I survived the first day of classes

[cornerofmadness]

My knee did not. We'll have a celebration of life for it over the labor day weekend. requiescat in pace right knee.

The students seemed to not be too bored with the utterly boring reading of the syllabus (I need the math prof's t-shirt. It's IN the syllabus!) I have athletes from everywhere including Samoa (not gonna be able to pronounce his name unless he writes it out for me phonetically. It's something I've not seen before).

One of our new hires is...confusing to me. She's taking on stuff we could get a masters or H.S. teacher to do (and only don't because of the time of the classes), coming here from the east coast to teach non major chem and human a and P (which she's not had) I like her. I'm helping her. I wish I could ask WHY do this? Her degree is in marine bio. She came to us with almost 40 turtles/tortoises. It's cool. I like watching them. The tortoises are piggish about their lettuce. But it's such a low paying job...(though given how academia is going it might be her first or second teaching job as she tries to find someplace with her actual field of study

At some point in the middle of the night it occurs to me I don't know where my check book is. I didn't remember seeing it as I unpacked. Well all I have left to unpack is my story stuff but it could be mixed in there. If not there, maybe it fell behind my dresser at home. I know I brought it here in June because it was the last week and I needed to write checks for storage and rent. It wasn't in the story stuff and I was ready to call mom to have her look behind the dresser when I see it.

It's under my computer monitor where I left it in June. THIS is the shit that has me worried about my brain. It's not that I forgot the check book here. Anyone could do that. It's that I DID NOT even realize it. That I did NOT pay my rent in fucking August. That is worrisome.

Also worrisome is why did my landlord NOT text to tell me. They did last time (when they accidentally put it in with their other business) I couldn't see my contact for my landlord in my phone. I knock on a neighbor's door. By the time she answers I find it and text him (no response) and my neighbor says they take the checks in at the end of the month (Huh?!?) Anyhow I texted him to say it 'must have gotten lost in the mail, want me to send you it all in one check for this month and September' (not going to say my dumb ass FORGOT I didn't send it in OMFG)




it's music Monday. Feel free to share with us. We're doing the alphabet and we're up to W. I'm only sharing the last 5 years but you can share whatever W songs you'd like.



This was overplayed and a little dumb but it's catchy

Watch on YouTube

Love her or hate her, Taylor does make good music

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Probably my favorite from her and pretty deep considering its source

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

This has a few painful lines in it

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[kitarella_imagines]

Oh good luck with the new academic year! I feel half smug and half envious. Smug because I don't have to deal with students anymore and have a different job, but envious because I did enjoy working with them and feel I was making a difference to the world.

[falkner]

Is a standing order through online banking not an option to pay rent?

[spikedluv]

I'm glad you made it through the first day! But I'm sorry about your knee!

I thought of you when I saw this on Tumblr this morning:

Steampowered September prompts at thepromptfoundry

[cornerofmadness]

thanks. the knee will adjust but its in shock right now

oh cool, that would be fun.

[cornerofmadness]

nope.

[suzume]

Will Anybody Ever Love Me?* - Sufjan Stevens?

Winter Windows* - Laura Veirs?

William Fitzwilliam - The Decemberists?

[cornerofmadness]

these were all good (Laura's video was vaguely disturbing) this is probably my favorite by Stevens

[suzume]

(Yeah, I agree with you there!)
But that's nice to hear. Especially about S. Stevens.

[cornerofmadness]

thanks.

Yeah a lot of days I wish I had another job but I'm so close to retiring, I can stick out the remaining years (i think)

But yes it IS nice knowing you are making a difference in a lot of people's lives

[kitarella_imagines]

You can do it! *cheerleading*

I say to myself, if I just changed one child's life for the better, it was worth it. I worked in some very rough schools and colleges, many kids had awful lives. School was the fun place for many of them. I often wonder what happened to them. I know one was paralysed due to a terrible accident. Some of them took or dealt drugs, most had broken family lives. I hope I helped them a little. We can only do our best can't we.

[cornerofmadness]

Oh that makes it really rough.

Mine is deep in rural poverty with little parental support so some of them have a rough row to hoe too

[kitarella_imagines]

I really enjoyed working with them but after 10 years it broke me. And I was very poorly during pregnancy then obviously needed to look after my baby instead of the students.

Sounds like a similar situation- mine was city poverty, yours is rural poverty. Both groups struggle don't they. You and I did/are doing our best aren't we 🌟

[cornerofmadness]

I get that.

If I'm honest seeing patients came close to breaking me

[kitarella_imagines]

I'm really not surprised. People who work in the medical field should have regular sabbaticals as a matter of course, they shouldn't be expected to work in such a stressful job for decades. It really annoys me when people criticise medical or education workers- the human race would be in a terrible state without such dedicated people 💪

[cornerofmadness]

And there is SO. MUCH. hate for health care professionals online and in the news (thanks to our current administration) It's a hard job and I TRY to get my nursing students to understand this, especially when they tell me things well I can't get up in the mornings or I can't work this many hours etc. I'm like do you understand what you're signing up for

[kitarella_imagines]

I really can't understand why people are so stupid as to hate healthcare professionals, and teachers. If we didn't have state of the art healthcare, a large percentage of humans wouldn't make it past the age of 5 and we'd still be suffering horrendous diseases.

I saw this quote, it was something like 'make the population healthy enough so they forget that they need great healthcare and they start thinking they don't need healthcare.' Something like that and it made sense. People think they are naturally healthy these days but they aren't. It's modern healthcare science that makes them that way.

Good luck with the nursing students 🤞

[cornerofmadness]

exactly so. I took a picture in the first cemetery I visited over the weekend which will be the centerpoint of my next social media post to piss off my right wing family. It was over an acre of nothing but baby graves.

This is what no healthcare gets us

[kitarella_imagines]

Good thinking, it really brings home how life was before modern healthcare. I've been researching my ancestors and OMFG so many of them died in childbirth. I found some very upsetting facts about my ancestors e.g. one census shows that my great great great grandfather, aged 25 was living in a house with his baby under 1 year old, and his sister aged 23. His occupation is listed as 'widower'. So that didn't take much detective work to realise what had just happened.

Also once I made the mistake of looking up my real name in death records. OMFG again. Soooo many babies with my real name died of things like smallpox, cholera, TB etc. Very, very upsetting. My own daughter was very poorly for 5 years as a little one, she would no doubt have died 100 years ago.

So good on you for showing your right wing family the truth. Some people think 'healthcare is an opportunity to make money.' I'm not saying your family think that! But the people who do think that are scum in my eyes.

[cornerofmadness]

I am sorry to hear that but not surprised. My grandmother lost 3 members of her family in a week as part of th flu pandemic

I always tell my students okay now think about WHY there are so many evil step moms in Disney movies and in folktales. It takes them awhile but then they realize so many women die in birth.

Sorry to hear your daughter had a hard start and you're probably right it was likely 100 years ago she wouldn't have had a chance

[kitarella_imagines]

Thanks, isn't it sad to read what our ancestors suffered? Sorry about your grandmother's loss too. It's unimaginable to think of losing so many relatives like that in one go. In the distant past I think it was 50:50 whether women survived childbirth and 50:50 whether men were killed in battle.

That is a very interesting take on wicked stepmothers. That hadn't occurred to me either, I thought it was just a trope to add drama.

Thanks again, it was very frightening. But I suppose 100 years ago I'd have had 10 other children as well! No contraception back then. My own great grandma had 15 children and only 9 survived, my grandma was such a fragile child they thought she would die young. But she lived to 97! Wow.

[cornerofmadness]

the good old days were not so good

Yes and no, it's sort of trope but it's based in fact. There's a nearby cemetery that we take the freshman bio students so they can look and see how many wives a lot of the men had since so many of them died in birth

[kitarella_imagines]

People don't know how lucky they are now with advanced healthcare. Contraception is probably the biggest thing for women, if we didn't have that we'd all have had a baby every year.

Exactly. My distant cousin was excited because our mutual great great great grandfather had 3 wives. Until I pointed out to him it was because they died in childbirth one by one.

[cornerofmadness]

And the fact that they're abolishing various birth controls here is terrifying.

yeah that's sad and generally the baby died too. On the flip side my great grandmother buried three husbands

[kitarella_imagines]

Yes that is really terrifying isn't it. I suspect modern women don't think much about pregnancy. They think they won't have children, or they'll have them when they are ready. But it might come to pass that they end up having children whether they like it or not, due to no contraception being allowed...

It does go the other way round too, the wife outliving the husbands. Marriage didn't last long until recently.

[cornerofmadness]

so many in my area end up with babies as sex ed isn't allowed in a lot of the h.s.

[kitarella_imagines]

That is actually cruel isn't it. Young girls just aren't ready to be mums. It's not like humans are dying out, we don't need everyone to have a baby to keep the population going.

They started teaching kids body awareness, emotions and basic sex education in my daughter's primary school FFS! So they know all about what to avoid from a young age.

[cornerofmadness]

it is but they seem to be after The Hand Maiden's Tale to make it real. They keep screaming about the falling birth rates (for fuck sake let them fall. We already have more humans than the earth can sustain well)

Same here whenI was young. It makes no sense

[kitarella_imagines]

I agree, it's like they read that book and decided it was what they wanted to base US society on.

Yes, birth rates are falling everywhere aren't they, but as you say the planet is overpopulated, we really don't need any more humans!

It's like they want the US to have the biggest population in the world, to match China and India.

[cornerofmadness]

One of the far right said the quiet part out loud 'this will force white women to have more babies'

[kitarella_imagines]

Yes...I think I read something about that. So WTF are they going to do with the babies that women of colour have? I dread to think.

It is true insanity. I am at a loss.

[cornerofmadness]

Yeah this hasn't crossed their idiot minds. White women still have more access to health care and are more likely to get birth control than women of color...

They're probably dreaming of the coerced sterilizations they used to do. I was so glad to see the police procedural, Dark Winds, set on the Navajo reservation, tackled that and brought it to light. I didn't know about it until I was a rez doctor and they told me that's why the men trusted me more than the women

[kitarella_imagines]

I expect they think they are all powerful and can control women with draconian laws...but fertility and pregnancy don't work like that. Humans have forgotten that when they have sex, pregnancy is the result 90% of the time. Contraception has been normal for so long now, so much that humans think it's natural and pregnancy doesn't happen most of the time. Hope you get what I mean, I'm not best at explaining.

Oh god yes! Forced sterilisations are their dream. Ugh, how barbaric.

[cornerofmadness]

My bigger concern are the young girls who use those period tracking apps. Some states are already using them to to 'prove' a woman has had an abortion but if you're like me, with polycystic ovarian disease or endometriosis and you can skip months of menstruation and then start again. On that app it would look like you were pregnant. We talk about this in class, trying to hint to them do what I did in my day, do this on paper

[kitarella_imagines]

Oh yes I heard of that happening. I advised my daughter to immediately delete hers and she uses a paperback diary now that no one else sees. I hope parents in the US tell their daughters the same!
I started using an app but got the menopause soon after so deleted it.
Good on you for advising your students! People are so obsessed with apps these days though aren't they...

[cornerofmadness]

Yeah it's not a good thing and maybe not something a young person would think about. I've many years under my expanding belt. Might as well share it.

And use myself as an example. I never once had a year of 'normal' periods. Mine were more let's skip three months and now have one that lasts three months. I should have had that uterus ripped out long before she went cancerous on me. (but alas many states you can't do that without your husbands permission)

[kitarella_imagines]

Yes they think apps can do no wrong and are secure. Nope!

Same here. My periods were always all over the place, never regular. I would get accused of having about 20 abortions in my lifetime if I used an app that they tracked. I'm very glad I'm past the menopause now.

You can't get a hysterectomy without your husband's permission??? WTAF. That's like the 19th century! What if you don't have a husband? Do they ask your father or your son or your brother???

[cornerofmadness]

Same here with the period app, glad I was too old for that

Health care and women's rights vary from state to state here. I live in a conservative state and others are way worse than mine (How's it looking Idaho now that you have only 100 OB/GYNs for the entire state thanks to your draconian laws)

I am curious about that myself but my ob/gyn was like yep, this needs doing and no one but me was consulted

[kitarella_imagines]

I think I had an app for a year or two then realised the dangers of it and deleted it.

It seems so variable in the US. It's variable between the UK counties but in general the UK government is in control of everything and it's like one state, as we are such a small country.

I'm glad to hear that. Consulting other people about an adult's health needs is ridiculous. I bet they don't get the wife's permission if the husband wants to get a vasectomy!

[cornerofmadness]

you nailed it. No need for a wife's permission for a vasectomy

[kitarella_imagines]

How funny! I wonder what on earth the reasoning for that is? Consulting men but not women? (Heavy sarcasm!)

And I thought sex equality was increasing, not declining...

[cornerofmadness]

oh we're marching right back to the 1820s here

[kitarella_imagines]

Or earlier 😞