Do Texans keep pregnancy tests on their legs?
The obvious solution for Texas is to argue that fetuses have rights but that workers don't have rights.
3: But what about the fetus inside the worker?
A fetal worker is a worker first and a fetus second. A worker may not abort a fetus for personal reasons, but harm to any workers, including fetal workers-to-be, resulting from the work itself is acceptable collateral damage. Workers live to work- they don't work to live. WORK IS THE GREATEST GOOD
5: Looks like someone is angling to become the next Texas Attorney General.
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Road surface drainage measures are relatively inexpensive and can prevent a lot of damage!|>
This final assault, with hot bitumen injection playing the key role, succeeded in completely stopping the inflow
Treating syphilis before antibiotics was harsh.
The man literally went on TV and told my owner to cut off my nuts. I couldn't have if I tried.
Wow, I'm impressed Bob Barker was still alive. Good livin', I suppose.
The joke I've seen made by several people: He made it as close to 100 as he could without going over.
So apparently Betty White and Bob Barker had a feud?
Yes, I remember reading about it in a book about game shows. (It looks like the link in 19 may be broken). An elephant at a zoo in California had outgrown its enclosure. Barker wanted to move the elephant to a sanctuary in a different area; White wanted to keep it in a bigger enclosure at the same zoo. White and her allies won out, and Bob wasn't happy. Sadly, Celebrity Deathmatch had already gone off the air.
18 was based on nothing more than knowing that Betty White was months closer to her 100th birthday when she died than Barker.
I guess I want more juicy details. Like, did Betty White leave a flaming bag of poop on Bob Barker's doorstep? I guess probably not, but its fun to picture that.
That's how proper feuds are conducted, after all.
Ah, here's a better link. Apparently a big controversy at the 2009 Game Show Awards.
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down-hole fabrication involved mechanical splicing of the 61mm through-pipe and butt weld splicing of the outer shell layer throughout the injection zone|>
hard-plumbed piping and valves engineered for crossover capability and flexible suction options
Each of these seams, over that lateral and vertical extent, will be largely replaced by a horizon marked by little or no remnant coal, but considerable brecciation of adjacent strata (while fossilized examples of, say pit props or mining machinery (or the skeletons of pit ponies or even miners) might occasionally be encountered).
26 et seq.
I keep taking MC's posts personally. Probably has something to do with experiencing my first kidney stone a couple weeks ago. Very easy to read them in that context. OK, skeletons of pit ponies went beyond what I related to.
The "I.P. Freely" might have been directly that way also.
Anyone want to shred into ribbons discuss the New Yorker story about Elon Musk's entanglements with the U.S. government? Honestly, scrolling through it, it looks really tedious -- parts of it are about Starlink and Ukraine, but it's also a profile, and surely no one needs to read yet another profile of this man? Is Ronan Farrow just longing for a cage match? It happens to all of us.
Part of the problem is the next thing on my list is In Search of Lost Time.
I listened to Ronan Farrow interviewed on Fresh Air so I don't have to. He only said one thing that really set me off (as in "you dummy!") but I forget what it was. His conclusion: Musk himself isn't so much the problem as the way we keep setting up a few hyper-rich people to have more and more control of what ought to be government functions. Oh, I think I remember what set me off - some long passage about what "we" were doing in that vein without ever using the word "Republicans." It's always "we" who chose to privatize and give tax breaks.
35: I'd bet Mort is both shorter and more fun.
But hey, I did finish The Magic Mountain a mere 30 years after starting it.
https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/08/25/der-zauberberg-by-thomas-mann/
If I still had a copy of Gravity's Rainbow I might be tempted to try to figure out where I left off in 1989.
Meanwhile, a military commissions judge tossed out a 'clean team' re-interrogation of a prisoner who'd been tortured years earlier. The opinion really is worth a read -- https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ruling-in-u-s-s/63627427c1a86144/full.pdf -- and we can all remember back when the blogosphere was new, and people argued that the shit done to this guy (among others) was OK, necessary, or both.
Are the alleged 911 plotters going to be able to make the same arguments? They'll certainly try.
37: But I keep In Search of Lost Time on the top of the toilet tank so I have it when I've got nothing to do but read.
To the OP, it'll take longer for Texas to become North Idaho, but outside the biggest cities, this is inevitable: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/22/abortion-idaho-women-rights-healthcare
Trump swam across the Yangtze River, so I guess he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
Doug, I should start over with Gravity's Rainbow and you can join me if you want. You can do the original or read Jelinek's translation. Moby, I say this with the greatest respect, but ISoLT is the last book I would recommend to you, like after that terrible series about sentient plants that your son kept reading or whatever it was. But you might like Gravity's Rainbow? I left off sometime after the aerial pie fight, I know, but I may have lost the bookmark.
If I don't warm up to it after the first car chase, I'll move on.
I guess I owe Chase Fraud Protection an apology because they stopped real fraud this time. Last time, they made me feel bad by calling fraud because I bought a nice gift for my wife.
They didn't object to six volumes of Proust.
I've been a fan of GR since it came out. The going is definitely slower at the start, but no less substantive.
Many were gathered,
Wide hosts of the Jews. Wolf-minds had they,
Evil hearts as well. Their book-learned ones,
Many men together, gathered at morning-tide,
Angry and hardened and longing for evil,
Wishing for wrong.
Is this about the Jewish space lasers?
The war-men all spoke,
The folk of the Jews, that He had forfeited life,
Was worthy of punishment. Yet not for His works was it
done,
That the Jewish folk there in Jerusalem
Condemned Him to His death, Him who had done no sin,
The Son of the Lord. Then the land-folk of Jews
Did boast of their deeds, how they could do God's Bairn,
Him held in bonds, the most harm indeed.
The crowd surrounded Him and struck His cheeks, the side
Of His head with their hands: unto Him they did this in
mockery and scorn,
The crowd of the foe; covered Him with their malice
And their blasphemous speech. And the Bairn of God
Stood firmly amid His foe.
I'd say start with the British candy section, then go back to the beginning.
If there's an indonesian grocery near you, some of those sell cubeb as Kemukus, it is good in gin for an accompanying beverage. Available through online ordering now I see. I'd totally be into GR reading, loved the book. I read it when I was young, clicked with me then. Not a character-driven book.
GR is my favorite book, I still have the first edition my first ex got me as a gift (never used as a reading copy though).
It took me several tries to get the momentum to make it through the Hansel and Gretel section early in GR, but I got there eventually.
Remember, it's all about the tungsten.
I've made the slog either 2 or 3 times (forget which), but after the last one I definitely decided it would be the last time.
44, 48, 53, 54: I see that amazon.de has two copies still in stock, so why not give it a go? I don't know how well I will do with reading along with anyone, as I am steadfastly and kinda randomly polybookorous (at the moment, it's Metro 2033, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque, and The Dragon Griaule).
That's neat that Jelinek translated GR, but no way am I reading it in German.
a desultory affair. The Guelphs catapulted donkeys with mitres on their heads inside the city in mockery of the late bishop Ubertini
That seems both cruel and difficult.
59 No doubt impacting with a perfect Poisson distribution.
62 well done. Here, have an English candy.
The English Candy Scene
http://bella.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Fun/gravity.html
58. My kid loved Metro 2033. That looks like an interesting memoir, easier to find in languages other than english though. How is it? Bohemia lost a lot of people during the 30 years' war, 20-30% are the estimates. I'd think Poland as well, so this period would be recovery from devastation?
Pasek's good! I mean, if you're the kind of person who's inclined to read a memoir of the Baroque, which I presume you are. He's vain, garrulous, and boastful. At least in the first hundred pages of main text, which are mainly campaigning in Denmark and then against Muscovy within Poland, there's plenty of action that zips along.
I can't help but picture him as much like Pan Zagloba from Sienkiewicz's trilogy (if you've read that), but I'm sure the modeling runs in the other direction. The translator gives useful correctives in the footnotes. Things like, n.b., it was not a complete Polish victory, or. the Muscovites only had 7,000 troops at that battle and not the 30,000 that Pasek claims.
Poland actually had quite a good Thirty Years' War by virtue of not being much involved. Unfortunately, they followed it by having the largest Cossack rebellion of the Commonwealth's history and then this thing known as the Deluge during which Poland more than made up for missing the Thirty Years' War, and the country was almost entirely overrun by Sweden.
Pasek's manuscript begins as the Poles are trying to recoup some of their losses suffered during the Deluge.
Metro 2033 starts as good pulpy fun. I wish the map inside the front cover were printed a bit bigger for my middle-aged eyes. It's fun to try to match the action to stations I've been to. We lived out at Yugo-Zapadnaya, the far end of the Red Line.
66: Jesus, that's unreadably bad. "Soft fenders"? That's the best bit?
I barely comment here at this point. I'm barely part of the community. And so I'm not sure I have standing to say the following: 49 and 52 are kinda freaking me out. I know that Mossy Character has been posting a lot of odd comments lately. I've not known if they're engaged in some kind of performance art piece or doing something else entirely that I'm not understanding. Regardless, 49 and 52 seem qualitatively different to me. But maybe my reaction is overdetermined. Dunno.
Mossy seems to be posting excerpts from a translation into modern English of a New Testament written in... Anglo Saxon or Old Norse? He's been doing it for a while. He does this with obscure history books he reads.
70: I appreciate the explanation. Thanks.
69 I think you do, and I don't think your reaction is overdetermined.
Old Saxon. 70 and 72 are correct, and sorry for freaking you out.
73: no apology necessary! I didn't understand what was happening and was a bit concerned. I'm reassured and will return to my regularly scheduled not commenting.
The translations are moderated now, but there's a reason most of the pogroms were during Holy Week.
The wiki article suggests that the Heiland was created to get German peasants to accept Christianity. Painting Jews as the "foe" was seen as effective marketing even back then.
68 You probably like English candy.
I just like English, which that barely is. It's like Neal Stephenson trying to do James Joyce without the antisemitism. (Assuming it doesn't have antisemitism later on, which I suppose it might.)
If you'd prefer more antisemitism, have I got an epic poem for you.
That's just awful. Congratulations.
Grendel does have a very pushy and domineering mother, now I think about it.
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How likely is salmonella poisoning? Pokey wants to bring and eat a raw egg at school to win some bet.
Kind of sounds like an old fashioned fitness strategy, and they weren't constantly getting salmonella, but maybe their eggs were fresher.
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I think many people consume raw eggs without any problems, but if you're worried you could pasteurize: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/how-to-pasteurize-eggs-at-home-5185434
It's probably fine -- you wouldn't worry about cookie batter, and I fed you raw egg in the form of mayonnaise at DCCon and no one got sick. If you were worried, do you have a source for fancy local organic farm eggs? Your odds are somewhat better than for a supermarket egg.
But I wouldn't worry about a supermarket egg, myself.
Isn't that the kind of thing you don't tell your mom about until after?
We eat a lot of mayonnaise here. I keep meaning to try to make some, but it seems like a pain.
It's not hard at all as long as everything is room temperature, but then you have an awful lot of perishable mayonnaise. I wouldn't make it without an immediate plan to use it all up.
Like the sands of time through an hourglass, but gloppy.
I'd actually trust supermarket eggs more because they're thoroughly washed. Farm fresh eggs are more likely to have some kind of animal shit on them which can contaminate the contents depending on how you crack the shell.
The supermarkets in Switzerland had all kinds of crazy egg colors and I don't know if they were natural or they just like to sell dyed eggs year round.
If you're eating the egg raw right then, contaminants on the outside won't have time to grow, right?
You can probably wash the egg yourself. Not that I've ever washed an egg.
During the great egg shortage of 2023, we were getting funny eggs. They were different sizes even in the same carton and one dozen I got had like six eggs that looked huge. Each of them had a double yolk. And some of the eggs seemed to crack very easily.
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
I have never seen an Adam Sandler movie all the way through. I couldn't even take a two minute "Opera Man" sketch.
95 Mobes, you should really watch Happy Gilmore just for the Bob Barker scene.
85 you could put the mayonnaise in a cookie
In the UK eggs aren't washed and they are stored (in supermarkets) at room temperature.
76: It goes back further than that, right to the gospels themselves.. Fascist Christians can point directly to the Bible -- and do. John (at least in translation) is particularly a problem, blaming "the Jews" and saying stuff like, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires."
Christian biblical textualists are more serious readers of their source document than constitutional textualists.
Update: Jammies wouldn't let Pokey take a raw egg, out of a conviction that the egg will get smashed inappropriately - like in a backpack or before the bet. If the other kid remembers to bring one, Pokey can make his own decisions. (I probably would have let Pokey take an egg.)
76 et seq: (Responding pedantically to what I'm sure were lighthearted comments, but if I can't be pedantic about 8th century Europe what's even the point of this place?)
1. At the time of composition "German" wasn't really a thing.
2. I don't know but will speculate that Jews in Saxony weren't really a thing.
3. The intended audience was at least as much the elite as the peasants.
4. The Heliand AFAICT is no more or less anti-Semitic than the Gospels themselves (though bad actors of course can and presumably have used it to slimy ends).
5. I found it a quick, easy, and interesting read. The translation I quoted is in the public domain.
78: this does make some things clear, like where the combination of liking extremely wanky Style and lying obsessively about foreign food got started.
The supermarkets in Switzerland had all kinds of crazy egg colors
Most countries prefer eggs that are various shades of light brown, rather than pure white. They aren't dyed; that's how they come out of the hen. I've never seen pure white hen's eggs anywhere outside the US and Canada.
Also this book is apparently set in Britain during the war, and here's a woman going down the street with a basket full of fresh limes? Top-quality research there. No doubt Pynchon thinks limes grow naturally in Britain. Or are they perhaps supposed to have arrived by air freight?
The Wikipedia article on rationing in the U.K. during the war is interesting. As is the one on the demob suit.
Presumably the Brits kept a bunch of limes around for the navy.
Man, you guys are really going to have a problem with the part wherein our protagonist swims down the toilet plumbing chasing his harmonica at the Roseland Ballroom.
In the UK eggs aren't washed and they are stored (in supermarkets) at room temperature.
In the UK, I have now learned, it is actually against the law for producers or distributors to wash or refrigerate eggs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-american-eggs-would-be-illegal-in-a-british-supermarket-and-vice-versa/
Yes. If one is going to refrigerate eggs, as in the U.S., it makes sense to wash them so that germs don't leach through the shell, contaminating the egg, upon the change in temperature. If one isn't, then the eggs should not be washed (and not needing it is a sign of good coop hygiene.) Basically the difference is the expectation of refrigeration.
Heebs if you give a ten year old an egg I think you get a Cleary novel.
I've heard both options are fine- wash and refrigerate, or don't wash and store at RT. Presumably don't wash and refrigerate is ok too aside from wasting cold storage space. The eggs naturally have a waxy coating which protects them at RT, but washing removes that so once they're washed you need to refrigerate. But I assume unwashed also means they're more likely to have farm residue.
105- I'm not talking about shades of brown, they were red, blue, green, orange. This says they're dyed but doesn't seem certain about it, and one of the responses says that means they're hard boiled. I didn't buy any from the store, but the hostel we stayed in served red ones for breakfast that were hard boiled.
If it's light blue, it means they have an unusually large robin.
If it has two pink lines it's a fertilized egg.
In the US it seems you should definitely refrigerate your eggs, and also cook them thoroughly, because there is a much higher risk of internal contamination with salmonella.
Since the late 1990's, British farmers have been vaccinating hens against salmonella following a crisis that sickened thousands of people who had consumed infected eggs. Amazingly, this measure has virtually wiped out the health threat in Britain. In 1997, there were 14,771 reported cases of salmonella poisoning there, by 2009 this had dropped to just 581 cases. About 90 percent of British eggs now come from vaccinated hens - it's required for producers who want to belong to the Lion scheme. The remaining 10 percent come from very small farmers who don't sell to major retailers. In contrast, there is no such requirement for commercial hens in the US. Consequently, according to FDA data, there are about 142,000 illnesses every year caused by consuming eggs contaminated by the most common strain of salmonella. Only about one-third of farmers here choose to inoculate their flocks. Farmers cite cost as the main reason not to opt for vaccination -FDA estimates say it would cost about 14 cents a bird.
Internal meaning inside the egg, hence impervious to washing etc.
You can wash inside an egg just fine. The rinse is the trouble.
Heebs if you give a ten year old an egg I think you get a Cleary novel.
Heh.
Technically Pokey is already 12 and in 7th grade. Time is flying like a fruit fly and all that.
113: the photos of coloured eggs in Switzerland show them as being labelled "picnic eggs" - so presumably hard-boiled? Quite a good idea - you won't get them mixed up with your raw eggs.
119, 121: Outside of an egg, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of an egg... never mind, yust yoking.
121: oh, wow. The Calabat is ten which is nearly as absurd as Pebbles being seven.
We just sent the boy in for the first day of his senior year.
My kids are grown adults. Newt is going into his senior year of college, but he spent all last year working full time for a semiconductor company (co-op program). And Sally is a grownup radio journalist.
OT: Is Gainesville enough in the path of the hurricane that I should text someone there with best wishes/warnings to flee?
My parents haven't mentioned budging.
In fact, they have not left for a hurricane since the 70s, when they were newbies.
I'm not even sure they left then, to be honest.
On the other hand, the climates, they are a-changing.
That path sure does look Gainesville-bound, huh. Maybe I'll text them.
I'm not going to text your parents. That would be weird.
Speaking of long books, I think it was Doug who was reading They Will Be Counted. I just finished it--good long book for Covid isolation (which shit I am not free of yet... was significantly better for 4 days and got back to Pittsburgh during that time, but then rebounded on Saturday evening and still lingering...). However, it was not quite as self-contained as I might have thought, have you read the entire trilogy yet?
Good book if you tire of trying to keep Russian names straight and want to try it with Hungarian names. Actually, a pretty good book overall.
134: Yes, I was! Still am. I may have mentioned that I am polybookorous, so it's always kind of a crapshoot about when I actually finish something that I have started, even though I only DNF a couple of books per year.
I knew that it's a trilogy, but have no idea how it's broken up or how cliffhanger-y it might be. I guess fairly so? Did you like it in general?
At least the translators put the Hungarian names into the Western order, so there's some chance of keeping track of who's who. Pasek mentions a bunch of people in his memoirs, but he's enough of an egotist that they don't really matter and not many of them recur. When I pick up the Banffy again, I'll have to remember that Polish and Hungarian pronunciations of s/sz reverse each other.
Yes. I generally liked it. A bit long-winded in places, but he does seem to have a keen eye, and writes evocative descriptions of the landscape.
I once made a Polish woman permanently mad at me. I'm not sure why, but it may have been because I didn't figure out who she was until after she took to insulting me. How was I supposed to get "Jeff-co" from "Dzigo".
Ajay flipping his shit about Pynchon is just killing me, I don't even know why. And then stopping to explain eggs, and then more Pynchon-bashing... more satisfying than feeding natto to an unsuspecting victim. I wonder if there's anything else similarly offensive to good taste that I have ready to hand? I can't remember how annoying the Cortázar translations tend to be.
90: There are breeds of chicken that lay colored eggs such as the Araucana but I have never heard of them being raised commercially in the US. I do see the eggs occasionally at farmers markets.
There's a breakfast place here called The Speckled Egg. First rate avocado toast.
138: I am very ready to believe that you can produce an effectively endless supply of shit books.
I think peanut M&Ms count as multi-colored eggs. There's a little hard yolk in there. The peanutbutter M&Ms are the raw ones.
Friends in Gainesville are saying they're just outside the path of the hurricane.
My relative left and is in Georgia with family. He doesn't want to get stuck on a crowded road if the path changes.
Obviously Pynchon is a great writer. He's been on The Simpsons twice.
141: I'm so lazy and chronically blocked; I just don't think the evidence is there.
No one could insult Pynchon like Gore Vidal could.
I tried to read Gore Vidal. He kind of sucked.
Actually wait, ajay, are you actually insulting my literary taste in particular? If so, please forgive my accidental misprision while feigning deliberate misprision. Also, I meant no offense to you and am sorry if I communicated poorly (reinforcing the truth of your accusations). I NEED TO LEAVE.
Haven't read any Pynchon, but as I recall, people who praised Infinite Jest compared it to Gravity's Rainbow -- partly for being brilliant, partly for being slog. Anyway, I liked Infinite Jest a lot.
150 Give Mason & Dixon a try. It's not for ajay, but you might enjoy it.
Reading my comment over again, it definitely comes off as much more hostile and mocking than what I was feeling when I wrote it, which was mostly delighted and hoping for more. I am not sure how that happened, but I really regret it. However, I am having a really, really terrible day amid a pretty terrible year, and this just isn't the best time for me to hear that my writing is effectively endless shit. I am very sorry.
|| Never give up this legacy, you are the heirs of the great Mother Russia, go forward with it," Pope Francis told young Russians gathered for the All-Russian Meeting of Catholic Youth in St. Petersburg on Friday.
"You are the heirs of the great Russia: the great Russia of saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, of that great, enlightened Russian empire, of great culture and great humanity," he said.
Students of history will of course remember that Peter the Great was the tsar who brought Kyiv and the Donbas into the Russian Empire, while Catherine, his successor, conquered the Crimea.
These European dictators do stick together, don't they. Solidarity extends like a shining bridge from one baroque palace to another.
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OT: Is 53 bpm too low for my pulse? I feel fine and I'm just sitting in my old-man recliner. I googled and it said below 60 was a problem unless I was very fit. I exercise and all but I'm fat and slow. Fortunately, worrying about my pulse rate raised my pulse rate to 60. Problem solved.
More googling says below 50 is the problem.
154: that does sound notably low.
152: I hope things improve compared to the terrible day, that sounds lousy. I took ajay's comment as implying that anyone who reads broadly would be able to think of bad books (90% of everything is crap after all).
154: that does sound notably low.
152: I hope things improve compared to the terrible day, that sounds lousy. I took ajay's comment as implying that anyone who reads broadly would be able to think of bad books (90% of everything is crap after all).
My resting rate is around 50, sometimes lower. I'm reasonably fit but weigh 125% of what I did at 20. BP is fine. Cardiologist is unconcerned.
Smith's charges seem pretty careful-- false electors and communication with Pence were both pretty detailed.
Keeping the plans to invade Iran seems like a slam-dunk also, but judge Cannon and FL jury.
The GA charges and circumstances seem most likely to trigger heart problems for defendant from rage at a black lady doing this to DJT. Plus she's charged a whole passel of his running dogs, gotta be some fireworks there. Can GA authorities kneecap her though?
I'm not keeping track of who has turned on Trump and with what records.
I meet my new students, Peter, Thomas, and Jordan. I would worry, but I think the Jordan is named for Michael.
"It's what we were wearing when you were conceived. "
"He's who I was watching over your father's shoulder."
Maybe they were looking at Jill Hennessy as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh in "Crossing Jordan."
Just rewatched Catch-22 as part of an Alan Arkin RIP rewatch (given the killer cast it should have been so much better than it is). I've been meaning to reread the novel for years now. But the absurdity of it really pulls me up short, there was no such regulation as "catch-22" in the US Army in WWII. And contracting with the Germans to bomb your own airbase so they will take all the cotton off your hands after you've cornered the market on Egyptian cotton and made it worthless? It never happened. Some really top-quality research there.
There was no real "Major Major Major" either. The shame.
I was pulled up short by coming across a "Major Vista" in Palos Verdes last week. My first thought was that it was someone's rank and name. "I have named the viewpoint Caleb in accordance with your wishes."
I actually worked with a Sergeant-Major Major a few years ago.
Also a Corporal Pepper.
Gouverneur Morris was never a governor but was a Senator.
152: Maybe this is a good time to thank you for suggesting Evelina! It was you, right? Anyway, it was loads of fun! And I got to learn about the tourist attractions of 18th century London. I think it would be good for Masterpiece Theatre, but maybe trying to reproduce Cox's Museum and the Pantheon would break the budget.
167 You'll recall that an investigation conducted after the war found no evidence for Darlene, her fenders, or her limes, although there was a Mrs. Quoad.
173: Evelina was me! I'm so glad it was a hit! Cecilia is longer but also great if you ever want to go deeper.
How many used wool Mackinaw jackets can you have before it's a problem?
It's only hoarding when they're unused.
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I set up an appointment w my therapist (who I only see occasionally these days) to get help with one of my kids, and my therapist thinks the kid is OCD and should probably be on meds.
I'm not exactly alarmed or disturbed by this suggestion, since I was alarmed and disturbed by the underlying behavior and its good to be validated, but I am processing.
Anyone have experience with OCD? My uninformed opinion is that we might be in the ballpark without being quite that exact diagnosis, but there's probably something nearby that fits.
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152: I hope things look up. Remember:
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
Anyone have experience with OCD?
Yes, at least with destabilizing intrusive thoughts. I don't even know if it will be helpful for me to share what my experience has been like, because your kid's pathology could be completely different, treatment different, etc. So please take with a grain of salt, especially all my ritual cursing of how much I hate it.
Basically: it's initially terrifying and one of the most helpful things is just to have some diagnosis offered: this is an unfortunate thing that brains can do, it's not a part of your mind that you've ever met before, there are ways to treat it that will make things better (CBT has a good track record, I think?), and you may have to rebuild your whole inner schema of what is and isn't really "you," but this definitely happens to people and it's a thing. That said, it's awful and so, so boring. Just so dull. I found myself almost longing for florid psychosis instead, if it had to be something serious.
In my experience, OCD is an extremely trigger-driven condition and makes a mockery of warnings and avoidance. You get triggered all the time and the only thing to do is process and cope. This leads to fatigue and badly needing breaks across the board. (I'm sure medication helps with this part of it -- I didn't have super effective meds for this in particular, but treating the comorbid depression, as well as just maturation, eventually pushed the symptoms into something like remission.) It's a mental load in general and on top of that, the anxious thoughts are unpleasant, meaningless, and tedious, so I never (ever) want to talk about them in the way that one would talk about real concerns in order to allay them. I wonder if it would work to kind of have a code with your kid, where you just generally ask how they're feeling, if they need to lie down, if obsessions or compulsions are especially annoying right now...? Relieving the burden of having to talk about it, and thus having to think more about it, is very welcome.
I truly hope that it's an easier thing for your kid to go through than it was for me. One of my close friends was diagnosed as a child and it doesn't seem to have affected their later life to a huge extent. (Depression, however, has been a constant chronic plague.) I think it's a fair assumption that whatever the kid is going through, they very much want it all to go away and leave them alone, so whatever your physicians can do to help alleviate it, that will be great. Sometimes, with depression, one's melancholy soul and exquisite sensitivity seem very hard to disentangle from illness and pathology. OCD is not like this. Pressure-wash it all off, stat. It's all foul.
I appreciate the you sharing all that, LM.
One thing I'm anticipating is that the kid is currently externalizing the problem. They acknowledge that nearly everyone they know does not care about these things to the degree they do, but they also think they're fundamentally right to have such strict rules governing all these things, and the rest of us are gross/wrong/etc. And in fact, there are versions of these rules that are fairly mainstream (involving cleanliness and germs), but the problem is the degree of distress that ensues when surgical-level hygiene is not followed.
My next guess is that there will be an extreme aversion to treatment because of a fear of loss of control. In other words, treatment will be seen as a direct threat to the stability of all the rules. I'm not looking forward to navigating that, either.
At the current age, I can still mostly force treatment on an unwilling minor. It's very likely that the kid would not acknowledge this is a problem until they are no longer a minor, and so there's likely no possible scenario where I can orchestrate treatment and they are ready to seek it out.
...but they also think they're fundamentally right to have such strict rules governing all these things
Yikes. Good luck to you.