I have not been happy with my writing.
I can do better. I think the stories are worth the work, but not the execution. What I have been posting here has been early drafts, not finished work.

The last handful of weeks, I have been working on chapters to improve the writing. Opening works and looking them over. It has not been a pretty picture.

I will finish STORM RIDER, but I face some options. 1) Continue to post chapters RAW here before I clean them up. 2) Posting the entire process here, from RAW to ready. 3) Posting when it is the best I can make it.

Options one and two only make sense if I get feedback. Putting in the work for clean, tight writing only makes sense if someone might want to read the story.

I think option 3 is the best, but I may not be able to keep up a weekly pace.

I have the chapter ready and will load it when I can.
It looks like a lot of people are on this boat.

At least it is not a basket headed down.

Political historian Timothy Snyder accused Trump of using the big lie technique in his denial of the 2020 election result.

To work, according to Hitler, big lies must also be able “to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings”. They are not aimed at our rational selves, but our unconscious and emotional selves.

Trump saying that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, is not appealing to our rational system. It’s providing us with a vivid image, and trying to affect our emotional and unconscious system.

The rest of the artical can be found here https://theconversation.com/why-doe.....nt-lies-241192

What we REALLY need is something like Antabuse for politicians.

Reposted from a comment left by grendelair and I love it!
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/grendelair/

In the United States we recently elected a man who’s name will enter history along with Mussolini, Stalin, Caligula and others. He will use the tools of office to steal from us. He will corrupt the institutions of government and society. What he cannot corrupt he will break. What he cannot corrupt or break he will ignore.

We let angry people sane wash his crazy and blame us for not understanding.
We let him lie to us and about us.
We allowed his supporters to pass off his lies as political hyperbole.
We let echo chambers of hate and ignorance develop without adequate response.
We let him complain about lawfare while promising to do exactly that to his opponents.
We watched as he eroded our institutions with a fire hose of lies and blamed us for it.
We allowed his propaganda to SHOUT down all other voices.

We have what we allowed because too many of us were disengaged and did not vote, did not speak truth to propaganda, did not stay engaged and involved. We could not see how it could even be close and stayed home. We were complacent in the face of voter suppression. We remain reluctant to point to growing evidence of vote stuffing afraid to be painted as election deniers.

I helped let this happen by not responding to the lies, by letting the crazy pass because I did not want the fight, because I wanted to keep the illusion of harmony.
For my compliance my existence in this country is in jeopardy. My status as a retired veteran and the native-born child of native-born citizens will not protect me. Each person disappeared for speaking out or following the law or detained for inconvenient protected speech is one person closer to me and to you.

I watch people “disappeared” without due process.
I watch attacks on our body of law leaving one man above that law.
I see his enforcers ignore the law or twist it to intimidate and silence opposition.
I struggle to survive as he and his elite steal from each of us, because they can.
I see this out in the open and we let it happen!

I will not let the lies go quietly into the night!
That is how we got here.
I will not rant and scream.
That is what he and his supporters do.
I will not remain quiet.
That is what he and his supporters demand.
I will not apologize or hide.
That will not protect me.

Do not let the big lie go without challenge. Any "friend" lost over that was never a friend.

How can I show support for Police and rule of law when the symbols I am familiar with are frightening my neighbors.

As a veteran of two foreign wars, I have met many who see and embrace the punisher skull as a badge to show that they stood in harm’s way to protect a greater good. Often and increasingly my neighbors see only the vigilante eager to seek revenge by murder with little care for people in the way once the fight starts. I have stood in harm’s way on foreign soil and in CONUS. I want to honor that. For every time I explain to someone the skull is about standing in harm’s way there are many more who will not talk to me and read a very different message. There are some for whom that skull brings terror.

My father worked as a beat cop in Oakland CA. My grandfather was a superior court judge in California. At the time of his death, he was the oldest former judge and the only one to make it to 100 years old. I have worked as a prison nurse in Texas. I know the thin blue line, and how thin it is. I know that line is frayed and in places tattered. When I see the tattered white on black flag with the blue line, I see police going to work every day hoping to come home at the end of their shift. Just as a nurse I do a quick health assessment of everyone I look at. Police do a risk assessment, so I don’t have to. Often and increasingly my neighbors see only “I can’t breathe.”

I have the right to say what I want. I am also responsible for the consequence of what I say and what I display.

What symbols can I use to show my support for those standing in harm’s way holding the line? What symbols can I use to show my support for the rule of law? How in a sticker can I also insist on accountability?

I stood in harm’s way. I can show the EGA and the corpsman shield. Most of us can’t. What other symbols can we use that do not strike fear into some of our neighbors?

I am angry about losing the thin blue line to fear. I do not know how to change that.

I know people very close to me who react to the skull with a level of fear that leaves them trembling. I know people close to me who feel dismay, defensive and disrespected when the skull is questioned. Sometimes they are also left trembling.


When people are that upset they rarely resolve anything.

Florida lawmakers may loosen child labor laws to fill jobs left by undocumented immigrants.

Senate Bill 918 would allow children as young as 14 to work overnight shifts.

“Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people,” DeSantis said at an immigration panel, according to the network. “And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? I mean, that’s how it used to be when I was growing up.”

The bill in its current form would allow more than 8 hour shifts during the school week and up to 30 hours on the weekend. That is hardly "part time"

This may not pass this is the first week of the FL legislative season, but is is concerning that such is being proposed. I have included a link below.

https://www.local10.com/news/politi.....ed-immigrants/

Taking my grandson to urgent care I found myself assaulted by conventional thinking. A young couple came in, obviously in love, and the girl asked the nurse about returning to work. From that conversation I learned that the girl is pregnant and dealing with a neuralgic issue.

When the young couple left an elderly couple to my left began complaining about how they didn’t know what was coming and what a tragedy it was for young people to have children. When they were finished, I chatted with them for a short while and learned that they have no children of their own.

I have children, and I have been a single parent. Yes, it was hard, and they still drive me nuts. We are never prepared for the reality of children but when all is said and done, I am better for having them in my life. I miss them now that they have their own lives. I would do it again. I would have children now if I could.

Who are they, a childless couple, to condemn two young people for having children?

I suppose they irritate me because they remind me of people who condemn passion as sinful. I will be too old and infirm to endure passion soon enough. I have let too much time slide by without passion because I listened to people unwilling to live the way they told me to live, AND I CAN’T GET IT BACK! I feel assaulted and robbed by that kind of thinking.

Every time I make some progress it is a struggle, but I am better off for it. That getting out there and living life sometimes exposes me to social push back, is just part of the deal.

When I am met with scorn or worse I may want to lash out but that makes me one of “those people,” and lashing out is not my style. If I smile and take it, I become a “safe one of those people.” Not much better. But with the second option we can talk get to know each other and maybe I can be just a person.

Can anyone tell me ...

What kind of person reaches out to hurt other people just to cause pain, when there is no gain to themself?

How does my choice of a lover harm someone I am not dating?

How does government work better by making people hurt?

How does chaos and hurt make America Great?

How does making Americans live a 3rd world life make the US or the world a better place?

I am moving this from my profile to here. I do not want to lose this but it is not my current struggle. I have made my peace with who I am.

For years I felt something was wrong .... I hid.
When I knew it could never be ....I pretended.
When I heard that it was a nasty thing ... I fought it.
When I knew it would never leave .... I tried to die.
When I could not hide or pretend or fight or die ..... I lost hope.

When I asked for help..... I took back hope.
When I felt it as a part of me... I knew need.
When I felt it as me... I knew want.
When I feel at peace with it .... I will know me.

In case you have not already figured it out.
I am and always have been a woman.
I had to live most of my life as a man.
I have struggled to understand just what that means.
I work now on the details of looking and living what I have always been.

Z.

I know why I have been feeling so bad. No energy for a month. Chills with fevers for a week. Night sweats started last night. Pneumonia, I went to urgent care for diagnosis and antibiotics, and codeine for cough at night

Pain and medicine

I have had two medically needy people in my home over the last several years. The nature of need is that it tends to hijack all other functions of the household, especially when it is not effectively treated. Treatment can be difficult and sometimes rejected by the people who need it. Sometimes we don’t know how to help. Sometimes we do.
It is maddening and hurtful when that treatment is withheld, especially because of system failure. When effective treatment is known and available but withheld administratively. I also work in medicine; I see this from both sides of a cone with a dozen or more sides. Our system will leave a person in moderate to saver pain, for lack of insurance, gap in insurance, or hope that expensive needs can be delayed until someone else will have to pay, the list is exhaustive.
I don’t have an answer to all of it. Right now, I am helping a friend through a painful episode that has been mismanaged, poorly explained and at times treatment has been simply refused. Some of this has been a lack of capacity that leads to long waiting lists to get treatment. Some of this has been in the hope this patient will just go away. Some of this is because this person hurt themselves preparing to move between states and jobs and they must wait until it is convenient for the new insurance to take effect.
Delaying treatment hoping the care will be deferred until someone else can pay for it is simply malicious. Refusing to take the patient seriously is bigotry. The gap is a system failure unique to the USA, Mexico, and I think Argentina. Most other nations have systems of care, that do not have the gaps we do, and do not provide an incentive to delay care. we did not.
The way we pay for healthcare allows us in the USA to pay for the most expensive health care on earth. For that we get less than the best outcomes and leave many people with no coverage at all. The fragmented way we try to provide care is confusing at best and malicious at worst. This is not a failing of individual caregivers or providers it is a failing of the system.
Single Payor is not THE answer, but it is AN answer for some of it. Medicare for all is not THE way to achieve that but it is A way to achieve it. When there is one payor there is no incentive to delay treatment until some one else will have to pay for it. That saves money and gives better care. When there is one payor there is no gap when people move or change jobs. There may be other ways to do the same thing, but single payor is one of the ways. Another might to have consistent rules in how bills are paid so that a system with insurers can look like a single payer system yet retain aspects of competition.
Our way of providing health care is broken and we argue about if there is something to fix. People want your vote and your money insist they work on this. Insist that the people who want to lead our country stay engaged in solving this problem. If we don’t they won’t and it will stay broken.

Working in case management when days go bad it can be spectacularly bad.

My day had one kid with Cancer relapse.

One kid with a bleeding disorder and a medication denied.

One kid in the ED for a suicide gesture.

One in a crisis reacting by accusing their stepparent of assault.

And one kid complete suicide.

It has been one BAD day.

My last case of the day. I just have to stop! Imagine a child in the hospital with a skull fracture fresh and chronic hematoma and other issues. This child is not yet a year old. The record says "suspected abuse," I will never know for sure. I read the record to make my notes and look in the data basses online to find history...and there is none no ED history ... no claims history ... no history. This child's history as far as the record goes starts with him appearing in an emergency room after a blow to the head.

1) Why did it take the no history for me to start crying over this? Have I become numb to the ordinary well-documented monstrosity of overwhelmed frustrated people?
2) How long can I keep doing this job? it is 9:00 pm Sunday I am just catching up ... I will still be a little behind in the morning but I can't face any more tonight.
3) Am I the craziest woman in America for seeing the hook this would make for a book or prompt for a story? [a story I don't have the time to write, or the emotional space to read ... erll not right now.]

ZZ

Not many things can change perspective as much as a change in life circumstances. It can be fun to imagine what something will be like, and add a bit of kink into the imagination. It is all fun and games as long as you don't have to worry about the consequences, especially if you are not equipped for the role. ... Yah That can change.

Toss a genuinely hurt and angry man into the picture and kink quickly gets very scary.

On the one hand, if this were real life I know exactly what I would do, and I would not sleep in my own home tonight. In SL, I am tempted to thak a softer approach. I don't want to add to the hurt and the problem.

zz

“In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty.
In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry.
In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die untended.
In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.”--Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 Inaugural Address.

I really thought things would change for the better when I heard that. I was 13 at the time.

Now I wonder;

Why did it take so long for a president to say that?
Why was there so much opposition to that at the time?
Why does the audience look so bored?
How did we fall so short of that ideal?

I don't know if I am aware of something because it is new, or maybe because I can see it, or feel it. It could just be that sense of different we have whenever there has been surgery. And of course, having to do "therapy" on something three times a day tends to keep it on the mind.

I very much like who I am, and what I am. The struggle to get here sucked, and there are surprises every week, most of them pleasant. Some of the biggest surprises were the things I did not have to struggle with.

I am aware of my new shape and parts every waking hour of every day. Some just off the radar stuff, like when looking straight ahead I can see my own bust in my peripheral vision. When driving some times I feel them against my upper arms. And some insistent awareness, mostly where I had surgery. Yes, I can feel that every waking minute and not just the burning numbness of surgery that was expected and is mostly gone now. I was prepared for that. I am not talking about the sting of upsetting the still healing wound, that lingers but is just about finished. I am aware of my vagina as a vagina all the time, and that can be very distracting. It is affirming in som undeniable ways, but I don't often want to admit just where my mind was a moment ago.

Next week I go back to work and imagine the absurdity of my daily schedule.

Get up dilate shower dress go to work, at lunch lock myself into a privet room and dilate, then at the end of the day rush home dilate and fix dinner. Even my daily schedule keeps me focused on my own sex.

I know most of this will pass.

I don't know how much will linger.

I don't know how much I want to linger.

I don't know how I feel about it.

In Relative comfort. the swelling is down enough I don't feel like I am sitting on a lump. It is just over 6 weeks and healing is coming along.
Fealing is coming back witch is a good thing but Post Op therapy is rapidly losing its appeal as things hurt now during the sessions that did not before. One day at a time. I am supposed to be back at work in 3 weeks. I will leave that open for now at least as long as I have any remaining healing to do where I sit. [The sitting can compromise the circulation and therefore the healing].

On another note, I have been aware on multiple levels of a part of me/my anatomy every waking hour for 5 weeks. As I am aware of that, I am also ... it is not exactly intrusive but never far from consciousness ... Friends tell me that they have never seen me more relaxed. After each step in this process, I feel more comfortable in my skin.

Two months ago I could not imagine being any more comfortable with me. five years ago I was just learning to like me. Two months ago I could remember being him, now I still remember him and his life, but I can't get any handle on what it was like to be him. Aside from working to understand a character I may be working on I think I can leave it that way.

I am so glad to be home, sleep in my own bed, cook in my own kitchen, and yes pick up after my partner.

Nearly all my stitches are out. The flight was delayed 90 minutes that meant a LONG time sitting on things that were sore. I don't care I am home. and I had ice.

I have enough healing that;

Sleeping is comfortable
Other sanitary needs are comfortable too
Walking is comfortable within limits
Sitting is still problematic but not out of the question.
There remaine some issues of healing that are TMI for this forum but quite manageable.

The healing has progressed to a point where "things" are waking up. Without going into details a physical therapist might find interesting this is FA, after all, I am getting a sense of: where things are, what it might be like when the restrictions are lifted, and bottom line ...

just how much better this fits with me in my own head.

First, thank you for the words of support.

Hard to believe a lifetime of waiting and it is now a week in the past.
The anesthesia cleared easily. that is a good thing.
I don't do well with Oxycodone the fogginess and dizziness were worse than the pain. But turns out I really did not need it so Tylenol tordol and ice have been enough. Two thumbs up.
All systems are working.
I have been walking since the afternoon after surgery. That Realy helps me feel better.

Well Friday is the big reveal ... and when I get the foley out.

NO I won't post pictures!

The last few months have been an emotional storm season for me. Partly as surgery gets close and partly as work got crazy and partly just the work that I do. I have had a great deal of difficulty sorting out where each emotion is coming from. First I am more comfortable in my own body than I remember ever being. that is a stop what I am doing and just enjoy the moment thing. As for surgery, there have been some really stupid anxieties all the way up to an hour and a half after the surgery the Vogans destroy the earth to make way for an inter ... you get it. Stupid, but with all the waiting and delays and obstacles I can not shake the feeling that Wednesday morning something will come up.

Last night was the last night I will ever sleep in my house in quite this shape when I return I will be different. That part of me that has wanted this and thought about this all of my life will have to find something else to do.

For good or ill we are influenced by what we remember of our lives. If something has been part of that life long enough when it is gone there is a hole left behind. Even if it is something that has done us great harm it is still part of how we become who we are.

Officially the next two months I will be recovering from surgery. The more important work I need to do is reconcile for myself my work, will I return and under what circumstances. By midday Friday I had my report about finished for turning over my cases and my anxiety began to rapidly fall away. Yes, I am anxious about surgery and what will come with it but I think it was more from work.

Joyce is home from work we have 2 hours before we leave the house ...

I do not handle stress well I never really have.

Deadlines, schedules, airplanes pretty much all of it upsets me. I can do all these things, but my anxiety in the process probably makes it unpleasant for those around me. I must travel out of state for surgery and make it to a hand full of appointments beforehand I am stressed over that. We have deadlines at work. The surgery is like 61 years delayed so I am stressed wondering what will derail it now. Will it work as well as I hope [of course it won’t my hopes are not grounded in reality] or at least as well as I expect [much more realistic expectations]. While I am out of town will I drive my host crazy? All of that playing on a family drama background with my son in lay getting deported from China [that did get sorted out, but it was a stomach wrencher while it was going]. And tied in with things I never learned how to talk about in any meaningful way and I…
Sigh, I know one thing at a time… one step at a time. Lately, the steps have included crying spells, hyperventilation, and lightheadedness and depending on my partner to make the airplane reservations.
Well in three weeks it will be over then I hope to have some brain cells for something else.

I did not realize it has been a year since I finished my last book. I have started another one but I am not making much progress on it or much of anything else.

Four months of chaos in my home did not help but that leaves 8 months of not really getting much done but housework and my day job.

With that out of my home maybe I can get some writing done?

After the con in Dallas

Maybe I will write another book "Tales of the trip to the pink side, and you thought we were the weaker sex."

Tell me what you think. Especially if there is a good story in it.

I do not like Bret Kavanaugh for a Supreme court justice. I do not think religious rights or corporate rights should ever trump individual rights.

I am also an abuse survivor at the hands of a domestic partner and at the hands of my society. I did not recognize it as such at the time and I ask no redress for it now. Having said that, I am disturbed by the accusations recently aired against Bret Kavanaugh. Having been made they need to be addressed, and some people will be unhappy with any outcome that leaves the man able to walk the streets.

I get it.

It is all assault.

We are harmed by all of it.

We have also all been children once, and we do not hold children to the same standards that we hold adults too. We have held as a society, that mistakes made as a child should have consequences that do not cripple the adult we shall become. Going back thirty years into a person’s past and judging them by the standards we would apply to the adult they are today strikes me as both not fair and as a blow to many things we have been taught about this being a nation of law. We do not allow Ex Post Facto law in this country. Or at least that is what I was taught, and I thought that was still the law.

Was I wrong about that?

There is another concern that I have, and that is the way a week accusation that does not lead to the discovery of a pattern of misconduct can discredit many men who did something stupid rude and WRONG as children, and have as adults been the men we want them to be. Much more than that, I worry that we risk discrediting and devaluing the testimony of many more women who have been hurt, assaulted and more.

Now that we are beginning to look at sexual assault as the crime that it is, are we going to discredit that look with first, the idea that it is all rape or the idea that no blood no foul? If we treat it all as heinous rape, everything from not taking “no” for an answer to brutal physical assault with grievous bodily injury, then we make prosecution extremely difficult. We let men walk without consequence because we have no proportionality. No blood no foul is hardly any better. We are to close to that for well-positioned men who face little or no consequence for the first dozen accusations.

I opened by saying I am uncomfortable with this because I don’t have a well thought out answer beyond this.
1) All accusations should be investigated, quickly and discreetly Not zero tolerance that applies only to low paid employees.
2) No one is exempt not even managers or executives.
3) Consequences need to be fair, real and not window dressing.
4) Recognize that anyone can be hurt. They all deserve support and healing even when the offense can’t be prosecuted for whatever the reason.