Argh pain

In pain. Decided to not read comments or respond to comments until pain passes. It's radiating from spine to left foot. Hurts most in the left knee when I walk. Beautiful day -- took a walk to the farmer's market (bought nothing), stopped by health food store (bought tea and various priobiotics and health related drinks and vitamins), came home, took an aleve. Tears of pain streaming down my face. Thinking okay. Just ignore it. It will pass. You know it's a pinched nerve.

On the way...a lady in a big black van decided to stop her car just past the crosswalk on Ocean Parkway. Ocean Parkway is roughly a four-six lane road, with two additional lanes.
It has stop-lights and cross walks, clearly defined. She stopped, blocking the entire cross-walk on one of the four lanes with her car. I rolled my eyes and walked around her car, in front of it, then waved at her with a tolerant smile on my face. The Old Lady behind me with a crew-cut, and using a cart as a walker - was not so nice. I'm guessing she was in a lot more physical pain than I was -- because she proceeded to scream at the driver, curse the driver out, and when she finished crossing the road, turned around on the sidewalk and continued to do so -- screaming how the driver deserved a ticket and huge fine. Seriously, it wasn't that big a deal. But when you are in pain and it hurts to get around -- it seems like a frigging big deal.

This may be period related (my pain not the old lady's -- she's well past that, I suspect). Pinched nerve in back. Due to clenching muscles. No clue.

But I'm irritable and I want to smack people. And that's not good. I really do. Badly.

Cousin who never met, although My Mother begs to differ...just got out of the ICU with an infection associated with Meningitis. He lives all the way down in Bay Ridge Area of Brooklyn, far from me. I'd need a car to visit him. And like I said, I have no idea what he looks like and he has no idea what I look like. He's an environmental engineer. We've never crossed paths, even though I work with a lot of environmental engineers.

Me: I've never met him.
Mother: Yes, you did. They brought your cousins by when we went to your Grandparents anniversary.
And later at the funeral.
Me: I have no memory or this or him.
Mother: HE was the youngest and most attractive.
Me: Still no memory, and by youngest...this means he was what ten when I met him? And I was twenty-something?

Exterminator came by today. Why?

Exterminator (who is Jamaican): Monday and Tuesday were holidays.
Me: What holidays.
Exterminator: Jewish holidays.
Me: Only in New York.
Exterminator: What? No.
Me: Only place in the country who takes those days off is NY. The rest of the country does not care.
I've lived other places, those holidays aren't recognized at all. (Not even by Jews. I didn't know they existed until I moved to NY.)

I do find it interesting that they chose Sunday of all days to have him come -- and during church no less. Says something about my building, doesn't it?

Not that I cared one way or another. But if I were a devout Catholic, I'd be pissed off at the management and call them on their religious hypocrisy.

Like I said, I want to smack people today. Rip them to little shreds. So, instead -- I stayed home, slept in late, watched Great British Baking Show. Took a walk. Came home and hunted physical pain management doctors on the internet. If you've never experienced chronic pain, you've no clue how lucky you are. I honestly think 98% of the nastiness in this world is due to people experiencing chronic physical pain. It's certainly the reason behind the current ophoid crisis.

(no subject)

Every once and a while FB gets on my nerves...it has this week. If it weren't for the fact that it is the only way to stay in contact with a bunch of folks, including extended family members and old social media buddies, I'd wave by-by.

Social Media friend: I've decided not to shut-up and go black on FB, but go ahead and do what you need to do.
Me: WTF? Why are people going black on FB - is this because of the recent hacking?
Social Media Friend: No for solidarity regarding domestic violence and sexual discrimination.
Me: And how do they mean to accomplish this on FB exactly? That's one of my issues with social media - everyone assumes interconnection, when in reality, no doesn't exist.
Social Media Friend: Lots of people are talking about this on my list.
Me: Well, apparently not everyone got the memo. You're the only one on mine. And I've quite a few people who are in the field of Domestic Violence, one's at a conference on Domestic Violence and Rising Voices against sexual violence, and several are professional social justice activists.
And none of them have mentioned this.

My problem with the whole "OMG, I can't believe what they are doing to Ms. Ford during the Kavanagh hearings, this isn't normal, this doesn't happen!" bit is well, "yes, it does. It's been going on for over a hundred years, and what fucking rock were you hiding under?" It was actually worse during the Anita Hill hearings and the whole Monica Lewinsky bit.

Seriously, just a couple years back, one person on my lj flist was doing a weekly rape report. Folks, this isn't new. You're just happening to pay attention to it. Some of us have been fighting it for over twenty years. I was fighting sexual violence and domestic violence, actively fighting it in the 1990s when Missouri still had laws on its book protecting the violators. In 2014 - I did the Vagina Monologues, and over 80% of the women I was performing with had either been molested, harrassed or raped. And over 90% of the audience had. It's actually getting better now -- because more people are fighting back. Not by much. But at least people are less complacent. The election of the Lech, managed to wake up a few people who thought everything was honky dory and HRC could actually win.

But I don't think FB is the way to do it. Twitter maybe. But not FB.

And yet another friend felt the need to inform me that they'd just gone and saw Hamiliton. Please don't brag about seeing Hamilton folks. It's not cool.