You Watch Your Phraseology

Picked up Yes, I Could Care Less by Bill Walsh today. The subhead is how to be a language snob without being a jerk. Got as far as page 2. Introducing us to the concept of common usage, and that some words we consider incorrect are just nonstandard, Walsh then chooses to admonish us: Language change is inevitable, so why not lie back and enjoy it? The first chapter title is are people just careless? I already have the answer to that. The last line I read made me feel sick. I don't know any other reference, or colloquialism or dialect or usage that could relate to any other understanding of the phrase. I am bloody sick of this sort of thoughtlessness. My mother, when she did explain the reasoning behind whatever punishment had been meted out, would talk about how balls start rolling. Let this go, and then there's more, because clearly it's okay through common usage to pass on this, and that pass gains momentum and here we are with every state in the US, and the government of same, trying to take rights away from women. There are cat fights on twitter and facebook about slut walks and slut shaming, which only tells me that women have jumped into the fray in a way that helps nobody. We have had a decade of more women's rights reversals than in any other decade in history, and a contributor to this affront is letting phrases like this continue to live. Women are hypervigilant, and if we're not, we damn well better start being. For me today, it's refusing to read a book that uses that thoughtless and foul reference.  Some thinking person needed to have taken that phrase out. Thanks, Mayor Shinn, for the title of this post from Meredith Wilson's The Music Man.

Women Need Expectation of Recognition

I broke my pedicure rule today and read a magazine article while I was supposed to be om mani pedi humming. I don't believe I just wrote that, but I got up at 5 am, so I'm a little zizzy. It was Elle, January 2013, an article about ambition + power + women, featuring Lani Hay, written by Laurie Abraham. Understood that Elle is a fashion mag, evidenced by the photos of horrendously skinny women, and ads like London Fog, which until today I thought was a trench coat maker, but apparently not. Abraham takes a both sides now approach to the interview about women + ambition + power that reminds me of Chuck Todd – everybody is to blame, everybody gets a high five. You can read the whole article if you'd like, but for this post, let's sum up that Lani Hay will be president in 2024. It is her goal. She's accomplished a long list of things already, including the Naval Academy as a pilot, starting her own company, growing that to the multimillion level. She's done research enough to know that governor is the title to get to the White House, and she is eyeballing the guv mansion in Virginia. Never been a female governor in Virginia, but heck, there's never been a woman president of GM until this month either. Hay is getting her creds together, polishing her image, doing all the smart stuff necessary for a successful political career. I'll be keeping watch on Hay's career path. She also mentors other women interested in military training and careers. Abraham makes a point of twitching at the idea of a woman with ambition. She is twitching on the reader's behalf, but she doth twitch too much. Abraham labels some of Hay's funnier anecdotes as cringe worthy. This is the attitude we need to adjust: women calling out women who are honest, tough and don't pull punches. Not reacting to female ambition and power is the response we need and expect. I don't need anybody to twitch for me. And I certainly don't want a female writing about how another female seeking high and higher office makes us twitch. There was one excellent line in the article, and it was quoting somebody else. What women lack–and I will be thinking that this is the critical piece for a long time–is expectation of recognition. Not twitching.

Jingle Bulls

Challenge Number One for Caregivers

The biggest challenge for caregivers is The Bureaucracy Beast. Once you've engaged services outside your home, especially if these are state agencies, or subsidized care providers like home health workers paid for by Medicare or Medicaid, you are in the belly of The Bureaucracy Beast. A few years ago, desperate to get a paperwork tangle cleared up (because doesn't one paperwork misstep just cascade into total chaos?) I called an emergency help line I found on the internet. That organization was a 501(c)(3) that was about 6 levels below the 501(c) I was trying to get answers from. You're seen those ORG Charts in PowerPoint, right? With arrows pointing every whichaway indicating who reports to whozeewhatzit? In nonprofit realm regarding the developmentally disabled, what we have in Michigan is nonprofits that started as state agencies, and were privatized. Through the decades, those nonprofits hire other nonprofits to farm out the work. And it gets confusing, ineffective and frightening. The Beast grows. And, the goddess forbid that they work together to solve problems, because that is called DOUBLE BILLING. Today alone I used too much time trying to make a caseworker understand that people trump paperwork. She did not understand — may in fact be incapable of understanding. But, by golly, she did set up the next round of next level private contractor nonprofit interviewers clutching their paperwork to fill out our SIS or PCP or LMNOP. Meanwhile, my father got his new round of medications from the VA. He's concerned because something is different about the dosage and instruction labels. He knows, because this is not his first rodeo. I called the VA to talk to the doctor. A nurse called me back. She's a third party. We've got an entire day of 3rd party. I'm done with 4rd, 9th, 5th party. If you're not who I called, get off my phone. Doesn't this drawing look like a Beast? It is made of words that cover the officious piece of caregiving, and the agencies that shuffle paperwork from one nonprofit to another. I know what's wrong with our healthcare system. Nobody is face-to-facing with their clients, and may in fact not believe they are customers. I can't believe I'm going to say this but we need a nonprofit ombudsman that does nothing but shuffle through the paperwork for the elderly and senior caregivers. I feel so sad for people who don't have the ability we have in our house to 1) get through the red tape, 2) get the services we need, and 3) not have anyone new added to the family members who need help. Once more today I remember that I have told my friends that if I end up in a straitjacket, please make sure it's a purple one.

Caregiver: Finding Your Self

Many notebooks and years later, this little book is the essence of all the late night wailing, the whinging on paper and the whistling in the dark. 9 years as caregiver. Seems unreal on one hand, and a lifetime on the other. In those years I've learned a little about life, and a lot about myself. I've written before about paddling, and understanding fully that the more you fight the river, the harder it will mess you up. I've mashed up paddling with life in published essays, but not in my head. I'm a slow learner, but once I've got my numbskull around something, I tend to hold it in awareness. I understand caregiving more now, and this is the book about what a caregiver can do to care for herself. To focus on how I feel, is this a good time for me to do that task, do I really want to eat meat and potatoes 8 nights a week? This little book is gentle and gracious, and I sincerely hope–helpful. The next one will have all the wens and wails and whinging. Stay tuned. Being un-noble is a whole lot easier. And more giggles. The Caregiver ebook is available for all digital reading devices on smashwords. While you're there, please take a moment to download the free children's book You May Already Be A Winner! to share with your favorite youngster.  It is an homage to a real Michigan man who is an inspiration for us all. And if you're not yet bored, read the interview. It was the most fun I've had in the house in a long time.

Say No to Not

Found this photo today looking for something else. The tiny lake is somewhere in northwest Michigan. My camera battery was almost gone, but the photography goddess accepted the image and watercolored it as well. I believe the Ayn Rand quote was laid over for a graduation card.

Do not let your fire go out
spark by irreplaceable spark
in the hopeless swamps of the not quite
the not yet and the not at all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish
and leave only frustration
for the life you deserved
but have not been able to reach.
The world you desire can be won.
It exists.
It is real.
It is possible.
It is yours.

Browsing the local resale for a notebook for a birthday gift yesterday produced bonus bounty. I found a magnetic fake leather journal that had The Secret Gratitude Journal stamped in goldfoil on the spine. The cover has thank you embossed in many different languages. I kept that one for me. Kiitos paljoin [thanks lots~Finnish.] The woman at the counter said she had just put it out minutes before. Found a notebook for the birthday boy. I thought it read Killer Reality, but turned out to be Killer Beauty, and for marketing reasons I can't fathom is merchandise from Snow White & The Huntsman. (It was still packaged and read "Spiral Bound" although it is obviously perfect bound.) Made me laugh, still does. He's a huntsman, and if he gets a deer this year, I signed on for some venison bacon. And I found a travel journal for another wonderful friend who yearns to travel, but life is asking her to stay home for now. Scotland next year. Fingers crossed. A deer for Patrick, Scotland for Nancy, and gratitude for me. It exists. It is real. It is possible.

Linda's Little Book of Caregiving

Informal. Unpaid. Caregivers in the United States, whatever the statisticians call us, number in the millions. Statisticians love numbers and percentages. 29% of the population. 66 million people. Any organization that keeps track does so based on self-reporting. My estimate is closer to 100 million people engaged in caregiving. I'm not sure surveys administered to caregivers, when identified, are accurate for this reason alone: caregivers think of the persons receiving the care before they think of themselves. And caregivers may be prone to underestimating the amount of daily living activities they perform, when they report at all. I participated in a Wayne State University graduate student's survey via telephone interview. I started crying 1/3 through because I could not keep it straight who the survey was about. I kept answering on behalf of my father and brother. Me! I'm the caregiver. Adding to this loss of self are workshops that claim to be for caregivers, when the session is actually about the caree. Remember to have an extra handbag for when mother loses hers is not about the caregiver. These misrepresented sessions add guilt to the stew. One I attended was displayed on the library sign "Caregiving." 2 hour session, and with 20 minutes left, I raised my hand to ask when we were going to get to the part about caregiving. The moderator was surprised. Really? Later, looking at the handout, it dawned: the session was put on by an assisted living facility. It wasn't about us at all. A friend and I went to an inaptly named Caregiver Conference a couple years ago. Some of the workshops were about the caregiver. But the booths were about paid assistance, products for the caree, not the carer. Paid in-home health work. Stand-in bathtubs. Handrails. We were dismayed. No booth offering free neck and head massage. No gifts for caregivers. No booth just thanking us for doing what we do. We pledged to have a booth the following year, but do we describe ourselves as a nonprofit? When we can't sleep we look at the internet for caregiver help. We know it's a loving job, doing [your higher power name here] work, but we still can't sleep, we're losing our hair and our strength, and damn it, when is it about us? Ah, well, we read that caregivers have health issues. Some are predeceasing their loved ones. And site after site reminding us we're unpaid. We don't give a flying fig how much our work is worth. We do care how we can keep our selves, our sanity, and a modicum of independence. We need to know we have sisters who are struggling to maintain well-being. We are who this book is about. All those big numbers, personalized. Me, my friends and the gallant tired carers who need to know we're not crazy. Or alone.