It’s time… for a sea otter. This photo is by Linda Tanner, shared on flickr.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
I’m about ready to give the kids away today. I think an early night is in order. Then I might give myself the heebie jeebies by ironing while watching Dexter.
Have been seeing some great comedy shows this week, but have to catch up on writing up interviews/reviews and am SO TIRED. Bloody menopause.
Introduced the Tiny Tyrant to Princess Bride last night. He watched most of it without falling asleep, no complaints. Good to know my kid has taste.
Aphie, he needs this T-shirt from ThinkGeek.com: Inigo Montoya “Hello” shirt.
Caught a very interesting movie while flipping channels about the events of the GFC in 2008 called “Too Big To Fail” focussing on the TARP bailouts – starred William Hurt and Paul Giametti and was quite riveting. If you can find it on DVD/Netflix etc, I’d recommend it.
[TW: medical whatsits, surgery talk, run-on sentences]
Dear member of the medical establishment who saw me the other week: Please don’t expect me to tolerate near-constant flare ups of a painful genetic condition just because you assume I simply must want babies. Please do not conclude that I therefore should only use “conservative”(pharmaceutical, stopgap) treatment for who knows how many years until I pop said compulsory babies out.
I realise that the pregnancy I have no interest in experiencing may exacerbate the condition, but I would really rather take the surgical option, as it would actually fix the problem. The surgeon you spoke to preferred it too, so I’ve signed up for it.
PS: Talking to your female patients as if pregnancy is both a given and the only consideration in play is fairly rude.
@Perla if I had a flaming sword of righteousness I’d go with you and we’d scare the shit out of that fucker together.
I really would like a flaming sword of righteousness right now. There are quite a few people I’d like to scare, including a few Federal politicians. Urge to scream rising. The fuctness of the patriarchy is making itself felt for too many people that I care about at the moment. Plus there is a healthy dose of self interest there too because I’m concerned it could turn it unblinking stare on me. Damn my tendency to catatrophise too.
Thanks Mindy. Unfortunately, my sheepishness about my condition and desire to avoid being labelled a “difficult patient” kept my trap shut at the time.
I realise now it might seem/read like he was telling me not to do it *after* he spoke to the surgeon, which isn’t accurate. He gave me the “Probably/preferably no surgery. Because babbiiezz!!1!” treatment, then spoke to the surgeon. He was seemingly corrected re: treatment options by the surgeon – he came back to me to hand over the paperwork and explain the surgery.
I join you in your rage against the fuctness of the patriarchy, with added-yet-unrelated wonder at the way the LibNats are carrying on like Slipper was never one of theirs.
That’s a lovely photograph.
I’m having a great time watching all the seasons of “How I met Your Mother” over and over again.
Thanks.
-Simon
@fellowLPcommenters – A lovely last comment from Paulus on LP’s last post. I’m not quite ready to delete it from my brower history just yet though, it seems too final somehow.
I feel like all tssk’s doomsday predictions are closer than ever to coming true now though.
I’m mostly a lurker here but I wanted to post an actual otter related comment on the OtterDay thread.
I saw an old movie on TV called Ring of Bright Water (1969) that’s about a pet otter. I don’t mean to say that I approve of keeping wild animals for pets. I simply enjoyed all the cute footage of the otter swimming, playing, and frolicking in the snow. The otter even played with a dog in a couple of scenes.
Warning – sad ending for the otter!
@ahimsa – Ring of Bright Water is a lovely movie adaptation of an even better book. It’s fairly common “classic” reading assigned in schools – you’d never heard of it before?
Perla, I am so sorry to read that doctors are still treating women patients with the assumption that all women want to have children some day.
Years ago, I also had a doctor (a woman doctor, as a matter of fact) who thought this way. After I described some new and troubling symptoms she had the gall to suggest that perhaps these symptoms were the result of my regret over having had a tubal ligation about 6 months earlier. WTF?
I refrained from screaming at her (which was a struggle) and quickly found a new doctor. My symptoms were indeed due to a serious illness (surprise, surprise!) and not some psychological manifestation of regret over children that I never wanted. After 20+ years, I still have no regrets at all over my tubal ligation.
I just wanted to post to give you some moral support. So sorry that you had to go through such an experience.
I *love* Ring of Bright Water. My granddad gave me a copy of the book when I was 10, and somehow, it spoke to me. The copy I have is very, very precious to me: I loved my grandfather dearly, and the inscription in it is written in his hand. It is the only physical thing I have than connects me to him. He died when I was 14, and it was the first great death in my life, the first one that marked me. There have been no others since, and I am now 46. But one is looming, sometime this year or the next.
But back on otters… it was something about the connection with an animal, and something about the isolation and beauty of the Scottish highlands that grabbed me. FSM knows why, given that I lived, and still do live, on the other side of the world. I have loved otters ever since. My children know to call me to come and watch if ever there are otters on TV, and I have spent hours watching otters at zoos. When we were in the UK last year, I watched the sides of riverbanks, in vain hope. We’re planning on getting back there next year, and come hell or high water, I *will* join an early morning otter trip.
Deborah, I remember finding a B&B in the UK on the ‘net last year that had a page devoted to its local otters in the waterway visible from the house sometimes. I shall have to try and find it for you, maybe you can visit!
@ahimsa & tigtog: My husband talks of one of his early memories being his mum reading him Ring of Bright Water, and crying the whole time.
Possibly, Perla, it’s all about procreation, in general, that is the given and only consideration in play, by many doctors. I have a couple of genetic related conditions, that I would not want to risk having off spring, for concern of them having either condition. I went to a locum doctor, in a mining town. When I entered the surgery, I was greeted by a very pregnant doctor. She suggested I go away and told me I was being selfish to a possible future partner. That when that happens I should discuss it with her, the future partner. To add to the insult she, the doctor, then offered me a course of anti-depressants.
Thanks Ken and ahimsa. Sorry that you both had such bad experiences. This was my first experience of a doctor viewing me as a future baby incubator with human-like problems, so it just stuck in my mind. [fixed ~ M]
Eeep! Please imagine the second “by a doctor” isn’t there. Argh, essay-writin’ brain.
*gah* must not argue with dickheads on FB. Must not argue with dickheads on FB.
Otters are now quite rare in the UK sadly. But, where I have seen them was in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, in the area just outside Dumfries near Locharbriggs and Ae. And they are just as exciting in real life!
On the other hand, I *detest* Ring of Bright Water, mainly because sad animal things traumatise me and leave me unable to rewatch/ reread them.
I am without lounge room or kitchen at the moment and expect to be so until the end of May. Whether I, or the rest of my family, will survive to see the new flooring and kitchen and other bits and pieces we are supposed to have by then will probably depend on ensuring a constant supply of tea, twitter and chocolate. Wish us luck.
My otter love began with reading Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson as a kid. The book is written from the point of view of a wild otter, was first published in 1927 and won the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature. It’s a very long time since I last read it, must revisit sometime and see if it is as wonderful as I remember. My copy is still on one of my bookshelves. (Or possibly in a box somewhere…)
Re: Ring of Bright Water, somehow I didn’t know about either the book or movie before now. And unlike other school assignments that folks have told me about, published too late for me to have read them in school, it looks like this particular book was published about the year that I was born. So, that’s not the reason. I guess I just missed it somehow.
Thanks to mimbles for mentioning the book Tarka the Otter. I like books told from the point of view of the animal, everything from Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty to Paul Auster’s Timbuktu!
&*(%&^$%&#$%%^*(&_ why won’t the world just do what I fucking want it to do? Is that really to much to ask? Seriously. Why is this tiny little issue which I shouldn’t even be wasting time worrying about causing me so much angst?
Now as punishment for fretting over minor issue I have a major rage inducing issue to chew on. Add to this the fact that it is happening to a friend of mine and I can do next to nothing about it and two people who should know better are acting in a completely fuct manner plus a large dose of selfish ‘what if they turn on me next’ and it is quite an afternoon I’m having. Plus friends on FB are calling for the return of Kevin. *sigh* I think I need to turn off the computer, or maybe just shut down the social networking sites. But I won’t.