I don’t want you to make me uncomfortable. Genital inspectors in bathrooms, drop your pants and show you sex organs to a stranger.

A Nationwide Book Ban Bill Has Been Introduced in the House of Representatives

Again all this is about is a Christian nationalist desire to mimic Russia and remove all LGBTQ+ representation from the public view in the name of “protecting children from porn” as if just being or media representing LGBTQ+ people is pornographic and sexual. These people feel anything not straight and cis is sexualizing and abusing children simply because they do not want the LGBTQ+ people to exist. Hugs

Side note. Ron got home last night 3-2-2026 about 6 pm. I made him a supper of a salad and two hamburgers with the fixings. He was so happy. I was happy. We went to bed and snuggled which made Tupac who has snuggled me every night a bit unhappy but he pressed in from the other side. All day Ron and I have been together, unloading the car, doing laundry, Ron started on the floors in the kitchen, and we are making a pork tenderloin, potatoes, brown gravy, carrots, and greenbeans for supper. It is so good to have my husband home. I understood why he had been gone for the better part of three months but it sure is grand to have him home. I feel better, anxieties lower, and happy feeling up. Also for those worried I was not eating which I was not, I ate like a pig at a trough tonight, having a first heaping plate of everything and then going back for a second heaping plate. The end of the second one was a bit challenging to finish but I did. I offered to pick up the last bits of left overs but ron said he would do it. I think he noticed I was trying to hide that I was swaying and wobbleing when I walked due to my pain levels. Hugs

Discussion of gender is not sexualization. Making books available to students that represent the diversity of their experiences and showcase the numerous ways to be a person in the world is not sexualizing them. Such an interpretation says far more about the adults and the perspectives they’re applying to books than it does about the books or their intended audiences.

Following this week’s State of the Union Address, House Republicans worked quickly to advance legislation to ban books from public schools nationwide. House Resolution 7661 (H.R. 7661), also known as the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.”

The bill was introduced by House Representative Mary Miller (Republican, Illinois). 17 additional Representatives cosigned it.

H.R. 7661 is an anti-trans bill, and tucked within its provisions are those that ban books for those under 18 that “include sexually oriented material.” This is the same vague language used in numerous states across the U.S. to ban books from public schools and public libraries. This bill includes “lewd” and “lascivious” dancing as prohibited topics or themes. No such books for young readers exist, but facts don’t matter to a regime seeking total and complete control.

The bill goes on to further define “sexually oriented material” as anything broaching the topics of “gender dysphoria or transgenderism.” The latter is an intentionally harmful word used as a cudgel to harm trans people. Such a broad definition also ensures that this kind of bill could be applicable in any situation where it would benefit the banners. It isn’t a stretch to see a bill like this used to outright ban all books by or about LGBTQ+ people under the guise of it being “sexually oriented.”

Though this legislation would apply to institutions using funds from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, there’s little question that it would expand to include all public libraries, not just those in public schools. We’ve already seen this very thing play out across the country.

Katy Independent School District (TX) banned any books about “gender fluidity” among its bans of “sexually explicit materials.” Just last month, the Texas school district outside Houston banned over 140 LGBTQ+ books under the policy. Greenville Public Library (SC) has banned all books for those under 18 with “trans” themes or topics, a ban later replicated and expanded in York County Library to include “gender identity” books (also in South Carolina). Greenville’s library was sued by the state’s chapter of the ACLU on behalf of several library patrons.

These local-level policies, alongside state-level policies like Iowa’s Senate File 496 and Idaho’s House Bill 710–both still working their way through numerous lawsuits–provided the roadmap for the proposal of federal-level book ban legislation. It was only a matter of time, and the ongoing onslaught of anti-trans legislation and rhetoric that has grown exponentially under the Trump-Vance regime made this the prime moment.

Discussion of gender is not sexualization. Making books available to students that represent the diversity of their experiences and showcase the numerous ways to be a person in the world is not sexualizing them. Such an interpretation says far more about the adults and the perspectives they’re applying to books than it does about the books or their intended audiences.

You can read the full text of H.R. 7661 here, including its list of cosponsors. Right now, your best way to have your voice heard about this hateful and discriminatory bill is to call your House representatives and urge them to veto this bill at every opportunity. There are years’ worth of resources from which you can pull about where and how all of these bills are calculated and targeted, and you can pull from the numerous ongoing lawsuits challenging similar bills and policies at the local and state level. Let your lawmakers know that you’re watching them and their voting records, especially if they’re among the roster of those proposing the legislation.

These bills aren’t about removing books; books are just one of the tools. These bills are about the complete and total erasure and removal of queer people from American life.

Tired, page 2

In the previous post, I spoke on how I was so very tired of the political climate. One of the issues that I described was this constant stress of chaos that the drumpf administration purveys upon the American public and the world in general. Stress is debilitating. It leaves a person living in a constant state of fight/flight, questioning what we should be doing to survive the madness that is maga and a perpetual attack upon our empathy for those not so fortunate to only be stressed.
There is a saying that goes generally that if you can’t do anything about it, don’t stress over it. But, I’m stressed.

Much of my stress is my own personal life challenges, but a lot of my stress comes in the realization that while I may hope to ignore those things that are beyond my control, others are not so free. How many lives have been destroyed in the turmoil of one man’s pursuit of totalitarianism? How many deaths do we lay at the feet of this conman? And worse, however reluctantly and contrary to our wishes, he is our leader and we are responsible for the atrocities he commits.

Let’s face it, he told us who he was before being elected – for the second damned time! He showed us he was a fraud, a rapist, a serial adulterer, a racist, a criminal. He stole from children, from his workers, from his wives.

So, right or wrong, earned or borrowed, stress presses down on me and many like me. And that chronic stress severely impacts our health by keeping us in that fight or flight reflex, leading to our burnout, mental impairment and physical illness. We struggle with chronic pain, insomnia, high blood pressure and a weakended immunity. We are anxious, depressed, and can’t remember why we came into the damned room!

Is this what it means to be an adult, or just an adult in the drumpf era? My god! I watch the news and find myself in line for ptsd treatment! What could be next? What ball will I drop next? What emotional eruption is next in line for me?

I’m so f’ing tired of being tired; I’m so f’ing tired of being depressed; I’m so very f’ing tired of being anxious.

Today one of my workers asked me if I was ok. He saw that I was angry, I guess. I laughed for a moment, told him I was fine and that my back was just hurting, that it was a typical Monday. He just stood there, in front of my desk and waited. And somehow I found myself very quietly saying no. I’m not ok.

I don’t really have the freedom to be anything but ok. I am the one that has to be there making sure things get done. I am supposed to be watching out for the morale of the team. I’m charged with the continuity of employment. I’m supposed to be the strong one, the boss. And there I was realizing that everything was broken, and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it.

I don’t have answers to a damned thing, but today someone stopped what they were doing long enough to demonstrate that they cared, and I realized just how powerful that could be. It didn’t solve my problems, the sun didn’t shine any brighter and the birds weren’t singing overhead, but for a moment my burden was shared. For a moment I didn’t feel quite so alone. That made a huge difference. I hope I’m strong and wise enough to emulate that, and perhaps together we can outlast this too. Hugs.

What do you think about the BLIND refugee abandoned by Border Patrol?

Let’s talk about Trump ignoring MAGA….

Trump Fatigue Setting In? | Heather ‘Digby’ Parton | TMR

I really enjoy Digby and her takes on political stuff. She says that tRump is losing everyone but the maga base. Hugs

C-SPAN Anchor Stunned By Struggling Caller

A poor person calls in to explain how they have nothing and no way to live with all these cuts to social services. Horrific. The Democrats must promise to fix this and return the safety to the safety nets. Hugs

‘Follow the money’: Maddow’s INSTANT REACTION to U.S. striking Iran

She has the same idea that I did about this war, it is the money groups pushing it. Only names far more than I did. Hugs

The diagnosis of my pain doctors and it was worse than I thought.

I have been promising this post since monday. But I have always been too tired or in too much pain to write it or post it. I am going to start this tonight but it is late for me and I may go to bed before finishing so it may take several days.

The fact is before I even went to my pain doctor to tell me the result I knew things were bad. In the morning I can only sit in my chair for at most two hours before I have to get up and do something that helps relieve the pain. Mostly that is going to bed. I don’t sleep just lay their reading news or telling my self stories I create hoping to fall asleep. Randy sent me a headband with speakers but that just interferes with my own thoughts and keeps me awake. It was a good try and I bought one for Ron and he loved it. I will give this one to him. I go to bed and lie there only to get up and sit for a couple of hours to have the pain again overtake me. Once the pain gets that bad it is 10 to 15 minutes at most before I have to leave the desk and simply walk around or do something because the pain gets so bad so fast.

Also Tupac is on the desk being as close to me as he can. He is not lying on the towel I leave down for him but as close to the keyboard as possible even at time placeing his paws on the on the keybord hitting random keys. He wants to be as close to me as possible since Ron has been away so long. He feels he lost another human. I will be exciteed t0 see him react when Ron gets home on monday night.

So before the doctor told me the damage I knew something was badly wrong. So remember that even before I talked to the doctor I knew something had gone drasticly wrong. Sadly the MRI showed that.

Yup figured that would happen the pain levels are too high so I am going to bed. It is 8 PM my time.

It is now Saturday and I am trying hard to get this post done and out. But today my pain levels are very high and it is difficult to focus but I will do my best.

One of the things that the doctor told me was that my spine is no longer aligned; the disks are not lined up with each other but shifted to different degrees. Remember this was only the lower spine now they are going to MRI the upper spine. Second my spine has curved wrong. Then we got to the serious stuff. Degenerative discs, bulging discs, and discs so damaged that the nerves are outside the spinal channel. The arthritis is so advanced it is deep / spread in each vertebra. She tried to explain all the medical terms. At one point she excused herself to go speak to the surgeon I see for spine shots. When she came back it was with bad news. He no longer thinks epidurals will help me in my lower spine and I need nuero surgeon to do back surgery. Crap I cannot afford that. I am losing my sight, Ron has to have eye surgery right away, and the van needs 2 grand in repairs. That doesn’t even include my eye surgery and the repairs on our home.

While I did not understand everything she said I so desperately wished Ron had been there as he often explained these things to me later, and I have forgotten some of it, the situation is I need an MRI of the upper spine as well, she has refered me to her prefered spianl nueraal surgenon. Then I will need spinal surgery as the state and federal government won’t let them increase my pain medication because I can’t take the fentanyl patches with my skin allergies. I am being squeezed into a surgery I cannot afford or seeking illegal drugs for relief to be able to function.

I remember when I started in this clinic in 2009. They looked at my MRI of my spine and gave me 75 gm of morphine twice a day. I asked it to be reduced to half that amount and it was and I could live normally. But after the opioid “crisis” the states started to inject non-medical legislators into the medical field to show they were tough on abuse and misuse of drugs. It got ever more crazy until my life went from normal and even being able to work for a few years to not even getting enough pain relief to sit in my desk chair and blog for an hour. Now the federal government is demanding it be restricted even further, as RFK Jr. taking steroids can work out in jeans. On the restrictions I can’t get enough relief to blog for any extended time of the day. I spend half of my awake time in bed instead of at my desk. I struggle to stand to do dishes. I just told Ron that I cannot clean the floors before he gets home as I tried and it left me in tears. Even with our lightweight, easy to use cleaning devices. The damage to my spine and the lack of medical relief have gotten that bad. This makes no sense to me. Why deny me the pain blocking medications that allow me to fuction semi normally. It simply makes no sense to me. Why put me in this state what is the goal?

Do you see my point? Why put me and people like me through this? Do they want us to use illegal means for relief, or do they want us to suffer to death and go away? Do they care about us at all as they make these rules? There is more things my pain doctor told me about my spine I did not list yet, things like protrusions, spikes hooking nerves, some thing she kept say stenoisis, and nerves being pinched between vertebrae. At one point she mentioned I have advance degerneritive disc, I so wish Ron was there as I understood so little of it, then came the but you need a neurosurgeon and back surgery to help you because the state and federal government won’t let us give you enough medical relief to have any life. I hate this regressive holier than thou republican elected officials that swallow all the illegal drugs they can get from their providers while denying us poor people relief for bigoted racist reasons and their personal gains.

I am sure I left things out. I had to take after talking to Ron a saved 30 miligarm instant relief morphine because I was going out of my mind. I try desperately to save extras so when the pain is so off the chart I can get relief. But with the new restrictions, how do I do that? Why do the people in power who have access to pill mills and who have no pain and want to just make a name for themselves while doing the very thing they legislate against try to hard to make the live so people like me so hard? And I am poor and scared. Hugs

How do you think we can make our bathrooms safe?

I love this video. Rev. Ed Trevors correctly says there are more problems and harms to children caused by people who look like him than there are from trans people. Ge calls trans haters cowards. Hugs.