Went to the doctor for the first time in 15 years today...

Well, in actuality, I first went 2 weeks ago to get my ear checked out: I hadn't had an ear-ache since 1983, so this was unusual. While making the ear checkup, decided to go ahead and make the first general physical checkup that I'd had in 15 years.

Ear got taken care off with a prescription for sulfite drops and a wash to get rid of ear-wax.

Body didn't get so taken care of. My new general practitioner attempted to do a pap smear; whatever instrument she inserted into me made me scream with pain (well, I wasn't actually "screaming," more like saying "Owwwww" really loud)! So she stopped after 4 tries. And then tried to cover by saying, oh, since I'd never had a pap smear before, that's why it hurt... I had to RE-explain: I've had many pap smears in the past, just not any since 2006---and I don't remember any of the earlier ones HURTING me like this!

Post unsatisfactory check-up, I was sent out to the main desk for "lab work" (blood tests). Where I was informed that it was an hour wait. No, I didn't want to wait around for an hour.

I had been concerned about potential diabetes (my left ankle has been swollen for a couple of years) and about anything else (cancer, liver disease) the blood tests might show. But I wasn't going to wait around for an hour on top of my initial appointment. Screw the list of 20 things that the doctor had put down to test for. (Half of them were tests for sexually transmitted diseases---which since, as I explained to the doctor, I hadn't had sex in a very long time, weren't actually necessary.)

After 15 years of no health-care, I came away from this brand-new encounter with "health-care" thinking that the system was trying to milk money out of my insurance company, and out of me, without actually taking care of me.

I WOULD ultimately like to know what my blood tests reveal... But like hell I'm going to sit in a waiting room for an hour! So I guess I'll never know. And I guess, sans blood results, I'll just come into the office whenever something happens (rather than the currently touted "preventive care").

p.s. Twelve hours after my unsuccessful pap smear today, my cervix still hurts, and my abdomen hurts. What the hell?

Am I dying soon? Past people are showing up in dreams...

People I've been in love with since a teen have been showing up in my dreams recently. Ginny, for instance, recently presented herself in black robes with a smile/smirk of greeting on her face! And Kathy and Kris were my friends. And my brief high-school senior-year boyfriend Joel---I can't remember what he was doing, but he was there.

A week ago, I dreamt I was sitting on my front porch, and saw a woman falling out of an airplane, with skirts flying/flailing. I couldn't believe the horror of what I was seeing, so I ran around the corner of my house, where I then saw the woman, and the plane itself, fall to earth. 

Admittedly, I've recently been thinking of the concept of being re-integrated into the cosmos... Doesn't mean I want to be re-integrated right now! :)

 
9/29/21 update: Ginny in another dream, and she was telling me something serious, but when I woke up I couldn't remember. Ginny used to appear to me once every couple of years, but she's showing up more frequently now...

"The Favourite": Whoa!

THE FAVOURITE | Official Trailer (2018)

Just saw this last night via Netflix. What a great surprise!

Random Austin Cable TV at 4am: The Matters

I almost always don't like jam bands or this type of music, but... I came upon this band last night on public cable TV in Austin and couldn't stop watching them. F-ing energetic and interesting!

The Carter Family: Wildwood Flower

Carter Sisters: Worried Man Blues (Live)

Walker Hayes: Fancy Like

Catchy, cute song (Applebee's commercial).
But the singer and hip-hop-influenced auto-tuning are pretty bad, smarmy.

Machine Gun Kelly ft. blackbear - my ex's best friend

MTV VMA "Best Alternative" winner 2021

In the olden days, we teens used to quote lyrics from pop songs to express our "innermost selves."

Here's what teens are quoting today: "Girl, don't act like you ain't saw me."
(Is there anything sadder/creepier than skanky lower-class white guys pretending to be black?)

George Jones: "Hung Up On You" Live

Happy Birthday, George Jones---September 12, 1931

George Jones: Worried Man Blues (2004)

 From Wikipedia:

The Carter Family recorded this song for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1930.^[1]

The song was recorded by Woody Guthrie in 1940,^[2][3] and in the years that followed by his sometime singing partners Cisco Houston^[4] Burl Ives,^[5] Ramblin' Jack Elliott (with Derroll Adams),^[6] and Pete Seeger. It was included by Seeger in his 1955 Folksinger's Guitar Guide instruction record and booklet (Folkways CRB1) ^[7] as well as his concerts throughout the 1960s.^[8] Lonnie Donegan and his band released a skiffle arrangement in 1955, with vocals by Dickie Bishop, paying homage to Guthrie and Houston in a later interview.^[9][10] The Kingston Trio wrote new verses and recorded it in 1959 as "A Worried Man",^[11] while Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs included it on their 1961 Foggy Mountain Boys Songs Of The Famous Carter Family album with Maybelle Carter.^[12] June Carter and Johnny Cash sang the song with Pete Seeger on the final episode of his Rainbow Quest television series in 1966, and performed it in concerts and on the later Johnny Cash Show TV series. The song has been performed by many bluegrass, folk and country artists, including The Stanley Brothers,^[13] Osborne Brothers, George Jones, and even by Devo, Van Morrison, Elliott Murphy, and numerous others.

George Jones: Still Doin' Time (1981)

Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops (1962, Ed Sullivan Show)

So sick of today's forced, false black/white dichotomy.
Jackie Wilson is GREAT. Everybody should recognize "great," regardless of color.
(And "great" doesn't have anything to do with leftist/BLM/communist ideas of what is good or not. If it were up to the left-wing communist academics, we'd all be singing folky propaganda songs. RESIST THAT SHIT.)

George Jones: I Stopped Living Yesterday (1967)

The Rolling Stones: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (1968)

Mick Jagger is naturally (and more interestingly) weirder/sexier than any performer trying to be "weird/sexy" today.

California Dreamin' (Jose Feliciano) from "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood"

Brad Pitt SAG Award Speech (2020)

Look forward to the year when I can start watching awards shows again sans left-wing propaganda.
Here's a non-propaganda Brad Pitt accepting his award for a great role in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Appreciate his humor and then his simple yet profound take on acting (at 2:05).

Birthday 1966

My birthday was last month, but my mother just sent me this picture.
My daddy's neat 1966 hair, and his neat polo shirt. The proudly displayed Melmac plates of the newly married young couple in the background. The baby's and daddy's shirts match the plates.
(I still have and use that same turquoise Melmac set; didn't know it was called "Melmac" until just a couple of years ago.)

 

Recent Texas Abortion Law

New Texas law: No abortions after fetal heartbeat (6 weeks). 

Aside from all left-/right-wing politics, I was just wondering: Who was it that first came up with the idea of scraping/sucking a human fetus out from a woman's womb to begin with? Seems like a completely unnatural, utterly psychotic thing to ever think about doing in the first place. And why would such a bizarre, awful procedure ever become de rigueur?

And over the past 50 years, how did the academia/media somehow reconfigure such an awful, unnatural thing into a solely intellectual position: "a woman's right to choose"?

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Rick Dalton / Green Door