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Girl Talk – The Hot Flash
There is nothing quite so comical…and annoying …as “the hot flash.”
When I was a child, I would laugh at my older women friends who would be fine one moment and ready to strip the next.
More than once I was warned, “You just wait,” but being young and all, I couldn’t relate.
That has all changed now.
What in the world was God thinking? How can it be possible to be comfortable one second and ready to strip the next, no matter where you are?
What logic is there to having your window open when it’s 5 degrees outside, because even as you need the heat on in the house, the heat loses to “the hot flash” every time?
A hot flash has power. Were we to capture the hot flashes of, say, two or three women at one time, and bottle it, I wonder how much energy from that heat we would be able to measure?
Case in point: I was at an event, dressed quite nicely, thank you, getting ready to make a presentation, when, BOOM! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, came “the hot flash.” I felt my face grow warm and beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I did the proverbial “look around:” Was this just me or had the heat suddenly gone up in the room? But no, nobody else looked the slightest bit bothered. It was me.
I wanted to fan, not just my face, but under my arms, between my legs …and I wanted to fan with much energy! But because I was in public, I had to do the dainty fan thing.
Ugh.
Menopause is quite hilarious, actually. It is amazing, what hormones changing around in us women do to us. It messes with our bones, it makes mood swings really interesting…but the funniest part (although not funny when you’re having one) is…the hot flash.
Mine aren’t really bad, and not all that frequent, thank goodness. I try to watch what I eat and exercise; I have heard that doing that sort of thing is helpful. I do not take hormone therapy; I’d rather let nature take its course…but these hot flashes are rude! They intrude in places and at times when they are not appreciated and where I cannot strip in order to cool down!
Sometimes, when I am getting my hair dried at the beauty shop, “hot flash” comes and sits with me, so even as my beautician dries my hair, it is getting damp again because “the hot flash” is making its way from my feet to my head!
Ugh!
I always say that when I die, I hope I have an opportunity to have a conversation with God. One of the questions I’ll ask is why we women had to have the menstrual period experience. Why don’t men have a lovely, monthly visitor with whom to deal? It doesn’t seem quite fair…
But clearly, one other question I would like to ask God was why He/She felt it necessary to make us women go through menopause and experience “the hot flash?” Surely this isn’t all because Eve tempted Adam to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden, is it? If it is related to that, shouldn’t Adam have to bear some of this…experience, seeing as he had the power to say “no” to her but didn’t?
Something is wrong with this picture, I write, even as I need to stop to fan. Yep, you guessed it…I am having…a hot flash.
A candid (and hot) observation…
What If?
What would America be like if it were run by a plain, old, middle or lower middle class president, and if the Congress wasn’t filled with millionaires?
There is so much conversation about how we are a plutocracy and not a democracy at all – meaning that the wealthy are doing the controlling and the governing. Government and big business are in bed together, and they are not about to give up or even consider policies which will threaten their class status or their wealth.
That’s understandable. They have no vested interest in the common people; “we the people” are merely puppets used in elections. Ironically, we elect people who do not really have our best interests at heart, not if it threatens the status quo.
It is not surprising, though it is sad, that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is getting larger and larger and that the middle class is almost non-existent. GOP presidential candidate shows absolutely no sensitivity to this reality, saying this week that the complaints against the wealthy is really envy.
Perhaps somewhat. It would be unrealistic to deny that the “have-nots” would rather be “haves.”
But what if the presidency went to a middle class person who was not so far removed from the days of real economic hardship, who remembered personally what it was like to work and still not have a decent, living wage? What if that person had a Congress that was likewise filled with people who could relate to the vast majority of Americans because they were in basically the same boat? What if the members of Congress didn’t have health care, or what if their jobs at Congress paid minimum wage or just above? What sorts of policies for the American people might emerge?
It is telling that in debates, the words “poor” or “poverty” are seldom heard. We hear that conversations criticizing the distance between rich and poor as being “class warfare,” and we hear jabs intimating that people who depend on entitlements or even government employment are burdens to the system of free enterprise.
But the candidates show their disconnect from what is the reality in America, and it goes beyond comprehension why they do not seem to know that a country cannot be its best if the masses are in distress.
And clearly, the masses are in distress.
Someone said to me that if more people would just try harder and get a good education, the playing field would be more level.
I wondered which country she lives in. The cost of a college education is skyrocketing, way out of reach for more and more people, even as jobs that don’t require college educations become fewer and fewer.
Something is wrong with this picture.
So, I just got to thinking …what if the president were just…one of us? I cringe as I see these millions of dollars being spent to get elected. It’s like the money was pulled from a reserved tree or something; this while so many people are suffering. The poverty rate in America is 46 percent…
To make matters worse, the money being thrown around isn’t getting us any closer to knowing who, really, has the best interests of “the rest of us” at heart. No, super PACs are doling out money so that candidates can tear each other to shreds personally. All these guys are super wealthy, and all they want to do is get into office to create policies that will protest their wealth. So, what’s a few million dollars to get that done?
If there were to be someone who came aboard advocating for the masses, he or she would be quickly dubbed a socialist. People call President Obama a socialist, but his policies have not been all that kind or helpful to the masses. The complaint against him seems to have stemmed from rabid opposition to his Affordable Health Care Act, but other than that, I find it hard to figure out why people are saying that he has been against big business and free enterprise.
At the end of the day, those who “have” fight to protect their interests. That’s all that’s going on now. That’s why I wonder what America would be like if someone less wealthy, with a less wealthy Congress, were in control?
Would we be a more equitable nation, or would those in power aspire to be like their mentors, i.e, the wealthy who are in power now?
A larger question might be, would a less wealthy president and Congress create a more equal America, or do the masses of people, wealthy, middle class or otherwise, even believe that financial and/or social equality is even a part of the definition of democracy? Was this country ever intended to serve the interests of and protect the masses, or were we, the common people, duped into believing in the ideal of equality by Thomas Jefferson’s words, “all men are created equal?”
A musing …and a candid observation.
Paul, Santorum Need Come to Jesus Meeting
I keep thinking that somebody ought to tell Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum that racism is…not presidential.
Both gentlemen fared well in the Iowa caucuses, and both seem to have a hunger for the nation’s highest office.
But Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum, can we talk?
Just a couple of days ago, Rick Santorum said that he “didn’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.” He was speaking to a group of white people, and I guess…well, I guess he was comfortable and he knew what they’d want to hear.
In the name of God, some white folks just think black folks ought to just …shape up, right?
He later on said that he didn’t recall making the statement, but that’s only after he said, in an earlier statement, that he had probably been thinking about what he saw in the movie “Waiting for Superman,” which focuses on black kids trying to get into charter schools…
Santorum said to Sean Hannity on the latter’s television program that, well, he doesn’t make racial distinctions, and, by golly, he has some black friends! Yep, sure does. Michael Steele and J.C. Watts, both black, are his friends.
Never mind that neither of those gentlemen seem to relate to the real plight of many African Americans.
And then there’s Mr. Paul, who, back in the day, had newsletters written under his name. Now, he says he didn’t read any of “that stuff,” but the fact is that “that stuff” appeared in these newsletters and he did not disavow any of it.
What didn’t he disavow, you ask? Well, for one, his statement, “If you’ve ever been robbed by a teen-aged male, you know how fleet-footed they can be.” (italics mine) In that same newsletter, published in 1992, he said that “we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males (in Washington D.C.) are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” He was the only member of Congress that opposed giving a Medal of Honor to Rosa Parks and opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. Paul said he is not a racist; in a 2008 CNN interview, he said that he’s the one who protects blacks in the inner city. He says that the statements show the tendency of the media to take things out of context.
That’s fair. The media does have a tendency to take things out of context.
He said in the 2008 interview that he repudiates all of the statements in the newsletters, and that is good. He said he has never read the stuff written under his name.
He said that the real issue is the drug laws that so unfairly impact black people, and he’s right on that.
But it’s the little things, the little tongue-in-cheek things that are said that help keep racial tensions alive, and keep marginalized people feeling, well, marginalized. It is a myth that most of the people on welfare are African American; though proportionately, the poverty rate for African Americans is higher than that for whites, statistics show that more white than black people are on welfare.
One of these presidential politicians ought to say that, don’t you think?
I know it is the job of a politician to get elected, and politicians will say anything to get elected. Ironically, I think of the words of the Apostle Paul, who said in 1 Cor. 9: “Though I am free, and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.” (9:19) Later he says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way to get the prize.” (9:24) I chuckled as I read that entire passage of scripture and wondered if Paul, in addition to fiercely loving Jesus the Christ was not also a politician?
It seems to me, though, that a good politician ought to have the adjectives “honest” and “sensitive” somewhere in his or her resume. Mr. Santorum and Mr. Paul need to “fess up” to saying, or allowing to be said in their names, some pretty racist stuff. It happens. This is America, and it is no secret that many to most white people have grown up with disparaging views and opinions about black people. How great it would be to hear a white politician just “own up” and admit they’d said some things that reflected how they grew up and were taught?
When we admit our goofs, we can begin to fix them.
And fixing their apparently racist ways of looking at black people is a must, in my view, for anyone who is striving to get to the White House. The American government has not been a friend to black (or brown) people, or to women or other oppressed groups. The American government turned its head to the injustices suffered by black people and would not, did not, protect its black citizens.
The country has suffered as a result of that.
Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum would do themselves and their campaigns a favor if they would just have a “come to Jesus” meeting with Jesus, and ask Jesus to change their thoughts and beliefs when it comes to black people, black life and black culture.
Because the country is not a lily-white place, gentlemen, and the country cannot be as great as it has the potential for, if all of its people are not treated having been created equal.
A candid observation.
© 2012 Candid Observations
RuneScape Wiki: The Ancient Curses are a set of prayers obtained as a reward after completing The Temple at Senntisten. →
What is your next chapter?
What is going to be “the next chapter” of your life?
It hit me last night that I really need to step out of my comfort zone in a big way. I have always known that, but last night, the magnitude of that necessity hit me in the middle of a sound sleep.
I woke up.
The truth of the matter is that we get so comfortable being uncomfortable. Discomfort has a comfort of its own which we do not like to acknowledge, but it is there, and it paralyzes us.
We lose the right to complain about our circumstances if we refuse to move. If I have a cut and keep pouring salt in it, it seems rather foolish to complain about the pain, right? If I want the pain to stop, I have to stop pouring in the salt.
We so often insist upon pouring salt into our own wounds, our situations, and then we complain. When I woke up last night, I realized my complicity in my angst. I realized that some of what I carry as angst, I carry because I have chosen to keep pouring salt in old wounds.
The death of my sister jostled me. How in the world could one so young go away, be taken by illness? She had the spirit of a fighting hawk; death took her, but not easily. Yet, she is gone, her chances to stop pouring salt into her wounds gone.
It is as if God said to me, “Well, what will YOU do?”
I would bet that God is asking a lot of us that question, not because it is the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one, but because God really wants more of us to “become’ what God created us to be. It is not about resolutions, which seem flippant, but about conviction about who we are and what we were put here to do.
We have a limited amount of time. When I felt the divine jostle, I knew what God was saying to me.
The chapters of most of our lives fall into a mundane hum. Many to most of us exist as opposed to living. We take everything for granted, from the breaths we take to the days of life we are granted.
Yet, God wants us all to have a “next chapter,” a chapter which will be different from what we have had up until now. God wants us to “be’ what God created us to be, to contribute what God put in us to contribute.
The best thing is that no matter how old we are, as long as we have breath and life, we have a chance to begin the next chapter. Even if we cannot finish the chapter, we need all to begin it. We ought to love ourselves and our potential enough to look into what God sees in us.
Even if one is an atheist, there is a “higher power’ than the “here and now,’ something which can encourage us to reach for the stars even though we may only reach the moon. The important thing is that we reach.
What is your next chapter? All of us have a “next chapter.’
That would be a candid observation.
Candid Observations 