Gardenspice, the doc told me hormone levels wouldn't be conclusive because I still get my periods regularly? I am kind of skeptical about that, but he usually knows his stuff, so he is probably right. The thyroid test was in conjunction with my annual blood tests and he said all of those were normal, except for anemia. For the anemia, he sent me to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy to rule out anything sinister going on. I believe he ordered the cardiology tests because my father had his first heart attack at age 51, and died of his third age 58. I am glad I was checked because those palps scared the heck out of me. It's easier to deal with them now that I know they are nothing to worry about.

As a person with PTSD, I definitely appreciate the accuracy of this post's comparison. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes decorating styles that came from the eighties or earlier. Those cringey little details that people hate? I love them. My fondest dream is to someday own an ugly house that was built between the 60s and 70s and looks like it, burnt orange, harvest gold, and all. I often visualize the confused looks on my neighbors' faces when they see a house that looks like the 70s threw up all over it, hear a random mix of big band, classic rock, and nu metal coming through the windows, and realize their neighbors are - GASP! - Millenials! These daydreams are how I cope with living in an apartment full of beige, beige, and more frickin' beige. That said, even I've got my limits: Carpet in the kitchen. My grandmother (God rest her soul) had her kitchen floor covered in some sort of flat indoor-outdoor carpet in geometric patterns of green, gold, and black...or, at least, I remember the shapes being green, gold and black. It was very old carpet, very rarely vacuumed, and always dirty. Sure, that's bad enough, but you know where the trauma came from? Well, Gran grew up in the South during the Great Depression and came from a dirt-poor family. You never got caught wasting anything around her; she even washed and saved disposable straws for future uses. During one visit with her, I was helping her prepare a modest lunch. (Green beans with butter and garlic, a small burger patty on white bread, and white rice with butter and salt. Yes, heart attacks run in the family.) I turned away for a moment, can't recall why, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the butter fall off the knife halfway to the green beans. It landed right on that nasty, ancient, smelly carpet...but you don't waste food. Gran picked it up with her bare hands, looked it over, and brushed something off. Maybe it was gravel, maybe it was a hair, or even a toenail clipping - all were entirely possible in that house. And - AND! - she tossed it right on the green beans and stirred it in like it was completely normal. I suddenly "got a stomach ache" and went home hungry; after my mother heard the story, she started sending money for us to get takeout so Gran didn't poison me. To this day, the idea of carpet in the kitchen makes me want to sit in a corner, rock, and whimper. Spherical knobs on cabinets. Like stick a marble on a bolt and it's a knob shape. This one's simpler. When I was in fifth grade, my parents bought a fixer-upper dating back to the twenties. It's a beautiful house but as the kid (read "unpaid manual labor assistant") I got a good close look at all the horrors from the renovation. Over twenty years later, I can still recall the obnoxious shiny round 'clown nose red' knobs on the kitchen cabinets...which, by the way, matched the 60s era strawberries-on-butter-yellow wallpaper...so Bozo nose knobs and butter color on the walls, double-whammy. The horror! Wallpaper in general. Sure, I don't mind having paper on the walls, but if there's any possible way, I'm leaving that wallpaper up until I die. I can't stand the wallpaper? I'd almost rather not consider the house. This, too, dates back to that 20s era house. Previous owners, instead of removing the paper and starting over, put layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint on the walls...and it took my parents three rooms of countless layers of painted paper to decide to leave it in place and paint over it. In the half-bath alone, we found about a dozen layers of wallpaper and painted wallpaper dating back to the 20s...and one of those papers had simplistic designs of women in bathtubs, all with beady eyes fixed on the room. I still feel watched anytime I use that bathroom. Lastly, this one is actually literally a PTSD thing. Buildings without a safe room, basement, windowless interior room, external shelter, or other ideal place to take shelter during a tornado. To simplify a too-complicated explanation, in 2011 the apartment building I lived in was in the direct path of an EF-5 tornado and I was home when it hit. The building had the latest in hyper-paranoid fire safety but it had no posted plan for a tornado in the vicinity. My neighbors and I wound up sheltering in the corner of the hallway just yards from several big glass windows and four all-glass doors. Needless to say it wasn't pretty, and most of the buildings in that neighborhood were either flattened or nearly so. I won't go into detail beyond this: our building was brick, and there was non-brick construction obliterated for about half a mile in each direction of us. None of my neighbors were injured or killed. We were so far beyond lucky it's dumbfounding. Ever since then, my first response on entering a new place or checking out a house is "where will we go when s**t hits the fan?" Not if...when. The tornado in 2011 was only the second or third in my city's history; we've had two more smaller tornadic events since 'the big one' and I've lost count of how many "once in a decade/lifetime/generation/millennium" storms have happened since. Missouri isn't known for calm weather, after all. There was such rampant PTSD around here from the tornado (and so many people who ignored the sirens) the city upgraded to new models that test silently. People are finally building safe rooms into most new structures, but it shouldn't have taken that level of destruction. Put your mark on your place - include all the little details you love and ban those you hate - but for the love of Mike, when you're building, buying, or remodeling, seriously ask yourself where you'll go and what you'll do if your region's form of natural disaster happens, and consider whether or not your plans will keep you and your loved ones safe. That got heavy. Here are my cats modeling the latest styles in boxes and bags to lighten the mood. Goldie's sitting in three nested boxes. Those proud cheeks! Skidd just wanted to remind me that he's the present.

I was the daughter, wife, sister and Aunt of police officers. Of course, from being the child of a police officer and then marrying one, I had very intimate knowledge of the many difficult tasks and sometimes terrible emotional trials they experience, in their line of work. I saw first hand all the support and comfort they are able to bring people in times of extreme stress and tragedy. But I also learned of the (fortunately low ratio of) police officers who use their authority to flaunt their arrogant, condescending, bullying attitudes towards anyone they consider inferior. It's a shame when the wonderful, dedicated officers are affected by the terrible reputation the bad ones have in society, much like the majority of wonderful Catholic priests suffer from the terrible reputation of the rotten ones. Too bad that both vocations seem to have so much difficulty bringing culpability to the bad ones and getting rid of them.

After you've used the paper towel on the handle to open the door of the public washroom and find no garbage container nearby into which to dispose of it, yeonassky, you say that you carry a plastic bag to put the towel into till you find a garbage container. If it's a usual kind that you've washed after having used for another purpose, then you're not using one more new piece of plastic to turn into junk. But if you use a new one, if you get milk in bags, would you consider washing an empty one into which to put the possibly contaminated paper towel, in order to avoid turning one more piece of fresh plastic into junk after just one use? At age beyond 80, I have no grandkids to help clean up the mess that we 7 billion inhabitants, which about 400 years ago were only about 1 billion, are making of the world. And plastic has been around for, what, about 60 years, more or less? ole joyful