Happy Xmahanukwanzyule 2018

Image copyright Annalise 1988

(This post was written on the Deliver Me blog and cross-posted)

Happy holidays if you celebrate them and best wishes for prosperity in the approaching year!

It has been an eventful and not terribly lucrative year here in the World of Nether, but many of our efforts are still in their infancy and I like to think that things are looking up and that perseverance still counts for something. To a degree, these are uncharted waters that we are navigating with the rise of the gig economy. So, what can we do to make this unprecedented situation work for us?

For my own part, I have a knack for speaking my mind, such as it is, and for telling it like it is from my point of view. This has tended to get me in trouble, but the older I get the less fucks I give. 

However, I do not intend to use this so-called skill only to bitch about everything that pisses me off. I would also like to use it to help others. 

For many years, I worked as a nurse's aide and then a nurse. I helped those who were too infirm to care for their own needs. This included the elderly and special needs children. However, my own constitution declined sharply in the past couple of years, and I can no longer do the physically demanding jobs that I had been doing since 1988.

My income declined sharply when I was no longer able to work as a nurse. Between 2015 and 2017, I was pulling up to $1000 per week if I worked 60 hour weeks. However, I was constantly exhausted and always in a mental fog working this many hours. In some ways I'm amazed that I never made any critical errors.

I am unable to work full time at this point, and my disabilities put me out of the running for most "normal" jobs. Because of my health issues, I need Medicaid. But if I make more than $1100 a month, I lose Medicaid. To me, it seems as if I'm being punished for being disabled. I think that punishing people for being disabled is one whole steaming load of crap. I also think that Charles Dickens would have a field day writing about the current political climate in the era of Lord Dampnut. In fairness, being British, he might be more inclined to write about Brexit and Lord Dampnut's British soul twin, Boris Johnson.

In any case, I am trying to piece together a life that works. Other than being broke and physically unable to do certain things that I used to be able to do without issue, there are many ways in which I like my life after disability better than my life before disability. I like not being enslaved by a time clock. I much prefer soft deadlines to Draconian ones.

Overall, I am a creative rather than a practical person. If I could, I would spend my days writing, learning to draw, engaging in Photoshop Phucquery, hand crocheting, loom knitting, woodworking, making soap and candles, and whatever other artsy fartsy crafty wafty pursuit happened to strike my fancy. I attempt to keep my artsy fartsy side separate from the Deliver Me blog, but there is inevitable bleed-through, and I'm not going to fight the tide too hard.

If you are interested in opportunities for writers or occasional shares of poetry and prose, visit the Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood page.

If you are interested in WAH opportunities, recipes, and suggestions for saving money, visit the Deliver Me blog.

If you are interested in reading high quality Kindle smut, visit the Naughty Netherworld Press blog. This blog is safe for work, but some of the places it links to aren't. 

If you are interested in obtaining a Tarot reading to help you kick-start the new year, click here.

May you and yours have a pleasant holiday if you celebrate, or a good day in general if you don't.

Best wishes,

Cie

This offer is valid through December 30, 2018

This offer is always in season

Sly Speaks: Why I Noped Out of my Hysterectomy

I'm 53 years old and I have a history of sexual trauma and issues with my endocrine system including my reproductive system. I have PCOS. I have a degree of endometriosis, and I have polyps and fibroids in my uterus. The fibroids are small, not some grapefruit-sized thing.

I avoided having pelvic exams for close to 30 years because of past sexual trauma and fear of being shamed for being a larger person. I finally found a doctor I could trust to be honest with about my plumbing problems, so to speak. I see her quarterly because of my endocrine issues. When I told her that I had my "annual period" and was hoping this would be the last year for that mess, she said that wasn't normal and referred me to a gynecologist.

The gynecologist was a very sweet person who made me feel at ease. She never shamed me for my size. She did a D&C, which sucked because I felt like someone had been up in my business with a cheese grater, but I wanted to rule out cancer. The biopsy showed that I have simple endometrial hyperplasia with no cellular atypia. My risk of developing uterine cancer is 1.6% greater than the risk for someone who has no hyperplasia.

Hyperplasia is par for the course in someone with diabetes and PCOS. I produce too much estrogen. My primary care doctor is having me try a bio-identical progesterone, which may reverse some of the issues with my plumbing. One can always hope.

I was scheduled to have a hysterectomy, but I canceled the night before. Let me be clear that I'm not fanatical about women keeping their uterus come hell or high water. My son's best friend's mother had such horrible endometriosis that it had invaded her digestive tract. Some people have fibroids the size of a full-term fetus. There is no reason that these people should be forced to keep an organ that is malfunctioning to that degree. But this is not my case.

I always had miserable periods from hell and was glad when they came to an end. Initially, I was gung-ho to get rid of my reproductive organs, but after doing some research I realized I might be trading one problem for another (i.e. my incontinence could get significantly worse) and the inside of my hoo-hah could turn into the Great Southern Desert for the remainder of my life. In the end, it didn't seem worth it to undergo major surgery for a 1.6% higher risk of possible uterine cancer down the line.

Although two of the doctors involved in the process are women themselves (the person who would have done the surgery is a man) and they were all respectful to me, not a single one of them said a thing about the downside of having a hysterectomy. I think that doctors are taught to have this attitude that post-menopausal women are no longer able to have children, so why not just take the uterus out? But major surgery comes with risks. For me to agree to it, the risks have to outweigh the benefits, and they simply do not in this case.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com

Sly Speaks: Me Too: The Work Edition

Copyright Tara O'Brien

I was thinking back to a "wonderful" incident which happened while I was working as an assistant district manager at the Denver Post in 1986. One of the carriers became friendly with me, initially in a perfectly acceptable and professional way, and I enjoyed our little chats. But then one day he said to me: "I'd like it if I could give you a hug sometime and maybe a kiss."

A lot of you ladies, particularly of my generation or older, will be able to relate when I say that I was trained from a young age to "be a lady" when a situation like this arises and to "not hurt his feelings," so rather than asking him in what the hell universe hitting on his supervisor was appropriate, my first response was to say "I'm married," so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. As if doing this sort of creepy thing would have been appropriate if his target wasn't married.

My initial reaction is to think what a doormat I was for reacting this way. Plus I never even told my supervisor, because I didn't want to get the guy in trouble. But my next reaction is to be angry that I believed his feelings were more important than mine, which was disgust and betrayal.

So, yeah, not going to be angry at my younger self for being taken aback and not behaving in a more assertive fashion in this lurid situation. The guy displayed not only gross sexism in having zero respect for my position of albeit mild authority just because I was a young woman, but he displayed zero respect for me as a human being in seeing me as an object that he could potentially grope and slobber on.

For some reason, when I was younger I seemed to draw a lot of creepers like this to me, probably because I tried to be nice. I'm honestly not at all sorry that my current age tends to render me invisible to this breed of asshole most of the time.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Graphic copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com

Insecure Writers Support Group + The Cheese Grates It: Banned on Tumblr

Image copyright prettysleepy2

Note: This post contains profanity. If that is a problem for you, please don't continue reading.

You may wonder what this post has to do with the Insecure Writer's Support Group. I argue that freedom of speech is something all writers should be concerned about, and that is why I think this post is appropriate.

Tumblr shadow-banned my slightly naughty Supernatural fan blog.

Not for filthy, filthy Wincest pictures, like you might think. You actually have to go to about the 13th page to find an even remotely NSFW image. 

Nope. I can’t publish or reblog anything to this blog because I was being snarky about Tumblr becoming a kid-friendly playground instead of a platform for adults.

I’m moving wincestshippingtrash to nibblebit, a platform that is similar to Tumblr in the way it functions, and which is a platform geared to adult bloggers. Which is what Tumblr used to pride itself on, but now that they've sold their souls to Yahoo and Verizon, they're trying to present themselves as family friendly. Heck, a lot of the stuff that Tumblr was proud to allow was too rich for my blood, and I'm the founder, editor, and co-writer of the very torrid tales at Naughty Netherworld Press. If I'm nope-ing out because it's too raunchy, you know that shit's raunchy.

Here’s what’s funny. I have blogs on Blogger which I’ve deemed NSFW, even though most of them only contain harsh language. I flag these blogs as “adult” and when people type in the URL, they come to a notice which says “material on this blog has been flagged as only appropriate for adults. Do you wish to continue?” 

Tumblr has something called "safe mode," which prevents adult-flagged blogs from appearing in searches. Wincestshippingtrash was flagged as “adult” by me. It shouldn’t appear in Safe Mode, like, ever.

But it wasn’t even adult content that got the blog banned. It was the fact that I was being cheeky to Tumblr Staff, and they couldn’t deal.

I may be a mess health-wise at this point in my life, but I would fight to the death to preserve freedom of speech. I think that what Tumblr is doing is some East Block level shit. I guess we’ll see how long my primary Tumblr blog remains active what with me speaking out against the Evil Empire this way.

Also, what is this “female presenting nipple” bullshit, Tumblr? To me, that’s sexist AF.

Tumblr looks the other way when it comes to cyberbullying, including telling people to kill themselves or death threats. It's okay to call someone a "fat, ugly cunt," apparently. It's okay to promote violence by encouraging people to "punch a TERF." But Heavens forbid someone shows a bit of butt crack or a "female presenting nipple."

Folks have been circulating this around Tumblr to see how long it takes for it to get flagged. This is how ridiculous things have become.

Tumblr will either do what Blogger did a few years back and backpedal on their decision to ban adult content when they saw that their longtime users were leaving in droves, or they will become a wasteland like Myspace.

Nobody (well, nobody who shouldn't be in jail) wants child porn. The way to deal with that problem is not to ban all adult content. It is to remove the blog presenting it from public view, and do not delete the content because the FBI and Interpol will need access to it, but report the content to the FBI and Interpol. 

Again, freedom of speech is an issue which every writer needs to be concerned about. There are a lot of things which I find offensive, and there are a lot of things that I'm just plain not interested in. However, I believe it is appropriate that even things I deem offensive (such as Stormfront) are allowed a platform. If they go underground, they become even more dangerous. If they are allowed to spout their rhetoric, it is easier to refute them, and also easier for agencies such as the FBI to keep an eye on them.

Tumblr really screwed the pooch with their blanket adult content ban. This pooch. It is not a happy camper and is coming back to bite them on the ass.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~