Sounds like a comedy team, but that’s not what it is at all.
Marian Van Eyk McCain is a woman of great passion for life. And, at this point in her life she is devoted especially to women determined to age with grace and spunk.
An author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction, she maintains a website at www.elderwoman.org, which includes a periodic newsletter. I found her through Time Goes By, and, when I subscribed to her newsletter, she asked me to write a piece for it about why I blog.
So I did.

A day of intelligent, thoughtful, funny, silly, intimate, non-confrontational discussion and conversation with close women friends, and now I’m back in hell on earth.

Argumentative and malcontented for decades, my brother thinks being such is normal, and so he doesn’t understand the symptomatic convergence of depression and dementia. And she has both. He insists on getting her off her depression medication. I disagree. She is not on medication for dementia for other health reasons.

I no longer have the energy to keep arguing with him over her care. And so I just have to deal with watching her again slip into feeling constantly sad and fearful. At least the anti-depression meds alleviated that a little.

She is becoming increasingly afraid to be alone. She follows me everywhere, keeps asking me whether I’m going out anywhere. “Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going? Don’t leave me.”

I try to dance with her every night, since it’s the one thing that seems to relax her anxious mind. She follows intuitively, seems to get into some kind of “zone.”
She gets very agitated when he and I argue, and so I’ve decided to become a rope. “You can’t push a rope.”

I let him go on criticizing me and just ignore the criticism. I just nod my head when he tries to bait me into a row. If he starts shouting, I leave. Go into my room and close the door. I leave him to deal with the my mother’s upset.

This is not how it has to be. But this is how he makes it.
This post is not only my venting. It is documentation.

Well, not restless legs per se, but the medication that’s prescribed for RLS.

My restless legs are the kind that make me want to dance or run away from home, and I don’t need any medication for those. And the only compulsive behavior I have is eating too many carbs.
So, tomorrow my restless legs are taking me out of town for an overnight visit with my women friends for our annual shared birthday dinner. The birthdays of all six of us fall between the end of February and the beginning of April. So we celebrate together in March. And this year I certainly will indulge my carb compulsion.
And, while I’m in the area, I’m going to see if the Subaru dealer from whom I bought my car 6.5 years ago can figure out why, even with a new battery, the electrical system goes kaput if I don’t drive it for four days. So far, no one else has been able to find the drain on the battery.

Well, I finally made it — my first visit to Curves for Women, where I was showed how to use the eight or so machines. I loved the place — energetic disco music blaring, behind which a female voice gave instructions on when to leave one machine and go to another and when to check your heart rate. Two other women, probably a little younger than I, were also there, going through the same routine that I was learning.
In thirty minutes, you work your way around the circle of machines three times, taking your rhythm from the music and the instructional voice. In thirty minutes, I had worked up a good sweat and my heart rate up to 22 beats in 10 seconds. And I felt great.
I was gone from the house for only an hour and fifteen minutes. Theoretically, I should be able to do that at least twice a week.
But that requires cooperation from my sibling, who will need to stay with my mother. We’ll see.

This is one of those things that most internet surfers probably have already seen. But I just found it.
So, if you’re like me and get a kick out of the differences between dogs and cats, go here and read excerpts from the diaries of each.
For some reason, my mom likes to watch the Dog Whisperer. I have to admit that I’m fascinated by how he gets just about any kind of dog to behave and obey its owner.
What kind of person would be able to get cats to do that? A Feline Mind-Melder?

I sat and listened to Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich tell his story on tonight’s 60 Minutes, the story of how in Haditha, Iraq, he and his squad were doing what they had been trained to do: responding to a perceived threat with legitimate force.
The VietNam War, with its various My Lai-type atrocities, made many of us peaceniks so angy that we too easily ignored the fact that both the perpetrators and the murdered were victims. Between now and then, we have learned more about how our soldiers are “brainwashed” into being amoral killing machines.
Apparently, it all began after the World War II, when United States Army lieutenant colonel named S. L. A. Marshall wrote “Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War.” I got the information about Marshall’s suggestions from a chilling article by Dan Baum that appeared in The New Yorker on July 5, 2004 and appears on the Not In Our Name website. That article includes the follwing:

If you Google “American soldiers trained to kill,” you’ll get lots of additional enlightening articles.
As I’ve said before on this blog, war requires testosterone stirred to the extreme.
I have come to believe that what Sgt. Frank Wuterich needs and deserves is not a court martial, but rather intense deprogramming and compassionate psychotherapy. You might want to listen to this.
Actually, what the major leaders of this country also need and deserve are intense deprogramming and psychotherapy (with or without compassion).

There’s a major recall of canned cat and dog food manufactured by Menu Foods. Go here to see the extensive list of pet food brands that are being recalled.
Menu Foods press release on this issue begins with this:

As my luck would have it, I feed my cat one of the recalled brands. She also eats dry cat food. But she’s been acting kind of funny lately — as though she’s not feeling well. You know, hiding under the bed, throwing up, not drinking much water…..
The cats who have been reported as ill from eating the cat food in question (some of whom have died) have all experienced renal failure.

I threw out her canned cat food, and I’m keeping an eye on my Calli. Of course, she’s not hard to miss; she weighs almost 20 pounds!

If you read this blog, you know how much I’m enamored of mythology and how easy it is to trace just about all Christian myths to more ancient sources.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and you might not know that the purported St. Patrick was born in Scotland of two Roman parents, which makes him actually Italian.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and the following statements are excerpted from here:

And, to have some fun with St. Patrick trivia, go here.

Three inches of snow already. No going out today.
Instead we sit by the window and watch what seems like every bird in the neighborhood gorging in anticipation of also being snowed in. Or snowed out.
So much for revving up for spring.

Thanks to Doug’s Dynamic Drivel for pointing me to this.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Spikey Mace of Patience.

Get yours.

The need for this Jihad is being promoted by Jon Carroll at SFGate.com, where he posts the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad.
Included in the communique are statements such as these:

Put your tongue in your cheek and go and read the whole thing.