An open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no MRAs, no I’m-not-really-an-MRA-buts, don’t be mean.
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
@kitteh
I have reflux, but it’s something I can feel happening in my esophagus, so I can usually head off heartburn by just re-swallowing the refluxed material with a sip of water. Sleeping with two pillows under me helps to prevent this from occurring when I am asleep and can’t respond to it.
Heartburn is kind of a pita to treat, but if you’re like me and you can feel the reflux, you might be able to head it off. You don’t get heartburn unless the acid stays in your esophagus.
@PoM Yes, sleeping with my head high on pillows definately helps too.
The heartburn’s died down a good bit this morning. I did the sleeping tilted up thing last night – rolled my quilt like a bolster under the pillows. Louis probably approves, he’s used a bolster for a loooong time. 🙂
Question – how sharp an angle do you need to be at for that to work? Mr C has also been getting reflux issues ever since a bout of food poisoning.
I wasn’t at a very sharp angle last night; it wasn’t like having to sleep sitting up. I had the equivalent of maybe three pillows under my back and two not-too-fat ones behind my neck. Enough to keep the upper body from being flat, but not so much to put pressure on the hips.
I use two pillows. I have one very hard stiff one, and a second that is more fluffy because the hard one is, well, hard. I actually built a bulwark of pillows across the top of the bed and down one side, so that no matter which way I roll, there is a pillow pile there.
So less than a 45 degree angle works for at least some people? He’s been thinking he’d have to sleep in a sitting position.
I would say the angle is far less than 45 degrees. Maybe 20 tops.
Just a gentle upward tilt is enough to help with reflux. You don’t need to sleep sitting up, just strategically place pillows. Pregnant ladies do it all the time.
Thanks, everyone. I’ll get him to try that, see if it helps.
Good luck!
You have a reflux reflex?
(Yes, that took me 12 hours to think of.)
I love you guy and all but sometimes I need to take a break from this site because I just can’t put up with the bullshit that comes from the MRA’s. I really do applaud you all for your good work. I need to confess some of my background: I am the type of guy that most of you and the MRA’s would cross the street to avoid me. I spent a lot of my life on the wrong side of the law and I have been incarcerated more times than I can remember.
I grew up in a bad environment, my father beat both my mom and my stepmom both whom I loved more than anything, I was a typical juvie, drug addict and criminal. I could never get over the way my dad treated my moms. I did some bad things to the women in my life because the only role model I had was my dad, but one day I just snapped and I promised myself I would not treat women the way my dad treated them because it just made me hate myself.
I came into feminism by accident, I was always aware of the movement but I never read anything about it then I just happened to pick up Robin Morgan’s Demon Lover and then I read some Dworkin after I read her and low and behold after I read them 9/11 happens and just showed me that everything they said about war and terrorism might be true. I know many think they are 2nd Wave extremist but they grabbed a hold of me and that is where I started.
Hope you guys understand.
The 2nd wave stuff speaks to me on a far deeper level than any of the 3rd wave and beyond stuff too, fwiw. It’s not just you, that shit was powerful.
Second wave was what I grew up with in the background, as it were, Robert, and I don’t know much about third wave except that it includes sex-pos stuff that I’m side-eyeing more and more.
Whatever, it’s good to see you back on site. Most of us need a break sooner or later.
One aspect of third wave feminism I sometimes am uncomfortable with is that in its rush to be accepting and open it feels like you’re not allowed to be at all critical of things like mainstream porn, cosmetic surgery and beauty standards.
@WWTH
I sometimes have a problem with how the rush to be open and accepting turns into picking apart the feminism of others in a really irrational way. For instance, I follow a tumblr, straightwhiteboystexting. Not long ago she posted a somewhat transphobic entry. This was pointed out, and she removed the post, and issued the following apology:
A conversation ensued between two other tumblrs in which one person claimed, among other things,
and
and then went on to compare this apology to the “I’m sorry you feel that way” nonpology that we all agree is not an apology.
The conversation can be followed from here:
http://littlemiss-stubborn.tumblr.com/post/99222405397/of-course-youre-not-going-to-apologize-for-that#_=_
This kind of reasoning makes me headdesk. A person screws up, apologizes without reservation or qualification, and yet that’s not good enough because … ??? This apology conveys the message that transphobia is okay because of …. ??? phrasing ??? There is literally nothing in that apology that conveys anything of the sort, and at no time does it say that she’s sorry that people were offended. This apology literally says that she acknowledges that she screwed up and she is sorry for doing so.
This kind of feminism? That requires perfection because no apology is good enough? Is not the kind of feminism of which I want to be a part.
Ditto. (Especially as I know I’m not capable of perfection)
Ugh. If a person doesn’t have the opportunity to make amends and be forgiven, they won’t have any incentive to be better and learn.
They have no incentive to stick around, either. If it’s impossible to make someone happy, the only rational response is to stop trying and do whatever makes you happy. In other words, to drop out of feminism (at least that brand of it). I don’t want to be part of any feminism that requires people to ditch it if they don’t want to be miserable. And make no mistake: competing in a mandatory “more feminist than thou” contest would make me nothing but miserable, and I suspect I am not alone.
Brain bleach time!
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@Robert, internet hugs if they’re wanted. Take all the time you need!
Robert, btw, I enjoy reading your comments. I totally understand needing to take a break though. I think a lot of us have to step away and come back because the hate (even filtered by David and the wonderful folks here) gets to be too much sometimes.
@Robert: I really like reading your comments. I understand the need to step away, I think I did for about a year while life got very busy.
Re being the “wrong” type of feminist: no ideology, NONE, has everyone who follows it embarassing exactly the same set of views. Look at Marxism, any religion, etc. Why the fuck would feminism be any different? So why the hell do some people – and I imagine they are young – set themselves up to be the arbiters of exactly what feminism should and shouldn’t include?
The 2nd wave of feminism speaks to me more strongly as I have been directly discriminated against in the job market, in promotions, and been harassed in employment for being female. It still happens from time to time, from some male colleagues.
Sooo I kinda have a confession. I haven’t really read much feminist lit. Some bell hooks, the Purity Myth, which helped put the Raping Year in perspective, and Body Outlaws. That’s about it. Everything else I’ve learned through folks on the Internet, basically. (I’ve also read a lot of trans stuff and some disability stuff, which intersects in various ways.) A fail is me? I just find a lot of the jargon really impenetrable.
Anyway, so, brain is still in the process of vomiting up horrorshows. By this point, I think we almost feel inured to all the rape and such. There’s only so over-the-top things can get before your mind just shuts down. Feel bad for Kid, though; she hated our family and had very low expectations, and it seems they weren’t low ENOUGH.
Also, our roommates’ ceiling started melting because it was leaking so bad it started bubbling inward, and now we might end up breaking our lease, which kinda causes a problem seeing as WE’RE the ones who coughed up the entire first month’s rent and security deposit. We’d be out like $700+, which would kinda suck.
What’s kinda frightening is that I almost feel like this is normal. We’ve only lived in one place for longer than a year once in the past seven years. (Well, two if you count the Homeless Year Closet. We lived there fourteen months, give or take.)
On top of which, visiting Boston again caused a lot of conflicting emotions, just because… well, we have FRIENDS there. Professional contacts there. We know the system, and the neighbors, and it’s so fucking expensive but I’m so fucking tired of getting creeped on and moving so fucking often.
I don’t know. I guess I just feel tired, and due to SURPRISE CEILING MELT I’m not really getting the post-con rest I was banking on.