How to Vote

I celebrated the anniversary of women's suffrage yesterday by going to a demonstration in downtown LosAngeles.

You know all about voting, right? Here are a few tidbits of information to chew on:

From the International Business Times:

The Senate passed the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919, and on Nov. 2 of the same year over 8 million women across the U.S. voted for the very first time. It took over 60 years for all U.S. states to ratify the amendment with Mississippi being the last one to do so on March 22, 1984.

This amendment was the center of controversy this election season when #RepealThe19th began trending on Twitter after polls found that Republican nominee Donald Trump would win if only men voted and his rival Hillary Clinton would become president if only women voted.

From the Asian American Legal Defense Fund:

Throughout United States history, Asian Americans have been disenfranchised by discriminatory laws that denied citizenship to Asian immigrants and rendered them ineligible to vote. It was not until 1943 that Chinese Americans were first permitted to become citizens. For Asian Indians, it was 1946. For Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans, that right did not come until 1952.

Also from the International Business Times:

While the 15th Amendment allowed all U.S. citizens the right to vote irrespective of their race or color, Native Americans weren’t allowed to vote until the passage of the Snyder Act of 1924, also called the Indian Citizenship Act.

However, even with the passage of this act, Native Americans were still not allowed to vote as the Constitution left it to the states to decide who could and couldn’t vote. It took Native Americans about four decades to achieve suffrage in all U.S. states.

This massive timeline lays it all out. When George Washington was president only 6% of the people could vote!!!

And I thought about my mom yesterday. She was super serious about getting out to vote. I don't think she ever missed a presidential election. When she left my home to go back to Iowa and live in a nursing home in 2015, I don't think we thought about registering her to vote in Iowa. It would have been complicated. Since she was in a new state, she would have had to prove residency. No utility bill. No official mail with the care facilities address on it. No driver's license--though I'm sure we could have gotten her a state I.D. in Iowa like she had in California so that she fill out the application to vote by absentee ballot in her new state since actually getting to the polls would have been difficult. As we baby boomers get older and older, I think this is something we want to think about...ahead of time.

East Meets West...and they pretty much agree

The treatment room's only decor

I went to see an old-school acupuncturist today. Next to a barbershop, the dark doorway opened into a waiting room full of ornate Chinese furniture, some of it covered in plastic the way your most fastidious aunt might have kept her living room in the 50s or early 60s. Not a gurgling water feature, a buddha, or an orchid in sight.

I diligently filled out the form, detailing my acid reflux diagnosis of a year ago, including the details of my reaction to the medication which nearly ended in a trip to the ER at 3 a.m. the night that my kidneys felt like they were on fire and my stomach bloated like one of those full moons that appear to be sitting on the freeway, occupying all six lanes. The scene in the acupuncturist's office then went a little Mel Brooks on me when the older Chinese lady at the desk got up to lead me to a treatment room, and I saw that she could not straighten up. Whether permanently bent at 90 degrees or not, I had a moment of Oh, nooooooo. Ruuuunnnnn. But I didn't.

Before really studying the form, the doctor asked me to stick out my tongue and said, "Big digestive problem! Big nervous system problem!" After he read what I'd written down and asked me some questions, he explained acid reflux to me pretty much the same way the ENT doctor did last year when he looked at the lesions on my vocal chords that he said were caused by acid reflux.

So my sexy voice might go away. I'm supposed to eat 20% less at my daytime meals, and 40% less at my nighttime meal (which I'm supposed eat early.) So maybe I'll run into you at some restaurant that has an Early Bird special. I'm also supposed eat very, very slowly.

Eating slowly is difficult. Like almost impossible. I get excited about eating, and I just eat it up. Boom. Done. I think I've always been kind of a fast eater, but I think things got out of hand post divorce when I ate pretty much all of my meals on the couch, flanked by two large dogs. Later when I began to care for my mom, I ate slowly because she ate VERY slowly, and I didn't want to seem rude or in a hurry. And we ate early. So that was actually good for me.

The acupuncturist was a old Chinese man with decades of experience (and with his round face and sweet eyes, reminded me a bit of the man who loved me.) He says that after a while, the antacids stop working and you just need more. He says I can get better without antacids, but it's a 50/50 deal between me and him. I have to do my part. So, wish me luck, and I hope that sometime soonish, my normally irritating nasally voice will return, and that my stomach will be more like a crescent moon. And who knows, maybe the treatments will be good for my anxiety. Pretty nifty coincidence that I blogged about that EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO. And yesterday I was a nutcase and had to walk for hours.

And tell me, how are you?

Friday Morning Beach Report

Imagine the humans already departed. The buildings empty shells. The streets quiet. Voices silenced except for the shouts of two madmen with sharpened sticks poking out one another's eyes.

What right do they have to murder the birds, extinguish the seas, pluck out the tongues of whales, crush the stones into dust?

I heard a drum beating beneath the waves this morning. Or the whales were talking to one another, already mourning.

Even the pink of the clouds is priceless.

The Kitchen Sink's Best Time of Day

I walked into the house an hour ago and found the kitchen sink ready for its glamour shot.

It made me think of the pictures my friend Elizabeth has posted of her bathroom on her blog.

http://elizabethaquino.blogspot.com/2015/03/three-pictures.html.

I guess we all have our moments.

My window ledge is full of beach treasures, fortunes from fortune cookies, and plastic musical instruments. If you zoom in you can see a metal tag that I picked up off the sand. It says "Joy Equipment Protection." Joy definitely needs to be protected. So protect yours, okay?

One more divorce post. Then onward.

I ran across this the other day. It made me laugh out loud. I made it some time in the early months of chaos.

Tuesday Beach Report:Beauty and Damaged Hearts

lone surfer ready to try the waves

looking away from the water

Crushed love--but survivable, I think

And good news in the mail! Life insurance for my mom. No medical exam!!! Good thing, huh?