You're listening to the Loving BDSM podcast episode
four seventy. Kayla Lords here with the one,
the only,
the
I'm I love you, and I'm glad that
we're doing this thing together both in general,
like the bigger picture, but also this specific
episode. True. John Brownstone.
I'm so glad to say your name.
Who am I?
Well, that is the question we all have
to wrestle with at some point in our
lives. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe multiple times. I know.
We're not that's that's not really what we're
talking about. But, you know, in a weird,
like, existential metaphorical way, we will it's weird.
That is it it all connects. That's all
I'm saying.
Actually, this week specifically,
because I know unless I change the title
from the time of recording to the time
of putting this
episode
out, some people get it. It's a vibe.
Gestures broadly at the world. Y'all know. We're
gonna be talking about some of what's going
on. I say the world. It's The US
primarily, but the entire world is impacted
we're gonna be focusing on resources of, like,
how do how do I help? What do
I do in this time of seeing all
this
awfulness going on around me? That is what
we're focusing on with talking about
the state of the world.
Plus at the very end, we're gonna answer
a question we were asked ages ago,
but we needed to be in the or
the right,
mindset for this, which is can you have
a power exchange with someone you disagree with
politically?
Yeah.
This episode this week's episode, I'll probably say
this later when we get to, like, the
main episode. I'm gonna say it now in
case I forget. This episode's gonna be broken
up into three main parts: the oh my
god, what's going on in the world? Here
are some resources. We're gonna try and help
you help yourself help the world.
Then we have what we consider a happy
announcement that should not be political, but parts
of the world disagree with that. So we're
gonna talk about that, and then we'll get
into the question. We I will try to
give you time stamps if there are bits
and pieces you're like, I would rather avoid
some of this parts of the conversation or
if you just want to get to the
because while I want everybody to be
engaged in the world around them, I also
know that there are very good reasons that
some people need to tune it out. So
consent matters
to us and all things including this.
So if you're like, uh-oh. I I I
wanted to answer the question but that's all
I want to know. I'll try to put
in specific, like go to this point in
the podcast
to listen to that thing you want. Okay?
Yeah. Welcome to the Loving BDSM podcast.
If this is your first time listening, glad
to have you in it. Both is and
isn't usually like this. If you're back for
another week, welcome back. Loving BDSM is produced
every Monday and Friday for your kinky pleasure
in education, and show notes are found at
lovingbdsm.net.
Come back often and feel free to add
the podcast to your favorite podcast app. I'm
not sure if this is the episode to
say, hey, please rate and review us on
your preferred podcast app, but why the fuck
not? We gonna keep it real around here.
That's for damn sure.
You can also follow the show on FetLife
at lovingbdsmpc.
PC stands for podcast, y'all. On Instagram and
technically threads at that handle I will forever
motherfucking hate with the passion of a thousand
fiery suns.
That is loving d s and the number
one. So at loving d s one.
On blue sky at lovingbdsm.
Blah blah blah. Or on YouTube at youtube.com/lovingbdsm
where you can watch us live stream the
podcast every Wednesday. All links are in the
show notes.
Okay.
Wait. We go. Okay. So
I'm doing this because
you have to walk the line between being,
like, a good human citizen of the world
and also living under capitalism.
Brief reminder.
Brief reminder,
that we are having our Patreon membership drive
right now.
And if you join
now through the February,
you get stuff in the mail sometime in
April.
I'm not gonna go into a lot of
details about it other than, our Discord
quite frankly, our Discord server
is sort of what gives me the strength
to, like, I'm gonna do those To power
to the scary thing. And I'm I will
defend
the audience who should not have to justify
their existence because people suck. Like, that that's
giving me some moves there.
But we're gonna talk about
donation stuff today,
where you can if you have the cash
to do something and you're like, how do
I help the world? Like, that kind of
thing. And quite frankly, and I mean this
we have our own on YouTube,
fundraiser running. We'll talk about it in a
minute.
I mean this truly, bottom of my heart.
If you've got an extra $5 dollars
to
spend and it's between us and a cause
that's important to you, please give it to
Yeah. The cause that's important to you. We
will be okay and we're gonna keep showing
up. Okay?
Yeah.
But,
technically,
it's a membership.
I
just wish the world would like let me
keep a schedule. Okay. Okay. Good luck with
that. I know. So that's all I've got
to say about that.
So
to be real
Mhmm.
We don't bring up specific politics politics specifically,
often.
We don't
in bonus sections, Shirley, and when I just
need a moment to vent, you if you
have paid attention, you know
that we don't like the, current administration. We
did not vote for them and will never
could never could not be me.
But we don't, like,
stand up and go, here's the thing we
stand for. Right?
Because we try to
live our
politics. Because our politics
are attached
to our ethics, morals, and values.
That
is not gonna be enough for some people.
And because I've gotten the emails and comments
before, it'll be too much for others. If
it's too much for you, you should just
nope out now. Okay? Because
you'll be fine. I will be fine.
And before I get
anywhere on any platform
where you can communicate,
just stick to kink. Why do you have
to make it about politics?
My baby, my precious sweet summer child,
kink
is political.
For all kinds of reasons, but let me
break it down on a person to person
if you did not know this. There are
100% people who can lose their job in
America for being kinky.
I have met and talked
to more than one person who lost custody
of their children Yes. Because their FetLife profile
got them and was presented in In court.
Yeah. I don't know how much the law
has changed over the past few years, but
a few years ago a judge in it
was either Virginia or it was North Carolina,
it was one of those two states said
you do not have a right to BDSM.
So even consensual
fuckery,
if if you get picked up by the
police, if somebody decides to prosecute whatever whatever
Yeah. So kink is political.
Kink and sex. Sex is not automatically part
of kink. They are two separate things, but
they often get
go together
politically and then with people's lives. Right? So
people are kinky and it's sexy for them,
blah blah blah.
That is heavily politicized. There is an entire
section in Project twenty twenty five that was
about how do we make the scary bad
sex stuff go away.
I have not heard about current legislation
in any state
level or federal level. If anybody has, feel
free to send me the links,
because this rest of the world has overtaken
news feeds
and right? Mhmm.
That hasn't happened
yet as far as I know. It's coming.
It's been happening. I've said this before. It
is regardless of administration.
There are people even in your own political
party, whichever one that might be, and you
think you're, like, quite liberal, who would like
the sex and kink stuff to be to
go away. Yeah. Right? There are people who
say that,
cis women cannot possibly fully consent
to be submissives. Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's some
shit. Kink is political is what I'm saying.
I here in Florida, you cannot access,
porn unless you Unless you have a VPN.
Yeah.
They they have outlawed,
porn here in the state of Florida.
Even as adult, you cannot
really watch it. Yeah. They've outlawed it. You
have
to prove who you are. You have to
prove who you are, but you have to
jump through hoops
for it. I don't wanna give any site,
even a porn site, my whole entire government
identity. Well, yeah. I mean, that's that's Not
the way it's being done. Yeah. Anyway, that
is probably outside the scope of this conversation.
Right?
That's our point though. Yeah. Your very existence
as a kinky person, regardless of any other
part of your identity,
is inherently political. So yeah,
we get to talk about politics. Okay.
So we do want to like I said
before,
we try to live our morals, values, ethics.
We try to
to be those people and embody that to
the extent that we know how. We are
constantly learning. We're trying to always do better.
Over the years, I know
OGs have heard my voice shake when I
have to try and learn how to say
something in a new way because I don't
like to be bad at stuff in front
of people. Okay?
But we are gonna take this moment,
in part so I can clip it and
actually put it out everywhere else, to make
sure that we are very clear. So if
you thought you were in a different place
than you are, we all know where
we stand. Okay? So can I go down
the list? If I forget anything, you jump
in.
Trans rights are human rights.
Drag queens were never the fucking problem. Read
a goddamn banned book, please, I beg you.
Abortion is health care.
Please please say gay because in Florida they
don't want you to. They have Yeah. They
have laws against they're trying to have legislation
against them.
Mhmm.
Fuck ice all the fucking way. Absolutely.
Fuck ice. The only ice I want is
in my goddamn coffee.
I know. They're ruining the ice thing for
me.
Nobody's illegal on stolen land. Right. Let me
be very clear. Yep. Absolutely. If you're not
committing crimes, I do not care how you
got into my country. I don't care that
you're here. Right. If you're working, you're raising
a family.
I I don't I don't
care. I don't care.
Murders are being committed in the streets.
Black lives matter. And let's also be clear
that, what we're seeing is not new. There
are just some of us who are not
used to seeing it and, having to worry
about it.
So that's where we stand. I did I
forget any?
No. Not really. I think I covered everything
I meant to. There's definitely more than two
genders, but we've always y'all have always known
we know that. Mhmm.
Yeah.
So that's that's what we're coming from. Now
this
Yeah. Floor you know, I
I'm I'm just gonna go into something real
quick. I want you to have your moment.
You know,
Florida and, unfortunately, Texas
have been a proving ground
for some of these laws that they're trying
to push through at the federal level.
Florida is not the Florida I moved to
in 1981
in no way, shape, or form.
They are trying to repeal,
the Fair Wages Act that the people voted
in
several years back, and they are trying to
circumvent that.
They are trying to
enact a law that if you speak out
against the government, whether it's local, state, or
federal,
you can be labeled as a domestic terrorist.
That is what they're trying to do in
Florida right now. And,
legislation that happens at the state, if it
can pass, it then gets copy pasted around
the Around the country.
Now that's Florida, other wherever you're living.
God, I hope you're in another country that
has better laws than we do. But if
you're in another state, your state will be
handling things differently, or maybe similarly. Maybe you
are in a deep red state like we
are.
-Yeah. -Okay? We're gonna offer some things that
maybe can give you a place to, like,
go look and see what can I do
to help the people in my community, okay?
That's the whole point of this. We don't
don't we could JB and I are, at
this point, probably over informed about some things,
obsessive on some levels. We really probably should
take an Instagram break for a couple of
days. Let's be real.
I don't want to get too much into
that,
because that is not our area of expertise.
And also, we could we could record for
literal hours and still not be done.
But also,
I don't I'm not a this is a
boundary we're placing. Okay?
You get to think whatever you wanna think.
You go say whatever you wanna say. But
we are not going to get into debates
with people over our politics. That's not up
for debate for us. That's not in question
for us.
If I thought there could be a a
good faith conversation about policy, I might consider
it, but that's not how the Internet works.
So if you decide to put thumbs or
just all your fingers to a keyboard, tap
tap tap, tell me exactly how you think
I'm wrong, you will be talking to yourself
because I don't give a fuck. Okay?
In the live chat during the stream,
my moderators are that delicious kind of evil.
Like,
they're great humans in general. They wouldn't be
our mods otherwise. Mhmm.
But they do love making sure
things are taken care of in the live
chat.
So
they get to they get to do their
thing with MP and E. Okay?
Because my concern
is one, nobody nobody's got time to be
to having these back and forths because they
don't change anybody's mind. And that's not what
I'm here to do. I'm not here to
change anybody's damn mind. You're gonna think what
you wanna think and if you align with
me, cool. If you don't,
you get to decide what to do about
that.
But I know in our audience there are
people who are
in any number of marginalized communities based on
any different part of their life and identity,
and they should not have to watch other
people debate their very fucking existence, and they
should not feel compelled to have to come
into a comment section and justify their existence.
And I will
not I will not engage with that on
their behalf. K?
So
just to, like, set the boundaries. Do I
sound like I'm yelling a little bit? Is
my blood pressure up? Yes.
Politics has always been something I struggle to
talk about,
but we live in a different world than
the way I was raised in, both politically
but also the way things get talked about.
Also,
we
don't always know what we should do with
it but we know we have the responsibility
of a platform.
Right?
And there comes times for us where
we can't just, like, bitch about the things
we don't like. We gotta do something like
this. I don't think this is our first
time ever doing this. It's just the first
time in a while. Yeah.
So I'm sure there are things I wanted
to say and that I have forgotten.
That's okay. Okay, so we are gonna start
with some of the things
in the news and point you to some
places. I have a shit ton of notes,
okay?
First of all we're gonna start with I'm
saying Minnesota because if you are even slightly
aware of the
world, you know what that means. Renee Good's
death, Alex Prady's death. Those aren't the only
two people who have died throughout all of
these ICE raids. They're the ones we know
about and are the most immediate right now.
And it is not just Minnesota.
I've I've linked all my resources and all
the places I'm pointing you to in in
the places, show notes, and, description box in
YouTube so you can go see this stuff
for yourself.
Current plans and I think
almost immediate future plans
for ICE raids. We've got Florida. They are
currently in Orlando and Tampa.
Tampa and Miami.
They were probably elsewhere in the state, but
those are the big ones. Maine,
I've seen about Portland. California, they're all over
the place. Let me be clear: Keith Porter
Jr, a black man was killed. Was it
New Year's Eve or New Year's Day? Yeah.
Presumably by ICE, but there's not a lot
of reporting. Thankfully some of the people I
follow have talked about that.
New Orleans and South Mississippi,
Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, Denver, Philadelphia,
Phoenix, Atlanta, Seattle, New York City, Washington, DC,
and the one that I went, what?
San Juan, Puerto Rico. I know. I don't
know why I went what. I think that
might be my own, like,
lack of education, but I was like I
mean, Puerto Rico is is American territory. Like,
I but they are Americans.
But I was like,
if you're picking up black and brown people
Yeah. Like
Well, you know, it's funny,
during the first term when that hurricane
hit Puerto Rico, you know, and it they
were ignored because they don't really not really
at all. Oh, the amount of people who
don't realize Puerto Rico Rica or Americans is
so maddening. Anyway, we're not getting into that.
So if you're like, how do I help
the people? How do I help people in
my own city, in my own town, in
my own state? Okay.
Minnesota specifically, if that's like you're drawn there,
there's a site called standwithminnesota.com.
It has got a shit ton of resources
of ways you can donate, give, volunteer, whatever.
And you can go by your
subject
matter area
of preference. So if you want to help
with,
food panthers, if you want to help with
pets, if you want to help people who
need, you know, need help paying their rent
because they can't go to work because they're
terrified of being picked up off the fucking
street. Whatever. It's there. It's a massive site.
There's tons of stuff. It's all specific to
Minnesota. If you want if you're looking more
broadly or you're trying to narrow it down
to your location let me let me scroll
here y'all. There's a site called welcome.us.
It is all about being welcoming to immigrants.
There are all kinds of ways to get
involved. And then the one that I liked
because it gave options,
by state,
is called
Win Without War. They're Immigration and Mutual Aid
Resources.
This is not comprehensive for every state, but
if you're like, I don't even know where
to start, find your state and see what's
there.
If that's not enough or you want to
do something different, I did this for our
area and came up with some resources so
I think everybody can do this.
Google
mutual
aid near me or your city name or
your region name and Google. You have to
get past all that sponsored crap and the
AI crap, and then it should start giving
you some options where you can put your
time and attention. Okay?
And those those organizations need all kinds of
things. If you've got dollars to give, feel
free to donate. If you've got time to
give, if it's like a, hey, we're, you
know, taking food donations or your gently used
coke donations or whatever. Whatever you've got where
and that that's your thing and you're like,
this is where I want to focus my
attention,
just pick one thing. And that's the overarching
thing I wanna say because this all gets
very overwhelming.
Because there is so much need,
so many places, for so many reasons.
Pick your one thing
that you're really like like, this is my
thing. This is this is what I'm passionate
about. And then figure out what start with
one thing that you can do, that you
can reasonably do without causing harm to yourself.
K? Mhmm. Now let me back up. I
meant to say this earlier.
I did mean to say this earlier. Here's
my opinion
of this.
When I'm offering these things,
I am talking to people who are probably
a lot like me.
You're cis, you're white, you're straight.
You've
never had to deal with what the system
and the state and the government can do
to you and how they can marginalize you
and make your life a living hell.
That's who I want to make sure I'm
like, here's what you could be doing and
please maybe pick something.
If you are a part of a marginalized
community, I want you to survive and thrive.
If you get involved in
cool, cool, cool. That that's a that's all.
That's a you choice and that's what works
for you. But this white lady's not gonna
fucking tell you that you need to be
doing something. Okay? I want you to survive
and thrive and do what you gotta do
to get through this crazy lot.
So just
just whoever I'm lecturing, I'm lecturing the folks
that look like me and JB. Let's let's
be real. Okay? I am lecturing us.
So let me put that in there. Okay.
Should put that at the top.
Now
that's the whole ICE raids and the the
current thing that is
it's painful to watch.
I shut down over the weekend. I start
crying. I just it was Wow. It just
that's that's how I handled it until we
got to this point.
Okay. So there's
there like I said earlier, pick an issue
you're passionate about and then figure out the
thing that maybe you can do. I'm gonna
go through some things. Okay?
Because I know if you're like me and
you scroll through your social media platform of
choice and you get on that side of
the algorithm, maybe it's like minded individuals,
your politics like that, you're siloed in that
and it's whatever,
they're all kinda yelling and screaming at you.
And I can I find it very overwhelming
at times? Mhmm. So maybe we can break
this down.
If you have extra money
and you're willing,
donate. Y'all, $10
means a lot to these organizations.
If you can set up a recurring thing,
cool. Great.
Our the charities we tend to donate to,
we do not donate often. We don't always
have the money to do that. But when
we do, they are
LGBTQ plus rights organizations,
specifically those helping the trans community.
That's our
thing of choice that we're like Yeah. We're
gonna put as much of our time and
attention as we can here. Okay?
So pick your thing,
if you've got the cash. If you don't,
it's okay. Not everybody can do that. The
donation thing I saw over the weekend, people
were like, you can't you don't there's no
protest for you to go out to. You
cannot physically get to a protest.
You don't you if something keeps you from
volunteering, do you have some cash? Because that
will help these organizations
render aid to the people who need them.
Right?
One thing we
do a combination of, and there are different
ways to do
this, we sign petitions. We contact our representatives.
We do it through email primarily, but phone
calls. The last time JB did a phone
call, he cussed out the senators. I I
I got a little, my blood pressure went
up a little bit. Yeah. I mean, it
was delight ball. It was delight ball. I'm
a traitor.
I think you dropped a couple f bombs.
And yeah.
Jamie might be on a list somewhere, but
that's fine. The cool people are. Okay?
I'm just saying.
Now
for anybody who just completely clinched over the
idea of a phone call, I feel you.
Here's my theory on it because I'm getting
there myself.
If all you can do
that you feel like I can do this
consistently is sign petitions and send emails, there
are organizations you can sign up for and
they'll send you links of, hey, go send
this letter to your senator or your house
rep. Right?
Start there, and if you can work up
the phone calls, cool. Because there's stuff to
help you with that too. Yeah. There, you
know,
I use
ResistBot. Yep. That's one of the ones in
my desk. It is it is a fantastical
thing. It when there is a letter that,
you know, you
for a cause, it tells you tells you
what the cause is, lets you read the
letter, so you don't even have to write
anything. Mhmm. I, you know, I I want
to send these letters.
I know I'm not gonna sit down and
write them. Right. The ones you have sent,
I just edited for you. That's true. You
you edited You did letters to the editor.
Yeah. That's another option you can use for
your local area. And,
they are they are great. All you have
to do, you know, you read through the
letter on your text,
and then you hit you have your choice
of,
phone,
fax, or email. The free one is email.
Free free email is free. You don't pay
for, like, coins or
or credits, you can do other things, but
free is email. And I've always used the
free option. Yeah. And that's what I've used
and and it's a fantastic thing. Mhmm. For
phone calls, I saw it in the live
chat and I used to have this question
too.
You can go to,
there are websites for the Senate and the
House of Representatives, but
five calls. The number five, the word calls,
it's both a website and an app. So
if you want to do everything on your
phone, you can. If you want to use
desktop, whatever, you can.
You put in your information of where you're
located
and they then tell you who your representatives
and your senators are. They give you the
phone numbers and they provide scripts.
So if you're like I can do a
phone call, but what the fuck do I
say and who do I call? You don't
they will help you with that.
What I have learned, even though I've I
I haven't gotten I haven't worked up the
phone calls yet. I admit that I'm not
doing the perfect thing. Phone calls are gold
standard because they count they have to count
every phone call that comes in, and you
can, like, flood the system and, like, fill
their voicemails up. Now, I will But And
that's Everything matters. Yeah. Emails, letters, all of
it. Now, I will say this, and and
this is something that,
kind of struck me as gold a little
bit in
in,
reference to the phone calls.
There are some people who do not like
to make the phone calls, that do, you
know, do not want to talk,
call on the weekends. You're gonna get voicemail.
You're gonna get voicemail. Just leave it on
voice mail, and they still should do what?
I hadn't thought about that. I could leave
a voice mail. I pray for voice mail
every time I have to make a call.
I could do So, yeah, if you call
at nights or on the weekends, you're gonna
get voice mail and leave as long as
the the voice mail is not If the
box is full, then you can. But if
the box is full now I'm gonna tell
tell my my fellow,
red state folks who have only conservatives representing
you. It if you feel like we do
politically, it can feel like it doesn't matter.
They're not gonna change their mind. Right? Right?
That is true. But here,
closer they get to an election
as more people yell at them.
So you might not change their mind. But
maybe
you can make them worry
about how that election's gonna turn out for
them. Just saying. Just saying. With the resist
with the resist bot that I like I
with all the cock a going on,
I almost send a a letter a day.
Really? I didn't realize you were no wonder
you're on your phone so damn much. Yeah.
I didn't realize. I did not respond to
a couple too many resist bot things. I've
been doing,
online through emails that are coming through. Yeah.
And,
they stopped messaging me. So I should probably
go back in and be like, hi. I'm
here. What's the issue? What's the issue of
the dump?
Another thing you can do, we do this,
we do it either through social media and
or email.
We follow organizations
that we believe are doing good work. So
for us, that's ACLU,
Indivisible,
Equality Florida. Equality Florida is near and dear
to our heart. We'll get to that.
Okay? They often send out emails or have
sections on their websites of, like, here's the
issue that we're trying to push back on.
The current one as of recording is to
get the Senate to pull out the DHS
appropriations bill from the bundle of bills, pass
the other bundle of bills Yeah. And deal
with DHS. That's a big issue to try
and get concessions.
You can we cannot defund
DHS with this appropriations bill. They got funding.
For days they got funding. But this thing
could make it so that maybe they don't
wear fucking masks in the goddamn street. Just
sayin'. Just sayin'. Anyway,
so when you find an organization of choice
that's your
that hits the thing you care about and
you want to help with,
get on their email newsletter, follow them on
social.
We were sitting at lunch today and Equality
Florida had a post about some Florida legislation
that's some bullshit legislation. And they're like, link
in bio. And I'm going, Jimmy, link in
bio, and right in Instagram. I'm sending a
letter to my senators.
Yeah. So,
that's a way to do it that you're
already on your phone.
You're Right. You're doing something. Something is better
than nothing if you have the
the wherewithal. Right? So
and again, you don't have to do all
the things we're talking about. Any one of
them that's like, oh,
that, oh, I mean that. Just like Let
me stick with that. You know, just like
Kayla said, there there are times I need
to step back from it all because it
does become over overwhelming. His blood pressure gets
so high. Yeah. And and not just my
blood pressure, but it it, you know, it
affects my depression.
It's hearing a lot of this stuff. You
know? What's going on? And and I do.
I there are times I just need to
step back. I don't look at any news.
I don't look at social media.
TV doesn't go on unless I'm watching something
like Walking Dead, but
you know,
We gotta finish watching Percy Jackson. We gotta
do that too.
You know, so,
you know, you do what you can comfortably
do. Right. You know, without harming yourself. Right.
And that there's a fine line because Yeah.
Again,
if I'm talking to the cis straight white
ladies of the world,
we we can be very comfortable very easily
because many things don't impact us. And so
you do have to get comfortable with being
uncomfortable. Yeah.
But I do think start with where you're
at. If all you can if all you
feel like you're able to do
is to sign petitions or to send emails
to your senator, to your House rep, to
whoever,
start there. Because, man, it it feels kind
of good. You know? I mean do it
enough and then after a while it becomes
easier to do something else to add on.
You know how we talk about with kink,
please start slow, start with one small thing
and build up?
This is kind of the same thing. If
you try to do all the things all
the time all at once, you'll burn yourself
out and you'll be a wreck. I mean,
no. That's not helpful. You know? One one
thing I did right off the bat,
I decided I'm no longer buying from Amazon.
Yeah. We haven't spent on Amazon since the
inauguration. Yeah. Yeah. And it it since saw
that person up on the,
you know,
I stopped.
Was it hard?
A little bit. We actually use Amazon as
a search engine. Yeah. We need a product,
we wanna see what brands make. And that's
now what it's come down to.
You know, importantly, you search for some something
to buy
online, Amazon's gonna be right there at the
top. Right.
And I use it. I I go to
Amazon. I find what I'm looking for, then
I go and search out the the company.
Yep. And often they are on another platform.
Right. They are on another platform or you
can buy directly.
And And let me do a disclaimer. We
do spend with Amazon for Kindle Unlimited. True.
But it's $12 a month, and I read
an average of 30 to 40 books a
month. I believe they're losing money on me.
And I am supporting indie authors. So
that is our one concession. But buying like,
being on Amazon Prime, we stopped out a
year two years ago. That was a a
money thing. That was just a broke bitch
thing. The buying from Amazon, we went, this
is a choice we can make. And then
let me remind you, we're not saying everybody
else needs to go out and do that.
Like, everybody has access to different things. We'd
love to boycott all of the companies we
disagree with. Mhmm. We would not be able
to buy groceries. Things. Yeah.
We just
so we make we pick and choose when
it can I think both companies do this,
but the one that I know for a
fact when it came out that Home Depot
was working with ICE to pick up people
who are in their parking lot trying to,
like, get some fucking work,
We have them in the Home Depot sense?
Right? Like, those are choices we make, and
only you can know
what's right for your situation and your family,
but the not spending money, like And and
that's a not doing a thing Yeah.
Instead of doing a thing. And we have
we live in an area that as, we
have, the option of still local,
hardware stores. Yeah. We do. We do. Yeah.
You've been going to a lot of local
places. Yeah. Been been doing a lot of
stuff with, local businesses. Yes. Yes. And,
look, let us get our bias out right
here. Thecancery.com.
When you can, shop small business. Right? Like,
just in general.
It doesn't have to do with us. I'm
just saying. If you can, that's that's also
helpful. And it's a thing you're doing
that maybe doesn't feel so hard. And I
think that's the thing. A lot of people
get very in their head about all the
really hard things there are to do. There
are
slower,
smaller, quieter things that make a difference. Okay?
Because it's not one person has to do
everything to fix everything. It's everybody who can
does one small thing and you've made a
slightly better world.
So,
there is the stay informed.
Like, you piggyback.
You piggyback before I got there so good
on you. -Yeah. -Um,
we believe in social media breaks. I do
not
I personally cannot
in good conscience,
pay attention to nothing and stay ignorant about
it all.
It doesn't it doesn't feel right to me.
But I do
have to know my own limits
and go, wait. I literally can't concentrate and
do the work that keeps our mortgage paid.
I probably need to put like not go
into Instagram for a little bit.
But when you're staying informed, there is a
lot of bias. Yeah. Things are being labeled
fake media that aren't necessary or fake news
that aren't. Some things that should be labeled
fake news are not being labeled that.
There are books out there you can read.
I just today I didn't have time to,
like, look through all the lists and link
things here
found several
posts by creators who were like, here are
some books so you can learn about these
things if what you want to be is
more well informed.
Your news source, my current preferred news source,
is Associated Press.
For two reasons,
they are usually where some of the stories
and even your local paper come from. An
Associated Press writer probably journalist probably read it.
And two, they're on their app I can
read every news story they publish and they
don't put they don't put it behind a
paywall. I do not have to pay to
access the news from the Associated Press. Yeah,
I know. So that is an option.
Where was I? I gotta find it on
my list. Oh,
okay.
Organizations
you support, follow follow them on social media,
your preferred platform if you can,
if if they're active there, if that's even
helpful.
And then I have a we have a
handful of creators, content creators That we follow.
That we follow because we feel like we're
being informed
without being terrified Yeah. Without the hype and
and yelled at Mhmm.
Or being sold to in some way. Yeah.
I have linked
to everybody's
Instagram on these people we're gonna talk about,
but they they are on other platforms.
Two, I know for a fact are on
YouTube. So if you're watching us on YouTube,
you can just find them in the same
app that you're watching us on. My absolute
favorite I've talked about her before. It's her
name is Amanda Nelson. Her handle is amandas
mild
takes. Mhmm. All one word, no spaces.
She gives she'll tell you about, like, what's
happening in the Senate and the House and
politics, but she also gives historical context. Yeah.
She was the one that gave me the
reality check that the shit we're seeing
now
is not new in America. Yeah. We have
been this way
for a very long time, and that was
great.
It was eye opening, it was also grounding,
because there for me, thinking this was a
brand new evil, how what do we do
about it? We don't know what to do.
Blah blah blah. That was overwhelming.
But going, wait. We've been dealing with these
people this whole time, and we've been
pushing them back, and we've been fighting and
and sometimes winning and, like, working very slowly,
not fast enough for a better world.
Okay.
I can breathe again. I don't like it.
I'm mad about it, but I can breathe
again. And the other thing I like about
Amanda is she's snarky as fucking shit. Oh
yeah.
Oh yeah.
She has no time for fools
and, oh, make she's one of the few
people who can make a pun. And I'm
like, no, that's actually a good one because
it's snarky as shit.
So Amanda's small takes. When JB gets really
riled up in the news he's seeing because
our
our algorithms sync up a little bit, but
there's differences.
I'm like, go watch what Amanda posted today.
You'll feel better. Yeah. Yeah. And it helps.
It does. Another creator I like, his name
is Jay Bowie. He is a New York
Times columnist.
He has a YouTube channel.
I've seen him on Instagram. He's probably on
TikTok because most people are. He gives good
calm,
well thought out
analysis on what the fuck's going on.
And he's like a sweet guy to, like,
listen. I I he just seems like a
nice guy. A parasocial relationship there. I'm like,
aw, you seem nice.
But when I listen to
him, the the topic might be maddening and
raise my blood pressure, but the information makes
me feel like I walked away going, oh,
I have a better understanding of that. I
have more context.
I'm
looking at this maybe from a different angle
than it was presented in another
post or another news story. Mhmm. Jay Bowie,
b o u I e.
A new one for me, but I like
her so far.
She's called goes by
Kate underscore ForThePeople.
I watched
a reel with her just yesterday or day
before and she said I'm an independent. I'm
not Republican or Democrat. I I fight for
the legislation. I fight against the legislation I
don't like. I fight for what I do
like. Her whole thing is she'll do videos
showing how she calls senators and reps and
what she says to them,
to kind of demystify it, maybe make it
seem a little easier for folks
to to try on their own. She also
breaks down legislation. She'll also talk about where
things are in the House or the Senate
and the process part, and I've really enjoyed
that. The last one on the list is,
your recommendation,
Jess Craven one zero one. Craven with a
c. Two s's in Jess.
What do you want to say about Jess?
You know, she does a she does a
lot of things. She,
has a way of bringing stuff
to your attention,
and there are times she comes up with
different action things that you can do.
One of the things I like about her,
about once a week she does a like
a compilation
reel of
different news good news,
you know. Yeah. I've seen some of those
videos. Mhmm. You know, she she works with
a lot of different content creators
to, bring a lot of that stuff in.
Mhmm.
In the live chat, things are mentioned that
definitely are worth a mention.
PBS,
local news stations, local radio, NPR.
-Yeah.
-Um, PBS for sure. If you still have
PBS in your area
and you want
a cause to donate to,
Help PBS out. Yeah. How many of us
grew up on watching all of the,
fundraisers?
Man, I always wished my mama would spend
some money because I really wanted that t
shirt mug tote bag set. Seeing seeing them
all up there in phone banks, you know?
Oh, my god. Yeah. Well,
PBS,
the corporate of public broad Corporation for Public
Broadcasting had to shut down. They lost so
much funding, if I'm understanding that correctly, if
I'm remembering that correctly. And PBS
lost a shit ton of funding from the
federal government. Yeah. There's a lot that's lost
a shit ton of funding and that could
be an entire fucking episode. I'm not an
expert. We don't have time. But if you're
looking for a place
to
spend time, money, effort, whatever,
PBS, Local PBS.
For when
when the news was felt like it was
peak craziness right after the inauguration last year,
we were like, we want to stay informed,
but I cannot watch these people yell on
CNN or MSNBC or I I cannot do
this. So we started watching PBS
NewsHour
on YouTube.
Like we didn't even pull up the channel.
We just watched it on YouTube. And it
was so
I've been around like I don't watch cable
news very often now. I used to. I
used to watch too much of it. And,
when it kind of first started becoming a
thing when I was, like, what, teenage years,
it was usually on somewhere. And God help
us, we're in the South. Everywhere I go,
Fox News is on a TV in a
lobby somewhere.
Yeah. But it's all that yelling back and
forth. I get very
overwhelmed by that.
PBS NewsHour?
Nice. No. They're just talking to one another
like adults. Yeah. Civil conversation. Imagine that. Even
when they clearly don't agree with something. Right.
Which, you know They're kinda how it should
be. They're professional news broadcasters, so you're not
really gonna see if they don't agree, but
they might push back on something. Yeah. Yeah.
I sometimes I need a break from that
too, but that is where if you want
to watch the news, we'll watch it. So
yeah, if you can donate to PBS, your
local PBS, please do. The other one I
saw in the live chat was, something that
a lot of YouTubers and podcasters
and people, you know, who make reels and
TikToks,
promote, which is called Ground News. Yes. I've
never tried it.
I'm kind of curious. I might go in
one day, but what they do is they
aggregate news
and then let you see
the what's being written by the left leaning,
what's being written by the right leaning, what's
being written by the Moderate. The
the organizations that are considered Mhmm. You know,
in the middle. Yeah. And then you can
see how things are, like, leaning, or maybe
something that you might care about is not
being covered by like, for us it would
be left leaning journalists
or or outlets,
and you've learned that, wait, there's a thing
that nobody's even talking about over here on
the right or in the center.
And it's and the thing,
Hank Green, because he got mentioned in the
live chat Mhmm. Because he talks about it
a lot now. What he said he likes,
because I didn't know this either, is when
you see the story and you go to
click on, like, the headline or whatever to
read more, it takes you to that
company, that
Wherever it was originally Thank you. What are
words? I don't know.
So that, you know, you're not it's
you might find a publication that you're like,
oh, wow, I like getting news from them.
Here they are, you can support them. From
an internet creator perspective, that's very nice when
something links to your actual site.
And and, you know, not I've also heard,
Amanda
Uh-huh. From Amanda's mild takes Mhmm. Talk about
ground news,
Jon Stewart.
Yep. You know, a number of people now.
Oh, yeah. Jon Stewart's podcast. Whoo. Yeah. Sometimes
he it stresses me out because he's talking
about serious shit, but sometimes it's it's really
good stuff. Very informative, the people he has
on there. I've I've been listening to it
Yeah. A bit too. His podcast is the
weekly podcast with Mhmm. Jon Stewart.
He had a conversation with a Palestinian
author
who,
is able to travel from Palestine
to America, has a lot of family in
Palestine, and he was talking about what his
family experienced over there. And I just I
this was in the summer. We were mowing
the lawn. I was listening to this podcast,
and I was crying while mowing lawn. It
was it was tragic. It was awful. But
he has those kinds of conversations and then
he talks to like he did an interview
with, Governor JB Pritzker.
Illinois governor? Was Pritzker Illinois? I think so.
Yes. I can't remember. Somebody cracked me. Yeah.
You know?
And he he and he, if if you're
aware of Jon Stewart, will a 100% push
back
on somebody he don't agree with. Mhmm.
So there's there's lots out there, and some
of that's personal preference and who you vibe
with and all that stuff. Like, I'm waiting
for John Oliver to get back from his
break
to start the new season.
Right. I need him to both depress and
amuse me. Thank you very much.
We watch something we watch it through HBO
Max, but it's available through CNN Mhmm. Called
Have I Got News For You?
Oh my god. I can see the host
face in my Roy. Roy.
I feel awful like a host face. We've
watched this conversation.
It's comedians and politicians or journalists that come
in, and you get a highlight of the
news,
and you get a moment to laugh about
some of it. It's let off steam. It
doesn't take away from the importance
of things,
but so that's all I mean, we're throwing
a lot out there because we are probably
a little too connected and probably, like, need
to go touch some grass. But,
The my point is is wherever you like
to consume information from, there'll be somebody out
there who is not trying to terrify you.
They're trying to inform you. Maybe they're trying
to help you laugh through it. Maybe they're
trying to help you, like, stay calm.
So you and the calmness is so that
you can go do whatever the thing is
that's important to you to do to help
with whatever. Right?
The calmness is so that you're not walking
around all the time going, oh my god.
I think
the world is ending right now. Right? Because
those feelings are valid, but it's very hard
to function through that.
And part of how
you push back against and ultimately
defeat regimes
Mhmm. Is you don't just survive, but you
thrive. You find moments for joy. You keep
living to the extent that you can.
You
laugh at
the fucked up headlines because of the way
the comedians are talking, whatever it is. So,
yeah. My thing is is if none of
our suggestions appeal or you're like that's too
much. How do I find somebody on my
own?
Here's my criteria. Do this what you will.
If all they do is yell at me,
if they
tell me the headlines in a breathless, like,
are you ready to be terrified kind of
way Yeah.
And no.
There's another one.
They don't give me
something I can do. Right? They don't say,
here's what you can do about this, whether
it's now, in the moment, or in the
future. Right?
And they don't show their sources
on the green screen to show me the
article or link or, you know, list the
URL and the caption or whatever whatever, if
they don't cite sources,
I find them questionable.
Because tell me where you got show me
or tell me where you got this information
from. Right?
Because
those things, when somebody does all they're yelling
at me and they're making me anxious and
and they're not telling me where they got
this information from,
I'm stressed now. And that's not helpful. I
can't function. So
feel free to,
look for folks who are matter of fact,
cite their sources, aren't afraid to show you
where they got the information from, and are
not Yeah. They're tell might be telling you
scary things, but they themselves are not actively
trying to terrify you. Yeah.
Algorithms
love our fear and our anger. Yeah.
Things including
especially incredibly false things travel so fast when
we're angry and afraid.
And that's how misinformation it's one way misinformation
gets spread. Yeah. So I seek out creators
who inform me without freaking me the fuck
out.
I have found that to be the best
way.
I do wanna mention volunteering,
because that is how I kind of started
really more focusing on what the hell's going
on in the world around me.
I write postcards for election campaigns because there's
a lot we need to do, and I
do believe electorally
voting is part of it. Not everybody agrees
with that, and that's fine. That's fine. That's
what I believe.
JB has worked with our local Democrats here
in the county. Here in the
county. And that that's like, I do postcards.
I can do that from home. It costs
money to do. So if you're like, when
we were on a tight budget, I couldn't.
Yeah. There have been times I couldn't. But
when I can, I do?
If you're interested in that, because it is
a thing you do at home
by yourself.
Do it naked if you want. Nobody gives
a fuck.
Here are the three that I work with
most often. They are linked in the places.
Postcards to Swing States,
Activate America,
Center for Common Ground.
They have other activist work. If you're a
person who likes talking on the phone,
teach me your Waze because I couldn't be
me. They do phone banking or they'll do
text banking or the there's different ways to
get involved if you are
if you are interested in helping with elections.
Right?
JB has done we've done not a lot,
but we've done a few different things for
our local Democrats. Mhmm. We sent postcards out
for a local candidate who did not win.
I was very sad. Yeah. He was he
was he I think he was a good
candidate.
Just Yeah. Dimms don't do well in our
county.
You did social media
at an event.
We signed up for an event where our
entry fee was a donation Right.
That there's hopefully gonna do more of. Like
Mhmm. It doesn't have to be all the
time.
In our county
they will do their monthly
meetings via Zoom so you don't have to
even go to know what the hell's going
on in your local and that's assuming you're
into electoral politics and, like, you you identify
as a party. Like, a lot of people
are independent and are like, I don't give
a fuck about either party, and that's cool.
Like, I I'm not gonna I don't have
an opinion on that. Right?
We do. We align with the party, but
you don't have to to do any of
these other things. Like not a damn thing
do you have to be part of a
party to give a fuck about what's going
on around us. Right? That's just where we
tend to put our time and energy.
Let me just reiterate because this is a
lot of information. I did not did not
know it would take me this long to
get there.
If you are so inclined and you're like,
I feel like I need to do something.
Right?
And you're like, but I can't do it
all and I can't do the thing that
erases is the the perfect thing I should
do, like or is the only thing that
matters. Like, don't listen to people who tell
you that there's only one thing that matters
and can change the world. They're lying to
you. Pick one cause you care about.
Pick one thing within that cause you think
you can do.
I heard somebody say online the other day,
it's what you can do sustainably, consistently.
Consistently does not mean constantly.
K?
Maybe you can volunteer somewhere and you can
only do it every few weeks.
That's more help than they that organization had
before. You can only give $10
every couple of months. That's $10 they didn't
have before. Right?
So yeah. That's the thing I would say.
With anybody
who is looking at the world right now
and going, what the fuck is happening and
how do I stop it?
Okay?
Let me give just reminder of a reality
check for people who look like me
and probably people who look like JB.
This is not new here in America. No.
This is not this has been building in
its current form for decades.
And these things that we're seeing, these horrific
things that are playing out in real time
on our fucking phones,
some form of that has been happening for
decades and centuries. Yeah. So Yeah. Sad. Sad.
Very sad. Right. I don't ever I don't
want to lose sight of that because it's
real easy to think this is a brand
new thing and it it's really not. Yeah.
Black people have been fighting this fight in
America for a long goddamn time. Mhmm.
So
that
is the
fire hose of information
I have. Yeah. Is there anything you would
like to add to this portion of today's
episode? I think the only thing I'd like
to say at this point, and and it's,
something that
I have been,
reminded of from George Carlin.
I wish he was alive for this time.
I know.
You know, he he made this statement, and
it's absolutely true.
It is easy
to lose your rights.
No. It's not that easy to gain them.
No. So.
No. People fought for centuries and decades for
rights
and still didn't have full access for a
long time. Right. The other thing I'll say
for anybody who's skeptical about the voting thing,
saying voting doesn't matter,
let me a couple things. One,
if
if it didn't matter,
they wouldn't be trying so hard to keep
you from voting.
We wouldn't hear about people being taken off
the voter rolls or,
voter suppression stuff. Right? The gerrymandering where some
states are trying to have all red districts
and some states to combat that are, like,
I gotta have some blue districts. Right?
If if it wasn't important, they wouldn't try
and rig it. Yeah. For anybody who's like,
oh, well, they're all the same. There are
a lot of some there are a lot
of things that piss me off about Democrats.
Okay? I might vote that way, but man,
some of this bullshit. Yeah. Fucking Chuck Schumer.
Anyway,
what I will say confidently,
I don't know
what what Kamala Harris would have done,
but I know
if she had won,
ice raids would not be happening in major
cities.
People would not be deported without due process.
People who have been killed would probably be
alive right now.
And all of us in this fucking country
wouldn't be paying out our asses for tariffs
that have been one of the reasons prices
have gone up. That's not the only reason.
But that is one those things
would not have happened if votes had gone
a different way.
So
I don't I'm not gonna strong-arm anybody and,
like, bully anybody into you gotta fucking vote.
That's a personal choice. I didn't I did
not turn 18 and go register to vote.
Okay? I was
almost 30 before I ever registered to vote.
My mother,
I wanna say, was in her fifties
before she registered to vote.
So I know it's not
a thing everybody's gonna
but I just I I just want to,
like, piss somebody off and point that out.
I I registered to vote as soon as
I turned 18.
You're a better human than I am. And,
I voted every election since then.
Up until I met you, I was a
registered independent.
Yeah. I I started as an independent and
then I learned you can't vote in a
primary where you might want to vote, and
I was like, fuck that. I want to
vote in the primary. I want to make
sure the person I like gets an extra
vote. So that's when I changed my affiliation.
Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Okay.
Anything else
about this section? No. Okay.
We we have become, like,
not obsessed, but we've become very, like, focused
on the science of we really could just
keep complaining about things we don't Yeah.
And sharing stuff that we've learned. Yeah.
We,
both do a thing when we are looking
at
information online.
If we can't personally verify it, we haven't
gone to the source or whatever whatever, we
do
caution each other with, I don't know if
this is true. Take this with a grain
of salt because so much shit can be
fake as fuck. So
so this thing we want to talk about,
I hate putting it here because it feels
like we're politicizing this, but I'm
being
political.
And quite frankly, this has probably made me
even more focused on politics because, you know,
I'm not gonna be even more focused on
politics
because
it was always important, but now it's like
So I'm pretty sure I know some people
know because I've had conversations and some people
probably get it. But we're just gonna say
it because I also don't want to ever
make to ever feel like we didn't
want to talk about this. That's not it
either.
We have not we've for years talked about
how we had two boys. Two boys. Two
boys.
We were wrong.
We had a boy and a girl. Yep.
Our youngest is trans. She is adorable right
now.
It's all social stuff right now. New glasses,
new haircut,
different name.
Her favorite color is pink. I'm like, why
could I have been purple? But that's okay.
I respect it. I respect it.
We are not gonna talk about
her experience
in this space. Okay?
You might still get proud mom shit. I
love to brag about the oldest and his,
you know, crazy shit with whatever. Right. You
might get that in the future.
But we also don't want it to ever
like, in the beginning, we were it was
privacy. It was she was figuring her shit
out, and we were figuring it out along
with her. Okay. Yeah.
But
at this point, it's like
every time I stay, like, gender neutral,
it's like, that's not right. That's not that
no. She is an adorable teenage girl, and
poor JB is learning
what it's like to have two of me
in one house.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah. She didn't fall far from the, tree
on that one. No.
We didn't get to see it prior go
ahead. Yeah. Prior to this. And
and,
yeah. I I get tag teamed now It's
kind of fun. With the sass. Kind of
fun.
This
I would I'm gonna support my children no
matter what. Yeah. But
the thing that just made it, like,
cemented in, like, oh, shit. Yeah.
Is that she's blossomed.
She is the person she was always meant
to be. Her personality is shining. Shiny.
I was there at
pre k when she cried every day. Yeah.
And I couldn't leave her. They would take
me to the side and be like, what
the hell's wrong with your kid? And now
she's Or or even through middle school where
she just sank deeper and deeper.
You know? And and now see this this
beautiful personality.
Oh my god. Oh my god. That's shining
and it and it's it's it's beautiful. It's
just beautiful. Mhmm.
So
it's not a thing even our whole family
knows. There are not people who are safe
in
our family. The reason it was like, we'll
do it here because our politics of choice,
our focus of choices on trans rights Yeah.
Because it was always important, but and I
hate to say it. It feels like I
should have been doing it anyway because I
knew it was important.
But now I'm like, how do I make
a safer world
for her? Yeah.
So anyway, we're not gonna talk about her
personal details. We're not gonna talk about her,
medical stuff. That is nobody's fucking business. That's
all private.
But you will hear us refer to her
as her. Yeah.
And we'll have, I'm sure,
proud parent moments to, like, talk about.
We cannot get her the health care she
needs in the state we live in. No.
The state is currently
actively
trying to make what little bit they allow
harder for professionals to do what little bit
is legally allowed. They're they're they have as
parents we cannot make,
decisions on medical care for her.
Nope.
Yeah. Not allowed. As parents, that those rights
have been stripped away. Our state is all
about talking about parents' rights, but sure should
not these parents' rights. No.
And and now they're they're trying to push
laws through,
which if a teacher
or,
you know, anybody in that position
assists or doctor assists
a kid
in any of this, that they they are
legally then liable.
Right.
So
the,
two things are happening. And I meant to
talk about it earlier because the whole video
has been going for YouTube folks and I
hadn't mentioned it.
So
the
the thing that we focus on most,
where energy outside of voting electoral stuff,
is an organization here in Florida called Equality
Florida.
They were the first organization of their type
in the country,
and what they do is they are an
LGBTQ
plus advocacy group. They work to
pass good legislation
and get bad legislation
not passed. I don't know what the words
are. Taken taken away. Yeah. Taken away. Make
it taken away.
And sometimes they're successful and sometimes there's not.
So,
they fight anti LGBTQ plus legislation. Currently in
Florida, there's this massive
page of shit Oh, yeah. To both oppose
and,
like
Support. Support. Thank you. What were words?
I did I just took a couple out
of the big long list. For Florida specifically
Mhmm. They want to do a pride flag
ban. They've been working on it. They want
to, like, make it worse, I guess, with
legislation.
They want a don't say gay thing in
the workplace. They've already done it in the
schools. Yeah.
I've I, who never thought I would be
a homeschool parent, am so fucking grateful to
be a homeschool parent. Mhmm. I don't I
don't know how I don't know how she
would have survived in Florida
school system.
I don't. Knowing what we know now, I
don't know how she would have survived. And
then that one we were just talking about,
making it easier to penalize teachers and health
care providers for helping slash supporting trans kids.
Give you a little inside baseball.
We have are going out of state for
a medical appointment for our youngest.
It is not required
that whoever they might be working with, like
their therapist or whatever, provide a letter of
support to kind of show whatever they need
for I'm learning all this so I don't
even know what's in a letter of support.
But they don't require it, but they they
like it when they can get it. I
go to the therapist and I say, is
this something you can do?
She takes a couple days to get back
to me and says, we would love to,
but we cannot without losing our license in
the state of Florida. Yep.
So when I say that we know we
we will at some point be moving out
of fucking Florida, that
Yep. We know it.
It's just not easy, and I think most
people understand that it's just not people are
doing it. I saw in the live chat,
from Malley, I think, a stat I had
seen recently
that 400,000
trans people have moved states
Yeah.
In the past was it past year? Year
probably. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember the time
frame.
Yeah. And we are in that list of
people who are trying to figure out how
that's gonna be feasible for
us. So I tell you this about Florida
equality
Florida
because
they helped other states have their own version.
Okay?
I did searches to see what it would
look like if you pick your state and
you go, do you have an equality Florida
a version of equality Florida?
I found Georgia equality,
Alabama equality,
Virginia
equality.
Mhmm. So what I'm saying is whatever state
you're in, type
equality and your state name or your state
name and the word equality. You might have
to scroll a little bit, But once you
see we are an, anti LGBTQ
legislation
advocacy group, that's usually how they label themselves
Yeah. You've got it. So
if I would say two things. Things. I
would say many
things. If you were in a red state
and you're like, I hadn't heard about any
anti trans legislation,
go check. Yeah. Find your equality for
whatever for your state and see what they've
got coming up and what they're working
for or against. Okay?
If you're in a blue state and you're
like, we don't have to worry about that
here,
check anyway. Yeah.
There are several states I have investigated
for, like, what do they say and what
are their laws and what are their rules.
And some states just sound amazing, but
I I can't live there.
But I am all the states are kinda,
like, on my list. I'm I'm watching their
legislation too Yeah. Because they could come off
my list real fucking quick after a single
election. Right? Because
elections fucking matter.
A thing if you do follow Amanda's mild
takes, highly recommend, by the way, she will
tell you. It's local that determines almost everything.
Come. Start local.
Because
the anti trans bills are coming from our
state legislature. Yeah. They're not coming I mean,
federal tried. Yeah. Federal tried and the one
thing thank you Democrats, I guess. Guess. They
got the anti trans stuff
pulled out of these appropriations
bills going through the process right now.
Thank fucking God.
But it's happening at the state level
probably more than most people realize. And I
look, trans folks who are listening or watching,
y'all been screaming this. Y'all fucking know. Right?
I'm, like, late to the fucking party, but
I'm here now.
So I don't expect you to care about
our
issue. Find your issue. But if you do
care about these things, if you're like, what?
They're they're passing that kind of shit? They're
not letting parents work with doctors to do
what's best for a child?
They're wanting to ban pride flags or say
don't say gay. Some
I urge you if that matters to you
in any way, go find your state's version.
Lola
Agrees.
Okay.
Lola fucking agrees.
Look. We we love, you know,
an ally, even in the four legs.
The other thing that I got secured away
with that I forgot to mention again.
On if you're watching on YouTube, you should
see,
where there's a donate thing.
We are gonna utilize YouTube fundraiser things. This
is our first one. We're gonna utilize them
more often as we go forward.
We are hosting a fundraiser,
through YouTube for the Campaign for Southern Equality.
It runs through February. Our goal is $250
because I don't know if this is a
thing
like, there's so many places you can put
your money.
Right?
Like, I don't wanna overtax people. I don't
wanna be like, hey, give me all your
money. You know? No. That's what I'm trying
to do.
Campaign for Southern Equality was the first organization
I got in touch with on behalf of
the youngest,
And
I almost cried the whole conversation
because it was wonderful.
And they have
helped. We have benefited from their grant program.
We are using their grant program for
travel needs,
and we're grateful to it.
So I wouldn't be able to do it.
Right. We,
hosting this fundraiser. It's gonna run through February.
If you've got it to give, thank you.
Yeah. If you don't, I totally fucking get
it. I will say the thing I said
at the top. If you're like, well, I
could become a Patreon member with my $5
or I could give to an organization, please
give to the organization. Please give. They they
they need help right now. They they need
as much as they do. All of them
do.
Our
our focus is trans rights.
I
am not going there.
Here's
here's what I will say
to parents.
I think it's universal
that we tend to be
afraid for our children. Right? Afraid for their
future.
Afraid afraid when they start driving. Right? Like
there's plenty of things to fear.
I have never been so afraid.
Now I am filled with hope
and I will fight like fucking hell.
But if you're like, yeah. As a parent,
I relate to the fear.
For me,
this has turned up a lot of fucking
notches.
And so
you will probably see a lot of stuff
like this.
Our last donation
our last fundraiser for Equality Florida. We did
that through the Kinkery.
We're trying to figure out a plan to
do more fundraisers and who we want to
do them for.
There's lots of organizations that need help.
This one through YouTube
is the Campaign for Southern Equality
so that other people
can benefit from their grants. Yeah.
Once I figure out the mechanism, it should
show up on most if not all of
our videos going forward
through the fundraiser, but it's a new tool
I've never used. So
if you can, great. If you can't, no
worries.
For anybody who's like, I want to do
stuff and I don't have money. God knows
I've been there. If you are
feel safe to, share these kinds of things
with your
your social media folk. And I don't mean
this episode. You can if you want. If
you would like if there's somebody you would
like to be yelled at, this is fine.
But like the organization that you're like, I
wanna support this organization.
This is my cause of choice.
And you don't have money to give? Spread
the word about them because there will probably
be somebody who got $10 that they can
give.
Okay.
I know I can't talk about this stuff
without crying, both happy tears and angry tears.
So thanks to, oh my gosh, all of
these donations that have come through. I saw
Tayesu at the top of the
stream.
JB had to go
deal with Lola who might be eating cat
shit in the backyard.
Thank you to Kim. Thank you to the
anonymous,
donor. I appreciate that.
So
Andre had the,
idea we should do, dollars for demos.
You know, for the fundraiser for sure for
sure. I will happily be hit with, Weapons
of Ass Destruction. We gotta make some more
Weapons of Ass Destruction, though.
Hopefully by
the,
the Friday.
The February Friday livestream.
Okay.
When JB gets back and gets settled,
I'll let him share any thoughts he has
that he has not shared, and then we'll
go to the third section of this episode.
And we still have a bonus section because
we've got Ella and Lola news. Yeah.
Anyway, is there anything you would like to
say about our our happy news and also
why? I mean, I Why are people that,
like
Why is America? You know, all I can
all I wanna say
is
I want to see her
be able to
grow and be happy. And thrive. And thrive.
And live whatever her life is supposed to
look like. Yeah.
Silent asked in the live chat if her
anxiety has maybe gotten changed or gotten any
better. This is still one of the most
anxious human beings I've ever met.
And But you know what she's not anxious
about?
Who the fuck she is.
And and to me So and to me
it seems like it is better.
She is able to articulate it better. She
can recognize what it is. She can talk
through it. That's that's a lot of therapy.
That's just some maturation. She's 16 now.
She
she she handles it. I think she does
handle it better, but,
it's almost like all of the anxiety genes
from all of the generations from me back,
quite frankly through the women in our family,
were concentrated
and inserted into this child because,
I mean, I always thought, oh, I'm an
anxious human. My mom is so anxious I
knew the youngest has us beak.
But she she is doing better. She's There's
there's a lot of growth
there. Okay. Now we're gonna actually talk about
kink. Yeah.
It's a question we got ages ago.
I've had thoughts about it ever since.
I don't know that the answer is gonna
be satisfying because we believe in nuance, but
can you be in a power exchange with
somebody that you don't agree with politically? You're
on differing sides of the political
spectrum. It depends.
It's the most dissatisfying answer. Right? I and,
you know, I mean, it it is, but,
you know, that you you can't,
I was I was,
in a long term relationship somebody who is,
very conservative.
Mhmm. And,
you see where I am today.
The stock power exchange, but yes, my my
mother and
the man she married are on complete opposite
sides of the political
political spectrum, and that's not a happy relationship.
Not just for that, but that's a big
fucking part.
Here's how I break it down in my
head, and I think there's more ways than
what I can come up with, but this
is what I've
come up with. If
you
are
politically
active or knowledgeable or engaged,
right, on your side of the political spectrum,
and your
partner is one of a few things I
think the outcome might change, but it is
a personal decision for you.
If they are completely apolitical, they do not
look at the news, they don't know what's
happening outside of whatever their hobbies are, they
don't even vote,
but they,
you know,
registered
Republican and you're a Democrat, but they're not
doing anything with it? They're not supporting anything,
I think that's worth a conversation. Like, why
are you registered if you don't support? Register
independent. Right? If that if your state does
that.
That becomes
a a conversation for you of do I
want to be in a power exchange with
somebody who does not care about this thing
that I care about? That's a choice only
you can make.
If you've got if you're in a relationship
with somebody who
votes,
but they vote who they've always voted for,
they don't they're not engaged in politics because
maybe they say they just don't care. But
win a big election, they're always gonna vote
for the same party no matter what regardless
of what's happening.
This is dissatisfying but only you can decide
if that is okay with you, if you
can live with that.
There are people I know who could not,
would not, would never be them and then
there are people I know who are like
everything else is good,
you know,
maybe they'll change, maybe we can have these
conversations, maybe we can grow together, like whatever
whatever.
There I don't think there's a singular right
answer here.
It gets trickier
when you both are pretty fucking firm and
activated and know what you think and how
you feel.
Now here's what my decision would be.
I don't know that I can trust a
person with the responsibility
of control over me
if
they literally do not care
about other people.
They don't care that rights are being stripped
away. They don't care that people are being
killed in the streets. They don't care that,
you know, we have federal agents who think
they can walk around
not showing their face, not having a badge
number, not giving a last name, like, nothing
that the police would have to do. These
got like, if they actively are telling you
that they don't give a fuck and or
they support it and you were actively
on the other side going,
that that's a violation of due process. That's
that's unethical.
That's evil. That
I don't know how you do it because
I I could not.
Are there people who decide they can do
it? Yep.
That goes back to a personal decision.
It I think it's how you view both
the politics of of what you believe wherever
you're on at on the spectrum of politics
and also
how you feel about power exchange.
I don't don't need a partner who agrees
with me on everything, but I do want
a partner that has similar ethics and morals
and values to me. Because there can come
a time when shit gets real fucking real.
And if we don't align on how we
think people should be treated regardless of who
they are,
and we don't align on,
you know,
does our constitution
count for everybody or just a few special
people? Like, the the and and that's important
to you. Right?
Now if you are just like your registered
thing one way because you just are and
you just don't care
and they're the same way, you're probably gonna
be fine. Yeah. I there there comes a
point It depends. Yeah. It it depends on
a lot of things. And I mean, you
you can even,
you know, I've I've had I've done this
with with friends in the past, you know.
I don't agree with you, but can we
agree to disagree?
And see, and I think it depends. Policy
oh, yeah. Yeah. It definitely depends. Yeah. Talking
about here's this bucket of tax dollars, and
I think it should go to this, and
you think it should go to that.
That's a political
discussion.
Mhmm. But the current situation in the world,
we don't have those conversations.
We, you know,
we literally say, I don't think trans one
side says trans people should not exist. Yeah.
Right? Yeah.
That's not I can't policy discuss my way
out of that with somebody. I can't make
you see the humanity of my child if
you were determined not to. Mhmm. And look,
cis white lady here just, like,
jumping on the right many of y'all have
been here. Your whole lives have been this.
I cannot speak for you. I do not
wanna talk over anybody.
But this is me reminding others who look
like me
that none of that's new either.
It's just more obvious.
Yeah. I
and mister Spock Mhmm. Said it, I think.
I I wasn't sure mister Spock was quoting
silent or answering silent.
I wouldn't feel safe in a BDSM relationship
with someone who didn't believe in basic rights
that speaks a lot to questions about how
they'll look at consent. Yeah. Thank you. Mhmm.
A 100%. That that's, yeah.
But I'm not gonna vilify somebody who
has a partner and a power exchange that
works that you don't align politically because it
is a personal choice. I can only tell
you what I'm gonna do, but I do
I do think it depends on how political
are they because a lot of people don't
care.
Half the fucking eligible voters in The US
do not vote whether they're registered or not.
I can't remember if that number is that
they're not even registered or they just don't
vote. I cannot remember.
But half
half those people probably have partners. You know
what I mean? And some of those partners
are voting.
And it's entirely possible that with a person
who just doesn't seem to care, it's not
a priority, it doesn't affect them enough for
them to wanna hear, or or, and this
is very real, they believe it doesn't matter.
Yeah. There are a lot of people who
have been conditioned to think it doesn't matter.
They've been conditioned to think that
both sides are exactly the same. No.
There's some problems.
There's some shit I want to change in
my
particular party affiliation,
but there are differences.
Right? And some of them are stark differences,
and voting does matter.
Yeah. It is possible that you as the
political one with a supportive partner who supports
your endeavors and is like, I don't give
a fuck, but I'm happy for you.
We do influence the people around us.
You know? Not immediately,
not quickly.
It can take a long time. Sometimes and
I hate this,
but I've also been this.
Sometimes it has to impact us personally before
we can step up in the way we
need to. Should it be that way? No.
I think basic empathy and caring about your
fellow human being and their basic right to
fucking exist peacefully
shouldn't be a thing we don't care about.
And the thing I've been see, I've been
telling JB
all this whole time since he became a
little bit more politically active. I was like,
look. I've been a blue dot in a
sea of fucking deep red conservative my whole
life except for the three five years we
lived in the Tampa Bay area and I
got to be in a purple area, and
it was a whole new fucking world.
Okay?
But I've been in these spaces and I
know how some not.
Some of these people
act. They do not give a fuck until
it it impacts them
personally. But you know what?
I don't have to like those people. I
don't have to forgive those people, but I
sure as shit will take their fucking vote
and take their their money and take their
support on
the causes I care about if they'll finally
fucking get there.
When I told JB,
both times both times,
this president
got to be president,
that people probably would not care until it
had to it would have to get real
bad for the people who voted him in
before there was change.
I didn't know how bad, and I didn't
wanna be right. Mhmm.
But I've just
I remember the tea part. I was I
feel like I was there the day the
tea party started because I lived in a
deep red fucking area where MAGA is currently
very popular.
Tea party was thriving. Yeah. And if you're
old enough to know who the fuck the
tea party was, if you know, you know.
I've just I've I've lived it. I've been
around it. I've got I've got people in
my family who are it, and I see
how
many, not all Yeah. Of those people are.
Until it matters to them personally, it doesn't
matter. And I don't want the world to
be that way, but
that's how the world is for some people.
I I think it would be better if
they weren't like that.
So
yeah.
Can you be in a power exchange with
somebody you are not politically aligned with? It
depends. Mhmm. And I think it starts with
your personal ethics. Do you want a partner
who maybe you don't agree on every topic,
but you know you're you have similar morals
and values and ethics?
If you're aligned there, I think the rest
can be figured out.
The rest can kinda be like, okay. Well,
we don't disagree on how the tax dollars
should be spent or what the property
tax millage rate should be. That's fine. I
can we go to a time when we
could just discuss that?
Can we that's where we disagree on shit?
But, you know, if you've got a, if
you've got a partner who's like, I think
every book that I don't like, that I
have not read should be banned, and you're
like, actually, I think kids should have access
to all kinds of books. Yeah.
I'm just there's some alignments that don't align,
you know? I think some people are don't
deserve, you
know, full rights and humanity within our country,
and you're over here going, but I do.
That's a problem.
I don't know how you was that square
that circle? Circle that? Close there's a square
circle. Yeah. I can't see it right now
either. Somebody will remind me in the comments.
So
yeah.
Yeah.
I hope I don't get yelled at too
much, but I just need folks to know
if you want to yell at me, you
are yelling at your fucking self because I'm
not talking to you.
I'm,
I'm I'm firm in my beliefs. I know
where I stand on things.
I am willing to be wrong on the
details of something, on the specific, like, facts,
but not in this
I I don't think I'm wrong in the
spirit.
I have said this many times over the
past ten plus years that I do not
understand how somebody can be kinky and somehow
think that they are better than other facets
of humanity
because
you can lose access to certain parts of
society just for being kinky too. It is
is it the same as being a person
of color or being in the LGBTQ
plus community? Of course not. But it's still
you I promise you, kinky people, there are
entire swaths of
population in every country
that do not approve of your kinkiness, that
think that you are deviant and wrong,
and they are across the political spectrum. I
know plenty of extremely,
or is it leftist? Is it liberal? The
language is changing for the the the Democrat
side and I have not kept up yet,
so I don't the far left, there are
some extremely liberal people who think all BDSM,
all porn, all it is inherently evil and
should not exist. So
I feel like if you're gonna be kinky
and you're gonna be up in this community,
you're gonna have to learn about inclusivity and
giving a fuck about more than just you
because
there are people in this world who would
take away your right to be kinky if
they thought they could.
Mhmm.
So
Yep.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh, Silent had a very good point to
make. I don't know in what part of
the conversation this comes up in, but the
point in general is
spot on. Okay. Silent says, I feel like
the BIPOC, that's,
black indigenous people of color community, LGBTQ plus
community, disabled, and other marginalized communities have different
thoughts on how different your views can be
while coexisting.
A 100
percent. Yeah. A 100%. And I'm not speaking
for none of y'all. Y'all y'all tell me.
Okay?
Y'all tell me because that is
we have different experiences. And just remember, anybody
y'all some of y'all know. I'm gonna say
the thing you're like, duh.
We speak through the lens of our experience.
We try to broaden our horizons. We we
try so hard to remember that our experience
is not the experience.
We will miss shit. Okay? That because our
experiences we literally cannot have.
So
I
when we can, let's let me put that
out there for y'all. For people who let's
listen to the people who are living this
shit. Right? And can tell us, wait this
is my experience because it will be different
from mine. A 100% every day, all day.
Which is why we need to be more
fucking inclusive in general because everybody's got a
point of view and everybody's got an experience.
Mhmm.
Anyway.
So for anybody who wonders, yes. I will
obsess over everything.
I didn't say, thought I said. Was that
tone right? Did it did it come away
come across the way I meant you? Did
I sound like a dumbass? This one usually
I do it for three or four days.
This one, I think we'll have a week
or so I'll be obsessing over it. You
know, for anybody who recognizes this, if you
ever had a conversation with somebody and then
like hours later, sometimes days later, sometimes years
later, why? You're like, why did I say
that thing? Did I say that right? I
do that with the podcast.
Everything we record.
And the more desperately I want to
do right by a topic, the more I
obsess.
So,
I'm sure I missed some things. I'm sure
there's some things to add. Certainly resources, I
could not have listed. We could not have
listed every resource. We would still be here
just reciting resources.
Those kinds of comments, the kinds of comments
that are helpful for people to here's a
place where you can go learn, here's a
place who needs your time and attention, here's
an issue to consider, please please share it
in all the ways that you can because
there will be other people who find your
comments and will be like, oh, that's a
thing. I didn't think about that. Oh, that's
a thing that interests me. Whatever.
But yes. If you would like to put
fingers to keyboard to
yeah. To to debate me bro kind of
on politics and on our personal ethics, morals,
and values,
you're talking to yourself. I don't care.
I hate say I I feel like I
wanna say that because it's important, but I
also know some people take that as a
challenge.
We're just I'm just blocking and deleting it
as I see it,
just so you know.
So all that, and we could go into
a bonus section if you're ready, Jamie.
I'm as ready as I'm going, babe.
Oh Oh my gosh. It's already good. I
don't know.
Keep it kinky, y'all. And we'll see you
next week.
Can we talk to the crickets? Yes, baby
girl. About our cats and dogs. Damn. I
say dogs like we got more. We got
one. Yep. She is not currently wearing her
cone of shame. That's Lola for anybody who's
new.
So we took her to the eye doctor.
She still has ulcers in her eyeball,
which part of that was why she was
scratching at her eye and she had to
wear the cone of shame so she would
stop scratching at her eye because she was
causing more ulcers by scratching at her eye.
And the doctor
said, oh, she's almost healed. There's still a
little bit of ulcer left in here. Keep
giving her the antibiotic
drops. Antibiotic drops three times a day and
the sodium chloride four times a day. And
the antibiotic you have to give twenty minutes
before you give the sodium chloride or the
sodium chloride won't work the way it's supposed
to work. No. What it's it's the other
way around. Oh, is it? The,
the way he explained it to me was
the
antibiotic,
the liquid it's a liquid antibiotic dropped into
the eye
and It pulls out moisture. No. Oh. That
goes that goes in to stop any infection.
Right. Right. Right. Right. The sodium chloride, that's
what draws the water out. Right. Which is
why you have to do the antibiotic before
you get the soda back because neither will
work the way they're supposed to work. Neither.
Well, I guess so you're right. The sodium
chloride would work Would work. Then the antibiotic
would not. But then it would counter the
antibiotics. Taking care of Lola's meds, including her
eyes, is JB's new full time job.
I used to want to complain about dealing
with the litter boxes, and then I just
watched JB
with his Lola pill organizer, and I went,
you know what? I'm a shut my fucking
mouth. I I I I have a single
problem. It it was getting so
confusing with her meds, what she takes in
the morning, what she takes at night, what
has to be done. So, yeah, I put
together a pill minder for her. I had
to. Yeah. Otherwise, I couldn't keep it straight
for the poor thing.
So what they said was even though her
eye is still healing a little bit the
actual eyeball, the, like, gloopy part not around
her eye as long as she's not scratching
at her eye, she doesn't have to wear
the cone of shame.
She is happy, we are happy, all of
our furniture that's movable by the weight of
a 72 pound dog is happy. Our end
tables were just everywhere. She she was re
yeah. You know? Yeah. Moving furniture around left
and right, redecorating.
Yeah.
Or when she couldn't get through a spot
that she normally
could without her coat on, she just look
at you with the most pathetic tone of
a little bit. I wanna tell you something.
You know how she likes to go through
that spot between the cup the end table
and the sofa? Yes. I do. She plows
by me. She she had not been able
to go through that particular spot that she
does
with the cone on.
Not for lack of trying. Right.
Now
this morning,
when I woke her
when I woke her up and we did
I'm gonna do you know, she went
when I got up to go to the
kitchen to start feeding them, she went,
went around, went to that little cut up,
she looked at it, and then she walked
around the other way.
Sweet baby. Yeah.
Now the thing with Lola is the thing
that's wrong with her eye please don't ask
me to explain it. I I will look
that up. But it's an an ongoing problem,
and the fact that she might get ulcers
in her eye could become a pattern. It
could be a thing that happens and goes
and happens
goes. And what they said was if we
can keep her stable where she's not getting
these ulcers in her eye
consistently and we're not constantly having to give
her an antibiotic and put the damn phone
on, then cool, we can just, as the
doctor said, ride this wave.
Okay? But if this starts becoming an ongoing
thing where we're constantly having to do this,
then we have to look at surgery. Yeah.
So we are hoping
Mhmm. This is a one off and we
know what to look for and it'll be
fine, but we are prepared that there may
come a time that they have to do
surgery on her eye. Yeah. And and they
were really nice at this at the office.
They told us, you know, if you're ever
in doubt, take a picture of her eye
and send it to them, and they will,
you you know, advise what I you know,
it's weird to have an ophthalmologist
for a dog, but I do like them.
Yeah. The tech who always,
is always there. She Mhmm. That person is
just works every time we go in. Loves
Lola. Oh, yeah. If Lola was not so
stressed out about being there, Lola would love
this person. Okay.
She's too stressed.
But you know be there. You know what
I what I like about about her? Mhmm.
She understands
pities. Mhmm.
When when we first went in there,
okay, you know, she, she obviously saw Lola
was was nervous.
So obvious.
She took, you know, she had the camera,
she had this other stuff that they're gonna
do. She let her sniff everything. Mhmm.
Mhmm. She let Lola sniff everything. Mhmm. And
Lola was fine. And that and that's something
I've noticed with Lola. If if
she sniffs something,
once she knows, you know, it's fine.
She,
That tells we can tell how stressed she
is when she does not want to sniff.
And that this last visit something about this
last appointment,
girl was stressed
out. Yeah. Didn't want Yeah. Oh, but here's
how she proves how sweet she is every
time. She hates being there. She would do
anything to run out of that room.
Sometimes it takes two of them to hold
her in place to do the things.
She never wants snarls. She doesn't curl up
a lip. She doesn't snap. She's it's a
very, like, suffering look, like,
okay, fine. Why? I'll just Don't you love
me?
Now
Lola also
got
to go to doggy daycare. Yes. We did
a meet and greet because we have to
board her next month,
and we talked about this in last week's
bonus, I think it was bonus section,
because JB was, like, you know, clutching his
pearls that I would just give her to
anybody to watch.
So it was a half day of doggy
daycare, and they were assessing her for, like,
what what environment would be best for her?
What do we need to know about her?
I think they probably are also like, your
dog is a if if this was necessary,
your dog's a menace. They can't come back.
Lola could never. Right?
So they also text you updates, which
Yeah. Let me let me just tell you
something. We dropped Lola off. She was nervous.
It was a new place. She didn't have
her cone on, thank God.
She she was uncertain, and it was a
little bit like leaving if if you've dropped
a child off at daycare before in your
life, and they're crying, but you walk out
and you find out later they were fine.
It was a little bit like that. If
we just leave she'll be fine.
We get in the car and JB's like,
what if she's
what if something happens?
What if what if they need us? What
if what if something goes wrong?
And I'm the one like, the person of
contact is my phone. And I went, I
think it'll be fine.
I have my phone with me everywhere, but
he kinda is just like, but what if?
What if how would we know? Like, obviously
meaning they're gonna call and your dumbass is
not gonna pick up that fucking phone. I
went, look.
I'll take my phone off silent. Okay? Because
the only
notifications,
phone, and text I get,
because my phone is always on silent, are
the ones I have on emergency bypass. That
is JB and my two children.
Everybody else, you'll wait till I get there.
I hope you don't die because it'll be
a couple minutes before I look at my
phone. The three of them, I wanna know
immediately, even when it is the oldest going,
hey,
can you tell me about
gynecologists?
That's the whole conversation. I'm not getting into
it because it was wild. But even for
that, I want the notification.
So I'm like, you know what? I'll take
my phone off silent. That way, if something
comes up,
I'll know that the phone is ringing. And
then I spent the entire morning
having the spam calls, the ones that go
straight to voicemail, and the few text messages,
none of which were the doggy daycare
coming through my phone.
And I did not take
the phone off silent until we were on
our way to pick her up.
But they they did send because they asked
us, they're like, do you think we should
do group play where she's with other dogs?
Do you think we should do the one
on one care? Because they offer both, right?
Because some dogs just should not be around
other dogs. We're like, we don't know.
We know she's mostly okay with other dogs
except a small yappy dog. She doesn't like
those. And I went, it's not that she
doesn't like them. It's that they stress her
out. So just keep that in mind. Yeah.
So the
the update we get is Lola was real
good. She got to play lay in the
sun. She didn't really wanna be outside for
too long. We didn't stay out there too
long.
She's okay with other dogs, but high energy
dogs make her nervous. And I'm just like,
same girl. Same. There's high energy people.
Man,
sometimes I'm like,
can I handle this? Sometimes I am the
high energy person. That's a whole other conversation.
So
they were very sweet.
So yeah.
Lola's doing as well as Lola can do.
Yeah. With this cold weather, she's living her
best life with her heating pad. Yeah. That's
on her bed. Got her a heating pad.
Those old bones need some place to, like
Yeah. They do. Well, her preferred place is
to lay in the sun and the rocks,
but if she's inside, she she now has
a heating pad. She now spends a lot
less time on the couch because she's got
that fucking heat.
If we had only known, our maybe our
couch could have survived.
It's fine.
Okay.
Next saga
in the fur babies of the Brownstone household.
I'll let you talk about Ella. I know
you gotta go run and do something next
week. I'll be
here.
Ella,
we talked about last week, was not peeing
the right color.
She's peeing the right color again, but
she had a UTI.
She had stones in her bladder.
They really want to just do the surgery
to remove the stones, but we're gonna just
change her diet for three months. We're gonna
change her diet for the rest of her
life, but
we're changing her diet to a urinary care
diet. It's very expensive.
Oh my god.
To see if the stones in her bladder
will shrink so that she can either pass
them or they'll go away. I got conflicting
information from the vets, but it was fine.
That they would not be an issue anymore.
So $700
later,
before the cost of the new food,
Ella is doing better.
She is actually
getting a lot more
love and attention from both of us because
I think we feel bad for her. It's
like, oh, you weren't just being a little
shithead. You were like, there was something actively
wrong. I'm so sorry, Ella. I'm so sorry.
We do love you. I promise.
I so technically
Ella belongs to the oldest, the 20 year
old. So I texted I texted him to
go had
to take Ella to the vet. They did
these tests. They did this. Here's the outcome.
Because his plan is when he has a
place and a job where he can take
care of a cat, he wants his cat
to be with him. And I'm like, cool.
You gotta have two cats cats or she
will drive you crazy. She needs another cat
with her. I think Onyx would be okay
on her own because she prefers it that
way. Same.
But Ella will always need to not be
the only cat. She I don't that that
cat she cannot handle it.
So,
you know, we're we talk about when he
takes Ella home with him, what that will
look like. And I'm, you know, I'm like
when you can take her to the vet
to get her vaccines and you know, and
you can feed her consistently and here's So
it's not a right now, probably maybe after
he graduates college. Hell, he might change his
mind.
That's fair.
But I'm telling him, okay. Your girl eats
the bougie shit now.
It's very expensive.
But it's for her health and that's what
we're gonna do. And he's like, what you
do to my cat?
And my literal ass got offended
and was like, excuse me.
And then he comes back two days later
the child texts me back and goes, I
was just joking. Like, I am a literal
bitch, okay? Like, I you gotta put an
emoji in a text. If you are making
a joke,
but it could be read
in another way. I just there's a reason
I put a lot of LOLs when I'm
writing shit. There's smiley emojis. I need you
to know that this is lighthearted, and the
only way I know to express that is
hearted, and the only way I know to
express that
is with an LOL or a smiley. Okay?
I need to indicate that I'm having a
good time over here. I'm not yelling.
I need I need the oldest to do
that for me.
But,
so
yeah. We're pretty sure there's probably gonna be
surgery.
We're trying the diets Yeah.
To see blah blah blah.
Her surgery, much like Lola actually, we don't
know what Lola's surgery would cost. Ella's surgery,
minimum, as of today's current price is, because
we know how inflation goes, that's a $1,800
surgery. Yep. I'm sort of thinking, okay, oldest
child,
who sometimes has more money
access to a buddy than I might in
a moment.
I'm not. We're gonna pay for it ourselves.
I am tempted to be like, you wanna
pitch in for this?
I can't get the child to buy his
own lunch.
You want to know. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I
I really wouldn't. He's a college student. He
needs to focus on that. But
so yeah.
She goes back in three months, new X-ray,
see what's happening, make decisions then.
I did
I did point out to JB
that he clearly likes Ella more than he
lets on. He was concerned about her. He
did neither was we did we blink when
we saw the price of the prescription medicine?
Prescription food? Of course. But he did not
blink. Now we went, okay, that's what we
gotta do.
And then he was like extra nice to
her.
So but you know, I I feel like
we should know she hasn't really been feeling
well because her favorite pastime is to sit
in windows. And our front windows, we have
a like, is that a bay window in
her? Yeah. It's a big old window. Mhmm.
And it's this wide window
sill. And she lives for sitting there Mhmm.
And yelling at the cats who are in
the front yard. One's a stray. One is
just an outdoor cat.
Look, I think we're dealing with an enemies
to lovers situation.
I think they really just enjoy hating one
another, but if they got to know each
other,
it it'd be a sweet romance.
It is a love triangle. I prefer a
white shoes, but this is a love triangle.
There's Butterball the Stray, who does not look
like a Butterball. I don't know how they
got that name. He will come over and
walk through the front yard in the in
front of that window when Ella was feeling
well and would spend a lot of time
there.
And she would oh, she'd make some noises
at him and he would spray on things
like at our front door. And then Koi,
the neighbor cat, who's just an outdoor cat,
he's not a stray, he has a home,
he is chipped and vaccinated and all that,
he would run Butterball off,
spray on top of where Butterball had sprayed,
and Ella would be screeching at him through
the window.
So we should have known she wasn't feeling
well because she stopped spending a lot of
time yelling at the boys. Yeah.
But I I do think if they would
just spend a little time together, romance.
Anyway.
That's the girls.
Onyx
Onyx is just living her best anxious life
where she just wishes everybody leave her the
fuck alone.
You know?
That's it.
Oh my gosh.
So
yeah. Yeah.
Do you have anything? Have we missed anything?
Oh, I don't know if you wanna talk
about it. What? My Your hand. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Real quick. I
got an answer finally about my hand. What's
going on?
It's not carpal tunnel.
No. It's,
severe arthritis in the thumb.
Mhmm. Apparently, there is no more,
gap between the
what do they call it? First metacarpal, I
think. Mhmm. The first joint.
So, yeah. It's kinda
owie.
Yeah. Apparently, it's so severe. He absolutely qualifies
for surgery. Yeah. But the best hand surgeon
in our area is retiring. Mhmm. And so
she was like, you're gonna need to find
another hand surgeon in another town. I'm doing
that research now. She'll do she'll write whatever
referral. Right. We are hope I'm hoping we're
both hoping that we can wait till July
Yes. When JB gets that sweet, sweet,
Medicare.
I hope so. Because I don't wanna know
what our current insurance would charge for a
hand surgery.
I don't wanna find out if we can
help it. Yes.
It's on an osteo yes. It's osteoarthritis.
Yeah. All the bone spurs and all the
fun that goes with it. It's so this
was a strange situation.
Orthopedic
office works, typically,
you check-in, you go sit down.
A nice person calls you back to take
your vitals, your weight, your your blood pressure.
Mhmm. And then they send you back out
into the waiting area. So I never go
back with JB. The first time, they're just,
like, doing that stuff.
This time, I'm like, okay. I'll stay here.
Okay. Here. They changed it up. They changed
it up. He texts me. I'm in there.
Now, technically, could I have been like, hey.
Can I go back there? Of course, I
could have. But I was like, no. It's
fine. It's fine. It's fine. I don't wanna
talk to somebody I don't know. Just ask
for a thing. And that would be weird
because I was feeling away this morning. I
just it didn't have any of me. So
what I said was do not downplay your
pain. Make sure they know the like, there's
a reason I go in, not just because
I'm a nosy bitch, but JB will not
tell them pertinent information.
And I'm usually there, so I was giving
him the tell them this.
So he comes out and I'm like, okay.
How are we doing? Blah blah blah.
He's telling me. He's like, he's
a medication he takes, he takes for his
back, not for his hand. It's not even
working on his hand. Yeah. I know. But
the doctor was like, oh, well, what's going
on? He lists, like, the arthritis in the
bone spurs and the disc in the back
of the she goes and this is her
response, her immediate response is, oh my gosh.
You are a hard worker, aren't you? Like,
physically don't like, you have beaten the shit
out of your body, man.
Yeah. It's clapping back now. Yeah. I'm tolerating
it now.
Like, I was like, oh, I I hate
that it's
a it's a those kinds of injuries
that
the doctor clocks is, oh, manual like, you've
worked hard. You physically worked hard. I've worked
since I was six years old. I know.
There's I got we've had those conversations. I
won't rant about that here.
But but, yeah, I was like, he is
a hard worker. And I was and I
was thinking 11. I wasn't even thinking like
like baby.
So
So yeah.
That's the saga with the procedures with JB
and the dog and the cat. And we
we've been doing a little we did a
little stuff around the house We did. Lately.
We did.
I finally
finished
all the
screens.
That took me a hot minute. Well, I
stopped. I had to slow down because of
my my hand. My hand. But, the screens
are all done.
And
we have replaced our outside
lights on the house. Mhmm. One of them
just
just fell off the wall one day. Literally
we're sitting back here we heard a clash
and open up the door and it just
it it fell off the wall. I think
our outdoor lights are are very nice. They're
they're definitely my style for sure. I love
a satin or a brushed nickel. That's, like,
my jam, and so JB indulges me. Yeah.
We had our septic tank pumped. Yeah.
And that was so funny because most people
do not call the septic tank company until
things have gotten very, very bad. And so
they're like, are you having problems? And JB's
like, nope. I'm trying to prevent them. Mhmm.
Go ahead and, like,
suck that up. Make that go away. Yeah.
Yeah. So Who knew they worked on Saturdays?
I know. To do base like, maintenance stuff,
not to, like, fix problems. Yeah. I would
expect that, but I was like, okay. And,
yeah. It was it was cool. They, you
know, did that, and he he said septic
tank because everything is fine.
He he
he complimented
me on taking the two trees out.
Yeah. Because I was gonna kill our septic
tank too. Yeah. Oh, yes. I said onyx
is fine. She's just anxious bitch as always.
Yeah. Onyx onyx is being onyx. Yeah. Yeah.
You know? Yeah.
We have ordered
the new door. I complained about this in
Discord.
To replace a door, it requires a permit.
That was new to me. We learned something
new. It's a $300
permit Yeah. For the door. But we are
getting a new backdoor. Now why do you
you all give a fuck? If you watch
our YouTube videos,
the light gets wonky. Part of part of
that, not completely, but part of that is
our backdoor. So getting a new backdoor, there's
many things that will be better with that
new backdoor. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
So
so we live in the county part of
Yeah. Outside this We we live just outside
of the city.
It's deep suburbia. You would not know we
were outskirts of the city, but we are.
They asked what's a septic tank?
A tank is basically,
yeah. Where where all
your sewage goes. When you flush your toilet?
Yep. And that goes somewhere. When you take
a shower. So you know, in in the
cities, yeah. It's it's in the sewer, so
it goes to a main pumping station and
and is dealt with. But then here, it's
buried in the in your yard, front or
back,
and,
yeah. It collects all that stuff and then
there
And sits there. Well, no. It doesn't actually
sit there.
That's the tank, and then off the tank
is what they call
a leach field. Okay. Okay. And there it
the liquid
will flow out and disperse itself
Mhmm. Into the ground.
But the rest is just sitting there. This
this is the I I wanna say like
three or four feet Mhmm. Down that this
leach field is dug usually.
And you do monthly maintenance to help our
septic tank stay healthy. I do. I try.
Because
nobody wants a septic tank problem.
Nobody wants anything to crack, break, explode. Whatever
happens with septic tanks, I'm not even sure.
I just know it's tragic every time. Back
in 1982
Oh, God. When I bought my I was
three years old. I bought my first house.
Moved into said house. Right?
Mhmm.
A week later,
water backing up everywhere. Tubs, toilets, sinks.
Come to find out,
the people who from the neighbors. This is
how I found this out, from the neighbors.
The people who sold the house
knew that the septic tank
and leach field was bad.
They had the tank
pumped
and then they did not allow any water
to go down. They they went somewhere, they
took their laundry. But, they turned off the
water, or didn't even use it? They didn't,
they lived there. They did live there, but
they took their laundry out to wash. They
went to a friend's house to take a
shower.
So, yeah. They had the tank pumped, so
when the home inspection was done,
and this was back before they had,
you know, buyer warranties on this. Sure, yeah.
Way before that. So,
yeah. It,
yeah.
So,
a week after I moved into this house,
I was out there digging Leach Field.
Are you a homeowner if something doesn't fuck
up within
about a week of moving into your home?
Life is the first house I ever bought.
We moved in
the first few days. It was the summer
when I bought it. The AC, which had
been fine for the home inspection, I did
I did what they suggest. They they recommend
it. I had a home inspection. Yeah. AC
worked.
Closed on the fucker, moved our shit in,
the AC died. Now I did not think
to say something to my realtor about it
because it was like, well, the
we've closed on the house. Right?
She was actually, like, a professional colleague, and
we were friendly with one another, and, like,
I picked her as my realtor for multiple
reasons,
mostly because we vibe together.
But she's also a really good realtor, took
care of her clients,
and she was like, oh my god. Why
didn't you call me sooner? I was like,
I didn't think I needed to tell you.
I've closed on the house. What are you
gonna do?
My realtor
helped me get helped me buy a new
AC unit
and then got, like, some people she knows
who can professionally Mhmm. To install it for
me at, like, cost or something. Like, some
crazy thing. Wow. Which, ironically, AC problems follow
me everywhere because when you and I moved
in together for the first time, that was
the thing that died on the first day.
Yep. So
Yep. And then we had the problem in
the condo when we moved in there. Mhmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. But, yeah, I just don't think you're
a homeowner if something
break, burn down, fall off, or just Right.
Crumble Right now. Right after you close on
your new house. Yeah.
Yep. So
Alright.
Anyway, we could keep going. Y'all know us.
But,
anyway,
for anybody who watches on YouTube, pay podcast
listeners. So if you're willing to come to
YouTube, wanna donate to Campaign for Southern Equality,
help them give out more grants to,
trans folks who need Help. Medical care and
cannot get in in the South.
That will be open and available through the
February.
If you're interested in any of the resources,
I've linked
to nearly if I we mentioned anything, it
was off that's not linked. That's because it
was off the cuff. I've linked to purposely
linked to everything in my outline, my notes,
so there's there they are there.
And,
even though Mali in live chat is asking
for five women, because as of recording, it
is four fifty five.
Yeah. Leah is now, adding to the the
begging.
I do have to cook dinner,
and five is a round number. And and
I have to feed the girls. So we're
gonna go.
Yep.
We'll be back next week. And I need
to put Lola's second drops in because that's
what I did when I stepped away. I
gave her her first eye drop.
So,
next week we'll be back to our more
normal, like, topics you Mhmm. Are used to.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thanks for being here Mhmm.
To the bitter end. Mhmm. Okay. Bye. Bye.