Mindymoo
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Posts posted by Mindymoo
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But back to opening credits... I had absolutely no problem with Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Six Feet Under (which I thought was awesome) staying the same. They were iconic to me... plus, it doesn't really matter (to me, anyway) if none of the characters are shown. I also loved Justified's opening credits/music. The opening credits to Game of Thrones is still a marvel to me.
The opening credits for "The Sopranos" was always great as well. I also liked the opening credits for "The Wire", but those changed from season to season and had different versions of that Tom Waits song.
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Eh, you don't need all those organs. ;-)
I'd had my tonsils out at age 14, then in my late 20's to early 30's I had (completely unrelated) emergency removals of my appendix, gall bladder, and one ovary, in a 4-year period. My BIL, a doctor, was like, "Are you trying to get rid of all the disposable organs before you turn 40?" Well, I'm past 40 by quite a bit now, and still hanging on to everything else. Gotta have something left to donate, right? :-)
I just had my uterus and fallopian tubes removed. I've had my tailbone removed as well, and will need to have my gallbladder removed soon. I've been joking that it's my weight loss plan to just get rid of all of those pesky, non-essential organs and that once I'm down to the bare bones, I can just start being a live donor and give out parts of my liver and lung so I can be vain and altruistic at the same time.
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The blood talk makes me reminisce a bit. After many years of period hell I finally found a woman obgyn that after listening to my tearful litany of problems sent me for tests and found I was full of fibroids, which led to a hysterectomy. After ten years of griping and complaining and crying to two or three other ob docs...but that's another story. When they had me in the prep room she came in with this serious look on her face that frankly freaked me out and said that they would have to give me blood immediately, because of my severe anemic status. I have no idea to this day how much they gave me, and I don't want to know, but I silently thank all donors. I figure if I'm dead, I sure as hell don't need that kidney, give it to some poor sick ten year old or young mother or whoever the hell needs it.
That hysterectomy was great, I can't recommend a better surgery to anybody. The drugs were fabulous, the food was great, and except for one wench I had the best nurses. Came home with a stack of booklets about eating fish and spinach and other iron rich foods and recipes. Best eight weeks off of work I'll ever have. And no more period!
Now this is seriously the best movie ever about having big families. This is the first documentary I ever truly watched and felt affected by. What great people the DeBolts were. That's how you raise 19 children...with love. Not with that keep sweet and religious blind obedience garbage.
I just had a hysterectomy on March 4th. I had twice monthly periods that couldn't be controlled by anything but depo provera. I was on it since I was 16, and no one should be on that drug for twelve years. They tried to do an endometrial ablation on me, but they tore a hole in my uterus because it was so full of adhesions. So, three months later, I had the hysterectomy. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The only downside is that I ended up with a blood clot from my popliteal to my femoral artery a month later, but that thing had likely been building up long before that surgery when you account for the sheer size of it. But yeah, no more awful periods, and no more hormones that will make me susceptible to blood clots since I have a clotting disorder.
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. POTS and Chiari .....all managable so far. Waiting to discover more. Ugh.
The POTS can be really awful. I've passed out and broken bones before because of it. And the EDS is terrible because my hips keep dislocating in my sleep, and I don't realize it in the morning, so when I stand up I fall flat on my face. Then I have to manually pop it back into place. I got it from my mom's side of the family. She gave me that and my genetic blood clotting disorder.
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I don't normally post here, but have been lurking for the last few days to read all of your thoughtful opinions on this. I thought I'd share some discussions I've been monitoring over the last few days.
I participate in an active online community on a subject totally unrelated to TV or anything Duggar related, and this scandal has been a hot topic of discussion. Without exception, the members of that group who are posting on the subject now want the show off the air (that wasn't the case when it first broke, but opinions have changed as more information has come to light). This is a very diverse collection of people - some secular, some very religious. Some liberal, some conservative. Many people posting are those who casually watched the show and/or followed the Duggars in some fashion via People, Today, etc., and admired their wholesome image and well-behaved children. They are now reading all about Gothard, ATI, blanket training, etc. and are absolutely horrified that they bought into any of it. They're taking it like they were personally lied to by TLC and the Duggars, and they're angry about it. They are all saying they won't watch the show again if it stays on the air.
I know it's a small sampling, but I found it interesting to see what "normal" people are thinking about the whole thing. Not leg humpers, not Duggar haters, not Twitter trolls - just regular people. If this is any indication, it doesn't bode well for the show.
I never watched the show, but did lurk around here. I also read a lot about these people and the cult that they're involved in. People can blame me wanting it off the air for being a godless lesbian all they want, but I really just think that Jim Bob, Michelle and Josh are really rotten people, and that they shouldn't continue to be rewarded with all of this money and exposure after what happened to those girls. And I don't think it will be good for them, trying to heal after this is all out in the public, if they're back on television again. When I finally admitted to my mom about the other sexual assaults I endured, I had to start the healing process all over again. It was like it had just happened yesterday. This may not be true for all victims, but it certainly happens to a lot of them. The wound is ripped open, and it needs to start healing all over again. I wish these girls would get real counseling outside of the church, with a licensed psychologist that can help them put things into perspective.
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Mindy, EDS? We are an EDS family.
Yep! EDS, and along with it came gastroparesis, POTS and NCS. It's not the Powerball lottery of genetic disorders, but it's definitely the state-wide Pick Four.
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I don't donate blood. For one, I'm really anemic. I can't do much about it because I have this disease that makes me throw up all of the time, so eating iron-rich foods doesn't really help the situation. Also, I have very little IV access because of both my connective tissue disorder and the fact that I've been in and out of the hospital so many times over the past 14 years. Nine times out of ten, you can't start an IV on me without an ultrasound. I am an organ donor though. They can't take my kidneys because those are shot, and I don't know how my connective tissue disorder will affect my other organs, but they can have at them if they're useful. I won't need them where I'm going.
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If it's the same trooper that I'm thinking about, he's in jail for kiddy porn.
Indeed it is. He was interviewed from his prison cell, and that was his excuse.
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WOW. So Jim Bob lied to the state trooper. It just keeps getting crazier. The state trooper has no reason to lie, he said himself that his reputation is mud and he's in prison and did not receive any compensation for his interview.
The trooper's story for not reporting still doesn't wash for me. He didn't make a big deal because Jim Bob claimed it only happened once? One instance of sexual abuse is enough to tear you apart for a lifetime.
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There are a few really horrible things to understand about sexual abuse. It is common that allegations of abuse are not handled properly. When that is the case and the victims do not get proper support, persons subject to abuse are more likely to be re-abused, either by the same person or by others, Persons who were molested as children are also more likely to be raped. In no way should this be viewed as the fault of the victims. The best research I have seen on this is a thought that predators zone in on people who are more protective of themselves; i.e., less quick to smile, pull back from physical contact, etc. The other horrible thing is that girls who are abused, if the abuse is known, are often sluts or otherwise accused of having "asked for it". While we absolutely know this is wrong, once so labelled, girls are more likely to be treated poorly, be subjected to abuse and harassment and to be considered less valuable as people.
Your story is horrifying but unfortunately not unheard of. I hope you can find a better balance in your world. As people are more willing to talk about these things, more support is available even if the courts and services have not caught up. We can confidently say it was not your fault, there are some really sick people out there, and you deserved none of this.
It took me a very long time to realize it wasn't my fault. Like, it didn't click for me until a couple of years ago. My therapist told me that it's not uncommon to be a victim of multiple abusers too, and he said that I really was the perfect target. I am short, petite, don't weigh very much, and as much as I can hold my own in arguments, I'm really a people pleaser with a lot of anxiety and a loner on top of it. Abusers can suss that kind of information out of you. Hell, I've been on cruises with my wife and had guys that would try to get me drunk so they could take advantage of me, even though they knew I was a lesbian, married, and completely uninterested. They've done it with my wife five feet away. And that's what was so fucked up about my first occurrence of abuse- it was by two females, at a time where I was having a hard time coming to terms with my sexuality as it was. I started thinking, is this how all lesbians act? Am I going to be a predator? Should I limit my contact with my younger cousins in case some freakish urge comes over me? This abuse made it a million times harder to come out, because some of the people who knew about the abuse assumed that I'm only a lesbian because I was abused by females, or because I hate men because I was abused by them. It's a really messed up situation to be put in.
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I am outraged that these parents taught their children that its better to be a man than a woman.
Mindy, if you feel up to it, maybe you can contact a lawyer to determine what your options are concerning your abusers.
I was treated unfairly in an employment situation. My Dad told me at the time that I probably won't win if I file a complaint with the EEOC, but I could at the very least make my former employer fill out paperwork in response to my complaint. My Dad was telling me that I could stand up for myself and that counted for something. Being discriminated against is not the same as being raped. However, the point that my Dad was making to me is appropriate in your case. You are important and you should be heard. When you are ready, start looking into how you can be legally heard. What you think of yourself is way more important than what others think of you.
Would that really do anything though? The crimes are between 12 and 18 years old. The statute of limitations would have long expired, and I don't even know where any of these people are anymore.
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Thanks for all of the kind words! I just wanted to add my two cents in when people were calling this a mistake done by a child. A "mistake" that took place over three years with at least five victims. I really wished that those who hurt me could have been held accountable. My parents did the right thing by going to the police, and the police just shut the whole thing down. I didn't report my brother's friend because I knew either my dad or my brother would kill him. I didn't want him to be the end of my dad or brother's life and freedom, so I kept my mouth shut to protect them at the cost of my own emotional well-being. The third time, I just knew my name would be dragged through the mud, that I'd be called a liar, and that my being a lesbian would be trotted out and ridiculed, and since I wasn't out to my family at that time, I kept my mouth shut. And with the fourth person, I only told my mom when he was threatening to do a school shooting, with me as his first victim. It was a very detailed plan. She called the school, and they did everything they could to protect him over me, while giving me the "that's just Steven" and "he's just a kid" schpiel. Even though Columbine had happened four years prior, they did nothing about his death and school shooting threats. Under the guise of my shitty health, I left the school and finished my last year and a half of high school online. I am doing a lot better now, even more so than just a couple years ago. Therapy and medication for the panic attacks and flashbacks have been a godsend. And I speak out now because I felt that the longer I was silent, the longer they had power over me. I hope that the Duggar girls and his other victim feel that way some day.
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I have read and heard the arguments that what Josh did was a mistake and that he was young and foolish. I have a hard time with that argument though. Does his age matter to his victims? Are they less touched, less violated, or less assaulted because he was not yet 18? Are their fears and nightmares less? Do they have a better self worth because at least he wasn't an adult yet? Do they flinch any less when someone touches or hugs them? My violator was a 58 year old man. I can tell you that his age has little impact on the memories I have and pain that I feel.
When I was eleven, I stayed the night at a so-called "friend's" house. I woke up in the middle of the night to both her and her 15-year-old sister molesting me. While I can look back on it now and say those girls were likely abused, because how else would an eleven-year-old know to do that, it doesn't stop me from hating the both of them, and their parents who tried to sweep it under the rug. I was just as violated then as I was when I was molested in my sleep by my brother's best friend right before my 13th birthday (he was 16), when I was raped by a fifteen-year-old at a high school party, and when I was repeatedly bullied and sexually assaulted by one of my peers between the 9th and 11th grade. All of them fucking sucked. All of them gave me nightmares, and PTSD that I have to deal with to this very day, as a 28-year-old. I used to think I had some kind of signal I emitted that said "easy to abuse". All of these people were under 18, none faced any consequences for what they did to me. The cops deemed the first incident "sexual exploration" even though it was done to me in my fucking sleep and refused to do anything about it. And that's when I learned that the cops don't care and won't do anything to help, so I didn't even report after that, because why bother?
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I do not have first hand experience with mushrooms but I thought I remembered an episode of the Soprano's where Tony was in Vegas and did mushrooms with some girl, he threw up violently at first then mellowed out. No barfing for Zoe? At any rate it was a strange thing for Zoe's character to do along with buying a term paper, she is by the book mostly so I do not buy it. Also if they were both off duty why did Thor tell them to get back to work?
It was peyote that he took, and mescaline makes you puke your guts out for a couple hours before sending you on your long trip. I've done shrooms and have been a trip-sitter, and that's not how people on that drug behave at all. Tony's mescaline experience was pretty on point, though.
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The shroom thing was part of what prompted my 'phoning it in' comment above re: this season. That was ... frankly completely uninspired. And most egregiously, it wasn't even funny. "We don't have anything else for you guys to do, so just lie on a blanket and make weird noises."
And anyone that knows anything about that drug knows that that is not how you act while on psilocybin.
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My heart breaks for stories like this and people like you. I'm so sorry that the people you were supposed to trust failed to protect you.
I would add that I think the Duggars scenario might be a shade worse than "pretend it never happened". At least, if there was a pretense that it didn't happen, then they wouldn't have been the need for the five year old victim to apologize to the guy in the room down the hall who touched her "Pee holder" before she could even understand the proper part names. There's something especially tragic about that. The victim, who is still a minor and we all know, name or no name who that could be, was too young to call her vagina a vagina... but had to accept an apology, forgive her abuser, and go through an interview that THREE years later still made her cry. How could she forgive what she couldn't understand? I hurt for them all. But, the trust of the victim to hop on a lap for a biblically based story (and she remembered the exact book years later so it did impact her) only to be fondled is disgusting.
I just have to be my cousin's rock in these times. I understand the abuse part due to my own history, but she little to no contact with anyone in the rest of the family because they all see her as crazy. I have a really hard time reconciling my feelings for my aunts, too. I love them to pieces, but they never let anyone know that such abuse had happened once there were grandchildren in the picture. So my aunts could protect their kids, but my dad and my uncle couldn't protect me and my cousin because they never said to them "Hey, this will be hard for you to hear, but you might want to keep Tata away from the girls because he's a pedophile." My mom always got creeped out by them so they never babysat me. My cousin's parents were pretty much absentee for a lot of her childhood, making her a very vulnerable target. And my uncle still goes on and on in Facebook posts about how great his parents were, despite his dad molesting his daughter. My aunts do the same. The whitewashing of the history intensifies my cousin's pain, and makes her feel like she's crazy. She's not crazy, and she's not the black sheep. The black sheep are the ones who knew this was a possibility, did nothing to stop it, and continue to play pretend about their father who was a pedophile, and their mother who knew about it and did nothing to protect her children and grandchildren. And that makes a giant herd of black sheep, if you ask me.
And it's funny how I found out. I was fifteen and staying with my aunt and my mom, and the two of them were getting drunk. I told her about my abuse, and then she drunkenly told me the family secret. Yet he hasn't told her own children, all of whom are adults now. Gotta keep up the facade, right?
I worry that those Duggar girls never stopped being abused until after Josh got married and left the house for good. I never watched the show, but know enough about these people to kind of want to throw up. Two months of working on a building renovation is not going to cure your pedophilia, and I wouldn't be surprised if he went right back to molesting those poor girls when he got home.
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I am a survivor of sex abuse and rape, though not by a family member. My cousin, however, is. She was raped by our paternal grandfather. He had raped and molested his daughters all throughout their childhood. He sent my dad to a seminary boarding school because my dad was a volatile loose cannon, and had he found out, my grandfather would have had the shit beaten out of him. Well, with my cousin, she was abused for eleven years. She always knew what was going on was horrible, but didn't know how to verbalize it. After seeing an episode on Oprah about child molestation, she tried to speak out. It took four people before someone took her seriously. The fourth person? One of our aunts, who was abused by the same man, and had a "holy shit" reaction. My uncle and aunt didn't press charges; rather, he went through counseling and so did she. He was, by court order, banned from having contact with children. Yet they still brought my cousin around him, and she was still abused by him. Had it been me, my parents would have pressed charges, if my dad hadn't killed him first. Sadly, my cousin is seen as the black sheep of the family, while my aunts and her dad pretend that he was the best dad in the universe and a hero because he fought the Nazis in the Polish Resistance (which is great, don't get me wrong) and very few of my cousins know. My cousin is a complete mess, has attempted suicide multiple times, and has no one but me, my wife, and my parents to lean on. You know, because we don't play pretend that our grandparents were great people, and we listen to her. It's interesting that this came out when it did, because my cousin made a huge post on Facebook outing our grandfather, and I've had my cousins contacting me asking me if it's the truth or not, and I've had to say "yes it is, but really, you need to ask your mom about it. It's not my place to give you the dirty details."
Anyway, I'm not a parent, and never will be. However, if I was, and my child molested another one of my children, or any child, I wouldn't hesitate to have charges pressed against that child. Not for one second. I know what it's like to be a child of rape and molestation. If the authorities opted to not press charges or my child didn't want to testify, I'd get the abuser as far away from the victim as possible. While I'd still have love for that child, my duty would be to protect the child who had been molested or raped. To get him/her the care they needed with therapy, and to get them as far from their abuser as possible. I'm not saying I'd put them in foster care, but I would have to find some other person to take care of them, and would pay for some serious, deep, intensive psychiatric therapy for that child as well. And I would make sure that my family knew to keep him away from the younger children in the family, just so he/she wouldn't have another chance to abuse another member of our family. I wouldn't sweep it under the rug, shame the abused, or just play pretend like my family has with my cousin because I know how disastrous that is. What the Duggars did is sickening, and is reminding me of what happened to my cousin, and what is continuing to happen to my cousin where everyone just pretends that it never happened, and she should just get over it because the abuser was such a "lovely" person. My Dziadzio preyed on the most vulnerable of all of his grandchildren, and the coldness of our family in the years since just astounds me. But hey, she's just a girl right? Why should she ruin his life?
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Those girls will have to live with what happen for the rest of their lives. If just one of them had just come into the room and said that they knew the boys, none of this would have happened!!!!
Do you think them saying they knew the boys would have made much of a difference though? Something about that man tells me he still would have used that gun.
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I agree it was more than a thought crime. Granted, he threw up roadblocks to his buddies online, but he did search these women out on law enforcement websites. I am in the minority that thinks that his time served was likely enough for this sort of thing, but the guy was so fucking smug and creepy about it all. She should have had to face court-mandated therapy. And when he was on Match.com, I thought, WTF? The only way you will find a woman who will accept your insanity will be if you go back to those fetish sites.
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I watched this last night and it broke my heart. Justin deserved Justice, and for that man to only get one year sickened me. It didn't surprise me, but it sickened me. And he still kept to his BS self defense story, when his own adopted daughter said it didn't go down like that. That poor family.
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*Also Reality Bites Back, but I think I'm the only person that remembers that show.
I LOVED that show. When it was on, I bought my dad an iPod touch and loaded the episodes on it for him because he saw a couple episodes while on leave from the Army. He's had a huge crush on Amy ever since and absolutely loves her comedy. That show was amazing.
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Boy did JJ have the number on that kid who throws himself into cars. And he's been on work comp for two years over a chemical burn to his foot?? Unless it melted off his toes I don't understand. He's probably in litigation trying to prove permanency. Maybe the same lawyer who's handling the other car vs pedestrian case. He's sure getting an early start as a grifter, isn't he.
He said he had RSD. What it does is damage the nerves in a way that causes your body to think that the injury is fresh long after it should have healed. I've had it after a surgery on my heart, and it is not fun. It took nearly seven years of strong narcotics and then a spinal cord stimulator that sends jolts to the area on a constant basis to get the pain to stop. It's not a bullshit condition, whether he was bullshitting about it or not.
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The thing is, people can find cats that are inherently large without being fat - and if they want a kitten, they can check its mom and, if possible, father. I had a very large-boned cat who was thin at 14 pounds. The vet wanted her to weigh at least 16.
Overweight cats are in danger of any number of ailments, including diabetes, which is awful. (Giving the shots is the easy part, monitoring blood sugar levels is the problem.) You can always tell cat owners who've had a diabetic cat by their fanaticism about finding gluten-free cat food. Donuts are not gluten free.
Anyway, I'm glad Elvis is doing better. Jackson wrote about his weight struggles in his memoir, btw, so that wasn't news to me. But I don't recall that he's ever mentioned it on the show prior to this.
My cat Figaro became overweight because he had a problem with his thyroid. He was 16 pounds when he should have been 12. Now that he's properly medicated and not eating dry food, he's lost the weight and is a much healthier, happier kitty. We weren't overfeeding him, but we were feeding him the wrong stuff for his health issues.
I was surprised that Jackson didn't mention that he also got high off of food. (Or maybe he did and they edited it out.) In his memoir, he said turned to food to cope after he got off of drugs and alcohol, and that's when he ballooned to 400 lbs. He even said he'd black out after eating ridiculous amounts of fast food. He got gastric bypass surgery and he looks really great now, and so much healthier. I really hope that Elvis and his mom continue on their path to healthy weight loss.
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I am really hoping that the KGB has bugged the Jennings' phone, just because in situations like this, it's easier to keep an eye on Paige and the things she's saying. And it's easier to keep an eye on their agents, too. Just think of the drama if it's Grannie or Gabriel that gives them the news that Paige squealed instead of Paige or Pastor Tim.
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The Duggars: In the Media and TLC
in Counting On
Something about not having tangible evidence to prosecute once so much time has passed. It's bullshit though, because for people who were childhood survivors of sexual abuse, it can take years to come to terms with and actually speak up about what happened to them. I don't think there should be a statute of limitations on any sex crimes. Canada, land of progressives and poutine, has no statute of limitations. If Bill Cosby were a Canadian and all of those rapes happened in Canada, they could still prosecute him for his crimes from four decades ago.