PERSONAL ESSAY - Letting the Diagnosis Sink In

Letting the Diagnosis Sink In
By "Anonymous"

One diagnosis didn’t convince me I had a mental illness.  I cherry-picked which diagnoses I’d accepted as mine and discarded the others like spoiled fruit. The first time, I thought I’d had a spiritual revelation.  The second time, I dismissed everyone around me as conspirators. The third time, the reports of my violent behavior skimmed the surface of my mind, as if they were fantasy stories about someone else. The fourth time, when my behavior threatened my employment at my dream job, I began to let it all sink in.  It forced me to stop distorting the reflection in my mirror. I’d believed my mind was my greatest asset and strongest defense, but it had turned on me and become my most formidable opponent. Could I outwit my demon and return to robust mental health?

It Came Out of Nowhere

My first manic episode happened in 2007, but I had no useful knowledge of mental illness in order to understand what was happening to my mind.  The attention from doctors and nurses was nothing more than a signal that I needed rest. Taking antidepressants was fine, as long as the condition was temporary.  The professionals weren’t sure how long I’d need to take medication, and it all seemed perfectly logical since I’d endured the trauma of my father’s death. But I hadn’t endured.  I’d collapsed. Without acceptance, I stayed collapsed.

The psychiatric staff gave me both physical and mental exercises to do to regain my functionality and I did them, temporarily.  I went a couple years off medications before another manic episode overtook me. That time, I refused to acknowledge anything I’d said or done was off.  My third manic episode let out rage but my conscious awareness was so sketchy that I didn’t know the full range of what I was doing or whom I was hurting.  The aftermath scared me, but it was all so confusing. I couldn’t believe I was capable of such violence against a person I loved. Denial shielded me from feeling shame.

Acceptance One - I Needed Meds

Through it all, I journaled, determined to deepen my level of self-awareness.  I also began seeing my medications as saviors. If I took them, I could stay out of the psychiatric ward.  I accepted that my condition was not a series of one-offs, but that I had slipped through a one-way door, never to return to normal-without-meds again.  That lasted for a couple years, until I was seduced by the futile hope that my meds were having no effect, and being without symptoms must have surely been proof that my meds no longer had a useful purpose.  I was wrong.

The offer of work at a prestigious spa with a storied past was the manifestation of a dream that I had pursued for two years.  I’d gone off my meds one August, started work in September, but by the end of December I was psychotic, loosely tethered to reality.  It’s kind of like being a hot air balloon that has a hole. I float up dreamily while the pinprick yawns into a gaping hole, and I fall towards an inevitable crash.  No amount of self-delusion can overcome gravity.

Final Acceptance

In the aftermath of that fateful day at Dream Job, the realization spreading in my perception was that I needed to shoulder some burden of responsibility for my state of mind.  I could no longer pretend Bipolar was a foreign language that I didn’t need to learn. I had to take charge of the totality of my health. If nothing else, I needed to be more involved in my own wellbeing.  The rivers of creativity and madness in my brain needed a valve regulator and that regulator was made of Risperdal and Cogentin.

While I believe my mental health practitioner needs to spend more time staying current and well-informed on the side effects of my prescriptions, I have my own access to the internet, and I’m not bad at vetting sources for reliability.  I’m now on low dose Abilify and don’t take normalcy for granted.

In the midst of it all, I’ve had to admit I have a voice and a good command of the English language, so I have no excuse for not writing it out.  With my meds as one link in my armor, I can face the daily challenges of life and regain trust in my mind and perceptions and senses. By taking my journey online, I’ve connected to a worldwide tribe who share their trials and strengths.  I’ve opened up to my cousin, who’s a good writer. She’s always wanted to write a book and my life was “great source material”.

The next links I’ll add to my armor are nutrition conducive to healthy mental states and daily exercise.  I plan to become formidable.

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY HOUSEHOLD CLEANING PRODUCTS

It's 2018.  There's little reason to kill the environment while keeping your house clean and tidy.  Life is all about variety.  So I did a little digging on a few different household cleaning products on www.livegreen.life/peace and cross-checked them against the Environmental Working Group's database.

(c) unknown. Found on the Internet

CATEGORY	BRAND	SCENT	EWG GRADE	SHOP
General cleaning	Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Multi-Surface	Lemon verbena	C	LiveGreen
General cleaning	Earth Friendly Products All Purpose	Orange	A	LiveGreen
Wood polish	Method Wood for Good	Almond	D	LiveGreen
Glass cleaner	BioKleen Ammonia Free	Vinegar	A	LiveGreen
Kitchen cream cleaner	BioKleen Soy Cream Cleaner		A	LiveGreen

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why the Environmental Working Group rated the wood polish a "D".  See for yourself on their site here.


Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#Ecofriendly
#NaturalHouseholdProducts

VEGAN PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS THAT MAY ALSO BE ECO-FRIENDLY

Man, it's getting damn near impossible to shop with confidence these days!  Am I friendly to the earth, friendly to animals, friendly to humans or am I saving one but killing another?

One name I trust is PETA.  The list will help you narrow down which Vegan products are ALSO eco-friendly.  Not all are, but the descriptions are brief.  You'll find the right ones easily.

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#ECOFRIENDLY
#NATURAL
#VEGAN

LOCAL SPOTLIGHT - Spiritual Healing at The Mandala Message

If your spirit has ever felt burdened, a Mandala workshop may be just what you need to lighten your load and carry on.  Lily Mazurek has created her own method of crafting mandalas especially for spiritual healing.  I sat down with her to learn more about how mandalas open pathways to healing.

Lily Mazurek holds a master's degree from NYU, which is where she was first exposed to mandalas. One of the textbooks was “Man and His Symbols”, which had Carl Jung discussing mandalas in it. She made a mandala painting of a sliced-open kiwi. This brief introduction was perhaps a seed that would lie dormant until years later when Mazurek was recovering from breast cancer surgery. She came across a video on watercolors that was laden with mandalas. Something about it resonated, and she found that the more mandalas she created with intention, the more she healed. In hindsight, she says mandalas are like that; they show up like a trusted guide when you're going through a major life transition.

While the watercolor video didn't attach any meaning to the mandalas, Mazurek kept making them, but with colored pencil and found she was healing. Her work got people's attention. Eventually, people asking, "Show me," turned into a workshop, which in turn became the Mazurek Method (TM) certification program.

Mandalas have a universal appeal because they show up in nature. Diverse cultures from Tibetan monks to Navajo have used mandalas for healing purposes for centuries. Even Gautama Buddha said that mandalas are a path to enlightenment. Tibetan monks create mandalas out of ground-up semi-precious stones. The stones make the color extraordinarily vivid. Being powdered, the mandalas are temporary. At the end of their ceremony, they carefully sweep the mandala grinds into the nearest body of flowing water, in the belief that sacred nature will deliver the blessings imparted into the mandala to wherever it's needed.

Navajo sand paintings are well known, not all are mandalas, but many are.  The only recording of a healing woman doing the ceremony was at the Ringing Rocks Foundation out west (no longer around). In the recording, Walking Thunder performs a ceremony, which Mazurek shows in her class because it’s very rare to see how it’s done. Interestingly, at the end of that ceremony, all the powders, pollen and herbs are taken outside and scattered.  Different cultures use mandalas for healing purposes.

Gautama Buddha advocated mandala practice as a path to enlightenment.  The word Mandala is Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language. Mazurek's understanding of the meaning of the word is "container of sacred essence."  A lot of cultures have used it in different ways for healing, wholeness, and learning to see the world differently.

While mandalas can be used for emotional, spiritual or physical healing purposes, Mazurek's interactive workshops utilize spiritual techniques, but the results can be financial, physical, emotional or on other facets of life that the student is working on. Participants don't need to have any special skills. It's a plus if anyone does. Skills in creating geometric, cartoony or realistic, symmetrical shapes are a bonus.  Part of the exercises help participants understand their own personal visual language.  There are a lot of different exercises with shape, color and meaning - symbols - so people can discover their own best way of expressing their love or confusion or anxiety or whatever the thought or feeling is, they have more tools to communicate.  Everything leads up to the 2nd half of the workshop during which they can create a healing mandala from scratch. Even if they don’t have any skills, they walk away with some skills.

You don't have to be in Pembroke Pines to participate. Workshops via Skype are coming too! You could be anywhere in the world.

Level 1 is on the art of the mandala, learning how to express with color, shape and symbol using colored pencils. Thoughts and feelings are vibrational.  Participants learn to express problem areas and translate to colors and shapes which they then use to create their mandala from scratch. Mazurek visibly got excited describing a student's enlightened reaction to the workshop. "They start realizing that mandalas are the common denominator in everything.  That usually shifts their perspective on life, sometimes dramatically. I had a girl whose whole outlook on life" shifted when we went outside, "because I always do a fieldtrip exercise, and as we were talking, she got it.  She got the connection and was so blown away. She was so excited at the shift in her perspective. When something like that happens, your personal vibration changes. You’re literally on a slightly higher vibration when that happens," says Mazurek.

To find out more about Lily Mazurek's Mandala workshops, see her Facebook page @TheMandalaMessage and website www.themandalamessage.com. Contact her directly with inquiries at mandalaworkshops@bellsouth.net.

Pembroke Pines

Workshops for one-on-one sessions or small groups can be accommodated in a private setting

Level 1 workshops begin in January 2019

Remember the man from Nantucket - Investment RESEARCH advice

I'll keep this short and simple:

Capitalism can and has been a major, world-changing force for good, and also for evil.  If you have a big or modest budget doesn't matter.  What matters is socking away as much as you can consistently for emergencies, vacations, college, retirement, mad money, etc.

I see the future like this:

• WATER (all you have to do is Google or YouTube "global water crisis" and you'll see for yourself how incredibly valuable this is becoming to the marketplace.  Knowing that poor people get screwed throughout history, you'll not want to be among them when water gets scarcer)

• MEDICAL MARIJUANA (screw Jeff Sessions and look to Canada)

• CLEAN ENERGY (we just have to make this work)

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTICS (even the most soulful and socially responsible corporations will have to rely on these more and more to stay in business)

I won't make specific recommendations because that's probably an SEC violation (not that any government institution under 45's administration has any teeth anymore, but I'm a minority.  Why run the risk?)

Research those four categories to the best of your ability.  If it bores you, find ETFs to diversify your risk.  Talk to financial advisers for their professional opinion.  Consider starting an investment club with people who have similar time horizons and investment goals (www.betterinvesting.org)

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

International Peace Day - I really missed the sour cream and cheese

Today is International Peace Day and I saw a tweet requesting people to eat vegan so animals would have peace too.  I said ok.  I had a veggie burrito from Chipotle.  Normally, I get this with sour cream and cheese, but then I would have broken my promise.  I'm not going to lie; I missed the dairy, but the burrito was still very good without it.

Dinner, I kind of forgot my promise.  Not kind of.  I forgot.  I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's (two weeks' worth of food for 100 bucks.  I'm tellin' ya, frozen food and fresh prepared are the way to go if you hate cooking).  Tonight's selection of ready made ravioli included PUMPKIN!!!  It's FALL!! YESSSSSSS!  That's what I heated up and tossed with Spanish olive oil and - here's where I failed on my vegan for International Peace promise - I sprinkled romano and parmesan.  By way of rationalization, I'd already had that cheese in the fridge so I caused no harm to any additional animal.

In terms of real impact, I'd been engaged in a pro vs con Twitter storm convo about Capitalism.  I'm pro-Capitalism and was promptly called a "f*cking ghoul" and a charlatan.  Here's the beauty of digital conversation:  live in person, there's a high probability that I would have flipped the f*ck out, but communication via a medium like Twitter meant I could pause, breathe, reach for my higher self and respond, rather than reflexively react.

In the end, the conversation resumed in the morning and it was defused back down to a civil discussion.  While I still feel Capitalism has no equal and is neither moral nor immoral, but depends on the capitalist, I'm open to hearing about its shortcomings and outright failings.  Maintaining my dignity online led to attracting a new Twitter follower, who turned me on to a website that I think deserves highlighting: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/

I'm kicking around the idea of questioning my own stereotypical ways of thinking about poor people and poverty.  It's just too easy to dismiss them as lazy, and perhaps that's nothing more than an outright lie to throw us off the real culprits of income inequality.

This was the healthiest way I could think of to exercise my 1st Amendment rights in the interest of real peace.

Did you acknowledge International Peace Day today?  In what way?  Comments welcome.

Remember to click on the BLUE FOLLOW BUTTON on the website/desktop version.

If you'd like notification of new posts, shoot me an email mackenzielittledalewrites at blogspot dot com.

PEACE  ☮☮

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#InternationalPeaceDay
#InternationalDayofPeace
#IHateCooking
#Foodies

KRATOM - It's Always F*cking Florida

I took a break from social media long enough to watch a little Netflix, and saw a trending broadcast called "A Leaf of Faith" about something I'd never heard of: Kratom.

According to numerous sources in the documentary, Kratom has been grown and harvested for various medicinal purposes - like pain relief - in Southeast Asia for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years.  It's been in use unregulated in the States for about 20 years.

The documentarian Chris Bell was pretty thorough and answered a long list of questions covering safety and efficacy, purpose, pros and cons.  The drug/plant/supplement started to sound too good to be true, and he heard from voices against keeping the substance legal.  The voices mainly came from people and entities that stand to lose boatloads of money if Kratom stays on the market.  The supplement industry, oddly enough, was also opposed, as of course so was Big Pharma.

One of the antagonists surprised me.  She's a State Legislator from (f*cking) Florida, State Rep. Kristin Jacobs.  I won't tell you how the story ended, but I will say this:  a natural, unadulterated substance that can replace opioids and heroin, relieve pain and has virtually no side effects and has little to no addiction risk is all right in my book.

The effect that Kratom has on dopamine is what I'd like to learn more about.  If I can safely switch from Abilify, I'd be very interested in knowing that's possible.

What have you heard of Kratom?  Were you one of the 23,000 people who reached out to the DEA to keep it legal?  If leaving a COMMENT proves problematic, shoot me an email to mackenzielittledalewrites at blogspot dot com.

Remember to click on the BLUE FOLLOW BUTTON from the desktop version.

By the way, one of the citizens who testified before the Broward County commission is Karl Dickey, a pretty cool vegan Libertarian in Palm Beach who writes the blog https://palmbeachlibertarian.wordpress.com/.  Check that out too.

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#Kratom
#ALeafOfFaith
#Netflix

RANDOM THOUGHT - Time to talk about the Bipolar thing

The purpose of this blog was to discover what I even enjoy discussing, and to find an audience for my upcoming novel.  Going vegan at least one day a week, and where I eat, what I eat, when I have an epic fail - all fun.  Good times, good stories.

But I'm finding more than an audience.  I'm finding dialog with a tribe on Twitter (of all places). I'm finding people who deal with mental illness around the world.  You have no idea how badly I want this blog to reach Haiti and other countries where the symptoms of mental illness are thought of as demonic possession.  We're not in the grip of bad spirits.  Prayers certainly reach the ears of God, but we as humans are the hands and hearts of God on Earth.  Medicine and mental health providers are available and crucial.  Please stop tying people to trees.  Get them to a psychiatric practitioner of medicine!  If the first medicine doesn't work, try another.

I've seen it again and again that a person who needs treatment for cancer faces no stigma, but once something is wrong with the mind, the person is shrouded in stigma, as if she asked for it.

I didn't ask for mine. 

Stigma held it under wraps for many years, so I'm profoundly grateful to the less-than-a-handful of people I could talk to.  Without them, I might have gone deeper into the abyss. 

So many factors go into mental WELLNESS.  Healthy communication skills are vitally important.  I can't stress this enough.  Just as important is a support network that either understands my symptoms or is willing to journey with me as I educate myself on what my symptoms mean, what medications are available, whether I need a combination of meds and getting my dosage right.  My support network is quite small, but pretty effective and reliable.

The key is I have to be involved in my wellness.  That means asking my practitioner questions - grilling them if necessary.  It also means doing some research on my own.  Some professionals have ego issues and don't like being questioned.  I can walk right out their door until I find a professional who respects my input and involvement.  Right now, my psychologist would be totally useless to me if she didn't get me on Abilify.  She's condescending and I don't particularly like her.  But I have others outside her office who help me where she can't.

Meds are no joke.  Sometimes the side effects of psychotropic drugs are actually a worsening of psychotic symptoms.  That happened to me when I was prescribed too much Risperdal and Cogentin.  Just shifting the dosage downward made all the difference.  I stayed at low dose for years, until I was switched to the more modern Abilify (and happily my sex drive is back ON).

I want to say my bipolar is mild, but what does that mean?  My bipolar is wild, but the dosage I need to function is very low.  If my creativity is housed alongside the bipolar, then so be it.  If they are intrinsically bound, then I won't sacrifice one to get rid of the other.

My story is one of good fortune.  My bipolar was triggered long after my 20s, meaning my prefrontal cortex was already fully developed.  When it strikes youths, it can have very unpredictable effects on the developing brain.  Meds often don't work on the young because the effects are so widespread.  I'm LUCKY!

Admittedly, I need to take my own advice and get physically active, get the blood moving, get the arms and legs pumping.  I can be a couch potato, but it's social media that holds my attention, not television.  That sounds like an excuse, but I do need to get physically active.  Writing doesn't really lend itself to physical activity. I'll have to force myself to find a way.

Find me on twitter @MackenzieLitt13 and see who I follow.  You'll find lots of advocates, people with tips, and people who fight the good fight every day.  We're real.  We have each other and we have life with purpose.

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#MentalHealthMatters
#KeepTalkingMH
#Bipolar
#DepressionIsReal
#EndtheStigma

JOYS OF VOLUNTEERING!

Yesterday was International Coastal Clean Up Day!  International!  This was the 33rd annual coordinated effort world wide to get dreaded garbage off the shorelines.

I made good on another promise - that I would volunteer, and so I did.  First, the approach to Oleta River State Park was amazing. There was a long line of cars ahead of me, and the line kept getting longer behind me.  I don't even know how many different groups of volunteers there were.  Groups were there from hotels like Newport Beachside Resort of Sunny Isles Beach, and schools, and friends of the park.

An organizer assigned me to group Friends One, and we set out with our garbage bag and recycling bag.  Maybe I've seen too many movies, but I was expecting mounds of easy-to-find trash that we'd just bag up and haul off.  But no.  In reality, the shore looks pretty clean.  Deceptively clean.  Finding people's trash takes time because sometimes the plastic is small, or partially hidden under rocks.  Or it's even become inseparably part of the rock.  The mission was to find recyclable plastic and cans (clear bag), trash (black bag) and cigarette butts (green bag).

Oleta River State Park shoreline 9/15/18
International Coastal Clean Up Day!
Photo: Mackenzie Littledale

 

Next time, I'll be more prepared.  You've never seen a less prepared volunteer.  No backpack (not even an unattractive fanny pack), no water, no bug spray, no gloves - just an attitude of total willingness to help out.  I literally carried my keys and my phone in my bra.  Next time, I'll know better!  Luckily, water, bags and gloves were provided.

Within less than an hour, our Friends One team had halfway filled up 2 garbage bags and 1 recycling bag. 

Some members of Friends ONE - volunteer group at Oleta River State Park 9/15/18

We kept going for a little longer and then took a break. Omg, some of us needed water quite badly.  It was super exciting to see so many young people caring enough about the environment to SHOW UP and DO SOMETHING!  I'm wondering what sort of earth-friendly inventions they'll come up with to replace plastic.  I'm wondering what's already available right now on the market.

It gives me hope.

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#volunteer
#InternationalCoastalCleanUp
#OletaRiverStatePark

RANDOM THOUGHT - I think I love Netflix

My tv is a satisfactory size.  It gives me pleasure when I feel like watching.  Netflix is a fave, for sure.  And now I may never turn my tv off.  Now that Netflix has a series called "Explained", I've watched some heavy topic episodes like the global water crisis, but today, I watched The Female Orgasm episode.  Lots of ah-ha moments!

(c) unknown. Seen in Google images

Ladies, there's been significantly more research since Freud.  Several women with guts speak openly about the limits of hitherto male dominated research on our province.  The topic is no longer corralled by superstition.  As it turns out, our sexuality is a rich domain for further inquiry and serious study.  Not to mention, experiments solo or with a partner.

You'll never guess what led to the invention of the dildo.

I'll leave it at that.  The episode is eye-opening and lighthearted without treating us as a lightweight topic.  Don't worry, there's plenty about a female orgasm that's still quite mysterious.

Enjoy.

Make someone else's (or your own) day magical!
Mackenzie

#femalesexuality
#netflix

PART TIME HALF ASSED VEGAN NOTES - send a message

One of my previous posts for women only mentioned This is L feminine hygiene products available at Target.

However, I also wrote an ECO-FRIENDLY EVERYTHING post and ECO-FRIENDLY WATER ON THE GO post.  We have to get a grip on the single use plastic we're using.  No more plastic choking our marine life.  Nothing like tying things neatly together.

I just sent the following message to support@ThisIsL.com

I was wondering if the plastic strips and wrapping on your feminine hygiene products are actually plastic, or if they're biodegradable.  There's a company in Indonesia called Avani making certain "plastic" products out of cassava starch.  Zero negative impact to the environment.  I'm hoping you'll take your positive efforts one step further and switch to a biodegradable packaging and wrapping material.

Keep up the great work - just go one step further to biodegradable wrapping!

Best regards,

Please take a minute or two and copy/paste the message in an email to support@thisisL.com.  

We'll start one company at a time and rescue our planet!  If you take a look at their mission on their website, you'll see they're already committed to good causes.  

I believe they'll listen to us.

Make someone else's day magical!

Mackenzie 

PART TIME HALF ASSED VEGAN NOTES - 100% Vegan. Really?

Oh, the sheer delight of delicious food!  When the food is also organic and vegan, my heart skips a beat!  Enter Screaming Carrots in Hallandale.  It's the most delightful hole in the wall you're likely to find.

It's bright and sunny inside, with living plants.  You'll be served water in a blue glass bottle - it's oh so Mediterranean!  The menu is all vegan, all organic, Mediterranean and Thai.

Photo Mackenzie Littledale

I had the Thai Mango salad (hold the tomatoes), and 3 on a spiciness scale of 1-10.  If you like crunch and a symphonic balance of flavors, this is the salad for you.

Thai Mango Salad at Screaming Carrots
Photo: Mackenzie Littledale

Traditional thai salad made with all organic mango, carrots, cabbage, roasted peanuts, red onions, garlic and other herbs & spices. Topped with our home-made tamarind sauce


I also opted for the Raw Nut Shake.  There are several different kinds of nuts that go into this shake, including almond milk.  If you're into nuts and shakes, you'll like this a lot.  It's not very sweet, just authentic nut flavor.

Raw Nuts Shake at Screaming Carrots
Photo: Mackenzie Littledale

Take notice of the straw wrapper.  It's a paper straw.  The owner of Screaming Carrots is seriously committed to cruelty-free, organic, healthy, FRESH, and eco-friendly.  If those matter to you (and you like really generous portions of delicious food), then you've got to go to Screaming Carrots!  It's small, so the place fills up quickly.  The best time to go is between 3:30 and 5:30.

Thai Mango Salad with Raw Nut Shake - $23.90 plus tax

826 West Hallandale Beach Boulevard / Hallandale, Fla.
http://screamingcarrots.com/


Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#foodies
#vegan
#allnatural
#placestoeatHallandale

ECO-FRIENDLY - water on the go follow up

I made good on one commitment.  I purchased my Brita water filter pitcher today from Bed Bath and Beyond.

The water still tastes a little "tappy", but it's not bad.  It's certainly worth it to take 100s of plastic bottles out of the landfills.

Still coming is

International Coastal Clean up Day

Saturday September 15th

This is an international effort, so find a place near you to volunteer: https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/international-coastal-cleanup/volunteer/

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

RANDOM THOUGHT - Matching Pair of Socks

Having little interest in professional sports (except philosophically for being a team player), the whole Colin Kaepernick controversy took me for a ride.  If you read my entry "(Skin)tone it Down, you know my family is mixed race.

You may not be aware that some family members served in the military and some are retired law enforcement. I was perfectly okay with Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem because, once I found out what his original cause was, I wanted a national spotlight on unwarranted police brutality.  Social justice and racial equality are great f*cking causes!  I was pleased that Nike stood by Kaepernick.  I was pleased to find out that Colin had been a steady activist and philanthropist after being nixed from the NFL.

The Piggy Cops socks are not going over well.

It's great that a human being whose livelihood was to risk injury for the sake of entertainment was forcing a pause to consider the innocent black drivers.  Let me be the one to say, if I get pulled over for a traffic violation, I want to get a warning or a ticket and then sent on my way.  I do not want to involuntarily surrender my life or get sent to the ER, especially over something immutable like my skin color.

Once upon a time (400 years long), it was against the law for blacks to learn how to read and write.  It was also against the law to teach them.  We had no power to name our own children.  We had no power to keep our own names.  We had no choice as to whether we could keep our children.  We didn't get to send our children to school because they were equated with working farm animals.  We had no power to choose a vocation.  We had no power to travel freely.  We could not vote.  We could not piss without permission.  Northerners are not off the hook either.  Northerners were compelled by law to return escaped slaves to their owners.  During Jim Crow, literacy tests prevented blacks from registering to vote (no one was allowed to teach blacks how to read, so a literacy test was racist).  It was all systematic.  After emancipation (and that was written down, so southerners would have had to tell their slaves they were free, because blacks weren't allowed to read.  I repeated that because you might be taking it for granted that blacks got the memo or heard the announcement on a radio.  There was no radio back then).  The Union Soldiers had to force the emancipation.

Then came the KKK.  Law enforcement was typically staffed with Grand Wizards.  A black household calling 9-1-1 may as well have made an appointment with the town executioner for his family's necks.

These evil racist cops today are holdovers from what used to be America's normal.  So I was and am still proud of Colin Kaepernick for successfully getting our attention that these scumbags still have jobs in the public trust.  I am happy he interrupted your entertainment and got the nation talking about something that was willfully ignored for decades.  It sparked conversations that I NEVER WOULD HAVE HAD with people I've known for many years, as well as complete strangers.  I respect that he gave Green Beret Nate Boyer his ear and took Boyer's advice to protest respectfully.

It's the unexpected horror of those damned socks.  I won't condemn the Police Department at large, even though I've made my share of piggy and donut jokes.   In addition to keeping out of the cops' way, I do have those retired Law Enforcement officers in my bloodline.  And as my dear cousin has said, we just want to have the same confidence that white people take for granted: Law Enforcement will protect and serve all the residents of a community, even the black and brown ones.

Please take note that the horrors that Kaepernick originally protested happen to my people every day, in some places more regularly than others.  Black achievement can't become commonplace if our nation's black men keep getting maximum sentences for minimum infractions.

In spite of the excesses of the organization, I still believe that Black Lives Matter, especially when I look in the mirror.  To be honest, I take it for granted that my life matters, and then I hear about sh*t posted on Facebook.

Kaepernick's face or not, the message is universal - BELIEVE IN SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT MEAN SACRIFICING EVERYTHING.

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie

#BlackLivesMatter
#AllLivesMatter
#Kaepernick
#Nike
#JustDoWhat

PESCETARIAN SATURDAY - Can a Steakhouse do Salmon?

Since Longhorn was such a pleasant experience, I wondered if the steakhouse had any expertise with fish.  The short answer is HELL YEAH!

My server asked if I'd like honey wheat bread.  Do not under any circumstances turn down this offer.  Their bread is amazing.  And this photo is all I have left of it (LOL)

I ordered the Longhorn salad with marinated salmon.  Just as a word for those on low sodium diets, all you have to do is ask them to use salmon without the marinade and get oil and vinegar for the dressing, and the sodium is virtually non-existent.

While the fish was cooked a minute longer than I'd prefer, it was still moist and juicy, and the flavor was fantastic!  The toppings on the salad complemented the fish nicely, and it's very filling.

Not one to get locked in a rut, I opted for a non-chocolate dessert, just for a change of pace.  The key lime pie in a jar is perfectly tart, balanced with light whipped cream and a graham cracker crust.  It's yummy!

Even better than dessert was the conversation I had with the manager.  She was just as eager to please as the first manager I'd encountered.  When I said sometimes I try to go vegan, she said she'd happily agree to customize an order to accommodate.

Longhorn WANTS you to eat there - even if you have moral objections to a perfectly grilled steak once in a while.

#foodies
#pescetariansaturday
#Longhorn
#PlacesToEatHollywoodFL

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie