Where to start? Which dumpster fire do I start with?

For me and for every healthcare worker I know, the logical starting place is the takedown and dumbing down of all the CDC web pages.

This is DANGEROUS!

But what galls me are the people just sitting in the sunlight, playing with their hair, playing with the sunlight saying “tra-la-la, I don’t see anything.”

Seriously?

Is that what you are going to say when the chaos impacts you and yours? When your child comes to you sobbing because (insert reason)? When you are denied an opportunity that instead went to a mediocre white man? When your parent suddenly has to move in with you because of the financial malfeasance going on in the social security offices and they can no longer live on their own?

When will it be enough?

What words or combination of words can be said to make you start to PAY ATTENTION to the country-ending shit that is going on in Washington?

By people who were not elected or confirmed by the senate?

Even if you won’t pay attention, I will. Someone has to watch as our government is pillaged and women and children are raped and denied proper healthcare because someone wants more babies in the US. Gilead and the Handmaid’s Tale is fiction, not a roadmap.

The dismantling of the CDC pages is just one step they have taken. It is a step that impacts all of us, sick or well.

What’s going on with the bird flu? Can’t tell you because those pages has been taken down.

What is the proper birth control method that a 26 y.o. female who has zero children but a life-limiting disease and who doesn’t want to risk a pregnancy ending her life prematurely? Can’t tell you because those pages have been taken down.

And the fact that RFK, who is the scariest nominee of them all, has passed the first hurdle? Makes me incandescent with rage. A lawyer who fucked up Samoa with his lies about the measles vaccine now potentially has the entire US to fuck up.

I understand the desire to look away from the atrocities that are being inflicted on us and our government is strong. Take time when you are feeling overwhelmed. I understand, I do.

Someone has to bear witness.

Cookie Thursday is a Thing is going to deviate from the theme schedule I made.

As long-time enjoyers of CTIAT will recall, I did two months of the Inflation Baking theme in late spring 2022, and, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, I did an entire month of “If You Want Women to be in the 18th Century so badly” in July 2022. Oh, and I did an entire month of Eggceptional cookies when egg prices skyrocketed in February 2023.

I anticipate that grocery budgets are going to be screaming come Monday.

Since I and my husband are the sole providers and I am the sole baker of CTIAT, I will start off this new austerity with a Cleaning Out the Pantry theme for February.

Followed by Cleaning Out the Freezer theme for March.

April? Yet to be determined.

These were NOT the themes I had planned.

But needs must.

I don’t write that looking for sympathy or donations. In the 10 years CTIAT has been active I have received $45 and a 5# bag of flour.

This is more of a public service announcement.

I’ve written before about research is expensive.

You have to pay the salaries of the researchers, the physical places to do the research, the salaries of the research assistants, the incentives for participants, the salaries of the statistician to help with interpreting the data, in some instances the postage, the electricity to run the machines, sometimes you have to pay for access to the big data sets if you want to do a secondary analysis. If you are doing hard science with microscopes and reagents and all the things that drive the hard science research you have to pay for all of that too. Sometimes there are travel costs incurred to get to the participants, including airfare and hotel, and certainly gas to drive there. Wherever there is.

Once you have finished a research project and you have the results, you have to pay for dissemination. Journals charge for papers, which are the result of the research. You have to pay to go to conferences to present the research. This includes the conference fee, the travel to and from the conference,

Research costs a lot.

However, research also gives the public so much in return. From drugs, and safe surgery, and safe food, and safe cars. Research is how we understand the world and how it impacts everyday people and things.

On late Monday, 1/28/25, President Trump wrote a memo suspending federal funding.

Fait accompli. A bloodless takeover of America by the billionaire class.

With a swish of his sharpie, all research came to a grinding halt and researchers were looking at each other saying “What now?”

This halt famously included children’s cancer research.

The funding freeze has been walked back, hastily, but I, for one, have a bad taste in my mouth about the whims of a spoiled brat and how much damage can be done to the fabric of America.

But I know that we Americans dare not look away.

What is happening is known as Shock and Awe. Where there are a lot of horrible acts in a flurry and you are feeling pummeled.

Which is the shock and very much as designed.

When everyone is reeling and unsettled and unsure of which direction to pay attention to, then someone, you know who, will come in and make it “all better”.

Which is the awe and we have yet to experience this.

It is important to realize that it won’t be “all better”. Millions will have been lost, hard science has to reset their experiments after losing data, and previously scheduled meetings may or may not go on.

This is by design and it is important to pay attention.

There are a LOT of memes running around on how long this January has apparently been.

Some say it has been 31 days. And then they quantify it by adding a thousand. As in January has been 31,000 days long. This absolutely tracks.

I counter that the time since the inauguration of the great disrupter has been eleventy thousand days.

I understand that paying attention to all the crap coming at us every damned second is hard.

Seriously, it’s like trying to drink from a hose. A firehose. However, that is the point.

We have to keep paying attention to the atrocities that are happening.

This can be difficult and soul-killing but we have no choice.

Because if we don’t, who will.

But hey, it’s almost freaking finally fuckingFebruary.

Only 47 and a half months to go.

February is only a day away!

Smile. Because I am sure that someone is watching and noting down when you don’t smile.

Are you paying attention yet?

I’ve been writing, ever since the fall of Roe, that the heart of the matter is that there aren’t enough babies being born. Scratch that, there are not enough WHITE babies being born.

That is the secret heart of the whole hullabaloo.

They want to control all women’s uteruses to control the output of said uteruses.

Bonus points if it is a white baby.

But, really, any baby will beef up the tax rolls.

You know, eventually.

But for now, babies can still help their community by collecting money from the federal government. This is done in a variety of ways, depending on the location of said child and which state they live in.

There are federal grants to help with schooling.

There are federal grants to help with feeding and nutrition.

The vice president just got up on stage this weekend at the yearly “March for Life” demonstration. Yes, the quotation marks are definitely needed. He got up and said that he wants more babies born in America.

If that isn’t a broad shot across the bow against women, I wouldn’t want to see them speak more plainly. This is sarcasm. I would like to know what they have planned.

He goes on to say that they want it known that it will be easier to find homes, easier to save up, and easier to kit out the nursery with a crib or a stroller.

The point that needs to be made is that there is no plan to assist in the bringing up of these children who are supposed to be happy. Just a blanket statement that he wants more babies, which become children, and young men and women. How they are supposed to be brought up to be happy, and how they are supposed to survive childhood with rampant gun violence and the food deserts that are proliferating must be magic.

Nope, never mind, the president just suspended and/or did away with all these grants and monies for those who need them with the flick of his Sharpie.

Never mind that the legislature, specifically the house of representative, hold the power of the government’s purse

Never mind any babies who are born alive during an abortion, which is from their imagination, and doesn’t happen, will have life-saving care. This passed the house but did not pass the senate. So that’s a nothing-burger and is just red meat for their base.

But what about the rest of us who know that this is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

They want more babies in America with no plan to raise the children. This probably sounds good to their base but has no real information or teeth.

But, hey, at least he came out and told part of the truth. They want babies born but left out the white babies part.

This is a very unsettled time in America.

The gown card reads “OR as an Aesop Fable series- 3 pigs, Goldilocks”.

This was from a series I have on the back burner, I take it out every so often, and look at it and think “Someday.”

I got my start writing OR parodies. I did several and self-published, if that is what it can be called, at a little store near my house.

I wrote a bunch of them.

I wrote about the number of things I pick up off the floor.

I wrote about the very bad, no-good day, a surgeon had in an OR.

I wrote about Tiny Hiney, a green frog bottle opener.

I wrote about OR sign language.

I wrote about the 12 days of the OR Christmas and what an ass Jack Ashe the charge nurse was.

I had several more in the pipeline. By that I mean I was writing them, thinking about them, talking them up with my coworkers.

And then the store closed. RIP.

And then I went back to school and my brain was suddenly full of new concepts.

But I never forgot how I got my start.

The gown card lists two of the stories I was working on.

The 3 pigs were the charge nurses standing up to a blowhard surgeon.

Goldilocks was about a coworker that was trying all the different specialties like a wrecking ball. Spoiler alert, they never found the right fit.

I also wrote a Hickory Dickory Doc parable/funny.

I will get back to them, I promise. I may change them, but I will get back to them.

I just have the Big Write in front of me.

And I also have to be in the right frame of mind for comedy.

Don’t hold your breath because I won’t be holding mine.

Psych!

This week’s School Me Saturday is not about any of the grants I have in the pipeline. However, it is about the grants that may never be.

Research is expensive. I mean the kind of research that is done correctly, not the diddle on your phone, and read some BS articles from BS sites that don’t know proper research from a hole in the ground.

Properly done research takes a principal investigator who has gone to further their education. They know how to search for research gaps, they know how to protect the people and things being researched, they know how to create a quality research protocol, and they know how to answer the question that prompted the research in the first place.

I am a nascent researcher. This means I have barely scraped the surface of how to do research, how to find gaps, how to answer the research question, and, most importantly, how to do all of this in a safe non-compromising way that keeps the data that is gleaned free from bias.

There are the hours the researcher puts in before a project can even begin, there is the research assistant who shoulders some of that work, there is the university that gives the researcher a place to do the research, there is the statistician who helps make sense of the gleaned data, there is the cost of doing the research, be it paying participants, feeding participants, and even FINDING participants. The point is there are a lot of moving parts to research. Don’t get me started on getting the research, when it is done, released to the public. This is called dissemination.

It is also of vital importance to have succession planning in place. After all, even the Wise Ones in Wicked knew they couldn’t live forever and they had to write down all their magic in a book. Students are also expensive, as is the cost of learning how to do university-level work. See also the con-man who came to Oz after a tornado in a balloon and bamboozled the Ozians into believing that he could read the book. That is a story for another time.

The US federal government cannot say the same. Which is why they disperse monies through the NIH. That is the National Institutes of Health.

Research is expensive. Without grants, research would be much, much, much, much, much smaller and the amount of research would drop. Precipitously. And it would have a subsequently diminished impact on the ones it should impact. Like Suzy, with childhood cancer, or Jen, with triple-negative breast cancer.

Bob with the male pattern baldness would probably be okay, there is always money to research white male problems.

Think to yourself why that is?

This week the newly inaugurated president wasted no time in freezing the review of grants at the NIH. Among all the other nonsense that took place. And there was a LOT of BS. The presidency, the revenge for small slights and maybe others know what they are doing, no wait, no they don’t, tour.

No review of grants, no grant approval. No grant approval, no research being done. Are you going to tell your child with cancer that sorry, the research wasn’t done? But you can ask them what color coffin they want.

But, sure, some ass in BFE US can claim they did their “research”.

No, no, you most assuredly did not.

How are you feeling? It is important that we check in with each other in this very uneasy time in our country.

Where it seems that every minute another more outrageous action is being undertaken and another right is on the verge of collapse. It is vital to pay attention to the fast-moving shocks. It is important to NOT look away.

Because that’s what they want you to do.

At this moment in history, their actions must not be done without witnesses.

I understand this is a high bar.

I also understand that people might not be feeling this.

I cannot stress how important it is to not let the actions that they are doing be unseen.

As the Washington Post’s official slogan says, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

To go back to the F prompt for this Friday, I am feeling determined, I am feeling overwhelmed, I am feeling for those who are under attack by this tantrum, and I am feeling tired.

But mostly I am feeling betrayed by the ones who didn’t know any better. The ones that were seduced by false promises of a brighter day where the cost of eggs was going to pre-pandemic levels and the cost of a house would suddenly be within reach.

Scratch that.

I am feeling a lot betrayed by people who “didn’t want to vote for a woman.” Or the ones who thought “We just had a black president.” The ones who thought the only immigrants that would be deported were the criminals. Yeah, every person who is here illegally is a criminal.

I am also feeling angry like a lot of other people.

To quote many, many people “how is the price of eggs? Are they cheaper yet?”

Don’t hold your breath.