One word jumped out at me from Stormy's testimony today.

I'll bet no one can guess what it was. Maybe, if you've read Mary Trump's book, it might ring a bell. Otherwise, there's no reason why it would.

That word is honeybunch. Stormy testified that TSF called her that after their sexual encounter. "It was great, honeybunch," he told her afterwards. Later, he said, “Let’s get together again, honeybunch!"

He continued to stay in touch with her for a while, calling her on the phone from time to time. She went along with this, because he said he was working on getting the network to cast her on Celebrity Apprentice. Figuring that could be good for her career, she continued to take his calls. He would often call when she was at work, and she would put him on speaker phone so everyone could listen in. Her colleagues all heard him call her Honeybunch. Repeatedly.

"So what?" You may ask. Well, here's what: in Mary Trump's book, Too Much and Never Enough, she mentions her uncles, Donald and Robert, being extremely fond of that endearment. They called her that so much that she says at one point, "I sometimes wondered if either of my uncles actually knew my name."

That's why the word jumped out at me today. I was struck by Stormy saying he called her that, because of what Mary had said about it.

I have never doubted Stormy's account, but this bolsters her credibility even more as far as I'm concerned. Her saying he called her that is too random to be just a coincidence, imo. If you want to be really, really cynical, I guess you could say she read Mary's book and decided to throw that into her story, but I don't buy that. She's been telling that story for years, long before Mary's book came out, and besides, there are lots of people who heard him use the word "Honeybunch" in those phone calls. I see no reason not to believe he used one of his favorite endearments when talking to her.

This is a pretty small thing, and I'm not claiming that this is a BFD. It certainly doesn't prove anything all by itself. I just find it fascinating that this random scrap of info from Stormy's testimony fits so neatly with something I already knew about him.

Every Kennedy family member that opposes RFK Jr.'s presidential campaign

Thanks for all the good wishes for Willow. ❤

I'm sorry I didn't thank each of you individually at the time. Please accept my apologies and consider yourselves all thanked now, from the bottom of my heart.

We got the news from the vet yesterday, and it isn't good. The tumors are malignant. She needs additional tests plus surgery that will add up to several thousand dollars. My husband is freaking out about the cost, but I've decided I don't care. I am going to raid my 401K to pay for it.

Most cats that develop these kinds of mammary tumors are much older than Willow and usually either unspayed or didn't get spayed until an advanced age. Willow is 8 years old, tops, and was spayed by the time she was two. So she was not at all a likely candidate for this. But you know how life is - shit happens, and it doesn't pay any attention to statistics.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions right now. The next step will be to take her in for x-rays and an abdominal ultrasound to check for any metastasis. That will give us a better idea of her long term chances.

Then she'll have the surgery and the stuff they remove will be analyzed in the lab to determine the type of cancer and the stage. Best case scenario would be no metastasis, the surgery gets it all, and she gets a few more years to enjoy life. That's what I'm hoping for.

I'm sitting on my bed typing this right now, and Willow is curled up next to me sleeping peacefully, completely oblivious to what's going on. Looking at her, it's hard to accept the fact that her little furry body has been invaded by a deadly disease. The whole thing seems surreal.

I guess that's it for now. I'll keep you all posted on everything that happens, step by step. Thanks so much for being here and rooting for us. It helps a lot just to be able to come here and talk about it. This group is the best!

Willow's trip to the vet

Hubby and I took our feisty little tortie to the vet on Thursday, because we had noticed a suspicious lump in her abdominal area. When the vet examined Willow, she also found another smaller lump. She said they could be mammary tumors and suggested doing a needle aspiration of both lumps and sending the samples to the lab to find out exactly what's going on. We readily agreed and are now awaiting the results. She said it could take up to 10 days, maybe less but not more than that. With luck, we'll hear some time next week, and I'll post as soon as we know anything.

I'm trying not to worry too much, but it's hard not knowing if my kitty has the feline equivalent of breast cancer. Willow's only about 7-8 years old, so I wasn't expecting to have to worry about any serious health problems for a few more years.

We also found out she has some bad teeth and probably will need some extractions, but we didn't schedule anything yet. We'll figure that out when we find out what's up with the lumps and the treatment options for that. If she needs surgery, I'm hoping they can take care of the teeth at the same time.

I'm okay right now, since we haven't gotten any definite horrible news yet, but thoughts, prayers, an good vibes are always welcome.

In the meantime, here's a pic of our little lady.

There's a revolution happening in children's book publishing--you can thank the book bans.

Publishers are fighting back on book bans by flooding the market with books representing diverse points of view.

Need suggestions for chicken free cat treats.

I'm going to be cat sitting for my daughter and her partner for a few days next month. This will consist of going over to their place each day to refill food and water dishes as needed and scoop out the litter box.

This will be my second time doing this. Banshee and Pooka are very shy little girls, and when I went over to take care of them last year, they spent most of the time I was there hiding. By the last day, they were showing themselves more but would still dart away if I got too close.

I want to make friends with these girls and would like to try offering some yummy treats to help them associate my presence with something positive. The problem is, daughter says Banshee is allergic to chicken, so I need to find something without that (very popular) ingredient.

I have a few weeks to get ready, so I'm starting to research what's available out there. I was wondering if any of the cat lovers in thIs group might have any suggestions.

I'm tired of my grandkitties thinking of me as the strange lady they have to hide from when she comes over and want them to start thinking of me as the lady who comes over every now and then and brings them *DELICIOUS THINGS*!

People come in all flavors.

I started writing a reply to someone's post but it started getting rather long, so I decided to put my thoughts in an op instead. I was responding to a comment expressing the view that Republican politicians aren't really people. It bothered me for some reason, and in the process of trying to explain why, this is what I came up with.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those Republicans of which you speak are not good quality people, that's for sure. Some or them are complete garbage people. But whether we like it is not, they are human.

Humans come in a vast array of flavors, like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Like the aforementioned beans, some are delightful, some are quite vile, and many are somewhere in between.

Unlike candy beans, humans have the ability (at least in theory) to make choices about what flavor they're going to be. As we all know, some of them make very bad choices. But candy beans are still candy beans, no matter what they taste like, and humans are humans, regardless of what terrible choices they may made.

This rather silly analogy is just my way of trying to express how I feel about saying any group of people, even truly awful ones, are not people, i.e., human. That kind of thing makes me twitch, because it's the exact strategy that has been used all too often throughout history to convince certain groups of humans that certain other groups of humans are not really human, and that the world would therefore be a better place if those other groups were eradicated.

Tell me I'm too sensitive if you want, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable to see comments like that at DU, even though I'm pretty sure that no one here really thinks that Republicansn (or any other group of humans) literally aren't human. (At least I sure hope so!)

To be honest, if I saw a comment of that sort anywhere other than DU, I'd probably just ignore it. But I feel like we here at DU should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We're Democrats, the party that values all kinds of people, and we never know who might be lurking here, especially in an election year. I thereby suggest that we try to avoid any kind of comment that sounds even almost, kinda, sorta like the kind of comments those vile flavored beans, err, people, sometimes make to vilify the groups they consider inferior to themselves.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me or do what I'm suggesting. But I hope everyone who reads this will just think about it a little. Then go ahead and do what feels right to you.

Peace out.

Next time I see a crying teenager...

Next time I see a crying teenager, I'm going to hug them and tell them it only gets worse.

(From a funny tweet.)

Here's Why The Total Solar Eclipse Has Prompted States Of Emergency In Parts Of U.S.

Biden to Netanyahu: Protect civilians or else