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CM,
Are you okay? By my calculations, it took only 6 minutes to answer.
If you were holding your breath, you would have passed out after 8 minutes.
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The time change never bothered me until a few years ago. I guess old age catching up with me, ha!

I let Tiger out in the back yard for awhile the other day, oh my, he rolled all over the patio, then on the grass before finding a place to lay. He was in heaven! It was about 55 degrees with calm wind. He just soaked up the warm sun on his back.
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Send
You can hold your breath for 8 minutes???

I got a mammogram yesterday and every time the tech said to hold my breath I didn't think I was going to make it
Of course, I was practically standing on my tiptoes and grimacing slightly
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Madge, reminds me of when the doctor had seen a shadow on my thyroid when I had an x-ray taken. I had to get a fine needle aspiration done to check for cancer cells. The nurse doing the procedure said "Now, try not to swallow" Uh, sorry but when someone is sticking a needle in your throat area the only thing you want to do is swallow.

Speaking of mammograms. I think there should be an equivalent test for men and their ahem, private area. Maybe, they'd be a little more sympathetic. I know they have to do the whole cough thing when they get their prostate examined but can you imagine how they would react if someone said: " now we are going to put your manhood into this vice and squeeze it really hard, okay?"
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Gershun,
I don't think a man's thyroid is in his ahem, private area.
Did I read that wrong? Lol.
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Lol, Send.............no the thyroid story was about me. I was referring to Madge's comments about getting a mammogram. LOL!!

Please read it again Send. That missing hour may have skewed your eyesight perhaps?
LOL, but I think men's private area is the ruling force in their life a lot of the time so maybe their thyroid is in their private area. Who knows right?
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Oh my lord..............I just realized that I made comments about men's private parts and difficulty swallowing in the same post. HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
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Hoca was short staffed all weekend
Tonight the maintenance guy was helping put folks to bed
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Ok, something is skewed. I read this earlier and now the posts seem out of order....
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MsMadge,
Why exactly do we have to stand on our tippy toes? What does that have to do with a mammogram?  
That happened to me too.
And, when my foot was x-rayed I had to climb up high on a very tall stool, putting my foot on a tall 
piece of equioment.  Who needs a foot x-ray if one can perform those dangerous feats????  Like mountain climbing.
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Presumably the radiographer didn't think to move the squidger down? I don't know what the technical term is for the plates they crush your boobs in, squidger will have to do. And they're not getting mine anyway. I don't care.
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cm - I once had a really horrific experience with mammography here in town. So I told my doctor if that was how it was going to be, I would not have another one. He referred me to a clinic in the city where I went and hardly knew they had done the procedure. Later I went back to the hospital here and advised them, (as advised by a tech) that a pressure of more than ??? (can't remember) was not required. I have not had problems since.
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madge -I am sorry about the staff situation at hoca.Hope things improve and your mum weathers it all.
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My complaint with mammograms is having to twist my torso like a contortionist so they can get my armpit area in. The technicians are usually short and I'm tall so it's quite a struggle most of the time.
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MsMadge, the maintainance guy probably did a better job. he's used to cleaning things after all. How did the Viking take having her privates cleaned with that big mop?
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We had a bathaid that said to Mom"You want powder DOWN THERE?"!!!
When she left we laughed and laughed about it and from then on when Mom needed powder,I'd say"You want powder DOWN THERE?" and we'd laugh again.It was so funny to us,just the way she said it.
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Mother did not find it funny that when she was in the hospital,one night in the middle of the night,a group of student nurses came in and they performed a cathedar on Mother to show the class how to do it.
Mother was Livid when I came in that morning~
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Lu,
Hopefully mom actually needed a catheter and they didn't just pick her at random
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Veronica
To wit !
I may never look that guy in the eye again for fear of bursting out in laughter with an image of a wonder mop in hand

Of course, that would keep him out of the reach of the Viking's pinch
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Someone stole the Viking's leftover pancakes from the common area fridge overnight 😡
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How low MsMadge....One thing after another with that place,I bet you could scream...
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Send,
Are you stuck again ?
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Been sleeping MsMadge!
Did you know, that if you are having a hard time sleeping, it helps to change your clothes, brush your teeth, turn off the lights, get into the bed, under the covers.

Falling asleep on top of the covers, in your clothing, just dozing off can leave one kinda shaky and not well rested.

When last I visited the brat thread, all that very funny stuff about the maintenance man was not there. How much does he earn, vs. caregivers? hmmnnn?
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Since he's a man no doubt he earns more.
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Claire Foy, who played the Queen in 'The Crown', was paid less than Matt Smith, who played the Duke of Edinburgh. Since I don't watch Netflix at all I can't comment on their relative performances; it just surprises me that the journalists who are commenting still claim to be surprised.

Highly successful actors are extremely rare individuals. The salaries they command have no relationship to any real-world scale, they're arrived at purely according to the brass neck of the agents negotiating them. Why are we looking on such people as examples of anything anyway?

But CW the maintenance man vs HCA comparison is more interesting. Birmingham City Council had a class action going on similar to this, with dinner ladies arguing that they should be compared with refuse collectors, I think it was, and were owed zillions in back pay, pensions and benefits. I'm not sure if they ever settled it, I'll have a look...
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Here we are, I didn't realise there were so many going on currently:

Guy Kelly
7 FEBRUARY 2018 • 1:41PM
This June, it will have been 50 years since sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant halted production, walked out and transformed the lives of working women forever.

Led by Rose Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera Sime, Gwen Davis and Sheila Douglass, the 1968 strike began when the machinists – who predominantly made car seat covers – were informed their jobs were considered ‘less skilled’, while men at the plant were considered skilled workers. That inequality was reflected in pay: women were receiving 15% less than the rate given to men.

As anybody who has seen the film or musical Made In Dagenham will know, the actions of those women eventually led to Barbara Castle’s creation of the Equal Pay Act in 1970. It was a landmark moment for industry, but as is becoming clearer and clearer by the day in 2018, it didn’t get close to consigning salary sexism to history.

This morning, Tesco is the latest industry goliath shamed for mistreating its female workforce. Britain’s largest private sector employer is facing a potential equal pay claim of £4bn. On behalf of nearly 100 shop assistants who claim they are paid up to £3 an hour less than their male warehouse workers, law firm Leigh Day has lodged what would be Britain’s largest ever claim.

Leigh Day said the most common rate for women was £8 an hour whereas for men the hourly rate can be as high as £11 an hour. If successful, up to 200,000 staff could be paid up to £20,000 in back pay over six years.

From actors to sportspeople to BBC presenters, equal pay disputes have dominated the news over the past few weeks, and they won’t go away. By April, all UK companies with more than 250 employees are legally required to publish their gender pay gap data, making the matter a talking point in workplaces around the country.

What has happened so far?

Tesco is not the first major supermarket to find itself accused of rife salary sexism. Building over the last four years, Leigh Day has brought a claim against Asda on behalf of 17,000 former and current employees, arguing that work in stores is of equal value with jobs carried out by men in distribution centres, and should therefore be paid equally. The case has been dubbed “Made In Dagenham for the 21st Century”.

In Asda’s owner, Walmart, the women involved in the case are taking on the world’s largest company, one with unlimited legal funds, and it isn’t proving easy. Walmart’s prestigious team of lawyers (which has included Lord Falconer QC) is appealing every single win by an Asda employee, delaying an overall result by months.

An appeal hearing is due for the Asda women in October. Should they win, female workers at Sainsbury’s will feel better about their own case. Originally lodged in 2015 by three Sainsbury’s workers, nearly 1000 employees have now joined the action – also lodged by Leigh Day – that demands the same thing: for shopfloor jobs (mainly held by women) to be judged as of equal value to distribution centre jobs (mainly held by men).

Away from the retail sector, in 2013 Birmingham City Council settled an equal pay claim from women employed as cleaners, cooks and carers, who were paid far below men working as bin collectors and road workers. The council, which is the largest local authority in England, is liable for over £1 billion. As a result it was forced to sell the National Exhibition Centre and make dramatic cuts across the authority.

Further north, last month that Glasgow City Council confirmed it would negotiate and settle around 6,000 equal pay claims from female workers, potentially concluding more a decade of legal battles. Female carers, cleaners, catering staff, classroom assistants and clerical workers were among the employees who said they were paid £3 per hour less than their male colleagues.

Councils across Scotland were ordered in 1999 to “harmonise pay for employees and address historic inequalities,” though all but one of the 32 authorities missed the imposed 2004 deadline. In 2017, 13 years on, The Accounts Commission said around £750m had been spent settling claims, but more than 27,000 remained active. Edinburgh sold off land and spent £20 million of reserves to meet its bill, while South and North Lanarkshire both settled claims worth more than £70 million respectively.

In Berkshire, it was reported last month that Reading Borough Council has spent more than £3 million on payouts for women – mainly care workers, admin staff and cooks – working in their authority, after claims dating back to 2003. More are expected.

And, in the most high-profile case so far, the BBC has reportedly received around 230 individual pay claims in recent months, though it is not known how many grievances were related to sexism. An independent audit of on-air talent published earlier this month revealed a 6.3% pay gap but “no evidence of gender bias.” Off-air, a report in October found the gap was 9.3%.

In January, BBC journalist Carrie Gracie resigned from her role as China editor after discovering she was earning 50% less than two male counterparts. She told a parliamentary select committee that bosses justified the discrepancy by telling her she was “in development”, belittling the work of one of the corporation’s longest-serving reporters.
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I note that John Lewis doesn't seem to be caught up in this. They have historically been famous for their "partnership" business model: all employees are shareholders in the company and receive a profit dividend in addition to their pay. Whether that's a disincentive for people to get narky about job differentials, maybe? - don't know. If the back pay is coming out of your bonus, I guess it is.

But I'm not speaking to John Lewis at the moment anyway, because they own Waitrose, and Waitrose have just sent me another stupid email about their "Waitrose Essentials" range - their idea of jumping on the bandwagon for offering rock-bottom prices on store cupboard staples. Which might have been sensible, except they were immediately and loudly mocked on social media for "Waitrose Essential Truffle Oil" - not satire, this was an actual product - and they're still bloody at it! Waitrose Essential Brioche Rolls, indeed. I ask you! Marie Antoinette is alive and well and working in your local supermarket...

Which already had steam coming out of my ears, and then my hapless MP sent a public consultation document asking for votes on which of seven routes we'd pick for the new bypass round the city. So I looked at the routes. And what is immediately obvious is that six years ago they built the industrial estate on the wrong bloody side of the city, didn't they? Clever.

It takes a public servant to be able to keep a straight face while (not) explaining how the new road will serve an industrial estate which it misses by some five miles.

I expect he is extremely highly paid. And I'm sure his political masters think he's worth every penny!
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While reading a new question about whether or not to ration someone's chocolate I had an idea flash thought my mind about how to keep our sugar seeking loved ones occupied throughout the day and limit their treats, just hide them all over the house! Can you imagine, it would be like an Easter scavenger hunt every day of the week, and if your loved one has dementia you wouldn't even have to come up with clever new hiding spots!
(I stopped myself from mentioning this on the new thread, I figured those who read here might appreciated my brilliance more :P)
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I do that with the dog's treats, CW. When we get back from our walk I empty any still left in my pocket, and they used to vanish before they hit his dish; so I've taken to hiding them in his bed and under his basket and so on. It does keep him busy for longer, slightly, but at the end of it I can't tell whether he's been entertained or annoyed?
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All brilliance is extremely appreciated, CWillie and Countrymouse.
Especially here on the brat thread.
Problem is........how am I going to hide my chocolate Easter egg from myself, once I buy it? And second, would it be a sin to eat hubs chocolate Easter egg, tell him I hid it and he must go find it?
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