Quarantine Diaries – Week 75

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Thistle

All right. Let’s start right in with lawsuit hopscotch here. Get your popcorn.

When I left y’all at the end of week 74, SA had sued the state, gotten a temporary restraining order, and put in a mask mandate in schools. Since then, things continue to flip and flop and muddle about. On Friday, the attorney general asked the 4th court of appeals to knock down the TRO. However, it upheld the restraining order instead, clearing the way to keep the mask mandate through Monday’s court date. On Sunday evening, the TX supreme court put out an injunction to nullify the TRO pending Monday’s trial. The state argues that this means SA can’t have the mask mandate, while the city argues this doesn’t affect whether or not the health directive is still in place. Then on Monday, the lower court trial took place, and the district judge granted another injunction against the governor, making the restraining order permanent, pending appeals. The city said “yes, mask mandate” and the state says “our injunction is bigger than yours.” Last night, the 4th court of appeals upheld the order again, so the RO is in effect until the next court date, December 13th. Of course, if the TX Supreme Court rules against us again and puts a stop on this RO, then we’re back where we were a few days ago. Pretty much, we’re going to change policies every three days or so.

The state is arguing that our mask mandate will “shatter” TX’s ability to respond to pandemic, though he can’t (or won’t) say why. The city is arguing that the governor is using a law that is meant to invoke emergency measures, not take away our ability to use them. Other school districts and counties across the state are suing the government, or downright ignoring his orders (including several in SA). A county judge has been removed in Dallas for defying the state order. The attorney general of TX is suing one of the school districts in SA because they’re requiring vaccines for employees under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A school district in Paris, TX, has made masks part of their dress code to get around the governor’s order, since he has no authority over school board decisions or leadership. People are getting quite clever out there! Meanwhile, the TEA has swerved sideways and changed their policies, now saying that school districts MUST notify teachers, staff, and families of all positive cases from school.

There’s really just so much going on right now that it’s been hard to keep up.

(TX current info)

In San Antonio numbers this week:

  • Cases: 268,970 (+11,176)
  • Deaths: 3,710 (+52)
  • Seven-day rolling average: 1,597 (+275/day)
  • Positivity rate: 16.9% (down 4.5%)*
  • Hospitalizations: 1,382 patients including 371 in ICU; 6% available bed capacity; note that roughly 200+ new patients are admitted per day, and about 10% are children
  • Vaccinations: 1,367,288 first dose (81.8%); 1,102,506 fully vaxxed (65.9%)**

*This is down because many schools went into session this week, so many employees were getting preemptive tests, bringing the overall positivity rate down.

**These percentages are of the eligible population – only around 50% of the full population of the city/county, including kids under 12, have been vaccinated.

The hospital situation is getting really bad. About a third of patients in the hospital are there for covid. Back in the winter, the state rule was that if the percentage of patients in hospital was over 15% for seven days in a row, capacity limits in restaurants etc had to be scaled back. But Abbott removed all of that when he banned masks in March, making it illegal to have limited occupancy level, so things just get worse and worse and worse…

(and vice versa)

Delta now makes up almost 100% of new cases nationwide, including here. Texas and Florida make up 40% of all hospitalizations in the country (go, bro-states!). We now have refrigerated morgues hanging around because things are just about to the point of needing them – and our county is still only the fourth highest in the state! Hell, we even got downgraded from severe (worsening) to severe (steady) this week, and yet things are just so bad. We still can’t get people to get vaccines. The city is in the process of getting approval to offer $100 HEB gift cards to people just to get their vaccines, and the county is giving $1000 refunds on health insurance for county employees who are fully vaccinated by the end of October. We’re paying people to get vaccines now.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us out there… The FDA has approved a third dose for immunocompromised folks and will start allowing boosters for people eight months out from their second shot starting Sept 20th. I’ll be eligible October 1st and will get it ASAP! Even without a $100 gift card. I don’t want to mess with f-ing Delta! Or future variants.

At home this week, Laurence went back to school (in a mask regardless of policies!). Ambrose’s college announced that most of their classes will be virtual for the first two weeks minimum, and while masks are optional, all students and staff must get weekly covid screenings if they’re on campus. Ambrose is very sad about this development. He really detests online school. (I am also really sad, as well as relieved. Just forget that whole thing I said on Sunday about having a few hours to myself a few times a week.) This week was also the last week of Gignacery frivolous outings. We bought movie tickets to see Free Guy a weeks ago, when things weren’t so dire. I decided to drop out, but Jason and the boys still went, in masks. I’m sad that days of doing things like this again are once again over.

Of course, the biggest news at home this week is in our school district. TBH, they’ve been bungling the whole thing. Last week, they announced that masks were required per the city. Parents complained, but they stuck to it. Then on Sunday, within minutes of the Supreme Court ruling, they reverted back to optional (with a bit of begging people to wear them). When Monday sided back with the city, we received a notice that they decided the state’s win superseded the city’s, and since they didn’t want to pinball back and forth in their policies, they were keeping masks optional. I can appreciate the desire not to pinball, but I do wish they’d chosen to land on the side of safety. Especially since they called for an emergency safety meeting only two days after the latest announcement, set for late last night. We’ll know soon what decisions they made, if any, to require masks or not. Perhaps we’ll pinball after all. Again.

Honestly, after some of the things I’ve heard coming from our school district, it doesn’t surprise me that they’re being so ambivalent. Somehow, they managed to have 77 students and 122 staff come down with covid last week, even though school wasn’t yet in session. (That’s just from extracurriculars like band camp plus teacher workshops.) They also held a convocation ceremony at one high school with 500 EMPLOYEES in attendance, masks optional, at the beginning of last week, and several positive cases were in that crowd. So not only were 500 folks exposed, the district refused to do any contact tracing! They said it’s “too difficult” when people aren’t wearing masks. Really?? What if some of those 500 PEOPLE are staff at my son’s school?? They’re just allowed to come to work without restrictions? Possibly exposing thousands more students? UGH.

Now, to finish out this week: Governor Abbott has covid. Of course, he’s fully vaxxed and has no symptoms and immediately got a third dose before FDA approval and special regeneron antibody treatment, so he’ll be fine. But he got covid after a big, crowded, maskless GOP convention, so…why am I not surprised?

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Wellness Wednesday – Hikes of 2021, #36-40

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Thistle

Compared to the early parts of the year, I’ve done just about no hiking for months! Most of what I’ve done has been at my local trails, so that gets repeated a lot here. But seriously, five hikes in over two months is uuuuuugh. Also, I really look forward to seeing some new parks soon.

36. After six weeks mostly off exercise, I decided to go for a short, gentle hike, to give my foot a try. Jason went with me, as I still had the bandages on my wrist, only one week out from surgery, and couldn’t drive yet. It was an event hike with lovely light, and we had fun noticing all these little things, like googly eyes on signs. I brought my telephoto lens and got a fun photo of the city skyline (about 20 miles away, but visible on the overlook in decent weather). [Hike 22/52 for my 52 Hike Challenge.]

Continue reading →

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Fitness for Every Body, by Meg Boggs

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Thistle

Subtitled: Strong, Confident, and Empowered at Any Size

I follow Meg Boggs on Instagram and enjoy her content for the most part. I’m not interested in the same kind of fitness as she is – heavy strength training and powerlifting – but it’s lovely to see some more body-inclusive folks showing that fitness is enjoyable and achievable for bodies of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked hard to fill a lot of my social media with diverse bodies (sizes, abilities, genders, colors, etc), and Boggs was one of the first that I followed. I’ve been looking forward to her book for ages and was happy that my library put it on order.

So let me start by saying that I didn’t realize that this book was so heavily focused on an actual workout plan. The first 90 or so pages, plus the last 10, are about body-inclusivity and body image and fitness for every body, which (from the title), I kinda thought would be the focus of the entire book. The 90 pages in the middle, Part 5 of the book, is devoted entirely to strength training. There are tips about warmups, form, getting started, etc, plus a 12-week step-by-step workout plan complete with photos and descriptions of specific exercises.

I…basically skipped that entire section. There’s nothing wrong with it – in fact, as far as formatting goes, I appreciate the great detail Boggs went into. However, I have no interest in a heavy ST regimen, and even if I did, I have several already from other programs (like Girls Gone Strong) and don’t need another. I was really hoping for an entire book about body-inclusivity in fitness. So while the book itself was not bad at all, it was a bit disappointing for me, personally. All my own fault, really – even the back of the book description says that it includes step-by-step workout plans. I will say, though, that the parts that I was interested in were good, and that I trust Boggs enough to say that her training program is also probably great for folks who would like that part, too.

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Sunday Coffee – an everything slump

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Thistle

This week, I picked up a book that I’d had out from the library for a couple weeks: One Great Lie by Deb Caletti. I’d put off opening it, even though I normally love Caletti’s books. Maybe it wasn’t the right time. Her books are slow-burners, and maybe I needed something else. I read through a few pages, finally, and decided to return it to the library for now, without removing it from my TBR.

Then I picked up another book I’d had out for the same amount of time: Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell. Very different book – fantasy, humorous, fast-paced, and part of a series I already loved. Again, I decided to return it to the library after a few days, saving it on my TBR for another time. I just had no interest right now.

So yeah, it feels like a reading slump, only…it’s kinda not. Because I’m not really doing anything. I’m not exercising. I have no interest in writing in my daily journal (last written in on the 8th), which I’ve literally been keeping for a decade. I’m withdrawing from planned events. Not responding to emails. Not keeping up with my planner – last used on the 6th – or day-to-day stuff. I’m just…depressed, I guess. Not in the sad way of depression. Just in the “all I want to do is mindlessly stare at the TV or my phone and do nothing and then sleep” kind of depression. Everything feels pointless.

Ever since adolescence, I went through cycles of depression that would hit three months of the year: mid-January, April, and August. In adulthood, the January episode has trailed off. April and August remained miserable, depressed months, and it was very clear what the physical trigger was for these episodes. I suffer from a sort of reverse seasonal affective disorder, where I get really depressed throughout the summer. It has roots in the same cause – lack of sunlight – because it’s so hot for months on end that I very rarely go outside. Sunlight through windows isn’t the same. April is when the weather begins to turn hot. August is the hottest month and when we tend to have drought and relentless temps that don’t drop below 80 even at night.

In the last decade, things have changed a little. I went through some severe trauma in May 2014, May 2015, and May 2017. The April episode, while still there to some degree, has basically ceded to a full on PTSD episode in May. August has remained a blah month due to heat, and added some milder traumatic PTSD moments from 2014. However, starting in 2011, I continued to exercise outdoors all summer, so the sunlight portion of the depression wouldn’t be as prominent.

Only this year, it is, because I’ve been basically housebound since early May. I very rarely exercise, very rarely leave the house, and I avoid going outside at all costs. I stare out my window and take lots of lovely photos of butterflies in my garden, but I wouldn’t step onto the grass out there if you paid me. I can barely make myself go onto the deck periodically. It’s so hot, my body hurts, and I’m so tired. So I do nothing. And then the PTSD triggers pop up on top of the lack-of-sun and lack-of-movement, and I fall deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

Laurence starts school tomorrow, in person for the first time since 3/6/20. Ambrose starts school the week after that, and Jason is already going in to work for two days a week. Soon, I’ll have two days a week with about four hours of alone time, which is more than I’ve had in about 1.5 years. That will absolutely and definitely help. So will the nearing of September, and thinking about RIP season, and getting back into exercise again. Also, I really need to cut back on sugar. I’m eating way too much and sugar is a known depression trigger for me. (Not like I’m depressed or feel guilty for eating it; it literally affects my hormones and causes me to feel exhausted, mentally foggy, and unmotivated.)

Hopefully in the next few weeks, I’ll get myself back into a better headspace. It’s been a really hard year for me, one of those years where you get relentlessly ground down slowly but surely. I know a lot of people went through this in 2020, but up until about November/December last year, I actually had a great 2020. Ever since then, though, I’ve just been on a steady decline, and I really want to start climbing (literal and metaphorical) mountains again.

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Quarantine Diaries – Weeks 73 and 74

Posted on August 13, 2021 by Thistle

So. San Antonio is under heavy covid assault, a surge that is still toward its beginning and has already surpassed last July, and is likely only a week or two off from topping the January surge. Literally five weeks ago, we were in good shape. Delta is an incredibly contagious and potent variant, and now makes up 99% of new cases in Bexar County. With the hardheadedness of unvaccinated folks and the distribution of extreme misinformation, this is just going to keep getting worse. Buckle up.

Numbers
For some very basic information from the last two weeks:

  • Week 73 (ended 8/5): 248,184 cases, 3,624 deaths, 1,249 seven-day average (up over 500 per day in less than a week); 19.9% positivity rate (up 2.9%)
  • Week 74 (ended 8/12): 257,794 cases, 3,658 deaths, 1,322 seven-day average, 21.4% positivity rate

Vaccinations: As of yesterday, almost 80% of the eligible population here had received their first dose, and 64.5% have had their full doses. That sounds better than it really is – at the end of Week 67 (6/24), those numbers were at 73% and 58%. It hasn’t increased that much, especially given how crazy things have been over those seven weeks, but they did say this week that they’re starting to see an increase of 10-11k per week, thank goodness! Last week, I read that about 400k eligible folks in SA were still fully unvaccinated. Notably, the adult population with the lowest vaccinated percentage is the 19-29 year old age range.

Hospitals: Currently, we have 1267 folks in the hospital with 327 in ICU. At the end of June, there were around 140 people in the hospital, period, with less than 50 in ICU. The situation there is BAD. For example: There is an 11-month old in the hospital right now, as well as a four-year-old on a ventilator. !!! In fact, our news briefing last night said that 15% of yesterday’s hospital admissions were pediatric cases under 12 years old. Oy.

Of course, the majority of folks in the hospital are unvaccinated – latest number is 88%. The remaining 12% include folks who have only had a single dose as well as any full breakthrough cases. Only 5% of total covid cases are fully breakthrough (we were not told how many of these ended up in the hospital.) Deaths remain 99.5% among the unvaccinated, with only six breakthrough case deaths in our county. All six were among folks with multiple underlying conditions.

Local news
Things have gotten a bit exciting (aka convoluted and insane) here in SA. Here are a few highlights before I get to the big news:

Since the end of July, we’ve gone from “moderate” to “severe” levels, and I’d guess by next week or so, we’ll be in “critical.” Our hospitals are under extreme stress without enough staff to take care of patients. There have been so many 911 calls in for covid emergencies that on Wednesday this week, there was a full half hour where not a single EMS transport was available in the entire city. Not for traffic accidents, heart attacks, or any other reason. Hospitals have had to cut off elective surgeries again. Covid patients are being shunted into maternity wards because of the lack of beds. One hospital literally has ZERO pediatric ICU beds left. To make things worse, nurses are now being verbally and physically assaulted by patients and their families. They’ve literally had knives pulled on them and had to call police to come out. The hospitals are becoming a war zone.

Daily website updates have restarted – they were weekly since early June – and news briefs have popped up again twice a week just this week. A bunch of new events that had recently been announced have already been canceled or postponed. A new emergency alert popped up on all our phones on the 4th. The antibody treatment center re-opened after months of being shut down for lack of need. The state, which had for weeks refused to request help in the form of extra hospital staff, finally this week requested federal aid. The moratorium on evictions was set to expire and was saved at the 11th hour, with new protection until at least October.

But here’s the big one. The city and county filed a lawsuit challenging Abbott’s authority to suspend state laws that give local officials the authority to make emergency mandates in their area. It also asked for a temporary restraining order against the mandate, which if granted, would allow them to make a mask mandate for city/country employees and visitors, including public schools. The TRO was granted on Tuesday, and by that evening, a limited mask mandate was put in place.

In terms of schools, all students, staff, and visitors aged 2+ must wear a mask indoors. Schools must conduct contact tracing, notify parents in case of close contact, and quarantine folks who had close contact. Considering that the guidance from the Texas Education Agency (below) says that schools need to do LESS for covid than they have to do for lice, this is a big (if temporary) win. The situation will be revisited on Monday, at which time the TRO could be converted into a permanent injunction. That would of course be appealed and so on up the food chain, but at least when school starts on Monday, masks will be required regardless of vaccination status.

Texas and beyond
Several counties across TX have filed similar lawsuits and also been granted various levels of legal protection against Abbott’s stupidity. School districts across the state have come out and said they will openly defy his order regardless of legality. Public universities across the state are begging the government to let them make their own rules according to the situation in their area, but Abbot refuses to listen. Instead, he continues to yell his head off about personal freedom, and has passed increasingly strict regulations. He’s literally made it into law that private businesses can’t require masks or vaccines for employees if they do any business with the government. Any teacher who so much as asks a student to mask can be fined and fired. Any government official who defies his mandate can be immediately removed from office. (Judge Wolfe’s response: “If anyone needs to be removed from office, it’s the governor.”) All these mandates have President Biden opening criticizing Abbott, saying he should at least get out of the way if he won’t help. For a politician who claims to believe in the government staying out of everyone’s business, he sure wants to control every single aspect of the state!

But Texas is what it is. Texas and Florida – who seem to be in a hold-my-beer competition for how bad things can get in their states – how make up 1/3rd of all cases in the US. Only 44% of eligible Texas are fully vaccinated, and last week, a 45-year-old politician who liked to post “covid isn’t real” and “vaccine conspiracy” memes died of covid just a few days after contracting it. This sounds like a broken record by now, it’s happened so many times.

On the home-front
Most of what we’re dealing with at home right now is back-to-work and back-to-school. It does seem like a really weird time to implement these things, given the severity, but it is what it is. Jason is now going into work twice a week. Laurence starts school next Monday. He already went to a week of drama camp at the school, as well as getting school photos (pictured – this is what he had to wear, heh), supply shopping, etc. And he wore a mask through it all. My kid wears a mask even at the gym, which makes me such a proud mom. He wore it even during June when the rest of us relaxed a bit. Ambrose, who also wears a mask when he goes out, will begin a new semester at college, on campus this time, the week after that. Right now, the current TRO does not cover public higher education campuses, so they can’t require masks. I just hope Ambrose can stay safe.

Some good notes: Our school district immediately changed their guidelines to comply with the new order, and additionally set out a way for immunocompromised students who can’t get the vaccine to have virtual learning (despite the state refusing funding for this). Also, my little sister is off to college at Berkeley, where they require vaccines, masks, and tests for all students. Because, you know, they’re not insane or stupid or duped. Hopefully, she’ll be safe.

I’m so sick of misinformation and lies, y’all. I had a very frustrating conversation with my mom recently where she told me that the virus is only spreading through vaccinated folks now, because vaccine antibodies are where mutations come from. There’s really no explaining that that’s not really how science works. Sigh. Even worse, I had to drop a facebook acquaintance after she started spouting flat-out lies on my page. She claimed that 1) she was currently in the hospital and extremely ill with covid and pneumonia (and yet posting on FB??), 2) that she was the only unvaccinated covid patient there (sure…), and 3) all those poor vaccinated folks with covid looked just as bad as her except they felt worse because the government betrayed them by putting this poison in their bodies and telling them it would keep them safe when clearly it did no such thing. Oh, and 4) that the nurses were trying to convince her to get a covid shot but she refused, which is complete BS because you can’t get a covid shot while you’re in an active covid infection. I told a friend about her post, and her response was, “That sounds real,” and I couldn’t stop laughing. But seriously: goodbye, spreader-of-lies. I’m so done.

Moving forward
I guess we’ll see where this lawsuit goes. The governor is trying to go around the district court because he worries about his chances in the legal system. It’s going to be a dog fight either way. Gah. I’m so tired of this, y’all. Just get your damn vaccine and wear your mask and STFU so we can all get back to real life already.

Also: weekly Quarantine Diaries posts will have to resume. Sigh.

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New Header (at last!)

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Thistle

This morning, I looked out the window and saw a gorgeous butterfly in the flower garden right outside my bedroom. I couldn’t tell immediately if it was a gulf fritillary (which is one of the most common I see) with very distinct markings, or if it was a different fritillary variant. Turned out to be the former, but I got a very lovely photo of it while trying to determine this:

So lovely, in fact, that I realized it might work as a header for this blog. The former header was from 2017, and I was saying around my blogoversary this past February that it was outdated and needed a change. And after all, my blog name is The Zen Leaf, and this is a butterfly chilling on a zinnia petal…

After cropping it down to the right size, it turned out to be perfect. Will I keep it forever? Nah. But right now, it feels right. I really needed this little change.

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My Top Ten Moments of the Olympics

Posted on August 10, 2021 by Thistle

Now that the closing ceremony is over and there’s something like six months before my next Olympics binge (heh), here are my favorite moments from the 2020(1) Summer Olympics, in no particular order:

1. Ahmed Hafnaoui, the 18-year-old underdog from Tunisia who won the 400m freestyle, plus the priceless reaction of his family

2. Mutaz Barshim of Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy choosing to share the gold rather than do a jump off to determine a winner in the high jump – if you haven’t seen the videos of these two, who were apparently long-time friends, screaming and crying and hugging each other, it’s worth looking up

3. Rebeca Andrade from Brazil winning silver on gymnastics all-around behind Suni Lee, and then getting gold in the vault

4. Tatjana Schoenmaker from South Africa realizing that not only had she won gold, she’d broken the world record – her jaw-drop was priceless

5. all of Caeleb Dressel’s emotional reactions to winning with his relay team, talking with his family, etc

6. Karsten Warholm of Norway’s reaction to breaking his own world record in the hurdles – mostly because he tries to rip his shirt open and the collar refuses to let him finish the motion, ha!!

7. the absolute incredible job Ashleigh Johnson did as goalie for the US women’s water polo team – she was the star and needs an MVP award

REUTERS/Marko Djurica

8. Quan Hongchan, the 14-year-old diver from China – completing two perfect dives (10s from all judges) as well as a third dive that had six 10s and a single 9.5. She obliterated the olympic record in the event, and afterwards, seeing her coach pick her up by the armpits and jump her around like a little kid, a giant smile on her face, warmed my heart.

9. watching Abdi Nageeye (Netherlands) encouraging and waving forward Bashir Abdi (Belgium) to get them both over the finish line of the marathon in 2nd and 3rd place when they’d both been behind the 2nd place in line only a minute before

10. The mixed relays in swimming and triathlon were incredible and not anything I expected to ever see. I wish I’d seen the track mixed relays but missed them.

On the reverse side, I’m going to call out a few things that felt like poor sportsmanship. Thankfully, only three of these come to mind!

The Over-the-Top: I’m not a fan of the kind of coach Ariarne Titmus has – he seems to be a “yell and insult to inspire” kind of guy – and I didn’t appreciate his reaction when Titmus won one of her early races. I’m totally happy for Titmus that she won, but her coach was hopping all over the stands, going crazy, shaking and humping the bars, going outside of his designated quarantined area and scaring the crap out of some poor Japanese woman who was trying to keep everyone where they belonged. Dude, I know you’re excited, but please don’t harass the employees who are just trying to do their jobs…

The Cringe: I didn’t see a lot of the weightlifting competitions, but there was one woman from South Korea who was struggling with a particular move, and every time the judges said she didn’t complete it, she started screaming and crying and yelling, why, why, why, and when she dropped the weight on her last attempt, she literally fell to the ground and started throwing a tantrum. It was embarrassing and very bad sportsmanship.

The Sorest of Losers: And then there was the worst. Dina and Arina Averina of Russia are identical twin sisters who compete in rhythmic gymnastics. They’re generally hailed as the best in the world. Arina messed up in her last routine, so with only her sister left to perform, she was sitting in bronze medal position. After Dina’s performance – which went well, and was sure to land her on the podium, knocking Arina out altogether – Dina fell to the ground sobbing when her score put her in second place. There was an immediate inquiry called – this seems to be common in rhythmic gymnastics – but the score wasn’t changed and Dina was hysterical. Right in front of her sister, who didn’t get any medals at all, she fell apart. When the gold-medal winner came to give everyone in the competition hugs, Dina refused to even look at her, much less hug her. Then I found out that the head of the ROC claimed that the judges were biased and he wanted an inquiry into their judging practices for the whole event. Talk about sore losers!! Further statements from Dina came out: “I don’t feel that it was fair today and it was obvious from the very first apparatus when… I got a lower score, so I can’t say that it was very fair,” and “My conscience is clear, I still believe that I won.” Ugh.

Okay. So the Olympics are over. Maybe I’ll get back to, I don’t know, reading and podcasts and walking and blogging and that sort of thing again?

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Sunday Coffee – Feral Colony, part 5

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Thistle

It’s been quite a bit since my last update, and at first that meant “not much news.” Now it means…well, new adventures and oh-no moments.

From the feral colony itself: Our neighbors managed to trap our kittens’ mother a couple weeks back. There is a very short list of locations that’ll do TNR surgeries at the Feral Cat Coalition discount rate, and most of them will only do a handful of surgeries one day a week. The closest to us is Animal Defense League, who does 10 surgeries once per week. That’s where the neighbors took the cat, at 6am to get in line (for a 10am start time) and they were too late to get a slot. They called everywhere they could think of, and even started calling vets to do the surgery at full price, but no one would take her because she’s feral. So they had to let her go again. This week, they caught the little grey one we call Bert, took him to the Humane Society at 3:30am, and managed to get him neutered. So that’s one down. Fingers crossed the others will have their chance soon.

I wish that was all. Unfortunately, a new adventure began on Monday evening. I went outside to try to get some good garden photos. As I went to step from the last stair to the ground, I looked down to see a charcoal-grey kitten butt and tail sticking out from under the stair. My foot was already in motion, so it hit the ground. The kitten was frightened and disappeared from view. I looked everywhere under the deck but couldn’t find it without a flashlight. By the time I got inside, got Jason, and we both had flashlights, we still couldn’t find anything.

Fast forward two hours. Jason gets home from picking Laurence up from driver’s ed. As he pulls into the driveway, he sees a charcoal-grey kitten by our trash and recycling bins. It runs back into the side yard, where Jason follows it and sees it go under the deck. And then he figures out why we couldn’t find it before. The kitten was hiding in the space between the old concrete stairs and the underside of the deck, hidden between crossbeams where there’s no way we could spot it.

Monday night left us wondering if one of the kittens from the June 29th litter at the feral colony had wandered over and gotten lost. Neighbors confirmed they’d seen one of the new kittens, a light grey one. But five-week-old kittens don’t tend to move as fast and coordinated as this one seemed to. Tuesday morning, one of the two siamese cats from the feral colony started walking along our fence, looking toward the deck (above). Neither of these two siamese has been in our yard (that we’ve seen) in three months, so I had to guess this kitten was involved. Tuesday evening, we put out food by the deck stairs, hoping to lure the baby out.

(I sat by my bedroom window and watched. At one point, two very large deer with enormous antlers walked past our back gate. !!!)

After a bit, I saw movement. The little kitten – who must have come from behind our yard – began the same skulking-along-the-fence route that the siamese cat had taken that morning. I got pictures, and this kitten is definitely at least eight weeks old. Since it didn’t stop for the food we put out, Jason went to the front yard to see if it was again by our garbage/recycling cans (it was), and it sprinted back through our yard and out the back gate.

Further coordination with our neighbors (with the new picture) confirmed this is not part of the new litter. Mom had begun to bring her babies with her for food, and there are only two, both light grey. Furthermore, a new siamese has started showing up at their house for food. We suspect it’s the third one we’ve seen in our backyard. It’s possible the new kitten belongs to this third siamese, that we thought was pregnant back in early June. But honestly, I have no idea. The neighbors suspect he’s male, and if that’s the case, there are either four siamese or the one that looked pregnant wasn’t actually pregnant. It’s a mess.

And to make things worse, despite putting out food every day since Tuesday, we haven’t spotted the charcoal-grey kitten again. We don’t know if it’s dumped, feral, lost, or something in between. We just want to rescue the baby and make sure it’s safe! Unfortunately, unless something changes, I don’t think that’ll be happening. 😦

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Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells

Posted on August 6, 2021 by Thistle

A dead body shows up in the middle of a public area on Preservation Station. These sorts of things just don’t happen here, so no one knows how to handle it – except Murderbot. The human security team doesn’t trust the rogue SecUnit, but given they all have to work with each other to make sure there’s no ongoing threat, there’s a lot of dubious extra care going on. And Murderbot is annoyed. This means a lot of extra time dealing with stuff it doesn’t want to deal with.

I really don’t have more to say about this series. Each book is delightful and I’m happy to see there are several more in the works. If you haven’t decided to try these out from my earlier reviews, this review won’t change your mind. Which is kinda too bad, though, because you’re missing out! Heh.

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – All About Coffee

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Thistle

Let’s talk coffee, allergies, inflammation, and weight. I tried to find my posts from last year that discussed this already, but after finding all these different pieces in multiple posts, I decided to compile this in one place. So for a quick recap:

  • Prior to late 2013, I didn’t drink coffee at all. I began drinking coffee drinks at Starbucks maybe 1-2 times per month in autumn 2013 while I was going through a really rough emotional time.
  • For Christmas 2013, Jason got me a Keurig. I began drinking coffee more often in early 2014, becoming a once-a-day habit by about March, and I began drinking it twice a day in May 2014.
  • May 2014 is when I began gaining weight after maintaining with no problem for almost 1.5 years. I didn’t connect it with the coffee because there were other factors involved – my stupid attempt at doing Whole30, a lot of family issues, and an upcoming cross-country move (aka lots of stress).
  • From May 2014 to early this July, I had at least one cup of coffee every single day. My weight gain went from May 2014 to March 2016 in a bit of a roller coaster, then leveled off at 75-80 lbs of regain from March 2016 to October 2020. (I’ll get to October and beyond later.)

Now, I began suspecting that coffee might be an issue in the spring of 2017. I started a personal 100-day experiment with the intent to cut out alcohol altogether and see if it affected my ability to lose weight. I also cut coffee down to once a day by chance. The experiment only lasted a few weeks because my family entered our Summer of Nightmares, and when you’re living under that much trauma and stress, personal experiments kinda lose priority. But I did lose a small amount of weight in that time, which I attributed to the alcohol abstinence.

Only by spring 2018, I’d mostly given up alcohol, and I hit a stride for about two months where I actually managed to lose about 7.5 lbs (equal to what My Fitness Pal predicted per my tracking). I tried to compare this 65-day period to the one I’d kept track of in later 2017, during which I lost nothing even though MFP thought I should lose 5-6 lbs. There were a lot of potential factors, but one I didn’t mention on that post was that in 2017, I drank 2-3 cups of coffee per day, and in spring 2018, I only had one daily. That’s when things really got suspicious in my mind.

Yet, it still took me until 2020 before I was willing to publicly call out coffee as a possible suspect in my health problems, and to design some coffee experiments to determine if the coffee itself, or caffeine, or some other factor related to coffee was the problem. I had a lot of realizations in 2020: I could have potentially given myself a metabolic disorder via coffee; I craved coffee to soothe anxiety over being hungry; coffee was clearly bad for my body as it caused severe hypoglycemia attacks. None of that was enough to overcome my addiction, which grew worse the longer I thought about giving it up. Honestly, I’m not sure if I ever would have managed to quit if I hadn’t landed in the hospital on July 10th. I saw the opportunity, and caffeine-headaches be damned, I ran with it.

Now, to change the subject slightly, I want to go back to the October 2020 to July 2021 weight story. Because in October 2020, my many-years of maintaining suddenly disappeared. I wasn’t eating or exercising any differently, but I started gaining about 3 lbs per month. At first, I blamed this on the new medication my doctor had put me on, but even after I got off it, I continued to gain. (Likely, this medication was the cause, because it’s literally designed to affect your metabolism, and I didn’t actually fit the criteria for taking it – didn’t have diabetes or PCOS – so it affected me badly.) I’ve fought like hell for the last nine months, and nothing I’ve done has made a difference. I just kept gaining. By the time I went into the hospital on July 10th, I was up a total of 26.5 lbs. (And yes, I was gaining even during the three weeks where I couldn’t keep down any food – I was gaining faster, in fact.)

When I got out of the hospital, I didn’t weigh in for a few days. Normally, I get on the scale most days, but I knew that with the amount of water they’d pumped into me – I had the fattest, most swollen hands ever – I didn’t want to see a number affected by water weight. When I did weigh in on the 16th, my weight was down about 1.5 lbs from before I went into the hospital. And over the rest of July – as my digestive system stabilized and I was able to keep food down – I lost a further 3 lbs. Y’all, I was no paragon of good health. I hardly exercised because I was recovering from sepsis. I could only eat very simple, processed foods because anything too complex would cause stomach issues. There was a lot of ice cream, cereal, and bread-and-butter eaten in the second half of July!

Now, it is too early to say 100% that things have turned around for me. The weight loss may simply have had to do with the giant influx of antibiotics changing around my gut flora. Maybe I’ll get another 2-3 months down the road and find out that cutting coffee has changed nothing at all. However, I suspect (and hope!) that this is, indeed, the answer. Whether an allergy or an interference with my metabolic system or something else entirely, hopefully cutting coffee will be the key that unlocks the door I’ve been searching for these last seven years.

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