Quarantine Diaries – Weeks 64-67

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Thistle

Not gonna lie – there’s not much going on in terms of quarantine any longer. Vaccinations are keeping things relatively under control. Which is awesome.

Numbers
Early in the month, we crossed the 50% line of fully vaccinated residents in SA. At this point, we are up to a total of 959,040 full vaccinations in SA (58% of eligible folks), and 1,207,058 folks (73%) with at least one dose. Here’s how the rest of our numbers have fared over the last four weeks:

  • Week 64 (5/28 – 6/3): 224,084 cases, 3,486 deaths, 106 seven-day average, 1.4% positivity rate
  • Week 65 (6/4 – 6/10): 224,660 cases, 3,520 deaths, 80 seven-day average, 1.2% positivity rate
  • Week 66 (6/11 – 6/17): 225,547 cases, 3,533 deaths, 105 seven-day average, 1.5% positivity rate
  • Week 67 (6/18 – 6/24): 226,404 cases, 3,547 deaths, 105 seven-day average, 1.3% positivity rate

As you can see, things remain steady without much change – a positivity rate between 1 and 1.5%, and just over 100 for an average daily infection rate. It would be wonderful to see continued downward progress, but you can see that only 58% of eligible folks are fully vaccinated, and only 73% have gotten their first dose. That’s pretty low considering we have plenty to go around, and I’ve heard that there’s a problem with people not coming back for their second doses…sigh. But holding steady this low is better than spiking upwards again. I guess we’ll see how things progress in the future.

Local news
We reached a major milestone this month: our last nightly covid briefing was on 6/3. All the numbers above come from the city’s website, which is now updating every Wednesday. Vaccinations have been mostly sent out into pop-up clinics all over the city, including ones at Fiesta, which is going on this month. Many businesses are starting to move into post-covid mode. HEB, for instance, stopped requiring fully vaccinated workers or customers to wear masks. I’ve been there a few times since, and some folks (both customers and employees) are wearing them, but many aren’t, and it doesn’t feel as weird or scary as I expected it to. All the barriers and floor markers are still in place, but more and more, we’re seeing signs of “after,” and that’s honestly a relief!

On the home-front
At home, life also moves more toward normal. We attended virtual graduation for my sister, and were thankful for that option, but also went maskless to her graduation party that same evening. We had a birthday party for my nephew at Chuck E Cheese, and half the folks wore masks (thankfully, my whole family did!). I’ve now been to several outdoor events and hikes and didn’t even bring a mask along with me (thank goodness, because the heat is unreal this year!). Our school district has let us know that next year, online school will not be offered at all because the state won’t fund it, so everyone will be back in person. Jason’s work, which previously said no one would be back in the office until 2022, might be sending him back in 2x/week in the very near future (possibly next week). My family actually went to see a movie in theatre for the first time since Feb 2020! My in-laws came to visit this last week, and we went around a lot of places, and actually didn’t wear masks at many, just like in ye olden days, and it felt strange and normal and new all at once.

On the other side of things, the hospital still required me to get a covid test the day before my surgery (that wasn’t pleasant – they did the all-the-way-up-your-nose test!), and most medical facilities are still requiring it. There was a funny conversation I overheard at the imaging center:

Receptionist to older man: Sir, do you have a mask?
Older man: A what?
R: A mask.
OM: The governor said we were 100% safe from all that and we didn’t need to wear those now.
R: Well, we still do at our facility, it’s our policy.
OM: (putting on mask they’ve given him) Gol-LY!
OM: (pulls mask below nose the second R looks away)

(And no, our governor may be stupid and horrible, but he never did say that people were 100% safe from covid. *eye roll*)

Moving forward
This will be my last time posting my quarantine diaries. (Unless, of course, something really crazy happens!) This series has really helped me a lot over the last 15 months, but as you can see, the last four weeks has really just been “starting to get back to normal” with a few other minor things sprinkled in. I might include a section in my normal monthly wrap-ups if anything larger happens, but as it is, I feel like locally at least, the pandemic is winding up. Sure, it would be great if the rest of the population would get vaccinated so we could keep variants from forming and spreading, and it would be great if we could NOT politicize medicine, etc etc, but that won’t happen any time soon, so there’s no need for me to be posting about it on a more regular basis here. Thank you all for reading!

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Murderbot Diaries #2-5

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Thistle

When I read a bunch of series books back to back like this, I don’t like to do individual reviews for each one. I especially like to skip descriptions as that can cause inadvertent spoilers for earlier volumes. So after loving the first Murderbot book by Martha Wells, All Systems Red, I ordered the rest of the as-of-yet published series from the library, and will do mini-reviews below.

Artificial Condition
My favorite thing about this second volume of the Murderbot series is the focus on unconventional friendships. The narrator, who I’ll just refer to as Murderbot, is on a quest, but that quest keeps getting interrupted by folks (human and bot) who form unexpected attachments to Murderbot. And those attachments end up proving mutually beneficial. So in essence, we have this Construct that is, for the first time, entirely under its own directive, and in attempting to discover more about its past, it’s instead learning about friendships, attachments, and loyalty that isn’t enforced by contract. It’s a lovely book, even better than the first in the series, and I can’t wait to dive into book 3!

Rogue Protocol
Back again, and this time, the book is full-on action. I love that, so far at least, each of these books has been completely different in structure, not following the same arch or general story. Murderbot is still its antisocial self with the built-in urge to protect humans (though it’s not so sure the urge is technically built-in anymore), and it’s learning all about other forms of bot in addition to the infinite variety of humankind. Only now, there are betrayals and combat-bots and lots of danger and fighting, with almost no space to rest. Interesting note to the series: Murderbot doesn’t feel inclined to understand the whys of everything going on around it. This leaves a lot of gaps in the reader’s information, where a reader might question why these people did X, and why other people wouldn’t do Y, and what caused Z to happen in the drop in communication. Murderbot doesn’t care. Murderbot just moves on without examining the specifics, forcing the reader to do the same, which is a slightly uncomfortable but also interesting experience.

Exit Strategy
And now we’ve come full circle, with Murderbot returning to help the folks it first got involved with back in Book 1. There’s starting to be more background on some of the world-building and corporations involved. This was another high-action book, but not as much as the third. There was a good balance of introspection, world-building, and action – the most complete-feeling of the novellas so far. It seems as if Murderbot is starting to figure out who it is and what it wants, and beginning to see possibilities for its future. I’m loving the progress. Once again, I raced through this book, end the ending was just perfect. The full-length novel is next, and I can’t wait! There are some hints that other characters may be returning!

Network Effect
This is the only (so far) full-blown Murderbot novel, and as such, could go into much greater detail on a lot of things (from characters to world-building, as well as thematic elements such as philosophy toward construct creations like programmed bots that also have organic neural tissue). It took me a bit longer to get through the book as I had quite a bit of Life Stuff happen shortly after I began it, but that in no way decreased my enjoyment. I found myself grinning every time Murderbot says something like, “Ugh, emotions,” because really, UGH, emotions, right?? I’m really sad not to have the (current) last book in the series out right now, but it only released at the end of April, so there’s a much longer hold line at the library. I’ll be diving into it as soon as it arrives, though. Still, I felt like this book could have ended the series quite nicely, with pretty much the past all closed up, and the future only hinted at as a possibility rather than a cliffhanger. But luckily for all us Murderbot fans, the series goes on, and I’ve heard it’s been signed on for another so-many books after #6, woohoo!

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Sunday Coffee – Feral Colony, Part 2

Posted on June 20, 2021 by Thistle

Last Sunday, I posted about the feral cat colony that no one has been taking care of at the house four doors down from me. (I also posted about other things, but consider that post Part 1 of the Feral series.) In the week since, I’ve learned a few things, and there’s been a lot of continued activity. I’ll break this into parts.

The House: First, I want to apologize. I made an assumption in last week’s post that I’ve found out since was wrong. I said that we suspected the man who lives at the junk-house is a hoarder, and that given the things I’ve heard him say (refer to original post), he’s also a horrible man. In talking with a neighbor this week, I learned that indeed the man who lives there is a hoarder – in fact, he was actually on Hoarders in 2012. I’ve never actually watched the show, but I sought it out to see what sort of situation we might be dealing with…and I discovered that the man I’ve seen at the house is NOT the owner. So the hoarder and the a$$hole are actually two different people. I’m not sure who the guy is that I’ve seen – it could be a relative or friend or just a handyman who helps out, because I always see him trying to fix the cars or board up windows etc.

But it’s not the owner as I assumed, and the owner/hoarder actually seems like a nice man, and I feel really bad for him. Hoarding is a devastating mental health problem. The reason I don’t watch shows like Hoarders because they feel exploitative. And hoarding clean-ups like that don’t just have happily ever afters. It’s clear the man has gone back to at least some of his habits in the nine years since his episode. So hopefully we can trap these ferals and TNR them and have at least one less thing he needs to worry about.

The Ferals: Ferals are hard to trap. They’re smart, and pregnant/nursing mothers are especially smart and wary. Here’s what we know of the colony. There are two Siamese female cats, one of whom is the mom of four kittens, one of whom is pregnant. The first is also injured, so we’ve been calling her Injured Mama. The second, we thought may have had her kittens, but we don’t believe so now as she continues to get bigger and her nipples are getting larger. The neighbor we’ve been working with also believes she’s pregnant. She’s the one we’ve had eating in our backyard. The two Siamese moms are a bonded pair, and they both look after the kittens. Then, there’s a large grey tabby who is likely the father of all the kittens.

(“Do you think I’m stupid?” // This was taken from across the street, very far away, and she’s still giving us that look.)

Lastly, there appears to be a slightly older kitten (maybe 12 weeks, but he might not be quite old enough for TNR) who is a grey tuxedo cat. He is not the sharpest hammer in the dishwasher, as Jason likes to say, and has gotten trapped four times. We originally thought that, as a kitten, we could try to socialize him too. He was on the edge of the social window, but we would try. Unfortunately, we moved him to the playpen we were using for the kittens after his first trapping, and he immediately escaped into our garage. We had to open the garage and let him go before he hurt himself. The second time he got trapped, we let him go, only to immediately have him set off the trap again, this time with one of the other kittens inside! We had to use a barrier to separate the two and then let him go so that we could capture the kitten! The third night, he got himself trapped again…like I said, not the sharpest of cats! Unfortunately, the others have watched this guy get trapped multiple times, and are staying away from the enticing food smells.

We’re currently taking a trapping break for a few days before we start again, to give them time to be less wary, to to let them have a few days of normal feedings again. I think we’re going to need to request the larger trap for the tabby and possibly Pregnant Mama too.

The Kittens: There are four grey/beige tabby kittens in the new litter, roughly 7-8 weeks old. We caught one last week and he didn’t do well, so after 24 hrs, we returned him to his litter. We waited a few days before going out to trap kittens again. On Monday, we caught Reaper and Ancho, whose name seems to have morphed into Angus over the week. On Tuesday, we caught Ghost. Ironically, the only one we didn’t catch was the one from last week! And his mom knew Jason was the cat-napper, because she kept getting between the two of the whenever he tried to catch him. But yesterday morning, the neighbor we’ve been working with (next door to the hoarder) caught the last kitten and we brought him home to the litter. His name is Gherkin, and all four siblings are reunited.

I’ve been posting the kittens’ stories on my Instagram, because a lot has happened since we caught the first two six days ago. As a brief summary:

  • They are all underweight and dehydrated. There’s been a lot of vomiting/diarrhea, and we’ve been giving them probiotics with their food as well as Pedialyte supplements and (in Reaper’s case) force-fed syringe feedings of kitten replacement milk. (They are all weaned and can eat wet food without an issue, but their stomachs are used to whatever they can catch plus garbage scraps in the yard.
  • Reaper, Ghost, and Angus have all begun purring, especially Reaper. They all let us cuddle them now. Gherkin lets us hold him but mostly because he’s very scared.
  • Reaper is female, the others are all male. [Note: This is incorrect. After better inspection, we discovered Gherkin is also female. Vet confirms: two female, two male.]
  • They’re just barely learning how to play. Play isn’t really part of feral life. Reaper is trying to show us she can play by biting/wrestling shirt collars when we hold her, ha!
  • We have a vet appointment for one of them set up on Tuesday, at which point whatever worm/etc treatments the one gets, they’ll all get.

Hopefully this week, we’ll have some improved health for the kittens, more play, purrs from Gherkin, and weight gain from everyone. Hopefully we’ll also trap the other ferals and get them TNRed. I might post here, I might not. There’s quite a bit of other things going on right now – I either broke or severely sprained a pinky toe two nights ago (yes, I’m a walking catastrophe at the moment) and it’s solid purple, and I have a friend whose husband is going through a devastating medical situation. The kittens will also take up a huge chunk of my time. I have a few posts half-written that I plan to finish and post, but I think I’m going to continue on semi-break for now while things are really crazy here.

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Wellness Wednesday – I need my own TV show.

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Thistle

I’m supposed to get my stitches out this morning, yay! It’s been 13 days since my surgery, and let’s just take a moment to discuss the medical situation over the last less-than-two-weeks.

First, I went home from surgery. No problem. Yay.

Second, I had a follow up appointment with my primary care provider (PCP), five days after surgery. Good news: My blood pressure was awesome after only a week on the new meds. Bad news: We needed to order more bloodwork now.

Third, and this isn’t really date specific, can I just mention how awful it is to have one wrist wrapped in bandaging and a very black angry bruise on the other arm? (That photo is only the beginning. That entire area turned solid black a few days after I took this.) I’ve had to start answering people’s questions with, “I had a cyst removed from the wrist, and look how awful, they missed on their first try with the IV, isn’t this a horrible bruise?” Too many folks were taking me aside to ask if I felt safe at home. I mean, glad they’re asking – if I was actually unsafe at home, it would be good to have people looking out for me – but also I kinda wish it was long-sleeves weather.

Fourth and fifth, more rounds of imaging! I had an ultrasound of my left leg (confirmed: ultrasound wands pressed on the tendons of your inner thigh and groin are extremely ticklish in a horrible way) and a CT scan of my abdomen. Results to follow on my next f/u appoint with my PCP in July.

Sixth: Chiropractor. At least that was all just maintenance.

Seventh: Gastro specialist yesterday, who scheduled an endoscopy and small intestine biopsy in July. Guess who has to go under anesthesia and have another IV and surgery? *raises hand* Sigh.

Y’all I’m so sick of medical procedures now. Really, really sick of medical procedures. Send help. SOS. Heh. Really, though, I think I just need my own medical drama series, because it feels like that kind of soap opera at this point. I just have to keep telling myself, maybe one day all of this will matter, someone will find something, it won’t just be pointless, maybe we can figure out what’s wrong…

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Sunday Coffee – Grief and Madness

Posted on June 13, 2021 by Thistle

Y’all. This week was just…like being sucker-punched over and over. It was a rough week. My thoughts are chaotic and not quite together, so forgive me if I ramble a bit.

I suppose I should start with Tuesday, the night that I saw the kittens. Backstory: there’s a house four doors down from us that is a typical run-down, probably-a-hoarder kind of house, with boarded windows and junk everywhere on an overgrown lawn. The man who lives there is an a$$hole, and every time I’ve seen him, he’s been spouting horrible stuff like “you have to slap your b!tch to keep her in line.” Last August, a litter of Siamese-tabby cats was born there, and we didn’t know if they were feral or outdoor pets. I mean, how often do you see a litter of feral Siamese cats, right? Plus there were rusted metal cages all around the yard, and water/food bowls that…well, they had leaf litter in them instead of food, but maybe the guy was just gone? He wasn’t answering his door anyway… Jason and I didn’t think there was anything we could do. We’ve seen several of the Siamese cats in our yard since then – 10 months old and technically adults now – and it’s become clear that these aren’t pets. Especially once another batch of kittens showed up.

(two on the porch and one in the grass the night I first saw them)

We’ve talked to a lot of the neighbors since then. No, the man doesn’t take care of or feed the cats, and regards them as “not his problem” even though the feral colony seems to like his junk-yard as their home base. We all agree something needs to be done. One of the cats is injured and has an infected leg. There is feces all over the yard and the kittens are covered in bugs. It’s a horrible situation. We tried reaching out to Animal Care Services, and they can’t do anything, so they sent us to the SA Feral Cat Coalition. They think it’s great that we want to TNR the cats, but unfortunately, the colony lives four doors down. We have to try to move it closer. And that starts with feeding times.

Which leads us to Thursday. We put out food for the first time that morning. If y’all are on Tiktok, you’ll know the Oh No song. That song immediately popped into my head:

That is one heavily pregnant kitty. We think, anyway? Sigh. But it was a good sign that she came to eat here – she’ll know where there’s food, and hopefully figure out the eating schedule, and maybe we can trap/spay her before there’s another litter of kittens born!

That day, I just felt off all day. Partly, I’m still adjusting to a new medication, and most afternoons, I get so sleepy that I take a nap. On Thursday, while lying down, I suddenly had the image in my head from when Ash passed away two weeks ago, and it was like being hit in the stomach. I know it was because we’d heard from the vet that his ashes and memorials were ready to be picked up, but I’ve tried my best to fill my head with other images since then, so it really was a sucker-punch. Then in the evening, Pregnant Mama didn’t show up for food, and while that’s not unusual – we’ve only started putting it out – it felt like an ominous omen. Then Jason caught one of the kittens.

The goal was to catch all four kittens and rehabilitate them to make them adoptable while TNRing the adult cats. The kittens looked to be 6-8 weeks old. They were eating solid food, had their adult eye color, were steady on their feet, etc. They were likely weaned and safe to be separated from their mother. After Jason caught the first, the others wouldn’t come near him Thursday night. So we spent some time setting the baby up in a safe environment. He – I’ll just call him “he” for ease, though we couldn’t pick him up to check – didn’t hiss at us or anything, and let us pet him, but he was obviously terrified and lonely and didn’t understand what was happening to him. Jason had gone out to buy some additional supplies while I tried to calm the kitten and adjust him to his new situation (covering the enclosure, making sure the temp was comfortable, getting him food/water, etc, all without touching him at this point). We were up quite late, well past when I normally sleep, and when I did finally sleep, I spent six hours in broken dreams of horrific things happening to the kitten in the hours he was alone.

Then I woke up to the news that the male half of the Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast, Dan, had passed away suddenly due to an underlying health issue (most likely his congenital heart issue, though the part in parentheses is my speculation).

Talk about sucker-punch.

(posted to the FB group from a fellow mourner)

I mean, I wasn’t a friend of Dan’s. We chatted on Instagram sometimes, and had been on a RLGS Zoom together a year ago with a half-dozen other podcast fans, and sometimes commented on posts, etc. We weren’t friends. But I’ve spent hours and hours and hours listening, watching, and reading his and Emma’s content over the last 15 months or so. He was 36. He was posting on Instagram stories the day before. The news was shocking and horrific, and your brain does all the things brains do to try to make sense of the nonsensical, and then the outpouring of love and grief from fans all over the world…

Again, Dan wasn’t my friend. My grief is real, but it’s distant. It’s not nearly the grief that Emma and his family and his friends are going through. And in no way do I want to make this about me, and my feelings, and my grief. But I’m also not going to pretend that the entire day wasn’t disoriented and uneasy and filled with moments where I broke down and cried, because it was. I’ve dealt with death before, but not sudden death, not since I was a kid in sixth grade with a classmate who was accidentally killed while playing with what he thought was an unloaded gun. My brain struggled – is still struggling – to cope with the sudden absence of a person.

Then on top of that, things continued to get crazier. Mama Cat didn’t show up again on Friday morning. She showed up at noon, her belly now smaller and sagging. (Or another Siamese cat with similar markings showed up? It’s unlikely, though, since she went straight over to the place she’d gotten food the day before, even though there was no food out during that time.) So either she wasn’t pregnant, or there’s another batch of kitten-worms out there and we weren’t nearly fast enough to TNR before it was too late.

(left: Injured Mama in the junk-yard; right: comfort nursing)

And on top of that, when Jason went out to try to trap more kittens that night, he discovered that Injured Cat was also these kittens’ mother, and while they’re not nursing for food, they’re still comfort-nursing at the end of a solid-food meal. The baby in our care was not doing well. He’d eaten plenty, and he’d explored a bit of his enclosure, but he hadn’t pooped at all in a 24 hour period and he was still clearly distraught. After some debate, we decided to return him to his litter until we could get the proper trapping equipment to get the whole batch. (They were all delighted to see each other, crying for each other and then grooming each other, including Mom.) We plan to try to trap the four kittens, plus their mom, toward the end of this week. In the meantime, we’ll work on getting them to trust us in the evenings. Injured Cat lets Jason get within a foot of her without running, which is good.

All in all, Friday was NOT a good day, and this week has been chaotic and messy and painful. Yesterday wasn’t much better. Pregnant Mama showed up for breakfast, and now looks like she may or may not ever have been pregnant, and we just can’t tell. We don’t know if it’s safe to trap her or not. And Jason has now seen that she IS one of the two Siamese cats that hangs out in the front of the junk-yard, so she’s bonded with Injured Cat (which at least means one less adult we need to trap). We keep going back and forth about whether to try to trap the kittens first, or the adults, and when to do it…we’re so new to this, and have no guidance other than a how-to video on when to feed and how to use the traps. Sigh. It feels very much like their lives are all in our hands and that’s not a comfortable feeling.

 

I woke up very late this morning, after several short, troubled nights of sleep, with the above song/video in my head. I first saw this video and heard the song back in 2006/2007-ish, and it has helped me to process grief many times over the years. So I’ll leave this here, in this post, which is a bit of an “in memorandum” post even though the person I’m mourning is only a distant acquaintance who nevertheless had a major impact on my life.

Sorry if this post is disorganized and chaotic. My brain is still not okay.

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Sunday Coffee – Surgery

Posted on June 6, 2021 by Thistle

Warning: contains post-surgical photos (bruises and bandages only).

Early Thursday morning, I had a ganglion cyst removed from my left wrist. As far as surgery goes, it was fairly quick and easy. The hardest point beforehand was the IV. They don’t work well in my hand because my veins are tiny and tend to roll there. Usually I get the IV in my wrist. The nurse instead tried to put it about an inch below my elbow and that was a massive fail. So she used a baby needle to put it in my hand. Blah.

Otherwise, the process went smoothly.

The anesthesiologist gave me a massive dose of local anesthetic so I didn’t have any real pain until the next morning. I took a nap in the afternoon after I got home (and had something to eat for the first time in 15 hours). Then I alternately rested and walked around a bit. I don’t think this is the kind of surgery that put me at risk for blood clots, but I didn’t want to take any chances!

Best thing about this surgery: it’s my left hand, so at least I still have my dominant hand!
On the downside: I can’t do much on my own. I’m typing this post one-fingered and it’s riddled with errors that I’ll have to go back to fix. I’m learning the value of the crook of my elbow to, say, hold items while I remove lids. After one day, I gave up wearing my Garmin on my right wrist because it was just so uncomfortable. I guess the info will just be blank until the dressing (hopefully) comes off on the 16th.

(clockwise: 1st IV site; IV fail bruise; surgical wrap; hand wrap over final IV site; all post-surgical, day-of)

Weird thing: A few hours after surgery, my left hand went numb above the dressing, and the bottom third of my fingers went semi-numb. My best guess was that it had something to do with where the cyst had been, but I called my doctor to check. Unfortunately, even after two calls, she never called back. The numb areas began to turn a weird shade of bruised blue. Fun! I don’t think it’s a circulation issue and it really does appear to be bruising, likely spread from the incision site. I do hope she calls tomorrow, though. On the brighter side, the numbed area decreased slightly.

Life is tough right now. I did have my first shower on Friday, with my hand/arm wrapped in plastic and taped off. Jason had to squirt shampoo and such into my hand for me, because I can’t do that one-handed! I feel quite helpless – I can’t drive yet, can’t cut up my own meat, can’t lift anything that requires two hands, can’t wash my hand well, can’t floss. I had to put my weighted blanket away because it was too heavy to lift even a corner with my hurt wrist. A few times, I’ve wrenched my wrist just trying to get my shorts back up after using the bathroom. It’s ridiculous. I know it’ll be worth it in the end, but meanwhile…gah.

Anyway, things are going about as well as can be expected. Hopefully they can be fully normal in a few weeks. I’m unlikely to post again until then – until I have more than finger-typing at my disposal. This is tedious! I’m not sure if that’ll come after the follow-up appt on the 16th, or if my wrist will be less painful before then, or perhaps even later. I guess it’s good that I usually take some time off from the blog in the summer, anyway!

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May 2021 Wrap-up

Posted on June 2, 2021 by Thistle

It’s been a really big month. Honestly, I spent a bunch of it withdrawn – not hiking, not exercising, not leaving the house, not really posting on social media much. The combo of 14 months of pandemic and incredibly early onset heat in SA this year (many days in the 90s already) made it a tough May. My antidepressant isn’t working as well as it should be – potentially because I’ve gained weight and thus might need an increase, potentially because I’ve been eating too few carbs and too much fat, which causes more side effects with that medication (like it feeling even hotter than it actually is). Now add the foot that won’t heal regardless of what I do, a wrist that is getting worse and about to undergo surgery, a new bp issue thanks to taking time off exercise, and a new SI joint inflammation issue (also re: taking time off) that is so painful that I can barely walk around. I do not feel good.

But the world goes on around me. Laurence interviewed for several jobs (top photo is at his first) and chose to work at Wing Stop. (Note from June: This did not work out. It’s a long story. Essentially, he showed up for his first shift and discovered that his hiring manager had moved to a new location and expected L to magically know this and move with him, without ever informing him.) Ambrose spent a week cat- and house-sitting at my sister’s house in Dallas. It was his first time flying alone and living alone, which I think was really good for him as he’s almost 19 and needs to experience a little more of what adult life is like. Morrigan and his roommate/best friend since kindergarten moved into an apartment together in Kansas so they can stay up there over the summer. My nephew Kyler turned 2. My half-sister graduated from high school. Several of my best friends had birthdays. And unfortunately, as much as I hate this part of life, Ash crossed the rainbow bridge at the end of the month.

Needless to say, it’s been both a big month and a tough month.

Reading and Watching
Because it’s May, the book I’ve spent the most time on is my multiple-re-listen of What Alice Forgot. Ever since discovering the book 2019, it has been my go-to survival book for this month of really strained PTSD flashbacks and triggers. One of these years, I’ll no longer need the book, but for now, it’s a lifesaver. I listened to it three times this month, sometimes stopping other audiobooks in order to go back to it again. I did have quite a large reading month beyond that, though. My TBR grew wildly thanks to a new Discord server I’m on. It’s far larger than it’s been in like a decade, heh. I got a ton of books from the library, and finished six books total. My favorite, other than the multi-read of Alice, was Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge.

Other than that, I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows – Britain’s Best Home Cook, and The Great American Baking Show: Holiday Edition. I meant to watch Shadow and Bone this month, but couldn’t be bothered. I did spend a lot of meaningless time scrolling through Tiktok videos though, heh.

Goals
Ha. Ha. Ha. Why am I even keeping this section around? My big goal right now is to train for Emory Peak in October, and at this point, my foot says that I can’t walk and I can’t not walk, so wtf am I supposed to do?

Health
At the beginning of May, I decided to take 4-6 weeks mostly off exercise to try to help my foot heal. This…hasn’t helped. Actually, it’s made things about 1000x worse. Due to being sedentary for the first time in forever, my body basically fell apart.

  • My foot has gotten worse. It swells worse if I don’t exercise, and now it hurts both with exercise and with rest.
  • Because I have to sit around all the time, my SI joint has become severely inflamed. My lower back, right hip, and thigh are in constant pain. I can no longer lean forward, bend over, squat, or sit without pain. I might need injections to improve this.
  • I’ve never had any problems with my blood pressure, but very suddenly, after weeks of not exercising, it has skyrocketed and now I’m on bp meds on top of everything else.

So yeah. My body feels very under assault right now, and it’s all just getting worse. Tomorrow, I have surgery on my wrist that will require another 6-8 weeks of healing. I need to find a different ortho doctor to look at my foot, someone who will focus on the current problem rather than the problem from four years ago. I have three new rounds of imaging, and maybe more, coming up – ultrasounds and CT scans and possibly another MRI of my head/neck. I have an appointment with one specialist in June and another in November (their first opening). I feel frozen, unable to do anything as I get passed from one doctor to the next to the next, my body getting more and more painful and unmanageable.

House
Wish I could say we’d made some progress this month. Unfortunately, we made a very big mistake: we listened to the employees at Lowes. In April, we painted most of the deck floor. You can see a picture at that link. There was a bit of painting left to do, and some second coating in places, and then we needed to poly the whole thing to make it durable. May was a very rainy, humid, wet month, so we had very limited time for this kind of work. Eventually, we did get everything painted. It looked awesome!

So the week that I was at the hotel, Jason put the first layer of poly on. When it dried, instead of having a glossy sheen, the deck looked milky and the paint was all streaked. Clearly that was wrong. So Jason began to do research, and went back to Lowes, and found out a bunch of things he’d been told incorrectly. First, outdoor floor paint, which we’d gotten from them, does not come in every color. There is a limited number of colors to chose from that will mix properly. The ones we bought were not from that set. The employees mixed them and said they’d be fine, but…no. Second, outdoor floor paint does not need poly over it (they said it did). Third, the outdoor poly does not work on paint, and will destroy it. The employees literally had to call the manufacturer to find this out while Jason was there asking about the white streaks.

This photo shows the milky streaks across the wood. It looks like the deck is partly wet in places, but the whole thing is completely dry. The lighter parts are where the poly completely ate through the paint and destroyed it. You can’t really see the purple stripe much, but that’s what ended up the most damaged.

In the end, Jason had to sand everything back down, re-putty all the nail heads, sand all of that down, and repaint the deck floor and the bench, which he’d also poly-ed to make it more durable. All that, with rain scheduled for the rest of May. And in brand new colors from a limited selection that don’t exactly match the color scheme we chose based on our old palette. Uuuugh.

(beginning the starting-over process, May 21st)

Jason has worked really hard to get this done in the few sunny days we had, and it came down to the very last day of the month, heh. But he made it! The deck is finally done. Hurrah!

In a week, we can put the deck furniture and plants back (just have to let the paint fully cure). And in the meantime, we already have our next house project set to start. I mean, we were planning to take a break and not do more house projects for a few years, but as it turns out, there’s quite the smell of mildew wafting from underneath our kitchen cabinets. There’s no visible mold inside the cabinets, which means it must be either behind or underneath them. Time to rip more cabinets out, (sarcastic) woohoo!

Favorite Photos
I didn’t take a lot of photos this month. I hardly went anywhere, and mentally, I was also very shut-in. So in the end, I only have four favorite photos for May.

Top, left to right: I’ve been taking photos of my 2021 reads for FB and Instagram, and I particularly love how this portrait of What Alice Forgot came out; my Lady Lizard does not appreciate me following her around on her adventures; early May harvest. Bottom: rose given to me at India Oven on Mother’s Day

Full photos – those are cropped quite a bit – are on both FB (album) and Instagram (story highlight).

Highlights of May
Ugh…May. There were days, sometimes a full week, where I didn’t find anything happy or anything to photograph or…whateves. So this is my (fairly short) list of the good bits from May.

  • first harvest of purple and white beans from the garden
  • seeing the HS one-act play, and Laurence getting an award afterwards despite not being an in-person student this year
  • my RLGS pins arrived (very late – I thought they may have gotten lost in the mail!)
  • We already have hummingbirds using the new feeder!
  • hit our family deductible for health insurance early in the month, woohoo!
  • my “Outside With Pride” pin for my hiking bag
  • getting to eat at one of my two favorite restaurants in SA, India Oven, for Mother’s Day
  • an actual in-person 5K! (Pic is Yoli and me sprinting/jumping(ish) at the finish line, ha!)
  • one of the athletic brands I love, RSport, sent an email to their subscribers and included my review/pic as one of their endorsements inside, which I admit was both flattering and surreal!
  • happy to find a good new swimsuit!
  • discovering Britain’s Best Home Cook on Hulu
  • rocking with laughter at a particular best-friends-being-silly account on Tiktok
  • we got a knockoff roomba and while it’s dumb and kinda ridiculous, it does a good enough job and that’s one less thing for me to try to keep up with (it’s a lot, given FIVE CATS – scratch that…four cats now *sobs*)
  • my new haircut, which I really didn’t think was going to come out the first time, because I forgot that I should never, ever cut my hair when it’s wet, but thankfully after it dried I was able to clean it up and make it look awesome
  • finding out there’s a new Mistborn character on Fortnite. I don’t play Fortnite, but still
  • a very kind vet
  • when my mental health was too poor to attend my sister’s graduation in person, I was able to follow a youtube livestream that the school district created specifically for covid reasons, and I’m so grateful that the pandemic gave them that incentive
  • also, my sister gave a really wonderful speech at that graduation
  • my two-year-old nephew, who is in a shy stage, has refused hugs every time I’ve seen him, but at my sister’s graduation party, we began to play a tickle game, and he was laughing a lot, and when my family had to leave, he came right up to me to get picked up into a long hug, and it was the best thing ever

Coming up in June
Surgery tomorrow. Hopefully much better mental health.

(On that note: I’ll be limited to a single hand for awhile. The procedure is supposed to be minor, but I might not be on the blog for bit until I can type again. I don’t have anything pre-drafted. I guess I should’ve planned better. Oh well, heh.)

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All Systems Red, by Martha Wells

Posted on May 31, 2021 by Thistle

From GoodReads: On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. 

This book has the honor of having one of the best opening paragraphs of any book I’ve read in quite some time.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

Ha! I love it.

I don’t read a lot of sci-fi. Fantasy, yes, but science fiction is normally a bit meh for me. Martha Wells did a great job with this one, though. It’s humorous, and her Murderbot narrator is the ultimate introvert who just wants to watch its shows in peace. I laughed all the way through this. Yeah, there’s a story and a plot that’s all happening, but it’s all skewed through the eyes of this robot that wants to avoid interacting with humans at all costs, and that’s just the best. The book is fairly short, and Wells manages to sneak in a lot of themes, from various LGBTQ+ relationships and multi-partner marriages to the treatment of part-human constructs. All of that goes on in the background, making it the opposite of heavy-handed. It was perfect. I’ve already ordered the next five books in the series.

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Sunday Coffee – Rainbow Bridge

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Thistle

(my last photo w/Ash)

TW: Pet death. Not gruesome or anything, just sad, but still, it’s pet death.

On Friday afternoon, our oldest kitty-baby, Ash, crossed the rainbow bridge. If y’all have been around here for some time, you’ll know that Ash has been sick for about 18 months now. It began not long after we moved into our current house. In fact, at first we thought it was just the move that unsettled him. He stopped eating and started withdrawing. He’s done this pretty much at every house we’ve moved to in his lifetime, sick for just a little bit as he adjusts to the new environment. Ash has always been very sensitive to environment, and that has gotten worse as he aged. But after a couple weeks with no improvement, we knew something else was wrong. We took him to the vet.

(Ash & my dad, July 2015)

That first appointment was rough. The vet said that in addition to being severely dehydrated, his skin was jaundiced and she suspected severe liver disease. I wasn’t expecting words like “quality of life” to be passed around. We were sent to a specialty clinic for urgent ultrasound, and they talked about abnormal nodes on his liver and intestines that they wanted to biopsy. I was a mess, freaking out, didn’t know what to tell them because I didn’t want to put him through surgery. Thankfully, his blood numbers were too abnormal to biopsy that day, and when we talked to our primary vet, she said that a biopsy was unnecessary. No matter what the biopsy determined, the treatment was the same. Ash was receiving fluids, his skin had gone pink again, and he’d begun eating. We started on a steroid treatment, which perked him up enormously.

(Jan 2014)

Life for Ash never really returned to normal, though. He was quarantined to his own room where he could be safe, because he’d suddenly lost his position as Alpha of our pack, and Jojo – the new Alpha – would attack him any time they saw each other. Ash was sick, and he needed protection. Of course, he could leave the room whenever he wanted, and we kept an eye on the other cats to make sure they left Ash alone, but it was always very stressful for him. We changed his diet to wet food, in order to keep him hydrated, and began rotating brands because he seemed to tire of particular foods very quickly and would quit eating or start vomiting more than normal (he’s been a particularly high-vomit cat since he was two years old). We bought him special toys, made him different blanket beds in his quarantine room, snuggled him, etc.

(World Cat Day, Aug 2014)

All through 2020, Ash had his ups and downs. I can’t tell you how many vet appointments he went to, and how many different ways he was treated (subcutaneous fluids, antibiotics, probiotics, steroids, painkillers, and so on). We thought we were going to lose him in October last year, but once again, he rallied. He never did gain enough weight back after he began losing in December 2019. As a fairly mid-sized male cat, he was supposed to be around 12 lbs, and never seemed to make it above 11 lbs again, often below that. And by this last month, while he was eating upwards of four cans of food, plus dry food, plus treats, every day, he just kept losing weight. We had another ultrasound that showed much larger nodes, one pressing into his gall bladder. We knew time was short, and we had to make a decision soon.

(the day we decided)

Jason and I don’t believe in letting animals suffer to the end on their own, but it’s hard to make a decision for a creature who can’t directly communicate. You have to read their signs and body language, their behaviors and movements. Ash never did get to the point where he couldn’t, for instance, jump up from floor to the bed in his room. However, for the last few weeks, he spent most of his time tucked away in a dark cabinet on a soft bed. He lost even more weight, and all his bones were visible or touchable. He struggled to go from lying to standing, and vice versa, and it was obvious he was in pain. Of course, he also loved cuddling and spending time with us still, and got very energetic when it came to treats, mewing with a voice that had gone from high-pitched to a croak. It was a hard decision, but we knew it was time.

(last photo, before crossing over)

When the vet saw him, she took one look and knew it was time as well. She said she could tell just how much things had changed in the few weeks since his last ultrasound. We weighed him – he was down to 8.7 lbs. She made us feel better about our decision, that it was the right time and right choice. We chose a box for his ashes, and set to get a ceramic paw print with his name as well. In the days before the appointment, we all said our goodbyes, and two of Ash’s longtime people-friends, Natalie and Stephanie, each came over to spend some time with him as well. He licked Natalie – he almost never grooms anyone, so it’s always special when he does – and he spent 20 mins head-butting Stephanie’s leg and cuddling up next to her. It was almost like he knew as well, and was saying his goodbyes, too.

I’m not going to go into the details of his death. It was peaceful, and Jason and I were both with him, his face cradled in my hands, Jason’s hands on his side. I bawled my eyes out, not for the first time this week, and I’m sure not for the last. The vet said to take as much time as we needed, and we did, leaving only when we were ready and when we knew we needed to go home to comfort Laurence, who had been crying when we left for the vet. (Ambrose wasn’t home. We waited for this until he returned home from cat-sitting at my sister’s house in Dallas so that he could say his goodbyes, but on the day-of, he was at a friend’s house, so hopefully he got some comfort from that. He was very close to Ash.)

(Morrigan w/Ash before going to college, Jan 2020; Ambrose sharing his chair with Ash, Oct 2012; Laurence on National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, Apr 2015)

When we get his ashes and paw print back, we’ll hang the paw print under his painted portrait. Laurence created the portrait at one of those paint-your-pet nights when he was ten years old (left), and it was his idea to hang the paw prints there. His ashes will be buried under the aloe vera in our eventual zen garden, so he can remain with us here.

Ash had a good, long life. He was just on the cusp of being 12 years old, and he’d been with us for all but the first 4-5 months of his life. He’s the cat who taught me to love animals, who as a kitten would wait for me to eat my food before he started eating, who loved to lay on my office chair and would occasionally challenge me for the seat (below), who literally got high if exposed to catnip, who loved feathers and the laser pointer and crinkly paper, and who hated being laughed at. Ash believed he was human, and I think he understood far more than many cats about the world around him. All my kitties have a special place in my heart, but Ash…Ash was an old friend, an old soul, and a very deep rooted love that only comes from years of experience together.

Rest in peace, my darling Ash. June(ish) 2009 to 5/28/21.

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Quarantine Diaries – Weeks 61-63

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Thistle

Not much has changed. We keep marching on, trying to survive under a government that is trying to kill us.

Numbers
Things are holding steady here. We reached a couple major milestones in number over the last few weeks. First, we passed the one-million mark of folks getting their first vaccine dose – 1,034,482 at the end of week 63. That represents 62.3% of the eligible population. A full 48.4% of eligible population, 804,762 folks, are fully vaccinated. Yay! Second, our hospitalizations have been continuously dropping and we’re ending Week 63 with only 135 folks hospitalized. The last time it was this low was in early June last year, as we started building up toward the big spike in July. Woohoo! Weekly numbers:

  • Week 61 (5/7 – 5/13): 220,517 cases, 3,404 deaths, 202 seven-day average, 1.7% positivity rate
  • Week 62 (5/14 – 5/20): 221,603 cases, 3,439 deaths, 138 (!!!) seven-day average, 2.3% positivity rate
  • Week 63 (5/21 – 5/27): 222,760 cases, 3,457 deaths, 126 seven-day average, 1.3% positivity rate

The 2020-2021 school year ends today, so in addition to compiling the numbers from the last three weeks, I’ve compiled all the numbers for the entire year at our local high school. Keep in mind that this is one school in a city with over 500 public schools serving over 333k students. Even with a giant chunk of our school’s student body staying home full time this year, we had a lot of cases. Over the last three weeks, there were a further 10 student cases, and no staff cases reported. That makes a total of 160 student cases, including one death, and 30 staff cases reported to us between late September (~4 weeks after school started since no one was in person at that point and no reports were going out) and yesterday evening. I’ll update those numbers if we get another report tonight, on our last day of school.

Local news
I feel like the title of this section could be “horrible things the TX governor did over the last three weeks.” Gov Abbott is a first class a-hole. Seriously. Since my last post, he:

  1. made the claim that TX’s improvement in the state’s covid numbers is not because we’ve been rapidly vaccinating as many people as possible, but because he opened up all the businesses and removed the mask mandate. Yes, he’s taking credit for what the vaccine is doing. Seriously.
  2. decided to opt TX out of federal pandemic unemployment benefits, despite them costing the state nothing. So all those people out of work due to covid can no longer get federal unemployment benefits because Gov Abbott says they’re just too lazy and need to start working. Literally, he said that.
  3. banned masked mandates in public schools and any government-led facilities (like courtrooms, city fitness centers, libraries, etc). If any school or local government requires masks, they’ll be fined $1000 per incident. This is the same man who, last year, said that no one could be fined for not wearing a mask, because that was none of the government’s business. So…hypocrisy much?

So yes, Gov A-Hole is clearly pumping up for his reelection campaign in 2022, trying to energize his nutty conspiracy theory Trumper base now that it’s semi-safe to do so. He got a lot of criticism last year when he put in a statewide mask mandate in July, so he’s been trying to backpedal as much as possible. ‘Murica! UGH.

He, and other folks, are driving me crazy. The CDC changed its guidelines to say that vaccinated people** no longer need to wear masks, period. It’s become a bit of a joke on social media. Everything is on the honor system, which means that folks who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks will simply lie and not wear them now, spreading their germs everywhere, while fully vaccinated folks are continuing to wear masks because 1) they don’t want to get mistaken for the first category, and 2) they still want to protect the unvaccinated population, especially since we only just got vaccine approval for the 12-15 age group, and nothing for the under-12s yet. That’s my cut-off point. I will continue to wear a mask in public settings until everyone has a chance to be vaccinated. And I’ll probably wear it in places like the grocery store over flu season, because really that just makes good sense. We should have been doing that for years. Japan is WAY ahead of the US on that!

(stock photo)

Back in mid-April, the libraries opened. There were all sorts of rules about it – capacity limits, temperature checks and questionnaires, masks required, etc. After a month, thanks Gov A-Hole, all that went away. I’ve been to the library a few times since then, and mostly everyone is still masking. I do wonder what they’re going to do with all their fancy new equipment that became obsolete after a month. I’m also not sure what’s going on with city pools, which were just starting to open with specific restrictions, and now I’m not sure they’re allowed to have those restrictions. Fiesta – the big party that happens in SA every April but was canceled in 2020 and postponed til June this year – is still going ahead, again with that whole honor system thing, which means my family is giving is a hard pass this year. I mean, we’d do that anyway, because no festival should take place in the day in June in San Antonio, but I hope we don’t end up having trouble because of anti-masking anti-vaxxers.

(library seating is open again!)

Other noteworthy news from the last three weeks:

  • hospitals, specifically labor & delivery units, began letting in more visitors than before
  • one of the metro health employees, Dr Woo, has been wearing her mask even during the evening health report since the beginning, but actually had it off this last week, which was kinda awesome – she followed the strictest of safety measures and only took it off after the CDC said vaccinated people were safe to do so, and that makes me so happy!

**One of J’s coworkers is an antivaxxer health nut (an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one), and he claims this new CDC guideline – which isn’t a law or directive, just a statement of what is/isn’t safe – is discrimination against people who don’t believe in masks or vaccines. My eyes are rolling out of my head so hard right now. These people just want to be oppressed so badly.

On the home-front
Far less news here, but a few fun firsts. My family ate in a restaurant on Mother’s Day. It wasn’t my first time back inside a restaurant, but it was everyone else’s first time in 14 months. I had my first in-person 5K in 14+ months. Ambrose traveled up to cat/house-sit for my sister in Dallas, and we didn’t even worry about the plane because he was vaccinated. Morrigan got his first vaccine up in KS. We had our first D&D session at home with Ambrose’s friend Tyler where no one had to wear masks because everyone was vaccinated. I stayed in a hotel without worrying about the people around me. We actually started planning to have some of Jason’s coworkers over for dinner because everyone in that particular group is also fully vaxxed. Seriously. Get vaccinated, people, and we can ALL start hanging out again!!

Moving forward
My sister’s graduation ceremony is this weekend, and even though technically they can’t require masks now, she’s asked us all to please wear them because she’s not comfortable with the situation otherwise. Happy to oblige, Julia! My portion of the family would’ve done that anyway – graduation ceremonies are crowded, and they’re not longer allowed to limit attendance, either. Again, we will keep wearing masks until kids can be vaccinated. It’s just selfish not to. But other than that, we’re starting to spend time with other people again, moving toward normal life finally, and it’s lovely.

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