Things My Kids Said

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Thistle

Last night, I was reading a really funny story about Steph the Bookworm‘s son Caleb, which I’ll let her tell on her own blog if she chooses. It made me flash back to when my boys were little, and all the silly things they used to say without realizing:

From the song “Instanbul (Not Constantinople),” Laurence would sing, “Even ol’ New York was once New Hamster Dance.”

There was this mound of dirt at the local park when my family lived in Cuba City, WI, and many kids used this mound as a mountain or volcano. We used to call it the volcano, and once, when we told Morrigan we were taking him there, he said, “I don’t want to go to the small-cano! I want to go to the BIG-cano!”

We used to buy cheap-brand country spread, and Ambrose – who spoke late and had a difficult time with sounds for a very long time – told us that the spread was “a koosh ball in the water.” We thought we were misunderstanding him, but eventually he pointed to the photo on the spread and repeated it. Sure enough: koosh ball in the water, to his eyes.

Ambrose was also the one who used to tell people we were growing “Hallelujahs” in our yard. They were calla lilies.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to when Laurence began speaking. He was 13 months old and had been saying random individual words for months (he was very early!), when he popped out with a fully constructed and clearly spoken sentence: “This is a cracker.” He punctuated each syllable with a pat on the place where he wanted us to put some crackers down for a snack. He then proceeded to say “this is a cracker” all the time, only he shortened it to “this is crack” and later just to “crack?” while pointing to various things. So, you know, this got repeated at the doctor’s office, at church, in the grocery store… 😀

Also Laurence, looking at an Apples to Apples card when he was a little earlier: “Who the heck is Saint Bernard?”

For years, Morrigan refused to use the word pilot, instead choosing to use “airplane driver.” He even went as an “airplane driver” at Halloween one year.

Laurence yelling, “No I amn’t!” as his own play on contractions – which I’ve since discovered is actually in use in Ireland, though definitely not in the US.

And one of my favorites, before I leave this for the day. Back in fall 2008, we took our boys out for ice cream and the song “No Rain” came on overhead. When we got home, I decided to show the boys the music video. Laurence didn’t really pay attention. Morrigan kept repeating a few questions over and over without giving anyone a chance to answer. (“Why is she running away? Where is she going?”) But it was really Ambrose’s reaction that I remember clearly. At one point, there’s a close-up of the little bee-girl twirling, and as that came up, Ambrose spoke up spontaneously: “She’s beautiful!” Remember that Ambrose hardly ever spoke, and at this time, he was only six years old. I remember thinking just how lovely it was to be young and free of the trappings of society’s idea of “beautiful.”

There have been many others over the years, but those are the ones that popped to mind this morning. Every day, I look back on my facebook memories, and I’m glad that at one point I started keeping record of all the fun and interesting things my boys said. I’m glad that before then, I had a few years of personal blogging where I kept a record of family stuff, including this sort of thing. Now if only I had some for the years between Morrigan’s birth and when I started said blog in 2008…sigh. I have to rely solely on memory for that!

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Sunday Coffee – Spring Forward

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Thistle

Here we go again! These are my seasonal “bucket list” goals for spring. They start today, the first day of “spring forward” into the wonderful Daylight Savings Time, and go through May 15th for a total of nine weeks. I’ve gone really light on these, with only twelve goals (and some of those are conditional).

(I am SO BAD at drawing people, ha!)

Buy new pajamas: I’ve been wearing my current sets of spring/summer/fall pajamas (which I wear for almost all of winter, too, because it’s just hot here!) for at least three or four years now. It’s really time to replace them!

Try out one of my bellydancing workout videos: I have lots of these (physical and bookmarked online) and I think they’d be fun to do, but I never think to try them! So on the list it goes.

Meet up with an old friend: This is an “only if possible” goal re: covid.

Buy a new alarm clock: I don’t use the alarm on my alarm clock, but I do like being able to see the time at night when I wake up and it’s still dark. My current alarm clock is something like 17/18 years old. It’s falling apart and periodically does weird, possessed things because all the wiring is going bad. But it’s really hard to find a current-day alarm clock with red numbers rather than LED blue (which affects wakefulness).

Listen to the Hamilton soundtrack: I’m probably the last person in the world that has never listened to Hamilton. I’m not really a fan of musicals, but I’m enjoying the new style of them more and more, and I’d like to try this one out. Fingers crossed!

Buy a denim sundress: I love denim dresses and especially sundresses, so I’m going to try hard to find one that fits me this year!

Listen to the Murdoch Mysteries podcast: Given how obsessed with Murdoch Mysteries I’ve been, this one should be easy!

Listen to the Unsolved Mysteries podcast: Ditto! I only found out this existed two weeks ago!

Make something with macrame: My newest obsession!

Reach 175 miles for the year: Beginning at 93 miles – this one will be tough!

Attempt C25K: I got all the way through the program last year and eventually went on to run a full 5K, but since then I’ve lost a lot of fitness and additionally gained a lot of weight, so I’m basically starting all over again. This is an “if my foot/hip/weight will let me” goal.

Finish my YWA backlog: Mostly this is from the Breath program in January, plus a few others.

Here we go!

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Anniversary: The Day the World Exploded

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Thistle

It’s been one year today since covid officially came to San Antonio. Friday the 13th, my son’s 16th birthday, the “last” day of spring break, and the start of an entirely new world. Today, I look back on the weeks that led up to this anniversary.

March 1, 2020: My 41st birthday. That day, I walked a crowded 5K with Jason and Stephanie in the morning, and spent the afternoon with several dozen of my hiking friends at an anniversary potluck. We’d all heard of covid, of course, but other than the evacuees at a local air force base – a situation we were told would be entirely contained and kept away from the SA public – it was a far-away thing that wasn’t really affecting much of daily life at that point.

March 2: You know that whole “it would be contained and kept away from the SA public” thing? An evacuee from Wuhan had been let out of quarantine after two negative tests, though several others were still pending. You know, back when we didn’t know enough about incubation periods and how to test for covid correctly. Further tests came back positive after this woman spent time in SA. North Star Mall shut down for a day to deep clean the entire building. Thankfully, no spread came from this situation, but it was the first real scare in SA.

March 6: The boys left in-person school that afternoon for a week of spring break, not knowing they wouldn’t return to this day. Or ever, in Ambrose’s case, as it was his senior year.

March 8: I went on a six-mile hike with eight other women. At the halfway point, where we stopped at the dinosaur tracks before turning around for the return hike, a couple folks began talking about covid and offering around hand sanitizer. Some people took a squirt. Others, like me, didn’t bother. I think I even remember saying something like “I’m not worried about it.” Little did we know that it would be our last hike for months (or for almost a year, in Stephanie’s case). After the hike, Stephanie and I had an amazing breakfast at Eggspectation, which was so crowded that we had to wait outside for nearly an hour for a table. We really weren’t worried at all yet.

Note: March 8th was my “last good day,” or what my brain internalized as such. When the one-year-pandemic-anniversary posts started going up, it was on this day that I began to grieve. It wasn’t even a day when I was worried about covid yet, but my brain solidified this as The Day. (That link leads to the instagram post where I discussed said grief.)

March 11: The NBA canceled the rest of its season. This is the moment when I realized the enormity of what was coming toward us. Between the 8th and the 11th, we’d had a flurry of news stories and calls and such. Morrigan called from Kansas and was freaked out about the terrible situation in Italy. His school announced that they’d be going online only after spring break (which later turned into “online and no one is allowed to be on campus at all”). Jason was sent to work from home for the rest of the week. But it was the NBA actually canceling the season – not delaying, but canceling – that hit home. That’s when I got nervous. I still didn’t understand just how serious the situation would eventually be, or how long it would last. There have been pandemic/epidemic outbreaks quite often over the last decade or two, and none had touched us directly. As of March 11, we’d had no real problems here in SA. Maybe it would blow over, I thought.

March 12: Laurence and I went to HEB for some mid-week shopping. We knew there wouldn’t be any toilet paper – that insanity had already started – but mostly the store was well-stocked. For the last time in months. Additionally, my cousin remarked that she hoped this “would all blow over” before Jason’s and my planned cruise in May.

March 13th: This was the day that all hell broke loose in San Antonio. Friday the 13th. Our first case of covid in the city, excluding the evacuees at the base. So much changed on this day. The 5K Jason and I were supposed to run on the 14th went from “this is still happening” emails on the 12th to “this has to be canceled” emails on the 13th, due to the gathering limit that was put in place. Siclovia was canceled. Fiesta was moved to November. UIL was delayed. Libraries closed and haven’t been open to the public again since. Symphony cancelled til late April (and eventually beyond). The school announced it would extend spring break for another week while they figured out what to do. Panic-buying (other than toilet paper) began, and Jason ran out to the grocery store to see if he could get anything for our weekly trip before it was all gone (photo of the shelves that day above). He was also told to work from home “for the foreseeable future,” which eventually became “indefinitely.” He has not been in the office again since.

It’s funny to look back on that day now. The last-minute attempt to grocery shop before nothing was left. The fact that we literally went to lunch at Magnolia Pancake Haus for Laurence’s birthday ( <– ), knowing that pretty soon the city was going to shut down restaurants. (It was our last time in a restaurant in months. In the year since, Jason has been in one restaurant while traveling to Kansas to take Morrigan to school, and I’ve been inside three in rural areas after long-distance hikes. And that’s it.) The sudden change at Morrigan’s university that sent all the kids home. All the emails I started getting from companies about reduced hours, or closing stores to go online only, etc. The canceling and postponing of doctor appointments, including the dental crown Jason was supposed to get at the end of March and had to wait until May for. My hands-down most naive statement of 2020? “I canceled my upcoming chiropractor appointment – that can wait until this blows over!” Within a week, I was posting my Quarantine Diaries series, never thinking that here I’d be, still posting it a year later.

The situation had become real, but silly me still thought we’d all lock down and get things under control in a couple weeks, or at worst, months. I didn’t foresee the insanity that is mask-politicizing and covid-is-a-hoax crap, or the lackadaisical, nonexistent, and/or actively harmful response from the government at federal and state levels. Stephanie told me that she thought we’d have to go on rolling lockdowns for the next 18 months to two years until a vaccine could be developed, tested, and distributed, and I was just dumbfounded by the idea. She was right, though – well, she didn’t figure on all the stupidity either, and so thought we’d have periods outside of lockdown rather than just different levels of it. Sigh.

So that was a year ago. Today is my son’s 17th birthday – his second birthday under a global pandemic. (Pic: three-frame dance from a few days ago that we put into a color app, heh.) My middle son, Ambrose, is starting his first job today. The oldest, Morrigan, is up at school in Kansas. I’m grateful that we are all okay. I’ve known friends and family with various severities of covid, and so far, everyone is still here with us. Others have not been so fortunate, and everyone has had to adapt in one way or another. On a personal level, there are a few things that I miss so much that it gives me physical pain to think of them: my local library; in-person 5K events; having my days alone and silent; extended family gatherings; HUGS.

But it wouldn’t be an anniversary post without giving a brief shoutout to those things that have kept me sane over the last year: my hiking group (of course!!); the Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast and the corresponding facebook group, which floods my timeline with all the fun and spooky paranormal memes and gives each day some lighthearted moments; apps like Marco Polo that helped me to stay in (visible) contact with friends and family; the massive increase in digital downloads (both audio and ebook) from the library; the friends who made better masks than we could buy and who provided food and supplies the times when our family had to suddenly lock down completely; running, which gave me purpose for a long part of this year; the local government’s attempts to counteract the horrible state and federal leadership; and the incredible efforts to get vaccines engineered for us all so quickly.

I hope that by this time next year, the world is in better shape, despite the insanity that is “multiple states removing covid precautions way too early right now.” One day I’d love to eat in restaurants without fear again, and to travel, and to go on larger-group hikes, and have potlucks with my friends, and hang out at the cafe, and see movies in theatre, and browse books at the library, and see my extended family for the first time in over a year. I want to hug people, and see smiles from a closer distance than six feet, and take photos with people all clumped together instead of spread out, and never have to rely on Zoom-like programs again. None of us have gone unaffected, but it’s my fervent hope that we all make it through safely to the other side.

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Off Menu, by Nell McShane Wulhart (audio)

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Thistle

Subtitled: The Secret Science of Food & Dining

From GoodReads: “Off Menu is a charming, fun-fact-filled deep dive into the little-known science of food and dining: why we eat what we eat, the nuances of our experience of taste and flavor, and the tiny, easy hacks and tweaks that, when mastered, can make a huge difference in our diets, meals, and relationships with food and drink.”

This is a book about food perceptions and how our experience of eating is influenced by far more than just the taste of food. It runs along the same lines as books I’ve previously read like Real Food, Fake Food and Mindless Eating, and quotes from many other books I’ve either read in part or in whole. (Shows you how many books about food and food history I read, no? Heh.) There is a lot of good information in here – so much, in fact, that I actually wished I had a physical copy at times, because I couldn’t take in everything all at once. Though the audiobook is under six hours, it took me about three weeks to listen to it. There was just SO MUCH in there, and I needed time to process each bit.

For me, the most interesting and poignant lesson had to do with an experiment involving a smoothie mix. I’m going to have to paraphrase this – no physical copy – so I might get some details wrong, but this is the gist. Participants were given two smoothies to drink. One was labeled with words like “rich” and “indulgent,” and had a nutritional label saying that it was over 600 calories. The other had words like “light” and “healthy,” with a label saying it was under 300 calories. In reality, it was the exact same content and the calorie level was somewhere between the two labels. Now, as you might expect, participants reported that the “indulgent” smoothie tasted better than the “light” smoothie. They also said they felt fuller and more satisfied with the first. But here’s where things got interesting: They actually were fuller after drinking the first smoothie. Tests were done to show that their ghrelin levels decreased significantly more and their metabolism ramped up to deal with the expected calorie load.

Their perception of how much they were eating actually affected how their body processed the food. 

You can see the implications, yeah? We talk about calories in vs calories out, and how weight loss happens when you’re in an energy deficit. But what does it mean to be in an energy deficit when your brain can literally adjust your metabolism based on what it thinks it’s eating? No wonder weight loss is such a complicated thing – especially as this is literally only one tiny fragment of the equation??

Now, I don’t want to give anyone the impression that this book is about weight loss. It’s not. It’s research into perceptions of food based on different senses. There are sections about how music in different keys can change how sweet or salty you perceive a dish, and how the color and shape of plates will affect the taste of food, and the incredible market research and development that goes into everything from packaging aroma (did you know that the smell of vanilla ice cream is actually a chemical on the lid because you can’t smell a frozen product?) to the color and font of a brand name. It’s fascinating.

Performance: Katie Schorr did a fine job reading this book, though I do recommend that if you really want to get deep into the science here, or take down tips for better dinner parties, you should get yourself a physical copy. Assuming you can find one, because as far as I can find online, only an audio version exists at this point.

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

Wellness Wednesday – Miscellany

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Thistle

It’s been one of those weeks where so many health/fitness things happened, none of them worth their own post, and I don’t really have much else to say, so here’s a bunch of mini-things.

Endocrinologist: I finally had my specialist appointment with the endocrinologist this week. Specialists can take SOOOOOOO long to get in with! In any case, the doctor agreed that my symptoms didn’t match PCOS, especially given the treatments failing in every single case. She asked me a ton of questions, some of which were really odd (like “What’s your favorite podcast?”). Then she said she wanted to test me for Cushing Syndrome. Essentially this is an overproduction of cortisol over a long period of time, and I can definitely see this as being at the root of the issues I have! At the end of the month, I’m supposed to take a special medication to suppress cortisol and then have blood drawn to see what happens. Then we’ll go from there.

C25K: Last year, I completed the Couch to 5K program (after about five months of work!) and continued to run through the end of July, when I finally ran a full 5K without stopping. While I continued to run afterwards, my training was soon derailed by injury and medication problems that included sudden weight increase. Now, I’m starting over, this time 15 lbs heavier than before. I really want to get my cardio health into better shape, and to keep running as part of my workout routines. I did my first session last week and definitely found it easier than when I started last year, despite the increased weight. (Pic from last year’s C25K)

Massage: I had my first massage since early December and it was ohhhhhhhh. That’s one of my least favorite things to give up when covid numbers rise, and I could definitely tell it had been awhile. There were muscles that were so tight that my masseuse had to use far less pressure than usual, and times when I actually jumped due to a painful spot. I have a bajillion massages saved up from monthly membership fees that I haven’t used in the last year, so I’m setting this to every two weeks for awhile!

Dermatologist: Last week, a thumbprint-sized dark spot appeared on my back between my shoulder blades. I thought it was a bruise at first, but it looked weird from what I could see in the mirror, so Jason took a look. He took a photo and sent it to his parents (a retired PA and nurse), who agreed that it looked unusual and that I should get it checked out. It stuck around for about four days and then just disappeared in pieces, not gradually fading the way you’d expect from a bruise. Thankfully, this was not a specialist that took two months to get an appointment, and I was seen on Monday. Of course, by then the spot was completely gone (at least I had a picture!) and there was little they could tell me. The doc did check me over for any signs of weird skin abnormalities and found nothing, so at least that’s good. Still, it felt like a bit of a waste of time and money. Oh well.

Cyst: Sigh. Okay – so back in January 2020, I very suddenly got a marble-sized rock-hard cyst on my wrist (above). I didn’t know what the heck it was, but I couldn’t even bend my hand 90 degrees without pain, and couldn’t put any pressure on the wrist at all (not even simple pressure like cat/cow position in yoga). I went to my doctor, who said it was a fibrous ganglion cyst and referred me to an orthopedic surgeon. As a specialist, it took months to get an appointment, and I was scheduled for March 9th. A few days before my appointment, the cyst disappeared as suddenly as it arrive. I spoke with the specialist’s office, and they said sometimes this happens, and sometimes it’ll come and go, but they’d keep my referral on file for a year. So my referral expired yesterday, and guess what popped back into existence? Yeah. I don’t need a referral for my insurance, so I just needed to make an appointment, but I’m amused by the irony. Thankfully, because I’m already on the list, I can get in quicker, and am set for the 22nd.

So that’s all the little things that have been going on. I’ve also been experiencing some one-year-later pandemic grief this week, but I discussed that more on FB and Instagram, and I have a post about the anniversary coming later, so I’m not going to go into it here. Suffice to say that its been a wild week, and sometimes self-care looks like tons of medical appointments while drinking too much iced coffee and maybe some retail therapy that you can’t really afford…

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Sunday Coffee – All the Nonfiction

Posted on March 7, 2021 by Thistle

It’s no secret that I haven’t really felt like reading lately. I’ve hardly read a thing since Rhythm of War came out in November, and none of what I have read – with one nonfiction exception – has made much of an impression on me. Over the years, I tend to go through reading moods, where I want to read only classics or only fantasy or only YA or only mysteries etc. Since November, I don’t seem to be interested in anything except nonfiction (hence the one exception).

The thing is, I’m SUPER picky about nonfiction. It takes me forever to get through a title, and half the time, I read part of a book and that’s enough. Most years, only about 10% of my reading comes from nonfiction, sprinkled into the rest of my reads. And the few times that I go on nonfiction kicks, my finished-books and reviews on the blog tend to be few and far between. Like now.

I do have a lot of nonfiction on my to-read list at the moment. (So much that it’s daunting – more nonfic than I usually read in three years!) And yet, I’m interested in adding to it. Even if I only get through a fraction of these, this is my current list:

  • Off Menu by Nell McShane Wulfhart (in progress)
  • Compete to Create by Michael Gervais and Pete Carroll
  • Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science by Robert Sapolsky
  • Coffeeland by Augustine Sedgewick
  • Strong Women Life Each Other Up by Molly Galbraith
  • Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery
  • Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig
  • It Could Be Worse: A Girlfriend’s Guide for Runners who Detest Running by Beth Probst
  • Gut Feelings: The Microbiome and Our Health by Alessio Fasano
  • The Happy Runner: Love the Process, Get Faster, Run Longer by David Roche
  • This is All I Got by Lauren Sandler
  • What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
  • The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
  • Leave Only Footprints by Conor Knighton
  • Becoming Odyssa by Jennifer Pharr Davis
  • Down to Earth: Gardening Wisdom by Monty Don
  • Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
  • Testimony by Mark Chadbourn
  • Understanding Exposure. by Bryan Peterson

What else should I add? Help me make this an even more impossible list! Heh.

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Quarantine Diaries – Weeks 50 and 51

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Thistle

There you go. Texas is about to become a virus hotbed in the next month or two. Rather than continue to hunker down as we get vaccinations distributed, we’re going to make sure another 50K Texans die. Excellent plan, Abbott. See Week 51 below for details if you haven’t heard The News by now.

Week 50 – February 19 to 25
194,736 cases, 2,514 deaths, 7.5% positivity rate (down 2.2%). Hospitals are down to under 500 patients, hurrah! Our local high school only reported 3 student cases this week. Things really do seem to be improving, even if our numbers are still skewed by the city’s shutdown over last week. Speaking of which: Testing was limited last week due to the Snowpocalypse, and went from around 60/70k weekly tests (normal) to about 10k. This has affected the case/death numbers and reporting, and the city won’t put out a rolling average again until there is a full seven days of data. Additionally, the positivity rate was calculated based on the last 2 weeks due to the low testing.

So yes, there is some good news. Hospital numbers have decreased so much that the occupancy levels at certain businesses can increase to 75% again. They were brought down to 50% in mid- to late-December because of our skyrocketing hospital admissions. But with every bit of good news, there’s always that one dummy – and in this case, that dummy is our governor, who told reporters this week that he’s thinking it’s nearly time to end the statewide mask mandate. Even though only 5% of Texans are vaccinated. Even though our numbers are still incredibly high throughout the state, with the only “dip” we’re seeing due to the snow and freezing temps shutting the entire state down for a week or more! I’m glad San Antonio at least has the order that people must wear masks inside businesses, and businesses must require masks to stay open and keep their occupancy certificate!

Another bit of good news: My sister and brother-in-law got their first vaccines this week! Neither of them qualify under the current levels the state is at, but they got on a list for leftover vaccine doses at a nearby pharmacy. One day, they got a call, and both rushed over. Hurrah!

Week 51 – February 26 to March 4
197,497 cases, 2,678 deaths, 329 seven-day rolling average (last reported average, in week 48, was 890!!), 5.6% positivity rate (down 1.9%). With 50K tests taken last week, the positivity rate and rolling average are up to date, which is really good news. Hospitals are also showing good improvement, getting almost down to 350, the lowest it’s been since early November. Also, we had absolutely no cases reported at our local high school this week for the very first time since schools opened to in-person classes back in September. All this is really great news, but it’s not going to last. Because:

For Texas Independence Day on March 2nd – and no, I’ve never even heard of this “holiday” before – Abbott announced that starting on March 10, the statewide mask mandate will no longer be in place, and all businesses – including bars – no longer have any occupancy limits on them. In other words, Texas became the newest contestant in the Hunger Games. Nothing else really matters this week. Yeah, San Antonio moved from “moderate” to “mild” risk, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was approved, and TX is letting all teaching/daycare staff get the vaccines now. But give it a couple weeks, and the cases will be skyrocketing again, and we’ll be rolling in refrigerated morgue trucks soon after that. I swear, if this a$$hole governor gets my husband or kids killed because of his recklessness, I will sue the state of Texas. THIS IS NOT OKAY. And it makes no sense, either. Back in May, he removed local authority to require masks when TX was averaging 5k daily cases, only to have cases skyrocket just like the health authorities predicted. Now, TX is averaging over 7k daily cases, and it’s only that low because all the testing centers were shut down for over a week! I predict that we’ll hit 100,000 deaths in Texas by the end of June if this order goes through. Which looks highly probable.

Per this new order, the city is no longer allowed to have its mask mandate in businesses, so that one safety line is gone. Our school district has said it’ll wait for guidance from the TEA, as if the TEA has ever been concerned with safety during this pandemic – glad my kid is still schooling from home! HEB has said it’s too hard to enforce a mandate in their stores if the governor won’t enforce it statewide, so it’ll require masks for employees and “strongly recommend” them for customers. Businesses have started drawing their lines in the sand, and as much as possible, I’ll be sticking with those siding with safety. –>

And definitely, my family will NOT be going anywhere. Even less than before. No stores, all curbside pickup, and if someone needs to go inside a store, that will be me, because I’m the only one vaccinated. Even then, I’m frickin’ pissed because already this week I spent time in Target and Lowes, and there were people defying the mask order even before the announcement. They say the mask is an IQ test, but it’s not, it’s an a$$hole test. Spot the a$$hole. It’s easy. A toddler could do it.

(I fixed it)

My dad, as a professor, got his first vaccine this week. Hopefully my sister and brother-in-law will be able to do the same, but they’re up in Dallas and I don’t know how the city is applying the rules there. My cousin managed to get an end-of-day vaccine at the UT Health Center. I’m going to see if I can get Jason and the boys onto a pharmacy leftover-shot list, and Jason is set to volunteer at a vaccination site (as volunteers used to get leftover vaccines, so we’ll see?). This is insane.

Moving forward
Time to prepare for the absolute worst lockdown ever. And for more emergency alerts, and the death toll going up, and people shooting each other over masks again, and…

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Recap: Winter Bucket List

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Thistle

Gotta start this post honestly: While I loved my summer and autumn goal challenges, I just wasn’t feeling it for this winter one. It’s likely because I don’t really have dedicated time block to feel “winter” and “spring” the way I do the other two. Plus, this is the time of year when I make my yearly goals and such. So a lot of this fell by the wayside, since a lot of it was quite arbitrary when it drew it up. Shrug. In any case, I split the post below into those goals I completed, partially completed, and didn’t do.

Finished: 14 of 20

Walk/hike a new-to-me park/area: Walked both sides of Hardberger Park, as well as the new land bridge connecting them, on 12/23. Other new-to-me areas include Denman Estate Park (gorgeous!), Lockhart State Park, Inks Lake State Park, and Friedrich Wilderness Park.

(Denman Estate Park)

Fireside night with the fam: Christmas Eve with the family, including some extended family (distantly, with masks).

Finalize my 2021 goals: done 12/27

Support a local/small business: first done 12/27 with Lucky Sew & Sew. Additional small/local businesses used during this time period (and which deserve lots of love!) include Bluebonnet Cafe, Uye Surana, Girlfriend Collective, Milberger’s Nursery, Aphrodite’s Closet, Pesto Ristorante, Knight Watch, and Instant Donuts.

Do a personal tarot reading for 2021: Two of them, actually. One was focused on what I need to know going forward. The other was more time-based (yearly, quarterly, monthly). 12/27

Create a 2021 vision board: done 12/30

KonMari catch-up of my room/clothes: done 1/2

Run the ASPCA 5K: done 1/14 – two weeks later than it was supposed to be done, but better late than never, yeah?

Give blood: donated on 1/26

Walk the wiggly sidewalk: done 1/27

Host a personal (at home, just us) Super Bowl party: chili dogs, queso, chips, cake, booing at Tom Brady because he really needs to just retire and get out now… (ha!) 2/7

Use up 10+ cubes of scented wax: done 2/13

Zero out my podcast backlog: done 2/16 (thank you rolling blackouts!)

Build the wall around the front tree: done 2/22

*****
Partial Completion: 4 of 20

Complete YWA Breath: I’d finished the first 12 days of this when I realized that I just wasn’t into this particular series. I didn’t want to force myself into something purely to reach a goal (though I did continue yoga more generally, because it’s good for me!). In the end, I completed 14 of 30 days.

Update my bucket list: Instead, I decided to make myself a shorter-term bucket list in my 50 x 50 project.

Catch up on backlogged medical appointments (2+): One of those appointments got scheduled in this time, but it’s with a specialist so the appointment itself isn’t until later in March. Another was put on hold until after my April bloodwork. Otherwise, I did no work on this, as I decided to wait until after my covid-vaccines were up to fully working beforehand.

Learn more about photography: Well, yes, I definitely learned a lot about photography during this time, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg and not nearly as much as I would have liked to due to a delay in getting a camera with manual mode. So I’m considering this a partial completion.

(turns out I like to take photos of small details)

*****
Didn’t Do: 2 of 20

Volunteer at the library: This was an “if allowed” goal, but the library has still never opened up to volunteers so I couldn’t complete it.

Read 1+ of the Sanderson drafts I have waiting for me: I started this, but realized that I didn’t want to read early drafts of books I’ve read, with non-canon information that might change the way I thought of these books. As much as I’d love to study the evolution of these books, I like them too much to change them around in my head.

*****
So that’s not too bad, really, for this go-round. I’m going to be more moderate (aka small list) for my spring goals, whenever I get around to drawing those up!

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The Meaning of Life

Posted on March 1, 2021 by Thistle

Ask Siri: What is the meaning of life? And she’ll tell you. (Or, well, she used to. Now she says things like, “If you ask Cruella de Vil, life is all about kidnapping puppies. That’s why we don’t ask her.” But a few years back, if you asked her, she’d answer correctly:

TBH, I’ve never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and likely never will. That particular book was ruined for me well before I had a chance to read it by a lecherous fellow writer in one of my writing groups. *shudder* But still, all this is to say that for the next year, I am the meaning of life.

As in, I turn 42 today.

Ha!

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Sunday Coffee – January/February 2021 Wrap-up

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Thistle

My original intention for 2021 was to do a seasonal wrap-up rather than monthly. I set up a future post where I could keep my notes as the months went along. In January, that was fine…but I got toward mid-February, and the notes piled up, and the post content got longer and longer until it was ridiculous and I began to contemplate breaking it into multiple posts. And then I thought – if I’m planning to break this into multiple posts, what is the point of doing it on a seasonal basis? These monthly wrap-ups have been an easy way to look back at my year and remember all the little things that were going on in my life, and to draft it up three months on means that I’ll disproportionately remember more recent months/happenings and leave the early season behind. I just don’t think that’s going to work for me! I don’t want to cut out any of the things I include in my wrap-ups, I don’t want novel-length posts, and the whole point was to include fewer wrap-up posts (so breaking it into multiple doesn’t help!).

So, what to do? Well, I’m going back to monthly posts, and this will just be a (long) combo post for Jan/Feb. These have not been the easiest months. Covid numbers were higher than they have been all pandemic. Ash suffered through another bout of his illness and was down to around 9 lbs (he should be 12 lbs), spending multiple days/nights at the vet before he finally began eating again. Morrigan returned to Kansas at the end of January. We had a week of Snowpocalypse in February, with around 8-10 inches of snow in San Antonio and multiple water/power outages. Our house was under various bits of construction for all of these months. My health has suffered tremendously and I’ve felt like sh1t for a lot of 2021. Everyone is getting major cabin fever after nearly a year of being stuck inside with each other 24/7.

It’s not as if there weren’t good things – I do include highlights below – but so far 2021 has been a sh1tshow, and I’m giving it major side-eye right now.

Reading
I’ve hardly read a thing during the last two months. Two books in January, neither of which were great, and absolutely nothing in February. There was one Rumi poem that I discovered that I liked (pic at left has the poem transposed on photo I took at Hill Country State Natural Area in 2020), and that was pretty much my favorite read of the year so far. I just haven’t felt the reading vibe since about November. It really doesn’t help that I can’t go browsing at my library. I miss that more than almost anything from pre-pandemic.

Watching
On the other hand, I’ve been obsessed with Murdoch Mysteries, and have watched all 13 seasons available to me since mid-December. I’m not generally a big TV person – for years, the only show that I watched regularly was NCIS – but over the last few years, binge-watching shows like SVU and Murdoch Mysteries has been a saving grace for me. It calms my anxiety for some reason. I’ve spent a lot of the last two months injured, with my left foot swollen and my right hip painful in any position, so a binge-worthy TV show was perfect. Additionally, I saw a few new-to-me movies these last two months (Bill and Ted Face the Music; Mulan), but honestly, I tend to prefer shorter show to watch than movies these days.

(I paused at one point and had this random ad come up perfectly framed!)

Goals
My goals are rather abstract this year, but I’ve made some progress in a few areas: fixing up the house, using more small/local businesses, and learning more about the potential career path I might take (still not ready to discuss publicly). Honestly, I’m not terribly happy about the nebulous goals, and likely I’ll forget them entirely by the end of the year. Already I had to go look them up to even remember what half of them were for this post.

Health
As I said above, my health hasn’t been great in 2021. Until this past October, I’d been maintaining my previous current weight +/- 5 lbs for about four years. Unfortunately, the two months I was on Ozempic injections really f-ed me up, and I gained 15 lbs on that medication. My body is heavier than it has been since 2009, and it isn’t adapting well to the new weight. My left foot/ankle is continually swollen and stiff (see below). My right hip has constant sciatica. My right arm continues to go numb from shoulder-blade to fingertips because of the weight from my breasts. My V02 max has dropped a few points because exercise has gotten harder and harder. In general, my body seems to have weight brackets: Go below a certain weight, and certain symptoms disappear. Go below another weight, and more symptoms disappear. Same with going back up. I’ve crossed the line now where my weight causes random body parts to go numb and my hips to continually hurt, and where exercise is no longer fun but a chore. It’s not pleasant.

(the swelling begins right at where the old break in this foot used to be…)

Other things in health: I had my covid vaccine (both parts) over these months, and my only side effects seemed to come from the second dose – a terrible headache for three days, and ten days of intense, grueling hunger. I’ve also experienced both sugar withdrawal and coffee withdrawal headaches these past months as I try to remove these from my diet more and more, as if my body is under major protest (I don’t blame it!).

Not everything has been negative, though. I walked/ran the ASPCA 5K in January, and the pain I’d been experiencing in the fall with my running had gone, so that was good! I hope to start up with C25K again this spring, if I can get my foot/hip to cooperate. I’m also intensely grateful for getting the covid vaccines and for having as much immunity as currently possible. Ambrose and I donated blood in January. I updated my Wellness Wednesday vision board/button. I have some upcoming trips this fall to look forward to and motivate me to greater fitness. And I made a little personal discovery with regards to mental health, emotional suppression, willpower, stress, and weight issues – summed up in the following quote from my GGS personal coaching program: If you are exhausting your willpower in order to suppress your emotions, you aren’t going to have much willpower left over for the self-care behaviors that are important to you. !!!

Lastly, the best thing in health over the last two months is that I’ve mostly been sleeping amazingly well! I’ve hardly had to use any sleeping medication at all, and most nights I sleep for a good 8-9 hours. Hurrah! As someone who has suffered (medically-diagnosed) chronic severe insomnia since the fall of 2011, this is INCREDIBLE!

House
I wrote a whole post on the details of this (link above), but in general, we got a lot done over this time period, mostly in this last week of February. Since Friday’s post, we’ve finished the first coat of base paint on the back siding, added the additional dirt/etc needed by the vinca wall and nectarine area, bought/planted the additional plants that will help the nectarine grow well, and put the baseboard back on in my bathroom. There is still a lot to get done outside (siding, porch) that we’d planned to do by now, but I’m happy with our progress (and that the inside stuff is done!).

Favorite Photos of January & February
Top two collages below are from January; bottom two are from February. There are non-collage, larger versions of all these photos in albums on both Facebook and Instagram. As always, these photos are taken by me, and are not always the best photos, just my favorites!

Top, left to right: Buddha’s Hand fruit; leftover rain water on my aloe vera plant; sunlight cutting across my chiropractor’s office. Bottom, left to right: bookplates from my favorite author; train bridge on a sunny morning hike; moss at Inks Lake.

Top, left to right: Denman Estate Park; Jojo lying in a sunbeam. Bottom, left to right: creek running through Lockhart State Park; air plants; shadow triumph pose!

Top, left to right: sun through snowy trees at my favorite park; dandelion; demon cat (ha!). Bottom, left to right: blowflower, mini-succulents on display at Lowes, macrame and tiny air plant

Top, left to right: catching snowflakes; a lone snowman looks out over snowy treetops. Bottom, left to right: icy blowflower; sun through snow on a discarded window pane. Note: Snow makes for very awesome and fun photos!

ETA: The problem with posting this with a whole day left in Feb is that I now have another favorite photo to add. Here is a tree tag in a photo that looks straight out of a paranormal horror movie, ha!

Random moments
Since this is two months’ worth of posting, I thought I’d add a section for miscellaneous stuff that hasn’t ended up somewhere else.

  • When doing our taxes, Jason and I totaled everything we spent on home repairs in 2020, and it came out to about $22,000. !!!
  • When Jason put the backing board behind the tiles between our kitchen windows, he carved “666” and a pentagram into it so that potential future home owners could have a fun surprise, ha! –>
  • Jason read out to us one night the best donuts in each state, and one was Holy Donut in Portland, ME. Ambrose and Jason argued over whether or not that’s where we went on our day-trip to Portland in 2015, when Ambrose suddenly said, “I’m sure mom has a picture, she takes pictures of everything.” He was rolling his eyes, but I couldn’t have been more proud in that moment. (Yes, I did have a photo, and yes, it was Holy Donut. Mom wins.)
  • Murdoch Mysteries are normally lighthearted and fun, but one evening, I watched S11 E7 and was just bawling. It was so incredibly sad. I very rarely cry at movies, shows, books, etc unless I’m already in an emotionally fragile place, which wasn’t the case here. It was one of the saddest show episodes I’ve ever seen. Very well done, too.

Highlights
Despite the not-so-greatness of 2021 so far, there have been good moments. Here are the highlights of the last two months:

  • my Hiking Group hoodie arrived
  • HEB had kettlebells for sale (I’ve spent most of the last six months looking for heavier kettlebells)
  • snow! (rare in SA – last time was 2017) (Note: This was snow in January, not the later snow in February. This snow was only a small dusting! And it’s very noteworthy that we had snow twice this year! That’s never happened in time here.)
  • my Secret Santa had a late-arriving gift, which turned out to be signed Brandon Sanderson bookplates !!!!!
  • We got some air plants! (Which later got new blooms!)
  • everything about the inauguration, and HURRAH to Trumpy getting out of there!
  • walking the wiggly sidewalk
  • Jason found a refurbished nice camera with manual mode for me, plus I learned (the basics of) how to use the manual settings!
  • outdoor yoga with friends in the park
  • lovely Galentine’s gifts!
  • While it wasn’t a great time what with power and water outages, it really was awesome seeing snow in SA! And going on snow-hikes at my favorite park!
  • Discovered mini-bottles of wine at Target! I normally don’t buy wine for home because I’m the only one who drinks it and I don’t usually go through a whole bottle before the wine turns. These mini-bottles (not just craptastic sutter homes and cheap brands) are a great solution, and it turns out they are available in three of my favorites: Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, and Chandon Brut!
  • I learned that there is an elephant sanctuary not 1.5 hours away from me!! You can pay a (substantial) cost to spend several hours with the elephants. Dream. Come. True.

Coming up
March is birthday month! My birthday is tomorrow, and there are seven further March birthdays in my family. Several are literally on the same day – which also happens to be the same day as our one-year pandemic anniversary in SA. March 13th – which yes, was a Friday last year. Dun dun dun. Ha! So that’s pretty much all we’re looking at for March. Lots of (virtual) birthdays and the acknowledgement of an entire year stuck at home.

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