Quarantine Diaries – Weeks 23 – 25

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Thistle

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been well, and that things have been improving in your areas. There’s a lot in this post, as it encompasses three weeks of change and data, so I’ll just say up front (in case you want to skip the rest): things have mostly continued to get better over the last few weeks, though the past few days have seen some worrisome trends. Fingers crossed that it’s a small blip and not the start of something more!

Numbers
When last I posted, the numbers were trending downward in SA. We ended Week 22 with 43,673 cases, a daily average of 248 cases, and 560 total deaths (several hundred more in the verification process). Here is what the last three weeks have brought us:

  • Week 23: 44,641 cases (+968), daily average of 138, 677 deaths (+117)
  • Week 24: 45,811 (+1,170), daily average of 167, 767 deaths (+90) **Note: 205 cases were added this week due to a coding error from Walgreens, with all cases being prior to this week (mostly from July). Taking that into account, actual totals were +965 cases, or 138 daily average (same as previous week)
  • Week 25: 47,070 (+1,259), daily average of 180, 851 deaths (+84)

As you can see, Week 23 continued our downward trend, but we flattened out in Week 24, and increased in Week 25. There may be some reasons for the increase (discussed below), but it’s still worrisome. I would hate for there to be another sudden increase like in June! Also, our death numbers continue to look high, though the majority of them are coming from that verification process and go back as far as early June. It’s still an astonishing overall number, though, and led to Bexar County getting a particular negative distinction (also below).

Every week, the city calculates a number of factors to track our progress with covid. These have continued to mostly improve over the last three weeks. Our positivity rate kept dropping – to 11.3% for week 23, down to 9.9%, then down to 7.8% this week. Our doubling rate shot up to 40 days in weeks 23 and 24, and even further upwards to 65 days this week! Pediatric cases remained steady at 16% for weeks 23 and 24, but haven’t been updated since Aug 24th so I don’t know where they are right now. Hospital trends (pic) have continued to improve, too, down to under 400 people in the hospital and under 100 on ventilators. Notably, though, the last few days show a slight flattening off or increase in ICU numbers, which combined with the increase in daily case numbers this past week, worries me quite a bit. People, behave!! Note: There’s a possibility this is related to a localized outbreak at a drug treatment center, but I’m not sure there are enough cases there to account for the full increase.

August totals
It’s hard to say what the grand totals are for August since so many cases and deaths reported during the month went back all the way to June. However, from a purely numbers perspective, we had 5,638 total cases reported in August, for a daily average of 182 cases, and a total of 460 reported deaths. On the one hand, the cases reported in August is an astounding drop from July’s 28,738 cases (927 daily average). On the other, the deaths reported in August make up 57% of the total deaths reported since mid-March. Of course, most of those deaths go back months, so the number is so skewed that it’s hard to tell what to think. Either way, most of the data for August shows continuous progress back into safer territory.

Local news
So over the last three weeks, things have generally continued on the down-swing, beyond the little bit of ticking up in the past few days. Hopefully said ticking up will get under control quickly and we won’t go through what we went through in June/July. I’m sick of that. If everyone would just minimize their outings, refrain from seeing people outside their houses/support group, and wear their damn masks, we’d be okay. At least the masks are starting to become normalized. Some people are still pulling them below their noses in defiance (Image credit: Philadelphia Inquirer), but it’s better than it used to be. San Antonio has actually dropped from severe risk (July), to high (week 22), to moderate, and now we’re on the borderline between moderate and safe! On this upcoming holiday weekend, all city/county parks will be closed to try to prevent too much gathering outside the home. This worked well over Easter and 4th of July, and we all saw what happened when the city didn’t do this over Memorial Weekend, so it’s good they’re taking this precaution again.

Of course, the big worry is school-related. Next week starts in-person school for many districts, including ours. Laurence is set for virtual-only this semester, but the school itself is letting in five students per classroom. Ironically, those students will be doing virtual school in the classroom since they can’t move from room to room, at least at the middle and high school levels (elementary is different of course). It’s still a potential disaster. Boerne School District, which is just north of SA and which opened weeks ago in defiance of local health orders, was already reporting rapid covid spread within two days of bringing in students. How stupid can you be?? We knew this would happen! Even in our school district, where there have been no students gathered yet, there were eight cases among staff on campus in mid-August, five of which were from local schools that our boys have attended in the past. !!! So glad Laurence will stay virtual!

Unfortunately, I have one major point of negative news to note: Our county has the distinction of the highest per capita death rate in TX’s urban areas (roughly 51 of every 100,000 people). Um, yay? Notably, in the Rio Grande Valley rural areas where covid is out of control, the death rate is more than triple Bexar county’s rate, at 158 of every 100k people. It’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything that this is hitting hardest in areas of high poverty and vulnerable minority populations, like the Rio Grande Valley and other deep south areas. It’s a bit alarming to see how bad things are here, though, especially as we were doing really well on these numbers until June. (Maybe, I guess. Maybe not, given the ongoing verification issue…)

Other points to note:

  • A doctor here is creating a longterm covid recovery facility for patients who are still sick but not sick enough for hospital care, which is becoming increasingly common
  • two more deaths of children/teens in the past three weeks
  • the SA airport is the first in the world to get a LightStrike Robot to combat covid
  • Alamo Drafthouse reopened one of its locations here on Aug 26th!
  • San Antonio helped thousands of hurricane evacuees toward the end of August, and things went fairly well (though we had some trouble with evacuees who wouldn’t wear masks – come to think of it, this may have something to do with the increase in numbers as well!)
  • Scammers have now come out of the woodwork as fake contact tracers, trying to get people to pay them or provide personal data for identity theft.
  • Gordon Hartman, founder of the Morgan’s Wonderland accessible theme park, apparently recovered from covid recently. He’s a major philanthropist in SA and has been on the committee that is helping with economic recovery. As soon as he was able, he donated recovery plasma! His COO at Morgan’s Wonderland also recovered from covid and donated plasma at the same time. (Photo of Hartman above: credit to KTSA)

On the home-front
We’re starting to see life return to a limited and somewhat-altered version of pre-covid life here. With masks becoming normalized, and more businesses both taking precautions and offering different services, it’s been easier and safer to do things we couldn’t before. The economy is still hit badly, of course – I saw some statistics the other day about in-person dining now vs six months ago, even though restaurants are allowed to seat at 50% occupancy – but it feels like the dust is starting to settle for the time being. Over the last three weeks, several things have happened that haven’t happened in the previous almost-six months:

I’ve been to our local grocery store twice, which I hadn’t stepped foot into since March 16th. It now feels safe enough for me to do the shopping, so that I can go in the morning on a weekday when it’s less crowded. Dunkin’ has opened its lobby for in-person orders (though you can’t stay to eat/drink), and so Laurence and I have gone in each week for drinks. The two of us also spent some time out at a thrift store, which we both enjoy, and where I finally found brown boots! I’ve had a masked massage. Jason and I went to Walmart for the first time in months. Morrigan’s girlfriend came over for dinner and some video games, during which time we all kept our distance and wore masks except when eating. Half Price Books has opened up to donations again on certain days, soon to be without an appointment beforehand. Jason and Morrigan ate inside a restaurant up in Kansas when they went up to drop Morrigan at school. (The last time I ate inside a restaurant was March 13th!) I spent some time alone in the house recently for the first time in six months. My boys and I are planning to see a movie at Alamo Drafthouse in the near future, at a less-busy time of day, because they’ve been amazing about supporting their employees during this time.

Of course, not everything feels entirely back to normal. Jason took Morrigan up to school instead of both of us, because the travel was safer with only one parent. The whole family got our flu shots in the last few weeks, far earlier than we normally would, as an extra precaution. Four of us have started virtual classes instead of in-person school. Jason and I both gave blood, which came with free covid antibody tests (we were both negative). One of Jason’s coworkers contracted and recovered from covid. Both of my grandparents have had continued health problems that keep putting them at more and more risk, and they aren’t being as safe as we’d like them to be. I still haven’t seen most of my family since my cousin’s wedding in February. Thank goodness for technology and social media, or I’d feel insane!

Moving forward
I’m honestly not sure what the next little while is going to look like, especially with some uncertainty in our current case trends. I hope so much that we’ll have a vaccine early in the new year. It would be great earlier, but I’m skeptical. Even early 2021 will be a super fast turnaround for vaccine creation! But with the next few months of holidays ahead of us, I can’t help but think about how Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas might look. Probably more Zoom, like my nephew’s birthday party this weekend. As I said above, I’m thankful for technology, but yeah, I’m tired, too. I miss people. I miss not having to worry all the time.

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Wellness Wednesday – The Answer

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Thistle

I’ve spent the last six years searching for answers. WHY did I suddenly start gaining weight in May 2014? WHY has my weight been steady for over three years now, but will not budge downwards no matter what I do? WHY is it that I can eat well and exercise tons and stay morbidly obese? I’ve experimented and researched and theorized. I’ve gone to therapy for mental health issues, improved so many areas of my life, and eliminated one after another potential causes. Over the last few months, I’ve talked a lot about the last hope I had – the correlation between when I started gaining weight, and when my coffee habits changed. Then last week, I had an ah-ha moment that pointed me straight to the answer, the root of this problem. I know what caused the sudden, inexplicable, rapid weight gain of 2014/2015. And I know why it very suddenly stopped, and what has kept me from losing weight since. Maybe I’m wrong, it’s always possible, but I’m 99% sure as it explains everything that has come since then – every symptom, every blood test, every diagnosis.

Factors that led up to this particular ah-ha moment:

  • In 2009, I learned about mindful eating, and then spent all the years since then trying to eat to a level of “no longer hungry” instead of “satisfied”
  • My GGS coaches have been asking me to eat to a level of “satisfied,” and I’ve struggled to retrain myself to eat the slight increase in food
  • On this particular ah-ha day, my coaches asked how I was feeling about this retraining
  • Also on this particular day, Dr. Joshua Wolrich discussed via instagram how/if adding/cutting breakfast contrary to normal habits changes total daily energy consumption, and how it messes with your personal metabolic conditioning

As I responded to my coaches, I had been awake for less than an hour. I was drinking my morning coffee and going through my morning routine. I was also very hungry because I’d slept in a bit later than normal and it was almost time for breakfast, but I was determined not to eat until my morning routine was finished. That’s the moment the ah-ha moment hit. I can’t just come out and say what I realized, because it’s complicated and involves a six-year-long situation. So I’m going to lay this out step by step, and anyone who doesn’t care can skip through to the bottom and then come back to read all this if my conclusions don’t make sense without context.

(pre-gain)

To start: On May 1, 2014, I made significant changes to my diet. I tried to follow the Whole30 plan in an attempt to find any food sensitivities. (This is utter BS, btw, but I didn’t known that then.) One of the changes was a switch to black coffee. I’d only begun drinking coffee in late December 2013, and I drank it with half-and-half and a large scoop of homemade chocolate sauce. The switch to no-cream-no-sugar was a big one. I only lasted about eight days on Whole30 before I gave it up. The next day, I tried to drink my coffee the old way, but found I no longer liked the combination of sugar and coffee. I then began to drink it with just half-and-half. By August that year, I switched to full-on black coffee, and kept it that way until the summer of 2017, when I inexplicably began to crave coffee with cream in it again. I’ve had it with cream (full cream, or half-and-half) ever since then.

(post-gain)

Now, to correlate my weight gain timeline: In May 2014, I’d maintained a healthy weight for almost 18 months. Starting in May, I gained weight steadily through the summer despite no change in calorie-consumption or exercise. In Sept/Oct 2014, I went through the full Whole30 program. During that time, I lost most of the weight that I’d gained over the summer. After the program, I spent several months struggling with weight, going up and down in little bursts. Then late Feb/early March 2015, I began gaining rapidly. I started on a specific antidepressant then, and there’s a possibility that the medication was a factor. However, I got off it in October 2015, and continued to gain – slower but still steady – until early March 2016. At that point, my doctor put me on Metformin for insulin resistance after my PCOS diagnosis. Since then, I’ve maintained my weight. I got off Metformin in the fall of 2017 with no change to my weight. The only other thing to note is that several times since 2017, I cut my coffee down to a single cup per day, and during those times, I was able to consistently lose a small amount of weight.

So – you can see why I suspected coffee as the culprit of weight issues (combined, of course, with the sensitivity to a specific medication). However, the combination of the factors mentioned above led me to make a specific realization: Maybe it’s not the coffee itself that caused the gain. Maybe it was the way in which I used the coffee.

Coffee is an appetite suppressant. It dampens hunger signals. I didn’t notice this when I was drinking the chocolate-coffee, because each cup had about 100-200 calories in it. But I certainly noticed when I began drinking it black, and of course I used that to my advantage! Everyone’s heard the dieting advice that you should drink a glass of water if you get hungry to hold off eating for a while and see if you’re REALLY hungry. Well, it’s not much of a stretch to start doing the same with coffee. Hungry when you wake up? Have a cup of coffee and you can delay breakfast for an hour or two. Hungry before lunch or normal snack time? Use coffee to stave off appetite so you won’t overeat by eating too early! Sounds perfect, yeah? Only…

Responding to hunger and satiety cues was THE MAIN DIETARY PRINCIPLE that I used to lose weight in 2011-2013. That was literally the most important thing, and coffee consumption – when devoid of calories – cut me off from those signals. Not long after we moved to Boston in 2014, I began to get frequent hypoglycemic attacks, usually within half an hour of drinking coffee in the late morning (in an attempt to avoid eating lunch too early). To this day, I get hypoglycemia attacks frequently if I drink too much coffee in a day, or too much in a single setting, particularly if this consumption is coming around a normal mealtime. Out with a friend (pre-covid of course) at a cafe in mid-afternoon? I don’t need a snack, the coffee will hold me over! Until I begin shaking and I realize that if I don’t eat something immediately, I’m going to be very, very sick…

Y’all. I literally gave myself a metabolic disorder by using coffee as an appetite suppressant. 

Ironically, I didn’t even eat fewer calories through this time. My calorie consumption remained steady; I just manipulated those calories to fit into certain times of day. I was afraid of the weight gain, and the more fear, the more tightly I controlled when I could eat, and the more messed up my body got. Blood sugar fluctuations lead to insulin resistance lead to weight gain, fatigue, worsening insomnia, and a whole host of other things. The only times I’ve lost weight in the last six years? 1) During the Whole30 program I completed, which is super low carb and early on in my metabolic disruption, and 2) when I’ve cut back on coffee to one cup per day, thus enabling my ability to better attune to hunger cues. My regain stopped when I began taking a medication to control my insulin resistance, and it didn’t begin again when I stopped taking that medication because there were now some calories (albeit minimal) in my coffee with the re-addition of cream a few months prior.

This is not an easy fix. I can – and have begun to – change my behavior. No coffee before meals, for instance. But the damage came not from the coffee itself, but the metabolic disruption caused by how I used the coffee. The weight gain was collateral damage. And the only way to heal is to first heal my metabolic system. Anyone who has any kind of metabolic syndrome knows just how hard this is.

However, it CAN be done. I did it once before, and now that I know, I can focus on doing it again. It will probably mean another couple years of slow, plodding work that may or may not result in weight loss. Hopefully, though, it will result in better bodily health overall.

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August 2020 in Review

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Thistle

Oh August, how I despise you. Honestly, it wasn’t really too bad this year, but August every year is tough. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always had depression issues in August – perhaps because it’s triple-digit heat most of the month – and those issues were made worse after some trauma in 2014 (now I have PTSD triggers, too!). So there were some definite mental health problems this month, especially toward the end. There was also a lot of stress (see School section below), more house problems (see House), and not as much exercise as I would like (um, did I mention the triple-digit heat?). But it wasn’t all bad, and I was certainly productive this month despite all the obstacles!

Books
I didn’t read very much in August: two rereads, one book that was beautifully written but not terribly memorable (and mostly read in July), and one book I loathed. I also flipped through and read parts of Why We Sleep, hoping to get some good information about insomnia (causes, solutions, etc). While some of the information was interesting, the book was written by a man with clear biases and who spent half the book name-dropping and self-idolizing, making the whole book utterly dismissible. Sigh. Otherwise, I haven’t read much, and my audio-listening has been focused on the daily podcast drop (30 Days of Terror) from Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast.

Goals
So many of my 2020 goals are on hold this year re: covid, but I got a major one completed in August. I applied to SNHU to finish my degree, and started first term yesterday. I have to complete 17 classes to graduate, including some utterly rubbish freshman level courses (English Comp I? Really?). Hopefully I can finish in about 1.5 years, depending on fin aid. Beyond university, the only real new thing I’ve done in terms of goals is to continue my push to run, with a new one-mile PR on Aug 3rd. Of course, it’s been triple digits since then and so running is mostly on hold until we get some relief, but it’s still a fun thing to note!

Health
Interesting developments in health this month. First, I seem to have discovered a mild allergy to peanuts, which was at least partially contributing to my anosmia issue. I have further tests to do – including the possibility of co-existing allergies – but it’s exciting to have even partial answers! Second, Jason and I both gave blood this month, and with our donation came a free covid antibody test. Both tests came back negative, meaning that either we’ve never had covid (would have been asymptomatic if positive), or we had it so far back that the antibodies are no longer around. Probably the former. Third, I got a new Ninja blender this month in order to make more fruit-and-veggie-packed protein smoothies for after lifting weights. Consequently, I’ve had far more produce in my diet, and far more varied produce, because you can do a lot with smoothies! I still eat non-pureed freggies of course, but this has increased my daily average by about two servings. Fourth, and last, I finally figured out what caused the massive weight gain of 2014-2015, and at least intellectually know what steps I need to take to repair the damage to my body (weight loss hopefully-but-not-necessarily being a side effect to said repairs). More on this in its own dedicated post tomorrow.

House
We’ve been hit hard the last two months with necessarily house (and related) repairs. In July, our water heater rusted through and began to leak, so we had to repair that (not to mention disassemble the walls around it to do so), and our chest freezer died and had to be replaced. August continued the trend. My car needed a new alternator (and consequently, a new battery) out of the blue, no warning. Just one day, it wouldn’t start. That was a lot of $$$ we hadn’t expected to shell out. Then just this past week, sewer gas began to leak from the master bathroom. We knew the toilet in there wasn’t level and rocked a little, and planned to replace it eventually, but “eventually” became “immediately.”

Other than the car issue, every single repair we’ve had to make over the last two months has been on an item we knew was old and about to go. We have a list, and our hope was to limp things along as long as possible while we dealt with older debts first. But at the rate that things are toppling, and with interest rates as low as they are right now, we’ve decided to look into a home equity loan. It’ll be another monthly expense, but it’ll allow us to replace several of the major things that we know could go at any time. The a/c system is the big one. It’s likely going to cost around $12k to replace, and both the internal and external units are on their last legs. We flat-out have no way to pay that in an emergency situation, so we want to get ahead of it, even if that means new debt. We’re in the process of obtaining a quote for that, and hope to use the rest of our home equity loan to replace the carpets – which are so old/gross that they’re literally making the cats sick – and the windows (at least the ones that get full sunlight all afternoon, making it an inferno in some rooms over the summer). Wish us luck in September!

School
I haven’t had this section in my monthly wrap-ups before, but school was a major issue of August. Laurence went back to school on the 17th, all virtual, and we’ve put him on the “stay virtual” list for at least the fall semester. Our internet isn’t the best – the choices around here are all smaller speeds because better cables/etc haven’t been installed in this part of the neighborhood – but he’s making it work as much as possible. Morrigan is back up at KU and began his half-virtual classes on the 24th. We have no idea how long that will last, and we can just encourage him to do everything he can to prevent exposure to covid.

Ambrose was also supposed to start his (virtual) classes at a local community college on the 24th, but there were problems with his counselor (first one had a family emergency and left, second one inherited the case load and took days to respond to each inquiry…) and despite a month of attempts to get scheduled, he didn’t have any classes on the 24th. He finally was able to speak to someone on the 26th, and will be in “accelerated” classes starting in October (basically, a semester stuffed into half-a-semester). Last but not least, I began my classes (English Comp I and Sociology of Social Problems) yesterday. Full time at SNHU is two classes per eight-week term, and I have my schedule set for the next few terms.

Highlights of August
With all the stress of this month, here are the few highlights that kept us going in the Gignacery!

  • new one-mile PR on 8/3 of 15:01
  • 30 Days of Terror from Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast!!!
  • we created our cat scratch wall!
  • I have a new runner’s board for medals, bibs, motivation, etc
  • new running shoes
  • the cover of the upcoming Rhythm of War release was revealed!
  • Zooming with Oisin
  • book club first book discussion
  • first time alone in the house since March! Only 90 mins but it was amazing all the same
  • wild lilies popping up in the yard

Coming up in September
Hikes are resuming! With the numbers decreasing and leveling off here, my hiking group feels comfortable opening up small, masked hikes again. I host my first one next week, assuming we’re no longer in a major heat advisory! Now let’s just hope the numbers STAY low so we can keep going rather than having to cancel all of them after two weeks again! Beyond that, September will involve pretending it’s fall outside (maybe a few whiffs or hints of upcoming fall weather?), lots of RIP reading, school stuff, some overdue medical appointments, Halloween decorating, and hopefully planned instead of emergency house-drama!

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Sunday Coffee – R.I.P. XV

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Thistle

This year’s Readers Imbibing Peril reading event (RIP XV) is going to be very informal – just a hashtag used on various media platforms, no official challenge website. I can understand this, as running a reading event can be stressful and time-consuming, and no one needs more of that in their lives right now. However, because I’ve been participating in RIP nearly every year since I began blogging, it feels wrong to skip the introductory blog post, book selections, event details, etc on my own blog. So I’m going to include them here. From past years:

The RIP Challenge runs from September 1st to October 31st and suggests that we read and enjoy books classified as mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror, and supernatural.

There are (were) various levels and subsets of the reading event/challenge, and I always choose Peril the First (4+ books). To be honest, I’ve basically been in RIP-mode all year, since becoming obsessed with ghost story podcasts, so saving up books for this event has been HARD. Still, I have quite a few potential reads on my RIP possibility list this year:

  • One by One by Ruth Ware
  • Twisted by Steve Cavanagh
  • Second Skin by Christian White
  • Henrietta and Eleanor adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Blood Territory by Mark Whittaker
  • Death Notice by Todd Ritter
  • Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas
  • The Whisper Man by Alex North
  • Casting the Runes by MR James
  • The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab
  • Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

I also have a few books on the potential list that may or may not qualify as RIP books (I won’t really know until I read them – unless a fellow reader tells me!):

  • A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne Brown
  • Beyond Strange Lands by David Peterson
  • Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Forest of Souls by Lori Lee
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab

And of course, the season wouldn’t be complete without a few RIP rereads:

  • Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris (I read this every year, plus it’s my September book club selection this year!)
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (because it’s time and it’s been too long)
  • Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater (with a clear head this time)

So what’s on your RIP list this year? Are you participating? Do you enjoy a real autumn where you live?

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Tell Me Lies, by JP Pomare (audio)

Posted on August 28, 2020 by Thistle

This book had it all: an evil villain that was immediately obvious from the very beginning (so obviously it felt like a trick); a narrator who couldn’t spot “obvious” if it bit her nose off and who of course gets obsessed with an obvious patsy; psychology that is completely wrong all throughout the book, including multiple references to possible “multiple personalities” which isn’t even a term used anymore; and an obligatory last-chapter “twist” to shock the reader and use the requisite “women are evil but you’d never suspect them” trope.

Tell me, folks – why did I read this one? Why did I keep listening? Genuine question, because I really don’t know.

At least it was free.

Performance: The audiobook was performed by Aimee Horne, my first experience with her narration. She actually did a pretty good job, which perhaps explains why I didn’t stop listening despite rolling my eyes so hard and so many times that I got a headache.

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Wellness Wednesday – A Blessed 90 Minutes

Posted on August 26, 2020 by Thistle

On Sunday, we began the “fall cleaning” process just a little bit early. In Texas, deep cleaning tends to happen in the fall because no one has been able to open the windows for six months due to heat, and the a/c and fans have been running nonstop for at least that long. Normally, we do our fall cleaning in October, but both Laurence and I got an itch to start culling things last weekend. The family does this periodically – we don’t like things to cluster up. Our last culling process was before our move last Nov/Dec, because we were downsizing from a two-story, 2250-square-foot house into a one-story, 1550-square foot house. Beyond that, I’ve been pretty good about keeping my personal stuff cleared out ever since going through the full KonMari process back in the fall of 2015.

However, it was clearly time for some rejiggering of our stuff. When we downsized, we still kept more than we needed, because we didn’t really know what we’d need in terms of furniture, cooking utensils, school supplies, college prep, etc. We also did an initial setup of furniture in the house that wasn’t necessarily going to be permanent. In fact, things have already moved around in our living room since the initial configuration. And it still feels crowded and misconfigured. Some of that is purely that we need to wait until we have the money for some things we need (decent bookshelves, for instance), and some was due to excess stuff. Hence: culling.

After a couple hours of going through movies, books, and video games, we had four large bags of items to take to Half Price Books. Jason wanted to sell them off right away rather than keep them in our living room for a few days. (Ironically, when he arrived, he found out that we can only sell them by appointment, so we can’t bring them in until tomorrow, anyway.) So on Sunday afternoon, Jason and the boys went off to HPB. Ambrose didn’t want to go, but Laurence did…and I saw my opportunity. I asked Jason to take Ambrose, too.

For a glorious hour and a half, I had the house to myself for the first time since March 6th.

That’s not a lot of time, and I didn’t do much with it. I watched a show, ate a snack, drank some iced coffee, played on my phone. Nothing major. But there were no other people around. After almost six months of never being completely alone, I had those 90 minutes, and appreciated every single one. Especially since they came unexpected and out of the blue. My brain clearly appreciated them – I slept for a full ten hours that night, and got the most restful sleep I can remember in a long time.

Now let’s just hope it isn’t another six months before the next opportunity for total person-quiet!

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Autumn Bucket List 2020!

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Thistle

As it turned out, I liked doing my Summer Break Quarantine Goals in a visual format enough that I decided to do the same for the fall. Got a bit more creative with the layout this time:

There are quite a number of things on here, but that’s because many of them are fun things to do rather than heavy goals to finish. I just really like autumn and all things Halloween and spooky! They’re broken down into general categories, with some crossover: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Clothes, Health/Wellness, and Home/Family.

  • Decorate for Halloween. This includes buying at least one new decoration for our home.
  • Install a ghost circle out on the lawn
  • Dress up for Halloween – preferably a costume that uses a mask!
  • Buy pumpkins! We always forget this until the last minute!
  • Run the Gourdy’s Pumpkin 5K
  • Celebrate Halloween however covid allows this year (get creative!)
  • Decorate for Thanksgiving
  • Celebrate Thanksgiving however covid allows this year
  • Make pumpkin muffins (not pictured)
  • Make traditional Thanksgiving foods if celebrations must be immediate family only
  • Buy brown boots. This has seriously been on my list for three years now and I need to actually get it done this year!
  • Accessorize with a scarf
  • Accessorize one of my beanies
  • Participate in the RIP reading event (not pictured)
  • Host a personal celebration party for the Rhythm of War release in November
  • Use up at least a quarter (13 cubes) of my old wax melts (not pictured)
  • Finish the next phase of xeriscaping the front yard (which includes digging, leveling, and paving a path and seating area)
  • Make hot chocolate
  • Drink coffee outside on a chilly morning
  • Have a family fireside night (not pictured)
  • Prep Christmas cards to minimize rushing post-Thanksgiving
  • Plan and begin buying Christmas gifts (ditto)
  • Donate blood
  • Find a new dentist and get my teeth cleaned
  • VOTE!!
  • Annual women’s exam
  • Run the Dia de los Muertos Night Run 5K

Dates for this go from September 1st to November 27th. Not traditional autumn dates, I know. In my mind, though, fall should start at the beginning of September (regardless of Texas temps), and it ends the day after Thanksgiving (when my family binge-decorates for Christmas).

What’s on your fall to-do or autumn bucket list?

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Sunday Coffee – All of the Books, None of the Reading

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Thistle

Since I’ve gotten back home in late July, I haven’t really been in a reading mood. Again. I couldn’t really say why. I just know that I have so many books hanging around my room (and on my devices) right now and I’m barely picking them up. If I don’t get to it soon, some of these are going to auto-return to my library before I can get through them!

One of them, in fact, already did that. The SAPL library system is under technical changes, so our accounts are inaccessible. I have to access digital books and e-audio through Libby. While Libby is great, the one thing I can’t do is change the length of time that I can keep an e-audiobook. Normally, these are three-week holds, but in the past I’ve put them to seven days (the shortest available) because I download the files and add them onto my phone, then just delete when I’m done. This way I can listen on my own time. (I don’t feel bad about the licensing issues. The librarians are well aware that I do this – as well as many other patrons – and as long as we are deleting them files rather than keeping them, it doesn’t really matter if we listen when our hold happens to come in or save for when we’re in the right mood!) Anyway, this isn’t something I can do with Libby, and my access time is at that truncated seven days, so I lost one book before I’d gotten even two hours into it…

Anyway. Setting that one fail aside, here is what I have sitting around that I need to finish up soon or risk repeating the hold-waiting-list cycle. Digital downloads:

  • A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage – this is actually the one I had returned on audio form. I have the ebook copy as well, and as of today, 11 days left to read it.
  • The Near Witch by VE Schwab – I didn’t expect this one to come in so soon and was hoping to read it during RIP season. It’s due in 8 days, though, so I either need to return it and put it back on hold, or just miss out on the RIP window.
  • Why We Sleep by Mathew Walker – This is due now in 10 days, but I’ve literally been reading it for 12 days and I’m only 20% in. Sigh.
  • A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne Brown – At least this one only came in two days ago, so I have a bit of time left to read after the rest of them expire…

I have no idea how I’ll get through all of these if I’m reading maybe three to five pages a night…

Then there are the physical books:

  • How to Take Awesome Photos of Cats by Andrew Marttila – To be fair, I doubt I’ll read this one in its entirety. I just like cats and photography pointers. But I haven’t even opened the pages, not even to look at the cat photos inside…
  • Death Notice by Todd Ritter – This is another one I wanted for RIP and had to check out too early. With the library system shutting down for several weeks, all holds had to be in early in the month, or wait until later this week. So I’ve had this one too long, and it may just need to be put on the hold list again.
  • The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson – This is my one non-library book, a BotM selection that so far (a bit over 100 pages in) is good, but my brain is moving too slow and plodding to get as much from it as I’d like. I feel like I should set it aside for several months and try again, but I also feel too book-lazy to start it all over again.

Aaaand then there is the backlog of audiobooks waiting for me:

  • Gideon the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir
  • The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water – Zen Cho
  • Second Skin – Christian White
  • History of Bourbon – Ken Albala
  • Beyond Strange Lands – David Peterson and Simon Taylor
  • Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling
  • Our Harlem – Marcus Samnuelsson
  • Tell Me Lies – JP Pomare
  • Blood Territory – Mark Whittaker

I don’t know if all of those will even get read, but I can’t even get myself motivated to test them out and cull them if I don’t like them. Nor do I seem to have any motivation to listen to my upcoming rereads: Words of Radiance, Gentlemen & Players (for my book club!), Oathbringer.

The only thing I want to listen to these days is the RLGS Podcast, and I’d rather watch crap TV than read a book. (Unless it’s the preview chapters for the upcoming Rhythm of War November release, because that’s about the ONLY book on my mind and it trumps all other things.) Other than the little “I feel like reading!” blip in July, I’ve felt this way since mid-February. A month before the pandemic hit home. I’m not sure what’s going on with my reading mojo this year.

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Into the land of the unknown he goes…

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Thistle

Supposedly, KU still plans to open to students for fall. Morrigan has an appointment to move into his dorm tomorrow morning. He and Jason left for Kansas just a bit ago. There are all sorts of measures supposedly in place on campus – temperature tests, a couple free masks and hand sanitizer for students, rules about who is/isn’t supposed to wear masks when/where. But this is college, folks. How many college kids do you know who are fussed about those sorts of things? Even if Morrigan – and his roommate, who is his longtime best friend – obey all the rules, and of course it’s not guaranteed in any way that they will, what happens if the other two guys in their dorm suite don’t? Then there’s Morrigan’s dining hall job, and the classes that are half-online, half in-person. This feels like an impending disaster, especially as I watch universities topple all across the country from the failed experiment of bringing kids back on campus. Will Jason or I be traveling up to Kansas again in a week or two to bring him back home, again?

Just questions that plague a mother at 5am on the morning that her oldest goes off into the unknown.

Morrigan hasn’t yet had the benefit of a normal college experience. His first semester last fall was put on hold due to scholarship/money issues, and he joined the navy instead. When he was medically discharged from the navy not long after he left, he decided to go back to school in the spring. That lasted, oh, less than two months before a pandemic sent all the kids back home for the rest of the semester? My oldest has yet to figure out the ins and outs of adult responsibilities, like many kids his age. He’s terrible with time management, self-discipline, saving money, remembering appointments/projects, and procrastination. This disrupted schooling is not helping the situation. Morrigan has all the normal lessons of adulthood to learn, and they’ll be hard enough for him to learn in a typical environment, much less this clusterf***. And as a mom, all I can do is offer an ear to listen and advice he won’t take and a plea to the universe to keep him and those around him safe.

It’s been a stressful week. On top of getting Morrigan ready for his trip, Laurence began virtual school on Monday. That was absolutely the disaster we anticipated. The school district’s website crashed several hours before the kids were supposed to log in, because somehow the district thought that their page, which gets very few hits on average, could handle thousands and thousands of students/parents all trying to use it at once. It’s mostly gotten ironed out now, and Laurence has changed a few of his classes, and hopefully things will go more smoothly over the next few weeks. Who knows what’ll happen once there’s a combination of online and in-person classes going on simultaneously.

And it gets better! Ambrose is supposed to start college on Monday like Morrigan does. His school is local, and most of their classes will be fully online. Because of this, Ambrose canceled his apartment contract as he says there’s no point in paying for housing just to be in online classes full time. He’s not happy about the online bit as he HATES online learning. Ambrose learns through listening and observing and doing, and doesn’t learn through reading or writing. He’s always been that way, and it makes online school tough for him. In either case, we have no idea whether his classes will be online or not, because his counselors can’t get it together enough to help him finish the process of enrolling. He’s been given one task after another to complete before he can choose classes, and each time he does, it takes ages for someone to get back to him. I don’t blame the counselors as I’m sure they’re overwhelmed and overworked at the moment, but it’s literally the last business day before classes begin and Ambrose isn’t yet enrolled. Sigh.

Then there’s my situation. I did get my acceptance letter from SNHU this week, and classes start on the 31st. It looks like at this point, I’ll need 17 classes to finish school, or about 1.5 years. That’s about as good as it can get, I think. But I’m frustrated about one thing and hope that I can get it addressed – I’ve been given transfer credit for upper level math, english, and history classes, but not for the lower level prereqs for those classes. So apparently I’m stuck taking english comp 1 and 2, and whatever 100-level math is (algebra? pre-cal?). But if I have to take baby classes, at least they shouldn’t take too much of my time. I just hope I can make a case for exempting them or something, because omg talk about redoing high school all over again…this is why I wish I could just GED my way out of undergrad school, or at least through associates level so all those basic classes that I’ve already finished will be gone.

Sorry to ramble. I’ve been up since 5:20 with anxiety about this trip to KS and all the hanging school stuff and the frustrating covid situation and…yeah.

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Wellness Wednesday – Peanuts

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Thistle

One night during the month we were in Wisconsin, I began to have a weird physical sensation, like someone was pressing a finger down on my throat where my neck meets my breastbone. Every time I swallowed, I met resistance in that spot. Drinking water didn’t diminish the sensation, so I began to wonder if it was a very light throat-tightening/closing like you can get with an allergic reaction. Except that as far as I’m aware, I don’t have any allergies that cause this kind of throat-tightening, and I hadn’t been exposed to anything unusual. But this is me, and I cataloged all the things that I’d eaten that day, particular at dinner (since that’s when the sensation started). It was all very normal-for-me stuff: rice, chicken, soy sauce, vinegar, chopped peanuts, stir-fried veggies, oil. The only thing in that list that isn’t par for the course for me was soy sauce, just because I’m not the biggest fan. But I eat a lot of other things that have soy. Conclusion: It couldn’t have been the food, and was probably just a fluke sensation anyway.

Fast forward to August 9th. I made a protein shake that day, experimenting with veggies. I’d been told that raw broccoli has no taste in smoothies, but I wasn’t sure I believed that (especially with my super-taster gene). (Side note: It was a lie – broccoli most definitely has a strong taste in smoothies.) My smoothie consisted of protein powder, spinach, broccoli, various frozen fruits, water, and a spoonful of peanut butter. Peanut butter has long been my go-to for masking flavors. The protein powder I currently use has a mild, pleasant taste, but many protein powders have terrible aftertastes, and peanut butter is a common masker for those aftertastes. I’d hoped that the pb could also mask the taste of broccoli if it indeed had a taste. End result: I drank about 2/3rds of the smoothie before I couldn’t handle the overwhelming broccoli flavor. Failed experiment. Except.

Half an hour later, that finger on my throat returned.

The only ingredient in common between the two meals preceding the Finger was peanuts. I was skeptical. While I’m not a huge peanut fan, it makes up a fairly frequent part of my diet. I grew up on pb&j sandwiches. I often eat peanut butter Puffins for breakfast. My Kind grain bars are peanut butter chocolate chunk, and most of my Go Macro protein bars have pb in them. I use natural pb on bananas and apples, and periodically spread it on bagels. I enjoy meals like mafé and peanut-crusted chicken, and as I said, pb was a main ingredient in my protein shakes until discovering my current whey powder 1.5 years ago. You’d think that if I had a problem with peanuts, I’d know by now. Peanut allergies are quite well known, and I’ve never had an anaphylactic reaction of any kind.

But there was that finger on my throat, and peanuts were the only common ingredient between the two meals. I started looking into the possibility of peanut allergy, just in case, and I was surprised by what I found. Things I hadn’t known, sourced from Mayo and NIH and other health organizations and hospitals:

  • most peanut allergies are mild, not the severe anaphylactic kind
  • mild peanut allergies usually present as skin problems – eczema and hives
  • one of the best predictors of someone having a peanut allergy is early onset eczema (as in, eczema in infancy)

I was astonished. Yeah, I first had eczema when I was only a couple months old, and it has plagued me throughout my life. I have to keep heavy steroid creams like Clobetasol around to use on fingers, palms, arms, back, toes, feet, and thighs. Non-steroidal and light-steroid eczema treatments don’t cut it. And I’ve had off-and-on hives ever since I was 12.

There has only ever been one period in my life when I didn’t have any exposure to peanuts. Back in Sept/Oct 2014, I did that Whole30 program, and all legumes including peanuts were on the no-no list. When I got off Whole30 and began reintroducing foods, I didn’t do a good job of going slowly, and frankly, never suspected peanuts as being a problem because of my long exposure to them with no anaphylactic symptoms. Within a few days of eating a few off-plan foods, I’d broken out in hives and my fingers were swollen and itchy with eczema. I didn’t know what caused it, but 100% didn’t even consider the possibility of peanuts. Ironically, the few times I tried to follow a mostly-paleo/Whole30 plan over the few years after this, one of the few exceptions I made was to allow natural, unsweetened peanut butter. I’m not a fan of almond butter, and pecan butter (which I used the first time) is extremely expensive and hard to find. I never had the same kind of success with those attempts as I did the first round of W30.

Starting August 10th, I eliminated peanuts from my diet. It didn’t take much – no pb Puffins, no natural pb, no Kind or Go Macro bars with pb, no meals that involved peanuts. On the 9th, my fingers and thigh were both covered in flared eczema. By the 13th, with no use of my steroid cream, all the eczema was under control. I could feel where it sat on the skin, but it wasn’t painful, itchy, red, or swollen. On several days, a couple tiny spots on my fingers flared up – dry and mildly itchy, but not red/painful/swollen – making me wonder if something I ate had trace amounts of peanuts in it, or if all this is coincidence and peanuts aren’t actually the cause of the skin issues. Each time, the mild flare would disappear quickly without any medication. Today, after nine days avoiding peanuts, my fingers are almost clear and haven’t had any major itching in all that time.

Now here is something truly bizarre and potentially wonderful: On Monday, we had a lunch mishap that turned into the need to grab fast food. Jason grabbed a fish sandwich for me, but he forgot to ask them not to use tartar sauce. Until a few years ago, I loved tartar sauce, but since my anosmia got my tastes all distorted in 2018, I haven’t been able to eat anything with onion in it, as it all tastes like rotten onions. In fact, a month ago when we were in WI, my MIL bought McDonald’s for lunch one day, and got me a fish sandwich there. She didn’t know about the tartar sauce, and I had to scrape it off because it smelled like death. On Monday, the tartar sauce didn’t smell like death. It smelled almost normal, and tasted almost normal, too. !!! I haven’t had a chance to fully test whether the anosmia is gone as we do not keep onions in the house any longer, but I did find a fajita spice mix in our spice cabinet with onion powder as one of the main ingredients. Several deep sniffs of the stuff had no rotten smell at all. I will be astonished if I discover that for almost three full years I’ve had anosmia/dysosmia due to a mild peanut allergy. Holy wow.

There are a few more trends I’ve noticed, but I’m as of yet unsure they’re related, so I’ll keep mum about them for now. I plan to keep peanuts out of my diet for at least a month or so, perhaps longer, to really see the longterm results. I know that at some point I should reintroduce them and check the results from that, but frankly, I’m not looking forward to a potential hive-and-eczema outbreak, so I might just skip that portion and avoid peanuts from now on if it turns out that my skin issues stay cleared up!!

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