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?

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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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Summer Break Quarantine Goals Wrap-up

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Thistle

Back in May, I decided to make a “summer break” set of goals – a bit of irony during a quarantine period where my kids had been home full time since early March and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. This “summer break” lasted for the days that the boys were officially off school for the summer. The dates of the personal challenge thus went from 5/23 to 8/17. I drew the goals out in my sketchbook, and have been coloring them in as I went along. Here’s how the challenge went!

Finished: 15 of 18

In order of completion:

Support a local small business: Mildfire, 5/24. (Also: Salsalitos, Buon Giorno Cafe, Rehoboth Eritrean-Ethiopian Cuisine, Matenga’s Pizzeria, Instant Donuts) (Also, non-local small businesses: Superfit Hero, Lipslut, Vush) – Links out to all these awesome businesses!!

Try a new-to-me fitness or workout: I tried out several, the first of which was boxing on 5/26 – absolutely love it!!

Finish Couch to 5K: ran more than given in the last workout, nonstop, on 5/30

Throw a virtual graduation party for Ambrose: done, 5/31

Print photos for frames and birthday coasters: done, first week of June

Go to a new-to-me location: Medina River Natural Area, 6/14 – and I drove there myself!! Woohoo for beating my biggest agoraphobia fear!

Crochet a bag for my Modern Witch Tarot Deck: I did this on 6/27, but I’ve gotta be honest. I discovered in this process that I really don’t like crocheting anymore. Because the motion in my right arm causes tension/pain in my neck and shoulder blade, I’ve only crocheted a handful of times since 2017. I believe this is the sixth item I’ve made since moving back to Texas three years ago. The bag only took a few hours to make – with distractions in between, like watching a movie – but the entire thing was an exercise in pain. In the end, while the bag looked perfectly fine, I despised it just because of how I felt making it, so I tossed it. It’s good to know – I’ve been slowly paring down my crochet supplies for years now, and I’ll probably still keep a few bare minimums. But this is likely the last time I’ll pick up a hook for a long, long time. If ever.

Finish the Real Life Ghost Stories Patreon backlog: done, early July

Go swimming: I said this could be nixed re: covid, and as it stands, all pools are closed in both areas I lived at this summer. However, I did go kayaking with my family, which involved some falling out of kayaks and swimming in the river (ha!), so this will have to count. Not what I’d intended when I made this list, and I wish I could go swimming for real, but hey. Done 7/18

(photo credit: Emmy)

Complete at 100% my 20-20 in 2020 Goals in June and July: Finished both as of July 28th

Go on four (or more!) dates with Jason: 8/2 – having a month away from home made this take forever! Not to mention all our dates were at home…

Apply to SNHU for the fall semester: done 8/8

Build a cat wall (for scratching!): 8/8 – I’ve wanted to do this for ages and finally we got it on, and on International Cat Day, no less! It looks awesome and includes cardboard, carpet, rough turf scratchy material, foam, three kinds of wood, and a wire to hang cat toys from. Not to mention Jason’s awesome freestyle painting!

Finish my runner’s board (for bibs, medals, motivation, etc): done 8/8 – This is a project that I’ve wanted to do for ages now, but didn’t have all the things I needed to create it. Jason gave me a bunch of the individual items (like hooks) as one of my Christmas gifts, but my original attempt at a board background got inadvertently destroyed by one of my kids, and then the pandemic kept me from acquiring something new. I kept debating with different ideas, shifting around as I saw other runners’ boards, until finally I came to a decision in July. The picture below is the running corner of my bedroom. It has my vision board, my mileage goal, and now my runner’s board with all the bibs I’ve had and medals I’ve earned since the Elf Run 5K in December that started this whole path for me. “Journey before destination” is a nod toward my favorite series, the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Eventually, I’ll get some photos to clip into the mini-clothespins. I absolutely love it!! Can’t wait to get more medals to fill out all those hooks. (Also, those are all finisher medals. I’m too slow for anything else, haha!)

Finish my Yoga With Adriene backlog: Last one done on 8/9. This backlog included roughly 45 sessions going all the way back to April 2019. This is a massive amount of yoga to get through in just under three months, especially with all the other exercise I do. However, since I began using yoga as a dynamic warmup, plus I had a bunch of extra days where yoga was my primary exercise while I was in WI, not only did I get through the backlog, but I kept current through the summer, too!

Those I didn’t finish:

Finish the next phase of xeriscaping the front yard (which includes digging, leveling, and paving a path and seating area): Since I spent a month away from home, this was just not meant to be this summer. Especially once it got into the sweltering months. I’m forwarding this to my fall list!

Start learning Spanish again: With as much as happened this summer, I decided to nix this goal early on as adding an extra daily goal – and learning a language has to be almost daily – was just going to stress me out.

Play Just Dance with the boys: I would have gladly done this, but my boys didn’t seem interested any time I brought this up. This goal was more about them than me, so I let it go.

I really enjoyed this project, and hey, maybe I’ll even make fall-based goals all drawn out to color in again!

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Sunday Coffee – Back to school, for me this time

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Thistle

I despise the University of Houston. I chose to attend there for all the wrong reasons (fear, mostly, which kept me away from the school I really wanted to attend, USC), and I regretted it even before I began. I managed to stick it out for almost four full years, at which point I had to leave to get a job and take care of my six-month-old son. Ever since then, UH has been a plague. They keep putting imaginary fees – sometimes upwards of hundreds of dollars – on my account that I have to pay if I want access to my transcripts. It’s not malicious – they’re just so badly run that none of their departments talk to each other and their systems contradict themselves. I knew this even before I began, when I received an application to the school from the housing department, who told me they couldn’t process my housing application until after I was accepted by UH, even though I’d been accepted for months at that point.

Anyway, I’m not going to go a full round with UH again in this post. I’ve done that enough over the last 12 years of blogging. I hate the school and want nothing more to do with them ever again, but sadly had to interact with them again this week. Once again, there was another hold on my account, with more money to pay even though I’ve had nothing to do with the school in 11 years since my last attempt to get free of them. Ironically, when IT set me up with an online account, it literally said I owed nothing, but I still had to put through a payment of $20 just so they would take the hold off and let my transcripts go through to SNHU. Whatever. I just paid the extortion money, and hopefully I’ll never have to deal with UH again.

I’m going back to school this fall. I’ll be honest: the idea of returning to school is not one that I treasure. The biggest thing my 3.75 years at UH taught me was that I despise university learning. Would I have learned this had I gone to a competent school that didn’t make me feel like I was repeating high school all over again? Unlikely. But that’s what I learned, and in the 20 years since I left, I’ve had recurring nightmares about returning to school that have reinforced the revulsion.

It’s not that I don’t love learning, because I really do! Frankly, if I could GED my way out of undergrad classes and start straight on grad school, I’d look on the whole situation far more favorably. But alas that’s not how this works, and I don’t know how many terms I’m going to have to complete at SNHU before I can get a basic degree and then move on to library school. I’ll find out soon. The application process is complete, and I’ll have the “decision” soon – I’m 99.9% sure I’ll be accepted – and then I can figure out which two classes I’ll take for the first term starting Aug 31st. Hopefully, enough of my 106 completed hours from UH will be able to transfer across to SNHU that I won’t have too many repeats along the way. I’d like to be done with undergrad school ASAP.

So wish me luck. I’m not worried about the classes themselves. Mostly I just need to overcome the revulsion and antagonism and wariness that I feel about classroom learning. Thankfully SNHU is fully asynchronous, so I can learn on my own time and in my own way, which is far more like the self-taught courses I’ve continually given myself over the last 20 years since I left UH anyway. Hopefully, SNHU can help me recover some faith in academia and reawaken the love of school that UH murdered in me.

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