Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Thistle

Mexico, 1950s. Noemí travels out to check up on her newly-married cousin after some strange letters arrived from her at home. She’s “welcomed” into a decrepit old house by a family who believes they are superior to the “local” population because they’re white, European, and old money (despite the money being long gone). Soon, Noemí realizes it’s not just the family her cousin has married into that is wrong. Nightmares, hallucinations, sexual violence, alchemy, curses, and secrets blossom as Noemí is slowly consumed by the house.

This is not your traditional haunted house story. It reads more like a fairy tale than a novel, complete with a narrator who is more archetype than individual, major thematic elements (mushrooms, bees, gold, silver), and a blurring of reality and dreamscape. The book is not like anything I’ve ever read, and I mostly enjoyed it.

There were a few things that I struggled with. First, the early parts of the novel are very heavy-handed. Lots of talk about eugenics, gender roles, etc that feel overly stressed. However, those elements end up taking on different roles as the book went on, so by the end, they felt less like heavy-handed modern-day issues, and more like setup for the story. The first half was also a bit slow, and it took quite awhile until the story really got started. For a long time, it was unclear which direction it would go. Lastly, there are some elements (like the wrist-burns) that never really got addressed, so it just felt like “weird stuff that happened to happen” instead of deliberate.

On the positive side, the fairy tale atmosphere was really well-done. It’s hard to write a novel with a narrator who is archetypical in today’s environment, but Moreno-Garcia pulled it off well. Some of the elements in the book were particularly horrific (like the woman who opens her mouth despite having no mouth), and the horror bits were very unique (never been afraid of a mushroom before…). The blurred line between hallucination, dream, and reality gets so confusing at one point that you keep waiting for Noemí to wake up, and when she doesn’t, it’s so creepy and disturbing and unsettling – it’s perfect as a way to immerse the reader into this nightmare. Lastly, while the solutions and many of the twists were visible from early on, as part of the thematic elements, it never felt as if knowing the twists was a bad thing. You might know what was coming, but not how, and so you ride with the characters step by step as they figure things out.

All in all, for a book that is WAY out of my comfort zone and unlike anything I’ve ever read, I really appreciated it. It may not be my favorite book of all time, but I applaud the author for her work, and definitely want to explore more by her.

PS – That cover is AMAZING.

Posted in 2020, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sunday Coffee – Nightmares

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Thistle

What a week! I already spoke about some of the stuff happening this week (construction, etc), but MAN it ended up being a Week on top of that.

First, let me say that I am NOT cut out for school. A year ago, I decided on a new career path (now that my kids were almost off on their own), and thought that having an end-goal would make school feel meaningful again, instead of pointless. That didn’t turn out to be the case. The decades of nightmares and the screaming in my head should have been a clue. I tried to override that and just deal with it – after all, the classes were incredibly easy and it would only be 18 months before I could graduate and move on to the next thing – but each day got worse. I already discussed the lethargy, depression, and severe downswing in my mental health. On top of that, I began to have a new kind of nightmare every night. Nightmares like watching one of my kids go through a trial for a brutal crime, and realizing that though I couldn’t imagine him doing it, he actually had. Nightmares like being married to a drug dealer who was extremely physically abusive, with no escape, trying each day to simultaneously be perfect, anticipate/defuse his moods, and not look afraid when I spoke to him. Every night was a new nightmare-scape to navigate and survive.

By mid-week, I was in a place where even thinking about school had me in tears. This is not normal depression for me – I tend to go numb rather than weepy – and I knew I had to do something. I spent the week talking with various people about the situation, and at lunch on Wednesday, Jason and I talked things through for like the seventh time. The thing is, yeah I decided to work toward being a librarian last year, but I only chose the career because it was one that felt good rather than like a noose being put around my neck. I’ve never in my life had any idea what I wanted to do as a career, other than dream of being a published author, and wanting to raise a family. That last part has a long history steeped in PTSD, but setting that aside, it boils down to this: I don’t want a career that’s going to define me as a person – I’ve already done that! I want the next phase of my life to be something I enjoy, and on my own terms.

So I’ve let go of the librarian dream.* This is not a path I can walk, not with my nightmares and waking inner voice screaming at me to abandon ship. I put in withdrawal papers. This is the fourth time I’ve tried to go back to school since my kids were born, and the fourth time that I’ve withdrawn. (Not to mention the dozen other times I considered and put off applying.) Unless something really major changes, I plan for it to be the last. School and I were not meant to walk together. And it’s time for me to come up with a new, non-school-based career plan.

A lot of the week was thus filled with school-angst, paperwork, nightmares, depression, and of course construction (carpets on Thursday, scheduling the a/c work, another kitchen cabinet drawer-face falling off, more back and forth with the person working on our deck supports delayed due to rain). But there was another surprise.

Laurence’s wisdom teeth began to erupt without pain back when we traveled to WI at the end of June. But it’s been six weeks since then, and this week he started to get major pain and gum blisters. We took him in to the dentist on Wednesday, and all four of his wisdom teeth are impacted. Sigh. So Laurence needs oral surgery, same as Morrigan did last summer. The problem? Apparently when our employer changed our dental insurance this year, the new insurance doesn’t cover** wisdom teeth removal – even if the teeth are causing problems. We literally had to pay $3200 for the surgery in advance to get the surgery scheduled. Really, WTF is up with dental insurance that doesn’t cover necessary oral surgery?? Health coverage in the US is so f***ed up!

However. Out of the nightmares, good things can emerge, right? They say that children go through periods of nightmares right before they make developmental leaps. While that only applies to literal nightmares, it makes an apt metaphor – eventually the nightmares end, and something new can emerge. This is where I’m ending the week, with (hopefully) good things to come.

*****
*I will be a library volunteer instead, and continue to haunt my local library, my second home, for all the years to come!

**This information came out to us mid-week, but we did some research of our own, and it turned out that the dentist was lying to us!! This kind of surgery IS covered. It’s still going to be expensive, but not nearly to the tune of $3200. We’ve been unable to get ahold of the dentist’s office since making this discovery since they’re only open a few days per week, but we will most definitely be getting a refund!!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Death Notice, by Todd Ritter

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Thistle

The small town of Perry Hollow has never seen a murder before, and its first murder is anything but typical. The body is left on the side of the road in a coffin, semi-embalmed, with pennies on the eyes and stitches closing the mouth. It has the hallmarks of someone practiced, and indeed, the state police come in to help with the investigation due to potential connections to a known serial killer. But there’s another unique aspect to this crime: a death notice faxed to the town paper’s obituary writer, declaring the death before it actually occurs.

For those not in the know, Todd Ritter is the real name of author Riley Sager, and this series, the Kat Campbell series, was published under his real name in the early 2010s. The series – or at least this book – is a combo mystery and crime procedural, and I quite liked it. It has some hallmarks of being an early published novel, but actually not too many, and it reads not dissimilar to Sager’s books if you’ve read them. Perhaps a bit more genre, a bit more formulaic, but not in a bad way. I enjoyed (most) of the characters, thought Ritter brought up many interesting aspects of human nature outside of the mystery, and I never managed to guess the killer correctly. Beyond one character’s bizarre behavior that didn’t seem all that realistic (Deana), and a tiny bit too much gore for my liking, I really enjoyed the read. Not sure if it’s a book that’ll stick with me forever or anything, but I’ll read the rest of the series, and I’m happy that this was the first book I finished for RIP!

Posted in 2020, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Wellness Wednesday – Avalanche

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Thistle

The last few weeks have been difficult. I’m struggling.

1: PTSD. In late August and early September 2014, I went through some of the worst moments of my life. I’ve worked very hard to work through the trauma of those moments, but trauma is persistent, and while I’m much improved over where I was a few years ago, I still struggle. The last few weeks have felt like I’m walking around disconnected from my body (dissociation), unable to process things as if my brain has turned into sludge. I’m having nightmares, insomnia, headaches, disordered eating, and depression so bad that it’s difficult to do basic things like shower. I’m turning down social meetups that I would normally love, and I barely leave my bedroom. Sometimes I CAN’T leave my bedroom. I know this will ease up in a week or so, but in the meantime, I’m really struggling. At least I haven’t binged or self-medicated with anything other than iced coffee…

Note: This morning I woke up NOT feeling like a zombie for the first time in about three weeks. Hopefully this means this part of my current stress is about to ease up!

2: School. Did I mention just how much I hate school? So yeah, I dropped that one class, and the only class I’m in right now is freshman comp. It’s a class I shouldn’t need to take. My biggest struggle is to simplify my thoughts, writing, and analysis down to the level it’s supposed to be for the assignments. Last Thursday, on a day when I’d been up since 4:52am, I spent most of the day crying and agonizing over whether or not to quit. I know this is something I need to do. I know it’s important. But I hate it. HATE. I’m not using the word lightly. I hate everything about university learning. I’m told grad school is better. Maybe that’s true. In the meantime, I have to force myself somehow to get through the rest of these 17 undergrad classes. Or decide on a different path for the next phase of my life. In any case, despite only having one class – and a blow-off one at that, or maybe because of just how blow-off it is – my stress levels on a daily basis are already twice my normal baseline. There’s a constant refrain in the back of my head yelling, “I don’t want to do this!” It’s making every other decision, from what to eat to whether or not I go to sleep on time, feel pointless.

(Have I mentioned that I’ve spent the last 20 years with recurring nightmares about returning to school? They involve signing up for school, getting into classes, despairing over how much I don’t want to take the classes, and then just not going for the rest of the semester, and quitting again like I did the first time. Very few people understand this. All they see is a person who never struggled with school, who got good grades and never had to study, who had no nervousness about taking tests or writing papers, who excelled in all those things, and who loves learning. It makes no sense that I despise school as much as I do. If I could work with a professor one on one in a self-directed learning plan, I’d be the happiest girl in the world. But even the first time I did the whole college thing, I got so tired of taking high school level classes all over again, until I eventually just stopped going to classes whenever attendance wasn’t required. I felt no heartbreak at all when I had to leave to take care of my oldest son.)

3: House. It’s probably not the best time to have the house in complete chaos, not with everything else going on. But chaos it is! On the 28th, the toilet in the master bathroom began to leak sewer gas late in the evening. For the 28th and 29th, we had the bathroom torn apart. It was just one of many things that were needed. To be honest, we got tired of fixing emergencies, and decided to take out a loan to fix all the things that were either about to become emergencies, or that were potentially causing house hazards.

  • Our dishwasher, which had never worked well, stopped cleaning altogether in late August. We ordered a new one, picked it up on the 3rd, and installed on the 3rd/4th.
  • The person who has serviced our a/c faithfully for the last year came out to give us a quote on replacing the entire external and internal a/c units. Both originally came with the house in ’97, and both – especially the outside unit – are on their last legs. The outside unit shudders every time it turns on and off, and it’s leaking water where it didn’t used to. On the bright side, I was expecting our estimate to be around $12k, but our guy says $4500. Work hasn’t begun yet – we want to finish the current work-in-progress – but will start soon.
  • Our house is fully carpeted except bathrooms, kitchen, and dining room. I’m one of the last people alive who actually prefers carpet to hard floors. However, the carpet in this house is AWFUL. Previous occupant was as smoker (enough said), and the cats have been getting sick constantly since we moved in. So over the long weekend, we ripped out the carpets in the hallway and the bedrooms (except mine), and put new flooring down. Tomorrow, new carpet will be put into the master bedroom and living room (assuming it arrives on time, which is now in question re: covid delays). In the meantime, there have been mazes of furniture in rooms where they don’t belong, and concrete subfloors to walk on, construction dust everywhere, and now a garage filled to the brim with old carpet and carpet pad. I’ve also had to pack up every loose item in my room and the living room so that the carpet peeps can do their work.
  • Notably, our deck area is also under construction, though since this is outside, it hasn’t really affected our household much. At some point, it’ll involve us building the new deck (after the company we hired finishes building the posts and supports), and replacing pieces of the wall around the back door (which have been missing/patched since January).

So yeah. Construction chaos on top of financial strain on top of school angst on top of deep-seated PTSD triggers. It is not fun times.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

First Week of School, and a Note on Perspective

Posted on September 7, 2020 by Thistle

Warning: Long.

Today, I begin the second week of this eight-week term at SNHU. I have no plans to do a weekly roundup or anything like that, but since this is my first week at school since leaving UH back in April 2001, I thought it would be a good idea to jot down my thoughts. They basically boil down to:

Why yes, I do still hate academia.

Sigh.

I started with two classes (full time) during this term. One was a blow-off class, English Comp I. I tried to get out of this as I’ve taken so many literature and writing and analysis courses already, but UH made us take this special class that mixed Eng Comp I with a humanities course, and thus it isn’t transferable as anything other than a humanities elective. Yay! In any case, it won’t be difficult, and it’s a good way to ease back into school while becoming familiar with SNHU’s online system.

The second course was Sociology of Social Problems – a sophomore level class that I needed for upper level sociology courses. I was actually interested in this course…until I met the professor. Brief description: elderly ex-military man who spends a lot of time talking about all the cool things he does like fly into hurricanes and motorcycle across the country, who drops random “lol”s into the syllabus, and who copy/pastes his replies to student introductions and project proposals on the discussion boards. This alone made me cringe, but then there came the actual project proposal.

Here’s the thing. I love learning. Like, I would read the sociology textbook for this class for fun. I’d happily read the book, listen to lectures, participate in discussions, do research, write papers, and take tests. But the project for this class is “creative.” We have to pretend that we’ve been given an assignment by government officials that will then justify all the research, writing, and analysis, and then we have to submit a proposal for the fake government official to prove we’ve learned stuff. Oh. God. No. I detest these kinds of assignments. Please just let me learn and prove I’ve learned??

Still, that’s the big project, so I picked out a subject to work with. It needed to be a social problem that could be examined on a local, national, and global level. At least I had the choice of what to study, right? I chose urban food deserts and their effect on health and class. This is a major, current, ongoing, worldwide social problem that many sociologists and epidemiologists are trying to address. It’s something of strong interest to me. I don’t want to write a fake proposal to a fake person, but I’m happy to write about this subject at least. It was something. Until the arrogant prick-fessor responded.

He told me that my topic was too broad and too local (wait, what??), and that I would be unable to study it on a national or global level. Dudes. The man – the SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR – doesn’t know what a food desert is. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised because he literally has NO background in the social sciences, so he’s completely unqualified to teach this class. The guy then told me to choose from a specific list of topics, rather than getting to choose my own. (Notably, he did this for a lot of the female students, while letting male students choose topics NOT from the list, like “victim mentality.”)

I. Am. Done. 

Two days into school, and I want to quit. I’m raging in every bone, snarling at the inadequacy of this professor and the class, and absolutely NOT going to sit through this guy’s “teaching.” I’m f***ing 41 years old, and if I have to go back to college to prove that I already have that base level of education, I’m going to do it on my own terms. I didn’t even bother to respond to that guy. Instead, I wrote to my advisor to drop the class and go part-time for the term. I also told her that when I take this particular course next term, I want a different prof, and as a precaution, that I would like all female profs unless that’s not available. I know there are great male profs out there – Hi, Adam! – but there are too many that fall into that arrogant, self-important, condescending category that I had the misfortune of getting this term. It’ll be easier to avoid the possibility this way.

So now I’m just in one course, one that I could do in my sleep, sure, but at least I won’t spend the next eight weeks seething as I deal with the man my friend Nat termed a “cheese-d*ck.” I remember being a late teen newly in college, and the way I just bowed to whatever I happened to get, never sticking up for myself, never changing schedules or teachers because I didn’t want to be a bother. I remember that girl going on to have a job under a man who made comments like “no offense, but it gets nasty out there” (about my mostly-female region) and “sorry, Amanda, you were off doing that baby thing” (about why I wasn’t invited to the team outing). I remember a girl that didn’t believe in feminism, didn’t think it was necessary or relevant, didn’t think she’d soaked up any of the cultural limitations shoved down women’s throats since infancy.

So much has changed in the 15 years since I became a stay at home mom, and I won’t go back to that timidity or acquiescence. It’s one thing to be civil and get along with folks who are different from you. It’s another thing entirely to sit quietly and just take it when you have complete control over a situation (like when you take a class, and with what professor). Maybe it’s getting older and having no more f**ks to give. Maybe it’s living in a hostile country for the last 15+ years. Maybe it’s standing up against fat-phobia, anti-LGBTQ+ folks, anti-women, and other backwards-thinking movements. Either way, I’ve learned that I have choices, and acquired the ability to use my voice to make them. If the late-in-life college experience has taught me nothing else, at least I know this about myself, right?

PS – Why god why do I need to use MLA or APA style guidelines on one-page baby english comp papers? If it were a social science research paper? Sure. But mini-essays that want 2-3 sentences per prompt?? When the hell else in my life will I ever be required to use MLA style guides? It’s college for college’s sake. Just another reason I despise academia. Can I just quit and go get a crap-paying job and never bother to finish the degree I don’t want anyway? I can’t be a librarian that way, but every day, I get closer to making this decision…

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 3 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Favorite Photos of August

Posted on September 6, 2020 by Thistle

Hello! I hope everyone is doing well.

My photos were quite scarce in August. I hardly went anywhere, and at home I forgot about taking photos much of the time. Many of the photos I chose in my favorites have already been posted on the blog. I’m trying to do better with noticing the world around me in September.

Top left: a particularly colorful dinner. Bottom left: sunset from a burning hot parking lot. Right: Gavroche telling us that it’s time for dinner.

Left to right: me with one of my favorite books of all time; Gavroche sitting in the shower (a weird habit he has after eating his dinner); my daily journals

Top left: Jojo winks at me. Bottom left: wild lilies in our yard. Right: first day of (virtual) school for Laurence.

Left to right: one of the many lizard friends that live around our house; my first ever tasted macaroon; Ambrose matching one of his birthday gifts

As always, the photos in this post were taken by me and are unaltered. They aren’t necessarily good photography – just photos that I like for one reason or another!

PS – For those in the US, I hope you’re having a happy and safe Labor Day weekend!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 2 Comments

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.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 11 Comments

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?

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