Category: Personal

Sunday Stealing, December 18, 2022

My plans for December: 

Already had the office party and a couple of other events. For the rest of December, Season’s Greenings at the U.S. Botanic Garden, New Year’s Eve Game Night party at a friend’s, and not sure what else yet.

How energized I feel at this point in the year: 

VERY. I’m a cold-weather person. Went for a city walk with friends yesterday and the fresh cold air felt glorious.

The best things about the holiday season: 

Seeing friends, viewing all the displays, and all the celebrations.

Something that changed my perspective on life: 

My job. I write about mental health and substance use disorders, and I read and write about trauma a lot. The things people do to one another make it hard to keep the kibosh on my misanthropy.

But also, people, PLEASE, the stigma has got to stop. It is just one more trauma to the people who have mental illness and substance use disorders. No one ASKS to have a mental illness. No one ASKS to have a substance use disorder. If you have never had either of these, please consider yourself fortunate that you do not have the genetic make-up that challenges resiliency. No, I do not want to hear how you experienced trauma in your life and you’re fine. That is not the point. (And not for nothing, but people who say that are usually not fine, as that very statement speaks to a callousness that often springs from past trauma.) Everyone walks a different path. Everyone has a different experience.  Everyone has a different childhood. Everyone has a different level of resiliency. Everyone has a different family history and genetic make-up. The brain is living tissue and it is subject to injury just like anything else in your body.

What I seem to get the most comments about: 

The changes I’ve made to my style:

I’m slowly transitioning to my natural silver hair. Right now my hairdresser does very fine highlights that make me look blonde overall, but slowly but surely, I will be all silver. It will take a few years, as the hair in the back is a dark gray, but I’ll get to all silver eventually. Also, I don’t wear face make-up anymore. Laser treatments are a wonderful addition to my life.

What gets in the way of my success: 

Procrastination and impatience with people who are slow to catch on to the fact that not everyone has to do something the way they would do it.

News sources I trust the most:

Reuters, AP

Fictional characters that would easily fit into my life:

Skeeter Phelan, Andi Sachs, Prince Akeem (Google them if unfamiliar. It is a peeve of mine when people ask me things they can easily type into a search engine and learn for themselves. It will stick better that way, anyway.)

My relationship with spirituality: 

Atheist here, so not big on that.

How I feel when I’m being retrospective: 

Relieved. What’s done is done and what’s in the past is in the past. I often think, “So glad I don’t have to deal with that/him/her anymore.”

My thoughts on AI technology:

It makes hilarious artwork.

The odd/weird things I do when nobody else is around: 

Oh, I don’t hide my weirdness. I let my oddness out into the world. Deal with it.

What I do when I can’t sleep: 

Think about how I can’t sleep. Resent that people with night chronotypes are so judged and maligned.

The winter/holiday season tasks I enjoy: 

I don’t do tasks anymore. I don’t bother with decorating, holiday baking, etc. I used to enjoy making ribbons for gift-wrapping but I don’t really do gift exchanges anymore, either. Just a few friends, and a lot of that is having stuff delivered to them. Gotta say, I love not having a financial hangover in January.

Exposed.

Did you know the CDC has a calculator that tells you what steps to take when you’re
exposed to COVID?  Now you do.

And so do I. One of my cubemates tested positive this morning. He thinks he picked it up over the weekend, but in my opinion, he probably picked it up sooner. It really depends on the variant, but a lot of them don’t show up on a test that quickly. It’s usually five days.

Well, we were both in on Friday and talked a bit, so I consider myself exposed. I feel fine and have had five COVID vaccines, including the bivalent in September, but I went to the CDC website to figure out what I should do because people, have you ever Googled “exposed to covid what to do no symptoms?” So much conflicting guidance. I’m not talking about woo-mongering antivax sites, either. I’m talking about university medical center sites, health systems sites, WebMD (hey, don’t knock it, I used to freelance for them and can tell you the citations requirements are onerous, to say the least), and mainstream media.

I’m following the CDC guidance, which says I should get tested on Thursday, and then again on Saturday. It also says I should mask up in public through Sunday, but as I am sick to death of masking and the weather is largely going to be lousy until Monday, I am staying home barring grocery/CVS/testing runs until then. (“Oh, no! Not the briar patch!” cried the introvert.)

This does throw a wrench into a bunch of plans, but I really don’t want to spread this around and ruin anyone’s holidays should I be infected.

At the risk of tempting fate, as I mentioned in another entry, I have managed to avoid getting it so far. Or, I have managed to avoid it as far as I know, as any time I’ve had even the slightest symptoms, I’ve tested negative. It’s strange, given that I take public transportation and Metro is a Petri dish, but there it is. There are studies to suggest that people who eat a plant-based diet are less likely to contract the virus and less likely to get severe symptoms if they do contract it, regardless of vaccination status. I’d been a pescatarian since 2009, until about a month ago when I went largely vegan, barring mistakes, ignorance, and oddball circumstances. (Never would have thought some brands of plain ol’ vegetable soup use eggs or milk?) I hope I can keep my streak going.

I will say this, because it’s my blog and I can, but no one will ever convince me that this whole pandemic isn’t a direct result of humanity’s exploitation of animals as commodities. I sincerely believe that there would be a LOT more vegetarians and vegans if people only saw the absolutely filthy and abhorrent conditions the animals they eat are born into, live short miserable lives in, and die in. Hint: You wouldn’t be too healthy if you had to stand in one place all day long, shoulder-to-shoulder with your neighbor, sleep on feces- and urine-covere concrete or wire, and eat food with feces, urine, blood, dirt, feathers, and other debris in it, all while being shot up with hormones and fed a diet designed to make you as huge as possible, right? Well, that’s what factory farming is. Never mind cruelty and the environment. Animal farming is just plain dirty and gross, and pathogens love dirty and gross, like the obscenely filthy wet market where the coronavirus that gave us COVID jumped from animal to humans. Hard pass.

Plus, when your baking is vegan, you can lick the spoon and not have to worry about salmonella. It’s the little things.

 

Celebrating (the end of) 2022.

Today Holidailies asks “What do you actually celebrate during the holidays, if anything?”

I’m an atheist, so nothing religious. I celebrate friendship, the achievements of the year, the wonder of winter, and the festive spirit around me. I haven’t put up a tree in 9 years, but when I did, it was a Memory Tree, not a Christmas tree: The ornaments were given to me by my parents or friends, or I bought them on my travels, while out with friends, or as a collector’s item.

This year I’m also celebrating the forthcoming end of 2022, as this was not a particularly fabulous year. It was great up until about April, and then I got hammered with a bunch of health issues, starting with a root canal retreatment after a dentist missed an entire canal a few years ago. But hey, I still haven’t gotten You-Know-What-19, knock on wood and let’s not tempt fate.

The biggest thing is that I’m officially a heart patient, after a scan revealed a 40-60% blockage in a coronary artery. So now I have a cardiologist. He put me on rosuvastatin (Crestor) and wow, my LDL and triglycerides fell into the basement and my HDL is at pre-menopausal levels. The only real side effect I’ve gotten is that if I don’t stay hydrated my spit gets kind of bubbly and frothy, you’re welcome for the image. It also makes me a bit tired, but it’s actually a good thing because when my head hits the pillow, I’m out. Me, a lifelong insomniac. I mean, while the lights are on I’m awake, but once I flip the switch, I get sleepy very quickly. Weird but true.

When I spoke to my cardiologist, I said, “So, what, about 75?” Meaning my lifespan. Hey, next year, when I hit 57, I will have outlived everyone on my father’s side of the family except my father. People on his side all had lousy tickers and died in their early to mid 50s, which is why my internist sent me to a cardiologist in the first place.

Anyway, the cardiologist said, “NINETY-five.”

“I’ll compromise and say 85.”

“No, NINETY-five.”

“Doc, I don’t want to be 95 years old in the United States, for all kinds of reasons.”

And it’s true. I don’t. For one thing, I’m a Gen-Xer. I don’t suffer from the delusion that I’ll ever be able to fully retire. For another, with the American politics, health care system, and treatment of senior seniors being what they are, no. And there is some Alzheimer’s in my family and I want my body to go before my mind.

But let’s not dwell on all of that. Point is, I’m SUPER glad that 2022 is drawing down because I’ve had better years.

And it started so WELL, too, with a fun New Year’s Eve party, some great city-hikes, a day-trip to Richmond, and plans to go to Poland to see my favorite band, Poets of the Fall (which got canceled for a few reasons).

Moving on, as this is a HAPPY occasion…

I did enjoy one thing all year, though: My apartment. After a major misfire with my last place, I’m happy to report that the place I moved into a year ago is PERFECT for me. It’s big, I love the layout, I have two full bathrooms (one of which is pretty much Inigo’s, heh), a separate office, and a spare room that I use as a home gym. I’m near everything—restaurants, nightlife, groceries, drugstore, some retail, most of my health care team, parks, trails, the county library, and a Metro station–but my place isn’t on a main drag. I told the landlord I’m not leaving unless I relocate, retire, expatriate, or expire. It’s perfect for aging in place.

Bonus: There is a great tree right in front of my living room window and all sorts of birds come by. Blue Jays, Sparrows, Chickadees, Northern Mockingbirds, Mourning Doves, American Robins, American Crows, and Fish Crows are the main visitors, but this fall a White-Breasted Nuthatch stopped by, and a Downy Woodpecker spent a few days woodpecking.

Squirrels of assorted hues, including black, also scamper around, and I like to think one of the black ones is the son or daughter of Amica, the black squirrel who used to sit in the tree and watch my TV through the window when I put cartoons on for Inigo. Unfortunately, she died. I found her curled around a fencepost last winter, not long after she passed as her tummy was still warm. Her back legs and hips were broken, so she probably got clipped by a car. I cried for a week and miss her still.

Here she is, as seen through the window, welcoming me when I took measurements of the apartment before I moved in. Whenever I put cartoons on, she would sit in the tree just like that and watch them.

 

I often put peanuts on the balcony railing. In the spring the Crows come for them, but lately the Blue Jays seem to have claimed the territory. I think they know my face and see me from afar because when I went out there today to put the peanuts out, I could have sworn there were no birds in any of the trees nearby, and suddenly a Blue Jay landed in the tree, looked at me, and let out a low series of whistles and soft chirps that sounded a little bit like R2-D2 gargling. Then it let out a few of the more customary and ear-splitting Blue Jay calls and boom, three more flew in. So I said, “Peanuts here! Get yer peanuts here!” and went inside to watch them from the living room. I’ll try to get some photos of them, but they are still a little skittish.

This entry is getting long, so I’ll end it here.