• Diaries,  facebook,  slice of life

    Annie’s Retirement Years

    I am now nursing a fourth pet through her end of life…the first three in 2019, 2020, and 2021, all in a row. I guess the thing that strikes me about the death process is how it *is* a process. For two of my animals who took longer to fade (the others were very ill and went quickly in the end), it’s a lot of slow up and down. Good pain days, bad pain days. Sometimes foggier than others.

    It was really hard going through this with my dog Ichabod because he had dementia, too. He mentally slipped away from us quite a while before he actually died. I kept nursing him as long as he was enjoying food, but even petting became uncomfortable for him, and he started having seizures.

    His death was my last relapse on alcohol. It was soooo bad. I abruptly quit nicotine and the mix of grief/withdrawal just sent me straight into clear liquor, and I got my own seizure when I realized that was stupid and stopped abruptly. (Don’t do that.) God, I was an absolute mess that winter. (Don’t feel too bad for me; I am okay, I immediately picked myself up and went to college for a couple semesters. Like I’m super rugged and committed to being gentler with myself.)

    I’ve had two years to chew on the enormity of my feelings about Ichabod’s death, and everything I learned/felt taking care of a canine dementia patient. It was truly just a time of such utter love and grief. Intimacy. Raw loss.

    Little sweet old Annie is taking me back, though. She’s been my obnoxious drooly best friend for sixteen years. This cat, she has never known the word “no” to mean anything. And everything she wants is affection. Human affection, to be clear. When she had more energy, she would not stay out of my face/hands for HOURS, no matter how many times I set her aside, and she has this dreadful drooling thing so it was MESSY.

    Annie’s also a big poo-starter with other cats. I don’t know why, since we watch all our cats closely, we’re literate in body language, we seldom saw actual conflicts between them. But something about Annie was so loathsome to the other cats when she was younger. She was the outsider of the household colony, firmly glued to humans. The sassiest little tortoiseshell with a crispy dragon-baby meow.

    Nowadays she has a Retirement Room. The spare bedroom has everything she needs, and she doesn’t have to compete for resources anymore. Her unpopularity paired with her growing weakness means she gets whatever she wants in a hundred square feet of cat luxury.

    Her body aches so she can’t clean herself well, but I brush her gently with a boar’s hair brush and wipe her greasy face. She has a gigantic tumor on her shoulder we decided not to remove because she’s been fading a while anyway (although I have doubts about this a lot), so I try to wash that and keep it clean too. She gets daily visits from the family. It’s a pretty nice retirement.

    This is one of her low weeks, though. I can see she is more uncomfortable. She loves cuddling, but her mood isn’t as…warm? I can just see the edge to it, and cats don’t really show pain, so she must be feeling it. All the heating pads and cbd in the cat food can only do so much. It is getting cold. I will keep brushing her for now.

    I don’t think I want her to have to stick it out as long as Ichabod did, but it’s a hard choice when she’s still very much mentally Annie.

  • Diaries,  facebook

    Changing, Again – Always

    You know what surprises me about crochet? The way it works muscles I forgot I had.

    It’s improved my grip strength enormously (I think it’s better than when I was heavy lifting—I needed help from straps—and I wasn’t good at rock climbing) and that’s the obvious benefit. I’ve never seen my hands like this. The muscles coming up around my thumbs are so cool!

    But also, crochet works my deltoids a ton. Probably more than any of the standard compound lifts, too. I had to add accessory lifts to get this feeling in my deltoids as a bodybuilder.

    Deltoids are kind of like the muscle caps on the top of your arms, partially controlling the rotation of that complex shoulder joint. Sawing my arms through tight stitches with stiff fabric is *difficult,* and I will do it for *hours* when I’m working on something bulky (a purse, a blanket).

    Even though nothing I’m handling is heavy, I’m watching my arm muscles go crazy and laughing in disbelief like “what??”

    But it also works my chest muscles! I’ve had zero chest development since I quit bodybuilding in early 2020. For me, nothing works like a good chest press, and I just don’t have the stuff around to do that as easily as weighted squats. (Pick something up, squat. You’re done.) So there is only one place that I can be getting aching pectorals from.

    Again, it’s a different kind of development than bodybuilding. It’s less mass, less swelling. I feel like I’m developing *cables* under the skin.

    I am crocheting with a hook, creating fabrics in my hands, and somehow this is also making my body crochet muscle in this whole new fascinating functional way. I have never had a functional hobby in my life. It’s weird learning my body is meant to DO THINGS.

    Most of my core maintenance is actually using a standing desk and picking things up, which also helps my legs a bit. I’m often hauling 40lbs bags of cat litter around, which is nearly the weight of an unweighted Olympic barbell. I pick up and move a lot of plants and heavy water containers.

    Like I’m the chubbiest I’ve ever been, the most body fat no doubt, biggest dress size, but I’m kind of turning into lowkey homesteader farmb0tch strongk? Just DOING THINGS instead of sitting at a computer writing all day? WILD.

  • facebook,  slice of life

    besties

    i hear people describe their spouses as their best friends all the time, but i don’t think they mean it like i do? because my spouse and i are best friends like. relentless mischief makers. second graders who live on the same street. should be supervised by taller adults most of the time kind of best friends.

    we got a halloween decoration with a glass ball on it last week. we realized that it does that thing where it captures sunlight and it gets hot. then we spent an hour in our backyard seeing how much we could set on fire using our new halloween decoration, while our 13yo stood back and said, “i don’t think this is a good idea?”

    today i rickrolled him on the stereo while he was trying to do dishes and he responded by banging the floor under our bedroom with the pole of a broom

    the other day my kid and i built a towering giant with a balloon head and big looming arms and put it on a rolling chair and stuck it in the kitchen so my spouse would be startled by it when he came home from work. and then we left it there so he would forget about it (spouse is very adhd) and get surprised by it every single time he went into the dark kitchen for something later that night. it is SO SATISFYING to hear the “ughghghgh” from the kitchen when it scares him again. (it’s still there.)

    he’s said to me before “our house should look more like a space ship” and my reply was “YES IT SHOULD” and we’ve been putting up like, random cargo nets

    we’re 35/36, for the record. lmao

  • Diaries,  facebook

    lemon, baby

    Behold my MIGHTY LEMON TREE! In summer ‘22, I was gifted a gigundo lemon that I didn’t remember to eat. When I cut it open, I found a seed already germinating. Zut alors! I took that seed and a couple others and put them into tiny cups. I don’t know which survived, but only one survived, and I moved it into a cup in mossy organic substrate. It *exploded* this summer.

    I’ve been trying to prune it in a tree shape (obv the lower leaves need trimming) so it looks like a proper little tree in my kitchen windowsill. Did you know lemon trees wanna stab you? They bite! It’s made me bleed several times from those majestic, citrusy thorns. I think I’m going to turn into citrus at this point, like the werewolf curse, but lemons.

    There is some common street moss in there (like pulled off the side of the road, that’s not actually what it’s called) and a couple little succulent florets so it also looks like a forest in the cup. The grass grows out of the sphagnum moss. I keep trying to pull it out but that shit is ROOTED so now I just mow it with kitchen scissors.

    Yesterday I moved my tree from the McDonald’s cup to a bigger maverick gas station cup. The roots had wrapped all around the bottom of the cup and much of the inside, too. It didn’t stay damp long. Do you know where the soil goes when you’ve had a plant for a while? THE PLANT EATS IT AND TURNS IT INTO MORE PLANT. All these big bushy leaves are like 90% substrate probably. Anyway, they’ve got more substrate now.

    I get to visit with this bad boy in my kitchen every day and it makes me happy, even if I do get bitten a lot.

  • Diaries

    another walk in darkness

    had a really nice walk this morning before sunrise. it was warmish despite being late-October and very dark, pitch black but maybe 45f with barely a breeze. i could actually feel the knots inside my skull coming undone bit by bit. walking through utter darkness in autumn is a purgative act.

    my head’s been messy lately. nothing is meaningfully wrong. i am struggling with isolation. i’m homeschooling, parenting, crocheting, writing, drawing, programming, gardening, and therefore always busy, but almost never leave the house. it is painful somehow.

    i’m far from idle in this idyll, no wordplay intended, but even when i’m doing a lot of really happy fulfilling stuff, it is psychologically difficult to be confined. i am immune compromised. i’ve been socially distanced a long time. haven’t really traveled. just at home, being domestic/artistic.

    it feels like there should be absolutely nothing to complain about, and yet my head gets twisted up in all the ugliest knots anyway unless i actually physically move my body around, go outside, walk, exchange casual greetings with neighbors. I don’t even need that much! but I get so agoraphobic.

    i like walking in the dark. it eases my agoraphobia. i didn’t even wear my glasses. there wasn’t anything to see except some distant street lights. just kept to the sidewalks/paved trails and moved through space, unseen and unseeing, under blurry starlight

    a couple livestock guardian dogs heard me and came to bark at the fence along one part of the trail. they were VERY BIGUNDO SCARY BARKS. but i used my soothing baby voice to say good morning and praise them for being such good guards and then they got quiet and followed me to the end of the farm lol

    i love dogs!!!! they are so good to their goat friends. those goats have nothing to worry about with such great big scary shaggy protectors.

    it is those small moments that break up my day that my soul absolutely *needs* and yet i often find so hard to get ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Diaries,  facebook

    small sources of wisdom

    Ahhhh I miss having little kids. Tonight I sat outside while kids were playing with my youngest, and a couple of the wee ones came over to check me out. One was so tiny I could cry, with his tiny bicycle. Smaller than our pumpkin.

    Apparently the kids think our house is scary. I think we have a bit of a mystique for a couple reasons… My eldest used to play with kids on the street but no longer does (just not interested anymore, kinda grew out of it) so they’ve ascended to myth. youngest seldom goes outside to play. i keep some halloween stuff up year round. big barky dog. black cats in every window. etcetera.

    the kids don’t even know about most of the creepy shit in my house, but they definitely caught our vibe. i love it. i can’t help being sweet with kids tho, i probs ruined my dreams of being the scary neighborhood witch.

    they were sooooo cute, on their bicycles, just climbing over my porch like it belongs to them. no boundaries!!! boogery and wearing very small shoes. then they ran home and weren’t my problem anymore, which is kind of even better than having little kids of my own honestly

    i also always think it’s so funny how neighborhood kids swarm me every time i go outside. i am not sure if it’s Just a Me Thing or if they do this to all grownups but it’s like, they want to hold entire conversations with me, directly. about random kid things like roblox.

    i’m like, this is adorable, but also you’re all frolicking out here to play with each other. go forth. frolic with humans similar in mass and cognitive development to you. (but of course i cannot stop them when they are giving me all their best prison escape tycoon tips)

  • Diaries,  facebook

    tabula rasa

    I think if I ever interviewed for a job again, and they asked me, “What’s your greatest weakness?” It would be, “I get so excited about a particular project that it fills me up and pushes everything out, until suddenly I get excited about another project, and in order to finish the first project I will someday have to collapse sobbing over my work to figure out wtf I was doing, relearn everything, and wrap it up.”

    Just saying, I left the worldbuilding guide to my epic fantasy book unfinished – and I haven’t finished editing the second half of the book, either. I decided to set them aside because I wanted to grow a little before revisiting. But also I got *really* excited about crochet. And then interactive novels.

    I have to fully reread the worldbuilding guide (and realistically the book itself) to finish it off at some point, so I’m going to have to study myself to figure it out, lol. I was just poking around in there again going, “Wow, this is incredible, and incredibly esoteric, I sure Made Some Decisions that I no longer recall.”

    Also I spent a couple days away from my interactive novel because I’ve been going hog over crochet again, PLUS I had to repot/replant a bunch of plants for the shift from summer to winter conditions. Now I’ve come back to code chapter 7, and I’m like, holy crap, what was I doing? Where do I put the autosaves? How do I determine the location of journal entries? Whaaaat monstrous abomination of a logic chain have I crammed into the end of every chapter in order to track character development for a dynamic narrative?

    I spent my twenties furiously writing fiction, and it got hard in the end because it felt too repetitive – like I wasn’t learning anything anymore – like there were no more surprises. Trying to Just Write a Book got to be excruciating because it was understimulating and too easy, as weird as that sounds. I made Mood Management my problem in that case (working even though routine murders me). Now I’ve thrown routine out the window so I can focus on having fun, but oh boy if it doesn’t spawn about a thousand different problems.