Posted 1/27/24 at 9pm.

Day One of my new weed-free life went well. I pined for my vape several times but got over it quickly. I have no appetite, I still felt stoned all morning, and now I’m getting that weird empty feeling. That’s all fine.

My weirdest symptom of withdrawing from cannabis: My gag reflex is back, and it’s more sensitive than I’ve ever experienced.

I did not discover that by doing the thing you’re thinking about. But go ahead and think that I did, because it’s much funnier.

Posted 1/28/24 at 8am.

My vet told us that if you see a pitbull with a docked tail, it’s not a breed standard, but a sign the pitbull injured its tail wagging too hard and it couldn’t heal because the pibby wouldn’t stop wagging, so they dock for safety. Literally pibbies are such happy dorks they wag their tails off.

Posted 1/28/24 at 4:30pm.

I think it’s really funny how I excuse drawing mostly women by saying “I’m not as good at men,” but I was just looking through all the 3D assets I’ve acquired and…it’s almost entirely hot girl stuff. lmao. I should be honest with myself that I just like looking at hot girls and that’s that.

I haven’t done art commissions in a long time but I took on a Very Special Project for a friend of a friend, which has me going back into 3D. I have so much stuff. I forgot I actually know how to do this. I was getting pretty good at rigging and lighting scenes and stuff.

I guess I wonder…how do people kinda…keep track of all the skills at their disposal as they age? I’m in my mid-30s and I’ve been obsessively following interests all over the show so long, I am getting to a point where I forget how much I know.

Like…I used to know enough about fitness to pass a physical trainer test. Before that, I knew a *lot* about being a doula and lay midwife. I used to volunteer in women’s health counseling. I have learned crochet. I cartoon, I draw charcoal, I do 3D modeling and layout, a tiny bit of digital painting. I’ve got bits of some programming languages. Very technical with computers, even worked with mainframes in the past. Did facilities & maintenance a couple years. I still launch a new website every year or so. A construction class once. Lots of biology and botany! I’m a writer obviously. I can write very diverse styles and formats. I’ve researched tons of bizarre stuff like poisons, history, demonology, trauma care, etc. And whatever else I’ve forgotten! Parenting stuff? Baby stuff? I could probably still give lectures on any of the above subjects.

It seems like by the time you hit your 50s or 60s, you must just be utterly *pouring* experience out your ears. Doesn’t it get to be A Lot? HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

I’ve always laughed at the Sherlock Holmes “attic mind” thing where he’s like, I just throw away the stuff I don’t need to remember anymore. Obviously that’s not how brains work. But I kinda think you gotta be able to throw this stuff out somehow.

Otoh, this makes me look at all my older friends with enormous heart-eyes because I’m like, omg, you guys must feel this too yeah? You guys must have EVEN MORE THAN ME. I want to sit at everyone’s feet and listen to them tell me about the specific cool stuff they know.

Posted 1/28/24 at 8pm.

Day Two of my weed free life has me LAUGHING that I was so scared to quit because so far it is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compared to nicotine, lmao. I guess they really aren’t kidding when they say that nic is the second (third?) most addicting substance in the world. Wow, man. I kinda wanna go back in time two yearsish to when I quit nic and give myself some hugs. That Was Some Shit All Right. How does ANYONE do that.

Posted 1/30/24 at 10am. Bluesky.

I do not like football or Taylor Swift, but I am very reluctantly amused to watch the NFL learn they’re small potatoes compared to a pop star and learn to take the knee for her influence on the media.

Ever since I read this paper about how sports constructs gender – and put it together with the kind of cis womanhood that is constructed by Taylor Swift’s brand – I suddenly understood why my nonbinary ass finds the whole thing annoying, though she is demonstrably as skilled as any artist I follow.

I’m like, “Everyone says if you don’t like tswift, you’re sexist, but I don’t think I am? Am I sexist?” and kinda sat in that a while. But no, it’s just my general inability to have any interest in binary gender and the commercialization of it as such. Same thing that bounces me off a lotta romance.

Hey! I just scrolled past another post describing what’s wrong with me if I dislike a music artist. “If you have a negative reaction towards her as a person, it’s because our society still goes after successful women in a way that men avoid.” There is a lot of simultaneous right and wrongness going on.

Aside from being unable to grasp personal taste, the number of posts I see that act like taylor swift is somehow subversive is…staggering. I assume that people who think she’s subversive are living in very oppressed regions/cultures tbh. I must be coming from such a wildly different perspective.

Her fanbase is so hostile, I have tried to just mute/block everything related to her name on platforms where that’s possible so I can try to know as little as possible, and hence Not Be A Negative Nelly, but it feels like I’m being beaten over the head with a club by this pop culture moment.

All that said, I like tswift more than I like the nfl, reluctantly, given that she is the kind of person who would date Matty Healy, but she has given many fewer young men major brain trauma than the NFL. So i’m like, go ahead, Taylor, eat them up.

Posted 2/1/24 at 8am.

The injection for King’s cancer has gone *really* well. He seemed to feel so crappy the first couple days. The tumor got all bulging and swollen and black and gross. I think the mast cells were releasing crap into his body as they died off, and the steroids/antihistamines/etc could only do so much. He was very low.

Yesterday the last of the tumor fell off. It just shriveled into a black raisin and disappeared (I don’t need to know what King did with it, let’s pretend it fell off). Now there is a hole on his stomach. Just a big round clean circle leading straight to muscle. Sounds gross, I know, but it’s *extremely* clean, great margins, no signs of infection whatsoever, inflammation reducing. And basically the instant the last of the tumor-raisin fell off, his mood improved 20,000%. He’s cheerful again!

The circle is already constricting so I suspect it won’t be long before the tissue closes up and then it will mostly be a memory. We’ll keep an eye for more tumors obviously. Hopefully we won’t have to do this a lot in the future, but right now it’s looking really really good.

Posted 2/1/24 at 9pm.

Okay y’all. I’m now six days from quitting cannabis. I still feel stoned most of the time.

THC, the complex of psychoactive compounds in cannabis, binds to fat cells. I gained sixty pounds from the low point of my eating disorder (I was hospitalized January 2020) through the depression of the pandemic. That means I gained sixty pounds while absolutely *slamming* sources of THC. That means I have sixty pounds of adipose tissue stuffed with it. I’ve been doing daily walks, and once I start walking, my body releases a bunch and it’s like I’ve taken a massive bong rip. I’m stupid and kinda stumbly. (I’m avoiding driving for now.)

Also, your body makes a ton of receptors to accept the flood of chemicals that THC provides. Once you stop adding new sources of THC, there’s all these empty receptors weeping for neurotransmitters. It’s going to take a while for my body to regulate receptors to the amount of chemicals I produce endogenously (and I’m probably producing less endogenously at this point too).

So basically, I feel foggy and stoned all the time, but also completely bereft, like my brain cannot get any traction. Weirdly, I am not really fighting with cravings. I don’t feel any urge to relapse. My mood is mostly okay. But I also just…kinda…don’t exist. Mentally. I’m spending so much time standing/sitting around staring at nothing.

This reinforces that I’ve done the right thing, tbh, and realizing what a commitment it is to regain sobriety/clear brain makes me just wanna never use it again. I mean, you really do gotta pay the piper eventually.

It’s really nice to be sobering up (sometimes I feel awake) and realize how much I’ve grown up, though. My eating disorder is a *lot* of the reason that I got into alcoholism, nicotine, and overuse of cannabis. Getting my eating disorder under control is easily one of the best things that has happened to me in my life, period, end of subject. I used to live as an enemy and stranger to myself, and I’m now so fully inside my body, perfectly happy with it, genuinely grateful, and I just don’t have all those difficult feelings that I used to run away from anymore. Having food become a source of cope and comfort and bonding with family was massive. I think I’m probably going to lose weight from quitting cannabis because I don’t have the munchies 24/7 anymore and I don’t even think of it as a benefit? I’m happy to just let my body rearrange into whatever.

I feel really good. Just. Also completely empty, unmotivated, and almost braindead. lmao. It makes it hard to feed/hydrate/exercise myself, and I am struggling to remember my prescriptions, and that part will make me feel crappy. But everything else is a big gray blanket of nothingness.

I was hoping to finish writing Fated for Firelizards in February but at this point I’m not married to it, just because I’m even less verbal than usual and I think recovery needs to be a priority.

I gained a lot of weight in the last 3.5 years, went from US size 4 to a size 16, and it’s funny how my internet now advertise ~plus size clothes~ to me aggressively. i feel incredibly normal sized at size 16 but the ads are like “Hey fatty! Want clothes for your FATNESS? You can still look hot EVEN IF YOU ARE A FAT FATTY” Also, diet products. SO MANY DIET PRODUCTS.

It’s wild because at size 16, I feel incredibly normal and I’m within the average spectrum of sizes in my community. I am a 35 year old woman, mother of two, who does not leave her house right now; my body is very suitable for my circumstances. I am five foot ten and around two hundred pounds. Most men would not consider themselves overweight at these proportions, particularly when they do as much house work as I do. It is only women who must feel insufficient because we dared to stop counting calories.

Capitalism hopes that changing in this way has completely flipped my identity around. I now need to identify as a PLUS SIZE GIRRRRL who wants to DRESS FOR MY CURRRVES (I support women who do this, you’re all really hot, marry me). Personally I dress so that I look like an eldritch witch-elf lurking in my house, like a trap spider, hoping to eat anyone who passes nearby. I do this at all dress sizes.

And oh my god, the absurd diet/exercise products. I know more about diet & exercise than folks at my eating disorder hospitalization program did (you know how intense I am about crochet now? I was that intense about diet/fitness for 10 years) and I know exactly how ridiculous, injurious, and foolish these ads are. They seem so predatory, too. They are trying to bite at one of the most vulnerable places on my hide.

Whether it’s “buy your way to pseudo-empowerment” or “fix yourself” nonsense, all I get out of this is that I might have grown in my relationship with body image, but society is still *really really* sick.

Also I’m not always happy with my body’s aesthetics, but I’ve become a big fan of Body Neutrality. This is just me. I’m not going to hurt myself to change it. Ads aren’t going to talk me into hurting myself to change it. I’m fine.

I kinda hate curvy fashion because none of it fits me. I’m an apple body type. If I didn’t mostly gain weight in my waist, I’d be two dress sizes smaller. They always think women will have big butts, big hips, big boobs, and then…any waist, whatsoever. I don’t have a waist! I’m not made that way! So I buy this stuff, and it cinches around my waist then looks like saggy diaper butt. Capitalism, if you want me to spend money on this stuff, you will have to make things that actually fit me. I’m going to keep wearing witchy muumuus.

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.