The System

One of the things you have to do when you have mobility issues is to plan things when you know you're going to have to deal with a lot of walking. It's important to have a system in place.

One vital element is to know as much about your route as you can. This isn't always possible, of course. For instance, today I went to the movies. I knew my route plans and when/where I could sit while in the lobby, but I did not know what theater bay I'd be in. Now in some cases, it's possible to call ahead and find out. Admittedly, I could have tried that. It used to be the theater only played a recording of what was playing, but I haven't checked in a while. Maybe now they have people who will talk to you.

It's good to know your limitations. I know about how far I can comfortably walk before I need to sit down. As long as I can break trips up to keep within those limits, I'm usually okay. However, this also means I need to plan extra time to make this happen and still get to the theater before the movie starts. My roommate and I always plan extra time to ensure we don't miss anything.

Speaking of my roommate, when you have mobility issues, it also helps if you have someone in your corner. My roommate is really my hero here. He gets my chair/walker out of vehicles for me and puts them back in. Today he was kind enough to check some alternate routes for me so I would know the best exit to take out of the building. This meant a lot to me. It saved me tons of mental and physical stress.

Finally, turn your ego off. Walking with equipment is unusual and people will stare. Sometimes they even make comments, whisper, or laugh at you. Should they do this? No, but you can't control what others do. Just focus on your own tasks and don't let their words or actions touch you. There are a lot of people out there who need mobility help but won't use it because they're worried about what people will say. The opinions of others should never outweigh your comfort, health, or safety.

I'm in pain now that I'm home, but not as much as I could be. I managed things well today thanks to planning, staying calm, and having someone willing to help me. I'm grateful for all of that.

The Bad Morning

As you know, in weather like this, I go to bed really late to try and ride out the high humidity/heat so I can sleep better. Normally this method works pretty well, but last night, the electricity snapped off close to 7AM. I'd fallen asleep around three.

Needless to say, I've been useless. I'm dizzy and my balance is off. I'm having to take everything very slowly. I have to shower tonight and I hope I can manage to do that without killing myself or breaking anything. I can really do without that kind of disruption to my life. 

The Good Dreams

I had some stuff in my dreams last night that made me very happy. It wasn't one of those things that made a lot of sense when I woke up, but the happiness lingered. That was nice.

I'm starting to look for Christmas gifts. I mean, for myself, not for other people. Well, I have some ideas for that too. My brother likes hot sauce a lot. He gets hot sauce this year.

Anyway, overall it was a good day. Sometimes the dreams really can set the tone.

All Ragweed

Ragweed season is here, along with 'too hot to keep the windows shut but not so hot you can justify turning on the AC" season. This means exposure to the nasty weed and all the ways my body reacts to it.

However, it has also cooled down enough that the cats are getting their appetites back. That is always a good sign.

We're heading out of summer and while I won't miss the heat, I will miss the light. We've had some overcast days but for the most part, the sunlight has been glorious.

All Rotten

On the way to my appointment yesterday, my best friend asked me to name something in media I suspected had darkness to it but I really didn't want to confirmation on. Before I could answer, she realized that had already happened to me, as I found out a few years ago that my favorite childhood author was a pedophile.

And yes, that was the worst one. I honestly still think about it more often than you would suspect and it still makes me feel a lot of type of ways. The irony is, when I got home, I read an article about a documentary that is coming out about Dungeons and Dragons and how a lot of stuff was stolen from people to make that happen.

I mean, I wasn't surprised, I guess. But it still sucks. The phrase 'nothing's sacred' used to mean that people didn't respect the sacred nature of things. These days? It just means everything is, at its core, really pretty rotten.

Which is fine, I guess. It's the human condition. We're all full of contradictions, goodness, evilness, greed, selflessness, the whole mess. No one is just ONE thing in either direction. I just wish people would be more open and honest about it when they teach us stuff.

Yeah, this woman wrote these books and they're really good. She nurtured a lot of other authors and really opened the field for women fantasy writers. She also married a pedophile and raped/gaslighted her own daughter.

This guy wrote up the start of what would become a fantasy roleplaying game that has, in many ways, been a part of most of the significant relationships in your life. He also stole the majority of his ideas from other people and manipulated a practically homeless kid into working for him.

It's rotten, yeah.....but then again, the good stuff grows from the rot, right?

Sigh.

The Conclusion

I passed my five year mark. I have been released from cancer purgatory. I am, as far as they know, free and clear. I could cry. I did cry, actually. It's such a relief.

It's also a little anticlimactic, but that's fine. This whole process has been way too climatic as it was. Too much blood. Too much mess. Too much fear. Too much cutting and recovery and meeting people and talking to people and appointments.

This chapter is over for now. I'm going to try and make the most of it. Maybe I'll ask for that podcast starter kit for Christmas. We'll see.

The Waiting

I survived my day of waiting. I've been lowkey nervous. There were things I should have been doing but I didn't. I just couldn't focus on them.

If all goes well tomorrow, I will be free of Tulsa Cancer Center. I need to be free of it, honestly. I need to put this part of my life behind me.

The Appointment

I have my (hopefully) last appointment in Tulsa on Monday. I wish I wasn't scared about it, but I think I will always be scared of any kind of appointment where I have to have a vaginal exam. It led to one of the scariest points of my adult life. I mean, also one of the luckiest because my cancer was found super early, but still.

Anyway, tomorrow won't be easy on me emotionally. I'll just try my best to not be panicky. I'll do what I have to do, prep stuff, get clean. The goal is to show up to my appointment and be told I have my five years of clean cancerfreeness and then move on with my life. I really hope this happens.

The Cat

Tinkerbell has now decided her new lounge of choice is my shoulder. This is fine for a while, but then it gets hot or my shoulder gets sore.

Once I start trying to move her, things get dicey. She growls at me, then howls, refusing to move. Sometimes she goes at me with claws and gums. She's so old, she doesn't have teeth anymore, so I get gummed. It's a little scary though because if she did have teeth, I'd be sporting some nasty bites right now.

Once I get her to move, she tries to wiggle her way back as soon as possible. If it's long enough to where my shoulder isn't hurting and my body has cooled down, I'm fine. Otherwise, more howling and gumming.

The Farce

There were several headlines I read today that I assumed HAD TO BE jokes. Just honestly, seriously jokes. Nothing could be this ridiculous.

Ohh but how wrong I was. Every single one of those stories turned out to be true. This is seriously a lot of stupid for one day. Also, the Rain Forest is on fire so we're probably all going to die. Which....okay. *shrug*

The Positive Side

Guys. Last night was SO BAD. It was hellish in the house. No one got any sleep. Everyone is tired today and just kind of dragging around. Tonight may or may not be any better. I hope it is because last night was horrible.

The humidity isn't going away. It just lingers and weighs us down. It's awful here.

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE, when my roommate and I were driving back into town this afternoon, the sky was so beautiful. We had some clouds overhead with the sun shining through them, creating all kinds of depth in the way the clouds appeared. It was stunning. I can get really focused on the misery of summer, but I will never deny how magnificently gorgeous it can be.

The Experiment

I was on this braindead loop of watching beauty hacks last night. Honestly, I think I saw the same one three or four times. Most of it was either stuff I'd seen before or things that were not practical for my life.

Then I saw this woman putting on lip balm for her tattered lips. She rubbed it on for like two full minutes, staying in each zone for quite a while. I watched her and couldn't help but wonder if I'd been putting on chapstick wrong this whole time. I just ran it over my lips. Is this something I need to change?

I tried her method. Admittedly, I didn't stay in each zone as long, but it was still more attention to the whole process than I usually grant. When I woke up this morning, my lips still felt hydrated. I mean, even after sleeping with a CPAP on and that never happens.

So I'm going to do an experiment for the rest of the month. I'll continue to do the whole longer rubbing of balm on my lips and see if it makes some kind of difference. At the very least, maybe I can finally get rid of this caramel apple stuff I'm using. It's kind of nasty, which seems unfair for something caramel apple flavored. I'll report back later.

The Cuts

Tinkerbell is old. She's very old. She's clumsy and grumpy and wants to sit beside or on me most of the time. Due to all of these factors, I am now cut on both legs, both arms, and both hands. It's a mess.

I never like situations like this. I know she's not doing well. I know she wants comfort. I also know that I would like to extend the same kindness to old cats that I would hope someone extends to me if by some miracle I actually manage to live long enough to get old.

On the other hands, I don't have claws to dig into people.

The Edge

I'm mostly complaining again. You can skip this post if you want. I completely understand.

Misery continues as we endured another hot day. The AC was on early (and I am SO THANKFUL FOR IT, I am), but when we'd turn it off for a while to make sure it didn't screw up, the heat would just surge back. Tonight it's going to take it forever to cool down. I'll probably be up until at least three. I tried to go to bed at two last night and I regret it. It was still too muggy. I ended up sleeping horribly. I plan on this being the last year for that though. I'm doing research on ways to make my bed cooler and plan to try to make as many of them happen as possible.

At least we're halfway through August.

The Anger

I was angry today. Angry at the heat and at the world and at the people in it and at my situation and at being stuck and at bugs and at the cats. You know, basically angry at everything. It was not a good day. I wanted to just hide in my room, zone out, speak and see no one. 

Anyway, I'm sure it's just exhaustion from summer/lack of sleep/hell life. Tomorrow I may wake up all sunshine.....well, sunshine for me, anyway. But for now, no. Grrr.

The Door

Ol Boy came and fixed the door today. I'm impressed. He showed up on time, did his work, didn't stretch the whole process out, was upfront about costs. That was a nice change.

Also a nice change? I slept well. I'm possibly going to sleep well again tonight. This is blissful news.

The Bond

Tinkerbell will now sit on my lap. I thought this might have been a fluke the first time she did it, but she's done it quite a few times since, so I'm guessing this is part of her acceptable behavior now. It's neat that we've come to this level of acceptance.

It's also made me realize that I've been very blessed in my life. For a long time, I focused on the people who didn't love me, the ones I wanted to love me, the ones I felt should have. At the end of the day though, none of that matters. People (and animals) either love you or they don't.

Where the beauty comes in is that the people (and animals) I have shared the closest bonds with are the ones who really love me for just being me. They don't want anything beyond my ability to play with them and just talk to them. It's beautiful and enriching. I'm grateful for it.

Complaining in Advance

Normally I wait until the weather is at least in the lowish 70s (assuming it will get there) before going to bed. Tonight I have no choice.  I have to be up by 5 AM, which means in bed by ten. At ten, it's supposed to still be 90. Sigh. This is insane.

This is skinny people weather. It isn't for people like me. I'm just barely hanging on as it is and tonight is going to be torturous. I hate summer. 

Impostor Syndrome

I helped my nephew with a paper today. I did some editing and made some suggestions about how he should structure things. Even though I know what I did was all proper and correct, I still feel nervous. Another English teacher will see my work.

The part of me that suffers from Imposter Syndrome wonders if what I suggested was good. What if all of my input makes me look stupid? I wish I didn't feel this way. I know I'm good at what I do. It sucks that I'm such a fraud about confidence when it comes to my actual skills. I know I have them. What even is this?

Oh well.

Bad RNG

Today was hard. A lot of the house's annoyances all went wrong at once. Plus it was hot and sticky. Plus some stuff that normally doesn't go wrong also went wrong. It was bad.

I think August is the hardest month. My roommate hates the growing gloom of Fall, but to me, the end of summer is awful. We've already endured two difficult months of heat. Now most of the internal resources we possessed are depleted. We're both uncomfortable and edgy. The normal number of spoons is gone.

The stuff that normally doesn't screw up got handled. My stomach has been in a mess ever since. Now I'm worried what else might go wrong or break.  We're tired. We hurt. We both have health issues going on. It's a lot.

Anyway, hopefully things will be better tomorrow. Or at least, hopefully things won't test us.

Curious

When I got home, my roommate asked me if I'd noticed the little box's cover was broken. I had not. I looked at it and realized there is no way I wouldn't have noticed. It's cracked pretty badly.

And so.....we have no idea how this happened. Yesterday when I cleaned the box, there was no crack. Last night he was back there several times and there was no crack. It's seriously too large for him to miss it. I was out of the house by five this morning and admittedly, I was kind of out of it, but I still think I would have noted this big crack.

I guess it happened at some point between me leaving and him waking up to feed the cats? We guess one of them jumped on the box and caused the crack. Or maybe it was cracked a little beforehand and a jump made it worse. We really have no idea.

I'm not mad about it. We've had this same box for over ten years. I'm just baffled.

Analogies

It seems that people are getting rather upset that mass shootings are being blamed on men (you know, the people who do them) and have decided that the rest of us need to be kinder. In fact, someone on Facebook posted that in the same way it is emotional abuse to keep pointing at a kid and telling them everything is their fault, it is abusive to men as a group for them to be blamed for doing the thing that some of them did. Uggh.

Okay, three things.

First thing. No one is blaming ALL the men. We all know they all haven't gone and shot up people. However, enough of them have done this to where it is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed.

Second thing, to expand on the analogy, no you should not blame your kid for all the social ills in the world or even all the things going wrong in your life or household. However, if your kid is consistently breaking the toys of other children because those children won't play with them or play in a way they don't like or are playing with toys they think only THEY should be allowed to have, then YES, you should say something to your kid about their behavior.

Third, and this is the one that sets my teeth on edge, where in the fuck was this 'let's be kind and not place blame' attitude when the people being blamed were women or POCs or the poor or LGBT+ or any other group besides men? And let's be clear here, the person who posted this was not thinking about men of color or gay men or men who weren't Christians. She was thinking about her cis straight white middle-class sons and worried people weren't being nice to them.

You know, I revise my opinion here. Somewhat. The adult men who decide to kill people are to blame for their actions, but the parents who set them down this path of entitlement and spoiled behavior share some of the blame.

Seeing

And so on top of having glasses, I now also have readers. I guess this makes sense. My last eye appointment was traumatic and unhelpful. The glasses I got from it sucked. They work at distances when I'm driving. Well, most of the time. They suck at me trying to see anything up close.

So now I have readers. My roommate got me the second weakest ones. They make me slightly woozy when I try to look up or if I try to look at the computer. Honestly, I can mostly just use them to read. Still, that's helpful in reading the smaller print stuff.

Do I feel old about it? I mean, no more than any of the other stuff. No more than the gray hair or the stiff joints or the saggy tits. I'm in my 40s. People get readers.

The important thing is I can read the little squiggles again.

Do Not Argue on Facebook

This is one of my basic rules in my life. I do not argue with people on Facebook. It works with my philosophy of trying to set up good habits for myself by doing nothing. I excel at doing nothing.

There are days when it is HARD to do nothing though. Today was one of those days. People are posting all kinds of idiotic stuff about the shootings. It's because of no prayer in school. It's because of homosexuality. It's because of feminism.

NO BITCHES! NO!

These were adults. These were adult men who decided to kill people. They made the choice to do this. They pulled the triggers. They wrote the manifestos. They planned out their killing. They did it. It is their fault. You cannot blame society on the actions of people who just so happen to be discontented with how that society is going. It's working for most everyone else. Just because you're not getting every little bitty thing you think you're entitled to get doesn't mean you can slide your blame to someone else.

I did not say this on Facebook. I did not argue with people. I focused on other posts and talked about glitter instead. I managed to do nothing, even though it was difficult.

And Again

There was another mass shooting in less than 24 hours after the last one. This is the 3rd mass shooting in the past week. While these acts of assholish violence were accomplished by guns, the guns themselves are not the problem. It could have been a car or a bomb or anything else they could get their hands on.

I honestly don't even know what needs to be done here. This is insane.

Once Again

So there was another shooting. Again. This time at a Walmart in El Passo, Texas. Again, the shooter was a man. Again, it's another angry little fucker who can't control his emotions and has to throw a fit so that everyone can see how angry he is.

Again, people will focus on the weapon or his race or his politics or his religion or his state of mental health or anything else that suits them besides the one truly common factor involved in most (not all, but most) instances of mass violence.

Gender. GENDER GENDER GENDER.

Men do this. Almost always, men do this. Men of all races, all religions, all political ideals, all levels of mental stability. Men are the ones who think people need to pay attention to their state of unhappiness because they can't get dates/jobs/people to follow their religion/hugs/etc. MEN.

If we want to end this kind of mass violence, it's going to start with ending whatever disconnect we're teaching men that allows them to think it's okay for them to kill a bunch of people just because they're mad about something. We're either going to have to teach them or something more drastic.

Rolling Ones

I lined up some books to read after the last series. Unfortunately, they're in actual book form and the print is too small for me to see. I mean, I can SEE it, just not well enough to read without a headache. Uggh. In the meantime,I'm catching up with other stuff I needed to see/watch/listen to.

The weather is being awful. It's technically cooler than it was two days ago, but the humidity is so high it feels worse. Tinkerbell Cat is sitting right beside me, breathing her hot breath on me and keeping at least one paw on me at all times. I somehow doubt I'll get this treatment this winter when it will be useful. One can hope though.

Compliments

I saw this article about 'why we should all stop ____" and I'll be honest here. I don't like stuff like that. I know that people are trying to NOT point fingers by making it a general 'we' but no one is fooled. Everyone feels condescended to. Oh and also, no one likes being told what to do.

Yeah and to be honest, I've probably made posts like that in the past, but I'm going to try to not do that anymore. It's bad communication. Instead, I'm going to give you a bit of my own personal self-discovery.

The article in question was what everyone should stop complimenting people when they lose weight. The points were solid, but, again, the article felt like it was lecturing people, maybe even over something they don't do or never did with bad intentions. Anyway, this is why I, as just a general person, will no longer do this.

When I was younger, I would, like basically everyone else around me, compliment people when they lost weight. I have no idea what their motives were. Mine were simple. I did not want to look bitter.  This person lost weight, I had not lost weight, and I did not want to look like a spiteful little bitch who took that personally. So really, my motivation had nothing to do with anyone but me. That isn't a good motivation.

I think I started to turn around on this when I would listen to my grandmother talk about how she commented on people's weight loss. She ALWAYS told me about it, because, of course, she thought that was encouraging me to lose weight (it wasn't) and would do so in the smuggest and haughty way.  "Oh, I saw Random Woman and she's lost weight. I went up to her and told her how much I LOVED the New Her." I'm a little shocked Gramma didn't tell her how much she disliked the Old Her, but even she had a small bit of tact. Just a small one though.

It was all I could do to keep from rolling my eyes when she would tell these stories. Gramma wasn't really complimenting the other person either. She was taking it personally that they lost weight while I had failed to and used this as a moment to wedge in a chance to talk to me about my failures.  Again, not really a compliment.

See, for me, this is a situation where the motive is important. I tend to run my mouth and assume whatever I'm saying is for the best, but honestly, is it? There are a lot of things I've tried to unlearn over the years and it's a constant process. If I compliment someone, I want to make sure my reasons are about them, not me. And it isn't about people being too sensitive or easily offended or whatever. This is about me wanting to be a better communicator, a more responsible communicator. Oh look, it's still about me. Jeez.