This past week has been a lot over here in my neck of the woods.
A lot of driving back-and-forth for TWO endoscopes TWO days in a room in a town over an hour away.
A lot of resting up after those two exhausting days.
BUT/AND now I know that my sense that my digestion was terribly slow has been confirmed after the first scope failed due to my tummy still having the previous nights’ dinner in it 12 hours later. This confirmation is causing me to reconsider one of my daily meds as that is a known side effect. I’ll read up more and discuss with my PCP.
AND it’s done, it’s over. I’m free of having to eat gluten every day and the discomforting effects that’s been causing AND soon I’ll know absolutely for sure if I’ve got celiac disease or a much easier to manage and navigate gluten sensitivity. I wrote about why I was doing a gluten trial here if you’re curious to learn more.
So, I’m grateful it’s done.
Also, grateful I’m partnered with an loving, support partner instead of my narcissistic ex would have have complained loudly and for a long time and likely punished me by withdrawing kindness and support everywhere else in life because I’d needed him to devote 4 hours, two days in a row to being my driver.
Seriously, if your partner would punish you for something like that, please consider if your relationship is worth being in - we all deserve support and care from our partners, not punishment for living in these unpredictable bodies.
In other news, our son moved back home this week.
I’m thrilled to have him so close, heartbroken for the reasons for it, and simply grateful we had space in our home to readjust and give him so much private space to settle down in.
I rested as much as possible Thurs & Fri, but kinda lost the plot on Saturday.
You see, a beloved friend was participating in a cat adoption event near my home and she had her baby with her and I had kitten food our Henri has decided she won’t eat any more of so I went. I sat on a chair chatting with my friend and the others involved in the event. I sat and made silly motions with my hands with her baby. I sat and leaned way over to pet two of the adoptable cats.
And then my POTS decided to act up and I had to sit on the floor, both to get my legs closer to my heart to hopefully increase blow flow back up, but also the let me keep petting the cats without leaning off and seeing stars.
And then, sense I was sitting on the floor and my friend was sitting in a chair next to me, I now found myself eye level with her baby and he and I got caught up in some major fun times playing and baby talking to each other! I so enjoy babies 🥰 I would have loved to cuddle him in my arms, but I’d already dropped my keys twice that morning so I knew my hands were near steady & stable enough to hold on to such a precious little one. But sitting there on the cold cement floor at the pet supply store, playing with her baby, it was one of the most fun moments I’ve had this entire year!!!
And then suddenly I felt the shift in my POTS that told me if I didn’t get horizontal real, real soon I might find myself so lightheaded and dizzy I couldn’t move, much less safely drive home. One of the other sweet gals working the adoption event helped me get up off the floor, I said my goodbyes and found myself hobbling very slowly back to my car - thoughts of a short trip into the grocery store nearby abandoned for safety’s sake.
But, seriously, getting to sit there chatting with lovely humans while petting lovely cats while playing with a lovely baby was an utter delight - very much worth getting completely knackered by it all. I came home and slept for 3 hours and needed to use my wheelchair for in-house getting around stuff the rest of the day and I try really, really hard to not push myself that far, but gosh it can get lonely spending so much of my time here on my daybed and I was having such a nice time. 💖😻🙏🏻
A short, but fun one was The Terrifying Reason Flightless Dinosaurs Grew Feathers over on PBS Eons.
Also, I got side-quested into revisiting Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure after I side-quested into the history of the word ‘dude’. Anyway, I came across this audition video from way back. If you’re a Bill & Ted fan, you might wanna check it out: EXCLUSIVE never-before-seen Bill and Ted auditions: Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves 2
Goes along with a Margaret Attwood quote I love so much it’s currently taking up space on my homepage:
I read a Medium piece titled I Thought This Was Normal Until I Left the United States: You don’t understand quality of life until you’ve experienced something different by Rocco Pendola. A few excerpts I want to share here with you:
The United States has effectively brainwashed its people - that would be an overstated cliché if it weren’t true. ...
Historically, the United States has taken what should be an unacceptable baseline - and is an unacceptable baseline in other parts of the world - and led people who crave change to believe they’re fighting the good fight. Activists were simply dangled carrots in the form of here-and-there, once-in-a-while incremental change. ...
The problem is that quality of life is difficult to measure when you’ve never experienced anything else.
You normalize whatever surrounds you - driving everywhere, sitting in traffic, spending a quarter of your income on a car.
You normalize enormous parking lots and hostility in public (people are just stressed).
Eventually, you stop seeing these things as choices.
They become the reality itself - your reality. You develop some sense that something’s wrong, but you don’t realize the full expression of it until you live in a completely different environment.
That’s the trick.
The most effective systems don’t merely force compliance. They convince people there is no alternative - and that any alternative goes against their superior way of life. ...
Quality of life is infrastructure.
It’s geography, transportation, housing, and public space.
It’s how difficult ordinary life feels on an average Tuesday. ...
That difference matters because quality of life is cumulative. It isn’t one thing. It’s a collection of hundreds of small things that either make ordinary life easier or harder.”
Really though, this whole piece is worthy of your time and consideration. Here’s a link so you can read the whole piece, I think you’ll need a Medium membership.
I blogged about my how I loved Tuesdays at my old job.
When I worked as a church secretary (OK, really I was the administrative assistant, but church secretary feels more fun to say). Anyway, when I worked as a church secretary, Tuesdays were my most introverted day. The day I was most likely to be the only human in the building. Just me and Luna, my service dog, quietly working on the behind-the-scenes creative design work...
Absolutely still hyper-focusing Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, wondering how long this hyper-focus will last...
🐘 what i’m trying to remember
Even just a few moments of genuine connection with others’ can go a long way.
Thank you for opening this, for clicking on so many of the links, for writing to me sharing your thoughts/reactions to these links. All of this experience in returning to emailing you has been nothing short of an utterly delightful blessing to my heart. 🙏🏻
💖 Kat
P.S. - Are you an adult child that had to move back home at some point? I’m really keen to hear how your parents supported you during this transition and/or how they could have supported you better?
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