Granola Bat

Ugh! Why is it so much easier to get the Crud at Gen Con than any other convention I've been to! I'm finally mostly recovered. Poor David's been having a hard time with upper-respiratory symptoms and some bad nightmares. At work, I've done some little witchy stuff cleansing and warding and such, with noted positive effects on myself, my own work, and staff morale. I'm thinking I want to get into that at home, too. David has his own monthly ritual, but I want to step it up. I feel like I could do more to protect my home and family. I also want to talk to him about seeing a therapist - maybe looking into some EMDR treatments, since it did so much for me. In health news, I'm thrilled to report that my weight is firmly into the upper 140s! Less than 15 pounds to a healthy BMI! I've also noticed great improvements in my cardiovascular and muscular endurance, and flexibility. After joking around with an old high-school friend, I've decided I want to...

If you want to know a weird learning curve, try being in love with someone who's a lot more fastidious than you. I'm not even getting into how physically-messy things got, pre-David, mid-depression. Here's your gentle reminder of the day that an embarassing space is often a mental-health symptom. (If you recognize yourself in this problem, you do deserve better. You deserve help! You deserve a healthier mind, and a living space that doesn't stress you out. Also, unfuckyourhabitat is a godsend.) David, meanwhile, is a type-A neat freak. At my best mental health, I have still been mellow about cleaning as I go, or even about cleaning up immediately after done cooking/crafting/etc. This does not fly at all with him, I've learned. I'm still learning this fascinating new lifestyle choice of not just waiting to tidy up 'til the end of your activity. So when we cook things together, I somewhat catch on, but mostly he's dashing around rinsing off the me...

(Content note: Talk about weight gain, weight loss, and sexual harassment.) Something happened yesterday that hasn't in years. I was cat-called as I walked from the parking lot into the CVS to pick up my prescription. It was frustratingly common in my teens. In my 20s, it was ubiquitous. I literally could not even walk from my front door to my car without some douchebag loudly commenting on my tits or my butt, or some other means of asserting that my body was there primarily as an object for his amusement. The one good thing about severe clinical depression hitting hard in my late 20s, pulling me into its depths, and packing 60 pounds onto my 5'1 frame, is that I hit this amazing Limbo that I didn't know existed - a land where you're too fat to be visible to serial harassers, and too thin to be visible to fat-shamers. It's entirely likely that my white privilege had something to do with this. Black ladies of similar height and build to me still complain...

Affirmation, by Michael Coghlan All has not been well at Casa Granola. It's been a little bit of one thing after another. Some minor health troubles and a little mental-health backslide for me, and a tragic death in the family for David. He's currently in the Chicago area, with his family, to inter his 38 year old brother's cremains in the family plot. The funeral was a week ago. It was, of course, a shock when he died so suddenly, at such a young age. David's grief manifested into physical pain and awful dreams. Last week was hectic and tiring enough to keep me from the gym for the whole week, and I ate a lot of feelings. I know that a profound loss never becomes OK. It becomes more possible to bear over time, and that is generally the best we can hope for. I don't have any platitudes, just love and sorrow for the family. While we come to the other side of the past couple of weeks, and bring ourselves back to some sense of normalcy, I've gotten back to ...

It's... been an interesting couple of weeks. There's truly nothing like the stunning banality of slipping into fascism in the modern United States to bring on a mental-health backslide. As I type and file and have an after-work cup of tea with David, the hub of gleeful cruelty that is the Administration builds concentration camps for tens of thousands of refugees who they call criminals. Some survivors of Japanese-American internment camps still live, and now they have to watch us do it all again - but this time, the kids don't even have their parents. As we ponder high school options for Bonus Kid, Justice Kennedy announces his retirement, thus solidifying the impossibility of a return to sanity within our lifetime - and a hell of an uphill fight to get it back within Bonus Kid's lifetime. My last hope was that this flimsy bulwark against fully unchecked, ravaging, gleeful governmental cruelty would, at least, hold long enough for us to regain the US House of R...

Content note: Weight talk! If this may be triggering, take whatever actions necessary to protect yourself. Hi loves! I missed posting Friday, because things hit the fan a bit on Thursday and Friday last week at work, so I was too tired after work and the gym to finish and schedule. C'est la vie sometimes. And then, we were off to archery nationals for the Bonus Kid, and I did not bring my laptop on the trip. So much the better for focusing on my family rather than on online distractions. Some things are more important than keeping up this one goal of blogging regularly. I'm a bit put-out to report that I'm somewhat stalled on the online decluttering, but the main reason isn't terrible. I've spent less time online in general! However, I do need to be more efficient with my time. I still spend too much of it checking up on friends via Facebook. If I cut down my follows, I would have more quality time with the people I miss, and less time scrolling through clutter....

I'm 33 years old. (33 and a half! my inner child squeals indignantly.) We hear a lot of coming-out stories in this day and age. I actually haven't heard many like mine, though. I'm so thankful for the hard-won rights of the gay community to be out and proud. Bi-erasure, though, is still a major problem. Not that bi really fits me. I'm still figuring that out. It's the widely-known term that comes closest, though, and starting there is OK. Especially since it's uniquely shat on by both the gay/lesbian side, and the hetero side as "confused" or "faking for attention" and so on, and so on. I didn't "know" when I was a child, like many people can say. There may have been some little indicators that, in a less heteronormative society, we would have picked up on. I did really like Xena, Warrior Princess. But... nah, kid-me chased boys on the playground, period. I've had many a painful dismissal from loved ones - friends, my ...