Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I had a lovely time in Chicago; somehow, miraculously, I didn’t end up with covid. I got to spend some really wonderful time with some of my queer gaming community while I was there, who I miss dearly. While the work part of the trip was pretty exhausting (it was productive and good, but just required a lot more being “on” socially than I’m used to), the social part was life-giving.
I got home Sunday afternoon, and made the mistake of not giving myself a recovery day, so this week at work has been rough. I ended up calling in sick today after waking up with a massive headache; today I’m going to try to focus on resting a bit and also catching up on the last of the homework that’s due before class tonight. We adjusted the dose of one of my meds this week, and one of the side effects has been random waves of nausea, which has not helped anything on this week when I’m already feeling pretty low on mental cutlery.
Tomorrow I have some fun plans as well as a meeting with the person who’s in charge of practicum stuff at my seminary to talk through when I can start that officially. I’m hoping this weekend can be restful and that I can start next week with a bit more energy than I had this week.
Nova was very excited to have me home, and also very upset on Monday when the end of Daylight Savings Time meant that I was working an hour later than she thought I should be. She’s adjusted pretty well the past couple of days, but on Monday she had Opinions. Please enjoy the Nova photos for this week:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I am in Chicago for work. It’s been a whirlwind rollercoaster of a week so far – we ended up being exposed to covid over the weekend, so I’ve been testing daily and wearing a mask nonstop on this trip. So far, all of my tests have come up negative and I’m still feeling okay, so fingers crossed I’ve continued to dodge that bullet.
I don’t have much by way of updates beyond that – I was home for all of 10 days between trips, so my brain is a little scrambled and I’ve mostly just been trying to stay afloat with homework. I did find Nova the perfect Halloween costume this year, though, so I’ll leave you with pictures of that!
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I’ve been a bit discombobulated this week – between the holiday on Monday, a sick day on Tuesday, our weather dramatically dropping about 30 degrees in 24 hours…it’s been a weird week.
It’s also a liminal space sort of week. It’s my final week of break before the fall semester starts. I’m going to need to start in on homework this weekend. I’ve been setting up my study schedule, trying to build sufficient homework blocks into my calendar so I can get done what I need to get done. We’ve been working on clearing out some space in my office so I can have a more relaxing environment to study in, which has turned into a bigger and bigger project the longer we work on it.
Change is not something I tend to particularly enjoy. I am a creature of habit and routine, and even though I am excited for both of my classes, there is definitely a part of my brain that wants to resist the shift back into school mode, out of the more relaxed routine of the past month and into a more rigid schedule. It’ll be good, though – most of me knows that. I’m a little nervous about the volume of reading/homework that I’ll have to do over the course of the next 3-ish months, but theoretically it should be doable.
Anyway, I think I’m going to leave it there for this week. Please enjoy these Nova photos:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I hope you’re all hanging in there. It’s felt like a rather long week here – I’ve been fighting the beginnings of a cold that seems both unwilling to vacate the premises and also not bad enough to make me seriously sick, so I’m just vaguely congested and fatigued and annoyed about it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about neurodivergence this week. The past couple of years have been an adventure of discovery around the various ways in which we are a neurodivergent household, and learning how to let down the neurotypical masks we’ve built up over the years. One of the interesting things that has happened for me with this gradual unmasking is that I’m increasingly aware of my own sensory sensitivities, and finding it harder to pretend they’re not an issue. Temperature regulation is part of it – I have always been someone who runs warm and overheats pretty easily, but my tolerance for being hot seems to be decreasing with time.
The big one for me, though, is sound. I’ve never liked loud noises (with the exception, as a teen and young adult, of sometimes enjoying loud concerts), but lately I’ve been noticing just how much noise can overload my system. Hearing trucks in the alley while I’m working (on the opposite end of our apartment from where I work, through a door) can be anywhere from mildly distracting to terribly grating. When listening to music, I find I’m often putting my headphones or speakers at the lowest possible setting (and if I’m wearing my over-ear headphones, I often have earplugs in under them). When the dogs start crying, I’m much quicker to get overwhelmed and find I need to remove myself from the room more often.
I have had a sort of parallel experience with queerness and transness that is helping me to make sense of this, somewhat. When I was first beginning to understand my own queerness, I still spent a lot of time mostly closeted. But the more I came to understand and appreciate that this was part of who I was, and the more I connected with other people who had similar experiences, the less energy I seemed to have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I want to be able to celebrate my queerness, not hide it, and my tolerance for pretending to be someone other than who I am has decreased dramatically over the years. This journey with neurodivergence feels similar – the more I come to understand how much of my energy has been devoted to maintaining a relatively neurotypical mask, and the more I let that mask drop (and sometimes even find I have energy to devote to other things), the less interested I am in trying to maintain the appearance of being neurotypical.
I’m grateful that I have a lot of tools to keep myself regulated when sensory stuff gets to be too much. I’m grateful for a whole bunch of loved ones who are also neurodivergent and the support we give each other. And I’m grateful for an increasing societal awareness of neurodivergence and the people who are pushing to destigmatize and depathologize our awareness of it.
Anyway, I don’t know if I have a point I’m trying to get to with this post, but this is what’s been on my mind this week. I think I’m going to end it here, but I’ll leave you, as always, with some quality doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I am all sorts of confused about what day of the week it is – the long weekend was lovely, but it really threw me for a loop.
Speaking of the long weekend…I had an absolutely lovely time in Chicago! I flew out Friday night and flew back Monday morning, so it was a whirlwind of a weekend. However, I was really intentional about not over-scheduling myself on this trip, and so it ended up being really relaxing, for the most part. Saturday started with breakfast at Smack Dab, my favorite spot in Rogers Park, which was incredible as always. Then I went back to the hotel and napped a bit, because I didn’t sleep all that well the first night I was there. In the afternoon I wandered around Andersonville a bit and visited a new, queer-owned stationery shop as well as a gluten-free bakery that never disappoints. After that, I needed to go back to the hotel to dry off – it was quite hot and humid. I didn’t have any concrete plans with friends made for Saturday, in part because I knew several of the people I wanted to see were going to be pretty busy over the weekend. However, I decided to let folks in my queer games group know where I was planning to grab dinner that night, just in case anyone was available. (I am perfectly content to go out to eat by myself, but pizza with friends is even better than pizza alone.) This turned out to be the correct decision, as two dear friends (who I’d absolutely thought would be too busy) were able to join me for pizza on Saturday night. It was wonderful getting to catch up at eat good food together.
Sunday arrived and was quite rainy (seriously, Chicago got something like 7-8″ of rain on Sunday). I ended up ordering more Smack Dab treats for delivery to the hotel, because I didn’t have an umbrella and didn’t feel like walking over in the rain. When the food arrived, I got an extra treat in the form of a note on the bag:
Turned out the owner of Smack Dab (who we got to be friends with in the time that we were living in Rogers Park) was working that morning, saw my order come in, and decided to share a little extra love. It made my day!
After I checked out of my hotel, I dropped stuff off at the friend’s apartment where I was planning to crash Sunday night, and got to hang out with her for a bit before heading out to meet a couple of other friends for lunch. Thankfully, she convinced me to take her umbrella with me as I was leaving. I had a great time at lunch, and then realized I hadn’t decided what I was going to do until I met up with friends for dinner that evening. I reached back out to the friend I was staying with and decided to go back to her place for a while. I ended up waiting in the pouring rain for about 25 minutes for the bus – had I not had that umbrella, I would’ve been absolutely drenched and miserable.
When I got back to my friend’s place, another friend was also there with their kiddo while they waited for a gas leak to get fixed at their new house (everything ended up getting resolved there, thankfully). We spent a lovely couple of hours each doing our own thing in our own separate corners of the same room, in comfortable silence. I texted my husband part of the way through, saying how much I love having queer, neurodivergent friends. We were able to just be together, which was exactly what I needed. That evening, we went over to our friends’ new house for dinner and watched Dungeons & Drag Queens on Dimension 20. It was delightful!
It was a truly lovely, restorative weekend. I felt so cared for, and so grateful for the community I have in Chicago. I love living in St. Paul, and I have great friends here…and I don’t have the same sort of community group here that I have in Chicago, and it felt really good to be in a space like that again. The time with those friends was exactly what my heart needed.
I am also eternally grateful to my husband, who managed both dogs while I was gone (which involved a lot of cleaning up after Mouse, who sometimes tends toward submissive/outside-avoidant peeing) and did a great job of that. They even managed to get a few scattered moments of peaceful coexistence. Both dogs (and my husband) were very happy to have me back.
I will leave you, as always, with some doggo content!
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I’ve been all discombobulated about what day it is this week – we had Monday off for Juneteenth, and I think not a single day so far this week has felt like what it actually is.
Despite it being a four day work week, it’s been a long one so far. Work has been fairly hectic, and I had to do a presentation for my class on Tuesday night (which went well, despite Mouse insisting on making an appearance in the middle of it). It’s also going to be a somewhat busier-than-usual weekend – Twin Cities Pride is this weekend, and I’m going to be volunteering at my seminary’s booth for a couple hours on Saturday (after I take Nova to the groomer for a much-needed brushing out).
Mouse got another adoption application yesterday; they sound like a good potential fit, so we’re waiting to hear back from the rescue about scheduling a meet and greet. The person showed interest in a few different dogs, so definitely no guarantees, but fingers crossed. As much as I don’t want to say goodbye to Mouse, it’s breaking my heart to see how panicked she gets every time we go outside, no matter what we do. Once she does find her forever home, we’ve decided we’re going to pause on looking for a second dog at least until I’m done with school. This has been a wonderful experience in a lot of ways, but it’s also been a lot of added stress, and I think I need to be more realistic about my capacity right now.
I think that’s where I’ll end it this week. As always, I’ll leave you with some doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of a week.
Saturday the first adoption application for Mouse came in. My immediate reaction was excitement for her…and then I pretty quickly dissolved into a teary mess. I know we’re doing the right thing by finding a different forever home for her, but I also love her a lot and it’s hard to think about saying goodbye. A day or two ago we heard back from the rescue that the family who applied has decided to put their plans to adopt a dog on hold for now, so we’re back to square one.
I’m also dealing with some pretty significant back pain this week, which has made focusing on work and school and the rest of life a little extra challenging.
All of that said, I’m also feeling very grateful this week. On Sunday night I got go see one of our Song School instructors, Ellis Delaney, in concert with Katie Dahl (who I don’t know personally but we have approximately a zillion folk music friends in common). A dear college friend agreed to join me for the show, and it was just a lovely time, even if it meant I didn’t get quite enough sleep Sunday night. In a fun twist, I ended up also getting to meet one of my seminary classmates at the show in person for the first time, after being in class together via zoom for the past two semesters! I was also able to get my big work project done and turned in a whole day early, which felt really good.
I think I’ll leave it there for this week; as always, here’s the doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It was a short week at work for me, because today and tomorrow are the Spiritual Directors International annual conference, which I’m attending virtually. Very excited to dig into more aspects of this field I’m pursuing with my degree.
This morning, I had my 6-week post-op visit with my surgeon. She was really pleased with how everything looks, and I’m happy with how I’m feeling, so I was in and out in about 15 minutes, which was great.
My husband has been out of town since Tuesday, so I’ve been getting back into the swing of taking Nova out on my own (now that it’s been more than 6 weeks and I’m less worried about getting pulled around by my 50 lb dog). It’s been interesting, I’m a little stiff now that I’ve suddenly increased my activity level, but it’s been lovely weather than past couple of days, so I’ve been enjoying our walks. Poor Nova has been especially clingy the last couple of days with her other parent gone; they’ll be back tonight, so I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.
That’s all for this week, but I’ll leave you, as always, with some Nova content from the week:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I was supposed to go back to work on Monday, but thanks to some paperwork-related nonsense around potential accommodations, I still have not been cleared to return. So this week has felt like a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.
I’ve been trying to keep myself occupied while I wait. This week I’ve helped a friend brainstorm about a game they’re designing for a class, gone to lunch with my mom, worked on my spiritual direction website, read, listened to podcasts, listened to music…and spent a fair amount of time compulsively checking my email, waiting for news about the work situation. I don’t mind the extra time off, but the waiting isn’t my favorite.
I don’t have a whole lot else to report on this week, but I’ll leave you, as always, with some Nova content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s gone from late winter straight to summer here in the Twin Cities this week (it was in the 40s last week, and yesterday we almost hit 90F), which has me feeling very thrown, and grateful that it’s supposed to calm back down to a much more seasonable 60-something in the next couple of days. Still, I’m glad for the sun that’s come out and the feeling of life re-emerging.
I am also re-emerging – this is the final week of my medical leave, and I’ll return to work on Monday. I’m a little nervous, and part of me wishes I had another week or two off. But at the same time, I’m looking forward to getting some structure back in my life. I don’t honestly know if my anxious brain could handle one more unstructured week.
In the meantime, my Comparative Religious Ethics class is wrapping up this week, and I’m trying to get my final paper written before the deadline (tomorrow at midnight). I have accepted (mostly) that it’s not going to be my best work. I think I can get it done in time, and I’m happy to see that I have a bit more focus than I did a couple of weeks ago, at least.
I still have another month of my Spiritual Direction class…because it’s through a different university that’s on a different timeline, that class will end right before my summer classes start up. I’m a little bummed that I won’t have a break between semesters, but at least this is the less stressful class. This summer I’ll be taking a class on Buddhist scriptures and one on early Christian theologies. I’m looking forward to both of them.
As I get further out from surgery, I’m trying to remember to stop and appreciate the feeling of rightness in my body. It feels more like it’s…mine. The fact that I never have to worry about menstrual cramps again (which I occasionally got mild versions of even after almost a decade of taking testosterone), or that if I were to lose access to testosterone, will never need to worry about my period coming back, is giving me an even deeper sense of peace and rightness within my body than I expected. So that’s cool.
I should get back to homework, so I’ll leave it here for this week. As always, here’s your weekly dose of Nova:
Accidental Fudge 