Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, so every day from here until June is going to get a little bit longer. And today it is very wintery indeed here in Minnesota.
I’m going to need to take Nova out soon, and I’m not especially looking forward to it.
Happy Hanukkah to my friends who celebrate! And a Merry almost Christmas to those to whom it applies. It’s going to be a busy weekend despite the cold as we celebrate with family. I am hoping to guard tomorrow as a mostly free day where I can relax, do some intention-setting for the new year, and catch up on sleep, because the rest of the weekend is pretty packed.
I don’t have too much else to talk about today, so I’ll leave you with your weekly dose of Nova:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a long week for not particularly concrete reasons, and I spent a lot of yesterday feeling like it should be Friday, but here we are. It’s snowing in the Twin Cities today – last I looked they’re predicting we’ll get 5-8 inches. Part of me wants to be grinchy about it, but Nova is so happy that it’s hard to be upset. And it is pretty, and it’s covering all the gross, grey, dirty snow that was mostly melted, which is nice.
One of the more concrete things that has made this week feel very long is that I’ve been dealing with a lot of auditory sensitivity. This has been one of the most persistent clues in my life that I fall somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum of existence – perfectly ordinary sounds suddenly feel unbearably loud, not in a way that gives me a headache or would be a sign of a migraine or something, but they’re just…too much, and if I can’t mitigate the sounds somehow, suddenly everything feels too loud, from lights to texture, etc., and I’m stuck fighting a meltdown. In a fit of overwhelm earlier in the week I ordered some fancy ear plugs that Facebook and Instagram have been advertising to me for forever. They arrived yesterday, and…holy shit, y’all. These are a game-changer. I could tell they were sort of helping when I was wearing them while I was working and felt a little better able to focus, but then as I was wrapping up work, my best friend (who lives upstairs) asked if she could come down to play our piano for a bit. Now, I love our piano, but in our old industrial apartment with its 12 foot corrugated cement ceilings, it is VERY bright, and I often find that it’s too much for my system to handle. In the back of my head I was trying to think of polite ways to excuse myself from the apartment if I got overwhelmed, but it turned out I didn’t need to worry. These ear plugs cut the bright frequencies that I find really hard to cope with, and what was left was a perfectly pleasant experience of listening to a friend make music. I’m blown away. So for my fellow neuro-spicy types out there, if you’ve also been receiving targeted ads for Loop ear plugs, I can say they get two thumbs up from me. I got the Engage Plus variety for myself, and while they weren’t cheap, so far I’m confident they’re going to be worth it for my (relative) sanity.
I’ve mostly managed to convince my brain at this point that I don’t need to worry that I’ve forgotten a homework assignment, which is great. I’m still waiting on final grades, but I’m not too worried about that – I know that I passed both classes and that was my goal. (I think I probably broke my straight-A streak, but that’s also okay, even if the perfectionist part of my brain is fighting me on that.) I’m happy to have a break between semesters, and am also really looking forward to next semester’s classes!
I think that’s where I’ll wrap this up this week. As always here’s your weekly Nova spam:
Yesterday marks NINE YEARS since I started this blog. I have posted something almost every Thursday for nine entire years. This is the longest I’ve ever stuck with one particular creative project, and I’m proud and also a bit dismayed that I’ve managed to keep it up.
This blog started out nine years ago primarily to record thoughts, feelings, and experiences around gender transition. For the last many years it’s been more of a general story-of-my-life sort of blog, but today, seeing as we’ve hit a major blogging anniversary, I feel like it’s appropriate to circle back to that original purpose.
Early last week, I had a consultation with an ob-gyn to discuss getting a hysterectomy. I’ve known I wanted to do this since before I knew I was trans. I was nervous going into the appointment, but it went really well.
Since then, I’ve gotten the requisite letters of justification for insurance purposes from my therapist and my primary care doctor, and the surgical orders have been put in; now, I’m just waiting on their scheduler to call me. In a perfect world, I’ll have this done by the end of the year!
It’s wild to think that this thing I’ve wanted to do for well over a decade is immanent to the point that it could be just weeks away. I’m not super looking forward to the recovery, but thankfully I have a great support network here. Mostly, I’m just very excited by the prospect of being done.
In non-transition news, we got almost 6 inches of snow on Tuesday, and Nova is over the moon about it. I’ll leave you with this video of her in her happy place:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. I completely forgot it was Thursday until my phone reminded me just now that I should be writing a blog post – I’ve had a hard time the last couple of weeks keeping track of what day it is. I’m grateful for my Google calendars for keeping me on track despite my internal clock’s confusion.
I’m not entirely sure what to write about this week, but let’s start with some good news: the intake I had with the potential new therapist last week went really well, and I’ve decided to move forward with services, so I have my first regular appointment this afternoon! I’m really glad this appears to be working out. It was really validating during the intake to hear her say she could tell that I’ve already put in a lot of work in therapy.
In less good news, today we’re going to have to try to get a urine sample from Nova to bring to the vet, because we think she might have a UTI. So that’s going to be an adventure that none of us wanted to go on.
I got to hang out with one of my best friends from college last night, and it was great to talk with her and reflect on how much we’ve grown as people since our days as freshmen at bible college. I want to take better advantage of the fact that I’m back in Minnesota and can therefore more easily reconnect with older friends.
Oh! The other good news is that the blood pressure medicine I started on last week appears to be doing its job. I do wish the app that records my blood pressure readings would let me turn off the alerts for what stage of hypertension I’m at according to the American Heart Association (which are showing up much less frequently now because of the meds, but still) – like, I’m aware my blood pressure is high and I’m working on it and getting yelled at by this app is not doing anything to help my at least partially stress-induced high blood pressure.
I’m going to leave you with this video of Nova enjoying the first proper snow we’ve gotten this winter. Since she came to Minnesota from rural Missouri this summer, we actually don’t know how much experience she’s had with snow before, but her husky genes are clearly strong and she’s over the moon about the white stuff on the ground:
Nova frolicking and digging in a pile of snow and having the time of her life
Accidental Fudge 