This week in squirrels…

From Sun May 3rd to Sat May 9th

Summary

  • The order of things in my summary going forward.
    • I am going to order the sections in TWiS posts from “most lighthearted” to “darkest” going forward.
    • This is my journal and I will post about what is going on in my life as deeply or shallowly as I feel I want to, but I am sure for anybody else reading this there is a line where they don’t wanna read further about my struggle with cancer or angst.
  • Being more upright and early PT.
    • These past few weeks, I have been working on building back up my legs and stamina.
    • I have been improving how much I can be upright sitting at a desk. Part of this is beyond my control, but I can always do more fitness to help my body acclimate.
    • Cleaning out my office and dragging in a nap bed has helped when it comes to being at my desktop.
    • I am hoping to be streaming in the upcoming week, if only for as long as my stamina can hold out. Hopefully even more, starting to work again; maybe not next week, but the week after.
  • The joys of the Analog Pocket.
    • I still spent plenty of time involuntarily horizontal this week. Instead of bouncing around between reading and napping, I have pulled out my Analog Pocket and been getting a lot of extra mileage out of it.
    • If you read this and have a favorite Gameboy/Color/Advance/SNES/NES game, ping me on my socials linked below and let me know what it is. I am always looking for a lesser-known title or an indie I can drop on my flash carts.
  • Auto registration.
    • I smogged and registered my car TWO days late. Ugh, why Ame? Embarrassing.
    • I wrote down the wrong dates and times, and when I can drive is spotty.
  • Last week’s blog post.
    • I once again didn’t get the blog post done last Sunday. Between headaches and not being in a computer habit anymore, it was hard to sit down and get it done.
    • However, I posted a catch-up later in the week and will move my personal post due date to Tuesday for now.
  • My struggles with food.
    • Food and a cranky stomach have been two of my biggest issues for the last few weeks.
    • This week has been a “need my nausea meds first thing and all day” week.
    • But my biggest struggle is finishing meals. I am very impressionable now; I think of a food, see a commercial, or hear somebody mention a food, and suddenly I need it. That is, until I make it or order it.
    • Whenever I start eating, I have a 70% chance of my body deciding it doesn’t want this AT ALL, and I am left needing to go make another meal.
    • This is a really big problem when this happens twice in a city, and I already have limited energy & funds.
  • Roaches.
    • Aw nuts. Bugs are always worse as the heat picks up, but roaches coming in isn’t what I need right now.
    • I am allergic to roaches and their droppings, so roaches in the house mean hives, and chemo means I have about 1/10th of my normal immune system to deal with this.
    • I laid down fresh boric acid since I was very overdue for it. I normally do it in spring, but I spent all spring… well, yeah.
  • The Chemo™.
    • This week is designed to suck. We made adjustments to the treatments and at-home to account for how poorly I responded to earlier doses of “the big stuff.”
    • Monday and Tuesday, I was on fire. The doctor asked me to push myself with lots of up-and-downs and stay up as far as I can push it to help with my dizziness on standing. Tuesday was 5 loads of laundry and a long time at my work desk, re-acclimating. My reward was sleeping through the whole night! Win
    • Wednesday was a 10-hour shift at the clinic. Seems my blood system is not loving all the chemo, so I needed all the bags before the heavy stuff, and now… the heavy stuff.
    • Wednesday post-chemo was pretty heavy and fried, but I slept through the night well and slept in. But Thursday I actually felt pretty ok? I think my blood is definitely “thin” right now. My eyes and head aren’t the happiest, but I am still moving.
    • My Friday Lumbar Puncture Chemo didn’t go great. The hardest one yet. It feels like they are getting a bit more challenging as they go on. I hate this for me since I have three more to go… that we know of.
  • The hidden expense of chemo.
    • Gas from 80 miles a week in appts
    • Ordered food
    • Grocery delivery
    • 110$ in Lyft on days I can’t get a ride or drive
    • Having to buy all new clothes as you rapidly drop two dress sizes
    • all the things I am not even thinking of
  • Peripheral Neuropathy.
    • A nurse said “Peripheral Neuropathy” earlier in my treatment, and my brain went a bit white hot at an idea I didn’t want to process.
    • Very slowly losing sensations in the tips of my fingers is one of my most obnoxious and possibly long-term, if not lifelong, consequences of all this chemo.
    • We call it “losing sensation,” but I am constantly obsessing over the feeling of the increasing numbness. I am always rubbing my fingers against something like it’s a stim or fidget, because it bothers me all day. I can’t stop anxiety/depression “testing” if it is progressing.
    • It seems to be linked to Chemo in the Spine time, that’s when it gets a little bit worse every time.
  • One of my besties’ wedding.
    • I had to miss the wedding of two people I love and cherish very much this week.
    • I can’t say i got out that often before all this but with my blood work being all crashed out I can’t really do much of any socialization or events.
    • it’s really painful and makes it harder to stay motivated. I miss real socialization, intimacy, and shared spaces.
    • I miss being able to have a conversation where it doesn’t feel like my situation is centered.

Books

  • The Feminist Killjoy Handbook
    • I am not done with this book, but it has been giving me life lately. I adore the author’s writing and how much time she spends referencing greats.
    • The topic of embracing feminist power and even struggles so that we can encourage ourselves and each other to do real work in our circles is something that gives me energy in these times.

Music

  • Gravity Kills
    • I forgot just how much I love this band, and also how edgelord dadaism the lyrics are.
  • <1979>’s “Underrated”
    • Brand new album by one of my favorite rhythmic noise acts! They go so many years between releases, but each one is a deep, intense banger.
  • 16Pad Noise Terrorist’s “Unmute”
    • Another HANDS label release that came out alongside <1979>’s new album
    • I might even love this one more than Underrated in the moment.
    • 16Pad is more of a mashup of 2-step, jungle, and all those UK flavor nasties with rhythmic noise. These go together SO WELL.
  • Ratwyfe’s “mushroom melancholia”
    • This indie folk style album is very cute if you overlook how femcel coded it is. I give it the pass for that because it is pretty gay and the “useless lesbian” is a relative of, but not quite the same as, the femcel.
  • The Lost Highway soundtrack
    • Back before Trent pivoted hard into soundtracks, he did some of the best soundtracks of the 90’s
    • I still come back to this one regularly because it’s imprinted itself onto my soul. Besides featuring some of NIN, Manson, & Smashing Pumpkins’ top singles of the era (The Perfect Drug, I Put a Spell on You, & Eye, respectively), it also has this amazing mix of dialog and instrumentals, and opens and closes with Bowie.

Reads and Videos

  • Music Production MYTH Tier List | AudioPilz
    • I am not sharing this for any endorsement of opinions; AudioPilz is just hilarious, and some of his memes in this one had me in stitches.
  • This Tiny Predator Shouldn’t Be This Smart | Infinite Biosphere
    • I like jumping spiders, and this is a fun science video. No angst or social commentary here; just a really cool video about how unexpectedly over-designed and intelligent jumping spiders are.
  • How I ended up Vegetarian | JaidenAnimations
    • I 100% agree with most of this video, and its experiences about being vegan. I was Vegan for many years, and it’s shocking:
      • 1…. how much animosity other people will throw at you when they find out you are vegan. I would go so far as to say that even without me directly telling them or talking about it, upon casually learning I am vegan, more than half of the people would actively lash out. The amount of trauma and self-judgment about NOT being vegan that some people carry is shocking.
      • 2…. how many vegans have a lot of other brain worms and will be weirdly intense levels of shitty towards other humans for not caring about exactly what they care about or doing vegan wrong or not enough or whatever. Which is kinda weird for a group primarily full of crunchy hippies.
    • These two facts are an Ouroboros of animosity.
  • RIP social media. What comes next is messy | Ars Technica
    • This news article is dense and a bit hard to get good actionable items, but it ties into three things that I have been thinking about.
    • “Third Spaces” or the places we congregate semi-publicly outside of home and work. How can we build more of these up and actually get people to go? Can these also be sanely made online, really?
    • There was talk about how modern social media isn’t even that social on a recent episode of the Offline Podcast. It’s essentially television. We don’t have curated content, but a feed of videos, ads, and posts that aren’t made for meaningful engagement or feedback but for either liking or hating, so the system knows what to give us more of.
    • Another pattern I don’t see people talking about is how far the “get ready with me diatribe” videos have gone. I believe it was a Kat Blaque discussion where she brought up how these have replaced people having conversations with their friends or a therapist, instead of one-sidedly live processing things out loud for the whole internet to be cherry-picked apart by others, and all possibly meaningful feedback on it is lost or discarded because it’s not given by the person’s actual inner circle.
  • Catching malicious contributions in Datadog’s open source repos | Datadog
    • Considering how big a deal this is, I really dislike how much of this reads as a marketing collab post.
    • Still, though, it is a good reference to the struggles of both managing open source right now and being on GitHub.
  • Congrats Everyone: U.S. Now Ranked 64th In Global Press Freedom | Techdirt
    • yikes

Quote of the Week

Punk: The world is fucked, and I’m pissed 😡

Emo: The world is fucked, and I’m sad 😞

Goth: The world is fucked, but there’s beauty 🥀

Ska: The world is fucked, and I have a trumpet 🎺