I started this site on the day the Russo-Ukrainian war started. That war continues. Others have started. The Israel-Hamas war has gone on almost two years. There’s still 48 hostages in Gaza and who knows how many Palestinian deaths. Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, (or was it even longer?) Charlie Kirk was killed. I hadn’t known of him personally but I had known of his attempts to target academics. It’s so confusing to me, so many are claiming he just wanted to debate, that he valued free speech. You can’t claim to love free speech on one hand while using the other hand to antagonize and silence your enemies. A lot of Israelis that I follow on social media are bemoaning his death, he was supposedly a staunch defender of Israel. It seemed he also held antisemitic views, at least according to his Wikipedia. Who even knows what’s true anymore.

Last week, or maybe this week, I don’t know (I am getting over COVID and time is slippery), in one singular day I saw an article in the NYT, the supposed paper of record, saying there were 600 deaths from the Israel-Iran war last summer. Which came as a surprise to me, I had heard no such thing, and I follow the news closely. And then the comments were a bunch of Iranians saying that wasn’t true. It was literally fake news. That same day a professor was fired from a public university for teaching more than the two genders declared by President Trump. Those two events in conjunction made me feel the authoritarianism in a way I hadn’t yet.

I go to work and walk my dogs, I pick up trash, sometimes I call my reps. I know I don’t do enough. I become more aware all the time how limited my power and influence are. How little I actually control. People don’t want a war here, or they won’t should it actually arrive. This feels more pressing than the climate crisis, and right now, just as unsolvable, but change is ever on the horizon.

Both my husband and I have biopsies this week, it’s so weird that things could just carry on as they have been, or we could both have cancer, or some half and half situation could arise.

I was reading Esmè Weijun Wung’s recounting of Kristen Arnett’s wedding, and I felt this phantom limb feeling I get sometimes reading about writers. Writers feel like a group I could maybe be part of, maybe, if I didn’t have a kid, or five animals, or an addict/hoarder husband, or if I was less damaged, or if I could improve my executive functioning, or if I had a quiet place to write outside of the mayhem of my home. I can never seem to get my home close to anything even approaching functional. I’m always running at it from behind. When would I possibly write?

But I am also aware of things, like, I do all the free NYT and WaPo games, almost every day. That’s a lot of crosswords. And I don’t have paid work! I started this blog and I thought I understood what my disability meant because I wasn’t going to search for work but I’m still only starting to get it.

I saw a violent scene of the Sopranos by accident last night and then I slept like shit and had nightmares. My cat got a dental today so I mostly just waited for the vet to call. And that was basically my day. I did a few other things: I cooked some old ass artichokes I wasn’t sure if I should eat especially after consulting reddit. They actually were pretty good. I got the animal water fountain functioning again. I got caught up on the WaPo crosswords, which are really the LA Times crosswords, which are the crosswords that all the Gannett newspapers run. One would think the Bezos could find his own crossword maker, but no. Anyway, that was my whole day. And I’m fucking exhausted. Laying on the couch in a heap exhausted.

I want to be able to do more, but I am very limited. I have another sleep study coming up in April which, could, hypothetically lead to some new treatment that gets my energy closer to that of an average chap. But I know not to hope too hard for that.

On October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel. I’ve been constantly scared and filled with rage since then. People don’t care about Jews, it’s crystal clear now. So few people said anything about the seventh, even though more Jews were killed than during Kristallnacht. They have been talking plenty and calling for a ceasefire now that Israel has retaliated though.

Here in the US the support for Hamas is astounding. I feel like I am living in some upside down universe. Liberals and queers pledging allegiance to a terrorist group that supports Sharia law. The ignorance is astounding, because Israel has more weapons and power, they are being deemed the aggressor, even though Hamas clearly started the conflict.

The worst part is that you can’t show any support of Israel without being deemed complicit in genocide. Which, it isn’t. It’s war and war is hell. I think, especially in the West that most of us are so far removed from any type of war that we can’t tell the difference between a war and a genocide. Between a war and ethnic cleansing.

And the war in the Ukraine continues. You don’t have enough time in the day to take note of all the horrors. It’s still a very beautiful world, filled with light, but it feels like we are on a precipice.

In late 2021, I started to realize that I was autistic. It was life-changing; it gave me permission to rest as I needed. I finally understood why socializing could be so exhausting instead of restorative. I wasn’t a failure; I was disabled. My husband encouraged me to stop looking for a job and find other ways to fill my time. I started this blog, began my conversion to Judaism, and joined the League of Women Voters. I took housekeeping as seriously as I could, considering my executive functioning issues and physical disabilities. This seemed reasonable.

It was not.

I only have to write my essays to complete my conversion, yet, I have found this difficult to fit in. I started one of the essays, and I have a plan to restart that same one because I didn’t like how it was started, which was too impersonal and formulaic. And this is something I really want to do! Like, deeply, in my soul, I want to finish my conversion and be a Jew. Out loud and in color, defending Israel, wearing a Star of David, telling people they are being antisemitic when they say they just don’t like Zionism. And I haven’t yet. And I am so close. I know some of this, again, is executive functioning difficulties. And a touch of perfectionism.

And a touch of “I have had 29 doctor’s appointments so far this year.” We’re six months into 2023.

I have two doctor’s appointments this week, and two next week, and it got me curious, how many doctor’s appointments have I had this year? I’ll be honest, 29 is way higher than I thought.

Plus appointments for my son, of which there have been many: he is also autistic and has some motor delays, which means lots of appointments. The animals have been going hard in the paint this year as well, lots of visits to the vet. My husband even made a cameo; I took him to a procedure yesterday.

I don’t think I have even tried to do any League of Women Voters stuff this year. And that’s actually a problem because my state is going crazy with the suppression of democracy. Like, it’s not okay that I’m not involved.

And the homemaking? It has its ups and downs, but I don’t think I am making much progress overall, like my husband continues to bring in new stuff, and I can’t get rid of the old stuff mindfully fast enough. He’s a hoarder, it’s hard. Everything’s hard. We can’t go outside because the air quality is so bad today from the Canadian wildfires.

I don’t know exactly what I am capable of right now. I have hopes that maybe my thyroid issues will be more obvious now that half of it is gone. I am certainly much more tired somehow even than I was before.

This is just living in America right now.

Have a good birthday America, I think you might be starting to show your age (empires last around 200 years).

Well, one day short of eight weeks, I finally got my Affirma genetic tests for my thyroid nodule back. It came back “suspicious.” This apparently means there is more than a 50% chance it is cancer. Yesterday I had the nodule on the other side biopsied, it is slightly below threshold for biopsy, but my endocrinologist wanted to check it so we would know if I should have a partial or total thyroidectomy. Either way, I am losing half of my thyroid. Thumbs down.

I know in my very last entry I said something to the effect of somewhat hoping I had cancer so I could rest or something? Definitely not feeling that way now. I know I can be weird about wanting things to be “worth” something, as in, it wouldn’t have been worthwhile to go through that long, hellish wait if it wasn’t cancer. I don’t know. I was wrong regardless. I always feel like I am wasting things, like somehow me getting checked for thyroid cancer and it not being cancer would take healthcare away from someone else who needed it more. Anyway, the point is, I am unhappy that I might have cancer, I am unhappy that I have to have surgery, I am unhappy that at least half of my thyroid is coming out.

To add to all the medical turmoil, I also found a lump on my breast on February 18th and I am getting that looked at tomorrow. If I have double cancer, I will be upset. I am already waking up at 4am everyday now, it’s becoming a habit. I’m losing my cool. I make more mistakes. My patience has shortened. I didn’t think I was masking my autism that much, but now I am not able to mask as well, I can see that I was masking more than I thought. I’m still not totally decided on whether masking is a bad thing overall. I know that’s the current narrative, I read Dr. Price’s book, I know it’s supposedly bad because it’s so exhausting. But, like, it’s also exhausting to not have people take you seriously because you aren’t masking enough? I stim pretty much whenever I want, but if I am dealing with people I want to take me seriously I try to move my face more and not talk in a monotone voice. And it works? People feel more like they can connect with me when I do that. I seem less robotic, more human to them. It’s dumb because, yes, I should be able to be taken seriously and be seen as fully human without doing those things, but that’s not where the world is right now.

I’m just moved from one limbo to another, now I wait to see the status of my other nodule, and then I wait to meet the surgeon. If the breast thing is something, then more waiting will ensue there as well. Then once I have my thyroid surgery, I will wait to see if it was cancer. And if it was I will be checking back forever to see if the cancer has come back. I am trying to relax into all this mayhem, but that’s just a cerebral façade, my body is terrified and displeased by all this uncertainty and it reminds me of this each morning at 4am.

I have been waiting seven weeks and two days for the results of either molecular or genetic tests on my thyroid biopsy. The doctor said it’s ok because if it’s cancer, it’s typically slow growing. I can’t understand how that’s supposed to make me feel better. I’m starting to unravel.

First, I had to wait from my ultrasound in mid-November to the end of January for my biopsy. Two days later I learned it was a follicular neoplasm. Previously, every person who had a follicular neoplasm had at least a partial thyroid lobectomy, and after biopsy, it was malignant 20% of the time. Now there is a molecular/genetic test that supposedly can help improve the odds of a person keeping their thyroid for a cancer that occurs one out of five times. But it’s very new. I haven’t been able to find much info about it. I’m not even sure if it’s molecular or genetic testing!

And then! Somehow my sample didn’t get sent! This wasn’t discovered until almost four weeks after the supposed sending after I called twice -and- the receptionist got shitty with me about it. (“We would know right away if there had been a problem with the sample.” But would you notice if it hadn’t even been sent? “Well maybe it’s three weeks in, three weeks out.” What does that even mean?) It takes three weeks for this test to determine results. Does it need to be cultured? Sequenced? I don’t know, like I said, brand new test equals something I can’t research! So now I have been waiting seven weeks and two days, after already waiting two and a half months for the initial biopsy. I’ll do the math for you, four and a half months of waiting.

But it’s ok, right? Usually it’s slow growing.

It has now been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. So far, no WWWIII. But the last nuclear treaty between the US and Russia fell this week. I am continually disappointed in humans and in our inability to get rid of nuclear arms. We know if any sort nuclear war starts it likely spells the end of humans and creates an awful situation for any living things that remain. It seems obvious no one wants this outcome, and yet the bombs remain. Well, North Korea and Pakistan have bombs, so we must as well. We can’t get rid of them unless Russia does. What about Iran? Why can’t this get figured out? No one even talks about the possibility of eradicating nuclear arms anymore. Almost everyone alive has lived their whole life under the specter of nuclear war. It’s in the background of every person’s consciousness. We’ve decided this is an acceptable reality.

Let’s stop manufacture of new land mines, as well. Humans are disgusting at times. We would never want these horrors to affect our country, our land, our people, but we afflict them on others? Are we that small sighted?

It the month of Adar, in which God instructs us to be joyful. I’m really trying. I am still waiting for the results of the molecular tests after my thyroid biopsy showed follicular neoplasm. The tests are new, a few years ago at least half of my thyroid would have been removed with follicular neoplasm. There’s a 20% chance I have cancer with a follicular neoplasm. I was told the test could take up to three weeks, and it has already taken longer: three weeks and two days now. Sometimes, at my worst moments, I find myself hoping I will have cancer so I can rest, so less will be expected of me, so my friends will take more notice of me. I know this is wrong, I know I need to make time for rest, I know I may need to clear my schedule, I know I need to talk to my friends about how they haven’t been there recently. Cancer will not solve these problems, and even though thyroid cancer is a “good” cancer, the truth is there are no good cancers.

I have a new kitten, though he is a stealth kitten, he is six months and somehow already seven and half pounds. He was found outside a Buddhist temple, and his temperament befits that. I was going to get him if I found out I had cancer, but then my husband told me not to do that. That that would be wishing for cancer, a problem I already have.

It’s been freakishly warm as well, 70° degree days in February. It’s not freakish anymore, I suppose. I try to enjoy it for what it is, nice weather, rather than a harbinger of a horrific tick season and unsettling reminder the climate crisis is here, right now, and so little has been done to mitigate it. I wore sandals in February again today.

Which, of course I did. That’s why this blog has its name. But I still have so much, and my life, my progression through this place right now, is still joyful. The horrible things happening are not happening to me and getting bogged down in the great suffering of the world does nothing to heal it.

Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. That is bad for Russia and its on going war with Ukraine. I didn’t realize Finland had so many past wars with Russia, but that’s having a different ideology and sharing a border for you. This painful war between Russia and Ukraine goes on and on. They predicted Ukraine would fall fast and early. It keeps not happening. The war goes on.

I read somewhere that one cannot be a pacifist and support any military intervention. I have thought about that saying a great deal since. I hate war and do consider myself a pacifist, but according to the above definition, that would mean I would not have supported other countries, particularly the US, providing military aid to Ukraine. That means I would have perhaps doomed Ukraine to Russian occupation if I had been the military high up in charge person who decided such things; if I was this person and I decided I would only follow this pacifist ideal. Which obviously I would never be! It’s like the trolley problem for war. Do you let the Ukraine fall to avoid an even worse international conflict? I feel disturbed by letting Ukraine fall, but of course fucking WWIII sounds way worse.

I know a lot of people are probably thinking it, but sometimes it feels like Ukraine will join NATO –> WWIII will commence –> nuclear war will happen –> the climate catastrophe will be “mitigated” in some ways by the loss of population. There will not be mitigation in terms of many cities being devastated by nuclear bombs and the horrific polution that would follow. Where I live would likely be a target, that’s what I have always been told, there’s a big research university here, as well as prominent science and chemical institutes that do work for the DOD. Also, lots of population. I catastrophize easy and often, OCD is the center of my mental health onion. I try to think of where we might go if such a situation were to arise and we were lucky enough to have enough warning to escape. It scares me, deeply.

I hate war. It has always felt like men playing stupid games over ideologies and little parcels of land and sea. They say one of the best ways to counter climate change is to focus on educating women. I wonder if that would help with war as well, though then I think of Margaret Thatcher and I am not so sure. Are women less violent than men or have they just not been given their chance to control the pieces yet?

It’s been a big week. I got my second COVID bivalent booster. I am pumped about that, my last booster was in October of last year. I got my flu shot at the same time. I also got an eyelash tint and lift, which is basically an eyelash perm and dye. It looks like you are wearing mascara. Getting it done was intense, I worried about accidently opening my eyes and damaging my eyes with the chemicals. But I prevailed! Now I look like I am wearing some makeup. I don’t know if I will get it again, but it’s fun to try at least once. The queen died yesterday. I liked the queen as a person but I think the monarchy is as dumb of an institution as there is in the whole wide world. The queen did it well, however. She was funny and liked corgis; I suspect she would have been a fascinating person to chat with. I am curious to see what happens to the monarchy in her absence, I have a feeling it might be similar to what happened to my family of origin upon the death of my grandfather, that is to say, it might unravel.

AND

This week was the big autism reveal! I met with a psychologist in July for an interview. She thought she might be able to give me an “informal” diagnosis from an interview with me, followed by a subsequent one with my husband and me. I apparently masked too well to qualify for this informal diagnosis, so I ended up taking the ADOS II in August. I got the results this week.

AND

I’m autistic! Hooray!

She said I was “very, very high functioning” and would have been diagnosed with Asperger’s if I had been diagnosed 10 years prior. To me, that seems hilarious, I definitely do NOT feel like a high functioning individual in any sense of the word, but I guess for an autistic person, I somewhat am? Maybe? Still sussing all that out. Going in I thought maybe I would be diagnosed as Level 2 autism. She didn’t even seem familiar with the new classification system or the issues around functioning labels. I liked her anyway and I feel so relieved to finally have a label that feels comfy and warm.

I don’t have any regrets about being not being diagnosed sooner, I don’t think I was ready for it until now due to my totally incorrect assumptions about autism. Live and learn. Also, I feel better positioned to support and advocate for my son, who has been diagnosed with ADHD and has a full neuropysch eval coming up it January that is primarily looking for Autism. I know if he had been diagnosed as a little guy I would have ABA’d the fuck out of of him in an attempt to make him more palatable to the neurotypical world. Thank god that didn’t happen!

I am not one of those people who believes everything happens for a reason because that is such a cruel logic, but I do feel I am on a good path right now. Who can say how long it will last? I am just content to have this new confirmation about what I believed about myself. Watch out world, I just might #actuallyautistic everything from now on!

This is an important post for all the reasons mentioned above, but also because I am writing on my laptop rather that my phone. Even though I am a shitty typist who looks at the keys a lot, using the computer allowed me to get my thoughts out with a speed I couldn’t imagine when writing on my phone. Feeling content today, like I made something more efficient in a way that helps me, rather than helps capitalism or my output or bottom line. It has been a BIG WEEK y’all.