Obie vs. Pills
Obie got his first pill Thursday night, the over that's to help him stop vomiting. It was a pretty easy experience.
This morning I attempted the first steroid dose this morning. They are bitter and it didn't go smoothly. I got it in him, booty he also scratched me and drew blood in 6-7 places!
Bless AF who saw my tweets and offered up interim gel capsules to put bitter pills into and a pill popper tool. I choose to combine both his second doses of steroid and stomach pills into one capsule. Rather than give him 3 pulls daily.
I also wrapped him up. He still managed to bite me, no short sleeves for this job, but I got the pill into him more quickly.
We'll see how he does with the whole procedure and if the medication helps. The stomach one we're hopeful about, her hasn't thrown up in a few days.
Surprises
An unexpected package arrived for me today containing a gift arranged for me by my friend and teacher. Given how low with anger and grief I've felt this week, this was such a ray of light.
I was reminded of the studies on gratitude and how surprises, like this today, are more nourishing, as it were. It's good for us to really reflect on them, as many details as we can recall about the event brought into the memory.
This weekend I'm going to sit with CK and makea list of Things That Need Doing Before the Election. I've already started thinking about some food things, what to restock from early spring.
I'm also just moving forward with teaching. I'm making more space for people to talk about how they're doing, it's so isolating and, as one student put it, "There's no ended in sight!"
So Much Grief
My memory of feeling worthless, not valued enough to be kept safe, is different in that it doesn’t directly involve my Mother. Instead it involves witnessing the caregiver I was left with abusing her children. I was accustomed to physical abuse within my family and was terrified this woman would come after n me next.
Something about this particular memory awakens profound grief. Combined with all the grief I feel about COVID, businesses I love closing, Black Lives Protestors being continually brutalized by police, the corrupt GOP, and our cat having cancer.
It leaves me feeling so tender, with tears right at the surface. This is a state I find painfully vulnerable, I do not have a friendly relationship with tears, still. It says something that I’m able to say that rather than “I hate crying”!
I said to students Tuesday that grief is so big at times, but e we keep working with it until it’s like a small, precious stone we set on the altar. We ultimately each create our internal Room of Grief where each precious stone lives.
I like this, I want to write more about it, but this beginning bit, when it’s all so much at once and so big, how to hold space for that? That’s the part I want to be better at.
September Sad
Obie most likely has lymphoma. He doesn't have many options and diagnostics won't reveal some miracle so we're going the palliative care route.
Hopefully we can get him to stop throwing up and gain some weight. He threw up again tonight. Nothing seems to trigger it, her just can't always keep his food down.
Her might respond well and have another year, he might only a few weeks.
2020 is the year that keeps on sucking.
End of August
Obie has lost five pounds since January, it's not good. We also can't seem to get control of his vomiting so today her got in to our vet. His kidneys are small and he has a golf ball sized, but not density, in his abdomen.
They took blood samples and more will be known tomorrow when the results are in. We're really hoping for hyperthyroidism.
A good friend, who happens to be something of an expert on disaster prepared, started off the day noting that she felt it wouldn't be a bad idea to prepare for civil unrest in November after the election. Prepare to lose power in late Autumn, have food stocked up, first aid supplies and a radio.
It's left me feeling down today. Amazingly I recorded a video and sent out a newsletter, and people found it helpful. The patches I took to the post office have started to arrive and people liked them.
Trying to keep all that in mind and not the rest of it; it will be there in the morning.
Another Body at a Protest
I'm pointedly staying away from social media right now. Tonight someone was killed in Portland during the protests. Tonight a right-wing group met at the Clackamas Town Center and drove into downtown Portland, shooting paintballs at people, spraying mace at people.
In the midst of all of this I'm trying to focus on feeding us simple meals today. Whiles CK napped I took nearly 1000 patches, across nearly 140 separate envelopes, to the post office. I also sent a strap and a handmade eye pillow off to a student who lives in Ohio. That's been waiting on me for a few weeks now. I put some origami cranes in with it too and a note.
We'll get to the hammock tomorrow. CK spent yesterday trying to stay alert and she was more tired and anxious today. I have had the patch and yoga prop mailing hanging over my head for weeks, so getting all that to the post office felt good. I also picked up our mail, checks, birthday cards, and a present from a student were waiting for me!
The anxiety we both felt seeing the convoy of Trump supporters was going through town with guns was pretty high. CK suggested we play a game on the bed; pretend camping. We played Hanabi which is lovely, doesn't need to stay perfectly in place, and is collaborative rather than competitive. It wasn't a total disaster when Bertie jumped up in the middle.
I'm hoping I can make plans for a couple of socially distant walks with friends this week. I'm thinking of making a trip through southeast next week to drop off another set of supplies with a friend and some small gifts for a friend who's not only doing regular compiling of the reporting on the protests in Portland, but has been going through a breakup as well.
Shopping Joy
It's already my birthday because I am, once again, up well past midnight. Pandemic Night Owl, that's for sure. I did decide I'd sleep better after a shower and that I wanted to wake up to a clean kitchen. These are often reasons I'm up late.
I spent some money frivolously today. I'd ordered a Japanese stationery blind box last month and it arrived just in time for my birthday. The website kept autocorrecting my home address, giving it the wrong zip code, so I opted to pick my box up in person at the downtown Kinokuniya Bookstore. I'd still not visited and this seemed like the perfect match up.
CK even suggested I get blind box toys for myself for my birthday since she hadn't thought to order any and doesn't go out anymore.
Side note; such a safe shopping experience! They check your temperature when you come in, as you're cleaning your hands off with a squirt of hand sanitizer they give you upon coming into the foyer of the store! No one messing around with a partial mask either! That alone made me delighted to spend an hour wandering around!
I also got art supplies for myself; cool dot pens and a tiny alphabet stamp set. I found some gifts for friends, I'm planning to mail some things out soon to people to lift their spirits.
My Mother really shopped for comfort and had truly boggling quantities of clothing, nicknacks, and all kinds of personal care products. There were other things too, bought and hoarded but never really enjoyed.
Retail Therapy is such an accepted thing, but it has certainly got me into trouble in my 20s and 30s. Our capitalist society is all of putting holidays and furniture on credit. I try not to fall for it anymore, it really doesn't help and things don't always give me the kind of joy I'm needing.
Today though, it was a frivolous spend and a bit of money. I've already been playing with the dot pens in my art journal and had a blast opening up all the blind box toys. The Maido-in-a-Box was so worth it, I was hesitant about the next one as the theme is ink and calligraphy. This one, "Back to School", is so thoughtfully done that I'm inclined to get it. I also remembered that lettering is something I want to improve on.
Wisconsin and Guns
I was deeply saddened, but unsurprised, to wake to the news that 2 people had been killed last night in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I'm grateful it wasn't worse. I'm livid at the sheriff there who suggests that protestors brought it on by being out past curfew. I'm also enraged at all the cops who encouraged militia members and gave the murderer a pass, plus gentle treatment. I'm sickened by the news media who show a white terrorist doing community works before killing people while painting an innocent man, repeatedly shot in the back in front of his children, as a criminal.
Oregon has a lot of problems with militias and racism. We have Proud Boys and people putting nails in shields to bash into Black Lives Matter protestors. We had them here this past weekend aiming guns at people and spraying bear mace.
Wisconsin though, they have the same militia problem AND they have whole bunches of people who think it is their duty to open carry while picking up groceries. Granted, the murderer was a 17-year-old cop wanna-be who came up from Illinois.
Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin; all of these states have the same issue. Too many people wanting to make a political statement by wearing a gun to dinner.
Years ago, when I was engaged to my second husband, we went back to Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he was from. Multiple events were planned for me to meet his family and friends. One small dinner party, 6 people including the two of us, had a conflict because one of my fiancée's friends was one of these open carry activists and I didn't want a handgun at the table during dinner, even holstered. The dinner was being held at another friend's, where we were staying, and there were numerous guns in the house already!
What strikes me is how he tried to talk me into just letting the friend wear his handgun into the house for dinner. Why couldn't I understand Wisconsin folks more, after all, I'd gone to college there? I was just so accustomed to people gaslighting me this way I ignored that, dug in and insisted that there were already enough guns.
Violences of All Kinds
I woke up in the early morning hours and was just getting back to sleep when CK, who had sat up in bed, said aloud, "Justin Townes Earle is dead."
We both have this memory of introducing each other to the music of Justin Townes Earle, who she got into, and Steve Earle, who I was into, as part of our courtship. It was probably a few years into our relationship she realized later, looking at the dates of JTE's releases.
This news set a gray tone over the day. CK noted that for whatever reason, this celebrity death was hitting her hard. I thought a lot about intergenerational trauma and how it robs people of their ability to feel connected. I thought about TJ, how close in age we were and how he didn't make it out. I'm so grateful for the ways I found to cultivate resiliency, I managed to avoid the addictions that were modeled for me.
We have been worried about friends and family in California. Just as one fire near my mother-in-law was contained another has started. I'm grateful our fire season has been so mild so far.
Today I heard that a member of the soccer patch community I belonged to was assaulted by cops last night, awoke in an ambulance and is now home covered in bruises and with a concussion. Part of me is surprised it has taken this long for someone I know to experience police brutality during the uprisings here. I'm grateful that it's taken so long and I'm also full of rage and grief at the state of the police.
Then another Black man shot in the back repeatedly by cops over the weekend. This time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is about 90 minutes from where I went to college. The man lived, but is now paralyzed from the waist down. There are uprisings there and the more police violence as the response.
I keep thinking about a series of tweets from Black activist Brittany Packnett asking how many times do white people need to "bear witness" to the brutalization and murder of Black people, particularly by cops, before we do something about it. Postcards of lynchings date back to the 1880's, I didn't know about this until I was a young adult. I was so surprised, now I know better.
I'm glad I'm taking a break this weekend and glad I'm cutting down to 2 weekends a month, but I'm committed to holding space for the Yoga of Freedom classes. If people want to study with me on Saturdays it's going to come with a side of social justice. Getting more white people to talk about this without having to ask a Black person to unpack it for them is vital and is something I can keep doing.
It feels like so little, but I'm keeping in mind that this past Saturday a student in her early 70's shared that she'd always thought herself to be, "a gentle, kind person", but coming to the class has helped her see that she does have a lot of biases about race and how people look. She said it's been very eyeopening and is helping her realize that she's got work to do!
Staycation
I'm not good at staycation. I can't let go of all the stuff that needs doing in our house. The to-do list I never seem to get far enough with because I'm doing something else like teaching, doing stuff with friends, and resting. Not being able to even get the house cleaned up feeds my feelings of unworthiness
I realized this was driving my urgency to go away for my birthday. I don't want to see all the things I feel behind on. That's the appeal of going away.
Instead I'm going to practice resting without shame, less shame. That's a big order for my birthday week, but the pandemic continues to make everything more difficult.
Today CK surprised me with an early gift, a complicated tabletop game that's based on a role playing game I played in college! There's an option to play solo too. She suggested I use some of my time off this week to learn how to play and teach her on Friday.