Adjusting to "Normal"

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

Most of the snow is gone now, replaced by mud two to three inches deep. The water pools and puddles on the surface, nowhere to go.

Of course, they say we have an 80% of more on Friday, measured in inches. Hard to believe when it was 54 today and I was outside in a T-shirt in jeans.

The light lasts longer now, measurably so. Oddly, that doesn't feel like a good thing, since we should be getting January's weather instead of May's, but the calendar and the mercury don't seem to be on speaking terms anymore.

The dogs have been shedding their winter coats since Thanksgiving; the horses are following suit. The chickens are laying, on average, 6 or 7 eggs a day right now, despite their raggedy molt garb. Normally, we'd go four or five months without fresh eggs. Some of them are normal-sized, too, but at least a couple of the girls are dropping eggs of monstrous proportions; they won't even fit in the cartons. They're wonderful, but I have to wonder whether this is normal — or if, like me (and like the very climate itself), this is their "new normal." 

I have no "normal" anymore; I think I've finally surrendered to that realization. Part of it is the sure and certain knowledge that climate (and with it, weather) upheaval will only increase, and autoimmune diseases are notoriously weather-affected. Part of it is that it's clear that something is changing, fundamentally, and weather it shows up in bloodwork and whatever other tests modern medicine devises or not, it's there, and I have to find a way to adjust.

I haven't yet.  

One day, I feel almost like myself — I mean, the "new" me, the post-diagnosis me, which of course has been "me" for decades now. I suppose it's like looking in the mirror; no matter what the glass says, your brain insists on reading the image as yourself at 20.

Then there are the days like these, when I don't even recognize the person in the reflection. I've always known that AI disease is a constant stream of ups and downs, but the peaks and troughs used to be relatively predictable in appearance. These days, it's mostly one very long trough. It brings to mind grade-school geography and the Marianas Trench.

We're at 7,500 feet here, so that's a hell of a drop.

There's one other problem with the trough: It requires slogging through cubic feet of heavy water and mud. That slows me down. A lot. So posts will be late a lot. Responses will be late. I'll space things, because when I'm this deep in the trough, the brain fog isn't fog anymore; it's a form of mental drowning, and my memory of my to-do list is the first to get swamped. If I say I'll do something and forget, it's just that: I've forgotten. Not intentionally; it's just the way my brain is right now. 

So bear with me. We've all got a lot of adjusting ahead of us, some of us more than others. 

In the meantime, I'm swimming — or at least treading water — as fast as I can. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Already Behind

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

So, new year and I'm already way behind.  I discovered yesterday that Gmail is hoarding messages again (well, Gmail or TaosNet or the CenturyLink backbone, who knows? the effect is the same). I have no idea how far back this goes this time, and had no time yesterday to dig around, so if you sent me a message that required a response and didn't get one, let me know or just send the damn thing again, plz. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what gets through and what gets held.

Nothing much that was on my actual to-do list accomplished yesterday; we spent half the day trimming/soaking/draining/painting/booting the two girls. Cree's founder has been in full swing again for a while, so Wings has completely taken over her trimming, because the standard farrier approach does not and will never work for her (which should be obvious, but apparently is not), and it's cheaper if he does it himself than bringing the specialist over the mountain from LV. She's had abscesses in her forefeet, a result of the the wrong type of trim job on a foundered horse. So he took off several more thin layers of sole yesterday (enough to let blood flow in a couple of areas), we soaked her in apple cider vinegar (far more effective than the Epsom salts that are the conventional wisdom in this area), then painted her hooves with tea-tree oil and booted her hooves. She's walking better already. (This episode was also much easier than the last one, a few days before Christmas, in blizzard conditions; you haven't lived until you've put a horse fully inside Wings's studio for trimming. Yes, the air was blue, and not with the snow, but we got it done.)

Unfortunately, we had to do Shade, too.  Shade is Cree's daughter, and now approaching middle age (she'll be 13 in May), and so we have to watch her closely to try to ward off early manifestations of either founder of Cushing's (which Cree now has, too). Someday I'll write about all of these in detail so people know what the hell it is I'm talking about. At any rate, Shade seems to be developing a tiny bit of a cresty neck (not good), and she's been a little lame on a forefoot (also not good), so we soaked, painted, and booted her, too.  She's never been booted before, and it makes her stumbly, and so she balks and refuses to move. We'll likely take them off today so her feet can breathe; it was largely protection to allow the vinegar and oil to soak in and do their jobs overnight. Cree, on the other hand, is an old hoof at this, and she's cool with it.

Add to that the fact that my current autoimmune crash has apparently decided to supplement itself with a bug, and I'm way behind. I say "current," because although I always have a post-holiday crash after the season's frenetic pace, filling orders, all the logistics of packing and shipping and so forth, coordinating with Wings on who needs what, and taking over more of the physical labor so he can cadge needed time in the studio, all in much colder weather . . . yeah, and all that's coming right on schedule, but this year, it's not really a new or distinct crash. Since my mid-August concussion, I've never really pulled out of the AI crash that ensued shortly thereafter. It's been a very difficult few months physically and otherwise, and it's pretty clear to me that this is going to be my new normal. 

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying that I'm way, way behind on everything, including my "day job" of promoting Wings's work and that of the other artists in our gallery. Today's post at The NDN Silver Blog will likely be late today, too. I'm dragging physically and mentally, and while this is not at all new to me, neither is how best to deal with it, which means that I have been and will continue to be cutting way, way back on my level of engagement. The prospect of anything else, especially that which involves giving energy or attention to certain types of behaviors by others . . . ain't nobody got time for that here. So expect to see me only when you see me; it's going to take all I've got just to do my, you know, job. Jobs. All of them.

Community Fundraisers: More Than Shelter, Home

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

It's a basic human need: Shelter. 

A roof over your head; a floor under your feet. A place to be safe from the elements.

But it also needs to be liveable. And accessible. And those words mean something very different for a healthy, fully able-bodied person than they do for someone who must live with multiple disabling conditions all day, every day.

Most Kossacks already know BFSkinner. No, not that B.F. Skinner; our BFSkinner. 

He's been a member of Daily Kos for about six years now. He's a member of a great many groups and subcommunities there: part of various groups organized by and for Jewish Kossacks, an active member of the LGBTQI community, a participant in various arts-related groups, just to name a few. He's famous for his regular series of community-building diaries, in which he invites Kossacks to explain an aspect of their identities; name a favorite song or movie in a particular sub genre; or otherwise offer up a bit of themselves for inclusion in this wild and wonderful community that the other side loves to deride as the Great Orange Satan.

He's also brilliant: a Ph.D., and, like his namesake, a psychologist.

He's also battling a complex cluster of disabling conditions on a daily basis.

The last several years have seen major upheaval; he's had to move several times to accommodate his medical conditions. His most recent move was to an apartment with a roommate, in what seemed like an ideal situation for them; instead, it's turned into a nightmare that is causing grave risk to his health and his very life.

He has an opportunity now to move into an actual house — not merely shelter, but a home. It's a very good deal; it will work out well for him and for his landlords, who are old family friends. But making the move will require more money [first month's rent for the house, one month's rent as penalty for leaving the old apartment before the expiration of the lease, and assorted utility deposits and hook-ups] than he can scrape together on his disability income. And he has only this month — March — to make it happen, or this chance will be gone.

That's where we come in.