Oof, it’s been a while. It’s been a hell of a two months chez Natalie and by the time Sunday rolls around I’m not in the mood to update. But this week, I am in the mood! Yay!

Both Balticon and Readercon were fantastic and I’m so glad I was able to go to both of them. So good to see my hoodlum friends.

Reading/Watching/Listening

Been doing a lot of reading. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War is an utterly brilliant puzzlebox of a novella and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve read it and I’m still having feelings about it. I also read Max’s Empress of Forever and it was a ripping great space opera.

I also loved Olivia Waite’s The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics; it was wonderful and I’m glad that Avon is publishing f/f romances.

Bujold has a new Penric novella out, The Orphans of Raspay, which is much in line with the other Penric novellas; that is to say a lovely comforting read where you know everything will be okay at the end. And finally, Fran Wilde’s Riverland, which is a haunting tale of two sisters trying to survive in an emotionally abusive household. With magic. It was a hard book to read, but well worth the time.

I’m currently working my way through The Ruin of Angels and it seems like Max Gladstone is the only male fiction writer I’m reading this year. Heh.

Work

So busy. OMG. I’m manually processing project authorizations and the number of people who are all, “What do you mean, budget?” is making my head explode. We’ve also moved into our new workspace, which is a very nice cubicle farm with lots of natural light and storage space. But we’ve only been there for a week so this may just be the honeymoon period. Ask me again in 6 months.

Medical

And this is where things get complicated.  My portal venogram at the beginning of June went well, but then the day after I was discharged I ended up back in the hospital with a fever of 103 which is no bueno. Turns out I had an asymptomatic UTI and a gallstone lodged in my bile duct. That was five days in the hospital, I think.

Then the week of July 4, I ended up in the hospital again for a day with what the doctors think was a GI bug–there was a lot of puking. And then just last week, I got to take an ambulance ride to the hospital because I had such severe abdominal pain that I could barely walk and there was yelling and full body sweats and puking–and then two doses of Dilaudid later, the pain was gone and we have no idea what caused it.

I was admitted overnight for dehydration, which made me feel a bit like a rock star. The part where I had to poop in a bucket four feet from my bed quickly disposed of that illusion. (I was admitted to a floor with a shared bathroom and because I have a history of VRE, I can’t used shared bathrooms: upside is that I always get a private room, downside is sometimes having to poop in a bucket.)

I’m still accumulating fluid in my abdomen, but not as quickly as before. But because I’m still accumulating, I have to have another portal venogram next month to have at least one stent inserted into my portal vein. Everyone pray that this works because if it doesn’t, then I get to have a (not-permanent) tube installed by which I can drain myself and I would rather not.

So this all means that my gallbladder removal hasn’t been scheduled and neither has my hernia repair–I have an umbilical hernia from all the fluid accumulation and it’s the single most uncomfortable thing about this whole situation now. I look like I’m 6 months pregnant, I have no bellybutton, and while I’m accumulating fluid, I’m also losing weight which is worrisome.

Oh, and I’m diabetic now, too. So that’s a whole new layer of complexity–eat low fat for the gallbladder, but eat low carb for the diabetes; what’s a girl to do? Lean meat/fish and steamed veggies it is. Except when I can’t stand it and we have bacon and eggs and I take an extra Creon just to be safe. I’m also supposed to stay hydrated for one of my diabetes medications, but I’m on fluid restrictions for the ascites. I literally cannot win here.

And people wonder why I’m so cranky all the time. This is why. It’s been a year and I’m still sick and I’ve been fighting this fucking fluid in my abdomen for six months now and there just doesn’t seem to be an end to it all.

Productivity

I’m basically married to my notebooks at this point. Trying to keep track of everything is a lot a lot a lot. I’m trying to step up my game at work because I’ve been out so much recently and I feel incredibly guilty about it (even though my manager says I shouldn’t). Obviously, I’m not going to kill myself for work, but just staying on top of everything would be a blessing right now.

 

Running a bit late on this week’s notes as I spent the long weekend at Balticon, which was fabulous. It was so lovely to see so many of my friends and to meet new people and to just be part of the community. Lovely.

Reading/Watching/Listening

I read Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire last week and it was amazing. I loved every minute of it. As I said in my GoodReads review, when I finished it, I had the same feeling I had when I finished Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit: the beginning of something extraordinary. It’s about diplomacy and where the boundaries of diplomacy are, how corrosively seductive empire can be, and how big (or small) our definitions of you, we, and, us are. It’s also about who gets to be a person–who is civilized and who is not. I can’t wait to read the next book.

I’m still working on Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing but have also started a book which is more on the popcorn side of non-fiction for me: Roma Agrawal’s Built, which is structural engineering for the layperson, more or less. And yes, I have a weird definition of popcorn non-fiction.

Work

I think this pretty much says it all:

Medical

It was kind of a hard week. My doctor’s appointments were fine. But then I had a paracentesis on Monday which pulled 3.5L of fluid out of my abdomen and on Tuesday I had bloodwork. A lot of bloodwork: 15 vials. Because apparently in order to find out what might be wrong with my blood, my hematologist needs all of it. I appreciate his thoroughness, but oof.

Productivity

I only had two full working days last week, so I had to cram a lot in. I was mostly successful, but this week is going to be a real endurance test–I’m running a bunch of training sessions on top of everything else I’m doing. We’ll see if I make it. Lists are going to be critical.

My garden, y’all. It’s just such a source of happiness for me. It’s so green and my echinacea and coreopsis and my roses and hydrangeas are getting ready to bloom and it’s so exciting.

Less exciting is my damn neighbor. While my spouse was dealing with some weeding in the backyard, she came over to yell at him about our lawn mowing guys blowing dust and debris (presumably lawn clippings) into her yard and seriously, she is complaining about dust. She asked that we request they not do that and my response was, “Just as soon as she stops blowing leaves into our yard every autumn,” by which I mean never. There was also something about “black shredded paper” that I don’t even understand because we don’t have persistent litter in our yard and when there is litter, I pick it up.

She also Monsanto’d a bunch of weeds in her rock beds today and put a child–presumably one of her grandchildren–to work pulling out their desiccated corpses with only nitrile gloves for protection. Her annuals look nice, though.

Also! I will be at Balticon this coming weekend! I’ll be there Friday afternoon through roughly noon on Monday. My plan is to take it easy and mostly chill in the bar area and I would LOVE to catch up with people.

Reading/Watching/Listening

I finally finally finally finished Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human. It was pedantic, polemic, and patronizing. It was poorly written and poorly argued.  There are good ideas in it, but it’s like being lectured at by your cranky uncle when you make an offhand complaint about algebra being useless when you’re 12 years old (true story). I think Rushkoff believes he’s organizing the peasants to storm the castle, but the thing is thins: anyone who’s bought the book is already on board with his central thesis. Less lecturing, more action. And more awareness that not everyone is a white dude.

In the same vein, I’ve started reading Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and while it covers much of the same ground as the Rushkoff, it does it in a way that acknowledges the existence of privilege and varying sizes of the margin available to people. It also feels more grounded–both in the way that Odell uses examples from her home, the SF Bay Area, but also in her connection to other the people carving out what she calls a “third space” in years past. I am still waiting for her to mention that Thoreau’s mom did his laundry and fed him, though. But overall, I’m finding Odell’s approach much more resonant.

Still working on Searching for Sunday, although I’ve taken a brief break to read The Billionaire’s Convenient Bride based on Sunita’s review over on GoodReads. I’m also starting to think I may need to venture into the novels of Betty Neels; I’m finding a lot of comfort in trope-y romances lately.

And I’m still plugging away at Astounding and continue to be astounded by the general douchebaggery of Heinlein and Hubbard and the gee-whiz keenness of Asimov. And appalled by the fact that Campbell’s hard-on for “scientific accuracy” in SF is still something that white dudes prattle on about at conventions. It’s an absorbing read, for sure.

I have such a pile of physical books to read–mostly non-fiction. I’m really resentful of how much of my time the Rushkoff book took to read; I have another book by a white dude in the stack that I’ve been slowly picking at since like January and come one, white dudes, step up your game with the non-fiction already.

Work

Spin is 12 days away. We cannot authorize any projects right now because Finance hasn’t done what they need to do (which they were supposed to do by last Wednesday). I have fallen into the PowerPoint abyss and I may never emerge (you try creating a job aid for an unnecessarily complex tool in fewer than ten pages, I dare you). I’ve been making a lot of tongue in cheek references to the five stages of grief and they’re becoming less tongue in cheek the closer we get to spin. I was in acceptance, but I’ve regressed to bargaining with moments of anger.

Medical

Big week this week: regular three month check in with my psychiatrist and an intake appointment with my hematologist. And I’m getting yet another paracentesis this afternoon; I’m betting on at least 4L of fluid, if not closer to 5L, considering how protuberant my hernia has become (yet another thing I’m going to have to get fixed). I’ve been feeling pretty good most of the time, which has been lovely and which has further cemented my belief that if I can get this fluid situation dealt with I’d be much closer to feeling normal (and maybe able to exercise).

Productivity

The big rocks/top three strategy is working well at work–at this point it’s basically one big rock surrounded by a bunch of pebbles as they come up. Still kind of flailing around at home–I am finding that I don’t want to take the planner out of my purse when I get home–so I need to figure out what to do there. Mainly, things are holding together and we are getting things done that need to be done.

 

This week I acquired not one but two flamingos for my garden. They’re both metal and have little solar panel and LED lighting in their bodies–so they glow at night. They make me happy. My garden, in general, makes me happy.

I also went to The Head Nut with my friend E! this weekend and bought entirely too much tea. So far, it’s all delicious. Since hot coffee doesn’t really agree with me anymore and while I can and do drink cold brew, I’ve been drinking a lot of tea and tisanes because they tend to be a bit easier on my stomach. My morning wake up tea is usually either St. Dalfour Ceylon or Darjeeling and I’m trying to switch to tisanes in the afternoon and evenings. I like berry and citrus tisanes the best, so if anyone has recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

Reading/Watching/Listening

It’s been a slow week on the media consumption front–I’ve been spending a lot of time playing a jigsaw puzzle game on my iPad. It’s oddly soothing. I also just downloaded Stardew Valley because I like games where you build things.

I’ve been listening to podcasts here and there, too–mainly Productivity Alchemy and Design Matters.

I’m still plugging away at Astounding and find myself utterly fascinated by what an uptight jerk Heinlein seems to be. Like he pushed Isaac Asimov to come to work on Yom Kippur after Asimov had signed a letter proposing that Jewish employees work on Christmas and instead get Yom Kippur off–which seems entirely reasonable to me. But because Asimov wasn’t an observant Jew, Heinlein basically backed him into a logical corner on the subject. Nevala-Lee calls this “a certain meanness of spirit” and he’s absolutely right.

Rachel Held Evans’s Searching for Sunday is also in regular rotation. It’s really interesting and it’s making me think a lot about intentional communities and how we welcome new people into them. There are a lot of connections with fandom, I think.

And finally, I’m reading a book on instructional design for work, Design for How People Learn and it’s really great. Very engaging and I’m learning a lot. And that’s a great way to segue into how work’s been going.

Work

The trainings I’ve been writing are almost done. I spent most of the week working on them and while I have a little bit more work to do on them both, I feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished. My focus on the training is basically “what do the users need to learn to successfully complete tasks in these systems” so I’m leaving out a lot of the whys and history of the tools, which means I’m butting heads with a colleague who feels the need to go into long-winded explanations about why things are set up the way they are. We’re so lucky to have an experienced instructional designer on our team; I’ve learned so much from her.

Making

I made a few ink and wash drawings this week that I’m really happy with; one was on a notecard which has been sent to its recipient and the other is in my sketchbook where I look at it with satisfaction every so often. I’m also fiddling around with drawing cartoon people and animals, so that’s fun.

I read Austin Kleon’s Keep Going last week and it really drove home the rightness of my decision to stop sharing my art on Instagram. I think I’ve managed to unfollow all the people who made me feel insecure in my own voice and my feed is now much more inspiring–my friends’ art, their kids, flowers, that sort of thing. I think I’ll start sharing again eventually, but for now, my art is for me.

Medical

I only had one medical appointment this past week! It was my usual weekly hour with my therapist. My therapist is so great, y’all.

But it was so nice to not feel like I had a shitty second unpaid job and on top of that, I felt pretty good for most of the week, even though I’m accumulating fluid in my abdomen (again, still). Three weeks until that’s (hopefully) resolved.

I only have a therapy appointment this week, too. Next week I see my psychiatrist and have my first appointment with my hematologist. Whee!

Productivity

As you can see, I got a lot done. I experimented with putting only my three highest priority items each day in my Hobonichi and that worked out really well. I helped resolve an irritating situation at work with aplomb and I’m keeping up with things. around the house, I managed to so some weeding earlier this week, but as I said above, spending a lot of time with the jigsaw puzzle game on my iPad, so while it’s technically wasting time, it also helps me to feel calmer and like I’m accomplishing something, so it is useful.

 

I’m writing this on a cold and blustery Sunday afternoon. It was beautiful yesterday, but it looks like a lot of rain this week, which’ll be good for my garden–which I’ve finally finished for the year. We’ve doubled the number of plants and it just looks so good. It makes me bounce with happiness to see it. And I see it a lot, so there’s a lot of happiness going on.

Reading/Watching/Listening

I spent a lot of time reading this week.

Still plugging away at Nevala-Lee’s Astounding on my lunch breaks and enjoying it tremendously, especially the bits about Campbell and Heinlein’s bromance.

I also read Ursula Vernon’s unpublished until last year first novel, Black Dogs. Written when she was a teen, it is very much a first novel and I applaud her bravery in publishing it. Because it’s basically a D&D campaign in novel form. At least that’s what it felt like to me. You could see bits of her voice peeking out here and there, but there are a lot of flaws. Thin characterizations, inconsistent pacing, and all sorts of other problems you’d expect to find in a novel written by a teenager. Anyhow, I really don’t want to spend a whole lot of time talking about the problems because of the sort of book it is and anyhow, Ursula’s a friend.

Then I blew my way through Miss Prim’s Greek Island Fling, which I’d bought after reading Miss Bates’s review of it. It was a fun read and I appreciated that the text explicitly acknowledged the absurd amount of privilege both the main characters have–wealthy, white, loving families–while still giving them some real problems to work through. This was exactly the book I needed to read as I dealt with some difficult medical things this week (more on that below).

And finally, I’ve started reading Rachel Held Evans’s Searching for Sunday. I’d read her A Year of Biblical Womanhood several years ago and had been meaning to read her other books for a while and just hadn’t gotten to it. When I read about her untimely death yesterday, I decided to make reading at least one of her other books a priority.

I did a little bit of podcast listening this week, too. I am perpetually behind on podcasts–I keep thinking I should unsubscribe from a bunch–but one I’m almost always caught up on is Jocelyn K. Glei’s Hurry Slowly, which is always thoughtful and informative. The most recent episode is a wide-ranging interview with Debbie Millman of Design Matters (another favorite). The most interesting part for me, was the discussion around whether people are sprinter or marathoners when in comes to creative work; Millman is a marathoner and Glei is a sprinter. It’s not a perfect distinction, but I’m finding it a useful framework to use as I think about both my work and my hobbies.

Work

I had a really good week at work! I managed to fall into a flow state a few times and it was a glorious feeling. More, please.

Making

I haven’t been doing much with yarn lately (my main project is a crocheted afghan, it’s going to be great when it’s done), but I have been doing a bit more drawing and painting. And I’ve decided that I am probably not going to share what I’m working on–not because I think what I’m doing is terrible, but because it sets up a lot of comparisons and that puts me in an unhealthy mental place. I’m working on unfollowing all the art Instagrams I follow unless they’re run by people I know or people whose work I find genuinely inspiring. I find the process videos particularly insidious for some reason. I may feel like sharing again at some point in the future, but for now, my art practice needs to be for me.

Medical

On Monday, I only had one appointment. By the end of the day on Friday, I’d been to four. And added another Expensive Medication (Eliquis) to the rotation (I have been feeling better since I started on it, I have no idea why).

Nothing new is going on, we’re just making progress on a few things. I had an appointment with my primary care doctor to go over my meds as I’ve been having a lot of low blood pressure readings (this is new and exciting!) and to talk about an old injury that I’d like to get dealt with at some point.

Then I had another paracentesis, where another 4L of fluid was suctioned out of my abdomen. And then on Friday, after my morning therapy appointment, I had a consult with a vascular surgeon about the blood flow situation in my gut which is causing the fluid accumulation. I have a much better understanding of what’s going on now and I am scheduled to go in for a procedure in early June to basically plumb my splenic and portal veins. I will be staying overnight in hospital, mainly because of my history.

But on that note, I just want to mention that the healthcare expenses are mounting. I have about $300 left in my HSA and I have new charges from the hospital for about that amount. I’m still paying off about $2,000 from last year’s hospitalization and I have $2,000 to go before I hit my out of pocket maximum. We’re managing, but high deductible plans are bullshit and my employer should know better. I’m just grateful that I only cover myself on my insurance–otherwise the deductible and out of pocket maximum would be entirely unmanageable.

I’m talking about this not to ask for money, but to just note that worrying about the cost of treatment is not something anyone should ever have to think about. Ever.

Productivity

Still struggling with executive function and writing things down, but I’m getting everything done that needs to get done. And I do tend to write little notes about how each day is going which helps me to spot patterns. And I get to use my pretty pretty pretty fountain pens, which makes me happy. I’m really aiming to use productivity tools not for the sake of productivity itself but in order to be able to enjoy my life without worrying that I’ve left something undone.