Recently, I said some things over on Patreon when posting a video about some ceramics I wasn’t particularly thrilled with, that made me think a post like this was in order. The TL;DR is that I can’t believe I was all “I feel like nothing has happened this year” at the same time I was all “holy shit this year has been a shitshow.”
WARNING: I’m going to get pretty raw, here, and say some things that I’d kept private for a while. I’m not interested in advice, I’m not interested in judgement, and I’m not interested in “well what you should have done was”.
Let’s get to it. HOWEVER! I realized after writing up January and seeing the word count was over 1100 that this post is going to need to be broken up into two or three smaller ones. Good lord. Is everyone’s life like this???
January
In January, Jeff finally moved out (mostly… he’s still got stuff here but I try not to think about it too much because at least it’s not in my way). I thought I would be all “yay, the house to myself!” but what it turned into was “oh, shit, Jeff was really impeding my grief process since he would constantly give me shit about ‘how depressing’ I was and how ‘it’s not like you and Tim were getting along, I don’t know why you’re not over it yet’ …” Yeah, I know. I know. I should have invited him to leave the moment those words came out of his mouth, but instead I put my head down and I hid my grief in my own house – the one place I should be free to be 100% myself. So when he moved out, it was like suddenly my brain was back to about a year after Tim died and I had to go through all that both again and for the first time. So, that was fun.
January was also the start of the Rat Wars. Sweet summer child that I was then, I thought there were only a couple, and I could catch them and cage them and give them a life for a couple of years (rats don’t live long) and that would be the end of it. HAHAHAHAHA I think we all know how that turned out.
Also in January – starting on the 1st! – I started having some random issues with my car. I almost hesitate to bring that up because of things I’ll talk about in June or July, but basically dashboard lights started lighting up and turning off and coming back, and the gauges were behaving like they were unconnected to anything else and would go to zero mph and no rpms when I knew darn well I was flying down the road at 60.
Good lord, I keep remembering things that started in January. I got started on tirzepatide, a weight loss drug. My insurance won’t pay for it, so I’ve been paying out of pocket, and here in September I’m looking at being able to afford it for the rest of the year but then either dialing it back to the lowest dose I can get away with for maintenance or getting off it entirely. It has helped me with weight loss, which has been great (side note: I want no lectures on eating less and exercising more, I have tried that for literal years with no body changes) but there have been some frustrations with needing lots of protein but also being allergic to most protein. More on that in a later month.
In other health stuff, I had a chest CT to follow up with some lung nodules, I had a follow-up appointment with my Pulmonologist (lung doctor) about that, and I had a separate follow-up with my ENT about tinnitus they can’t cure and slight hearing loss in one ear. I also met with the same Nephrologist that I’d met with years ago, because in December my PCP had seen a drop in my kidney function that she really didn’t like, and randomly chose to refer me to the one I’d seen years before (they used to work together at AGH years ago – Gainesville is such a small town!). He didn’t like my numbers any more than she did, so he started me on about an every-six-weeks blood draw to test kidney function and to look for any random diseases I might have that weren’t showing any symptoms other than a drop in kidney function. I will cut to the end on this story to reassure everyone that everything is fine; in early September he had ruled out everything he was worried it might be, and chalked it up to acute dehydration that happened in December, randomly, at the same time I was getting a blood draw for a regular doctor’s checkup. It did mean, though, that between January and August I had… I don’t know… six blood draws to check kidney function?
Oh, and the follow-up with the lung doctor led to at least two more chest CT scans between January and August… maybe three? And there was a chest MRI in there somewhere, too, but that may have been in late December. Honestly it’s all a blur, maybe you can see why since I’m at 1900 words and am barely out of January?! The end result on THAT was that the nodules were most likely left over from my regular every-day asthma, but then also damage from Sepsis and Covid back-to-back in mid 2024. The nodules (one in particular) wasn’t even there at all in the last scan, so now I don’t have to get another chest CT until July of next year. Thank goodness! It feels so weird to go to what used to be the family photo section of Sears to get them (y’all Gainesvillians know what I mean).
Two other things that weren’t just January, but every two to three weeks throughout the year — massage, and therapy. I try to get them both on the same day and call that my “care of self day.” I was actually going to start cutting down or even take a break from therapy; my therapist was leaving the office where she worked to start her own place, and I thought that might be a clean place to break for a while. But everything got so fucked up in January that I was like… nah, I should probably keep paying someone to listen to my bullshit problems because this month is INSANE. I’ve kept up with that every few weeks. Not always the same day, but getting to unburden myself and have someone help me figure out more constructive coping mechanisms than horror movies and video games, and having someone massage all the tension out of my body… that’s good for me.
Lastly, in January, I repainted part of my bathroom and painted the rest of it. Well, all except one corner, and have I gotten up there to finish that yet? Hahahaha. Come on, it’s only September. Mostly I say this just to add it to a list of things that would probably only take me an hour to do but have I done it yet….?
One lovely thing that happened in January was that I had a birthday party for my dogs (my annual “Potato and Honey Butter Whiskey Bonfire Party”) and everybody had a great time. Oh, and a new stray black cat showed up. It’s a boy, reasonably feral (he just now let me touch him for the first time, in September), but he gets along with the Garage Girls and he keeps other males away, so I guess he can stay. I’m not giving him a name, though.
But overall…..? JFC, what an absolutely unhinged start to the year.
February
February was thankfully slow compared to January. I took my dogs to Puppy Day Care a few times, I worked on learning/practicing some stop motion videos for work, I made lots of ceramics.
So many ceramics that about the only thing of note was that I went to my pottery supply store and they were out of the clay I usually got, but they recommended this blend they got made specially for them that was supposed to be just as good. Spoiler: It was not. At least, for me and how I make things. It cracked on almost anything that had a curve to it (rough, when you make a lot of mugs) and it warped in the kiln on almost anything that was flat (rough, when you realize it’s not working for mugs but maybe it’ll work for small dishes and trays). The killer about the warping in the kiln is that it didn’t do it on the bisque firing, where I’d be able to see it wasn’t working and at least not glaze the piece. Ohhhhh noooooo. It would warp in the glaze firing, after I’d spent all that time on painting. But would you believe it took me until about August to realize it was the clay, and not me? I spent months thinking that everything I was making was shit, obviously I was shit, I was a terrible pottery, barely an artist, and I should maybe give everything up and go work at Starbucks even though there’s no way I’d be able to take shit from people in a retail setting anymore.
Jeff was still showing up to work on things at that point, and he got most of a room painted, and most of a bathroom. I was looking forward to him finishing that because I wanted to move some furniture around and wanted those two rooms cleared and painted so I could do it. I had been willing to paint them – painting is one thing I CAN do – but he offered, and frankly, he owed me, so I let him.
Oh, and the car kept doing that weird shit but my mechanic couldn’t figure it out (more on that, and the absolutely unhinged friend of a friend who completely lost their mind over this, in an upcoming month/post).
But at least I didn’t catch any rats… or maybe I caught like, one more rat? so I thought the whole thing was over. Or at least not serious. HAHAHAHA.
February was a walk in the park compared to January. Or maybe I was just shellshocked from January?
March
In March, I had another CT scan, but scheduling snafus meant I wound up not getting a follow-up with the Pulmunologist until May (but I pretty much already told you the end result of all of that up in January, so people wouldn’t worry). I also got an ultrasound on my kidney, as part of a follow-up with the Nephrologist (along with that every six weeks or so blood draw to check kidney function). Oh, and I had my first optometrist appointment in about four years. The one I’d been seeing here in Keystone Heights up and retired without really telling anyone he was going to do that, and I was like… well, fuck. But last year I’d gotten a membership to Costco (they’re right up the road from where I take the girls for Doggy Day Care) and they have a whole vision department! I still bought my glasses from Zinni, mind you, but at least now I have a reliable optometrist who if she suddenly stops working there for some reason, there’s a good chance that Costco will fill her spot with someone else since they have them in all their branches.
Jeff finished painting the rooms, so I was able to get my guest room back (not that anyone ever uses it, but it makes me happy to have one just in case) and I was able to start moving furniture around like I wanted. And getting some of that furniture out of my bedroom meant I could get started on that (which, again, isn’t finished, and don’t think I don’t see the humor in me being irritated by people who don’t finish things for me when *I* don’t even finish things for me!).
My car was still doing that thing….
… and I am not gonna lie, it made me want to not drive my car. Now, in September, it’s fixed, but…. at this point? If I could have afforded a Toyata Rav4 Hybrid, I would have traded cars in a hot second. This whole thing was so frustrating, from not knowing what it was for the longest time to people who were telling me what I should do when they knew absolutely nothing about it. To be honest, if I found a bag of money in the street, I’d probably still trade this in for a Hybrid, but now that’s more because of the price of gas, not the state of my car.
I didn’t really make that many ceramics in March, and the ones I did make I was really unhappy with. Problems with the clay, my kiln was firing wrong… I didn’t make much and I wasn’t happy with what I did make. Warping, Exhibit A:
That should have been the bottom of a butter dish, which for OBVIOUS reason, I didn’t put up for sale. Which is too bad because it was cute as fuck! And I didn’t have time to make another before I wanted to get them listed. Sigh. Like I said… I spent a lot of time this year doubting my abilities when it comes to pottery!
Three fun things that happened were ICFA, a No Kings protest, and meeting D&T for lunch at Jaleo. I really wish that place was closer! I just happened to be in Orlando at ICFA and they happened to come down to Orlando to go to Jaleo so I met them there and we ate ALL THE FOOD.
And as far as the Rat War, I didn’t realize it was gearing up. I think at this point I was housing four of them, and I had no idea what it was going to become.
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2300 words later, and that’s the first quarter of the year. How did I think I’d be able to put nine months in one post, keeping to about 500 words per month?! HAHAHAHAHA.
Stay tuned in a day or three for part two.