maximum_marrs — Today at 6:29 PM Hey [6:30 PM] Know how I used to just break out in song, most of them on the fly parodies like I was the protagonist in a musical?
Robin — Today at 6:30 PM yeah
maximum_marrs — Today at 6:30 PM Know how I just randomly stopped?
Robin — Today at 6:30 PM yeah
maximum_marrs — Today at 6:31 PM Turns out stopping was a life and brain trauma response. [6:31 PM] I’m healing. [6:31 PM] Know how I can tell?
Robin — Today at 6:31 PM random jingles?
maximum_marrs — Today at 6:31 PM Give me the red meat and free my soul, I wanna get lost in the taco and steak for days! [6:32 PM]
Max — Yesterday at 4:17 AM She has 3 humans and 2 other cats home and awake at 9am. Why is she bullying me?!? [4:17 AM] Though on Wednesday the kids go back to school. Ash is going to be so pissed.
Zeus’ bastard son #478 — Yesterday at 4:31 AM Congrats, you’ve been chosen. As a victim but still
Max — Yesterday at 4:37 AM She loves me yeah yeah yeah She loves me yeah yeah yeah She loves me yeah yeah yeah yeah [4:38 AM] She says she loves me And I know that can’t be bad Yes, she loves me And I know I should be glad
Robin — Today at 6:33 PM lol
maximum_marrs — Today at 6:34 PM I’m taking the time to type them out to people who can’t hear me sing them.
I picked up a side hustle delivering for Doordash. I’ve worked 4 shifts, for about 12 hours total.
Even took my 9yo on a short shift so I could earn but spend some quality time with him. It was good fun but his bladder is small and I bought him a soda early in the shift. Lol
I like that I can basically dash whenever and wherever I want. There are dashing hot spots where they are desperate for dashers and you can earn extra dashing in those areas.
But let’s talk money. When the tips are good, it’s decent money. When the tips suck you don’t earn much. (Always tip your delivery person!) In the 12 hours, I spent dashing I made about 150$. I can live with this. But it won’t always be this nice. Also, a chunk of this is gas money because I’m using extra gas to dash. The good news is I drive a hybrid. So my gas usage isn’t horrible. But I am still using extra gas to dash. Keep this in mind. If your car is a gas guzzler you don’t want to dash. You’ll spend all your earnings on gas.
Dashing isn’t the most exciting work, but it’s decent work. I can listen to my music while I drive. I can take a kid. It could be a lot worse.
Lost my most recent patient, Miss Pattie, to liver cancer this week. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I was with her quite a bit leading up to her final moments.
I really enjoyed the time spent with her while she was still functional. I only had about a week or two of that time with her, but I’ll treasure it.
I firmly believe that everyone we meet leaves an impact on our lives, even if our time with them is brief. Miss Pat introduced me to honey.
I mean, I’ve always been a huge fan of honey. I spend way too much money at the local farmer’s market buying quality honey. I have spicy honey. I have a lot of honey. But I’ve never quite known what to use it for other than adding it to tea. Yes, even my spicy honey.
(Spicy honey in tea when you have a cold is the best. The spice clears your sinuses and the honey soothes your throat. And tea is also good for a cold too, of course. But I’m serious, get yourself some spicy honey for your next cold.)
In her final days, Pat didn’t eat much. But what she would almost always agree to eat was honey on a toasted English muffin. Now, my kids are big on English muffins, so I usually have some on hand. One evening after my shift with her, I tried it, and it opened my mind to a world of honey uses. The next day I excitedly reported back to her that I’d tried honey on a muffin for myself and understood why she lived on them. She sent me home with a fancy jar of honey from her friend’s bees, and instructions to try it on vanilla ice cream.
I’m telling you here and now, honey on vanilla ice cream is absolutely the best way to eat ice cream.
From there I branched out to fancy honey. Expensive honey. But EBT paid for it, and we currently have extra EBT because of Covid, and it’s use it or lose it. So if ever there was a time to try acacia honey and manuka honey, it’s now.
Next on the list was honeycomb. Because I’m trying to honor a woman who I’ve known for a very short time, but touched my heart, I’m diving head first into honey adventured. I will say autism and beeswax in the mouth aren’t the best mix for me, but the honey is good enough that I’ll finish what I have. I melt it over muffins and that helps with the texture. Also, my 13yo, who has a chewing stim, got to discover raw honeycomb, and he is a huge fan.
My final adventure will be creamed honey. I haven’t bought any yet, but that is simply because I forgot. I plan to do that in the next week. That too will probably land on an English muffin.
I really appreciate having met Miss Pat. Watching her die from liver cancer is probably the most triggering thing I could ever watch someone die from, but I honestly think in the end it was worth it.
I’m currently working towards getting certified in basic first aid and CPR. I feel these will make me a better caregiver to the elderly, but also a better prepared mother.
I achieved my first aid certification last night. Most of the class was online lessons, but there was an in person demonstration of how to use an EpiPen which is an important skill that you don’t have time to stop and read the instructions for when in the heat of the moment.
Next week is CPR. That course is fully in person. I’m looking forward to it.
I still want to get my EMT certification. Again, I feel it’ll have me better prepared in an emergency, but also I want to volunteer my services at things like pride. Or even street medic protests. Though my best friend will beat me to death with a flip flop over that last one.
I enjoy learning. I really enjoy learning useful things. And has my brain heals from brain damage from prolonged lack of blood, I’m finding myself capable of learning again.
Speaking of healing, I say my cancer doctor the other day. I am confirmed in remission. I bought us cake about it.
Sorry I missed last week’s post. I was physically not OK and spent my usual time to sit down and write napping.
I’ve known for a while my gallbladder was in rough shape. I actually decided in the fall of 2020 that I was going to look into getting it removed this year. Then the whole cancer thing happened. I decided to put it off because it wasn’t exactly hurting me, it just felt like pressure under my lower right ribs. On the pain scale, we’re talking the occasional 2 or 3. Enough to make me want to take my bra off, but that’s it.
Then around 2 am on what was officially Thursday the 24th of June, I started getting the worst heartburn. The worst. I don’t have breakthrough heartburn often, but when I do, it’s a doozy. Only, it wouldn’t go away. I drank a bottle of Pepto, ate a container of tums, tried my hot pepper trick. Nothing.
Eventually, I went to urgent care for their heartburn cocktail. They gave it to me, along with an EKG, and sent me on to the emergency room. There, they did more testing on my heart, but they also scanned my chest and belly and found my gallbladder full of stones and angry as can be.
It took a full week of managing fat intake very carefully and giving up any remaining carbonated drinks in my diet, but I am finally pain-free again and have been almost a week now. Meanwhile, I also have a surgery consult. I’m looking to schedule my surgery for the very end of August or early September. By then I’ll have a week’s paid vacation at work so I’ll only be short 1 week’s pay in my recovery.
This came up in my Facebook memories and hit me super hard. I walked the stage with a nearly perfect GPA and top honors. But here I sit 2 years later with too much brain damage to attempt grad school. Grad school being why I needed perfect grades.
I was dying. I didn’t know it was cancer, but I was very much dying and I knew that. I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me, but I knew. And yet I forced perfection on myself. I asked for extensions instead of just skipping the occasional assignment. I studied while in the hospital. I wrote final papers right after surgery while on opioids.
I pushed and I pushed myself to perfection. Nearly killed myself striving for perfection. All so I could have a perfect GPA so I could get into the grad program of my choice.
And now? I can tell the difference. How smart I used to be, versus where I’m at now. Yes, I’m still intelligent. But not like I was. I can feel the difference and I can tell I’m no longer cut out for grad school. I was already going to be struggling because of Autism and ADHD. But brain damage to?
I am so angry. But I’m mostly sad that I put so much importance on my grades. C’s get degrees but I nearly died achieving perfection.
My path looks different now. I spent all of therapy coming to terms with all of the above and all of the below.
My best friend is Marissa. Granted, we don’t call her that. We call her Coffee. I’ll continue to call her Coffee on these pages. But her name is Marissa. I think it’s good to attach a real name to her existence now and then.
We’ve been best friends for a few years at this point. It all started with her sending me photos of the various animals in her life on Tumblr on a bad night and then before I knew it was had a friendship unlike any I’ve ever experienced. I’ve blogged about best friends before. If you’ve been here you know those usually blew up in my face. There was the ableist girl from high school. Tried to steal not just my spouse but my kids too last time Robin and I separated. There was Nate who was emotionally constipated and forbid me to have any emotions around him ever.
Coffee. I don’t have words. We have faced a lot of the same struggles, though there are plenty of differences. She is strong where I’m weak, and vice versa. I can honestly say that while it’s strictly platonic and nonsexual, I am absolutely in love with her. She is my person. She is one of my chosen sisters and I would do anything for her and know she would do anything for me. She’s held my hand through the process of nearly dying, losing my wife, and just every low moment of the past few years. She’s not afraid of my emotions and low points. And she approaches my BPD with common sense, compassion, and basic human decency. She’s also not afraid to call me out if I need to examine and rethink my behavior. She’ll enable me buying a children’s fishing pole to go “cat fishing”. But she won’t enable me treating people like shit. She makes me want to be a better person and helps me dig deep to find who that better person within me is.
And everything that she does for me, I strive to do for her in kind.
She is more than I could ever have hoped for in a friend.
And together we have built two really solid and healthy friend groups, with some overlap. A found family full of love, acceptance, neurodivergence, and queerness. My life is so full of love these days, but I found this chosen family with Coffee by my side. And through her love and guidance, I became a person worthy of their love. I do a lot of hard work. It wasn’t all Coffee. But she offered solid support and feedback.
There is a point to this.
Coffee is going to school to get a degree in running an agricultural-based business. The plan is, she and her husband Pete will buy some land in probably Kansas and they will run a lavender farm. In 10 years when my babies are all grown and out of the nest, I’m following them to Kansas and I’m buying a house as near theirs as I can and I’ll help them run their farm. Coffee will make sure I have a thriving wage and health insurance. I’ll also do what I do now, caregiving, on the side to help add enrichment to my life.
My path is no longer taking me to grad school at OSU and a PsyD that I’d use to diagnose especially women with Autism and ADHD. But that’s OK. Because my path is now taking me to Coffee, and her little family, and that’s even better.
