The next 50 years

I'm watching a video by a woman very much like me who came down with the same disease as me around the same time, and had the same initial treatments.  I sit here scarred and weaker but healthy and building back to fitness.  She is in palliative care and going down with little hope of future.  She's fifteen years my junior but looks older by that.  She won't see my age.  I am so astonished I can still dream of camping and travelling and biking and kayaking and so on.  I still can dream of working for income and living.  I am feeling so deeply moved by this.  And so much love and sorrow for those who aren't so blessed. I wonder, how much of this was my agency and could I teach the world?  I mean, there was some amazing nutrition involved and I know the medical system completely disregards nutrition these days.  They pay lip service to it using the same stupid home ec rules we learned from corporations in the fifties. But they don't actua...

It should not be necessary to like someone for you to get along with them well enough to be in community. For you to help them or be helped by them.  There are some very simple courtesies that allow you to interact with the least amount of irritation in spite of vastly differing opinions and view points. Firstly, you both agree on two solid points:  You will teach each other where your lines are drawn with calm and control. You will not step over a line you have learned exists and you will not feign ignorance of a line you've been taught.  To step over these lines utterly compromises the trust of a relationship that has nothing else on which to build.  We need each other.  Sometimes things go wrong in our lives and we need a community.   If we can't establish even basic trust with each other, how alone are we? I have a neighbor who has steadfastly rejected me in every possible way, not even deigning to a passing nod or acknowlege my existence.  ...

I saw the psychiatrist at the OUT center yesterday to get my dx of gender dysphoria.  I'm so relieved I don't have to repeat that nonsense every month for a year!  She said she'll give me my letter for the doctors and she also called me a jerk.  LOL I asked her to define that, she described all my manliest character traits, using derogatory adjectives.  Like arrogance instead of confidence, self important instead of self assured, that sort of thing.  I firmly believe that I'd come out as a strong confident man if people read me as male.  But they don't, they read me as female, because I have a very femme body. And because of that, my masc traits are condemned as the worst character traits for a woman. I tried to explain at one point how women are expected to work in service, that being a creator and a fixer and a maker is a manly thing, so she told me I have black and white ideas of the world.  No, I know better, silly woman, I'm telling you how the w...

I've been vlogging on youtube which severely reduces my need for this, but now that I've stopped going to facebook I've got all kinds of free time again! Well not all kinds.  It takes all morning to get the chores done.  I am also putting in an hour or better walking on the treadmill.  Activities this winter include playing minecraft, knitting, weaving, and struggling with guilt about everything and anything.  I'm still not happy about the colostomy and have contacted the surgeon to see if at the very least it can be slightly reconfigured so it works better.  It's got too many turns at the end and I get pain and it's almost impossible to irrigate.  Today I"ll be walking in the excess cold to pick up my winter bike.  I bought it in December but the lock I ordered wasn't ready till now.  I'm still married, still bickering. The bus is in the back yard, not being worked on for the winter.  It's just been too cold.  I could see using it in -...

No, not because it's ugly.  I don't care about that.   I'm not embarassed or ashamed, why should I be?  It's not a punishment for bad behaviour so why shame? No, I hate it because it's a bag full of shit dangling off my belly.  that alone I suppose I could learn to live with if I could ignore it for a moment of the day.  I hate it for the following variety of reasons. It stinks.  I don't care that the pros insist they don't stink, it does.  It's faint and I doubt anyone else notices it, but I do. It always stinks, sometimes worse. It runs when I try and sleep.  Oh yes, if I try to sleep at night or trying to nap, that thing will start putting out poop, guaranteed. Now you'll be saying "oh, so what, let it run."  Yeah, uh huh.  See, it does run and it doesn't work as advertised. Nope, the poop comes out, clings to the lump of obscene red flesh that is my "stoma" and piles up against it, contained by the plastic ring of my co...

It's going to be hard and I may fail, but I'm going to try and fast again, indefinitely.  I can't get irrigation to work and I can't live with this colostomy if it's going to keep spitting poo at only the worst possible times. It robs me of sleep, distracts when I'm driving on the freeway and spoils my meals. What have I been doing since the last post?  Well I've been working on the bus periodically. I have long stretches when I can't get anything done because I can't figure out how or because other tasks interfere like buying groceries or cleaning the house. it's come along a bit but I'm feeling pretty hopeless right now. I may get the bus done. I might power through not knowing how to do the electricals or not knowing how to build the storage. Maybe I'll miraculously make the smart car ramp and door. but I won't get it out of the yard I'm sure. Ok, well maybe I'll manage to dig up the fence and drive out and maybe block the...

I knew she was a bitch, just didn't understand how badly she was.   I'm doing my social duty, volunteering my time and back ache to help a solo mother. She's working and raising a child.  She's doing pretty damn good with it, has a home she bought, it's furnished, and they eat quality food.  She manages to find time for socializing and trips home to the family or to festivals.  So all in all, she's doing better than my married mother was raising us. But she's complaining about how she can't clean her home well enough. Hey, I can relate, I like a clean home.  hers is easy to do because she's not as dirty as most modern humans.  That's not to say it didn't need cleaning. So I volunteered to help out once a month.  I've done it before, when she was sick. Both times she wants to yap at me and so I oblige although this is more work than house cleaning for me.  Well she starts in about how hard it is to raise a toddler.  Again.  And again. I ...