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Xandwiched

My old blog feels cumbersome: mostly because of the people who know about it. I have no idea if these people are actually reading my blog, or if they just know of it and occasionally stop by, or if they know of it and never read it. But I felt the intense need to cut away from them so that I could write more honestly. For a long time I was sort of racked with guilt about making this jump. You know the old saying, "If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all?" There's a kernel of that which feels appropriate in the blogging world. If you can't say it to someone's face, don't put it on your blog.  And yet...YET...that assumption assumes that everybody has the same line between what should be public and what should be private (which we don't). And it assumes that public and private are opposites instead of being on a spectrum. So here I am, in the grey area. Sandwiched between two ends of a spectrum. More pertinent to this blog, ...
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I think I know you

Today is a bad day. Maybe I've read too many articles about people losing their jobs; maybe I'm sick of being stuck in the house with the kids. I'm overwhelmed by trying to make the right decisions and do the right things and still feeling very, very helpless to affect positive change in the face of this pandemic. There is something that wears away at me – annoyingly – because I can not reach any resolution on it, although it seems like a factor that could make a big difference. I think I may have had Covid-19. From about January 20th to February 15th. And now I am also going to mention that Fritz, who works in medical research (therefore making him more authoritative than me), is unconvinced. So you may take this information with a grain of salt and I will not hold it against you. And really, this retrospective self-diagnosis is only based on the anecdotal information I'm getting from stories of mild infections in the media. Here is the background: the week befor...
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Outlook Not So Good

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I have this goofy indulgence, where I sometimes consult a magic eight ball on the internet. Pretty sure I have mentioned this before...I found this eight ball ages ago, and while the internet got fancy and speedier, and Eight Ball Apps came into existence, I continue to be very partial to  this particular  eight ball and its associated website. Silly, I know. It's very grouchy and glum with me lately. And every time I ask it a question and it comes back with some negative answer, I vow to stop visiting, but then I come back anyway, because my hope is slow to extinguish.
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Onset

I have an aunt who lives about 45 minutes away from us. She is above 70 and lives alone. She has always been very independent-minded, and she never had children. A few years ago, her husband, my uncle, passed away from lymphoma complications. She is mostly retired now; she was a veterinarian specializing in at-home euthanasia, when she was still working. Over the past year, she has been having a lot of problems with her hands. At first she thought it was because Raynaud's Disease - which she has - but over time, she began to think that it was more than cold hands and circulation. She stopped working, because she stopped being physically able to administer drugs to animals. The problem was somehow more muscular than circulatory. She just didn't have strength and dexterity in her fingers anymore. She began to see a Neurologist for testing and she told me, "I think I know where this is going - ALS." I knew immediately that ALS = Lou Gehring's Disease = serious. S...
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