85 and thunderstorming today, hello summer

[flexagon]

Hard to believe the first half of the year is ending.

Tiny victories:

• I managed to replace my favorite worn-out hoodie, because someone was selling a new one on eBay (it was "used", but not "favorite hoodie for ten years" used like mine).


• My back is clear of yeast-related blemishes for the first time in more than two goddamn years ("yay! now don't do anything rash" said the squirrel helpfully).


• I figured out a situation when I was definitely sitting with a twist, as suspected by last week's massage therapist. Another pattern to not repeat, and to counteract.


• My reading of paper books, to get through my to-read bookshelf instead of scrolling on Reddit, is going pretty well so far. I uninstalled Pokemon Go at about the same time as Reddit, btw, and now instead of catching pokemon when I walk around I pull out black swallow-wort.


• I gave some stuff away to new homes. Always feels good.

I was glued to the news about the Titan submersible this week, and I'm unnerved by the current related awfulness all over the internet. Nothing I care to go into detail about, except this: I'm extremely glad the crew & passengers died instantly instead of suffocating slowly over the course of four days.

I almost posted mid-week in frustration at the huge number of incoming things that I wasn't on top of, but some resistance broke and I was able to deal with a lot of them on Friday. This unfortunately included the world's least productive visit to the vet, who urged me to come in same-day for the kitten's cough but then were out of swabs for the test we'd scheduled... and also failed to X-ray the little squirmer. But at least we got medicine, because everyone is pretty sure that Hypercube gave her something, and I'm moving forward on most things. Of course, as I go to bed I'm making a list of all the things to attack tomorrow.

Comments

[justplainuniverse]

I thought the latest on the skin issue on your back was that you were allergic to a common ingredient (linalool maybe) -- did that turn out not to be the cause? I missed any update about yeast! Always weirdly curious about these things.

[flexagon]

That was a step in the process, yeah. The biopsy showed both some yeast and also some hypersensitivity to something. So we tracked down the hypersensitivity first. I ended up cutting out a couple of allergens (limonene, linalool) and then that wasn't enough, so I reminded the doctor about the yeast and then ALSO used ketoconazole 2x/day for a long time. It works pretty well as long as I am relentless about 2x/day.

At this point I'm slightly curious how a re-test of the allergens would go, since my environmental allergy panel wasn't very reproducible at all (allergen drama!), but not really interested enough to go through the full testing again. Using fragrance-free products seems like a reasonable idea anyway.

Bodies are such a fucking pain, and I have some scarring from all this, but I can also wear backless shirts again and have done so twice in the last week or so! JOY!