Seventy eight weeks out from surgery, and here are the numbers I care about:
- Weight: 237
- Blood Sugar: 100
No change at all from last week, unless you count the increasingly clear picture being painted regarding elected officials helping domestic terrorists ransack the capitol building, but uh…let’s maybe not focus on that this time around. Happy to have not gained, wish I’d lost even a fraction of a pound, but fuck it, and the blood sugar’s good. We lost two faculty members at one of my schools last week. I only knew one of them, and I wish I’d known him better, but damn. Antimaskers can seriously get fucked. And in the last 72 hours, my niece has tested positive and her mom has symptoms. Antimaskers can seriously get fucked.
I’m writing this a day late again because I made the mistake of opening up faculty email for all three campuses yesterday, and that was the day shot to hell. On the (next to zero) chance that any student, current or otherwise, happens to read this: Writing your letters of recommendation is something I’m absolutely happy to do, but it takes up a SERIOUS chunk of my time. Several articles have been written about how much time this takes faculty, and how infrequently (especially for adjuncts like me) they’re ever compensated for that time. But fuck it, keep asking me to write your letters, I will HAPPILY write them. Seriously, with a smile on my face and everything. On the other hand, if you’re gonna apply to 15 grad schools, and list me as a reference on al 15 applications, you need to give me some fucking notice. Please and thank you.
I noticed the other day that I’ve been leaning a little too hard on the protein bars lately. Nothing crazy, but I should be having more actual food and leaving the protein bars and shakes and whatever else to just breakfast. I also haven’t been going out into the world a whole lot because I’ve been fighting off The Ick, but I think that’s on its way out the door.
Three things I’m grateful for:
- Community. When you’re going through bariatric surgery, either before or after, you really need a community of support. My friends and family have all been fantastic, but most of them haven’t been through it and that’s why the support groups are just enormously helpful. Part of a lower tooth chipped off a few weeks ago, like a tiny iceberg calving a sheet of ice. I’m old. Entropy. Fuck it. Except three days later I was in a support group and that’s when I learned that a lot of people who’ve had bariatric surgery have trouble with losing their teeth. Something about the body not absorbing enough calcium. GOOD TO FUCKING KNOW. So thank god for community. I’ve talked about it with my dentist and will be talking about it with my doctors. I’d like to keep my teeth.
- Community. My fourth job is organizing a writing workshop that meets biweekly for five sessions, three times a year. The first winter session was last night, and it was so great to see so many old faces, and new ones, and just being around writers and artists is good for the creative mind (and my soul).
- Community. Sometimes, as an American, I feel like an awkward teenage boy, walking in front of a group of pretty girls, next to my dad, who’s wearing a beer hat and a T-Shirt that says, “Who Farted?” There’s a lot of embarrassment is what I’m saying. But the truth of the matter is, what the girls think doesn’t really matter, and my dad really isn’t that awkward, he’s just a guy who’s a little too old to give a shit what other people think. It’s really easy to think that everything’s going to hell, and to harbor almost supernatural amounts of embarrassment (and shame, and fear, and, and, and) in my head, but the actual number of Americans who are embarrassingly stupid / apathetic / evil isn’t that high. (Are they over-represented in Washington? Yes. Do they get a disproportional amount of airtime? Yes. Do they wield way too much power? Yes. But there are still less of them than there are of us, I genuinely believe that.). And the hard evidence for that this week is in the change in rhetoric when the subject of the president comes up, and in the number of corporations who’ve suspended donations to republican leaders in the Sedition Caucus. And even though those people are WAY TOO FUCKING TOLERANT of white supremacy and out-of-control capitalism, it’s good to know that open insurrection and violence is still a line in the sand for a lot of people. It might be small comfort, but it’s comfort, and I’ll take it.
I’m good this week. There’s a lot of horrible in the world, but there’s a small shift in the wind, and by this time next week we’ll have a new president, and those are both good things.
Here, have a graphic:
