Happy November, y'all. 💕 We're inching closer to winter up here and it'll be interesting to see if we're as unprepared for a Chicagoan winter as everyone here fears we are. Our plan is to hibernate as much as possible, and we at last have window blinds so we're hoping that will help! (In the nick of time, too, because the windows were getting very very cold. I'm not sure how insulated they are.)
Some Bad News: I said last time that I thought we pretty much had everything under control and that was apparently bad luck because I then immediately got very sick with some kind of sinus infection from Mars and then Kissmate started having extreme pain that confined him to bed and culminated in our doctor warning that he needs invasive surgery as soon as possible. We've got a GoFundMe up to cover the costs that insurance won't cover, and I think we're setting some kind of record for yearly surgeries to remove various organs, sigh. I feel like a Ship of Theseus except that we're not putting new organs back in to replace the ones we take out.
The Good News: Otherwise, aside from medical issues, things are going about as well as can be expected. We still have contractors essentially living with us, because it turns out when you move into a 100-year-old house that was renovated by a house-flipper then you run into little things like "your heater was incorrectly hooked up to vent through your dryer and that's why you smell gas downstairs; don't light a match until we can get this fixed" and "oh, sorry, you wanted the window in the bathroom to be able to CLOSE in the winter? that costs extra" and stuff of that nature, but I'm trying to view it all as, like, an adventure.
I can say that our mental health and emotional states have improved immensely by not being in a locality where we could be arrested or killed for being queer. The worst thing that has happened so far is we're pretty sure our homophobic neighbor stole our little Pride lawn flag. Which is to say that it was stolen by parties unknown and when we replaced it, he could be heard loudly complaining on the sidewalk that it was back again and "some people just put any old trash in their yards". This is, of course, still a huge improvement over the Texas situation.
Cats: I know Cheddar is the darling of the internet, so I'll focus on him for this update, lol. He is still very wary of us approaching him directly, but I have also done so by accident several times (he looks like Chip in the dark) and then apologized and backed away when I realized my mistake. So he's learned that if he holds still and just gives me an alarmed "why are you approaching me" look then I'll bank off. He still loves the under-the-bed pillow we put under the bed for him. A few days ago, I lay on my stomach on the floor and hand-fed him chicken puree while he lay on that pillow. So he's living a happy pampered life. Everyone else is similarly okay, though Cherry accidentally tripped me hard a couple days ago and the contractors were all very worried that I'd dropped dead on them. That was a little stressful.
Live-Reactions: I really really miss having a place to live-watch and live-read things. I popped back onto Twitter when the Medical Emergency happened and I was desperate, and the response there confirmed that Twitter is not a safe place for me now. Which honestly sucks very much. But I've gone ahead and spun up a public discord where I can share things, and that can be found here. You are all very welcome to join and I hope you do!
Sending you all love and hoping we get through this safely.
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