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I already know what mine would be since I've been playing it for 26 years.

It's an obscure little track from a now out-of-print Christian album by Brave Saint Saturn. The band was led by Five Iron Frenzy's Reese Roper, and while they went on to make multiple albums now available on Spotify, there's something almost bittersweet about the fact that their origin album, So Far From Home can now mostly only be found on YouTube.

I first heard the album when I was 18 and living in Garden Valley, Texas as a Teen Mania Ministries intern. As much as I liked the sound and overall space concept theme, it was a single quirky little track that lodged its way immediately into my soul.

Never in my life, have I felt a song so… speak for me—and that's really saying something since I have always interpreted my life through the music I love.

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It's led to more thinking about my past and how I got here. How my childhood and various traumas influenced my parenting and perspectives on life. How various fears changed the trajectory of my entire life.

And how I feel like writing about those topics again… but in a book-length project versus more blogs or articles.

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If you've been following my writing since my decline on Medium you likely understand why that feels so weird and complicated… but also, hopefully good.

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Shortly after coming out to me as a lesbian, my kid came out to me as non-binary. At that point, I was worried for both of us.

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Good morning, folks. I apologize that this past week has been too difficult for updates. On my birthday last week, I found my left arm getting progressively more stiff and painful until I could no longer lift it. I couldn't drive my kid home in Friday afternoon and had to get help.

Turns out I have a pretty extreme case of bicep tendinitis from working on a writing project and having my dominant arm bent so long. This has become an almost standard complication of my life—tendon overuse injuries—with my lipedema/lipo-lymphedema/ehlers danlos syndrome.

I'm finally doing a bit better but still find daily tasks a challenge. This injury is the most painful thing I've dealt with in years. It's just constant pain, difficulty sleeping, difficult rest. I feel ridiculous saying this but it's surprisingly close to childbirth pain in its intensity

Hence why you haven't heard from me

Dealing with my arm on top of the extra driving to the new middle school has been…. a lot.

I wish I could go home after school and not drive for the rest of the weekend, but the school has its first dance tonight from 6pm to 8pm

There are plenty of things for me to update you about, but the time, energy and physicality isn't really working out.

We didn't do any of the postponed birthday plans last weekend because of my injury…. We might push a little home birthday celebration to the end of the month.

But I promise you all will be the first to know when I improve enough for good updates again. I'm back in physical therapy so please send positive and healing vibes our way 🩷

Middle school starts on Friday with a half day, but we're hoping that maybe on Saturday or Sunday we can do some of Wicked home birthday stuff I wanted to do. Today we will just lie low and make sure we've got everything ready for school.

While I've perhaps seemed to have been “checked out” of writing, my mind has been a tornado of thoughts about the future. Including the million different posts I still want to write.

One thing I know I'm doing is to pivot away from most writing about my tween to protect their privacy now that they're entering such an important new stage of adolescence. At least for now, I'll write in more general terms about parenting, and whatever we're dealing with in their middle school development.

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With my health (lipo-lymphedema, arthritis, aaaand AuDHD), I struggle to consistently keep up with the basic chores around the apartment. It's a legitimate dream of mine to get the struggle under control so I'm not constantly stressed out about my life 24/7 at home.

It's hard for me to figure out what systems will work for me and my current energy levels, range-of-motion, etc.

So, we've been working hard on changing up some of our current organization systems that have been failing.

I am especially trying to get things better organized for my birthday on August 6, and the start of middle school on August 7. Life is stressful enough worrying about my medical bills, health, parenting, work options, disability application/appeal paperwork, rent hikes, and everything else. I REALLY want to be able to relax in our apartment sometimes without feeling so stressed about managing the space.

Trying to juggle this reorganization goal with all of our appointments has kinda been… a lot. It's left me exhausted every night. Hence, my silence this week.

Please know that while I'm trying to figure things out, I'm still HERE. Still trying to get my lipedema and overall health to a better, more manageable place.

I'll be back soon. I just need to try to build some better systems here at home so I don't feel like my life is such chaos, though it's kinda slow and draining work at the same time 😅

The start of summer often feels so hopeful and full of promise. Or at least, opportunity. There's all the plans you want to make—the places you want to go to, the activities you want to do. At the very beginning of the summer, it almost all seems possible.

Now, as we're heading into the end of summer break and the start of a new school year, I find myself missing those very first hopes of what a summer might be.

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He didn't make a payment yesterday, although it was the 15th. Worse, he never communicated that he wouldn't be making the payment. I have repeatedly told him h…

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We're still working on getting everything together and ready for the new school year. Yesterday, a classmate from the old school came over to our apartment to hang out. I let them pick out a couple of fun snacks at Target, and ordered them pizza—definitely not the best use of money right now but I also don't want Sophie to feel bad about having friends over if I'm unwilling to get them a treat like the other parents normally do when Sophie goes to their homes.

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I just logged into my Social Security account, and see the status of my application suddenly changed. It's now apparently a non-medical denial, but I won't know how the denial was actually determined until I get the denial letter in the mail.

Based on the way they sent so many different conflicting letters with conflicting due dates for the requested paperwork… I suspect that they're going to say they didn't get something on time.

Once the letter arrives, I'll know how to move forward. With an appeal or having to start over. I'm just… trying not to panic about things I can't control, and instead an trying to focus on things I can actually do.

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I've been trying to get everything in order for Sophie to start middle school next month. The middle school finally gave us the official list of supplies the sixth graders need, so I'm now going down the list to make sure she's prepared for school on August 7.

The school also announced that they rescheduled the orientation for earlier that week, which is nice because now that means we can celebrate my birthday at home on my actual birthday instead of worrying about making it to the orientation that day.

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If I haven't gotten back to and you've messaged me, please understand it will just take me some extra time. I've also been running into some problems with apps on my phone that should usually run smoothly (like Medium and Substack), and after several hours of troubleshooting, I learned that Samsung has retired my phone model. Which means it's stunted and cannot receive OS updates, and it's more susceptible to security issues without thosee regular updates. Because my phone is “so old” in Samsung terms 🙄 my carrier Mint Mobile also won't accept a trade-in, and new phones are just wildly expensive.

After a lot of reading about my options this weekend, I decided to order a refurbished phone through Amazon, in a model three years ahead of my of retired model while Amazon actually WILL give me some trade-in credit.

I managed to order one that I can pay off with monthly payments through Affirm, and that only required an $18 down-payment.

Fingers crossed this solution works out since I use my phone for everything, and need to be able to keep my apps updated.

As soon as I can have a life outside of the bathroom again and I am not so nauseated, I'll be back to working on household chores, like laundry and organizing my bedroom, AND seriously trying to bring in some actual income for July. I also really need to get some reviews and sales going up on Etsy to hopefully help things out in that area.

Overall, though, I'm really trying to keep going, and to gain more momentum, but I apologize for it all leaving things here feeling… maybe a bit chaotic.

Sophie and I are doing better tonight as the temperatures finally cooled down enough so the heat index isn't driving up the misery 😎 We are so grateful for that! We're still under a heat advisory through 8PM tomorrow, but it seems we've gotten through the worst of it for now.

Earlier today, we tried to keep cool by making a ham salad with green bell peppers, greek yogurt, and some dried fruit. It turned out great but I was super slow making it because my body is still pretty stiff and inflamed from the heat. Sophie didn't mind—the heatwave has been getting to us both in terms of draining our energy.

We also spent some time chatting about the next five weeks, because Sophie didn't realize that school is starting so soon.

They have a half day on August 7—that's the first day of sixth grade. The day before that, on August 6, we've got orientation in the middle of the day. August 6 is also my birthday, so we've started talking about how we want to celebrate. I always try to plan something for my birthday, even just at home, to send the message to Sophie and myself that another year is indeed worth celebrating. And that everyone deserves to celebrate their day.

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I couldn't believe it this morning when I realized it was Thursday and I dunno, not Tuesday. I've been dealing with a bad headache and the higher temps today of this week's heatwave, so I don't think this will be too lengthy. Er, actually, my head is mostly better now, so… if I do keep writing once I get started here, it will definitely be unstructured. I'm sorry if I ramble. My brain has been extra foggy these past couple of days 😑

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