Insert the obligatory “Gosh it’s been forever!” disclaimer of your choosing here, I suppose, though I’m under no illusions of anyone sitting around waiting to hear how my life is going. (If you are, may I suggest looking into other hobbies? I’m pretty sure literally anything else would be more interesting.)

When I last updated, all of the kids were settled into their new digs in BlueCity, Chickadee was back to work, Sunny and Monkey were figuring out their respective grad schools, and Turnip was so traumatized from being left behind on our trip, she was spending every waking moment trying to trip me in her neurotic pursuit of being attached to me at all times.

Everything was absolutely perfect from there on out. Haaahahahahahaaaaaaaa! I mean, that would’ve been nice, I guess? But of course it wasn’t, because 1) I’m me, 2) our country is currently a flaming dumpster fire, and 3) reasons. And before I go any further, I suppose I should clarify that everyone is fine, it’s fine, NO REALLY IT’S FINE, I’M NOT YELLING YOU’RE YELLING, it’s FINE totally fine stop looking at me. We’re all fine. It’s the little bumps in the road that make life interesting, right? Right.

Anyway, everyone was good and happy and Otto and I were trying to figure out how to adjust to our (finally) empty nest, and then Monkey got sick again.

Remember, they’d gotten mono over the summer, but by the time we moved them up to school, they were tired but mostly better. And they were loving school and feeling better every day… right up until they weren’t. They once again developed Sleeping Sickness and general “I feel bad”ness and because they had spent the preceding 25+ years coming to me any time they’ve felt bad, they continued to do that, except I am now quite far away and also not a doctor, and diagnosing “I’m so tired all the time” and “my body feels BAD” via telepathy is not my strong suit. (Listen, I tried.)

The timeline is quite fuzzy now—probably because I’m trying to repress it—but the abbreviated version is: Monkey very unwell; multiple visits to the student health center with no answers; a battery of bloodwork with maybe some hints; me panicking over whether I needed to drop everything and head north to take care of them; and finally, I remembered something VERY IMPORTANT which I had ALSO repressed. Here is that important thing: If you have Ehlers-Danlos (as the kids and I do), other than the standard party tricks of being bendy and having weird skin, you may remain free of systemic issues UNTIL you experience what some people call an “activating illness.” To my knowledge, the medical community still doesn’t understand exactly how/why this happens, but it’s common enough to be recognized as A Thing.

Here, let me give you some examples! I think you’ll pick up what I’m laying down.

Example 1: After Chickadee’s first year of college, she came home with a life-threatening case of mono and spent a week in the hospital. After she recovered from that, she developed a case of POTS so severe, it was years before she regained full normal functioning. (POTS is a very common EDS comorbidity.)

Example 2: After I had a (relatively uneventful, vaccinated) case of COVID a few years back, I also ended up developing POTS, and then after a life-threatening case of pancreatitis and a bunch of bonus suckage that ultimately led to having my gallbladder removed, I ALSO (I’m an overachiever) developed Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which ended up severely impairing my quality of life for a couple of years while we got it figured out. (MCAS is also a very common EDS comorbidity.) (Bonus for those of you who’ve been here forever: anyone remember the YEARS we spent trying to figure out why Chickie broke out in random, full-body rashes all the time? That was MCAS. Too bad we didn’t know it at the time.)

Do you see where we’re going here…?

I ordered a fitness monitor for Monkey and instructed them to wear it constantly for at least two weeks. Suddenly their extreme fatigue and general malaise made a lot more sense, because it turns out that when your heart rate is regularly spiking up to the 180s while you’re just sitting there or, say, SLEEPING (really!), your body is going to feel especially un-good.

So. On the bright side: Mystery solved! On the other hand: POTS treatment is an elusive beast for lots of reasons I won’t bore you with, but there are lots of non-medical interventions both Chickadee and I utilize in addition to meds, so I got Monkey started on all of those while we tried to find them a local cardiologist who treats POTS. Monkey obediently began drinking all of the electrolytes and eating all of the salt while wearing all of the compression socks and leggings, and the one doctor I managed to locate at Giant Industrial BlueCity MegaPlex Cardiology who takes POTS patients had an opening… 18 months out. Faaaaaaabulous. We scheduled that appointment and I continued trying to find someone to see them sooner, and eventually an appointment was secured for about a month out from when all of this was happening.

I ended up driving up to BlueCity for a few days to take Monkey to that appointment as well as hang out with them and the girls for a bit. (It ended up coinciding with the government shutdown and I was nervous about flying when TSA was affected, and it worked out fine.) The doctor they saw was nice but mostly useless (“You don’t want to go on meds!” Sure, yes, why do any actual treatment and feel better?), so we are still on the hunt for more medical support, BUT because I am me, somehow we did manage to cobble together enough over-the-counter/lifestyle/physical-therapy-esque changes that Monkey not only was able to stay in school (it was bad enough for a while that we worried they might need to withdraw), they aced everything. That was all a huge relief in every possible way, but also C’MON UNIVERSE, cut my kid a break, already.

Monkey then came home for winter break and Turnip lost her tiny mind (again!) and we had a wonderful time with them here, right up until Christmas.

For Christmas this year, Santa brought me the superflu! So sweet. (Also: Puzzling. I spend most of my time at home, and when I do go out, I mostly still mask up. Not only did I get the worst case of flu I’ve had in at least 20 years, Monkey and Otto didn’t get sick at all, even though I obviously didn’t start quarantining until I had symptoms, which means I was already contagious. WHERE DID I GET IT?? HOW did they dodge it?? It’s a mystery.)

I was so sick, Otto and I had an argument about whether I needed to go to the hospital. (He wanted to take me. I was already on TamiFlu and was not interested in spending 12+ hours in a waiting room full of sick people to be told that… I’m sick.) I had a solid 48 hours in there where alternating fever reducers at their max levels still had my temp hovering in the 102-103 range, and it turns out you can be too sick to sleep (who knew?), so I get why Otto was worried. I eventually recovered, but 0/10 stars, would not recommend.

Meanwhile, the girls hadn’t been able to come home, but that meant I didn’t infect them, so… itty bitty silver lining. Other notable news from the daughters:
1) Sunny also rocked her first semester of grad school, natch.
2) The elderly cat with cancer we were all sure was going to die at any moment is still doing fine, so perhaps she is immortal?
3) During the first major snow storm, the girls suited up, took the cats outside one by one, and did a photoshoot. The pictures were hilarious. Those poor southern, indoor cats. “Where am I and WTF is this white stuff????”
4) Chickadee applied for and—after 4 or 5 rounds of interviews, I forget—snagged a new role at her company that is, essentially, a huge promotion. (Yeah, I’m bragging. Sue me.) She is a lot busier now than she used to be (boooo, I miss our lunchtime calls), but she’s loving it and bringing home the (metaphorical, vegetarian) bacon, so YAY.
5) Right before switching roles, she was nominated for a company-wide quarterly award which she has been nominated for every quarter for a whole year. I am a bit fuzzy on the selection (it might be random, actually?) but it turned out that fourth time was the charm, because she finally won, which was a feather in her cap and a nice cash bonus. And THEN (I think? again, fuzzy on details) a certain number of employees from the pool of those recipients get selected to win an all-expenses-paid vacation with a plus one, and she won that, as well! And that means that the girls are headed to a tropical resort at the end of this month for a getaway and it’s not costing them a dime. They haven’t even had a honeymoon (yet, they remind me), so I am DELIGHTED they’re being somewhat forced to take some time off and go have fun.

Anyway, the point of all of this, I guess, is that life marches on. Everyone is Doing The Things and while I find it incredibly rude of my children to live so far away, they’re living their best lives and small annoyances/genuine challenges aside, all is well.

But at the same time, the state of the world is… well, I don’t know about you, but I am finding it more and more challenging. It’s very easy for me to slip into feeling like everything is awful and there’s nothing I can do and furthermore, what’s the point? Some of this is current events, some of it is a slew of unexpected losses over the last couple of years, some of it is (probably) figuring out daily life without daily mom-ing. For me, the way to regain my footing is to have A Plan, and for a good stretch there after I had the flu (when Monkey went back to school, and Otto was very busy with a project at work, and I was recovered but still felt kinda meh), I not only had no plan, I felt like plans were clearly pointless because… *gesturing vaguely* Y’know. Just… everything.

Eventually I started some decluttering projects that are long overdue, and that got me into a place where I felt like maybe I could Do Something, if I could figure out what. So—as one does—I fashioned myself a small tinfoil hat and turned to the Internet for guidance. (I’m kidding about the tinfoil hat. I hate hats.) Basically, I am proceeding from the premise that being prepared for the worst is better than not, and safety nets and supply chains are likely to experience disruption in our current “Who needs vaccines/environmental regulations/laws/rights” circle of hell, and that gave me plenty to do for a few months. I’m not going to tell you what to do or that I have any actual answers or even that—if it truly comes down to the kind of shitshow I think is inevitable—any of this will make a difference, but I feel a little better.

[Sidebar: Again, I am not an expert, nor do I think anyone needs me to be a guide. We’ve simply… taken some steps to make ourselves a little more disaster-proof. We have acquired various equipment that would be useful in the event of a power grid failure. We’ve stocked up on necessities and expanded what sort of shelf-stable foods we keep on hand. Our first aid kit has been, shall we say, beefed up, and in case you’re wondering, hypothetically, you can absolutely go take a free or low-cost first aid training course that will teach you how to handle even severe injuries you never thought you’d need to know how to treat, but perhaps recent events in our country have made you rethink that position. (Hypothetically, of course.) And did I spend an entire month trying to suss out a way to revive and expand my gardening efforts while still working within the confines of appropriate/available sunlit location(s) and the veritable Disneyesque level of hungry forest creatures that traipse around here and have, in the past, decimated my harvest? Yup. It involved some tense negotiations—Otto takes his pristine lawn VERY SERIOUSLY, y’all—but with the promise that he can rent a tiller and go to town in April, we have agreed upon a new, expanded garden plot which will be situated inside… well, it’s a very large chicken run, officially. But nowhere does it say you can’t use said giant cage as a protective garden structure, and I found it on clearance (woo!), and so when all is said and done, I will (hopefully!) have the largest, most bountiful, un-pilfered veggie garden of my life.]

At this point I’m kind of in a lull: I have some seeds started, but garden work won’t begin in earnest for another six weeks or so; the kids are all busy doing their stuff; there’s plenty of things I should be doing that I simply don’t FEEL like doing because grief is exhausting and no matter what I want to call it or brush it off as, I am still grieving an overwhelming number of people/things/situations. And it turns out that even a complete spreadsheet cataloging the contents and expiration dates of your carefully curated just-in-case project does not fix a world running on “may the biggest bully win” or restore some sense of safety and/or belonging when the rug has been whipped out from under you a few too many times. (Weird, right?) I must DO or I will have too much time to THINK, but it’s the thinking that’s making the doing hard, and yes, I AM always like this, and no, it isn’t fun.

The point (I had a point, I’m sure I did) I am trying to get to, I think, is that everything is Fine but also Not So Great and I am forever looking for meaning where there probably isn’t any, but this brings us to my hairdryer.

A couple of years ago, my (probably cheap) hairdryer died. I decided to do some research before replacing it, which led to me going to Otto and explaining that I could go ahead and buy another cheap hairdryer that was probably fine, or I could buy a much more expensive one that would likely last a lot longer, but I wasn’t sure the money was worth it, and what did he think? I swear this is NOT why I asked him, but Otto—being Otto—immediately offered to buy the expensive one for me, because spending large sums of money freaks me out and he is always happy to pay a little more for quality. And so it came to pass that I went from having a cheap, generic looks-like-a-speed-radar dryer to having a Shark FlexStyle Air Styling and Drying System (fancy!!) because my husband is awesome.

Now, did I NEED all that/do I use all the various attachments? No, and no. I use the diffuser (see also: JewFro), and I use the regular nozzle concentrator when I dry the dogs. But we got it on a Black Friday deal, and I looooooooooove it. It’s lighter and more maneuverable than my old dryer, dries faster, has more options, etc. It is MY PRECCCCCIOUS.

And, like, my hair dryer is not top-of-mind these days in terms of things that are concerning me, you understand. But a few weeks ago, said precious wonder-wand of perfect drying started to… randomly turn itself off while I was using it. Which is annoying.

It happened a couple of times in one week, and then started happening even more, and finally I had to say something to Otto about it, even as I was expanding this weird little blip into catastrophic proof that everything is terrible, in my mind. (Don’t ask me what I thought was going on or why it must be my fault and/or a sign of disaster. I can’t explain. The first time it happened, I was pretty sure I’d accidentally been covering the intake vent at the base of the handle, but subsequent episodes I definitely hadn’t been. It also occurred to me that I would periodically clean that area on my other hairdryer, but in looking at this one, there didn’t seem to be a way to expose it. UUUUUGH, this thing was SO EXPENSIVE and I was worried it was dying and surely I dropped it one too many times, or something, right? I dunno.)

And so I found myself, one evening while we were out, recounting to Otto the progression of what was surely the slow death of my favorite hairdryer ever—the turning off occasionally, then more often; how initially I could hit the buttons on the plug and that would fix it for a bit but that day I’d just put it down because it turned off twice in quick succession and I’m not looking to burn the house down; how I probably should’ve said something earlier but anyway did he have any idea what might be wrong?

Otto is nothing if not practical, so he immediately asked me if I had checked/cleaned any debris that may have collected by the intake vent.

“But that’s the problem,” I said, “Every other hairdryer I’ve ever owned has had a little plastic cover that pops off for cleaning, and the Shark doesn’t. I don’t think I CAN clean it.” He said he could take a look for me when we got home, and I said I’d look to see if I have the manual, too.

When we got home, I discovered that Past Me had done Current Me a solid: I’d not only kept the manual, I’d stored it with the attachments, so I found it right away. So I started leafing through it and found a “troubleshooting” section. And whaddaya know! The unit turning off and flashing a particular light (the one I’d seen flashing when it happened to me) is commonly a safety shutdown due to… insufficient air flow. Solution: clean around the intake vents.

Here let me pause for a visual aid.

On the left, the back of every hairdryer in the world other than a Shark or Dyson. On the right, the handle/base vent area of my hairdryer. Does that look like there’s a removable piece to you?? Because it sure didn’t to me.

Furthermore, the manual helpfully instructs that the user should “Pull the vent cover off” to expose the intake vent for cleaning. There was no picture. There were no further instructions. And the longer I stared at it, the more I suspected I was being punked.

I finally found (elsewhere in the manual) something that cheerfully suggested that area be cleaned “at least once a month” and that the cover should be pulled down to expose the intake vent.

Eventually I just grabbed the very bottom of the wand—where it sure looks like there is absolutely nothing that detaches—and gave a mighty tug.

And it turns out that that piece DOES come off. The shiny disc-looking piece that’s at the very base and looks like it’s attached to the entire wand is actually part of the vent cover, and the whole chunk slides down around the cord if you pull hard enough. Huh.

Needless to say, I’ve had this hairdryer for over two years, and this was my first time figuring this out, so there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Otto was correct, reduced airflow WAS the issue, and now that I’ve cleaned it out, not only is the dryer no longer turning itself off, it works a lot better, too. (Go figure!) The bad news is that whatever you might be picturing as the accumulation of flotsam and jetsam around the intake vent, it was SO MUCH WORSE than that. I legitimately thought I had to be careful not to destroy the fabric filter in there, but—HAHAHAHAAAAA*sob*—there’s just the metal vent, and what I initially thought was a removable filter was, in fact, a fully compacted layer of dust and dog fur. My bad!

Believe me when I tell you that I had examined the handle and the intake multiple times, always concluding it must be immovable, always following that conclusion with a hearty round of self-flagellation for my inability to FIX IT.

It may not be a sign from the universe—or maybe it is; I rule out nothing at this point—but I just couldn’t see the solution, until I did. I’m calling it a win, and quietly hoping for more of this. (Uh, minus the parts where I’m dumb, if possible. But whatever.)