Friday Links

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1. I’m not versed in contemporary art but I didn’t realize that Robert Mapplethorpe photographed any women, let alone Lisa Lyon–the first World Women’s BodyBuilding Champion–in the early 80s. You can see some work and a very swole woman here; there’s nudity but for Mapplethorpe it’s all pretty tame.

 

2. Somewhat related to bodybuilding:

 

3. Let’s learn about words:

Bread And Roses

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Journalist Lyz Lenz wrote a beautiful newsletter this week “about Wordle, and roses, and trying to live.” Just go read it–she works in Rebecca Solnit’s book about Orwell, word puzzles instead of the news, and being so tired of trying to make it all better. This part right before the end is perfect:

Anarchist and political activist Emma Goldman once said, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful radiant things.”

Some days, I feel as if I am living and working so desperately. The world seems so perilous and fraught, and I’m meat and flesh and nerve endings trying to find a way through it all. And life, if it is worth living, isn’t all tirades and rage against the machine. It’s wine in Rome, it’s roses, it’s puzzles.

Tweets Of My Feelings

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You and me both, Georgia:

ACCURATE:

Also accurate:

Me to just about everything:

Tuesday Project Roundup: Butt-Adjacent (But Not Poop)

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There’s nothing like seeing your man in a hospital gown for four days to make you realize he’s due for some fresh underwear. I mean, I do the laundry, so I was aware the pairs I’d made him with Joann knit had lost most of their color and that the elastic was going, but it becomes a little more urgent when the entire world can see it, too.

Fortunately, I’d already been buying some better knits to make him more undies for Christmas, so I just bumped up the schedule.

These are both sold out now but the raccoons (Raccacoonie!) were from Nature’s Fabrics and the cats were from Jumping June Textiles. The pattern is the Greenstyle Walbrook Boxer Briefs and I sewed both of these up Sunday in about 90 minutes.

At some point in the last few years I’ve become a knit snob and the Euro stuff (especially from Jumping June) is indeed worth the price tag. It doesn’t fade, it doesn’t bag out, and it’s just such a nice quality–smooth and thick. I sincerely hope we never see the inside of a hospital again, but it’s good to have deluxe new undies anyway.

Hot Poop Summer

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It’s still summer and we’re still dealing with poop–yesterday because we were concerned at how dark Doc’s was. We ended up in the ER again (because American healthcare really doesn’t give you another option on a Sunday night) and he does have a little bit of internal bleeding, probably from the diverticulii poking at his guts.

He wasn’t in pain, his vitals were fine, and his white blood count was just barely elevated, so we got to go home and just monitor everything until the follow up tomorrow with the doctor who treated him in the hospital.

Truly, universe, I’m ready to stop talking about poop. Any time…

Friday Links

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1. I swear to gods I am ready for that Autumn of Ease and Abundance: We took Toby to the vet yesterday morning for all the tests and another glucose monitor. Imagine everyone’s unhappiness when we found out the monitor wasn’t applied correctly and wouldn’t give us a reading…and we went BACK to the vet four hours later for a new one.

I hope next week contains 100% fewer medical professionals all around.

 

2. I feel this gif so much lately:

 

3. Talia Levin has a soothing essay about a cheese sandwich and also about humanity:

Cheese started as a means of survival; it endures as testament to the irrepressible creative force of man. For as often as we betray ourselves, as often as we inflict unthinking cruelty on each other, we make wonders.

Big Moods

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Pls stop happening (via)

 

Trying to remember this (via)

 

Trying not to do this

 

We all deserve good things. We do.

Summer of Struggle: Hospital Edition

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Reader, I’m going to just keep my mouth shut, because the universe really seems to enjoy one-upping me lately. As soon as I said, “I would really like to not think about poop for a while,” Doc stopped pooping, developed symptoms of appendicitis, and ended up in the hospital for three days of IV antibiotics for diverticulitis.

Saturday his doctor was talking surgery (since there were micro perforations in his guts) but the antibiotics did their trick and he’s home now with intact intestines. He was a trooper for the whole thing and the nurses were all nice but we both just collapsed and slept like the dead when we got home yesterday.

(Not to be outdone, Toby’s insulin dose is still messing up his little guts so I would wake up to rush over to the hospital and discover more! poop! in creative places. [He gets to go to the vet tomorrow.])

I blogged years ago about “amor fati,” love of one’s fate, and I think my fate for the moment is poop and I’d better just embrace it.  Because look what Doc and I saw on a walk around the neighborhood last night:

 

 

Friday Links

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1. I could have written this short essay about not becoming athletic until my latest possible 30s. Anne Helen Petersen is a runner but I was nodding vigorously along to the whole thing:

I just think women’s relationship to endurance, generally speaking, changes with time. Plus running is so much easier than so many parts of being in your late 30s. Like, if I could choose between running a half marathon and figuring out how to successfully resubmit a rejected health insurance claim….I would pick the half-marathon. […]

But there’s also something about pushing past your own understanding of your limitations that frees you from other arbitrary limits. As in: that was really hard. But my body can do really hard things, I know that now, in a way I never knew before, because I wasn’t actually interested in finding out.

 

2. This Burnt Toast interview with Sharon Hurley Hall is a must-read. “I don’t know any Black person who’s worked in a white majority space, especially a woman, who has not had some white person in their office space, make free with their hair. ”

 

3. My friend group found the best Twitter account this week:

 

A Poem About Nice Things

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I caught my own imagination with my joke about an “Autumn of Ease and Abundance” on Tuesday and I’ve been letting what that looks like simmer in my mind for a bit. It might look like the things in this poem: bird watching, walks in the woods, cake.

 

Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse
by Nikita Gill

Sunrises. People you have still to meet and laugh with. Songs
about love, peace, anger, and revolution. Walks in the woods.
The smile you exchange with a stranger when you experience
beauty accidentally together. Butterflies. Seeing your grandpar-
ents again. The moon in all her forms, whether half or full. Dogs.
Birthdays and half-birthdays. That feeling of floating in love.
Watching birds eat from bird feeders. The waves of happiness
that follow the end of sadness. Brown eyes. Watching a boat cross
an empty sea. Sunsets. Dipping your feet in the river. Balconies.
Cake. The wind in your face when you roll the car window down
on an open highway. Falling asleep to the sound of a steady
heartbeat. Warm cups of tea on cold days. Hugs. Night skies. Art
museums. Books filled with everything you do not yet know.
Long conversations. Long-lost friends. Poetry.

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