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i'd like to start out by greeting my blogosphere associates. i miss you, i love you, and i thank you in advance for your warm welcome back into our wonderful web consortium. i would like to talk on the phone or write a letter to you soon. but, right now, this is what i'm doing.  maybe to rip the bandaid off and save myself a little grief, i will share a little bit about my present circumstances. reader, they are not good! in july, i got sick. tomorrow is the last day of october. i am still very unwell. it is a strange sickness because to the naked eye i actually appear to be very well-- i do not cough or sneeze or drip, my voice and complexion are quite normal, and i can tolerate standing and moving around in small doses that you might encounter me for. i am not in pain. unfortunately though, my energy stores are unnaturally, gravely low. cleaning my home, walking distances even of a couple blocks, a particularly long set of stairs; these activities are all enough not just to e...

  woof. what a week! or has it been two? and if you can believe it, stuff just keeps happening. gonna start off with some bullet points here and see where that takes me.  - surprise brain surgery! my apologies if i haven't yet shared  with you-- it's not good small talk! at the beginning of march, my mom was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, which is a kind of benign brain tumor. the most important thing anyone will tell you about acoustic neuromas is that mark ruffalo once had one. anyway, she had a surgery scheduled for mid-may, but due to some weird symptoms it got moved at very short notice to last wednesday. i got wind of the possibility monday evening, it was confirmed the next morning, and i hopped right in my prius v and drove down to the fine city of philadelphia. not a particularly fun or easy week, with lots of ups and downs you can explore on the tumor blog , but she was discharged in surprisingly good shape just one week after my arrival, and i was able to ...

i hesitate to confess this, but my job is kinda... good? like every single workplace where i've ever been employed, i showed up here feeling excited, but wary. usually it only takes a couple days, if not minutes, to get wind of whatever tension or dysfunction or character will ultimately become my problem. and... not to sound utterly brainwashed, but i'm three weeks in (!!) and so far my workplace appears, by all indications, to be a functional, dignified, and enjoyable place to work? and-- this genuinely isn't a pointed statement about any organizations at which i may have previously been employed, because this standard felt unthinkably, impossibly high for any workplace past or future-- i think i might have an ACTUAL reciprocal and healthful relationship with the organization that employs me..... i've been reading jenny odell's new-ish book  saving time ( how to do nothing -heads let me hear you!!!!!!*) so i've been thinking a lot about what it means to have ...

hello from vermont! i now live here on the farm with 5 of my very nice co-workers and over 100 chickens. mostly my life here has looked like work, and then the feeling of being tired from work and the brain power it takes to absorb an abrupt change of environment. slowly but surely, i am adapting and settling in! spring here so far appears to be winter, just with more mud. i have spent many of my working and leisure hours stomping and squelching through a variety of mud textures and consistencies. already one of the great pleasures of living here is the hundreds of acres of woods and hills and trails right out my back door.... they are filled with many beautiful instances of moss and lichen as you may gather from my collage. if i may be controversial for a second, vermont is a beautiful state! i am moved by tall mountains and old homes and wide fields and rivers and main streets. this will be the third place that i have moved to as an adult, and it's weird and exciting and overwhel...

hi everyone. i hope you are ready to see photos of the inside of my esophagus and stomach because here they are! the first time i had one of these photoshoots back in september my dad said it looked a lot like his colonoscopy, which-- fair! i saw uncut gems.  anyway these pictures are from yesterday. they have to put you to sleep to do the endoscopy, so it's this whole thing with the gown and the monitor and the little stickers on your chest and and the iv and that. i don't have munchausen's and i definitely couldn't afford it but i DO love attention, so i see where those guys are coming from. you really get to be the star of the show in a hospital. unless you're on grey's anatomy, in which case you're probably more of a co-star (misleading BIZ LINGO for bottom tier speaking role). anyway i woke up this time and it was a real laugh because the whole point of the whole thing was to deploy this device (see image three) in me that's supposed to take some pH...