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My gyno ordered a CBC differential panel for pre-op, that's the one that looks at all your blood cells and makes sure it's all good, you're not having a reaction to anything going on in your body. Boy oh BOY do I have eosinophilia. Which, I understand just means "too many eosinophils," but my brain wants to read it as "these white blood cells love you SO MUCH!!" Really glad I was never tested on this word in college, it would be the one time my Ancient Greek would have screwe

CW: If you determine "summer" as the months of June, July, and August, we're at the halfway point, and so far 2026 has been the summer of Expelling Things From Between My Legs. If you don't want to read about that, skip to the bold print. I made a run for the border after my neurology appointment a few weeks back, and got served the Michigan Taco Bell Cyclospora-coated lettuce on our tacos and crunchwraps. My whole family ate it. Looking at my calendar, I'm betting this thing

I went from having a very open summer to having a whole lot of appointments yesterday 😅😅 Hysterectomy is happening August 5th, which was exactly the time frame I assumed I'd be on. I'll have two pre-ops, one with my gyno and another with anesthesiology. I also went ahead and scheduled the MRI and CT Angiogram my neurologist wants to see, so the hospital is about to get sick of seeing me and my teeny-tiny veins that outright reject IVs. My last post-op is six weeks after th

So, we're getting whimsical this summer, huh? I found my gnome doppelganger. 26 years ago exactly (starting something on a decade, century, and millennium-starting year sure makes it easy to remember), I was preparing myself for my first summer as a tarot card reader at a renaissance festival. I didn't choose the whimsical life, the whimsical life chose me. As a former Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I am happy to share my tips for a whimsy-filled summer to distract from The Horrors.

Apparently, the influencers are currently stocking their Amazon Storefronts with "Summer Essentials" that are really only essentials if you're into overconsumption... I mean, I live in Michigan, and I'm still only working with five bathing suits, and I feel very weird saying "only five." I don't have an Amazon Storefront, and most of my essentials aren't really consumables, anyway, but I'm still going to drop some non-sponsored links to products I do use. One: Japanese Sunscr

The first part of the blog post I wrote this morning was a lot of me thinking out loud about how to practically prepare for a drought potentially severe enough to cause water rations. Yes, like I'm sure most everyone else my original thought was how to stockpile water, but that's not practical at all... not only would you need the collection and storage equipment (I don't have the space for a water tower, I measured), but water goes stagnant. The question to ask is, "how do I

I'm from the Midwest, and both of my grandfathers are military veterans - one in WWII, one in the Korean War - so "Dopp Kit" is one of those traditions and terminologies that got persistently handed down in my family, much like calling chipped dry beef in cream sauce served over toast "shit on a shingle." But I digress. A Dopp Kit is a particular design of men's toiletry bags used for travel. Nowadays, there are many travel kits out there, and the kind that fold open and hang

After 10 years of Tent Camping While Disabled, I have a gear collection and my own setup down pat. And since I could use a new packing list after a forced two years away from the campgrounds, might as well make this blog content while I'm at it, right? I should point out that this is the car camping in state campgrounds kind of camping. It's music festival camping (which is how I got into camping in the first place). It's kind of half between rustic camping and "glamping." An

While I'm over here reminiscing on Millennial Summers of Yore, remember when Evian launched the mist bottle of Evian water? That's it, it's just Evian in an aluminum mist bottle. And it was THE beach and gym bag item of the summer the year it was launched, probably somewhere in the 2017-2018 years. Y'all, they sell that stuff for $3 an ounce. It's... water. Mineral water, yes, I have sea salt in my cabinet, too. Here's how the trail of innovation happened... I bought a contin

Here's a hyper-regional reference for you: use an orange slice and dilute it just enough and no one will know it's not an Oberon... Fellow Millennials, remember when rosé wine was the symbol of Summer 2015? When all of us 20- and 30-somethings, and by "all" I generally mean feminine women, were wearing short white shift dresses with gladiator sandals and big, floppy straw hats with giant designer sunglasses to brunch, where we spent three hours gossiping over chilled bubbly r