TW: diets and diet culture, including describing extreme dieting techniques of the 80's and 90's. I've been waking up really late recently, daylight savings time is not helping this, and I had an 11:30am appointment yesterday. A normal person would have plenty of time to pull themselves together, but I slept until nearly 10am, and it takes my stomach a couple more hours to wake up than the rest of my body, so I went to that appointment on water, coffee, and collagen powder. And by the time the appointment was over, the McDonalds in the parking lot looked pretty amazing. Do I eat fast food? Depends on how customize-able the app makes the food. Taco Bell is my go-to, Jimmy John's and Popeye's are also favorites, but fast food is a once every other month kind of thing, maybe. That's road food. And I am so rarely on the road anymore. The last time I ate a quarter pounder meal was sometime last summer. And I should state, for the record, that I'm taking Contrave, aka Buproprion and Naltrexone, as a weight loss aid, as well as eliminating my diagnosed food allergies from my diet - dairy, soy, nuts, eggs, and tomatoes - and eating a "Mediterranean Diet" based primarily on beans & lentils, rice, lean meats, seeds, fruits & veg, and olive & avocado oils. Alright, according to the Maccas website, the burger is 520 calories, the fries 320 calories, and the regular Coca-Cola 270 calories, for a grand total of 1,110 calories. I typically eat around 1,600 calories per day. How did my body react? I spent the rest of the day sucking down water and electrolytes. But food? I finished my grandma's fries around 9pm, so maybe 100 more calories, and had two mandarin oranges, total 80 more calories. So, I ended up eating fewer calories than usual, but also got almost no fiber, and WAY more sugar and salt than I'm used to. Why bother blogging about this? As an OG Body Positivity girlie with an Anthropology degree who had Obesity Class 2 on my chart this time last year, I find the current Fat Activism pretty fascinating. Particularly the "What I eat in a day as a fat girl who dgaf about counting calories" videos where these women start their day with a meal like that, subbing in or just plain adding a coffee drink with double the calories of the Coke, and they just... keep eating normal-sized meals in the same vein after that. I used to be able to do that. And I just... can't anymore. Something I've been seeing a lot of these fat activists say lately is "diets don't work," but they just... leave it at that. Diets don't work, so that absolves them of trying. Problem being, since I am an OG, I remember the rest of that saying - "diets don't work, you have to make permanent lifestyle changes." See, I'm even old enough to remember what diets were before social media - I remember "a Slim-Fast shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and a sensible dinner," essentially tricking your body into thinking it's consuming nutrition by feeding it two chemically processed 12oz protein shakes and nothing else all day, and then eating the current US administration's recommended budget dinner of a small piece of baked chicken, a couple of broccoli florets, and a single tortilla. I also remember the one where you eat nothing but a cabbage and tomato soup for a whole week, nothing else. Or the "Atkins Craze," where you only consumed protein, to the point where it was causing brain damage from lack of carbohydrates. When people say "diets don't work," they're specifically talking about these "quick fix" starvation techniques that might get you "fast results" if you want to lose 15 pounds for your vacation next month, but you'd never be able to take significant weight off, let alone keep it off, with any of them. You need lifestyle changes - you need to re-shape how you feed yourself every single day for the rest of your life, and you can't set yourself up to fall back into your old food habits. That means learning to cook from scratch for yourself, and having a stocked pantry and go-to recipes. That means meal planning. That means knowing where and how you can eat out while still maintaining your food habits. That's not a "diet" in the "diets don't work" sense like we see above, that's making healthy lifestyle choices. Learning how to independently care for your electrified meat sack, like the Sovereign Being you're supposed to be. And for the record, people with epilepsy have been eating Keto since the 1920's, and the Mediterranean Diet has obviously been eaten for millennia even though the book wasn't written until 2014. As a matter of fact, that's my biggest piece of advice for anyone who wants to make healthy food changes - don't try to eat like an American, but in a calorie deficit. Pick a culture or five that prioritizes whole foods and traditional recipes in their daily food system that you really enjoy eating cuisine from. And find cooking content creators from that country demonstrating what they're actually feeding their families on a daily basis. And learn their recipes, start to incorporate them into your meal rotation, keep the ingredients to make them on hand. WIX is riding the technical struggle bus today, and I just took a pause to reload this post, finally (at 12:45pm! Damn, McDonalds...) eat my usual breakfast of dairy-free yogurt, flax seed meal, and raw honey from my neighbor's hives before taking my meds. I also brewed a pot of masala chai, and discovered my sprouting jar lid just delivered, so I put a cup of lentils on to sprout, which I'm excited to eat in a homemade flatbread wrap with all kinds of sauces and spreads. As I was doing this, I was describing Japanese-style rice in tea broth to my grandma as a way to serve the smoked salmon we picked up yesterday. Lifestyle changes. Learning from cultures that prioritize whole foods. And taking responsibility for yourself. That's the other thing I hear so much, "I tried [diet and/or exercise] and it didn't work." Okay, but did you fight to find out why? Did you get tested for food allergies or try an elimination diet to see if there's a particular food that's at the root of your symptoms? Did you try therapy or any other treatment for any neuro/psychological issues that could be contributing to your failure here? Did you just jump into a full exercise routine right off the bat, injure yourself, and not recalibrate your routine so you could build your strength and endurance slowly? Before you "but..." me here, I learned to strength train at a fibromyalgia pain clinic, where I was also diagnosed with non-EDS joint hypermobility. The method is called "greasing the groove." It trains your nerves as it trains your muscles, so even a brain with Central Sensitization Syndrome like mine finally realizes what you're doing is a safe move. And it trains your muscles at a reasonable pace, so you'll see fast results without injuring yourself. I lost 29" total and got buff af using this method with multiple physical disabilities. Y'all always talk about how healthy you are... And as for the people who are mad that people who were into "fat activism" are now going on GLP-1s or hitting the gym, because they profited off of being fat as a fat activist influencer on TikTok and now they're going to just cast off that identity... repeat after me, feminists: MY BODY, MY CHOICE. You only get to make decisions about your own physical form, not anyone else's. And I hate to break it to you, but being bitter about someone's personal choice about their own body just comes off as you being mad that they're proving that you can do it, too, no matter how much you claim you can't. OG Body Positivity is about loving yourself, no matter what. Let's just say that Acts of Service is your body's primary Love Language. Feeding yourself nutritionally dense food and moving your body in functional ways is an act of love. And if the result of that self-love is fat loss, that is not a "betrayal of the movement," that's being fully successful in your Acts of Service, you're seeing real world results of loving yourself enough to care for yourself in real ways. And you get the benefit of living in a strong body with all the tools at hand to function correctly, which, trust me here as a person with MANY chronic physical disabilities that have nothing to do with my weight or my general overall "soft bits" health, makes a massive difference in your life experience. I'm 100% for everyone doing whatever they want with their body, but let's at least be real in the discourse about it.

I've obviously had a lot of time to think about all of the things recently, and one thing that's been on my mind is how to keep my hair protected from the environment while I'm outside, especially for long amounts of time like camping trips. I typically used to put my hair into two cornrows, and just not touch it while I was in the woods if possible, and if not to just brush it out and re-braid it. This was also before I started wearing bonnets to bed, so I wasn't really aware of just how harsh this kind of exposure was on my very fine, very porous hair. This was also pre-chebe, so those highly porous hair cuticles gripped each other a lot more than they do now that they're properly sealed. Keeping cornrows intact for a weekend in the woods isn't as easy as it used to be. This issue is easier in winter, satin-lined beanies are a dime a dozen, and I mean that almost literally. But in the summer, when I have the power schvitz combo of post spinal cord injury + perimenopause? I need both breathe-ability, and something to hide my soaking wet hair 😅😅 So, I think to myself, "self, you're using an African hair care regimen, they must have a solution for this." Head wraps, duh. And I happen to have this realization as Sister Minnie's mom is having a big sale on her website , so I ordered some jersey hijabs to start with. And I've spent the weekend watching video tutorials on how to tie them. Holy katoot, I never realized just how versatile a good head wrap can be! Which is just one thing I like about this already. I believe I now know more ways to style a wrap than I do to style my hair. And I'm pretty good at braiding and styling! So, that's even more looks for my wardrobe. Why else? A simple wrap takes less time than a simple style on my hair, and is less damaging than a baseball cap. Which makes it lower in spoons than a hairstyle on 8am doctor appointment days. I'm not one of those people who can wear a brimmed cap just because, I need to be actively out in the sun or the rain where the brim is useful or it's a sensory issue for me. Wraps are one of the few non-brimmed headwear styles that's out there to choose from. It's one of the easiest ways to incorporate the 2026 brooch trend into a light summer wardrobe. This isn't something I'm really formally including in the Hair Growth Challenge, but I do consider my recent post-spinal cord injury kundalini re-awakening as a part of my hair growth, and have been attending to the spiritual aspects of my hair and hair growth as I attend to the physical aspects, hand in hand. I chose black, white, and plum for my first three colors. Black because it's my neutral - I have a very cool olive tone to my skin, those "clean girls" were killing me there with making their cream and beige and yellow gold jewelry trend so hard. But also because it's a protective color. White because it'll reflect the sunlight off the top of my head, which will be amazing after having black hair my whole life. But also because it's the color of the crown chakra. And plum because it made me gasp when I was scrolling through the color options - talk about a royal crown 👑 It's also really close to violet, the other color frequency associated with the crown chakra. And, well, considering all the spiritual gunk out there right now, and considering how used to spiritual attacks I am, putting a barrier between me and the world that combines physical practicality and spiritual hygiene? For the record, this is spiritual, not religious - aka you seeing or not seeing my hair has nothing to do with why I would choose to wear a wrap. This is to keep my hair from UV rays, friction from rubbing on my clothes, and bad vibes. So, yes, I will still be posting monthly length checks. I also took advantage of Second Fool's Spring to shift my closet around from winter to summer, to assess what I have, and what I need. Which is practically a snow summoning ritual, but whatever, I did it anyway. And past me set 2026 me up for success! For instance: The pair of muslin bloomers I sewed for my Pirates of the Caribbean inspired pirate wench costume 20 years ago that I found hanging in the way back of the closet. The pair of Thai "balloon pants" I bought for spine surgery number one, five years ago now, for the wide, comfy waistband. The pair of linen drawstring pants I ordered on off-season clearance last fall, and completely forgot about until today. Same story with the brand new package of tank tops in the perfect size I found in a doom pile. This... might be the first time in awhile that I've been excited about my summer wardrobe! Summer clothes used to be my favorite while I felt frumpy all winter. But my summer wardrobe has been in such a state of flux since 2020 that this is really the first time I've looked forward to enjoying wearing my hot weather wardrobe and feeling good in it since my 30's. It's not my body size, I was a size 20 my entire 30's. It's having light, fashionable clothes again, and places to wear them. And I had my first eye exam since... before the pandemic today. Early 2019, according to Zenni. So, I'm changing up my eyewear look, too. The pink lenses are the FL-41 tint for migraines, the avs are at 25%, and the latte shades are 80%. The round black shades have a 50% grey tint. I have all light situations covered. My life was really dramatically upended when I was 37-38, and since I've always tailored my wardrobe to what I wear my clothes for, e.g. for the office, for meeting tarot clients, for cocktail events or backyard parties, for being outdoors, etc, etc, I was really focused on what I would wear in my 40's as I was working through the identity shifts and shifts in my physical form that I was going through during that time. And here I am three years in still figuring that out 😅😅 But I could not have predicted my body or the crazy fashion shifts of the past six years, either. And we are NOT well enough informed about what peri/menopause does to the 40-something year old body, and how that tends to start informing your clothing choices. The muumuus make sense now. Let's see if I'm up to regular-ish OOTD content as the weather gets warmer, and I get out more so I put on more than cotton shorts and a tee, freeboobin' it and all. Just remind me to somehow overcome the ADHD time blindness and get ready to go out early enough to take pictures before going out, since my spoons are shot to hell afterwards 😅😅 Or have an accountability buddy to take pictures of me an my 'fit during said outing...

After hearing about my surprise overnight scar improvement, my grandma tried my scar combo this morning. Now, I'm not taking care of her wounds, so I'm being told that now that she's started on my daily collagen and electrolytes regimen, her wounds have healed, and she's working on scar management now. Turns out, she was dealing with scabbing that was refusing to come off, and that she thought she'd have to go to wound care to have removed for her. I'm told the minute my moisturizing trio hit the scabs, they started to fall off. They're gone now. One application. Again, no before and after pictures because of the "ew, gross" factor 😅😅 As for my scar, it's doing great. The incision went to the bone, this scar is a part of my body now, I'm not going to heal it like it never happened. But it's way less tight and restrictive on how the skin moves than it was. To recap my method, I layer from thinnest to thickest: Hyaluronic acid serum Full spectrum Vitamin E oil Raw cocoa butter Funny enough, searching images gets a lot about the smell of cocoa butter, which is understandable since it smells amazing, but what's so funny about the raw stuff in particular is that it doesn't have the Palmer's scent that triggers the usual childhood scent memory associations, but it does for some reason trigger the scent memory for me of a particular cocoa scented scratch-and-sniff sticker from the 80's that we'd get in elementary school as rewards for good work. Don't ask.

A few days ago, I saw a YouTube dermatologist say that topical Vitamin E doesn't do anything. Now, I recognize that this is anecdotal evidence and no scientific study, but I have to disagree... To be fair, there's the question of synthetic vs. natural, and percentage in the formula, and etc etc. Now, most naturally sourced Vitamin E is a soy derivative, so I have to be careful which Vitamin E products I use, and I generally stick to CocoJojo's Full Spectrum Vitamin E Oil (not a sponsored or affiliated link). To recap, this is my evening skincare routine: First cleanse with African Black Soap and an African net sponge Second cleanse with Kojic Acid Soap Spray down with HOCL Hyaluronic Acid serum Frankly's "The Closer" pore refining serum CocoJojo's Vitamin E oil Pure cocoa or kokum butter My surgery scar has been giving me a bit of grief, healing very hard and inflexible. Considering it's over a major joint, I decided I needed to do something about that, so my skincare routine is being brought down to my hip now, at least for a few months. All but the pore closer serum, no reason for that on my hip 😅😅 I kept thinking last night that I should take before and after pictures, but it's a gross scar, ew. But damn, I should have taken before and after pictures. Last night, the incision scar itself was purple, and the area around it where the mesh bandage was for the first month was reddish. This morning? The mesh bandage scar is barely perceptible, and the incision scar is red. That's overnight. I expected it to take WEEKS before I'd see any improvement. The FUCK. I had no idea the body could even work that fast. Just in case you were wondering why the skin on my face is so supple despite my advancing age and lack of expensive dermatological procedures. It's like I keep saying, your body actually works the way it's supposed to when you give your body what it needs to function properly.

February was kind of tough, health-wise. I ended the intro post saying that I was transitioning from healing leg to growing hair, but I definitely had more leg to heal 😅😅 Not to mention two weeks of Fool's Spring gave me a preview of migraine season, and I wasn't about to get into scalp massages when I have inflamed dura mater right underneath. Or get into showering in general when I'm in that much pain 😅😅 I think I managed four full wash days and chebe treatments for the month, which isn't bad, but is only about half of what I was aiming for. I did keep up my internal part of the challenge! Daily hydration and nutritional supplementation, as well as very minimal "cheat treats" aka foods I'm allergic to but eat anyway sometimes with the help of Benadryl, damn the torpedoes. Pizza is my biggest weakness, and I didn't have any in February. So, I felt like I was mitigating the stress of the healing leg and the migraines by not adding to it with any undue stress I put up on myself with my food choices. And I basically lived in a silk bonnet, and when I did take it off I immediately pulled my hair up into a ponytail, so yesterday's growth check was news to me! I did give myself a trim the other day, nothing that affected the length. I did default to techniques and shapes I'm used to, I need to check myself on that and explore different styles as my hair grows. So, how did February go? To compare, here's where I started: Not a lot of length overall, but the front really grew in! I did that, and healed a whole hip joint! As a preview of March, I only have about two treatments of chebe butter left with the yellow shea butter. Functionally, it's working great, but the yellow is making my greys look brassy. I purchased ivory kokum (or mangosteen, it's a seed butter) for my next batch, so there'll be a report on how kokum compares to the cocoa butter and shea butter I've used for my chebe butter so far. As well as on my skin, I usually slug with cocoa butter, but kokum is supposed to be good for pore refining, so let's see...

Getting back to this topic from a couple of weeks ago, my friend sent me this last night: Dear Universe, if I am a goddess somewhere back there, don't let me know about that past life. Or lives. I don't care how free of ego I may become, I don't need those kind of mind games. That'll just interfere with my purpose. I am who I need to be right now. And if I'm embodying anything, I'll embody it knowing the why or not. Also, anyone who's been in the spiritual community for awhile has already met multiple self-professed incarnations of all of the above goddesses already, we're aware 🤣🤣 So, I thought this worthy of blogging thanks to an interaction I had not too long ago when it came to people coming together to share their experiences of connecting with Mary Magdalene. One person, who claimed to be in the Magdalene bloodline (hi, cuz), came into the discussion and said that Mary Magdalene had reincarnated as a human and is peacefully living her human life somewhere, and therefore we're all in a fit of spiritual psychosis, as she couldn't be appearing or speaking to any of us. Babe, you're completely forgetting about the Higher Self. Mary Magdalene, who likely herself was an incarnation of Auset/Isis, likely is here in the human realm, assisting with midwiving the New Age of the Earth into being. Her Higher Self is not here behind the veil of forgetfulness, and can continue its spiritual function while she's also here in the trenches doing the work. We all have this capability at the soul level. So, Mary Magdalene, and any goddess or god who currently has a human avatar can definitely still appear to humans, in the form they're accustomed to seeing or hearing them in, and can still advise or aid them as needed, while also still supporting their human avatar. They could each have multiple avatars operating on Earth right now, while still continuing their functions as deities. The most Millennial reference. For instance, I dropped that gif, and got up to do a few things, including clearing out one of my "doom piles," finding new homes for everything in the pile, and cleansing the space both physically and spiritually, because we're going back to the Indian supermarket to get that Kali Ma statue tomorrow. Is Kali Ma currently incarnated in a human body? I'm like 99.999% sure yes. Is the Higher Energy of Kali Ma very present in my life right now? You bet your boots. Am I Kali Ma? Doubtful. Does my dad's dad's family have a very deep ancestral tradition of Kali veneration? Yep. And I'm betting Kali will be bringing Sarasvati and Lakshmi onto the altar by May 24, as well. iykyk. So, please don't see that meme and think "OMG, I need to find my patron deity in their physical incarnation in order to communicate with them!!" No, no. In their human form, they are not "The Goddess Kali," they're whatever name their human parents gave them, or whatever chosen name they took on when they were ready to express their true human identity, if they needed to. Keep communicating with their Higher Self aspect the way you normally do, that part remembers being a goddess or a god, and can advise or aid accordingly. Their human avatars? May be more spiritually advanced than most, but are still here on Earth operating an electrified meat puppet like the rest of us. It comes with some limitations. They're consulting their Higher Selves, too.

I may not have an audience, but damn it, I have opinions! I logged on with one more post-op update - I used my favorite cane for the first time since surgery yesterday, a single-point offset-handle aluminum model that's engraved so it looks like it's covered in shiny dragon scales. When my hip joint is fully functional, my left leg is my "strong leg" thanks to my balance issues and the foot drop in my right leg caused by the spinal cord injury. Which means that when I'm supporting my right leg, I use the cane on my left side. And when you're using a cane for support, you size the cane so the handle sits at your hip. I grab my cane yesterday, and... had to adjust it up a full notch to fit my new leg length. Damn! I should probably get re-measured. I lost an inch when I lost the disc at L5S1, I wonder if I regained a bit with the new hip. We're talking between 5'10" and 5'11", so I'm not exactly talking short and shorter here... I then took my longer cane to do a little light grocery shopping, where I walked the perimeter of both Meijer and Aldi with no pain issues! I haven't been grocery shopping in months!

I downloaded a free little macro & nutrient tracking app yesterday. Who am I?? I guess when you remove the toxic control element all of a sudden you can see the utility of the practice. Turns out, you can be eating the healthiest foods the earth can provide, and you can still fall short on some nutrients if you're eating it on vibes. Especially if you're #FIBERMAXXING. This was 2/22/26. Ignore the sodium & calcium, I couldn't figure out how to track my electrolyte drops. I planned on fixing myself Mujaddara for dinner, I even caramelized the onions, and when 6pm rolled around... I ate a big apple and an open-face SunButter & Jam sandwich instead. I wasn't meal kind of hungry. Had I had that Mujaddara, I would have hit my calories and protein and not hit the seeds so hard for the fats, but I fibermaxxed a little too close to the sun yesterday. The good news? I'm going to keep an eye on it for a few days, but I think I can drop spending $20/month on Benefiber from my budget. And you're probably looking at the calorie count and freaking out. Contrave has me eating purely for my physical needs, and I am so sedentary. I really only get up to cook myself meals on a daily basis. So, I do keep myself in a calorie deficit, but for me it's more of a maintenance diet, though I'm obviously losing weight. I can tell you from post-op healing that I get hungrier if I need to. I expect the more active I get this summer, the closer to a real maintenance diet I'll get.

Things I have learned in the last 72-ish hours: It's a lot easier for me to track my macros and decide on what to make for dinner based on what I still need in my diet that day, and what I have on hand. For instance, today's been heavy on the healthy fats, I had two chicken thighs and some olives for lunch, on top of my usual seed consumption. So, I'm chasing carbs and protein for the rest of the day... smoky pinto beans and cornbread from scratch for dinner it is. Edit: I originally thought my cornbread, like my white bean bread dough, was super low calorie, but I finally found the calculation error, my bread recipes are actually quite nutritionally dense! Good grief, I just charted it - the whole dinner is 531 calories, 18 grams of protein, 16 grams of fiber. Y'all want a healthy, easy meal that'll fill you up and tastes delicious? Pinto beans and cornbread without any dairy, eggs, or nuts.

TW: American Disability & Medicaid systems, medical neglect, discussions of surgery/post-op injury, and genocide. You know how I was denied Medicaid for 2026 because of a perfect storm of events that most people would simply write off as personal laziness? Well, I'm writing this blog post to kill some time as I'm on hold with my County DHS to speak to someone about how to get the denial overturned. First of all, I had to hang up and call back to start on the automated menu from scratch three times, because the terminology they use is so specific that it's very confusing for anyone who doesn't work with it regularly. I also had to go through two menus and two sub-menus to find where I could speak to a human being. And when I finally connected (at 11:11am, it's 11:38 as I write this), I was caller number 36. I have no idea how many "specialists" they have on staff. I have an appointment this afternoon. Not until after 4pm, but now I wonder if I have enough time for this call and my appointment both. Here I thought five hours would be plenty of time to handle this and head out for my appointment... Starting next year, they've made putting in 20 hours per week of officially reported work or volunteer service a Medicaid qualification requirement. Are they planning on budgeting the staff to handle that? Because, at this point, they don't have the staff to handle the load of work they already have. And even if "official reporting" is handled online and by AI, they're going to need human troubleshooters for when something is inevitably fucked up by either human or robot. Especially if something as essential as peoples' health care is on the line if mandatory reporting gets fucked up for the smallest of reasons. They really thought adding another layer of difficulty to this system was a good idea? I know you likely think I'm being a dramatic liberal nose ring person for using the word "genocide" about this, but I'm not a liberal, I have roseacea so no nose ring, and I am out here with both personal experience and actual numbers, so I'm just going to point out how wildly inaccessible and understaffed/underfunded the social supports for disabled people in America are (and that includes facilities and supports for disabled veterans - I'n not a veteran, but I see what they're experiencing at the VA hospitals, I see how this country treats its heroes - all bluster, no compassion), and I'm just going to go ahead and make people uncomfortable with the "genocide" word when discussing what I see and experience. 11:59am now. Still on hold. Speaking of the Medicaid 2027 requirements... I've read them through, and I don't remember seeing anything about what happens if you can't make your 80 hours a month. Most part-time employees don't get PTO or a lot of PTO, they have to eat it if they get sick or have a family emergency. And volunteer positions don't have those kinds of deals at all, you're there or you're not, there's no "PTO" for volunteers. So, if your grandma is dying in Alberqurque, and you need to take a week off to be there, do you lose your Medicaid coverage? Are you expected to double your hours the next week to keep it? What if that's something that will flare the chronic Illness that has them on limited hours and Medicaid to begin with, so they need another week or two off to recover from the physical and emotional stress? Before you "but exemptions for disabilities!!" me, I have had two separate government employed "employment experts" and two separate government employed "doctors" (one had no idea what "myleomalacia" was, and when I said the word, the look on her face made it clear she decided I was faking right then, before the exam even started) declare me fit for full-time employment. They have done this repeatedly as I was concurrently going through multiple spine surgeries and that spinal cord injury, as well as severely damaging the nerves in my dominant hand and injuring the wrist joint in a way that is growing a cyst that's obstructing the use of my hand/wrist, and getting a total hip joint replacement. Despite Failed Laminectomy Syndrome being on my medical chart along with that myleomalacia (bruising of the spinal cord caused by a compression injury), I have had multiple government employees tell me that my surgeries fixed all my problems and made me fit to work again, despite some of those surgeries not having even taken place yet let alone healed in a way to determine what I lost and what I regained or retained. Getting a disability exemption from Medicaid work requirements will be just as impossible as getting into the social security program. I don't think this wasn't well thought out. I think it was extremely well thought out. I think they're trying to keep as many people uninsured and without access to health care as possible. And if they can take Medicaid away from the people already struggling as they're years, plural, sometimes many years into the disability application process, and have to earn their income the whole time like they already receive the disability check each month, even more will die before they get to their case, oopsie! 12:11pm now. I've officially been on hold for an hour, after taking a half-hour just to get to the point where I could be placed on hold. Soooooo... how is everyone? What's new? Break for some texting, and I'm back at 12:34pm. Still on hold. I have to bail on this at 3pm to get on the road for my appointment. They make me check in every 10 minutes to make sure I'm still on the line, but they won't tell me where I am in line now, or how many specialists are at their desks. What do you bet I need to call back and do this all again tomorrow? 1:11pm. Two hours on hold now. 2.5 hours into the process. They WANT you to give up. Just go without healthcare, die if you must. And I have the luxury of waiting around on hold. I don't have to run after a toddler, or get dinner on before picking the kids up from school. Or make it to a job where I can't have my phone on me or make personal calls outside of my lunch hour, like most front-facing and many office jobs nowadays. So, when are we supposed to handle our DHS business? They answered my call at 1:25pm. To tell me to call another number. Now, at the number they gave me, I asked for help applying for Medicaid, they sent me to tech support to get into the state website to do the application myself. Only, the website is down. So, I'm done for the day at 1:40pm, I'm denied the accommodation I stayed on hold for two hours to ask for, and my issue is still in limbo, and needs to be revisited tomorrow. Yep. Tune in tomorrow to see if the website actually works so I can get health coverage for another year...

I saw a video clip recently about how one of those Silicon Valley billionaires who thinks they can MAXX themselves into immortality saying that they pay a personal chef $500 per meal to cook them a diet with 30% dietary fiber, 20% more than what the average American gets in the Standard American Diet. Y'all, this rich fool is spending $1500 per day to eat grains, beans, and vegetables. And he thinks it'll make him more immortal than your average Old World grandfather. Wherever your Old World is, they're all eating like this, with regional variances. Also, I think wanting physical immortality is very immature. I thought Anne Rice's description of being a living witness to history was very romantic when I was young, but about the time I realized the immortality of the soul and what that entails, I sure as hell didn't want to be limited to this body forever and ever. Ew. I need more variety than that. Anyway, I'm exploring grains outside of rice and oats, because there's only so much rice one person can eat without wanting to explore other grain options. I'm polygrainimous, what can I say? I picked up quinoia, sorghum millet, and barley while I was out shopping the other day. Speaking of Quinoia, does anyone else remember the lady on Pinterest who kept the parody account for "Quinoia," her millennial beige hipster baby model imaginary daughter? Little Quinoia would be in high school now, and you know that kid would be a clean girl skincare influencer destroying her teenage skin with retinol and "baby Botox"... Back from that little sidetrack - I also got a sprouting lid to sprout some of the 8-ish pounds of lentils I have in the pantry. Considering my White Bean Bread Dough recipe makes a really soft, flexible flatbread wrap, I'm looking forward to veggie wraps with hummus and sprouts all spring and summer. #LEGUMEMAXXING. Thank God soy and peanut are the only ones I have problems with, I wouldn't know how to eat without the other legumes out there... With my success with my diet on both my health and my weight, my mom has decided that she wants to start eating my meals with me. Which means I spent a big chunk of the afternoon taking stock of what I have in the fridge and the pantry, and I set up a meal schedule for the week. I actually set up a public blog to record my recipes before I set up a weekly meal plan, y'all. I have been feeding myself on vibes and inspiration this whole time. And I love over-planning shit like this! I put my planning document together as a Google Sheet document, so I can share it with everyone who's eating. I'll probably blog about how to put a personal plan together in a few weeks, when I have it worked out. Dinner tonight is Mujaddara, if you were wondering.

And I mean that in the very southern "bless your heart" way. TW: American Disability & Medicaid systems, post-op recovery, chronic illness including seasonal migraines, neurodivergence, mental stress, discussion of distress, danger, and genocide. I just got denied Medicaid for 2026. Why? I didn't return the re-application form. Why wouldn't I do that promptly, it's not hard to return a form, right? I had a total hip joint replacement on January 5. I spent most of the month of January on Oxy. I came home from the hospital with a stomach virus, and my sister brought me home an upper respiratory virus at the end of January. I learned my SSI Disability appeal was denied at exactly one week post-op. I've been busy re-applying with my lawyer's office, in-between medical appointments galore. I spent most of February in a severe, intractable migraine thanks to an extended "Fool's Spring." Every time I was prompted to re-apply online, I was locked out of the state website for 24 hours for too many failed login attempts, because apparently none of my saved login info is correct. I have combined-type ADHD. It's on my medical record. That's not going to be manageable while I'm on a meds regimen that's totally different than normal and have extreme physical and mental stressors in my life. My lawyer's office can tell you how the demand resistant avoidance is treating me. Locking an ADHD person out of a task they're prepared to focus on for 24 hours is the kiss of death. Basically, I am being asked to complete a "simple task" with an obese elephant strapped to my back, and zero assistance. So, now I get to call my DHS office on Monday and demand they reconsider my case. My current plan ends on the 28th, so I'm clear for all of the medical care I've had so far, and I'm up on all my prescription meds, so I can deal with a month or so of paperwork, and I will absolutely submit anything I pay out of pocket for retroactive reimbursement. But seriously... I was denied SSI Disability despite the fact that my combined disabilities contributed to my failing to submit the paperwork to keep the healthcare coverage I need for another year. Go ahead. Tell me this isn't an ongoing, bipartisan genocide of disabled people. Flying the American flag upside down is a sign of citizens in distress, with extreme danger to life or property. Considering disabled Americans aren't allowed to have any kind of accumulated wealth to access the social security system, and considering thousands of disabled Americans are unable to participate in the full-time workforce and yet are in SSI Disability application limbo for 2-12+ years... the call is coming from inside the house.