Holy CRAP I just made the best salad. Dominic brought home arugula greens yesterday, and despite my better judgment I'm risking the diarrhea parasite here, but damn this salad was good.
I made salmon with roasted sweet potatoes and steamed green beans last night. Usually three serving sizes is about a half a serving too much for my family. I'm terrible about being scared of leftover fish, so I usually throw it away, but I decided to save a half portion this time for an asian-inspired salad for lunch.
I made a quick sesame dressing and tossed it with arugula, tomatoes, quinoa, pickled onions, and leftover chopped green beans. I would have added cucumber if I had remembered it, and now I'm sad I forgot :(
I flaked salmon over everything and thin thinned out some peanut sauce I made yesterday and put that on top with some sesame seeds.
It was INCREDIBLE. The double dressing, steamed green beans, and pickled onions were all MVPs. I'm never, ever creative with leftovers, so I'm feeling very smug. And hoping I haven't made myself sick by eating a salad in this day and age of not being able to trust fresh produce :(
Slowly healing. I have nerve damage of some kind that has left my finger both simultaneously numb and more sensitive somehow. I think it will get better?
Trying to push through the last of The Odyssey before we go see it tomorrow. This is an incredibly accessible translation, but I’m tired of That Bitch Odysseus. Oh I keep sacking cities and falling on top of ethereally gorgeous goddesses and getting my men killed. I have more treasure than when I left Troy! I’m favored by the gods! I’m so clever and beautiful have you SEEN my wife Penelope she’s a faithful BABE celibate for 20 years without me who I still don’t trust? I’m the saddest wretch in Ancient Greece! Time to murder some suitors!!
The stupid thing about compulsory screening for low testosterone, other than it is gender-affirming care, is that for aviators the list of medications that they can be on and not be medically disqualified from flying is super restricted. Like, there's about 10 medications total that aviators can take. Testosterone is not one of them, and in fact when my spouse was a commander of a flying squadron, one of his troops took testosterone that he got from some shady source (because getting it prescribed would medically disqualify him from flying) and my spouse tried to get him kicked out of the AF. Aviators who can't fly can't do their jobs. Illegal drug-seeking behavior is frowned upon.
(Obviously this affected/affects trans aviators too, which is unfair. D also experienced this with a trans troop, and that person could no longer fly because they were using legally prescribed hormones. D did not try to kick that person out because they were not illegally drug-seeking medication, but now trans people aren't allowed in the military anyway, so I assume that person had to leave. Which is so stupid. My god, the thing I have hated the most about this administration is their malicious scapegoating of trans people.)
I wonder if the military will revise their medication list for aviators based on this new policy. I don't love the thought of a bunch of aviators juiced on extra testosterone flying around in our skies.
If testosterone stays banned for aviators then my assumption is that affected aviators would not take it, but if they did it would cause issues with readiness. Because they would not be able to fly.
And finally, this is all probably a moot point anyway because I don't think most young men are affected by low testosterone, and the military is almost exclusively made of young people.
Got my stitches out this morning and had another panic session over it. My NP asked if I had kids, and she was like, well you got through birth, not unkindly--I had been telling her about my weird inability to deal with this minor injury--and then I told her about my emergency cesarean/ruptured uterus/surprise hysterectomy, and she said, "Okay, so you probably have a little PTSD."
I'm surprised I hadn't connected my outsized reaction to this injury to medical PTSD, but that makes sense, and I feel better about being a baby about four stitches. The last time I was hurt I almost died!
In much nicer news I just found out I've been awarded a week-long writing residency in Door County, Wisconsin next year! This will be my first residency since Vermont Studio Center in 2019. I was awarded a residency in Wyoming in 2023, but I didn't want to leave my then-baby for any length of time, so I declined it.
I'm super jazzed to have been awarded this residency--it's nice to be reminded that I'm a professional writer. And I get to go with two writing friends!
Managed to have some fun at the lake, despite my injury, but I'm glad we're home.
Normally, when my extended family gets together, we do it at our Pensacola house. We might plan one or, at the most, two events, but mostly we just hang out at home, and the kids play and the adults visit. My sister wanted to meet at the campground/waterpark they like this year, and it was very, very fun for the kids and pretty fun for the adults too, but it was also exhausting for everyone. Then we transitioned to the lake house and my parents and sister's kids came but my sister and brother-in-law didn't, and we just simply didn't have enough adults to manage all the children. Plus, with my injured finger, I just couldn't do as much as I normally would have.
The past six days have been incredibly chaotic. And there is clearly something genetic in my family's makeup that sets up small children to be moderately insane lol, because these three 4-year-olds are a wild bunch. Add my big kid, my 7yo niece, and my baby niece to the mix, and I think every adult lost their shit at least once.
Break for talking about blood, in case that skeeves anyone out too much.
Yesterday, 20 minutes after I took this photo, I had a freak accident with a cutting board and crushed my middle finger. I had just finished cutting up a watermelon, and I was lowering the cutting board into the sink and it fell on my finger in such a way that it suddenly and dramatically pinched it against the side of the stainless steel sink. The cutting board must have been nearly the same length as the bottom of the sink, so it really got me. My finger bled pretty heavily, but then after Dominic bandaged it, it stopped. It was such a weird accident though, and I was suspicious that it was worse than it looked, so this morning Dominic took me to an urgent care. I hadn’t looked at my finger since yesterday, and as soon as the doctor took off the bandage I could tell it was a bad cut and would need stitches. So now I have four stitches in my finger. I am still on vacation with my family. And I can’t get into the lake.
So, obviously, what a huge bummer. At least it’s a finger on my left hand, and at least I got it looked at instead of convincing myself I’m fine (I’m not).
One weird thing is that the nature of the accident was hugely unsettling. I didn’t cut myself with a knife because I was clumsy or negligent. I accidentally crushed my finger between the cutting board and sink in a freak turn of events that no one could see coming. It really messed with my head that I could be fine one moment and then instantly not fine at all. I guess that’s what all accidents are like, though?
And I also instantly understood that my vacation was fucked up, and it was—and is—such a huge disappointment. I had this weird emotional reaction where I cried very, very hard and couldn’t stop and then I hyperventilated and couldn’t stop. It was like a plug had been dislodged and all the tears I’ve held back the last year and a half burst out. All I kept thinking was: There’s so much to cry about! There really is, so I cried for at least a half hour straight.
I’m feeling a little better now, I guess. Stitches in a finger are not fun but also obviously not the end of the world. It’s just disappointing to end my vacation this way. And it’s a bummer how fragile human bodies really are and how easily we can be hurt.
We are at a campground / waterpark in north Alabama with my whole family, and it is NUTS but also fun. The kids are having a great time. We rented an EV golf cart. It is SO HOT.
