The travel is the kind of stint that requires the logistics of being in perpetual movement across climates and time zones.
I’ve been moving for what feels like 24 hours straight as I did the dance of managing feelings, working to get across to other people, unloading and unpacking and then promptly repacking again as I’ll be on the road for a stint.
As it turns out of the 540 species of sharks only a handful have what’s called Obligate Ram Ventilation which means the faster they swim the more oxygen flows through their gills. If the strop meaning the oxygen drops and they literally die. Great white sharks are the canonical example.
When I am angry I consider the question of whether humans are indeed the apex predators of our environment and if it is in my nature to flow the oxygen and predate upon the wide world who crosses my hungry wrath. My own Christian faith asks for a very different answer and I obey. But the hunger is in all of us.
Somewhere along the way I leaned into my hippie heritage and stopped wearing bras. Don’t fret, I didn’t burn them. Nor do I view it as any sort of political or fashion statement. It was the pain that did me in.
I simply could not tolerate the pain from the pressure of even the most forgiving fabric bralette. No bra fitter in the world (not even the famed Orchard Corset of the lower east side) could get around the physics of an inflamed spinal and intercostal condition. My breasts would have go free.
I do have some sense of propriety about the situation. I lock the girls up firmly for business and conservative occasions, but even then if I can find a way to style myself such that I can hide the lack of brazier I do it.
And as I pack for a summer camp out in which I will be socializing with some very conservative people indeed, I found myself humming a crass tune from my maternal grandmother’s third husband’s family.
It was a 4th of July tradition in the raucous La Flair clan (a flavor of French Canadians who oddly settled on Long Island) to host a talent show. The well endowed Boomer women of the clan, who wonderfully possess no shame, had a chorus line dance they called “Bounce Your Boobies!”
I won’t be dressing or dancing in the manner of this fantastic clan but it’s quite likely my boobs will be doing a bit of bouncing for the rest of my life.
I went to bed yesterday around 3:30 or so. Oops. I could barely write a post as I was struggling to stay awake at all. I did three short paragraphs and tagged it and said good enough.
A long night of poor sleep
My sleep was not peaceful or restorative but at least it was long. The night before I was up late (ok 10:30pm or so) and I struggled to fall asleep.
Alex’s birthday party on Saturday was enough to wipe me out so badly that on Sunday I couldn’t stay up past mid-afternoon. Pathetic yes but not surprising.
I recently did a big round of bloodwork and was thrilled to see my inflammation is down significantly but I have something called inflammatory anemia. So maybe a contributing factor to my exhaustion. There are a number of odd areas that need some attention especially in my endocrine system.
The Bimzelx switch is in its 4th month so almost through the loading dosing. I have had awful side effects but the code biomarkers of CRP and Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) are significantly improved.
I still have all kinds of weird pains and compensatory biomechanical problems but I’m feeling moderately optimistic. The next steps are around the corner. And hopefully I get more deep sleep and REM sleep before I tackle it.
I am older than my husband but only by enough (a year and change) to let me land middle aged jokes. We celebrated his birthday at Costco. We are spending Saturday grilling. We own a Subaru. I think the jig is up.
I’ve been fighting to restore my body to “factory settings” since we made the mistake of messing around with fertility treatment hormones. Sadly why our middle aged jokes don’t involve children. Ourciviccontributions and investments in founders tie us to our future for now
And in our ambitions to be prepared for giving that future everything we’ve got, we are doing more and more for our health.
I started an earlier as my body gave out earlier but we are both doing more biohacking. We are slowly building out a collection of treatments and devices that we hope will end as a medical spa serving our region.
The hyperbaric chamber for oxygen therapy we purchased in January l has finally reached American shores. More sauna and ice cycling might be in our future too. On a “in the red” day I’ve been known to hit my recovery with everything I’ve got. Heat, cold, and pressure can fix almost anything. Add in oxygen and we might just survive whatever the future throws at us.
Today is my husband’s birthday. He genuinely is a very low key guy and when his birthday falls on a weekday he isn’t into big to-dos. But he said he’d be up for a Costco date.
No surer sign of enjoying middle age than loving the finest buyers club values of Cost. But to be honest we’ve both always loved Costco. And you can really get into Costco when you have a multiple barn freezers and backup power so no apologies for our love of a practical Costco date.
Bounce house for sale? Birthday win
Though it didn’t go entirely to plan. If it means anything to the pulse of America the Bozeman Costco was a chaotic in a “concerning operational decay” way.
But other things were off. Staffing wise you had to wonder if they fired half the staff or no one planned for managing checkout flow for June in Montana high season? Nothing is as predictable as tourists going to Yellowstone if you’ve got a manager with any tenure or common sense. but maybe they don’t. I have a Twitter mutual who burned out on a Costco job so two strikes guys. Talent is part of the Costco brand.
Alex works New York hours so we got there around 2:30 or so which you’d think would be quiet but is not in midsummer in southern Montana. It was summer high season traffic you’d expect on a Saturday though.
We walked every aisle and there was a lot of fun oddities. Japanese toilets, water bottle drying racks, sound absorbing wall panels. And there were some less fun selections.
We usually do a better business with bear spray
There was a disturbing amount of slop packaging products and rapidly prototyped TikTok trends follow ons. Dubai chocolate ice cream bars? The zoomers will enjoy their summers up here I’m sure.
Lots of grouchy Boomers and exhausted families were looking for basics in the middle of the store as we perused the sides of the store for fun. Everyone is in Montana it seems. As we waited checkout I heard discussion of how JD Vance meeting with the Murdoch family at their ranch in Dillon.
We had intended to go end it with a hot dog and pizza slice respectively but it was so intense at the checkout area we didn’t even try. The lines were unmanageable which is how we got so much gossip. Montana isn’t so big that you can fly Air Force 2 to Butte without chatter about which ranch you are visiting.
I hope Costco has made some margin on selling gold bars to happy men like my husband. We also found a few other things
It seems easier to send electromagnetic waves at different frequencies than create a sealed oxygen chamber but consumer is weird and the military and elite athletics tested HBOT whereas mere hippies played around with PEMF.
A temperature setting swaps for 4 separate vibration settings Delta Waves, Theta Waves (Schaumann Reponse, Alpha and Beta Waves
So it’s qualia only here on the good vibrations but I am excited to try it out. I can’t exactly feel the vibrations unlike in other clinical settings where I’ve experienced much more intense (it’s measured in gauss or Tesla) but infrared warmth is a nice experience even if the vibrations don’t do much. But I will report on it.
Not so long ago the idea of dopamine fasts became quite the topic of discussion. A Twitter mutual of mine first brought it to my attention and it seems it is his coinage.
The concept originated with California psychologist Dr. Cameron Sepah as a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tool to help people cope with behavioral addictions and reset their relationship with instant gratification. Via perplexity
I won’t get into the details but the premise is to reduce stimulus so as to calm your dopaminergic responses.
As social media hyperstimulation rears its ugly head, I don’t think you need theory and angst or full cut off from stimulus. You ideally change a little at a time and sustain a practice.
Sure we are working against automated algorithms designed for maximum impact but we all still know how to be human. Breathe, feel your body, and relax into focus on whatever you see first.
I have a mix of high tech and simple body routines I rely on. I put on over the ear noise canceling headphones like Bose and I turn on my Endel app to play Solfreggio tones or let an autogenerated audio soundscape play. I dim the lights if it’s daytime. I love my ApolloNeuro for its vagus nerve tuning vibes as a supplement here.
If I need to come down from the day I’ll do a 3 in-5 out breath and settle into some fiction. I like to read on e-ink at night with either my Kindle or sometimes my Daylight though that is generally my reading instrument for the research. Once I start nodding off I’ll pull down my eye mask.
It’s a gorgeous breeze June Sunday in Montana. It’s the sort of day where you go to your favorite bakery for an exotic little pastry, maybe get lunch from a favorite restaurant and then go for a hike or a bike ride to marvel at the majesty in wonder.
As I am working through a new physio routine to improve compensatory pain in my trapezius muscles I was a little nervous. I wanted to adequately test that I’d found new corrective instincts without overdoing things.
I walked a favorite two mile circuit with a stead inclined of hills that eases back out into the flat valley. I felt terrific. The sun was shining but the breeze kept it cool. Truly paradise on earth.
And then within an hour or so I got an awful headache. Had I failed at reworking my compensation so badly? I checked fascia and muscle points and found my shoulders relaxed.
Then I checked my upper cervical spike and yelped. I had swapped one compensation for another and gave myself a killer headache in the process. But I didn’t have the same pain pattern or headache type and that is a win.
We get regular reminders of how chaotic things are in our new hypersphere networked world that we have entire memes categories and full influence campaigns dedicated to blackpilling people into nihilism.
No blackpilling meme
The fatalism and determinism expressed on the internet is the experiences reality for plenty of people and it’s probably not limited to a few radicals. The presumption that any of these pills are limited to incels misogynists racist cranks is comforting but incorrect.
She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”
I also believe it’s a deliberate strategy by virtually every player in the great games of power and influence to make us feel nuts. Everything is a conspiracy. Everyone is a villain except your in-group. Except it’s not.
It is so beautiful today in Bozeman it almost doesn’t feel real. It’s warm but not hot. It’s sunny but we have fluffy clouds breaking up intensity. Cool breezes waft in and out without ever really turning to wind. I hope our entire summer has this weather.
Because of the holiday weekend the town has fully switched into “seasonal” mode from daily New York flights to way more availability at restaurants and service. One of Alex’s friends from college is headed into Yellowstone with his whole family from grandparents to kids.
Mountain towns make as much money in the summer as they do in the winter so you always wish for fluffy snow and cool clear summers.
The snowpack is smelting, the grass is green and the sky is oh so blue
While Yellowstone is worth the travel, I appreciate being able to work and hike all flavors of public trails from city to state in Bozeman.
On days like today I want to fully throw myself into a Bryan Johnson super adherence biohacker as I want to be able to enjoy as much of our summer as I can outside.
