It’s funny that whenever I should have a particularly good week I am inevitably presented with pain and a bad day. And today was a bad day.
I woke up starving at 5am for no reason. Everything hurt. My skin was peeling and I was freezing. A snowstorm barreled in overnight which was cause for some distress and an awkward moment of uncertainty as whether our spring chickens could weather the storm. It’s their first full week out of the barn and in the outdoor coop and the smallest one is still so very little. They did great but they were not happy about it.
Our five new pullets who are snowed in on the first week outside the barn
I also got a sad bit of news about a company that I had witnessed being birthed through its early years as a direct to consumer darling. My first boss had been on its board and their technical cofounder was a college friend who also worked with my prior boss.
If one is to believe the reporting it was sold in debt to a large foreign company whose own brand is the antithesis of what the startup has meant to its customers. It was the first and last of the direct to consumer companies.
I don’t wish to make anyone sadder than they already are about it and I am saddened common stock holders get nothing. It’s a common story in the space and it hurts to see every time.
So I went and bought a bunch of basics in memory of what the company had tried to be and in a show of mourning as I do not trust the new owners to maintain quality.
That’s a common story in all consumer categories now. One is sometimes let down by growing too quickly or raising too much too fast and I have so much sadness in my heart that reality. It was the end of an era.
Women are at a bit of a disadvantage to men when it comes to relieving ourselves. Yes I am talking about taking a piss.
From road trips to the backcountry, we’re forced to hike up our skirts (or worse shimmy down our pants) and aim our stream through squat & thrust such that it lands where we desire without soiling our garments or surrounding areas.
You might be wondering why I’ve got such a urological topic on my mind. And I might remind you it is not as if my writing lacks for lewd colloquialisms. Some readers may recall my viral hit “dick riding” so if you are inclined towards Freud we can have a chuckle about penis envy. And today it might even be true.
I am at the moment stuck in a literal can. I am nearing the end of a session of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy. To be specific, my 27th session on my second round of the therapy. My first round of it was forty sessions last fall. I am rounding the end of my second set in the next two weeks.
I happen to feel dare I say good this most recent round of HBOT. It’s a marvel what it can do for the lungs and for healing wounds. However I can’t credit my current upswing just to the oxygen I’m breathing in while under two atmospheres of pressure.
I have gone off my biological injection Bimzelx after a frightful year of infections despite its excellent ability to squash down inflammatory biometrics like CRP and sed rate. I’ve added in hormone therapy via testosterone and estradiol pellets (also my second round of them). The big change is that I am heading into my forth week of injecting experimental peptides.
Those had a hell of an adjustment, but seem to have done absolutely everything which was claimed by their champions in terms of anti-inflammatory benefits. Alas I am not sure if I should discuss them too much lest I get in trouble for being ahead of the insurance rackets. My doctor supervised and approved of them which should be good enough but one never knows.
That was a long way of saying that this combination of discontinuing old expensive therapies and adding in new cheaper less expensive treatments is adding up to a lot more mobility and capacity for me.
So today I went hiking and I lifted weights. Actual under the bar squats in my own rack like an actual human. The kind of active life that I’ve been desperately trying to regain for years.
So I’ve drank rather a lot of water today. More than perhaps I should have, as here I am in a pressurized can absolutely desperately wishing I could urinate.
Alas I am waiting the timer praying for decompression to arrive so I can relieve myself in a proper water closest. And thus we circle back to the penis envy.
It’s just that I have an empty can in here with me, it’s not out of the question I could find relief in that manner. Perhaps I’d have a better treatment. My heart rate is higher than I’d like and my bladder is unhappy about the pressure. But I’ve got no aim and little room for error.
Just imagine the smell. If urine smells in a well ventilated area like a roadside rest stop, just imagine how it might smell in a pressurized tube. It’s not a place you want to fart I’ll tell you that much. So wetting the blankets, upholstery, and my clothing in here would be a disaster. I’d never get the smell out.
So here I am laughing to myself about wanting to piss in a can. Maybe a good reminder to buy one of those hiking helper devices for women. You never know what kind of situation I may find myself in this summer if I can actually move my body comfortably again.
It’s a topic on which I have written extensively, as I am one of the women who was hurt by the American approach of high hormone intensity to extract eggs efficiently. To make a long story short, it kicked off an autoimmune process in me that we’ve never fully gotten under control.
I think a lot about what the fertility industry did unknowingly to me and how it forever changed the course of my life. I went from thinking I had an insurance policy to being too ill to work within the space of a year. There is no recovery for me as of yet, even though I spend quite a bit of time and effort on my health.
If you were a millennial or Zoomer thinking about these procedures, I’d like you to consider reading her research and my personal experiences and educating yourself so you can make the most informed decision in your family planning.
Becoming a mother may have been an easy or unexpected decision for other generations of women, but we live in a very different time with very different technologies and different social constructs.
The more you know about your options, the more likely it is that you will find the right path for yourself without doing harm to your body in the process.
One of my mother’s great passions is children’s literature. I am an avid reader and credit my love for books to my mother’s knowledge of the space.
She built a beautiful library to cover my needs from kindergarten to the upper grades that covers hundreds of foundational texts. It is the foundation of my moral, civic and business life.
Or if you prefer something a little less pretentious, I read all kinds of things from science fiction to periodicals to grand biographies as an adult because I was taught to read in the classical cannon of literature and history that has benefit many generations before me raised in the Western Cannon.
Children’s books tend to be sneered at self serious adults and it is more the pity. The beauty of childhood is that we need not approach all issues with grim learned gravity, rather in appreciating the childlike perspective see the truth that only a child’s eye reveals.
There are many books in the Western Cannon appropriate for children that can introduce them into the joys of critical thinking. And it can be quite intimidating to set out to build a library of you were not raised with this knowledge. This is a market opportunity.
Over the last 25 years I’ve seen the classics that I read as a child disappear from high quality prints. You could find items circulated in cheap paperback or you could search for used books. My girlfriends would text me about where to find classic high quality booksas their own children reached reading age. A child deserves a library that is not only quality in content but in form as well. Beautiful illustration sparks the imagine and quality binding grounds the experience.
My mother slowly built our library as my mother practiced her discipline as a teacher. It was not just raising me that drove her, but the combination of homeschooling and teaching in Waldorf schools that honed her favorite choices.
Many homeschooling families will attest to the challenge here. They know what they would like to find for their children, but it’s hard to find classics you can rely upon and curriculums vary in quality and tone.
So when my friends, Hannah and Josh Centers, told me last year that they were working on an imprint called Chapter House focused on great children’s literature in the Western Cannon I was excited. I knew the demand was there.
They are also homeschooling parents interested in improving themselves in their effort to raise educated independent children. They have first hand experience in the challenges. They are, what we would call in startup world, operating in real world conditions.
We publish restored editions of classic children’s books in four Chapter House box sets, made with premium materials and meticulous craftsmanship.
We also curate a grade-by-grade bookstore from select publishers, giving families a complete reading curriculum for children at every stage
I have often wished I could gift my mother’s library to new parents. In reality, it was almost an impossible task. It easily costs many thousands of dollars and cannot easily be assembled. I feel like what Josh and Hannah have put together is the start of being able to gift my mother’s favorites.
Josh and Hannah very graciously listened to many stories about this library and my mother’s teaching inspirations which means that wish has been granted. Their choices reflect treasures from my childhood and those of many other children educated in the classical tradition.
I seem to have accidentally fallen into polyphasic sleep. Those experimental not for human consumption, long amino acid chains that everyone is doing n of 1 research with?
Well, my n of 1 experiment seems to be yielding the occasionally odd sleep pattern. I’ll be up early after having a night of sleep that feels more nap than fully weighed sleep hours.
Think out by 9pm and awake before dawn. I feel fine, so I pack in the full day till around 3pm when lunch digestion & the general slumps have me saying “maybe a short nap.”
I’ll find myself popping back up at 6pm with an eye on dinner. Another accidental siesta has stolen the afternoon hours back from the long evening hours to which I’d applied them.
I won’t have any trouble going to sleep on time early. This pattern seems to be applied to days where I have a lot of physical strain.
If I get in a workout, a long shower, extra walking time, and other physically demanding tasks in alongside my mental work I end up needing the nap and still fall asleep on time.
I am trying to get healthier, but that suggests it is even an achievable goal. It would be wonderful to get back to endless working hours or even just eight hours on my feet.
Every time I make a tweak to my routines and I see a change in my biometrics, it’s becomes eventually cause for concern. There’s no stable equilibrium to be found, and I know that’s part of life, but I’d like a stable equilibrium that’s a little bit better than one day at a time or ideally a couple weeks at a time.
Take my experiment with Bimzelx. Even when I achieve an outcome like getting my CRP rates into the normal bounds, it came at a cost that is simply too high to maintain. I had four separate incisions and surgeries last year from soft tissue infections.
What good is a drug that tamps down my immune system so much that I need to always go under the knife? It was like Goodhart’s Law came to haunt me personally.
I am going off the biologic (I am 12 weeks from my last injection) and already seeing change in the wrong direction. Not enormously bad but my immune system will pop if it’s not locked down.
Yet there’s very little I can do except keep going and hope that the balance will be more manageable, as I don’t know that I could have another year like 2025 again.
I set out trying to reboot my immune system last year, and it certainly seems like it worked. But can I keep the numbers in a place that are low enough to let me live, and ideally live with fewer medications?
I am constantly working against some new tweak or some new problem, and even little gentle experiments like a Pilates reformer workout or 10 minutes on the trampoline can turn into a full-day migraine if I am not immediately able to tamp it down. Thoracic pain will pop up crushing my breathing if I take a nice slow hike in the pastures beyond our house
Everyone is maxing now. You can barely read a proper broadsheet without the Zoomer coinage crossing your transom. Maxxing is everywhere.
Maxxing means maximizing a certain aspect of one’s life. Comes from “minmaxxing”, a term for extracting the maximum output from the minimum input.
Urban Dictionary gives its history though the minmaxxing, though lately I’m not sure minimum input is actually part of the Maxxing game.
Maxxing is now maximizing every aspect of wherever you are focusing on improving. And boy do people want to improve across all possible vectors and all at once.
Is a geopolitical conflict all about Chinamaxxing? Is an influencer Looksmaxxing? Is a certain venture capitalist Retardmaxxing? It’s a little uncomfortable all around but time is short so why not go all gas no breaks.
I myself have noticed a kind of JulieMaxxing creep into my life I refuse to settle for a set of interconnected yet impossible to tease apart health issues.
From hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy to everyone’s favorite semaglutide I intend to do it all. The same goes for face. I do an ABC+SPF routine just for starters for my skin. I am going to JulieMaxx if only so I can get back to Minimum Viable Julie.
We did not have much of a winter to speak of Montana. Sure, Farmer’s Almanac predicted a lot of snowfall but even such an august institution can’t always get it right.
We got almost no pre-season snow fall. Which one can shrug off. We dutifully schedule our snow tire switchover at the end of September anyway. Alex bought his lift tickets with high hopes for a good ski season. Then the openings of our local mountain and Big Sky looked dicey. And yet still we hung onto hope.
We had no white Christmas. The deep freezes of January usually come with snowfall. It was grey this year. February would surely come through right? Alas wrong again. March did not go out like a lion. There was little water to whip up in our non-existent bay. And so, in April we cried and our hopes stepped aside as we waited for pretty little May.
People began to take off their snowtires. This just wasn’t our year. Spring would arrive early right? Any hopes of good days of powder were thoroughly dashed. It was over till next year right? Wrong!
The weight of wet snow
It snowed a big wet mess of deep sloppy powder on Good Friday. Hooray! Indeed it was a good Friday. Except, oh no, our snow tires are off.
Then, last night, when no one honestly believed the forecast for 6-10 inches one bit, we went to bed expecting a normal day. The days had already begun to lengthen substantially. Birds were hatching and the green was growing.
A heavy wet mess dumped onto our patio overnight
Clearly we were wrong. I tossed and turned all night as my joints bubbled and ached. I thought I was using a flare. But when I woke up it was clear my body knew more than my brain and the weather forecast was correct. It has snowed almost a full foot.
The hot tub needed to be dug out
Now the particulars funny aspect of all this is that Alex took the snowblower off the tractor yesterday. He needed to cut the side pasture down before new growth hit so the snowblower attachment was replaced for the trimmer. We’d let long grass grow and then flatten which required more than a riding mower. It needed the Deere to cut through.
So the front walkway was hand dug out but the drive to our road is going to remain snowed in for a bit. The sun will come out tomorrow. I did however have to reschedule a haircut. But that’s the price you pay for trying to get ahead of the weather. We never should have taken off our snow tires early.
Some days end up being so much more interesting than you expect. I awoke to a family member, who has been preparing for a set of major surgeries, saying they had in fact gone in that morning for the first round of procedures.
I had been concerned they were putting it off so I was quite relieved that their lack of communication on the topic was simply their preparation to face what will be a grueling health challenge. Preparing for a procedure well gives you the best chance at success.
Then I went about a normal work day having lobbed a question, or maybe a prayer, onto the network as the reality of human lives is that imperfect options are always what remains. Being clear eyed about the choices in our lives and how the weight of our past actions have set us on a path can be hard. But it is necessary.
And as I wrapped up my day I was the recipient of some good news. I can’t share anything but the shape of it. But a project that was an experimental approach to a space I care deeply about has bravely faced the whipping winds and looks like they will successfully come to a safe berth intact with all souls.
Which is not such an easy thing to do when you set out for uncharted territory. I am so very proud of what has been accomplished thus far.
All things in life are the fruits of imperfect options that remain. That we make the best use of them is our obligation not only to ourselves but to those to whom we have committed. I am grateful that today was a day where those hard choices were made.
I am no spring chicken. That’s why we bought some spring chickens this weekend. I kid I kid. I do however have a forever 35 face. I come from a line of women who age well sure but I have very consistent habits.
I’m lucky to have an ageless look. My husband would say I have a forever 28 face as I somehow look better having crossed into my forties than I did when we met at 28. Meanwhile my husband has gone from boyish wonder with full head of hair to distinguished grey beard with a bald pate.
Now sure husbands are supposed to say nice things like “no honey you haven’t aged a day!” Except I really do seem to have benefited greatly from genetics and routine.
He may be right, not out of any urge to flatter me, but simply because some women do look better with a little age on them. I looked young with a rounded features right until I looked ageless somewhere in my late thirties.
Alex and I at 29 where you absolutely can spot my pre-retinol skin Alex and I two weeks ago before touring the West Wing during our trip to D.C
I don’t look all that different when I compare and contrast between photos from then and now. I gained and lost as much weight as a Kardashian (more than once damn you prednisone and bless you semaglutide) but my face has somehow retained its plump without a maximalist approach without gaining wrinkles. I’ve lost the fine lines.
I didn’t start Botox till forty and I’m grateful as I need much less now. I didn’t pull anything out either even when cut looks were all the rage. I’m glad for my rounded features now.
But I have added in more to my beauty routine as I age because I enjoy it. I found it humorous when a 31 year old pursing a doctorate in clinical psychology said out loud what I’ve darkly joked about with girlfriends for years. It’s really hard to be completely controlled.
For a year in my early 20s, I was also spending literally all of my money on a psycho 100-step skin-care process. Looking back, I didn’t have the executive functioning to be successfully anorexic, which is what I also wanted. But I did have the discipline to enjoy this complicated multistep ritual of the skin care. I found it satisfying.” New York Magazine
Now we can all joke and say she shouldn’t be in practice but I never felt I could pull off an eating disorder either even though I often wished I could. That eating disorders are dangerous enough to kill you isn’t the point. It’s being able to control your body enough that you can kill yourself that we desire.
I hated that no matter how much effort I put into diet and exercise I could never achieve the standards of waif like beauty put out in the heyday of Anna Wintour’s heroin chic era. Millennial beauty expectations were a bitch and I could never quite work up the control to hate myself. Sure I got really fit with a heck of a squat but I always had to watch every single macronutrient and instead of skinny I got lean.
And while I appreciate a good Molière joke about The Imaginary Invalid, weight was never the issue that got me in trouble.It was hormones that got me.
So I knew poor health with a healthy weight and I knew poor health with a lot of weight gained trying to fix the poor health.
I will never allow myself to get over the BMI band again to avoid the medical discrimination I faced when I gained weight while on prednisone.
Alas no my autoimmune condition was not mitigated even an iota by weight loss. I had it before I was fat. I got fat treating it. I still have it now that I’m at a healthy weight.
But the desire to maximize your looks and your health always intertwine with women. Increasingly it does for men too. Body dysmorphia respect neither sex nor gender. I doubt it will ever again.
Beauty is a skill set. And some of that skill set is now pharmaceutical in nature. And if we are honest, it’s been that way for a few decades. It’s just that everyone know about it now. The network age comes for us all.
