What I wore today

Sorta?

My outfits don’t quite differ enough day to day yet to not make this really boring. But every couple of days, sure.

Today was a beautiful day so I went for a run.

Where I ran today

   <img src="_IMG_0152.JPG" alt=" I love Fall.  ">  I love Fall.   

This was near Meadowood Park about 2 miles in.

WIWT

• Saucony running shorts (discontinued years ago and I need to replace them ☹️)
• Vibram FiveFinger EL-X running shoe
• Threadless Running Rhino T

Watch Face

For funzies, this was my watch face for the day.

   <img src="_IMG_0153.PNG" alt=" Chronograph. &nbsp;Complications clockwise from top left: Carrot Weather, stopwatch, OmniFocus, Calendar ">  Chronograph. &nbsp;Complications clockwise from top left: Carrot Weather, stopwatch, OmniFocus, Calendar

What I Wore And Carried

Me and Stuff

Huh?

I’m beginning to break, slowly, away from my uniform clothing presentation. Specifically, I am exploring accessories as a means of subtle differentiation in my presentation.

I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and I think I’ve already found people treating me differently.

Because I am an overachiever, I thought it would be neat to do both what I wore and what was in my bag. My favorite online photography communities were the latter.

What I wore today (WIWT)

• Denizen jeans
• Gap v-neck sweater
• Redwing Iron Ranger (burgundy)
• Gotham pocket watch
• Apple Watch 1 (not shown)
• Saddleback Leather satchel (1st generation)

Listing this all out seems kinda shlubby, like who cares that I’m nearing a Gap sweater?

What’s in my bag? (WIMB)

• From bottom left clockwise. Ish
• MacBook
• Lightning cable
• Kevlar gadget zip case
• Skullcandy earbuds
• Leuchtturm Bullet Journal notebook
• TWSBI 580AL fine nib pen
• rOtring Lava custom ground stub nib
• rOtring Lava multipen
• Leather bound Constitution (forget where this was…)
• Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (RandsInRepose.com)
• Dental pick (2)
• Tums
• 12watt USB-c power brick
• Car keys
• Fuji x100
• Hyper USB-c hub
• Switzerland wappen

That last thing is special. My Dad took a trip to Europe when he graduated from Purdue. He saw pretty much every country in 90 days. In each country, he bought that country’s coat of arms on a patch - Wappen.

Of all the countries he visited, he didn’t have time to get the patch for Switzerland. 3 years ago, while visiting me for the holidays, we managed to find the patch in New Glarus. I found it in his desk when we were cleaning out the house after he died this February. I’ve been carrying it ever since.

Working as expected

It only took 1 email conversation to have a cat delivered to our doorstep last week, Saturday. Technology marches ever forward, no? At least it wasn’t by drone.

It wasn’t intentional, getting a cat delivered, just serendipity. The agency was moving her from Milwaukee and coming through Madison to pick up another cat they were transferring from a different state traveling to MSN. I happened to inquire about her at precisely the right time to allow the agent to adjust her Madison schedule.

“Well I could bring her by and you could meet her Saturday. If it doesn’t work out, I can take her on her way.”

This was Thursday.

“OK. Sure. We can be home for that.”

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

The life of a disabled person has two distinct eras:

1. The era before she knows she is disabled.
2. The era after she knows she is disabled.

The era before that understanding is unremarkable. You live and breathe and play the same as anyone else but you may have to do a thing or many things in a particular way. You just are and adapt, not that you would idetify Doing as Adapting, while remaining delightfully unremarkable.

This cat is remarkably unremarkable. She is, dainty, soft, and very small; she has tabby stripes with calico shocks of orange fur. She hoovers Fancy Feast with the same vigor that Poe and Minuet do. She truly adores, and would likely consume were it not firmly attached, the mouse on a cat dancer pole.

She is Errata. Erri for short.

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

It’s inevitable that someone tells you you’re disabled; America, in particular, deplores nonconformity while still recognizing exceptionalism to the point that you are expected to be exceptional in only very particular ways. So someone has to tell you, very pointedly, that something is very different about you and would you please do something about it?

Now, a shift; everything that you just did because, whatever, that’s what you did, is now something very Different and Weird and Other. Nearly all disabled people remember that point, the event where like lightning up their spine they understand that they do not work as expected.

The thing that I remember about my moment is how quiet it got when the 3rd grader standing before me said, loudly, that I couldn’t play in the game because I only had one arm. We were standing on a field outside school at recess and, despite it being open and sunny and blue skies end to end, the world collapsed inward and it was just me and him. Him and me and the other kids picked for the team that understood deeply that something had just changed.

This kid here was Different and that’s Not OK.

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

The interesting thing about the shift between unaware and aware is that you remember all the times you “just did the Thing because that’s What You Did”. But now, that was “you did the Thing but You Aren’t Able To”. And how could you Just Even do those Things so blithely? How could you function as if you were normal.

Cats only sort of have a concept of different. There’s “not my colony” and “my colony” different and the rest is “my spot” or “my food” or “my human”. A cat is a cat and may or may not give me issue trying to get to any of my things. Poe and Ginger have pretty much ignored Erri, though Poe doesn’t appreciate the change in food portioning. Minuet, a less severe presentation and kindred CH cat, has been more curious. And maybe a little more put off.

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

I worry, in my overdeveloped monkey brain, that bringing Erri into the house has created that turning point for Minuet; that another cat akin to her exists here, now, and highlights the contrast between Minuet and Poe and Ginger who are large but otherwise prototypical Cat. So maybe now Minuet understands in her own little kitty way that she is Different and Weird and Other because of us.

There’s a modicum of bliss and, maybe, a little bit of dignity in the before state. It’s like children. All children exist in the world without bothering with difference. They exist in the classical, biblical definition of Grace where everything is joy and nothing matters beyond this very moment in time.

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

This is the state Erri lives in. She energetically interacts with the moment as the moment. All cats do this but because I, firmly set 26 years beyond my coming into awareness, seeing that she is different grants me a more direct understanding of what that is like. It’s remarkably unremarkable. Stairs are just stairs. Toys still toys. Food just food.

Well, no.. food is a hell of a lot more to this the ball of fur. It’s the only consistent time she’ll vocalize.

And oh yes, you will become aware then.

Addendum

We have a video of her playing.  It’s adorable and strange and endearing.

Elderberries

Alyskas, Courtney, and I had brunch at Macha today. On the way to and from, we went wild Elderberry picking. There’s a crazy number of large (trees?) clusters along John Nolen Dr such that we came home with about 8 pounds in a grocey bag.

I really liked how they looked, the stems especially, as Alyska processed them that I took them down to the Bunny Rope work room where I had a white box set up.

So. Photos? Yes, photos.

  <img src="_img.jpg" alt="">

Kitties getting older

We had Poe in for surgery yesterday to remove two masses from two or her hindquarter mammary glands. She’d developed two small lumps over the last few months that we’d already had the vet inspect. They were mobile, soft, and produced a slightly milky fluid. No cancerous markers from pathology - we checked just in case.

But, after the aspiration, they both got much bigger very quickly. Fearing an injection site sarcoma, we took Poe into the vet again last week and opted to have the removed. At worst - early cancer - at best just inflamed from the testing.

Surgery went well and Poe came home a little hoarse and very loopy. She gets pain meds twice a day for four days and has to wear the collar for at least a week. It is pitiful and adorable but she purrs just as hard when we pet her.

Content

The plain reality of time is that everything gets older and slowly marches to an end. I try to take a Buddhist approach to death and attachment in that I recognize and consider that everyone and everything that I love will one day be gone.

I’ve been thinking about death frequently this year, of course, both others and my own and what it means to live. It is so easy to get lost in the days and not see the weeks and months and years stretching into decades and then? Maybe a century?

Maybe not. But I know that we only persist by the things we make and the people we touch.

This is not a bad thing. It just Is and is as certain as one day we, ourselves, will no longer Be.

Desert Island Desks

Are you a Pen Addict?

A few episodes ago and discussed in the recent podcast episode, Brad and Myke discussed what stationery they’d take to a desert island - 1 pen, 1 ink, 1 paper. This lead to much goofiness and a new Tumbkr from a show listener - Desert Island Desks.

  <img src="_image.jpg" alt="">

Of course I’m getting on that boat.

Pen: rOtring Lava, custom ground stub nib. This was my first Grail pen after dipping my toe into the fountain pen water. The pens I like the most have some distinct, modern design. High gloss bodies or non-round shapes or similar. I like my tools to be pristine, strong, and clean. This pen pretty much everything along with a Brutalist aesthetic (and Brutalist heft…) in the grey, textured exterior looking like concrete. Love at first sight… until I saw the prices on eBay - $400-$800. O_O.

But. But! Alyska, with her bargain-fu managed to find one at not even close to that price and gifted it to me on Christmas in 2014. I’ve been using this pen nearly daily since then. And I miss it when I’m not using it.

Psst.. (Have I mentioned recently that my wife is amazing?)

Ink: Iroshizuku Kiri-same, Autumn Shower. A good match for the grey pen, no? It looks old and worn in a well-loved sort of way. I’ve always coveted notebooks as artifacts of a person. My favorite movies all have important journals or notebooks with all sorts of art and diagrams and codes and I want the stuff that I write down to be like that.

It’s exactly the opposite of what I like in my tools. I want the things I create to feel old and loved, secret and personal. I get that feel faster with a light, washed out ink.

Also, if you’re still using Moleskine notebooks…. why‽

Paper: Leuchtturm medium hardcover notebook - I’m not sure if dotted or grid…. the Leuchtturm was the first notebook I found that stood up to ink while still packing a ton of paper - 249 pages. And they’re numbered. I gravitate to the white covers because they wear in quickly and plesantly, all dirty and ink-stained by the time you’re done with it. I think the ribbon on my last one has three inkblots on it, one that came in the first week of use (I was very bad at inking my pens…).

Regarding artifacts

Some of my favorite pages from my last few notebooks.