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The Party
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One answer, many questions
Another quick update: I’ve been diagnosed definitively with lupus. I’d been toeing that line for a long time, have had symptoms related to it for at least 15 years, but things properly went wrong starting around the middle of last year and a recent biopsy made it definitive.
Anyways, send me all of your hot-weather recommendations for long sleeves and pants that don’t make me feel like a boil-in-a-bag meal. And hats, all the hats. Did Carmen Sandiego have lupus?
(Genuinely, related to the clothing recommendation solicitation: I really appreciate the emails I get about this blog, truly, and I’m sincere when I say “send me x”. But I should say now, I’m not great on quick replies at the moment, haven’t been for some time. It’s hard to find the words. But thank you.)
The first week after diagnosis was the honeymoon phase, relief at knowing. Now I’m in the much lower “what now, what next” phase. The diagnosis road has been very long, and honestly there’s still a long way to go in terms of finding the right cocktail of drugs to keep flare ups and progression at bay. Reading other folks’ stories has been really helpful though, so I’ll try to share it at some point.
If you’ve wondered why the long time between posts, here’s the answer.
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Onward and upward
Quick update: I’ve departed the Eames Institute. Feeling a lot of feelings about it! Can’t wait to see what the EI, LMP, and Stout folks get up to, what a fantastic bunch. Will be watching those spaces.
I’m taking a breather for a bit, mainly focusing on some health stuff, reconnecting, and making new connections. Also hopefully giving this site a facelift… Reach out to say hi. 💫
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Reflections on running a self-hosted personal site in the year two thousand twenty-six
Yet again, a long drought between my last post and this one. Unusual for me in the reasonably recent past, now a common occurrence. I keep asking myself “why?”, why am I not posting as much when I loved it so much before?
Edit: Wow… I just realized my last post was almost a year ago.
While recently troubleshooting some bonkers bad bot traffic on an org website that I help maintain, I finally realized: It is getting a lot harder to maintain a self-hosted personal site. I’m seeing all of the same problems that org site is seeing, just at a slightly smaller scale and with less visibility since I haven’t had client-side analytics since late 2020.
Picture the scene.
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Overheard on 7th
I was walking to the grocery store just now with AB in the carrier. A man bumped me accidentally rushing after a woman about his age, maybe both mid-70s. He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her to him.
“Where are you going?!”
Silence.
“You want to go home?”
She nods.
Gently turning her the opposite direction, “But home is this way.”
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Hello again
It’s been a while! My site has fallen majorly by the wayside which both feels appropriate (see first point below) and makes me a bit sad. There’s a lot I’ve already forgotten. I want to analyze a bit more why I haven’t been posting… but that’s something I need to think a bit more about first.
A few notes to catch up on major points, and then hopefully back to posting semi-regularly.
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A postponed postpartum story
This is a mega-post about our daughter AB’s arrival a little over two months ago, with a bit about BB’s birth three years ago thrown in. I wanted to note some of that at the time but never did.
It’s mostly so I don’t forget, but maybe someone else will find it useful too. Maybe AB in the future if she ever decides to have kids.
This gets a bit in the weeds. If you’d rather not read about things like breastfeeding, IVs, episiotomies, etc, probably best to skip this.
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Some thoughts about making a Donald Judd-esque table
Most of the NYC crew from the Eames Institute took a little field trip to 101 Spring Street yesterday. There was a lot I found beautiful, and a few things that gave me pause.
But one of the things I most enjoyed inspecting was Donald Judd’s big 14-seater whitewood table in the kitchen / dining space on the second floor. Clearly well-loved, and slightly more rough-and-ready than some of his other furniture. It was good fun to have a close look at the dining chairs too, though I’m more interested in the form there. Don’t look too comfortable.
This is a very broad overview of some points to consider if I ever want to make a Judd-esque table.
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“Power and safety are not the same thing”
It’s been an awful, heartbreaking October.
I don’t really know what to say about the conflict in Gaza and Israel. Part of it is that I don’t feel like I know enough. Both about all of the micro and macro events that have led up to this, and what’s going on in this moment. And I don’t really feel justified to share my feelings. It seems performative considering I have no personal ties and am many thousands of miles away.
But Eli did a great job articulating his feelings in this post, and I wanted to share that here since it is the one thing I’ve read that most closely mirrors my current thoughts.
It all feels a bit like staring in to the void.
“Tragedy” is almost a meaningless word, with the frequency it occurs.
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Manifesting cake
All of the birthdays in our little family fall within a 15 day period in the middle of the summer. There was a lot of cake around for nearly a month. And then we went to the UK to visit family who kindly wanted to celebrate all of our birthdays, so we did it all over again.
Now, B asks for cake after nearly every meal, sometimes for breakfast. Obviously we’ve been trying to phase it out, explaining that there’s none left. But there have been enough times when he’s asked for it at random moments and it has been around. So there’s no way he’s going to chance not asking for it.
This was the conversation the other day at his Nana’s table during lunch.
“KEHK??”
“No buddy, there’s no cake.”
“… Happy bur-day?”
“No buddy, there’s no cake. It’s no one’s birthday.”
“…… Happy bur-day Nana?”
“… 🤦🏻♂️”
It had been my birthday, Sam’s birthday, and his birthday already. But we hadn’t celebrated Nana’s yet, so it was a logical ask to be fair.
I asked him what his favorite song was yesterday, and he started singing Happy Birthday. (This was 100% a ploy for cake, his actual favorite song is “Hey Jude” because he likes to yell the NAH NAH NAH part.)
He’s still getting over jet lag since we arrived back from the UK last weekend, lots of 5:30am-ish wake-ups. This morning, he wandered sleepily out of his bedroom to go use the potty and the first thing he said was, “Bur-day?”
I’m pretty sure he thinks he can manifest cake.