My ongoing medical fight had a new wrinkle added with the MRSA hospital stay but I am back home… and the day after I came home, I was laid off.

Which… not surprised. Only myself and one other person was laid off. Both of us ID as queer. I don’t know if they realized that or maybe they did? Either way, job hunting while fighting a health condition is gonna be awesome. And yeah, I don’t qualify for disability. Technically I can still work. And truthfully, I want to.

Still, life and lemons happen.

And oh, this looks good.

Nothing much else is happening. Dusting off the resume, building up all of the portfolio things I need to do, paperwork… so much paperwork… and of course, still doctors’ appointments. But on he happy side of life, writing is back on the menu so, I’m looking forward to getting something out.

I hope you all are doing well, and please stay safe!

Okay to be fair, I really don’t need a green tea because I do have a pineapple refresher from Jollibee’s right now. And that’s a delight.

There has been a few revolving guests in the house over the past few weeks following my surgery and I am ever so grateful for the help. And the fact that I can get better sleep but also, sometimes there is someone to let the Potato out in the morning and give the girls brekkie. I probably need more sleep but it’s hard because I don’t trust my body to behave yet so… we’ll see how it goes.

I do think the Potato is very sad to see his Aunties leaving every time they go because he does love the attention and I can’t get down on the floor with him right now. And I can’t for a few months. Which makes me sad because you know, dog scritches. I want him to know I love him and well, I make sure he gets scritches where I can reach. He was supposed to get a bork today but it’s a holiday and Auntie Paige had all of her appointments call out so it didn’t seem right to drag her out of bed for one walk so we’ll do stuff later this week. He will get a bork in.

But that’s today and well, the house is now empty. Gus has gone into his room to sleep and most of the cats are snoring away. Badger for some reason is grooming himself while sitting on the bookshelf.

I am going to immerse myself into Japanese Demon mythology for a project now so… have a good Monday!

I really am going to try to use these as a newsletter of sorts.

I am home from the hospital following a very long and brutal surgery. it went very well according to my doctors and now it pretty much is all about rest and taking medications while I heal up. I can share that I am very uncomfortable and there is definitely pain but all in all, the outlook for everything is good. Although I could use more sleep.

there really isn’t too much going on except perhaps the potato has a new bed and it is large enough for Harley to claim a corner. It makes her so very happy to be able to sleep near him because she loves the dog so much. the dog does not reciprocate but he suffers through it.

I am halfway through the Eric Carter, necromancer series and am enjoying it greatly. I will have to finish it soon because I need to begin writing and since it is urban fantasy and I will be writing urban fantasy, that could lead to some conflict in my brain. But I have mysteries sitting on my Kindle for when I need to switch over.

keeping me company through all of this are Japanese cooking shows. I really enjoy Kimagure. Most recently he posted this fish and it is always fascinating to see how he does things.

but that’s pretty much it for today. I am going to try to get comfortable and then maybe crash later because sleep is hard to get. I am looking forward to delving back into stories. I so miss writing.

I am probably going to ramble today just because I wanted to touch base and see how everyone was. What I probably am going to do is share links and other things that I find interesting because I keep meaning to do that and I forget.

Monday is coming quickly and I will be showing up for the hospital in the cold dark morning so hopefully they can fix everything that is broken. Okay to be fair just the internal organs situation. Everything else that’s broken is not their fault.

I think the thing that I missed the most actually is driving because I do enjoy it. When I am finally free of this relentless medical crap I fully intend to go on a road trip.

and you know what I really need is a good grilled cheese sandwich. Now mind you I like my grilled cheese sandwiches like I do my macaroni and cheese. Mac & cheese comes from a blue box and grilled cheese sandwiches are white bread with American cheese, preferably on the edges and too hot to eat but you bite into it anyway and burn your tongue.

I actually have to get more American cheese because we’ve been using it to pill the Potato who had a very nasty bout of infections but it is clearing up rapidly. He is definitely slowing down and his seasonal allergies that also give him the skin infection really hit him hard this year. Still, he is comfortable and happy so that is all I can ask of the universe.

I also really miss being able to cook because standing for long periods of time is problematic. I did however sharpen my knives because that’s a good meditative thing to do and I have a few older knives that I really don’t use anymore but I should sharpen them as well.

It is been very cold and I keep the living room — well the whole house — at about 69° to 70°. This is kind of necessary because both Badger and Gus have joint issues that get worse if it’s too cold, just like me. Goji and Harley pretty much sleep on the couch on opposite ends but Badger usually can be found on the corner of my bed where the heating vent hits. We have a forced air heater so we can at least maintain a good temperature in the house.

That is pretty much everything for this morning. I do need more coffee and I also know that these kind of read like an email but hey, I should be better at communicating. I realized that what I’m working on needs to start a different place but I also have to figure out exactly what angle that would be so wish me luck.

I identify as queer.

For some people it’s a problematic word. For a lot of us who are older, it was a word we took on as our own. An act of defiance. While rainbow flag came into being in the late 70s, it wasn’t widely adopted until later. or at least anywhere I was because things like that spread slowly. At the time the one symbol that we did have — a symbol with its ties to the generation about the boomers — still a bit of a fuck you to everyone who push us down and that was the pink triangle.

It was something I could have as a patch on my jean jacket and other people got it tattooed to their skin, usually hidden under clothes because you couldn’t show a hint of being out if you weren’t living certain communities. And those communities were few and far between.

Being anything but heterosexual was dangerous, often deadly. And when I entered high school, the AIDS epidemic hit. I think it’s funny they call it an epidemic because it really wasn’t anything short of a horror show. The beginnings of open non-hetero exploration and outwardly celebrating the queerness connecting us was shattered. Countless men were given a death sentence by hateful people who justified the mounting fatalities as what “they deserved” for being gay. We heard a lot of “God hates fags” and “this is the gays’ plague”.

There were small pockets of community where we could gather and kind of party to forget what was outside of those walls. We all had our havens. Even in Hawai’i. Back then Hula’s was a makeshift bar/dance club next to Hamburger Mary’s. It really didn’t have walls but mostly was a chain-link fence with bamboo panels to keep out prying eyes and a canopy of trees strung with fairy lights. I remember going there periodically with a bunch of my underaged friends (well, so was I) because drinking age was 18 back then and let’s face it, nobody was checking IDs. It was where we could go and laugh and be open for a little while. But some of the faces grew gaunt and disappeared. I think in a lot of ways it was our Holocaust. Probably not too appropriate that word but I don’t know another phrase I could use. It was like losing people to a game of Russian roulette. I suppose actually maybe a better phrasing would be our Squid Game? I don’t know.

What I do know is the disease was weaponized in so many ways and an already disenfranchised, estranged part of society was now left condemned further and being torn apart from within. We were abandoned by the government — the president at that time was Reagan — and Christian facism was the mainstream ideology.

We had no rights. Longtime partners were denied their place next to their dying loved ones and many of the dead were stripped of their personality and souls to be buried by the people who hated them the most — their families.

Many of us were bound together by the trauma of being cast out by people who were supposed to protect us. So many of us were children. And so many of us died. The late boomers and Gen Xers lost so many of our most fiercest and brightest souls.

I think it hurt so much because it felt like we were losing our family again. And no matter how hard we cried, how desperate we were for someone to help us, not only did no one care but they celebrated our deaths.

So we kept fighting — what else were we going to do? So things changed. Some quickly. Some not. Men and women who spoke up were beaten and oppressed and killed. And we were still learning our language.

queer.

An umbrella word that covered all of us — even those of us without another word to say but we knew we were not a mainstream sexuality. We didn’t have an identity but we knew we were queer. It’s not everyone’s word. Not now. We have so many now. But back then… it was all some of us had.

It was our word.

Here we are — again in the trenches — fighting off false Christians but with a lot more voices behind us. A lot more rights arming us. Quite a few of us still bear battle wounds and many of us still looks to a pink triangle as a symbol of who we are… Something that defined us when we had no words to do so… But the word queer fit. For me.

I think it’s a discussion that we all should have — what words we hang our souls on — and what they mean to us and why. I don’t begrudge anyone the words they found to use. Or the pronouns. I will use them to describe others. I probably use a few to describe myself.

I guess if I had to say I was one thing — it would be that I am a pink triangle queer. Because that was the first step of my journey and my first identity in this community. I do welcome the discussion of this and are probably revisited as I think more on how I feel about certain things.

But we can’t go back to the days where people tell us to hide who we are or to not use the words we say speak for us — speak about us — because I have already fought those battles and we’re back to fighting them again. But we will win this oppressive war. We are the only side with casualties. We are the only side that have been beaten to bruised and broken and death. And that will continue as long as assholes use us as the boogie man to fearmonger and control the small minded.

So no matter what symbol or word you use, use them. Fight with them. Use them for change. Use them for understanding. And remember we might all have different words we use for ourselves but we are all in this together.