November 2022 Newsletter
Hello subscribers! It’s been a few months, but I’ve decided to get back into writing my newsletter to let everyone know what’s been going on with your friendly online wyrd-worker. November has been quite a month for Twitter threads and starting new social media accounts. I’d also like to share a bit of news with those who may not have heard what’s been going on in my personal life for the past couple of months.
The saga of the little piggies
Content Note: This section contains discussion of a surgery and loss of extremities. It also contains some pictures, including a picture of a bandaged foot with a couple toes missing. If that’s something that may negatively impact you, please feel free and encouraged to skip to the section about Twitter.
As my Twitter followers know, I’m a type 2 diabetic. Well, over the past year, I let my blood sugar get out of control. Eventually, I developed an ulcer on my right foot which got infected. I didn’t notice this until the infection had gotten into the bone and I had developed sepsis. When I finally realized what was going on (I originally attributed the week-long low grade fever to a virus or something), I had Joe rush me to the emergency room. They admitted me to the hospital and put me on antibiotics after taking blood for blood cultures.
After some x-rays and a CAT scan, the doctors determined that there was no saving the two toes that were involved in the wound and infection. So an orthopedic surgeon skillfully removed the little piggies that had none and went “wee wee wee” all the way home. I then spent about another week in the hospital so they could pump me full of intravenous antibiotics before they were confident that oral meds would finish off the infection at home.
The cool thing is that we learned that I am no longer allergic to penicillin. I hadn’t been tested since my initial reaction to penicillin back when I was in diapers. Since that was over four decades ago and the blood cultures indicated that the specific little creepy crawlies infecting me would respond best to an amoxicillin-based antibiotic, they decided to have me do an amoxicillin challenge. That’s where they give you a dose and watch to see what happens. Fortunately, nothing happened other than Joe had a couple hours where his anxiety was cranked up beyond where it already was, which I’d estimate was already at the eleven thousand mark.
Let me just say that recovery from an amputation sucks. I was effectively couch-bound and reliant on a wheelchair to get around at all for over a month. For those of you who have never experienced it, not being able to get around and do even the simplest thing is exasperating. On top of this, I spent the first few weeks seeing the orthopedic surgeon or his physician’s assistant every week. They had put me in a pretty pink cast, which they had to remove and reapply each week in order to check out the healing progress.
Eventually, the surgeon had me start dressing the wound with gauze padding and wrapping the foot in an ace bandage. He also gave (well, I had to pay for it) me a (boringly black) surgical boot to wear when I’m up and about in order to protect the foot while it’s still healing. Yes, that means I’m actually walking again. With the aid of a walker. I’m not sure I actually need the walker, but I need to face the wrath of Joe even less. He’s far more comfortable with me using it.
We have to change the dressing regularly. Ideally, that’s once a day, but well…Basically the goal is to get the dead tissue cleaned out of the wound so that good tissue can continue to grow in its place.
Overall, I’m in good spirits. I’m not too upset over losing the toes other than the struggle not to beat myself up over the fact that the whole thing is self-inflicted in a sense. I mean, I could have prevented the whole ordeal if I had just taken better care of myself. But what’s done is done and the only thing I can do now is do better moving forward. So I’m getting my diabetes under control and have committed to inspecting my feet regularly from now on.
Twitter activity for the month
I had a pretty busy month on Twitter. I started out by sharing my thoughts on ghosts and my experiences with them as someone who engages in spirit communication. This inspired me to also share my thoughts on magic and speculations on how it might work.
One thing I’ve been noticing lately is some professional tarot readers announcing that they are certified as part of their self-promotion efforts. They typically don’t seem to give any details, such as who certified them or what the certification process entailed. I shared a few thoughts about that.
I did a thread talking about how I and other polytheists I know see the deities. The thread particularly covered why polytheistic religions are often non-proselytizing.
Some Pagans and witches like to paint historical witches as part of the “love and light brigade,” claiming that all negative talk about witches originated with the Christians. And while I certainly agree that Christians have historically badmouthed witches (just like they did and do everyone), I also felt obliged to point out that the pre-Christian feelings toward witches wasn’t unmitigated adoration either.
Despite the fact that it pays my bills, I don’t talk about software development very often. However, the things that have been happening since Elon Musk (who I have taken to calling Evil Big Bird) gave me an opportunity to dispel the notion that software developers are interchangeable parts.
I fell in (non-romantic!) love with Mandy Capehart the first time I heard her talk about grief. She and I got talking about it again the other day and it inspired me to share my own story of how I came to see grief as precious.
I’ve decided to start offering occasional reflections on the various runes of the Elder Futhark. This month, I ended up reflecting on Sowilo, Raidho, Ansuz, and Wunjo.
I’ve also started listening to episodes of the Thereafter podcast again and livetweeting them. But can you really call it “livetweeting” if you’re listening to a pre-recorded show? At any rate, I have threads covering the episodes with Jo Luehmann and Mike Harvey, Tim Whitaker, the Heathen Queen, and Robert Monson.
A lot of conservative Christians like to claim that their Christian siblings who say truly horrific things about LGBTQIA+ people are “fringe” and “not very powerful.” That’s why I felt it important to draw everyone’s attention to a certain amount of chumminess between Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler and certified hate group president Tony Perkins.
There’s been a decent amount of talk in certain circles about Thomas Achord, a former schoolmaster (he was let go due to the news) for a small but well known conservative Christian school. It came out that he expressed some pro-segregationist, white supremacist, and antisemitic views. This has some evangelicals wringing their hands, including Rod Dreher, who has written at least two opinion pieces on the topic. There may be more, but I only read and offered my thoughts on two of them. You can find my comments here, here, and here.
Expanding my social media presence
Since most of us are expecting Twitter to disappear at some point — either due to technical issues caused by the massive reductions in staff or simply because Evil Big Bird’s decisions cause its financial collapse — I’ve been working on expanding my social media presence. To that end, I have created an account on Mastodon and resurrected my accounts on Tumblr and Instagram. I’ve really been enjoying creating the text images I’ve been posting to Instagram. I also encourage my readers to check out the thread about my spiritual journey over on Mastodon.
That’s a wrap for November
I hope your November has gone well and you have an excellent December. I’m hoping I’ll get back into YouTube videos, though that may still be challenging while my recovery continues. Either way, I’ll see you right around the new year!