Category: introspective

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My 500th Post!

This is my 500th post! I started posting on this blog on August 31, 2016 and am posting this on December 17, 2025, so it has been over 9 years since I began! I have taken some breaks along the way, so it is exciting to reach this milestone.

Looking back over my posts, over half of them (268) have been about jigsaw puzzles. I only started puzzling in 2021, but it quickly became an obsession of mine, and I have done a LOT of puzzles in that time.

The second largest category is books, with 165 posts. I have been a voracious reader my whole life but haven’t always written about the books I read. I have found lately that writing book reviews helps me remember the books more clearly, so I will keep doing it as long as I can.

Posts about other topics are more sporadic, but I have at times shared updates about my life and posted about pets, travel, or other fun things. I don’t have a lot of readers, but I still enjoy posting for myself and truly appreciate those who stop by and leave a like and/or a comment.

Here’s to many more posts to come!

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Week in Review: December 14, 2025

Today, I finally finished decorating for Christmas. I kept it very simple this year, just my small tree and a couple other decorations. I just don’t have the energy to do more than that.

One of the things that has been on my mind a lot lately is my financial situation and the fact that retirement is getting closer than it used to be. I finally took a step towards facing things and met with a financial planner this week. We had a good initial meeting, and I am hopeful that she will be able to help me.

Death has also been on my mind recently. A friend who lives far away lost her husband to a sudden heart attack a couple of weeks ago. More recently another friend lost her 24 year old son to complications from a seizure. I have known her for about 20 years – we met because we both had children with autism and have been connected ever since. Michael and I went to his celebration of life on Saturday. It was a very moving service.

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Week in Review: December 7, 2025

I had a good week with just a couple of appointments. I went to the orthodontist to get prepped and scanned for starting Invisalign. The appointment was a lot longer than it was supposed to be because their scanners were acting up, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I have a very small mouth that is hard to maneuver the scanning wand in.

I also went to the optometrist. I was happy to be able to go to the one that I prefer due to an insurance change, and he updated my prescription and added prisms to make it easier for me to focus. I will go back in six months for the diabetic medical exam.

Michael did not work again this week. He was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but that morning they texted him that they were low on product and he did not need to come in. His job coach’s manager is going to contact them to see what their plans are for his employment, so hopefully we will find out more information this coming week.

I started doing Christmas puzzles this week and have completed three already. I have also finished five books so far this month, as well as a short story called Goblins & Greatcoats. The story is by Travis Baldree and is set in the world of the Legends & Lattes series. It is a fun story that features Zyll, a goblin who appears in the most recent book, Brigands & Breadknives.

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Thanksgiving Catch-Up

This has been a busy month, so I am very glad for a four-day weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. Yesterday, Michael and I had a quiet day at home and enjoyed our version of a holiday feast. We are both picky eaters, so it was mostly beige foods. We enjoyed it though!

This morning, Michael had a manometry study to evaluate the motility of his esophagus. He has previously had a barium swallow and an upper endoscopy, both of which were normal. We are hoping that this test will give us some answers to his swallowing difficulties. The nurse who administered the test was great; she was very patient with him and explained everything that was happening very clearly. Michael had a bit of trouble with one small section of the test, but for the most part he did great. Actually, he did a lot better than I think I would have done!

Tomorrow I am going to a local puzzle competition. I am going as a spectator, partly because I enjoy watching people who can puzzle fast and partly because they are having a puzzle swap table. I am really hoping people bring some good puzzles to trade.

Speaking of puzzling, I just bought a new floor lamp for my living room that is a lot brighter than the one I had. It makes doing puzzles much easier and also helps me take better pictures of the finished puzzles. I am going to put the old floor lamp in Michael’s room since he only has a bedside lamp right now.

I did something a little different this year and bought an advent calendar for Michael. It is a Minecraft Lego advent calendar, and he seemed to really like it. I hope he will enjoy building each day’s item.

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Reading Habits

When do you read? 

The answer to this question has changed over time for me. For most of my life, I simply read all the time (meaning at any moment that I could sneak in even a few minutes.) 

While my son was growing up, my time to read did lessen somewhat, but I still read way more than most people do. These days I tend to finish 10-12 books a month, with one of those usually being nonfiction.

The most common time you will see me reading now is during mealtime. From childhood, I always had the urge to grab a book while I was eating. I had to suppress that during family dinner time, but now that I am single with an adult child, I almost always read when I eat.

Outside of that, my reading times are pretty random. I do read in the evenings or on weekends, but I also watch TV or movies and put together jigsaw puzzles, so I’m not as single-minded about reading as in the past.

I’m interested to know what other people’s reading habits are and how they have changed over time, and I would love it if you left me a comment with your thoughts on this.

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Catching Up – July 2025

This post is really just a list of random things that have been happening in my life over the past few weeks. But first, here is a picture of my cat Peanut Butter sleeping on my son’s backpack:

  • I got two more bookcases to store puzzles, but I built the first one and it fell apart. My fault for going cheap – Target no longer had the one I liked from them, so I got them off of Amazon. I’m going to try to build the other one and see what happens. I kept the shelves from the first one so I can have extra for the second one.
  • A couple of weeks ago, we started seeing what looked like gnats in the apartment. After some research, I found out they were drain flies. I poured boiling water down the drains and bought traps for them. I also contacted the apartment office and they added us to the Orkin list. The Orkin guy came on Friday and treated the drains, so hopefully we won’t see the bugs again!
  • I got my ears re-pierced. I originally had my ears pierced as a teenager (had to do it twice because they got infected the first time). Then a couple of years ago, I got out of the habit of wearing earrings and the holes mostly closed up. So I finally went somewhere and got them re-pierced.
  • I got my third library card. I already had ones from my local library system and from the Queer Liberation Library, but I got one from the Free Library of Pennsylvania after finding out that anyone who lives in PA can get one for free. Once I had the card, I added it to Libby and checked some of the books on my TBR. I found two dozen books that my local library either didn’t have or only had a physical copy of, so I am very happy with that.
  • One of my front teeth needs a root canal. A lot of dentists have been dropping the insurance company I have, so it has been challenging to find people for things. I did find a local endodontist, but I can’t get the rool canal until mid-August. The pain is mostly under control right now, but sometimes it does get pretty bad.
  • After the root canal, I still have one tooth that needs a filling before I can start with orthodontics. I need to talk to my dentist about that first, though. I really like her bedside manner, so to speak, but when she gives novacain, she always hits the nerve directly. She says this is the best way to do it, but it is quite painful and I have never had a dentist who did that before.
  • One piece of really great news – Michael got a job! He is a donation processor at a thrift store, and he is working twenty hours a week. He just finished his second week and is feeling pretty good about how it is going. So far, he has been learning how to sort the clothes and other donations that come in. The next thing he will learn is how to tag the clothes. He is pretty nervous about being able to do it quickly enough, but they seem like they are willing to work with him. He has had his job coach with him so far, but she will just be coming once a week now.

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Update on Michael

Michael has been having some swallowing issues that I recently became aware of. He describes it as a pressure in his chest and a feeling of release after he drinks water. If he is unable to drink water right away, the pressure increases and become painful. I took him to his primary care office and they referred him to GI and gave him a medication to try in the meantime.

We had the GI appointment, and she wants him to continue using the medication and have a couple of tests – a barium swallow and an upper endoscopy. She said that it could be related to reflux, or it could be EOE like I have, or it might be a motility issue. She said the suggestion of achalasia made by the primary care office is unlikely because that is a more severe problem than he seems to be having.

Michael was more nervous about the swallow test than the scope because he has a lot of sensory sensitivities related to food textures. He had the barium swallow test Monday morning and it was unpleasant but he got through it. The first date they had available for an endoscopy was October 20th, so it will be a while until we get to that.

On another note, he has made some real progress with dental work. When he first transitioned to an adult dentist, he needed work done on several teeth and required sedation to handle it. Over the last few years, he has stepped down from twilight sedation to a combination of a pill that he would take an hour before the appointment along with nitrous oxide given during the appointment. This time, he just needed one tooth filled, so the dentist recommended trying it without taking the pill ahead of time. He said he would still give him nitrous if he needed it once they got started, but Michael did just fine without it. I’m so proud of him!

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Mental Health Update – June 2025

It has been an interesting few months since I last shared how I have been doing. I was in a depression for quite a while and was having a hard time forcing myself to go places and do things. For example, I skipped a lot of church because I just couldn’t make myself go (thankfully, I can watch the services online). I even had a few days where I was crying for no specific reason.

I did talk to my psychiatrist and we increased one of my meds. She originally suggested increasing the antidepressant, but I worried about doing that because of the bipolar 2 dx, so we increased the mood stabilizer instead. (I see her through an autism clinic, so she had forgotten that I also had the bipolar 2 dx, or she probably wouldn’t have made the first suggestion.)

About three weeks ago, I woke up on a Sunday and my first thought was, I would like to go to church today. It has been the same the last two Sundays as well, even this past Sunday after I stayed up most of the night scrolling TikTok. Normally that would be a reason for me to skip, but I knew that I wanted to go. I’m glad I went because the service was great and the sermon was powerful. I even had successful conversations with a couple of people!

I am feeling a bit upset today because Saturday was my 30-year anniversary with my company and no one has acknowledged it in any way. The same thing happened with my 25th, but I chalked that up to COVID; at the time, I had been cut to part-time and was thankful to still have a job.

On a good note, I am starting to look forward to a trip my son and I are taking in September to visit my family in Illinois. I was feeling very anxious about how I would handle it given how depressed I have been, but now it feels much more manageable. Hopefully, I will still feel that way when the time comes.

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Mother’s Day Reflections

As today is Mother’s Day here in the US, I have been thinking about my mom and her relationship with books. Growing up, I hardly ever saw her without a book in her hands. She would often have more than one going. Her favorite genre was romance, but she also liked mystery/thrillers. 

My mom and her mom and sisters would share books between them. When one of them finished a book, she would put her initials on the inside front cover and then set it aside to be passed on to the next person. I remember us driving to my grandmother’s house just to drop off a bag of books that my mom had finished (and usually pick up a new bag!)

I definitely learned by example to love books myself. I read several hours a day growing up and even into my adulthood. I still read around 8-10 books a month, and, to this day, I feel strange sitting down to eat without having a book in my hands!

My mom was recently diagnosed with borderline Alzheimer’s and confided in me that she hasn’t been able to read for a while now. She can’t concentrate enough to follow a story. This is one of the saddest symptoms to me so far, although I’m sure there will be more difficult ones to come. 

Did your mom have a passion for anything that she passed on to you? What’s a memory you have of her that means a lot to you?

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Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?

Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark? The Bible and Modern Science and the Trouble of Making it All Fit by Janet Kellogg Ray

Summary

Janet Kellogg Ray, a science educator who grew up a creationist, doesn’t want other Christians to have to do the exhausting mental gymnastics she did earlier in her life. Working through the findings of a range of fields including geology, paleontology, and biology, she shows how a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis simply doesn’t mesh with what we know to be reality. But as someone who remains a committed Christian, Ray also shows how an acceptance of the theory of evolution is not necessarily an acceptance of atheism, and how God can still be responsible for having created the world, even if it wasn’t in a single, momentary, miraculous event.

Topics Covered

  • The Nature of Science
  • Young Earth Creationism
  • Old Earth Creationism
  • Intelligent Design
  • Theistic Evolution/Evolutionary Creationism
  • Naturalism and Scientism
  • The Age of the Universe and the Earth
  • The Flood and the Fossil Record
  • The Missing Link
  • Human Evolution
  • Leaving Creationism without Leaving God

My Thoughts

I grew up in a conservative pentecostal church and was taught to believe in a young earth and a literal six day creation period along with a worldwide catastrophic flood.  When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I was exposed to the Institute for Creation Research and became obsessed with their materials.  I even challenged a student teacher in one of my high school science classes once.  I am embarrassed now to remember how superior I felt knowing “the truth” that most scientists didn’t understand.

Over the last several years, I have come to the realization that this belief was rooted in fear.  I was afraid that if I listened to mainstream science, I would lose my faith.  It has taken quite a while to overcome these fears, but I no longer believe in a literal reading of the Bible as it relates to science.