39 and Counting

Hello! You know what feels good? Blogging in a bar. I’m at Preservation Pub in downtown Knoxville, where the air conditioning is on, the music is scruffy, the lights are barely on, and nobody’s yammering about their investments and podcast ventures. The same cannot be said for Partial Cafe, I’m afraid. Honestly though, it wasn’t that bad there. Their music was loud enough that all the tech bros’ conversations felt like they were part of it, so the din felt distant. I swear though, there is not a lot that gets my blood boiling faster than listening to miserable little entrepreneur peacocks in public places. Get a room.

Anyway! Here I be, half a year into my homecoming and feeling like a million bars of gold-pressed latinum! Except for The Cramps, which I’m so excited to tell you all about in a bit. But first! I think I want to make a template for my blog posts, so I can just go in and answer my own questions like a quiz every time! Maybe that’ll make me want to write more. Okay, here we go.

Date:
Location:
Outfit:
Mood:
Weather:
Health:
Work:
Family:
The Chariot:
Friends:
Events:
Art:
Travel:
Deep Thoughts:
Listening to:
Reading:
Watching:

This list may change over time, but that’s all I can give it right now. So let’s try it on for size, shall we?

Date: Thursday, July 30th, 2026, 4:51PM
Location: Preservation Pub, Knoxville, Tennessee, US
Outfit: Long white sleeveless dress, semi-sheer, flowy, no stains, $10 from a thrift store somewhere, sometime. One measly compliment. Boobs look great.
Mood: 10/10, no complaints
Weather: It’s a perfect day today! Relatively low humidity and I think the high was/is 84º. Nice and sunny, a light breeze, practically vacation weather!

Health: Oh here we go. This is going to be a paragraph. Okay, so after five years of hormone suppression, I started my period on my birthday! It was so shocking, but a little relieving, because I’d been experiencing inTENSE mood swings the week before, so knowing that was just PMS made me exquisitely happy. It definitely should not have happened at all though, so very much cause for concern.

I went in to get my hormone levels checked a few days after my birthday and they were significantly elevated from what they should be, but still not high enough that I should’ve experienced “Ovarian Escape.” For reference, my estrogen has historically been around 5 (idk the unit of measurement, sorry) during my treatment over the past five years, and last week it was around 30. My oncologist has yet to reach out to me about wtf. I’m trying to be generous.

My suspicion is that over the past several months, my ovarian suppression medication has been administered incorrectly, which led to it being less effective. Another possibility is that my fibroid(s) have grown enough that they caused some kind of “breakthrough bleeding.” The period (if it was a period) is over now, but I’m still experiencing significant cramping, which is troubling.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading about it, and one thing that would fix all of this and more is a hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (take my lady bits), and honestly––after the PMS and cramping––I don’t see why this wouldn’t be a great option for me. I don’t want kids, I don’t want estrogen, I don’t want periods, and I don’t want PMS symptoms. So what are the downsides? Let’s find out! brb…

Okay, so according to Chat, my immediate post-surgery experience would probably be unnoticeable, because I’ve been suppressed for five years already, so the normal, scary bits associated with the surgery, I’ve already CONQUERED! (Chat didn’t say that.) The issue, for me then, would be the long term side effects that post-menopausal women deal with every day.

• Continued osteopenia and all the joys that brings
• Decreasing muscle retention
• Worsening insulin resistance/increased risk of diabetes
• Stiffening blood vessels (increased risk of hypertension, coronary artery disease, and stroke)

And I didn’t even tell it that I accidentally started smoking again… eek. So basically, I may have the option to go ahead and bypass the possible 1-2 years of bleeding I have to look forward to when my current treatment is complete in 2031. I’ll be 44, so I might not even get my period back, but I’d definitely get a flood of confusing and tumultuous hormones, just in time to experience The Change all over again! Who would choose this?? And why hasn’t this come up in conversation with any of my oncologists over the years??

I’m trying to be generous.

Anyway, there’s that. I’m really, really, really, really, really leaning toward the oompaloompectomy. Fuck this crazy treatment plan, I’m ready to just be done with hormones, once and for all.

Work: I’m off today. Work has been great, with a few awkward weirdsies that I’m learning about and trying to roll with. You may not know, but I had been working several part-time jobs over the past six months, just trying to get caught up with debt and back to my luxurious lifestyle lol. I was cleaning for a handful of regular clients, conversationally training the Babel app’s beta LLM, selling pictures of my feet, serving at Central Flats & Taps, signing people up for gym memberships and pool parties at the Cansler Family YMCA, and manning the front desk at the Knoxville Botanical Garden’s visitors center. And now, I am happy (and a little sad, tbh) to report that I’m not doing any of those things anymore! Well––regularly, anyway.

Starting next week, I’ll be full-time at Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum, as their Event and Rental Coordinator! As with most nonprofits, there is a lot of overlap in their departments, which is my only complaint so far. I’ve been training part-time with the current coordinator (mostly without her though) over the past month, and it’s been a little discombobulating, but again––really great overall. It’s been a long time since I worked at a place where I could take a lunch break and take a walk in nature alone, let alone gorgeous, secluded gardens. It’s really special.

So yeah, uhhh, let me know if you’re rich as hell and want to rent any of our facilities for your soireé or wedding or whatever. It’s pricey. Worth it! But pricey.

Family: My mom’s cancer came back, boooo. It’s Mucosal Malignant Melanoma, located inside her nasal cavity, and it’s a sneaky-ass cancer that’s not responding to treatment as well as they’d hoped. She’s developed persistent/chronic vertigo on top of major fatigue and some cognitive decline, so I’m working on getting her out of work asap. The SSA has allowed a provision in their standard excruciatingly laborious process to draw disability, specifically for her type of cancer, so hopefully this time next week, she’ll be out of a job! lol

She’s taking the whole experience very much like I did mine, i.e. enjoying others actually taking care of her for once. And also the mandated rest. She’s about to start radiation, which will be a daily face zap for a few months. Which leads me to my next point.

The Chariot: I’m moving Rowan and myself up to their property in Halls, to be more available to help out, drive her to treatment when I can, and force her and my dad to put their screens down every few days. Those addicts! They’re going to get a taste of their own medicine soon. Thirty minutes a day! No chat rooms, downloads, purchases, conversations with strangers, and I have to approve every website they visit, no exceptions! Haha.

Being back on that property for more than a few days is going to be verrrrrry interesting. I’m sure it’s going to bring up some stuff, but I knew this was a possibility when I moved down here, so I’ve been mentally preparing myself for a while.

Friends: I miss my old friend. She told me she didn’t want the kind of friendship where I called her out on shit, and I haven’t heard from her since. I liked her so much. But I don’t want the kind of friendship where we can’t be honest with each other, so I think it’s done. This makes me very sad.

Events: My 1st Annual 39th Birthday Party was last week! And DAMN it was The Best Day Of My Life. Bar None. My old choir teacher, Connie, from homeschool coop surprised me by driving down from Roanoke to attend. My youngest sibling, Havilah, made me an enormous and inCREDIBLe robin’s egg blue coconut cake with rainbow coconut edging. My best friend, Corinne, who doesn’t go out and doesn’t drink, not only made an extended appearance, but made a hundred paper chains to deck the halls with. My old friend, Mary, made me a to-DIE-for robin’s egg blue signature cocktail with mezcal and a Sailor Moon-esque garnish called “Blue Da-ba-dee.”

We sang together, laughed our asses off, shed not a few nostalgic tears, ate and drank in moderation, and danced until 2am. I only got a little PMeSsy once when a stranger (a guest’s plus one) bogarted my dance playlist, but he apologized for misreading the room and I apologized for almost ruining my own birthday, and then we were friends and everything was all right. Truly, it was the best day of my life. SO worth the $2,000+ I spent on it… heheh. Well, most people gave me $20 to attend, so it wasn’t all me. I think I’m going to start putting a few bucks per day into a designated bank account for my birthday parties every year. I want to do this again, but I don’t want to be left with literally $7 afterward.

Art: My friend Corinne’s friend Megan gave me the greatest little pep talk the other day, and I think it gave me the encouragement I need to get the ol’ Paper Blog going again. Rebranded though, as will surprise no one. It’s going to be called “BAUDRONS: An Illustrated Journal,” and I’m going to release the first issue in a few weeks. Like and subscribe.

Travel: I got to drive out to North Carolina briefly the other day. It was just to buy an incredible rug for my work office, but I took a long break in the Smokies, just hangin’ by an unknown stream, crying and talking to the butterflies and kudzu. It was much-needed. I need more.

Deep Thoughts: Well, I’m working on my next tattoo. It’s meant to remind me of my core values, but I don’t want there to be any words/writing in it. Here are my core values though, in case you were wondering: Agency, Honesty, Creativity, Sagacity, Bravery, Sensuality, Curiosity, Sanguinity, and Generosity. That’s about as deep as I feel like going right now. Maybe this section should be farther up the list so I have the mental energy to write more in it.

Listening to: I’m in the middle of Amy Poehler’s interview with Ann Lamot right now. I’ve never read anything by her, but she seems quite level-headed.
Reading: Corinne is forcing me to read The Audacity Experiment by Chris Corsini. I haven’t started yet. I’m sure it’s amazing, I just have… focus issues.
Watching: Why, “Silo,” of course! In a passionate one-sided love affair with Rebecca Ferguson. What a babe.

And that’s all I have time for today! My tailbone is hurting so much from sitting in this delightful booth for so long! I keep wrenching around to try and relieve the pain a bit, which I know looks like I’m farting. Anyway, time for Rowan’s wet food!