Last month my wife had a pretty credible cancer scare, and an emergency surgery. It was enough that 3 doctors told us to prepare for the worst. Luckily, it turned out to be a gallbladder issue and the inflammation was so bad they thought it was shelf sign, which is a metastasized set of cancer cells, and no cancer was actually in evidence.
It did mean she spent a week in the hospital, and when they removed her gallbladder it took them three different attempts to get it out, as it was one of the worst the surgeon had seen. This surgery resolved 2 decades of issues she’s had, and we are very grateful it’s finally fixed and she’s on the mend.
This means, I really have gotten nothing much done. My own surgery, disability, and then worrying about my wife? Yeah, I spent a lot of time reading monster romance novels, and laying in bed hoping for the best.
I did get some green onions planted though, and my rhubarb is going wild. My strawberries survived and seem to be thriving.
This morning I found a little friend in my strawberry patch.
Large preying mantis.
I wonder if she got in when she was small, and then got trapped. Not that she doesn’t have ample food, but the wire cage is too small for her to get out. She seemed happy though.
My wife was thrilled as she hadn’t realized they exist around here.
I am starting my planning for next spring. I need some soil, but I have compost ready from last year, and all I have to do is plant.
I will also be putting in a timer based irrigation system, so I don’t have to worry so much about getting everything watered. That’s particularly on my mind since I am watering some green onions I planted last week by hand.
I am very grateful my wife is fine, recovering, and healthy. I can now look towards my future garden plans.
My wife has ADHD. Amongst other issues, if she doesn’t see it, it ceases to exist in her memory. Sometimes this means she re-buys things she has in abundance, or puts things away in a fascinating way.
When we moved into this home, I wanted to make sure she could be as at home there as I was. She loves to bake and do cooking projects. She researches recipes, often historical, and makes them.
I wanted the kitchen to work for her. To this end I put in open shelves for the things we use day to day the most.
She would lose her coffee cups all the time, but now she always knows where they are. She can find everything, and doesn’t have to search.
I made sure the most used pans were visible, and I put a basket for the bread, and all the snacks. She has stopped losing the snacks now that I’ve set it up this way. She can find everything she wants more easily.
I also put a lot of the utensils she uses most on the countertop visibly, and so she can find them easily. She’s said having the utensils there has been so much easier to work with for her.
My latest effort is to make labels for the cupboards. This isn’t the most popping color right now, but I plan to paint the cabinets dark dusky orange. Then they will pop!
I created the labels in Affinity Design, and after the first label was done, I just used it to make the rest as a template. Then my wife printed them out and laminated them all. She’s got a whole side project with 5 x 7 ” cards for the game she is running. She hands them to the players as a mission card, so I figured I’d commandeer her process for kitchen labels.
This will look so much better when the cabinets are painted. They are very 1980s right now.
I can’t label everything in every cupboard, because she would be overloaded by it all. So instead I tried very big summaries, and specifics that she uses the most. We are also old, and wear glasses, so I used a HUGE font that she can see without glasses.
So far, it seems to be working. My wife can see what she needs, and it works with her ADHD.
I am interested to see how this works for her going forward, and I like to keep checking in with her to make sure there isn’t something better I can do to work for her.
The biggest challenge is to make it all look like a design choice? However, I don’t care much as long as it works for her, cute or not. I think we managed to make it cute though.
This picture is my homemade instant hot cocoa mix in front of my wife and my coffee and tea set up. The white jar is for loose sugar for my wife, the dark blue one is for instant coffee, and the teal one is for sugar cubes for me.
This is not a sponsored post. I don’t have affiliate links. This is just me, in my first home, marveling at the small upgrades I can make in order for my life to be a billion times better. I just like to document and link things.
My incinerator. Ignore the gap between the backsplash and the counter. I have to fix that. It’s relatively mild here, but is like a 1/4 inch as it creeps larger at the end of the counter. I haven’t sealed it yet because I am waiting to fix it.
This is an Insinkerator. That’s the brand name of my infant hot water system. What it does, is deliver water hot enough to make tea out of. You can increase of lower the temperature to fit your needs.
In my home, my wife prefers instant coffee. That is probably horrifying to folks, but she grew up on it, and prefers it. Over our 30+ years of marriage we have had normal coffee makers, high end espresso machines, you name it. She always goes back to instant. This actually frees up a lot of counter space, and reduces waste from Keurig and espresso machines, presses and coffee makers.
I am a hot cocoa and tea drinker because I am a very high energy person, and caffeine takes me into the arena of damn annoying real quick, so I stick to my caffeine-free tea, and my hot cocoa. What little caffeine I get from the cocoa is about all I should ever have.
In the apartments we have been in, we were in a constant hot water kettle search. We would burn through one every year or so, because between the two of us, we would have tea, cocoa, and coffee all day long. We just killed them from over use. I was even considering one of those massive zojirushi how water dispensers.
Add to this, my wife has ADHD, and she would always come start the kettle, then leave, and an hour later come back to start the process all over. Just waiting for the water to heat was enough time in ADHD for her to end up distracted and not get her coffee. Some mornings she would realize she’d have related the task endlessly and never gotten her morning coffee.
With this in mind, one of the first items I bought for the house was a hot water on demand system. It’s like a mini on demand system that holds a gallon or so of water for your use. The Amazon listing says 3 gallons, but that’s wrong. I think it’s closer to 2/3 of a gallon.
This is like a $250 luxury. I can get my cocoa in the morning instantly. My wife no longer circles the kitchen in a remember & forget coffee dance.
I think this is the single most amazing item we have in our home. I had no idea when we put it in that it would help my wife so much. This was worth every penny. When or if it dies, I am replacing it immediately.
Being able to modify my home in such a tiny way, to help make our lives easier? I really want this for everyone. We were so lucky to get out of the rental racket, and into a home, and I just really want this for everyone.
It’s just so shocking to me that with such a relatively small purchase I can make such a huge impact on my enjoyment of my home.
I got the stakes to fix my broccoli. It’s been windy and rainy here, so all my broccoli fell over. I had no idea it needed staked, because I hadn’t ever grown it before, but now it looks much better. No more sideways plants, with upside down leaves. Ignore that tiny one. It’s a replant when that square of broccoli didn’t come up. He’s doing fine.
Also, my Amazon purchase for my wife came in. I like to buy her things. Today? It was a red dragon onesie. I love it and she was thrilled with it. The cat? Tally is really not too sure about this development. She’d only just gotten over the balloons my wife got as a get well soon gift from her coworkers for after surgery.
Behind her is a router and all sorts of internet cables on the shelves. I was supposed to drill a hole through the wall, install 2″ desk grommets, so the wires could go through, but instead I made wall pockets for iPad and laptop storage next to our bed.
I found a unicorn tote for my wife, the lovely disaster unicorn, and a hail gay satan one for me. Yes, yes I did find a hail gay satan tote bag on Amazon. You can find anything there. It’s amazing sometimes.
We both use an iPad in bed, and my wife also uses an old laptop for writing her YouTube scripts and gaming notes. I am always concerned they will get stepped on, so I made them a place to go up off the floor. We can’t use a normal nightstand arrangement because our bed is literally in the closet, sticking out, which is cool with star lights, but I don’t want to do pictures until I finish the canopy for it. This means we have to get creative with storage.
Also, my wife has ADHD, and tucking anything in for a nice clean look was out the window 30 years ago when we married. I find keeping everything in easy to access and visible areas increase the likely hood that it will get put away, and that she will remember where it is.
This is actually straight, but the picture makes it look crooked.
Construction was just a fabric envelop made out of tote bags with pictures I liked on it, and then I used the straps for the totes to make a small loop at the top, then I put some hooks in the wall, with carabiners I had laying around. The rainbow ribbon was just what I had on hand because I bought 100s of yards of it on Amazon once, so I use it in my projects when I need a bit of ribbon tab.
The most exciting part about this is I own the whole damn house, and I could use actual hooks that screw into the studs in the walls. It’s not a rental, and if I want to put holes in my walls, I sure as hell can. The sheer freedom to put 6 cup hooks in the walls? Worth every penny of my mortgage.
Yesterday we went to a business/restaurant supply Costco. You can use your normal membership to go to the business/restaurant supply Costco. It’s just a Costco that doesn’t have all the electronics, clothing, and home goods, and instead has the food in bigger quantities, and restaurant supply stuff. The reason we went is it opens at 7am and is practically empty, with easy parking. We get up really early, and hate crowds so it’s super nice.
We spent a lot at Costco, and filled our chest freezer with restaurant quality crinkle fries, salami, lunch meat, hot dog sausages, a sliced cheeses, and corn dogs. Just about everything you could need for the next six months when you have non-cooking days.
While I like to cook everything from scratch, I am not always physically up and running. On those days, I like a quick and dirty meal and ready made food is a part of that. As my condition progresses, I have had to make peace with the fact that while I have the skills and prefer 100% from scratch cooking, concessions will have to be made. I focus on those items I really love to make, and make do with store bought for the rest.
Arguably, the best greasy spoon on the west coast.
We then went out to eat at one of the best kept secret diners in our area. The staff is amazing. The food is 110% Americana diner food that is well made, affordable, and with portions that are bigger than I ever eat.
However, going out in public these days is always risky. When my wife went to pee, some lady complained to staff about a “man” in the bathroom. My wife looked damn good in her little floral skirt, doc marten’s and top. She has boobs larger than my head, and her hair color was killing it. To call her a man at this point in her life is just literally being a bigot. She may be identifiable as transgender, but she looks NOTHING like a man.
We live in such a blue area that this was a non starter with the staff. The staff member cleaning the bathroom completely blew her off. When my wife left the bathroom the lady had gotten her husband to come stand with her by the door to the women’s room. Apparently, not content to just wait and come back after my wife, she wanted a man person to come menace my wife.
I should remind everyone my wife is 6’2″ tall. This apparently matters to the cis men she towers over. He couldn’t look her in the eyes when she smiled and waved at them both, and came back the the booth. This has been happening more and more. The amount of times my wife has been challenged by some lady in the bathroom, who then goes and gets a man to come help her threaten my wife with either implied or overt violence is just insane.
To be fair, the silver lining to this madness is the number of cis dudes that completely look out of their depth and back down when my wife shows up. Size really matters to cis dudes when height and threats come into play.
Oh, and can I be petty? My wife looked more feminine, had better fashion sense, and was just factually more beautiful than the nasty tired old lady freaking out?
The real challenge of this all was actually just being in public. My wife can’t leave the house without something happening right now. Those bigots seem thrilled there is a minority they can unabashedly attack because they feel they finally found a socially acceptable victim. Don’t be mistaken, these same people are probably racist antisemites, too. They just found a new group that isn’t fully protected by social convention and are gleefully on the attack. The Venn diagram for transphobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms, is pretty much a circle.
The most insidious situation is the picture taking. People will just take my wife’s picture like they saw Bigfoot. They are not as discrete as they think when they even try to be sneaky. Some assholes use it as a way to harass her by outright getting in her face to do it.
I live in a large city. My wife, is legit not even the weirdest thing I see driving to get donuts at sunrise just last week. Have you seen a meth head wearing a feather boa and nothing else at a bus stop dancing? I have! This is not a really rare occurrence because we live in a city that has a rep for that kind of drug use.
I mean, there are so many more pronounced situations going down at any one time in my limited time outside my home, that to pick my slightly gothy transgender wife to target for photos is just people being assholes.
It’s a risk whenever we go out these days, and while I am a transgender man who can “pass” as cis, my wife cannot. I worry for her safety a lot these days because the uptick in violence is very real, and you never know if you are going to run into someone that has been wound up by the media and is just foaming at the mouth to hate crime someone.
I truly wish this wasn’t a concern we had to work with just to go get breakfast and groceries.
My wife had surgery on the 9th. It wasn’t a huge surgery. She’s had, I think 9 of them in the last 4 years for her transition from female to male. She’s one of the craziest strongest recoveries I have ever seen for surgery. When I was a nurse, in my first career, I did medicare units with post surgical recovery on and off, and so seeing my wife recover this strong is impressive to me.
For instance, she didn’t take anything much for pain the last couple days. She never does. She hates narcotic pain medication, so she switches over to Tylenol or something over the counter really quickly.
I think part of the issue is my wife has ADHD, and I am not sure if it’s related, but meds just hit her different. Stimulants put her to sleep. Every time she has general anesthesia she is incredibly busy until it wears off in a day or two. The night I brought her home, she was so chatty I had to tell her to be quiet at midnight so I could sleep. She was happy and up, but I was exhausted from getting her to Seattle and back and getting all the details taken care of.
For the bigger surgeries, she is more out of is and sleeps, but every little one like this? She practically doesn’t notice.
Wife in her housecoat I made for her out of my grandmothers quilt, being stalked by Tally the cat. This is a general picture of them, as I didn’t think to snap pics of my wife yesterday. Plus she’s so busy, it’s hard to chase her around.
Anyways, on to food. My wife always wants Dick’s Cheeseburgers and jelly beans after surgery. I don’t know what the anesthetic does to her, but it’s pretty reliable. Once, years ago before her transition, she had a vasectomy in a town an hour away, and on the ride home, she was so insistent I get her jelly beans I had to pull off and go into a Fred Meyer to buy her a pound of bulk candy.
When we got to the house, 20 minutes later, she once again got insanely insistent, so I asked where her jelly beans went. Turns out, little miss post-anesthesia ate the entire pound of jelly beans without remembering. It made her a bit queasy too, so after that I was much more careful with her demands, and I only got her a small bag of jelly beans, and vetoed Dick’s Cheeseburgers on the way back until I could be sure she wasn’t going to be nauseated from eating.
Sweet and Sour vegetables and rice.
For the first night I wanted to go easy on her stomach, so I made the above, sweet and sour rice and vegetables. I made the sweet and sour sauce from scratch and the green onions are from my garden.
I wanted her to have a good protein-rich set of meals for recovery. We don’t normally eat steak and red meat that much. The costs are prohibitive and we just don’t miss it, but I splurged to make sure she had good recovery food. I should note, I was so tired from the night before, that I got the groceries delivered, and the steaks I wanted were replaced with flank steak. Which is fine, but they looked like they’d been through it. I am a little pickier on my meat selection, so I just cooked them up in the pan with butter, salt and peppers and sliced them across the grain.
Steak, country mashers, candied carrots and Hawaiian rolls. This is my plate so it has all the fat and gristle bits, because I like that.
She woke up well, and I made her a late lunch, early supper with flank steak, country mashers with some leftover potatoes in the fridge, and carrots glazed in honey. She loves rolls, so I bought Hawaiian rolls. Normally they are a bit sweet for our tastes, but it was what was available for delivery.
Later that evening we were both hungry, so I used leftover steak to make burritos with steak, rice (leftover), cabbage, green onion, and cheese. I used some light sour cream for sauce in them. I forgot to get pictures of that one.
Steak, mushroom, green onion, and cheese frittattas with Trader Joes polenta broiled with parmesan cheese.
I made a nice frittata and used it to use up leftovers in the fridge. I used up the leftover polenta as well, broiled with parmesan.
The cheese in the polenta is pepper jack, and cheddar. The only place I buy cheese these days is Costco, in large blocks, and grate myself using a KitchenAid grater attachment. I swear the pepper jack tastes like pepper jack. Some grocery store versions are very bland and not remotely spicy.
I might do more sweet and sour vegetables for dinner. I need to get more veggies into her.
However, she’s been doing super well, and maybe now that she’s good, I can finally relax.
My wife has ADHD, and we have named her ADHD Patricia.
Six months ago It old my wife we should buy some more cumin. Patricia heard this, and immediately decide to find a deal. This is for a household of two, not a professional kitchen. This is also not the first time this happened.
I am using it in a spice sprinkler jar to mark the inside of the dishwasher, in addition to cooking with it in everything, to try and use as much as I can. Somebody help me with how to use this, this is insane.
She has no proprioception and was shocked to hear that the noise was her own foot. In the 30+ years we have been together I had always wondered why this happened to her, and I guess from reading other people with ADHD have the same problem. Proprioception seems to take a hit.
Garden Rat 