Update on Moobs in Planting Trees

Trigger warning: Slightly bloody things.

Our therapist didn’t know my surgery had gotten moved up, so that was a blast. We joked about it before hand and then I dropped the line “So my surgery isn’t going to happen in October…” [pause, looking dejected] “…because it happened a week ago!” We spent 90% of that session talking about it and how much life seems to be breathed into me. She asked for the surgeon’s name and I passed it on, because I know she sees other transgender patients. I can’t believe the next appointment is coming up this Tuesday already.

Nothing too exciting to see on the healing front, other than how much cleaner it all is now. The bruising is gone and the stitches are very clean now that I’ve been able to shower. I have to keep my back to the water and not let it beat on my grafts until my follow up appointment Sep. 30th, but everything else goes as normal now. Here’s a picture comparing August 30th to a day or two ago.

Don’t worry, the middle of the nip isn’t infected. The darker outer layer that peels off over time is still attached there and looks like a soggy scab when wet, and I had just showered. I don’t know what I was holding up there. There is zero sag on my chest. I guess it’s just habit… I say like I took frequent titty pictures or something. Anyway.

The grafts are peeling away to reveal healthy skin now, but they won’t be gone entirely for another two-ish weeks. Part of that healing process is that they slightly bleed. It’s enough to look a little gross when the dressings come off but not enough to pass beyond the thin white gauze holding down the xeroform.

Because they’ve peeled and have something against them, every now and then I get a nice stabby jab of stinging pain in them. I’ve remarked that the more I feel pain now may mean the more feeling I’ll have later, but who knows. A lot more feeling has returned since the wrap first came off, but there’s still one patch on one side that feels like a skin-on chicken thigh got left out on the kitchen counter overnight and you touch it to see if it’s warm… and it is. I told Shane that every time I get jabbed, in my mind I hear, to the tune of the chorus in Unleash the Archer’s song Test Your Metal: “STINGING NIPPAAAAHHLS.”

Oh, so. Before therapy, I noticed my healing buddy had graduated from the pupa as a beautiful little butterfly. The weekend right before surgery, mom and I went to Cadron Settlement and walked the trail up the cliff along the Arkansas River. It was later in the afternoon, early evening I guess, and after work, which was retail during tax free weekend, so we were both pretty spent. I think she could tell I was nervous and wanted to get me out in my element to relax and talk about it. It worked. I didn’t go crazy digging for cool plants and critters like I usually do, but it was fun. Ran into some old friends, like the velvet ant species at the top of the overlook that turned out to be the farthest eastern report of them on iNaturalist (cool deets in the comments here.) Still up there almost exactly three years later.

One of the moments I did stop to dig around, I’d found a well eaten plant and two leaves partially stuck together. When I tugged at them a little to see inside, it wasn’t well silked up, so this bundle of joy fell out into my hand.

I usually put them back if I disturb something, but it just kept rolling out, so to save it from ants and other threats, I took it with me, riding in my open palm the whole walk. I cleaned out an old spice/grain jar and containered it, telling it we’ll transform together and then laughing at how stupidly cliché it was. Fifteen minutes before therapy, we’re dressed and about to leave and I thought the pupa looked a little dark, so I bent down to see. I winced, as the glass was a little distorted, trying to see if it was getting ripe, infected/dead, or just a husk, and this glorious black butterfly swoops down from the lid and lands on the glass. I did a happy dance. My luck with rearing things is absolute garbage. We got a picture in before releasing it on the catio.

Then, this last weekend, my dad was off work by some fluke of scheduling, so we went out playing Pokémon Go. At the end, we stopped at the bike trail that runs along Tucker Creek nearby and hit those Pokéstops, and because I can’t help looking for creatures even when wrapped up and healing, I spotted this little one down the slope on the rocky shore of the creek.

Instinctively, I felt my heart sing “My baby!” but of course it could be an entirely different one. It’s a Horace’s Duskywing, by the way.

Playing pogo (mostly from the passenger seat) and therapy are the only two times I’ve left the house since the big day and I am living for it. Butt’s a little sore from sitting at my computer and my elbow from the armrest, but what’s that to complain about. I have a massive backlog of species photos to catalogue, a ton of writing to do, and a new laptop literally built for art to break in (which is going to mean major knocking the rust off for these hands of mine.) I have almost a year’s worth of audiobook credits to use on audible if I can find something both informative and narrated by a voice I can tolerate. I have a fifteen hour audio book on the history of salt on my wish list that’s been waiting for this moment.

I’ve been given a break on board gaming since that weekend, too, since everyone’s been working. Saturday, we played a civilization building game called Through the Ages that is hard to wrap one’s head around at first (partly due to some of the terminology used) but an admirable machine of synchronized functions once going. If mom wasn’t so nice, she’d tell you she hates it, but she keeps trying to give it a chance. Nunu has decided that his favorite place to be is snuggled up under the blanket of whoever is on the couch, so when it was clear mom wasn’t going to watch TV any time soon, he barreled into her lap and dug down into her cardigan. She fastened a few buttons around him to keep him supported. He then spent the game cackling at me like this:

Oh, and also, on one of the cards in the game, I caught this. Nice try, trying to sneak a Finnish reference by me without me noticing it.

That’s Suomenlinna Fortress in Helsinki. Kind of weird how things are popping up like that lately. From the dancing Sanna Marin video “controversy” to this to the round of trivia last week that featured Carl Mannerheim. I guess they say once you buy a car, you start to notice the make and model and even color everywhere you go. … I didn’t buy Finland. Probably just the guilt that I should be using this time off to continue learning the language, though.

I’ll hit it up when I feel a little less stressed. I’ve just finished (hopefully) the paperwork for my leave of absence. I may see if I can still apply for short term disability since I didn’t realize I had to file it at the same time and it wasn’t inherently part of the same paperwork, because of course it isn’t. I’ve had the Sedgwick login page collecting dust as a tab in my browser for two days now and I’ve been too avoidant/anxious to deal with it, but I’d really rather be paid if it’s an option. Once that’s over with, I’ll truly be able to relax until going back to work.

Oh, I was to segue from the nature stuff into this and rambled off. There’s an adorable little fountain Shane built for the cats on the catio. I took a pipette to it and sucked up some fun stuff in it to put under the microscope and found some really neat stuff. I’m going to save it for its own post. I’m going to start a book for nature science things so it doesn’t take up real estate in a normal entry and I won’t feel guilty showing a lot of pictures.

We walked around what’s left of the garden today when Shane got home. There’s still hope for two really robust vines, one watermelon and one ornamental squash. The rest has pretty much stalled out and good riddance. I love the garden, but I can’t deal with it easily right now, and if I had to pick one thing to manage a fruit out of it all, it’d have either been the tomatoes, the watermelon, or the salsify (because I’ve never had it before.)

I think I’ll do a walk around the yard with my baby micro lens and see what’s up out there right now.

I’m going to leave off with a picture of my cat looking at me like I’m a fool from the futon as I sang to him:

“Leg so hot
hot hot leg
leg so hot u fry an egg.”