April 17 2023

New editor and delays

So after I realized the issues I face with editing — mostly visual and focus issues — I decided to make an editor to help. And it’s been amazing. Learning to code has really allowed me to create my own support tools, and it’s just opened up so much. I’m going to be using this to write, it’s been so helpful, and I’m really excited about it.

Unfortunately, I’m faced with old challenges this week and who knows how long, as my allergies flare. At first I thought it was a cold because my throat just became raw a couple of days ago in the matter of minutes, and I had no clue why. As it lasted, and the heat increased with the weather, I assumed environmental allergies from the sudden explosion of Spring. It took until a day or so ago to realize it was the new cat litter we got, and it’s really bad.

We stopped any kind of ‘dust’ based cat litter ages ago when we realized how bad it was for the cats and humans. Somehow, those lessons were forgotten — I swear I just become complacent, you know? Looking for convenience. And these litters make those promises of “no dust”, but they’re fucking lies. I don’t know what the standard is for dust in the cat litter industry, but however they’re defining it, they’re full of shit.

So I’ve been sick. And it’s been the worst version of the allergies, meaning the exhaustion combined with the difficulty moving my limbs, and fucking save me now, the face pain has been sparking again. It’s been over a year free of that excruciating pain, and one fuck up and I have a house full of dust and the screaming face pain is building. I’m hoping having a bunch of teeth pulled means there are less nerves in my face to react, but I can’t know. Not until the allergic responses get so bad that it’s beyond anything inflammation wise, and at that point, if it’s not screaming pain, it’s severe cognition loss, which is its own hell.

I might be living out of my car a bit until I can get the dust under control — or just to avoid my allergies reaching that kind of extreme again. I don’t know. I’m going to talk to my allergist tomorrow, see if they have anything useful to recommend. At this point, I don’t understand the lack of solutions from the medical community. I can’t be the only one who gets screaming face pain from allergies. I can’t be. It’s clearly an inflammation response that is happening in the nerves of the face, and that I keep getting blank fucking looks and no help after all these years isn’t just nonsense, it’s a failure of the medical system. This is an a + b = c problem, and I shouldn’t be the one to have to keep pointing it out.

Whatever. I’ll be writing while I can. Like I said, the face pain is more a threat, and less full blown screaming right now, so I’m hoping to cut it all off before it reaches that point. I need HEPA filters and I’m going to have to break out the construction level air filter that was powering the clean room when I needed a clean room, and see if I can capture the dust asap — but it’s going to be days for new filters to arrive. Have to wipe down every surface, walls, ceilings, floors, everything. The fine particulates of the dust is just as bad as whatever is hitching a ride on the particles to my system right now, hence the hoarse throat.

One day, if I ever get my life back long enough to not be struggling just to survive, I’m building a toilet designed for cats. At their level, so if you have a cat with mobility issues, they don’t need to risk falling from a height to use the bathroom. I don’t know why the fuck humans have normalized raw sewage and dust in their houses as “sanitary” when it comes to cats, but it’s a fucking problem for everyone involved. If you have allergies, or find that you just don’t feel well at home, and you have a cat, that litter box should be your first concern. There’s nothing okay about 2023 still not solving this shit. We don’t have chamber pots anymore for this very reason, so why keep with litter boxes?