What I’ve been up to… (plus cats)

I’ve thought about blogging, a lot, over the last few months. As things have happened, I’ve thought of blog titles or why I “really must post something about that”. However, blogging takes a specific type of thought, and these days, when work and life take up specific energy, I must prioritise what I do with my free time. Writing fanfic isn’t easier than blogging – but it’s more fun. Especially when WordPress has had issues whenever I try – I’m writing this on the desktop app instead of the web browser and that seems to have helped.

So, it’s been almost four months since I last posted. In that time:

• We came out of lockdown, went back to work for a few weeks, then returned to a stricter lockdown – it’s been exactly six months today since that first Tuesday of lockdown in March.
• I’ve had a number of professional successes;
• I’ve continued to be disappointed, enraged and disgusted at the behaviour of JKR;
• I’ve learnt a lot about my own resilience, privilege because of that, and how to use it, with my professional knowledge and access to supports, to manage my own mental health (a work in progress);
• Watched countless hours of livestream videos of cats (thanks to Tinykittens) and, now, falcons (thanks to the Melbourne Peregrine Falcons nesting).

I’ll talk about all of these in future blog posts – right now it’s school holidays, and I’m hoping to type and schedule a few posts while I have the time.

The topic I want to highlight today is the cats of Tinykittens. Tinykittens is a not-for-profit cat rescue organisation based out of Fort Langley, BC, Canada. They’ve been broadcasting their rescue stories live for seven years now, and I’ve been following them, on and off, for three. They specialise in Trap-Neuter-Return/Adopt programs for feral cats in their community, and in educating others about how to help similar efforts in our own communities.

I’ve learnt a lot from them, like, how to care for and socialise feral cats. Tinykittens believe all cats, no matter how feral, sick or injured, deserve a chance to be treated with compassion. We can do more than just euthanising ferals. Read more on their website: http://www.tinykittens.com/projects

I first encountered Tinykittens in 2018, with Chloe’s litter, which included the remarkable Auracuda. Aura had a very large cleft palate, which was life-threatening. If she’d been born in the feral colony, she would have died. It was touch-and-go for a long time, with around-the-clock care with tube feedings. At 179 days old, she was big enough for groundbreaking surgery which gave her a donor cleft palate (from a dog!). She’s a medical foster at Shelly’s home still, and loving life – though it’s not without challenges.

This year, the first lockdowns coincided with “kitten season”, the time when the bulk of Tinykittens’ fosters and TNR efforts are focused on pregnant feral cats. They trap the pregnant feral and hope to socialise the mama and babies for adoption. If the mama proves unwilling to “hand in her feral card” as the TK volunteers and chatters call it, she’s spayed when the kittens are old enough and returned to the colony she came from, where volunteers provide food and socialisation every day. (The hope is that eventually, the mama cat will show signs of being happy with humans – she can then be re-trapped, and fostered to adoption.)

The kittens are socialised from birth, and when old enough are adopted in pairs. I’ve seen four litters go through this process so far this year with their mothers. Twenty cats in loving homes instead of running feral and contributing to the cat overpopulation problem.

There are currently another four litters of kittens at Tinykittens HQ. They share time on the two livestreams. Two sets in particular are ready to go home, and I thought I’d profile one of those today: a mother cat, Caramel, and her boy kitten Salty. They are a very social, playful pair. All they need is an adopter. I don’t know if I have any followers in Canada, especially any who are in BC. But if I do – or if you know someone who is – maybe you or they have a cat-shaped hole in their life?

Look at their faces! Aren’t they the cutest?

Hi there….

So, it’s been a while since I posted. Let me tell you why:

1. The pandemic and shift to working from home (which began properly the day after my last post) has meant what I do with my days off has shifted and I have less energy for writing & posting;
2. What energy I have for writing things is getting funnelled either into my Twitter interactions, or other projects that I don’t want to lose steam on (fic writing, for example);
3. And – the big one – I have this tendency to avoid stuff if I’m already late with it…the ‘pressure’ of coming back after I miss self-set deadlines is annoying, so I avoid and continue to do so, by letting 1 & 2 distract me.

Going forward: I’m going to try to aim for one to two posts a month. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

The creek at the bottom of the street near where I live. These paths have been lovely to walk on during this time.

So, what have I been up to since April? Lots of things. Let’s start with work.

I was in a hands-on role prior to the lockdown, which has changed to a mostly admin/ support from afar role during this time. For nearly seven weeks (not counting the extended school holidays) myself and the team have been supporting staff, students and families by offering programs to assist regulation, ideas for things to do with household items, and most recently, info sheets about different body skills and senses. It’s been a lot of fun at times, but also a bit of a drag at others – I get my energy from working with the kids, so not being able to be with them has been hard at times.

In that sense, I’m glad that I’ll be going back to work onsite next week – the Victorian government has told all special schools to go back this coming Tuesday. Mainstream have different arrangements depending on year level. Returning to work onsite means a number of other good things – like having regular driving time again, as I work towards my licence by driving to and from school on my work days. It means a return to the physical separation of work and home, with my routines around that.

But we’ll go back to a changed environment. It’s not going to be “straight back to usual”. The rest of term – four weeks of it – will be spent re-adjusting and taking things as they come, with specific health and safety measures in place. After all, by Tuesday, we’ll have had ten weeks off – students were last onsite on Monday March 23, while staff switched to WFH from Tuesday March 24. This has been the longest that students have had off, ever. Longer than the usual summer holidays. Add that to the new health and safety measures and it makes for an interesting few weeks ahead.

A colleague reminded me that the best thing is to focus on the positives, while keeping our expectations low. Be kind to ourselves and the students while supporting our and their wellbeing. We’ll get there.

Also, big ghost/ Jedi/ virtual hugs to everyone else out there who’s worried about all the things, especially if you’re in a country overseas which is struggling more with this thing.

You can’t feel it physically, but it’s there!

What else have I been doing? Hmm. A few things.

This lockdown time has reinforced for me how my neurodivergent brain works and what it needs to be happy. Many, many routines were lost and disrupted with lockdown – like choir being cancelled (and possibly remaining so for longer than other things, due to the way the virus spreads). Also, work (naturally), church and not being able to go to gym/ BodyPump. I’ve had to find new ways to do things and acknowledge my hidden supports.

Like, working at a school means, in usual circumstances, I work in a really structured environment – three sessions a day, specific windows of time for morning tea and lunch, and so on. Then I’d added further routines on top of that – for example, driving the same route to and from work every day and only wearing my name-badge and visuals lanyard on school grounds. My work days were my biggest step days as I walked between office, classrooms and staff areas.

Losing all of that meant I had to create my own structure and find my own ways of getting that movement into my day. I’ve used Google Calendar and reminders on my laptop as my own visual schedule. I kept my morning wake-up routine, albeit a little later than usual. I did things like have a specific Chrome window for work-related internet stuff, only using/ opening work-related apps like Outlook and Webex during work hours. Regular walks became a thing, with plenty of pictures taken to mark the things I saw (two of which have featured in today’s post).

Another image of the creek at the bottom of my street. Taken a day or two ago after all the rain Melbourne had this week.

I ordered some gym weights so I could keep up with that, because I find it grounding. I joined in on a couple of virtual choir events, have been to regular virtual church services and video-called people or chatted over Discord to feel connected. LaTUCS has maintained a regular Wednesday social time on Discord since we had to stop meeting in person, which has been lovely. I’ve also found lovely online things to provide good feels (though sometimes sad, too). Like this cat-cam YouTube channel, advocating for a Trap-Neuter/Spay-Adopt-or-Release approach for feral cats. There are so many kittens on the two channels right now, with the promise of even more joining them in a few weeks. I love watching them and definitely have my favourites.

Health stuff like psych appointments became virtual, too, with telehealth.

This will continue for me for some time yet – I’ve decided that how i’m going to handle the anxiety of work going back is to recognise that this acknowledges schools as essential workplaces, with staff as essential workers. I am going to still keep physically distancing myself from most things except shops and work, at least until the end of Term 2. We’ll see how it goes. But I am proud of how I’ve managed myself during this time and want to continue that.

The other thing that’s been occupying my time is fandom. In times of stress, fandom is one of the big things that give me joy and make me feel safe and happy – though it can still be its own mess, at least I can carve out my own corner and defend/ fix it. It’d be nice if there was more to claim for my corner and less to fix, but still. Taking part in fandom in a critical way makes me happy.

That’s meant that I’ve been reading and writing fic, retweeting pertinent views on Twitter and engaging with people. I also did a few nice things for Star Wars day. I wore my hair in Rey buns (I tried Leia buns but that was too tricky *sadface*), wore my BB-8 earrings and edited some photos from Supanovas past into little flipbook movies with accompanying music. Thread here. Fun!

I think photos from this year’s Supanova count as my “last normal photos”, which is a thing that went around social media last week…people posting photos from the last “normal” thing that they did before the lockdowns. It’s rather fitting that my photo is related to fandom:

One of several photos from this year’s Supanova, where I cosplayed as Rey Skywalker. I wish I had a BB-8 of my own….

Stay safe, everyone. Until next time!

Staying home and staying connected

Hi all. Well, it’s been over a month since I last posted. *sigh*. I wanted to post more thoughts, sooner, but got caught up in work stuff and when that happens, I don’t want to think enough for blogging on my days off. Motivation goes away. Then the whole thing with this virus started.

I have many, many thoughts, but these days it’s often easier to share them in short-form conversations, such as Twitter threads. You can follow me there if you like. (I’ve been very into fandom on there lately!)

This post was started two to three weeks ago, but then WordPress had a hissy fit when I tried to post it and refused to save. I’m just hoping this one works. It feels like it’s been three months since then, not three weeks. Supanova feels so far away too…

Supanova Melbourne is going to be my marker in all of this in terms of when things started. I attended with some caution, but on the second weekend of March, cases in Australia were still limited to international arrivals. I’m also privileged in that I’m not immunocompromised or otherwise at risk, so the risk felt minimal. A week later, Supanova Gold Coast only went ahead because our Prime Minister decided to time the first community restrictions to start on the Monday, not the Saturday. If Supanova GC had been first and Melbourne second, I wouldn’t have gone to it, because things changed so much so fast in that first week. It’s surreal.

How are we all going, people? Hope you’re as okay as possible, right now, physically and mentally. In Victoria, it’s week three of shutdown. (Australia, too, but the way this crisis has been managed so far, the states have had to take the lead and done everything slightly differently to each other, so I’m referencing my home state only.) No-one’s allowed out of the house unless it’s for one of four very specific reasons, with specifications in the fine print. We’ve been told to expect changes in some form for at least six months.

Councils have closed libraries and pools/ activity centres, initially until the start of April, but now indefinitely. University choirs, including my local one, LaTUCS, have paused or suspended activities. (Even this year’s national intervarsity choral festival has been postponed and won’t happen this year – a first!) My church has gone virtual, live-streaming pre-recorded services. Schools will be operating with online/ remote learning procedures and end-of-year exams have been postponed.

Despite the inevitability of the Victorian shutdown decision, its suddenness still took me by surprise. While I’m very pleased it happened – it gives me confidence that our premier and his government are on top of things as much as they can be – it’s still disconcerting.

My brain thrives on predictability and certainty. I was anxious during the week prior to the shutdown due to the uncertain circumstances. I had a meltdown after I went home on the last day of onsite school work actually, because it had built too much. It’s still unsettling that this is going to continue indefinitely and I don’t know when I’ll be able to be physically close to my friends, family and colleagues again.

I’m sure I’m not the only one struggling with feelings around this. In these times, we all need to be gentle with ourselves. We need to support those who work in essential services, like health care workers, cleaners & garbage collectors, posties, and supermarket (etc.) workers. Give them a smile, don’t be a dick to them. The current chaos isn’t their fault.

Honour your own feelings at this time. It’s scary, frustrating, tiring, sad. I’ve found acknowledging the feeling and brainstorming what could help is useful. As well as things like seeking out favourite activities, watching calming/ funny/ moving videos, snuggling with warm (and/or weighted) blankets, taking warm showers and listening to music. All the usual advice applies about trying to get enough sleep, food, physical activity, mental stimulation and social contact. Keyword there being “trying to”.

I’ve been creating daily schedules for myself using Google Calendar. They’re loose and flexible but provide my brain with the structure it needs. I schedule needed activities first, so I can reward myself with the wanted ones after. I also make sure to include reminders for breaks for food and movement.

One of the things I’ve organised are scheduled “virtual café” catchups with friends and family. The idea is we each grab a beverage of choice then phone or video call at a pre-determined time. I love having catchups with friends, and moving this online during this time seems like a great way to stay connected when every other way of socialising is restricted.

Another idea is to do something like what’s suggested by the Black Dog Institute in this article: a self-care plan. They have a template you can follow, it’s quite easy. Give it a go; we all need to think about taking care of ourselves in this time, especially if we’re supporting others.

Everyone needs to figure out how to do stay connected during these times. What works for you? (Please comment! I’d love to get some virtual conversations going!)

I’m going to aim for blogging once a week – I want to get into the habit again. Until next time, remember you can find me on Twitter, like I said at the start of this post.

Reviewing the past…

I thought I’d schedule this as I’ve been reflecting lately about milestones.

Everyone is doing that “10 years: then and now” thing on social media, posting photos of themselves and reflecting on where they were in 2009 compared to now, in 2019. People are getting sentimental about the fact that it’s another decade passing.

Really, though, as much as I like number categories, especially round ones, anyone can celebrate decades passing and milestones. It doesn’t have to be neatly packaged into dated decades. We can celebrate the little and big things all the time.

Humans love time and rhythms. It’s why we love doing the “look back” thing, I think. It’s also a form of processing. I like to remember things – heck, I keep a daily journal because of that (and for processing them).

Just remember, we aren’t our successes or failures – and each person’s story is different. It’s what makes us who we are.

Having said that, I’ve written down some milestones below. There are many milestones I could pick out. I’m young and have been fortunate.

“Little” ones include going to some lovely musicals and participating in lovely choral performances myself, as well as trying new things, like fencing, BodyPump/ gym and the SCA.

Other (bigger?) ones include:

• joining my university choir (LaTUCS) and travelling interstate to attend my first intervarsity choral festival;
• meeting my partner there;
• becoming LaTUCS vice-president then president
  • through these and other roles, learning how to better work in professional teams with people in real ways that uni doesn’t always teach you, including some hefty conflict management.
• beginning to move out of home, learning how to best take care of myself and what works for me.

This year/ in the past twelve-ish months, I:

• finished uni and then graduated with a double degree in Bachelor of Health Sciences and Masters of Occupational Therapy Practice
• moved in with my partner in Melbourne
• got a job in a specialisation of Occupational Therapy that I really love: Paediatric OT, working with autistic kids.
  • As of Friday the 20th, I’ve officially had a full year of employment as well as four school terms of work. Awesome stuff.
• bought a car together with my partner and made great progress with getting my drivers licence (I’m hoping I’ll get it in the new year)

Throughout it all, I’ve done a heckton of development in understanding myself, including my disabilities, my sexuality, my faith and mental health – and from that, I’m learning what self-care works for me and how to get it.

I’ve struggled at times, but fortunately I’ve usually had supports around me or have gained access to them. I’ve come through okay.

I hope you have too.

Here’s to the past, the present and the future, for all of us.

Happy New Year.

Life update

How are we doing?

I’m writing this on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Thank goodness for those, because the rest of the weekend is busy – the week has been too. I’ve had choir rehearsal three times since Tuesday, a work end-of-year event last night, and the first carols concert today. Tomorrow is the big concert – if you’re attending the Monash Carols by Candlelight event at Jells Park, you’ll see me as a soprano as part of the choir. Should be fun, if a bit exhausting. I’ve already scheduled Monday as a crash day. I love singing and carols but I need my downtime too, especially when all the events are on the same weekend. What’s your favourite carol?

Throughly fed up with politics at the moment. Australia is led by a fascist government. If you’re in the UK, vote so Labour will win – politics is not a bloody popularity contest!!

It was International Day of People with Disability on Tuesday, a day to “to promote understanding of the issues facing people with disability, and to push for change”. On that theme, if you want to read a couple of young people’s perspectives on their disability, check out Ben’s and Carletta’s stories from the Every Australian Counts website.

I’m relaxing this lazy Saturday afternoon by listening to Queen videos. If I had a time machine and money, I’d go attend famous musical performances, like Live Aid. That reminds me… I need to create my 2019 song playlist.

The holidays are nearly here, meaning that in two weeks I’ll have completed a year of work! I’ve learnt a lot during that time. #proud

Hope your lead-up to the holiday period is smooth, that you have enough time off, and your holidays are relaxing!

Reblogging for the post title

Big mood: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/10/16/its-already-past-five-and-my-brain-is-the-consistency-of-mush-so-please-accept-this-picture-of-two-tuxedo-cats-who-may-possibly-be-bored/

It’s been a funny week. Admin week due to transition reports needing to be done, meaning no official class time. Except for last session tomorrow, as attending as usual there will mean I get information for those reports. I have decided I dislike admin-only weeks. I prefer working with the students.

Also, my executive functioning crashed (lol, that sounds like it’s a computer program. Hm… “executive_functioning.exe”?) today after gym and shopping and all I wanted to do was fluff around online… eating dinner (which partner cooked, due to the aforementioned crash) only helped slightly. Sleep will help it reboot (heh heh) in the morning better.

Good night!

Reflections

Hi again!

I cringed when I looked at the date of my last published post and realised I hadn’t written a thing since August 14th. That’s nearly eight weeks – wowzers! Guess I got distracted by other things. Hopefully this month will be better, though I make no promises; I’ve learnt by now how hectic life can be and how easily distracted I sometimes get. (Case in point: I meant to start this blog post this morning, not at 21:30 at night. 😛 )

So, in the past eight weeks, what have I been up to?

• I’ve attended another SCA event and had some fun there. I think I might stick around. 😉
• I’ve done lots of admin for work
• I’ve learnt how to do my version of a fine motor/ handwriting program at work (work in progress)
• Same with an emotional regulation program
• I watched the intensity of the Global Climate Strikes – young people to the front for the future! (I hope to write more about this at some point)
• I’ve attended many hours of choir rehearsal, as the semester “sped up” and we prepared in earnest for the concerts of this semester
• I’ve baked various different things, in order to have something to eat for breakfast that I can eat on the go and doesn’t easily go soggy (I’m fussy about that 😉 )
• I’ve tried out a few recipes, too – hopefully I’ll put them on the blog soon.
• I got sections of my hair coloured – I’ll show you a pic or two some other time, when I’m more organised
• I’ve learnt things about myself, really trying to understand how and why I think or feel or do things a particular way
• I watched, with my family, from home as the Richmond Tigers won another premiership – go Tiges! – and reflected on club cultures and community.
• I went camping (properly, in a tent!) and had fun – campfires, so many animals, toasted marshmallows and fruit damper and coal-roasted potatoes…
• Oh and last Friday? I performed in one of the choir concerts of this semester – MonUCS’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. I Had Some Thoughts after that…

In the list above, I mentioned that I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection about what makes me, ‘me’. I have several passions – some are small or about “things”, e.g. my favourite animals are dogs, and I’m one of those people who always likes to say hi to the dog, and often makes up what an animal’s thinking based on their expression/ behaviour. Other passions are bigger and are more, I realise, things “to do” and “to be”. Like story-telling (which I’ve spoken about before and will do so again later) – and music; listening to it, relaxing with it, and performing it.

Last Friday’s concert was fantastic. It was hard work – I wasn’t as relaxed as I was in other concerts. But I feel really happy about it all the same. The reason for that is how many people watched us. We had a decent audience (a fact I’d been slightly concerned about, given the large capacity of the venue) – and more importantly to me, a number of people were there who’d personally either bought a ticket from me, or came at my recommendation, because I was singing.

Afterwards, they were of course the people whose opinions I cared about the most. So to see their happiness and excitement at what we’d performed – pardon the pun, but it made my heart sing. When someone else gets a thrill from watching me do something I love and do it well – it makes me very happy. It fills me up, completely.

Partly, it’s because it is a gift that is shared. I am forever sharing “me” through my passions. But society’s rules and expectations, the way that quirkiness is looked down on because it’s different, meant that I struggled with fitting in for a long time. Anxiety, especially social anxiety, is a leftover gremlin from that. Finding LaTUCS, then the rest of the choir network, helped me become more comfortable in being “me” – because in the choir(s), we’re united through a love of music and a love of sharing that through choral singing. Regardless of our differences.

Being able to share that with the people I love, my friends and family, is wonderful. So I say to you: support your friends in their passions. Go see us perform, or ask us about our current project. Watch us light up and understand: It means the world to us. Often, we’ve spent a long time hiding or minimising our passions and ourselves. Being supported and seeing our friends enjoy what we do? It makes us feel seen. And loved.

Thank you to everyone who came to last Friday’s performance.

A reblog: Brains are amazing.

Check out the following. I enjoyed it and related to it. Brains are amazing

This week has been good – first week back of term and of choir rehearsals too, getting into the routine again.

It’s also signalled the likely death of my laptop. The screen went kaput at work, so I’ll be working out of the resource room for a while until I get a new one.

Tomorrow marks fifty years since humans first walked on the moon. I think that’s awesome. I’ve always been fascinated by the stars and outer space.

Ugh. June is the month of sickness apparently

Hi all. Last week I did lots of fun and busy things, so no blog posts.

I’d hoped to remedy that this week, but woke up crook with some sort of gastro thing on Monday. I thought it had gone away by the end of Tuesday, but it reappeared yesterday. Yuck.

So I’m on the couch today with only podcasts and hydrolyte solution for company. (I’d like to do more, but anything that makes my eyes focus for too long isn’t helpful to recovery.)

Maybe after the GP visit today I’ll go back to bed. I slept through the afternoon on Monday.

*sigh* why did this had to hit the last week of term instead of the first school holiday week? idk. I wanted to do fun end-of-term stuff with the students…

In the meantime, I’m listening to a podcast that I’d saved from last year about the idea of a universal basic income and other so-called radical ideas. Fascinating stuff. I must remember to get the book they’re talking about, “Utopia for realists”. Sounds interesting.

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/conversations/id94688506

Curried sausages

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My grandma (Dad’s mum) makes great curried sausages. I asked her for the recipe, then tested it.

Grandma’s recipe

Ingredients:

• sausages, gravox, curry powder, cornflour, margarine, veggies

Method:

1. Boil sausages then cool and chop
2. Sauce of gravox, tsp curry powder, cornflour, margarine
3. Keep stirring so it doesn’t burn 
4. Combine sausages with sauce and veg plus grated apple

My Adaption

I prefer to chop and fry the sausages, then make the sauce around them then add the veg. It tastes so good!