where everything's not so fixed

Also: coffee klatsch, coffee klatch

an informal social gathering at which coffee is served.

chocolate espresso banana jam

- mashed and boiled banana - semisweet chocolate, melted - instant espresso - creamy peanut butter ?? - pectin

as a gelatin (light to dark):

- boiled, mashed, strained banana - creamy peanut butter + water (1/2 cup + 1 cup per jell-o jigglers recipe) - prepared espresso - finely chopped semisweet chocolate

pb&j jigglers (for peanut butter): https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/recipe/182788/pbj-jell-o-jigglers

raspberry chocolate gelatin (for chocolate gelatin): https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/raspberry-chocolate-gelatin-recipe-2042837

Since this prompt is more image based than writing based, I decided to share my bullet journal spreads that I use partly or wholly to track diabetes metrics: The first is my quarterly spread, where I log my daily habits, which includes my fasting and bedtime blood sugars. I don’t often test my blood sugar outside of those two times, unless I’m having a noticeable low or feel drowsy and/or have eaten something I don’t know how to bolus for. I have lows (69 mg/dL or lower), my target range (70-126 mg/dL), an acceptable range (127-160 mg/dL), above target (161-185 mg/dL) and high (186 mg/dL and higher) color-coded for easy review. I also keep track of my daily carb intake and any changes to my infusion sets (the orange lightning bolts), reservoirs (the meandros-ish spiral symbols), and batteries (the AAs), and whenever I upload my pump data to Medtronic’s CareLink portal (the up arrow). I also use the bottom boxes to track monthly averages, which allows me to roughly estimate my HbA1C based on the fasting and bedtime blood sugar numbers for any three months at a time.

I’ve experimented with plenty of ways over the years to track my blood sugars—something you’re supposed to do when you’re on MDI (multiple daily injections), including tracking your carbs, but that’s basically obsolete now for a lot of people with insulin pumps and CGMs (continuous glucose monitors)—from writing down every test, every carb, every dose, and every time to the minute that each of these things happened, to writing nothing down at all. Too much micromanagement is exhausting, and I have a tendency to “go big or go home,” which leaves me feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Before I started bullet journaling, I just let my pump record my sugars and doses and carbs, but then that was the far opposite extreme: I didn’t have enough information, and so I wasn’t in enough control.

In 2018 I started recording my blood sugars in my bullet journal, but it wasn’t really until this year that I came up with the beauty in the picture here: All my stats in one eight-page spread, color-coded and standardized and easy to eyeball and thus easy to use. I haven’t had to worry about skimming pages to find out when I changed my site last, or to look at my fasting and bedtime sugar trends to determine whether anything needs to be tweaked or added or avoided. I’ve already decided I’ll continue to use this quarterly spread to track these vital measurements, though next year I may add an additional set of pages for tracking additional tests between getting out of and back into bed.

The second spread I wanted to share is my inventory tracker for my diabetes supplies and my changelog for basal and bolus rate adjustments. You can tell this is from before the pandemic, since there’s no point in keeping anything in my backpack anymore. I don’t keep up with this page as diligently as I should, but practice makes perfect… maybe next year I’ll have that one fully integrated in my routine.

For anyone who has to keep a paper diary, or who just wants to!, you should consider starting a bullet journal. It’s organizational, artistic (if you want it to be—it can be monochromatic and utilitarian if that’s what you like; it can also be full of colorful markers and stickers and stamps!), and even meditative, and can be used for just tracking your diabetes, or your entire life. Personally, I live out of my journal; some people have one just for work, or one just for life—the beauty of it is how free-form it is. I feel like it’s been instrumental in my diabetes management. (If you’re more of a digital record keeper, there are apps for this for tablets and smartphones that people swear by, too!)

I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 22. I was just finishing up my first semester as a senior at my university, but I had been experiencing strange issues for the last few months—since at least summer break, if not that whole year. I had lost a significant amount of weight since that January (which I had attributed to stopping birth control, and there still may be some truth to that); I was becoming disoriented when I got drunk; I was excruciatingly thirsty and hungry all the time, chugging gallons of orange juice like nobody’s business; I was going to the water fountain and the bathroom so often it was cutting into my time spent in my classes; I was having brutal middle-of-the-night leg cramps; and I developed dry sores at the corners of my lips and uncomfortable dry skin in general.

One major event that convinced me I needed to see the doctor was when I couldn’t complete an oral exam for my Spanish class because I was blanking on and stumbling over my words. This was unusual for me, and my professor at the time knew it. She stopped me mid-bumble and said she was giving me an A, explaining that it was because she knew I was capable, but that I was clearly in distress, or something was otherwise wrong with me, and she urged me to seek help for whatever it was. I had also become disoriented celebrating my birthday party that semester and had popped all the blood vessels under one of my eyes from a resulting fall (which was also a major red flag about my health), so this professor was clearly seeing this pattern that I don’t think I would have seen myself. (And bless her for being so compassionate!)

I chalked that exam snafu up to having been hungover and the vocabulary being hard (ironically I believe it was medical vocabulary – inyecciones and such), and the drinking incidents to, well, drinking, and so the urgency that took me to the Urgent Care where I was diagnosed was little more than chronic inconvenience. My mom took me and my brother there when we came home for Christmas break, essentially just a check-up. She was in the other room with my brother when the medical assistant who did my blood work came back in and told me I had diabetes.

Honestly, most of that experience is a blur. I know my blood sugar at diagnosis was 555, and I know the medical assistant who announced my diagnosis said something to the effect of, “She doesn’t look that sick.” I know my mom and my brother came into the room with me while the staff at the UC tried to explain what this meant and how things would have to change for me, but I was in information overload. (I am extremely thankful they were there, because I don’t think I retained any of that information myself.) They told us we could go get something to eat and then come back for them to get me insulin pens and teach me how to use them. In hindsight maybe they should have gotten us squared away with the insulin part before unleashing me on food… alas.

I guess I have a weird relationship with “coming out.” Partly it’s the concept itself—what does it mean to “come out?” what qualifies as such? And partly it’s whether there is or is not a point to it, at least individually for me.

When I think of “coming out,” I think of an announcement. Like some grand gesture, the way people post Facebook statuses for all their friends to become aware at once. Or like sitting your parents or your partner down to talk and telling them intimately and seriously.

When I think of all the ways I’ve identified myself as queer, none of them ever felt like “coming out.” I don’t remember ever sitting anybody down and being like, “This is what I am! Any questions?” But maybe I did and I just don’t recall.

I remember questioning, and discussing. Particularly a conversation in the car with my mom when I was in high school, when I had found the word “asexual” on the internet and I floated it as what I might be. She suggested it could be caused by trauma or other disruptions at crucial development points (like moving states when I might have developed crushes, and an abusive situation when I might have developed sexual attraction), and that it was okay even if I never did feel that way. I don’t think I had intended that conversation to go that direction, but it was good that it did.

There have been conversations about limits in my lifestyle life that became conversations about my gender identity. My partner knows sometimes I want to be treated like a boy, and that for the most part I cringe when feminine labels are applied emphatically to me, and our relationship has become much more fluid and flexible and queer at least linguistically as a result of those lifestyle negotiations and discussions.

I’ve advocated for gender neutral circle colors on a chat room I go to (which was in the works according to the site admin anyway, but still! success!) and use masculine pronouns there (and have all my oddball identifiers in my profile); Facebook uses they/them for me; I’ve regularly shared memes, surveys, and other things about asexuality, pronouns, and LGBTQ, queer, and trans topics.

It never felt like “coming out,” though.

And then I get to: Why bother doing it anyway? What does it change to shout it from the rooftops?

But I know that this comes from a place of privilege for me—I’ve never felt like I had to hide who I was. I go from questioning to certain to casually out, privately like... like dyeing your hair and not asking your friends for input, and not sharing before and after pictures, I guess. (It’s hard to find an analog to “coming to a conclusion or making a decision privately and then not announcing the process or the result on social media” at this point, it turns out.) Anyway, I’ve had conversations about my identity with my partner, of course, because it does affect him and our relationship; I’ve discussed it in groups on Facebook about these identities, because having outlets and kind of taking on an advice-giver role are good for my mental health; and I’ve discussed it with my siblings, though mostly as part of a larger discussion about what gender identity and sexual orientation mean for people. But my friends I have on Facebook or people in other spaces of my life don’t necessarily need to know this information, so why share?

But, I know representation matters. And that’s not just for TV shows and movies, that’s for real-life, too. I don’t think coming out is as important as being out, and I’ve always been out, inasmuch as I’ve thought it relevant.

So, I guess this, then, is a “coming out” post? even though I’m doing it on Tumblr with an audience of no one with no intention of making this A Thing... here goes: I’m a genderfluid asensual aromantic asexual, possibly demiboy or masculine-of-center though I am most frequently in “blob” state (neutral, maybe agender?). I think I spend about 80% of my life in blob, 15% in masc and the last 5% feeling fem. And if I could find a word for “sometimes has exaggerated romantic ideas about one or two women, but they’re more about romantic gestures than feelings” that’s a word I’d add to my alphabet soup as well, though I prefer to avoid further microlabels since it’s already a lot as it is.