"it takes someone bleeding to get you believing."

I'm perpetually underdressed, mostly by design.

There are very few parts of my body that I like enough to show off. Possibly none. But there's a whole lot of ink that I am very, very fond of and I get to carry art around and I want everyone to know. And even though the culture has changed, and even though I still feel like I'm not tattooed _enough_ or even significantly tattooed, I still like the subtle undercurrent of give-few-fucks.  (I never give no fucks, but I've calibrated the scale enough that I know what the bare minimum is and I'm often giving that, while simultaneously remaining as vigilant as possible because everything that moves really is a wolf).

And maybe I like showing off my high pain tolerance a little bit. 

I had my salpingo-oopherectomy early enough in development of BRCA testing and surgery that no one thought to warn me about menopause. (well, to be fair, my coordination of care was shit and they may have all thought someone else had told me.) They checked in with me a bunch about fertility but no one warned me it was a possibility that I was going to lose my shit and be perpetually reminded of how much of my shit I was losing by these overwhelming waves of heat and sweat.  Flash, my ass. Though I guess hot calamity doesn't have the same ring.  So I stopped wearing anything that didn't have at least at least some cotton in it, I did some disastrous poly, I hated everything, and I especially hated being warm, hence layers.  Ridiculous numbers of layers.  Layers of the sort that when you board a bus you're instantaneously awkward.  

Eventually, once my boobs and I parted ways, HRT was finally an option and now I'm headed towards an age where my oncological gynecologist is making noises about it being time to part ways with my beloved pills and I am super-punting on that one because fuck going through that a second time, even if it would be slightly less like being drop kicked off a cliff in to a pit of spikes.  

And, well, I'm short and fat and I have a weird facial droop and displayed to advantage, boobs can get me a little less eye contact.    

I'm hating how aware of my face I am these days.  Zoom is merciless at reminding me about the existence of my face (and I know there are ways I don't have to, and options to keep cameras turned off, but I prefer seeing what others are seeing and participating and all those things.)   The droop on one side and the scar on the other, which I'm relatively sure other people can't see until I point it out to them, are ever more apparent to me.  And my glasses are always crooked and I didn't know that the difference in prescription strength made my eyes different sizes until the pandemic. And now I've moved my desk to somewhere more comfortable for me but with worse lighting, so we'll see how that works out.    

I'm not sure if it's a zoom thing or a regular thing that I didn't know I did, but I smile so much more than I ever thought.   At some point, someone told me that the downturned corners of my eyes and downturned corners of my mouth made me always look like I was frowning and I just sort of assumed that was true.  

I'm starting to try to put together a feast day menu or two if I'm lucky, spaced two weeks apart the day of with J&S and then two weeks later with Hands and Hips.   And that's both sweet and bittersweet and seven other things which I'm not sure I want to look at directly yet.   At least Honeycomb Creamery is doing cakes again.