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There’s a Jenny Craig ad featuring a woman sobbing because she realized there were no photos of her and her infant daughter, but now she’s lost a bunch of weight she can take SO MANY PHOTOS and REALLY LIVE HER LIFE.

This commercial makes me so, so angry.

Look.

There is nothing preventing you from taking photos of your fat ass, or living your life, but you. I super hate the societal message that women who are fat should hide away and never be seen, should exist in a state of shame, should do everything they can to reduce their physical bodies to an acceptable size. It leads to ill health both physical and mental, and it leads to people putting their lives on hold, waiting forever for the magic moment when they’re slim enough, when they’re good enough, when they’re deserving enough, to actually live.

Get out there and live.

Bust out the camera and take photos of yourself, have family and friends photograph you.

Then look at the photos.

You may hate the way you look, but seriously, the more you look at them the more used you get to them, and the more you’ll get to like them. Pretty soon you’ll stop focusing on your belly or thighs or double chin or weird hair or the way your shirt bunched up or your crooked teeth or your zits or whatever the problems are. You’ll just see you. And you’ll see you having fun and doing things and being with people you love.

I have very few photos of my mom, because she spends most of her time hiding from the camera “feeling fat.” Looking through family photo albums there’s a weird sense that she doesn’t exist. When she is photographed, she’s usually hiding behind someone or something, or half out of the photo, or something like that. One of my favorite photos of her is her on the stairs with a terrible haircut, a perm that went awry. My dad took it to document her awful hair, and she’s laughing, and you can see her brilliant smile and sense of humor and how gorgeous and full of life she is. Another snapshot is her on the day she graduated from college, holding her diploma triumphantly, in her weird hippy shirt and her hair longer than she usually wore it. She’s so alive, so present. Her favorite photo of herself, one that she carried around in her wallet for years (and might still have), is her standing in the sunlight in cut off jean shorts. She’s at her slimmest, and she keeps it to remind herself of how perfect she was then. She was taking prescription amphetamines and spending time she normally would have been sleeping running on treadmills to use up the excess energy. She was also in her 20s and hadn’t had kids yet. But oh, how she clings to that photo. It’s like something out of the long-running (now ended) syndicated comic “Cathy.” I mean, at one point, Cathy pulls out a photo of herself at her slimmest and compares her current fat self to it.

There’s a quote I ran across once and now I can’t find it again. I don’t know if it’s from a story, a blog post, a song lyric, or what. “We were young and beautiful and didn’t even know it.”

We’re all young and beautiful, and we don’t realize it, don’t recognize it. Especially those of us raised female. We worry about our fat and our breasts and hips being too large or not large enough. We fret over our skin and hair and posture. We’re perfect, but convinced we are imperfect and those imperfections make us unlovable. And we get older and bigger and more wrinkled and our hair thins and we lament our lost pasts. Why didn’t we take more photos? Why didn’t we run around enjoying our bodies? Why did we spend so much time hating ourselves? But we’re still unkind to our bodies, still viewing them with suspicions, still expecting perfection and disappointed in the reality. We had from the camera, too fat, too wrinkled, too female.

And our family looks through photo albums and we’re not present, we’ve made ourselves invisible.

It’s easy to pick up a camera and take on photo taking duties. It’s a service. It’s part of the emotional heavy lifting that’s expected of women. But it’s also an excuse. If you’re handling the photos nobody else has to. If you’re the only photographer, it’s an easy out, an easy excuse to not be in the photographs yourself.

Please stop doing this.

Take photographs of yourself, let others take photos of you. Leave a record of your life, be present in your life. Just live. Stop thinking about your body and live, exist. Give yourself permission to exist and take up space. Stop being afraid of not being perfect, not being good enough. Stand in front of the camera and just be.

When Niko was an infant, my sister-in-law snapped of photo of me sacked out on the couch holding him. I hated the photo when I first saw it, the first tens of times I saw it. I’m so fat. Look at my chins. Look at that huge mole. Ugh, my hair. Ugh, my hairy arms. Ugh, my crooked glasses. But the more I saw it the more used to it I got. Yes, I’m fat. That’s how my body is. I’m fat and I’m hairy and that’s just me, it’s how I am. And look at me, there with my baby, relaxed and happy and both of us safe and comfortable and asleep. It’s an intimate moment, a photo of us just being together and loving each other. I love that photo now, and Niko loves to look at it.

You are who you are. Please, please, stop putting your life on hold until you’re a better version of yourself. Start your life now and actually live it.

And take some photos.

You’ll appreciate it later.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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It’ll last longer is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

You’ve probably seen the latest Dove viral ad campaign. It’s a video available on you tube about how totally awesome Dove is because of their decade long “Real Beauty” campaign and how now they’re going after the people who are REALLY evil: “art directors, graphic designers, and photo retouchers.” Not ad executives and companies, no. Just those evil artists who for reasons TOTALLY UNKNOWN make women feel bad ON PURPOSE about their bodies. But how to “catch them in the act!!!” and “make them reconsider”? They needed a plan! So they created a Photoshop Action and released it into the wild, where it will be used by amateurs who want to make wedding and baby photographs look better. Billed as a “skin glow effect” they posted it on reddit and other places where art directors, graphic designers, and professional photo retouchers TOTALLY hang out and get their totally professional Photoshop Actions, Brushes, etc from.

In reality, all the Action does is revert all changes made to the original image and pop up a scolding message.

Don’t manipulate our perceptions of real beauty.

Of course, to undo that reversion, all one has to do is hit… well… undo.

BAM! A totally effective message that will OBVIOUSLY CHANGE THE WORLD FOREVER!

Or, more likely, go viral and make Dove look totally awesome and progressive because they just love women so much and are so willing to take on those horrible evil photo retouchers who are just the WORST, right?

Dove, remember, is owned by Unilver which has those atrocious Axe commercials (women! they are fuck beasts for fucking!) and SlimFast (women: you are fat cows, stop eating!). If they really wanted to push for long acting real social change, they could apply pressure to Unilver to at the very least stop marketing Axe the way it’s marketed.

Of course, they could also change their own advertising as well.

I mean, if Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, maybe they shouldn’t find new body parts for women to be ashamed of? I, for one, never knew my armpits were ugly until Dove told me so.

If Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market Firming Creams, and their criteria for casting calls wouldn’t be quite as shameful (beautiful skin and hair only! No zits or scars, those are GROSSSSSSSS).

If Dove (and Unilever) really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market skin-lightening creams (which are physically as well as emotionally harmful) around the world.

Like diet companies who co-opt HAES and Size Acceptance verbage, and companies who practice Greenwashing, Dove is taking Body Acceptance language and using it to sell product. They are telling women what they think women want to hear for the sole reason that they want to sell products to those women. There’s nothing inherently wrong with companies advertising their wares. What’s wrong is the incredibly hypocritical advertising Dove uses. They aren’t trying to change the world, but they very willing to use social justice and activism language to sell their products and their subtle form of body hate. Dove doesn’t give a shit about your body or how beautiful you feel, they just want your money.

One of the worst things is that Dove is actually in a position to make actual changes in the industry. Instead of telling everyone that we should pat them on the back for promoting size acceptance and bodily diversity (while actually showing a pretty narrow range of sizes and skin colors), they could just use a wide variety of women of different body types and ethnicities. They could show instead of telling. They could push for Unilever to do the same with other ad campaigns as well. And they could pressure Unilever to drop the body shaming, sexist, manipulative language and images that other Unilever products use. But Dove isn’t doing that. Instead, they’re creating viral videos that do the bulk of advertising for them (saving them money) and creating good will among their users. It’s an effective ad campaign, but it’s also an insulting one.

Dove claims that they’re against distorting perceptions of beauty, which is harmful to women, while telling women that their armpits are ugly and their skin is saggy and their scars are gross and their frizzy hair is uggsville and their dark/uneven skin is THE WORST, but hey it’s ok because they can spend money on products to make them prettier YAY GIRL POWER WOOOOO now how about a nice round of SlimFast for all? The hypocrisy is thick on the ground.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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Dove wants your money and will tell you what you want to hear is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

February is my birth month. I’m turning 34 this year, on the 25th.

I’m very comfortable with my 30s, but lately I’ve been really feeling every year. Add this to my clinical Depression and Anxiety Disorder and this rough winter (I suspect that, like a lot of people, I have SAD which is… really aptly named) and I’m having a lot of trouble taking care of myself lately. So this month I’m investing time and effort in self-care. A lot of it is really ridiculous stuff that most people don’t have trouble with, like remembering to take my supplements to help with my pernicious anemia and skin condition (they’re just pills! once a day! why can’t I consistently take them?) and putting athelete’s foot ointment on my toenails and feet twice a day. And then I get all frustrated at myself because really! This is baby stuff! How can I call myself an adult if I can’t manage to do this?

So I’m trying really hard to do that basic stuff, to take basic care of myself, because I deserve it and also my family deserves it, because I function better when I’m taking care of myself.

I’m also trying to work out more, especially doing exercises for my back. Because I feel better and function better when I’m not in pain.

The days are already getting longer and I’ve noticed my mood and energy improving. Hopefully this continues.

I spend a lot of my life feeling less than functional, less than. I really don’t like it, but it’s hard to scrape together the energy and will out of the dregs of exhaustion to make changes, to take control. It’s so much easier to just lie back and float, to spend as much time asleep as I can.

I’m also thinking of what I want to do for my birthday (and Niko’s birthday after). Right now, I’m tentatively planning on pizza and watching “John Dies at The End.”

You know, one year, I’d love to rent a theater and show a movie, have all my friends come and enjoy.

What would your awesome party entail?

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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February is my month is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

I get migraines, sometimes.

They usually aren’t too bad– a sudden and searing whiplash of pain through my brainmeats, sometimes painful enough to literally stagger me, a LOT of visual stuff, and then it’s gone. They usually only last a few minutes, I rarely have confusion or nausea or anything lingering afterward. Lucky, right?

Except Tuesday evening my head started hurting. I lay down for bed with Niko and it just hurt worse and worse and worse, too badly to sleep. I took Excedrin with a coke and stayed up for a bit until it abated enough for me to go to sleep, slept in a bit the next morning, and spent the day stumbling around with nausea, mild aphasia, and an attack of the clumsies. And a sick headache that eventually ebbed around 10pm.

I haven’t had a bad headache for that long since 2004, when one stressful evening I retired to a dark bedroom with frozen peas draped over my eyes.

It’s coming back, like a bunch of stiletto blades jamming into my forehead, and I can smell this artificial, powdery, fake-candle chemical type smell everywhere. It’s like it’s clinging to me. Either it’s causing the headache (and yes, some smells, especially chemical perfume smells and stargazer lillies, can cause blinding headaches) or the sensation of smelling it is being caused by the headache. I’m not sure which, but it’s kind of creepy.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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I get migraines is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

Let’s play a hypothetical game.

You find a bag on your lawn or in your hallway or something. Inside is bundles of cash totaling about a million dollars. They don’t seem to be marked.

What do you do?

Do you call the police or take out an ad asking for someone to claim the money?

Do you contact the IRS to claim/pay taxes on your windfall?

Do you keep it secret?

If you keep it secret, what do you do? How do you spend it without attracting attention to yourself? How do you keep your money safe? How do you keep YOURSELF safe?

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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If I had a million dollars… is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

I dropped about $30 at Payless on a pair of Safe-T Step black laceup shoes that are aimed, I think, at people who work in kitchens and warehouses and will in general be on their feet all day. I’m wearing them around the house right now to break them in, and tonight I’ll wear them on the half-mile walk to tutoring. I was riding around in the car today in my canvas shoes, unable to feel my toes because it was so cold, so we’ll see how these shoes hold up. the 8.5W were much too tight and the 9W are a little loose, but hopefully that means I can wear these shoes with 1) an insole and 2) thicker socks and not have any problems.

This is not the ultimate solution to my shoe needs. These are vinyl shoes and they WILL wear out soon. But they are something that can bide me over until I can get “real” shoes and they will work both as an office shoe and as a walking shoe, if I ever manage to get a job.

When it gets warmer, I’m going to try and get a pair of New Balance shoes. A lot of people have recommended them, but I’ve had bad experience with them wearing down and rubbing my feet in weird ways (like, blister-to-open-sore-in-minutes rubbing, and my feet/heels are INCREDIBLY calloused so blisters AT ALL are rare). I’ll see if I can’t find a different style or something. But this spring and summer I’m going to be doing a LOT of walking, since the closest parks are a mile away, the library is over half a mile away, the zoo is free, and I don’t have a driver’s license.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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Yet Another Post About Shoes is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for awhile know that in the past, I’ve grappled with disordered eating. It mostly took the form of binging and fasting (where “fasting” is “going 2-3 days without eating until I’m so hungry I consume the entire world, then freak out about it”) and severe calorie restriction (like, trying to live on 500 calories a day, mostly in the form of diet soda). I’m also really, really fat and it took me a while, but I’ve gotten comfortable in my body. It’s a fat body, but it’s MY body, and (at least until recently) it more or less did what I wanted it to do, when I wanted it to do it.

I used to do a lot of manual labor. I used to dig up (small) trees and haul them around; muck out horse stalls and wheel around overloaded wheelbarrows full of sodden straw and manure; toss around 75 pound bags of flour and sugar; unload trucks full of slate, mulch, compost, etc; work all day in the hot sun.

When I started trying to practice Health At Every Size (HAES) and intuitive eating, my weight stabilized. (I also stopped eating so much dairy, because it makes me ill. It helped me listen to my body more.) I mean, I had a kid 2 years ago, and I had no problems losing all the (minimal) weight I gained while pregnant. I currently weigh the same amount I did before I conceived.

Only I feel fatter than I used to. Like, I feel like I’ve gained 20 pounds or so. My clothes don’t fit well. I feel sluggish and confined. I’m a lot more sedentary than I used to be (this has been a long, cold, wet winter and I don’t have a driver’s license, so going out and doing things and moving is… challenging) and I think I’ve lost muscle and gained fat.

I don’t like my body like this.

So I’ve started working out and holy shit am I out of shape. I used to dance competitively. I used to Irish Step Dance, which means I basically used to jump up and down for an hour or two at a time. I can’t even imagine doing that now. Well, I mean, I can imagine it… and when I put my head down to work out, I’m done far too soon. It’s depressing. I’m still working on it, working out, waiting for the snow to melt and the temperatures to break so I can actually leave the house with the toddler in tow. We can walk a mile to the library, to the park, etc and that’ll help.

But I’ve gotten into some bad food habits as well and I need to correct that. I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, I’m a sucker for bread (especially with butter), and I could stand to stop eating so much pre-packaged processed food. We have an actual fruit bowl in the dining room, on the table, and having the fresh fruit RIGHT THERE AND VISIBLE is helping us remember to eat it (Niko calls apples and oranges myommyom balls) and I’ve upped my fruit intake quite a bit. I found some great recipes for cauliflower and we’ve been doing a good job of eating more cooked veggies AND more salad (we splurged and got fancy dressings, croûtons, flavored almonds, etc for extra fancy restaurant style salads).

So I’m doing what I can to, in general, improve my body’s health. But the urge is there: to stop eating entirely; to count and reduce calories to almost nothing; to go on a faddish crash diet; to try to win that elusive prize of thinness by any means necessary even if it means shaking hands and dizziness and vertigo and poor health. It’s so sick. There are foods that make me ill (upset stomach, mouth rash, migraine… not all at the same time) and I should keep a food diary so I can track what it is that’s making me sick so I can cut it out of my diet. But I fear that if I start logging food I’ll start restricting again. That way lies madness, and by “madness” I mean “obsession and compulsion and terrible anxiety nightmares.” There are times I wish I could just not eat ever again, never put anything in my mouth again, shed my physical body entirely and just drift away.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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My Body, Myself is a post from: Words, words, words, art. Why not stop by and leave a comment?

I spent most of yesterday running a 100.4* fever, which is enough to make me really stupid and tired and out of it. Over the course of the day– which, let me remind you, was spent ENTIRELY ON MY OWN WITH A TODDLER because Nesko wound up spending over 30 hours at work, finally getting home after we were asleep– I managed to cut myself, burn myself, tear the knee of a nearly new pair of pyjama pants, drop a whole lot of food on the floor at different times, close my hand in a door, and hit my head on the fridge. I was in rare form.

I also became obsessed with the snow caked on our window screens, and opened a window to try and knock the snow off the screen. Only the snow had gotten between the screen and the window, so when I opened the window, dirty snow fell all over the window sill and the wood floor. Did you know that squirrels sit on our window ledges and poop? They do. I got squirrel poop in our house. :C

I should be less of a hot mess today, although we are running out of food and food-like substances. None of the side streets or alleys have been cleared out yet so they are all choked with snow… 2-4 feet of snow, depending on where they are. Nesko got home to our general vicinity in good time last night, but then was driving around for about an hour looking for a place to put his car. He couldn’t get down or street OR down our alley (which had a 5 foot drift of snow along one end of it). He wound up parking 2-3 blocks away and walking home. I think he’s going to have to do the same tonight. Hopefully he can stop for groceries on the way home.

I have a cold. Again. It hasn’t settled in my lungs YET but I can feel it moving south just like last night I could feel my temperature inch up towards fever levels, my throat start hurting, and my sinuses slowly fill with snot. I started making stock today. Nesko will have to strain it and put it away because, my darlings, I made mashed potatoes and then had to sit down and rest for ten minutes. It just wore me out. Halp! I am weak and diseased.

I’m also job hunting and am kind of between a rock and a hard place here. At the very least, I need to make more money than Nesko is making at HIS job so that it makes fiscal sense for him to quit and stay at home with Niko, which means I can’t just pick up temp work. That pays crap, and day care would eat all that income up so what is the point? I’ve looked on monster in the past, and gotten nothing but work at home scams, pyramid schemes, and telemarketing gigs (I am terrible at telemarketing). I’m looking at Craigslist, but there is almost nothing on there. I’m sending out 2-4 resumes a day, which feels like absolutely nothing. I’ve sent out about 50 or so and gotten… two responses.

Two.

Out of 50.

Both of them scams.

Apparently, there’s a popular scam going round craigslist where a job is posted, and when people reply, someone ostensibly from the company writes back that hey! wow! you’re so awesome! You’re in our top ten list of possible candidates! All we need you to do is visit THIS LINK RIGHT HERE and get your credit score for us and let us know what it is because of convoluted reasons. So just sign up for this TOTALLY FREE CREDIT REPORT OFFER and we’re good to go! Note that we haven’t said anything about our company name, location, or type of business. JUST FILL OUT THE OFFER OK.

The first ad I responded to that replied in such a manner almost sounded legit. The ad looked like the kind of ad a small company that expanded quickly and doesn’t quite have its act together would post, and the “oh halp we needs ur credit score” response almost sounded legit, to the point where I composed an email saying that gosh gee wow I’d never needed to provide my own credit check before, the potential company has always done that.

The reply bounced.

Because, you know. They just want people to sign up with the TOTALLY FREE CREDIT REPORT OFFER OH HEY WOW DID I MENTION IT IS FREE? IT TOTALLY IS.

Which is depressing. Because I need a job, and now I need to not only filter out jobs based on type, location, wage, etc but also whether or not they even exist or are just scams. And since I have, seriously, about half an hour a day to do stuff online since I am the full time caregiver of a toddler? Fuck you. Seriously. FUCK YOU. I just want a damn job. (PS this is why, if you have a blog which I have not commented on, why I have not commented. IN FACT, it took me two days to write this relatively short post, which is why up top I say there’s stock needing to be separated and strained and down below I say there’s stock in the fridge.)

Somebody bring me some awesome drugs, ok? I’ve got chicken stock chilling in the fridge. I’ll trade you. In fact, I will give you one quart of very dark and flavorful chicken stock in exchange for an un-expired albuterol inhaler. That’s totally a good deal, right? You’d exchange a prescription drug that costs about $100 for a quart of home made chicken stock, right? Urgh.

I haven’t been super bloggy lately because I’ve been sick. I spent about 2 weeks with a cold that turned into what almost was bronchitis except that my terrible horrible no good very bad cough that was more like a fit, a paroxysm, of coughing that lasted for a minute or longer and left me gagging and retching and almost puking (and once I threw up in my mouth totally ugh) and barely unable to catch my breath afterward were… completely nonproductive. My lungs weren’t congested, my nose wasn’t stuffed up, I had no snots, no sinus problems, I was producing no phlegm. I was just coughing. I was coughing so much my throat was raw and hurting from the coughing.

And then I started getting better and I had about a week where I was almost entirely symptom free except I kept suddenly spiking a fever of 100* or so. My normal body temperature is 97.9*, just FYI.

And then Thursday or Friday (I forget when, exactly; I’m exhausted and not remembering things clearly) I started feeling ill again and seemed to be developing the exact same cold only this time? My lungs and sinuses are full of crap.

And I’m again with the terrible paroxysms of coughing, and I’m sleeping on the couch because I don’t want to wake up the guys (who have colds of their own) and this cough is seriously going to kill me.

It comes on if I’m lying down, lounging, propped up, sitting upright, standing, walking around, doing dishes, taking a hot and steamy shower, drinking water, blowing my nose, sucking on a menthol action cough drop. Using my inhaler helps me breathe a bit (I can feel the difference in my lungs after) but doesn’t really stop the cough at all; taking antacids etc (in case it’s “silent” GERD) doesn’t help; cough suppressants don’t really help (I HAVE TRIED SO MANY DRUGS INTERNETS SO MANY); expectorants don’t really help; staying hydrated, keeping my nose blown, and taking allergy medication helps a tiny bit; this has been going on for weeks and weeks and seriously. I can’t keep doing this.

I was in a different room, coughing, and woke Niko up that is how loud I was coughing.

I went on the internet, turning to the warm embrace of Dr. Google.

Did you know that there is totally pertussis in Chicago? And that about half the cases of whooping cough don’t have that characteristic WHOOP inhale, especially in adults? And that my cough sounds almost exactly like recordings of whooping cough I have heard online? AND THAT OBVIOUSLY I HAVE PERTUSSIS OH MY GOD.

I am fairly freaked out about this, and trying to remain calm and also trying to remember if my booster shot 3 years ago was for tetanus ONLY, or was DTaP, and hey, Nesko isn’t THIS sick and he’s apparently got the same thing as me and it’s highly unlikely that HE would have a shitty cold and I would get whooping cough and I am SO INCREDIBLY GLAD that Niko is up to date on his shots. Because I would not wish this on anyone let alone a small child who comes up to me when I’m spasmodically coughing and choking on the bed with white foam dripping out of my mouth, and pats me on the back comfortingly.

Another thing is, I have coughed until I puked before. I used to get bronchitis twice a year and I am an old hand at The Cough That Will Not Die, that produces thick wads of blood-streaked pustulant mucus, that causes gaggy retchy vomiting, that pulls abdominal muscles and leaves one sore. In many ways, this cough is similar. It probably is the same old same old, just slightly different. BUT. I swear, it feels different. My fever is nowhere near as high. My body and joints don’t hut as much. Sitting upright isn’t a help. I’m not drowning in snot. I mean, I was really snotty for like a day and a half, don’t get me wrong. I used up 1.5 boxes of tissues. I’m still producing mucus. It’s scanty, but it’s there. But it is not bronchitis level ropes and gobs of stuff. Which is kind of, you know, bronchitis is incredibly disgusting. But this feels like a different animal.

I’m going to try and hit a take-care clinic tomorrow (if nothing else I am going to try and get a fresh scrip for both my inhaler (oh god so expensive!) and metformin). I’m also going to try and record this croupy barking draining cough just in case I can’t produce one on command. It’s really freaky sounding.