The Scleroderma Chronicles: Carrying Light

You know, I think that synchronicity is a real thing; you just have to pay attention to what is going on around you. Sometimes, if you take notice, the world hands you just what you need at that moment.

Scleroderma has been kicking my butt lately. Having improved dramatically over the summer and sailing through my heart/lung testing last fall, my doctors were pretty upbeat when I reported worsening symptoms while visiting them in late winter. They ordered some testing, but they were also very reassuring.

A week ago I arrived at a Kaiser facility bright and early for a routine echocardiogram and 6-minute walk test. The echocardiogram did not go well (usually they don’t hurt, and what was up with having to pause so I could pant a little to catch my breath…) and I was in the red zone (the pulse oximeter starts glowing red if your oxygen drops below 90%) after a minute of walking. The test was halted after 3 minutes, and the concerned nurse walked me out to the elevator.

Ugh. Not good, little BLZ, not good. Refusing to overreact, I went to my favorite yarn store on my way home, bought some great yarn, and then hit Starbucks by my house. It was a bright, blue day and I headed out to the deck to knit.

I took this picture of Hannah. Look at that bright, blue sky!

Do you know the quote by Elizabeth Zimmerman that goes “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.”? Yep. That is a quote to live by! I cast on a new hexagon for my blanket and started knitting. I felt myself settle inside, my breathing steadied, I began to process what had happened, and my anxiety faded away. Scleroderma is a monster, and by the time I was casting off the hexagon, I was ready to once again face it down.

This post had appeared in my knitting group on Facebook from Michelle Obama a few days before:

Well, look at that: Michelle Obama is a knitter! Yay! It looks like she also knows about the Zen of knitting and the ability it has to bring calm and purpose to a simple activity while you reflect upon and process problems large and small. I knitted every night to finish my teaching days. I knit in hospitals. I knit in meetings. I knit just about everywhere I can, and I especially knit to deal with the rolling shitshow that is my chronic illness. I went and bought Michelle’s book.

Thursday morning the results from the echocardiogram were posted and a couple of hours later my cardiologist called me. I was knitting and ready for the call.

For the first time the words stage 3 heart failure were used in the discussion with my doctor. My pulmonary pressure is higher than ever before and there is more fluid around my heart. It is not clear if my symptoms are caused by worsening pulmonary hypertension or pericarditis, but the only way to sort this out is to go back into the cath lab and directly measure the pressures with a right heart catherization. It may be both. I will need a different treatment regimen. An emergency referral was put in and tomorrow I’m heading back to the hospital for the procedure. This is what happened the last time I did this.

My pulmonologist, who works closely with my cardiologist and rheumatologist, saw me on Friday for a lung function test and office visit. My lungs are hanging in there, but my ability to diffuse oxygen into my bloodstream has dropped significantly. I told him about the upcoming trip to the cath lab, and he started checking those test results. I’m not going to lie, it is a little alarming when your doctor says, “No, no, this is not good. I am not happy with this at all.” More testing has been ordered. He emailed the other doctors on the team to start the discussion about what changes should be made with my meds.

I took this picture of my new Goldwing sweater in his office the day that I met him. If you are going to scary appointments, armor yourself in your favorite knits!

This weekend I started reading The Light We Carry and was amazed that it starts with… knitting. Serendipity strikes!! Michelle Obama began knitting at the start of the pandemic as she struggled with the lockdown: grief, isolation, loss, and everything else that happened in that time. It became an important vehicle for processing, recovery, and perspective for her. The daughter of a father with MS, she is very aware of disability and how it absolutely impacts how someone like me can view myself and the rest of the world. She talked about using tools such as the cane that her father needed to empower ourselves to deal with what comes our way. Her book appears to be a toolbox of different strategies to cope with the challenges in life.

For the first time since all this started happening last week, I cried. This book is absolutely, positively, what I needed to read right now as I pack my bag for the hospital and prepare for what is coming my way in the upcoming days and weeks. It’s like someone could see right into my heart and lit a light for me. I will carry that light along with its warmth and glow tomorrow as I join my doctor and the pit crew in the cath lab. Whatever happens, I am positive, I will glow, and my light will shine.

So, Michelle, whatever can I show off as a favorite knit? Every single item that I cast off my needles has left me with a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and fed my creative needs. Knitting helps me cope with adversity, plan my day, and work through problems. Knitting delivers calm in a time of crisis. Knitting allows me to deal with an unpredictable autoimmune disease that delivers an uncertain future. Knitting connects me to all the knitters in the past and provides gifts for others as I pay forward. It is essential for my being and a vehicle to connect with others.

Here are some things I’m really pleased with: Goldenfern, a knitted copy of a beloved (and lost) cat, baby booties gifted to a neighbor knitted from a pattern handed down through 4 generations of my family, the hats and PICC line covers that are donated to Kaiser infusion centers in my area, and Mando (and Grogu) mitts for a knitworthy niece.

Tomorrow I’m wearing arm warmers and knitted socks into the cath lab. Take that, scleroderma.

Behold, I carry my (knitted) light with me!

Did you wonder what a BLZ is? That’s me, the Blue-Lipped Zebra!

The BioGeek Memoirs: Jade Plant

I still have with me the jade plant that I bought for my classroom almost 25 years ago. I had to make a special trip to the garden center to locate one that year as I needed it for a prop in a lesson in AP Biology about photosynthesis.

Okay, I told a little lie. This isn’t that original plant, but a direct clone of the original. In a way I still have that plant that was bought so long ago in a panic trip to the garden center near the high school I taught at.

Why did I need that plant? Well…do you remember anything about photosynthesis? (I mean, why would you unless you like to memorize chemical formulas from your days in the classroom, and then retain them for the rest of your life…) I’m guessing that you haven’t thought about it in a loooong time! I should start out mentioning that plants use their leaves as little factories to capture sun energy and then they transform that energy into a chemical form that can be used by the plant to make everything that it needs to stay alive. On their way to producing sugars (which we can think about as stored energy) the plants take carbon dioxide from the air, water from the ground, and then produce oxygen as a waste product along with the sugar that they need. Whew. Photosynthesis. There are a lot of structures and chemistry involved and it makes brains hurt everywhere when this unit is taught in biology classrooms. As a teacher I tried to use cute animations, labs, demos, activities, and as many props as I could drag into the classroom. Facing a section in the AP Biology curriculum that demanded that the students understand different types of photosynthesis (adaptations that plants have to survive in extreme environments), I needed examples of the different types of plants.

Which brings me back to the jade plant. This plant comes from Africa; southern Africa to be exact, and it is adapted to living in dry conditions. Remember that plants need carbon dioxide to do photosynthesis? The leaves of most plants have little trap doors (called stomata) that open to let air in. If the plant is losing water through these trap doors too quickly they shut. For plants growing in hot, dry conditions, this is a problem as plants need both CO2 and sunlight to do photosynthesis, but opening the stomata in the day dries out the plant. Jade plants solve the problem by only opening these little trap doors in their leaves at night. The jade does some chemical trickery to store the CO2 dissolved in water stored in the leaves where it is safely banked until the sun comes up. Did you notice how thick the leaves of the jade plant were? These plants need thick, waxy leaves with lots of stored water to support their photosynthesis. When the sun comes up the little trap doors are closed, but the CO2 is released from its chemically captured form in the leaf where it is now used for photosynthesis. Sneaky, right? Do your photosynthesis, minimize water loss, and survive in the wasteland: way to go, jade plant!! The whole process is called Crassulacean acid metabolism or CAM photosynthesis. The entire process was worked out in plants that belong to the same group as jades, which is why I needed a jade plant!

Anyway, back to my plant. It got really old and kind of ugly, so I took cuttings off it and gave plants away to people. When the plant that I kept grew into a shape I didn’t like anymore, I took more cuttings and started a whole new generation of plants growing.

So easy to get a new plant. I made four pots with cuttings, gave two away and kept two with me. They grew really well in my indoor garden under the grow lights and then in the summer I put then outside in a shady location, and they really took off then. These cutting are now the grandchildren of my original plant, but also genetically identical to that jade.

Here are the plants after their second summer outside. I now have them behind chicken wire because of Mateo. He loves to dig in the plants, but they are toxic to cats, so best to be safe.

Yes, one plant is much larger than the other. I don’t know why, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the slime mold that suddenly appeared in the soil the first summer that the plants went outdoors. Actually, that’s why they went outdoors. No slime molds in the house!!! Mine looked exactly like the slime mold used in the opening credits of The Last of Us if you watched it. Do you see why the plants moved outside?

They were fairly large at this stage and getting pretty dense. Happy plants, right?

The jades are 4 years old now and too big to get behind the chicken wire indoor garden. Mateo and Hannah don’t mess with them, so they are growing in the front room. Everything was fine until…

…this picture arrived in my Facebook feed from Nick’s Garden Center, the place where I bought the first plant all those years ago. It’s a blooming jade plant!!! Me want, badly!!!!!

I actually drove over to look at this plant, but it had already been sold.

Dying of blooming jade plant envy, I hit the internet looking for ways to get my plants to bloom. Water more, some sites suggested. Hold the water said others. Everyone said to give the plants a high phosphorus fertilizer to encourage blooming. Do it in the late winter, early spring for best results.

Okay, let’s think about this. This plant comes from an arid region. These are CAM plants, so it makes sense that more water helps with photosynthesis and that means that they have all the materials that they need to grow, and they will prosper if they grow because they need to store extra water in their leaves. The plants actually don’t like overly damp soil, so they have been taking action to keep the soil the way that works best for them. These plants have been growing really well… I think that I have been overwatering them.

This is the plant at four years old. It is now huge, and it has been doing well over the winter in a western facing window. There is lots of new growth.

Yeah, these guys are totally going on a water diet. I gave the plants high phosphorus fertilizer April 1st, and that is the last water that they got. I don’t plan to give them more for at least another month. I also decided to heavily prune the plants as they are so heavy at this point, they struggle to hold their branches up. You can see all the stakes that have gone in over the last year.

Here is the larger plant pruned down. I may take more of the lower growth off tomorrow.

I will probably water these plants with fertilizer again May 1st, but it will be a light watering. It is still too soon to move them outside, but by the middle of May the large plant will be back on the front porch doing its jade plant thing.

Remember that I started this plant with cuttings? That is a type of cloning, and this plant, happily growing on my front porch and hiding all of my delivered packages, is the same plant I used that day decades ago to teach about CAM photosynthesis. That lesson, taught so long ago, reverberates today as I try to convince this plant that it should bloom.

I used to tell my students that biology is life.

Yes, it is.

Notes:

  • There are three main types of photosynthesis in plants. C3 is the most common type that is used by the grass in my lawn, my roses, and the ash tree growing in the front yard. All of these plants struggle in the high heat of the summer because they have to keep the stomata in the leaves shut due to the extreme dryness of the air.
  • C4 plants overcome this problem with some chemical trickery that lets them move lots of CO2 along in the cells of the leaf without losing too much water and they grow quickly in July. Corn and sugar cane are examples of these plants.
  • Cacti are also CAM plants, but they have really gone to extreme measures to control water loss. The plant that we see is the stem (and the stomata are there) while the leaves have adapted into needles that help protect the plant.
  • Class is dismissed.
  • Oh, I forgot. Pineapple is also a CAM plant. Pina coladas for everyone who read all of this!!!
Mateo: Don’t forget: it’s Caturday!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: The Blanket Update.

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I have a new box to sit in! This is my blackberry box.

The Mother of Cats has kind of been all over the map lately. She knits on a project, works on her plants, reads a book, knits on another project, starts listening to a different book, and on and on and on. She just can’t seem to settle down and get things done. The books are getting stacked up next to the bed, and the knitting project bags are all over the house!! It is just crazy! I have been hanging out with her trying to settle her down, and slowly she has gotten several knitting projects done. A hat, a PICC line cover, some socks, and a knitted cat all got done. The empty project bags are piling up and I’ve shoved most of them into places where she can’t see them. The CoalBear dragged one of them behind the plants in the living room and I have one stashed under the bed…

Finally, she is spending most of her time knitting my blanket. Yay!

The blanket is going to be made from these knitted hexagons. Don’t you like that color of pink? I think that it looks good with my fur.
The Mother of Cats knitted a whole bunch of the units and kept them in a box where I couldn’t play with them. What is up with that? Finally, last week we began sewing the little units of the blanket together.
Look at how nice the hexs are going together!

It got really nice and warm this week and the Mother of Cats finally let the CoalBear and me go outside. There are bugs out there! I was a little freaked out by the wind, but mostly it is wonderful to hang out on the catio with her while she sews on my blanket.

Where is the bunny?

Yes, you read that right. The Mother of Cats put up chicken wire around the deck so the CoalBear and I can visit the outside, look at the bunny, and enjoy the breeze while staying safe. This is our catio now, and there is also a swinging garden seat and a nice table out there so the Mother of Cats can hang out with us as she enjoys her lunch and sews on the blanket. I just love spring, don’t you?

Don’t I look nice on the table?

So, do you want to see the whole blanket? It’s not done but you can kind of imagine what it will look like someday…

See how wide it is going to be!

Yesterday the Mother of Cats finished sewing together all of the hexagons that were made and she went back to knitting more hexs. She wants the blanket to be pretty big so there is still a lot of knitting to get done, and she is even talking about buying more yarn. What? When will this blanket ever get done?

That’s okay. I’ll just grap a nap while she’s knitting.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The blanket is being knit from the pattern Nectar Blanket by Ysolda Teague. I got a little carried away sewing together the units and my version is going to be bigger than the largest size in the pattern because, well, isn’t it really nice looking? I want it to cover the bed and I do have to share with the cats…

I’m going to have to get another large cable needle to put the border on this baby!

It has been just beautiful outdoors this week and I put out some potted plants. Yeah. It is going to be really cold again with snow this weekend. Those flowers with the cats on their catio will be heading into the garage tomorrow.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Orchid Cat Caturday

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats has been ignoring me for days and days while she knits on a… CAT!!

I hardly know what to think. She had this cool yarn in the stash that kind of reminded her of orchids and spring. The orchids started blooming a few weeks ago and that was that… she began to ignore me and the CoalBear and started fussing over the orchids and the yarn.

Okay, it is true that the orchids are kind of cool. I like to climb into the garden where they are growing from time to time to hang out with them. The Mother of Cats gets a little cranky when I do it, however, so I don’t get to do it all the time. I lately have been sleeping right next to the Mother of Cats while she knits on this… cat… Really, it doesn’t look all that much like a cat, but she kept telling me that it was. Here’s what happened.

The cat started out with some crazy knitting that produced this leg. Whatever. I have a cat paw, and it doesn’t look anything like that. The colors kind of are like orchids, however…
As she kept knitting it began to look a little more like a cat, but…
What is up with this face!!!

I was really concerned for the Mother of Cats. It seemed like she didn’t really know what a cat is supposed to look like. I can kind of see the chin, but that nose and the EYES were the stuff of knitty kitty nightmares.

Finally, the ears, nose, and eyes were on the cat. Oh, wow. This is starting to look like a kitty (or maybe a pug?) and I can almost hear it asking, “When will I be done?”
Two days ago, she finally finished knitting the cat and I helped her put the whiskers on. Gee. He almost looks like he belongs in the orchids, doesn’t he.
He even looks pretty good in my strawberry box!
But the Mother of Cats says that he actually belongs in the orchid garden. He does look pretty good in there.

Now that the Mother of Cats has finished up the orchid kitty she has gone back to knitting on my blanket. Yay!! She isn’t ignoring me so much because she keeps putting the blanket on me while she sews the pieces together. I can’t wait to get my blanket and we are working on it every evening together while the CoalBear runs wild and chases his toys downstairs.

Mateo the CoalBear: why does Hannah get all of the cool knits?

Hannah: Because I am a little princess, and also because you don’t share the toys!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

Happy Caturday everyone!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

  • The pattern that I used is Grey Kitten Calico Cat by Claire Garland.
  • The yarn is a silk/merino/nylon blend by Noro called Tsubame. It is dk weight and I just knit the colors as they appeared in the ball as I worked. Mostly. I did throw out some green along the way.
  • My project page on Ravelry is here. Yeah, I was too lazy to write in any notes on the page.
  • I used the center quill of feathers to make the whiskers.
  • 5 of my 7 orchid plants are now blooming and they definitely deserve a knitted cat to hang out with them!!
  • Did you want to see the back of the cat? Here he is!
Doesn’t he look like a spring cat?

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Rare Disease Day, 2023

Well, here it is again. Rare Disease Day. I kind of was going to ignore it this year because I’m quite frankly worn out by my… wait for it… rare diseases, but I also feel like I should pull myself together and represent for the community again.

People with rare diseases are referred to as Zebras in the medical community. I obtained my zebra status when I was diagnosed with systemic sclerosis in 2014. This zebra was sent to me last week by my Most Knitworthy Niece Melissa.

I wrote a pretty darn good post last year about my journey with a rare disease which you can read here if you want. I talked about rare diseases in general, my specific conditions, and the many things that have been said to me by my doctors over the years. I thought about just reposting what I wrote last year, but I’ve been reflecting all morning on some recent events that kind of shine a light on my situation and that of other people who are coping with rare conditions.

  • I recently managed to go knit with my fellow members of Frayed Knots. This was a big social outing for me because it’s hard to get out of the house, and I have to be having a really good day to go to something like this. Knitting with friends is just “normal” for most people, and it would just be a little part of their day, but for me this was something that I had to prepare for a couple of days in advance, and then recover from in bed the next day. Many rare conditions are chronic, and chronic illnesses can be very isolating by their very nature.
  • A woman at the knitting group questioned my decision to wear a mask. I started to explain, but she cut me off to say that I was doing it so I could feel comfortable. It was a little condescending and suggested that I was being paranoid. Truthfully, my immune system, crushed by the drugs that I am taking right now, is compromised in its ability to make antibodies. If I catch a viral disease like the flu or Covid, there is a good chance that I won’t survive. My vaccinations have a low chance of protecting me for the same reason. For people with rare diseases, life is fraught and full of difficult decisions. For me, and for many other immunocompromised individuals, simple decisions involve life/death level risk analysis.
  • Another woman at the knitting table was struggling with long Covid and shared her difficulties with returning to work. She especially felt crushed by the attitudes of her coworkers who seemed to feel that she was “fine” and just trying to get attention. Yep. Been there, done that. Many rare diseases are genetic or largely invisible to others. Invisible illnesses are especially hard to cope with because others tend to question their validity.
  • I’m in several online support groups, and there are always discussions about what drugs to take, and whether the side effects are worth the risks. Yep. There are no specific drugs for systemic sclerosis, no cure, and treatment can involve a patchwork of risky off-label drugs. The drugs that are used are often non-specific carpet-bombing like approaches. Rare diseases have fewer treatment options because there are only a limited number of patients.

Over the last year my wonderful team of physicians have been suggesting that I am really unusual and have been extremely responsive to my emails. They clear an hour for appointments with me. I’m one of the very lucky zebras who has managed to get diagnoses, secured treatment, and am benefiting from a team of collaborative, interdisciplinary physicians who actively communicate with each other and with me; just last week my rheumatologist told me that for a patient with my status this is the only way to deliver care. I’m so grateful to have secured this level of medical attention, but I also feel a little nervous about it. I spent some time this morning trying to work out the probability of one person having the several medical diagnoses that I’ve racked up since 2014. Like, just how rare am I?

The National Organization for Rare Disorders estimates that there are 100,000 patients with systemic sclerosis in the United States. That’s rare, but still, a big club, right?

The 15% Rule is a general measurement of the risk of severe organ involvement in systemic sclerosis. As it turns out, quite a few of the major lung, heart, and kidney complications associated with systemic sclerosis happen about 15% of the time. I have Sjogren’s Disease overlap with my systemic sclerosis, which happens in about 13% of patients. Suddenly, I’m in a much smaller group of about 13,000 patients.

My most worrisome complicating conditions are diastolic dysfunction (a type of heart failure), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD). I looked up the risk of having each of these conditions using the 15% rule data, and it turns out the risks are 16% (diastolic dysfunction), 15% (PAH) and 35% for the SSc-ILD. Did you notice the the ILD doesn’t fit the 15% rule? Yep. It’s much more common and is the leading cause of death in systemic sclerosis patients. I found that risk factor here.

I brushed up on my probability math (you multiply the probabilities of independent events…), and after running the numbers:

100,000(13/100 x 16/100 x 15/100 x 35/100)

I came to a grand total of 116 other patients in the US who share my set of diagnosed conditions.

Oh.

See, I have lots and lots of stripes. Stripes in purple, teal, periwinkle, red, green, and blue: these are the awareness colors for my conditions.

I just ordered that rainbow zebra unicorn shirt! I plan to wear it with my mask on my next social outing…

You can learn more about Rare Disease Day or my conditions at the links below.

Finally out of hibernation: a new sweater is on the horizon…

I have been struggling somewhat at the start of the year. I am between knitting projects and good books. It has been snowing endlessly (12 storms since the first of December) and after shoveling I’m too tired to knit. I want to knit a sweater, but I’m still thinking that I should continue to destash. I could spend the coming year knitting socks, but somehow this isn’t appealing at the moment. I want to do some stranded colorwork, but I really should remove some of those projects that have been sitting in the corner thinking about where they went wrong and bring them back to life…

I have been knitting away on Hannah’s blanket again and now have 12 hexagons finished. (This pattern is the Nectar Blanket by Ysolde Teague.) I have a couple of other projects that I can work on, but meh…

This week, in a moment of reckless impulsiveness, I pulled a sweater that has been hibernating for over two decades out of the garage and took a good look at it. The fabric of the knitting is really cool, but somehow, I fell out of love with the colors and packed it away long ago. Now I like the colors again, but I’m clueless about what I was doing when I packed it away. There are simple but important questions like, where is the pattern, and what size was I making, and holy smokes, where exactly was I in the pattern when I stopped knitting…

Here’s the knitted fabric. Pretty cool, right? I debated just cutting this up and making a sewn teddy bear or pillow or something for a while…

I finally pulled myself together and took stock of what I had in the bin with the sweater.

I had the chart that I was working from, the color key that I made with the yarns that I was using, and some funky notes written on the chart…

I did more digging around until I located the book that the pattern came from. Oh, this is an Alice Starmore pattern published in 1995 that I bought a kit for some time after I bought the book. I put it away when I was working on my master’s degree, so this sweater has been in hibernation since at least 1998. Wow. This sweater has been in hibernation for so long it is almost fossilized. Anyway, here is the book.

I had this book with all my Alice Starmore books and it didn’t take too long to locate the sweater again.
The sweater is Rona.

Once I had the pattern again, I did some counting of stitches and used the chart to figure out where I was in the knitting. Oh my goodness, I was up at the neckline and there are 4 different steeks in this knitted wonder!! The front steek is now on standby, and I just have to worry about the sleeves and the one created to handle the neckline. The notes on the chart I was using actually are the count of the neckline decreases and I had the armhole steeks drawn onto the chart. I’m so glad that I still have the chart and the yarn key! Evidently this was size medium… the directions even began to make sense as I read them over a couple of times. I pulled myself together and knit a few rounds and it all came back to me fairly quickly; I was able to start adding tally marks to the chart to track the neckline decreases just as I had more than two decades ago.

I have all the balls of yarn organized again and I am back at the knitting with a purpose. I hope to have the body of the sweater off the needles in another week or so.
Mateo has been a good boy all week and has been hanging out with me while I knit.

Have a good week everyone!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Bad CoalBear, Bad!!

Hi. I’m Mateo (AKA the CoalBear)

I’m the most handsome young cat ever, right? Emphasis should be on the word young. I’m not even two years old, I’m still growing, and I need lots of attention and play opportunities. Usually, the Mother of Cats and Hannah support my needs, but not this week. For reasons that I don’t understand I have been yelled at ALL WEEK LONG!!!

Okay, I was standing on the pizza while the Mother of Cats’ back was turned. Oh, are you having trouble seeing those prints?

How about this one? Hey, this is what the Mother of Cats gets for eating in bed, right? It’s not my fault that I tracked catsup footprints all over the white linen duvet cover. See the above comment about eating in bed…

Then I was caught bunny kicking and chewing on a library book. Umm… maybe if I got more attention, I would have to resort to stuff like this. I need lots of time with the laser light, and Hannah should be chasing me more, and why don’t I get more toys? All of my toys are old and I knocked all of the ping pong balls under the sofa so I can’t play with them now, and I AM SO BORED!!! I do play with the yarn every time the Mother of Cats knits, and would you believe I get yelled for that, too. I get yelled at EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!!

Hannah: <sigh> I keep telling the CoalBear that he needs to spend more time being cute, but does he listen to me? Nope. Not so much.

See how cute I am?

Now it is really, really cold outside and I can’t even go outside to look for the bunny. Maybe the Mother of Cats will knit soon so I can chew and chase yarn for awhile…

Sigh. Guess I will go see if I can get the tiger cat to play with me.

This is Mateo, signing off.

Two Books Set in Colorado: Action, Adventure, Suspense, and Cognitive Dissonance

Okay, here I am, still pretty much in lockdown because of Covid, reading an action/adventure/post-apocalypse book with serious science connections set in a small mountain town of Colorado. The town in question, Ouray, is not one that I have been to (it’s on the other side of the state… you have to travel on a seriously challenging mountain road to get there… it is famously beautiful, however), but I have bought online yarn from an indie dyer in Ouray. Beautiful, set deep in a canyon surrounded by steep mountains, this is the setting for the book Wayward.

Do I want to tell you the whole plot of this book? No, I do not! Here it is in a nutshell: there is an outbreak of a fungal disease that kills almost everyone. It came from bats. An AI interferes in the course of events by targeting a select number of brilliant individuals who are brought to Ouray to become the seed of humanity’s recovery. There are crazy right-wing militias, evangelical leaders hunting for a flock, a self-proclaimed president, tiny nanomachines that live inside of humans, A Good Boy dog named Gumball, a rock and roll legend who provides lyrics on demand when needed, and tons of suspense/action/adventure. There are also a few moments of outrageousness that are beyond the bounds of credibility, but it is a book, right?

Still, there was that scene where two central characters are camping inside a ring of birch trees, their bark glowing in the moonlight. Right. We don’t have birch trees here in Colorado. We have aspen trees, people, not birch. I also choked on my morning latte when one of the characters described his caribou hunt in Colorado… we do have Caribou coffee here, and caribou (well, reindeer) at the Denver Zoo, but no one comes here to hunt caribou in the wild because this isn’t freaking Alaska, people. I just hate when books/authors mess stuff up, which I know is ridiculous when reading a book about a fungal pandemic, a crazy nanomachine-based AI, and other fictional craziness. It still was a pretty good book in a Stephen King, The Last of Us kind of way.

So, I was really hopeful when I started another book set in Colorado. A murder mystery thriller with lots of social and political overtones. Perfect! Here’s the cover:

See that cover art? We’re up in the mountains in kind of a small town. Maybe an old mining town, I tell myself. Clearly the mountains as I can see the ski runs on the mountain in the foreground, and the upper peaks are above treeline, so those peaks are above 12,000 feet in elevation. I settled in to read a great murder mystery set in a mountain town.

Okay, this is a good story, but for me the whole thing was a hot mess. The story is not set in the mountains, but in the foothills south of Denver. Like, exactly where I used to live, drive around and hike. The immediate cognitive dissonance was just jarring as the community of Blackwater Fall was well described in the book as about 20 miles south of Denver with a view of the Lockheed Martin complex to the north and Chatfield Reservoir down below.

I used to go hike the Carpenter Peak trail each summer in Roxborough State Park. It’s a longish day hike, and I would set out mid-morning with my backpack and a hiking pole up the trail, mentally preparing myself to face down mountain lions as I started up the trail. Yep, this is mountain lion country and there is a warning sign as you cross the creek and step foot on the trail. Make noise, try to look big, don’t run, and if attacked, fight back, says the sign. Yep. That’s why I take the hiking pole. I would finally arrive at Carpenter Peak in the early afternoon to eat my lunch among the red rocks at the summit. Golden eagles soared in the wind below me, Chatfield reservoir gleamed to the northeast below me on the plains, and to the north was the Martin Lockheed complex exactly as described in the book. To the west of the peak is a view of endless rolling hills covered with conifers that merge with the true mountains of the continental divide in the distance. The trail to the peak forks right at the end where you can decide to hike the Colorado Trail or turn right for the summit; I always wistfully thought that I would someday to the Colorado Trail, but the view from the peak was what I always settled for in these hikes.

Yeah. There was no town in sight, no falls, no church, no school for the rich and privileged kids of the community, and the rich details of the book kept crashing into reality for me.

Our main character is Anaya Rahman, a Denver police detective who works in a unit that works to ensure justice in marginalized communities. Anaya is of Syrian descent and Muslin, and she struggles with no longer wearing her hijab. She is smart, compassionate, and dedicated to her work. She is sent to Blackwater Falls to solve the horrific murder of a teenager; killed and hung onto the door of a church in an artistic display. Oh, boy. The victim is a Syrian refugee and there is lots going on in this community. Hate and bigotry is everywhere. There is a meat packing plant with Somali workers who want to unionize. There is a high-tech aerospace company creating defensive infrastructure for the southern border. There is an exclusive school filled with entitled rich (white) kids. The FBI is running some type of operation that Anaya’s boss is involved in, and did I mention the motorcycle gang of thugs connected to the far-right church? Violence, bigoty, worker’s rights, the stresses of assimilating new cultures into an existing community, corruption, and you name it, it is here.

For me this book was a hot mess. First off, why is a Denver police detective working a crime scene in Douglas County? Shouldn’t the state be involved if the local sheriff and that force can’t handle the job? Then there was the scene of the crime: everything that can be found wrong in America was crammed into this community put down in a location where I know it can’t exist. My mind keeps careening off into speculation as she describes events in the book. Anaya and her boss drive along Titan Road on their way to interview someone… I’m thinking to myself… wow, that’s the road that was built to haul out the Titan missiles built at that Lockheed Martin plant in the foothills south of Denver when it was Martin Marietta. The victim camps at Marina Point in the Chatfield State Park, and I think… no way could a teenager without a car get there, and it is a crappy campground for tent campers… The meat packing plant full of Somali workers should be located in a town up north of Denver. You know, where the actual meat packing plants are located. The town of Blackwater Falls with its history, waterway, church, and economically divided communities could be something like Louviers, Colorado if you lumped in communities in the area to the east. (Louviers is really cool. It was a company town laid out by Du Pont when dynamite was produced there…) That exclusive school is actually north of there, but you get why I was constantly falling apart while reading the book. She actually called Denver a COW TOWN!!! (Okay, there was a cattle drive down some streets of Denver this month as part of the National Western Stock Show, and there was that steer that had high tea at the Brown Palace in Denver, but still… it like it’s okay for you to call your little brother names, but if someone else does… violence!!)

Cognitive dissonance overload. Maybe a little outrage, too.

Did I mention that I used to teach Somali and Syrian refugee students and I was pretty upset at moments for what those characters in the book were putting up with? I loved those students, and I hated the bigotry that was being portrayed in the book. It seemed so extreme and overblown.

The book really was okay, but the cognitive dissonance and distress about the extreme depictions of, well, corruption, violence, and bigoted views just did me in.

Inaya solves the crime and gets her man, but there are some loose strings hanging that I’m presuming will be picked up in later books in this series.

I’m just going to let them hang.

Hasta la ByeBye, 2022: These were the Books

I read a lot of books in 2022: Goodreads says that I read 43. I had planned on completing 50 books, but there was a period in the winter when my brain fog was too bad to read. Not nice, scleroderma, not nice! Anyway, I am back up and reading at a steady clip again, and I’ve been mulling over what were the best books of 2022 for me. You know, the books that you enthusiastically give a 5 star rating to and then you head off to Amazon to see what else this author has written. Anyway, after thinking it over, here are the books that I liked the best:

I just loved, loved, loved these books. I think that I posted about some of them during the year:

I’ve noticed that there are some threads of commonality between these books. Animals as integral characters in the story, people connected over space and time with each other, learning one’s worth and being true to yourself, being brave in the face of adversity, friendship and love, and finally, the power of science. Altogether, a pretty good year of reading.

I literally am unable to pick my personal best book of the year from these favorites, but I have to admit that the one that I thought about the most (so much that I wrote an entire post about it) would be Lessons in Chemistry. I seriously liked Remarkably Bright Creatures for the entertainment value, and I still think about the things that I learned in The Song of the Cell.

Well, that was 2022.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snow Bunny Caturday

Hi. I’m Mateo.

It’s my favorite day of the week. I get to go out first thing in the morning with the Orange Monster to check out things on the catio. We see birds, and squirrels and lots of fun things while we are out there. We also get our paws cold, but that’s okay, because if you want to play with the Orange Monster, you have to be willing to deal with little stuff like that!

You won’t believe what we saw today…

The backyard bunny was out in the garden! I mean, the bunny was RIGHT THERE at the side of the catio where the Orange Monster and I hang out in the mornings. The Mother of Cats has been feeding the bunny acorn squash (I know, right?! Why would she do something like that… but the bunny does eat it… thank heavens she isn’t giving it our TUNA!)

Personally, I think that acorn squash flavored bunny would be a little weird, but I was certainly willing to try it out. Nope. Darn chicken wire… there needs to be a FREE MATEO protest, right? Can you hear my big cat sigh? The bunny finally left and the Mother of Cats put some more ACORN SQUASH out for it.

Now we are back indoors knitting on the scarf thingy…

while Hannah snoozes…

and we both dream of the backyard bunny.

Happy Caturday, everyone!!