COVID’s a big, fat jerk.

Okay, first off, you guys wanna know something cool?

Excellent, then, I shall tell you.

This is what’s cool: People are still reading my blog.

Which, you know, may not sound that terribly exciting upon first glance, as the entire point of a blog is obviously for people to read it. But blogs are all about momentum and consistency, right? Sometimes almost more so than actual content. And we’re all, unfortunately, intimately aware of my fraught relationship with momentum and consistency, aren’t we?

Sigh.

But that’s what makes it so fucking cool that people are still finding and reading my blog. Because despite being horrifically inconsistent and trending toward decidedly niche content not at all designed to appeal to the masses, some of you lovely humans have actually shared my content to various other platforms, which in turn has pointed other random lovely souls this way. I mean, we’re not talking hefty numbers or anything, of course, but as cliche as it sounds, even if just one person finds something beneficial in my content, like, damn.

That’s so fucking cool.

And some of you even show up and check out more than just the one post that initially brought you here, which means you maybe didn’t even think whatever you read first was complete and total bullshit, and THAT is really saying something.

So, do know that I’m a total creeper and sometimes just open the app to see if anyone’s visited that day and sometimes someone has actually visited that day and that’s the shit that keeps me going, my friends. And like, I’m not even concerned about actual engagement. Just the fact that someone clicked the link and landed on my site does it for me.

I’m easy to please.

Well.

Sometimes.

This, of course, means a massive amount of THANKS is in order, which is why I put it in all caps and bold.

That’s how you know I really mean it.

Now you wanna know something decidedly not cool?

Okay, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.

My husband took our kids to TwitchCon in Las Vegas this past weekend (which is clearly not the not cool part), and I picked them up at the airport some number of hours after posting Episode One of my podcast My Autism DISCO to Spotify on Monday, and turns out they brought home more in the way of souvenirs than just brightly-colored TwitchCon socks and lanyards signed by all their favorite streamers.

Wah-wah.

And, see, this is an excellent example of why it’s not necessarily entirely my fault I seem to struggle so epically with momentum and consistency (it’s just mostly my fault). Finally rebooting the podcast and actually getting an episode recorded, edited, and posted was meant to initiate a new wave of ridable momentum containing the necessary ingredients for actual sustained consistency. And while I’m definitely probably fooling myself, I honestly think I got the recipe right this time, meaning it may well have worked, if not for this pesky microscopic douche-nozzle lacking any sort of situational awareness that might otherwise convey to it that it’s literally not welcome anywhere at any time whatsoever.

Because there’s a very good reason I chose this past weekend to finally make this most recent push: I was all by myself. No one was looking. And more importantly, no one was listening.

I mean, not that anyone in my house actually listens to me much in the first place, but still. Just the fact that there might potentially be someone in the vicinity who could at any given moment technically choose to listen to me talk to myself out loud with purpose–you know, as opposed to all the talking to myself out loud I constantly do without any real purpose whatsoever beyond the fact that I can’t seem to not do it–is a state of affairs I find terribly problematic. Which is, yes, pretty fucking ridiculous, considering the entire fucking point of podcasting is to have people listen to me talk to myself out loud on a regular basis.

Yet here we are.

And sure, this begs the question of what the fuck I was planning to do going forward, considering I won’t always be able to record my podcast in an empty house anyway, but, again, that’s where the momentum comes in–with enough of that, the anxiety of potentially being heard talking to myself before I’m actually ready to be heard talking to myself becomes less of an issue. Why, I have zero clue, but that’s seemingly just the way it is with my weirdo brain.

But with a house full of plague-infested people not going anywhere all week, and me in caregiver mode as I patiently await my turn to begin feeling like doo (a day that has now arrived, as I woke up with a bit of a sore throat this morning, meaning incubation time equaled roughly four days, for the curious), I had neither the privacy nor the wherewithal to punch out the next episode like I had initially planned. And assuming I soon sound like my kids have all week, it’ll be some number of days before my voice is again fit for general consumption, so once again, COVID’s timing is, you know, obnoxious at best.

However.

It also seems somewhat fitting that COVID should strike again at this particular moment in time, as I gear up to FINALLY tell the proper story of My Autism DISCO, because it was, of course, the arrival of COVID a few weeks after my dad died last spring that helped confirm my suspicions that the mystery chronic illness I began dealing with in earnest towards the end of 2021 (but which I now know I’ve been suffering from my entire life) was the result of some sort of innate immunity dysfunction, and in turn, also seemingly intimately connected to my neurodivergence. And the precise mechanism I used as evidence to support my working hypothesis was the fact that, a few days into my first run-in with COVID, every single one of the dozens of what I now know are histamine intolerance symptoms up and completely vanished.

POOF.

Because, you know, my immune system finally had something legitimate to deal with, meaning it no longer had time to perform its apparently boredom-induced constant and wide-ranging version of talking to itself out loud simply to hear itself be an asshole. And my hypothesis that diet played a key role was then further validated once my appetite really returned a month or so later, as one or two histamine-filled meals was all it took for those astronomically frustrating multi-system symptoms to come roaring back into being.

Holy shit, but you know what I just realized, you guys? I just realized there also happens to be a stupidly awesome silver lining to COVID’s timing this go round:

Fucking Halloween.

You know, the autumnal night (at least in this hemisphere) when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest, naturally necessitating a celebration wherein we carve geometric faces into New World gourds to be illuminated by mini displays of fire on our front porches, whereby they act as beacons for our children, who, disguised as either banally frightening monsters and/or their favorite media character du jour, and either way fooling absolutely no one, we send round to collect from the neighbors a literal cornucopia of treats made of sugar, food dye, and plastic that are scientifically-designed to be difficult-to-impossible to not completely gorge oneself on with, of course, every intention of doing most of that gorging ourselves, at least until our kids are old enough and wise enough to take steps in order to mitigate our eternal parental betrayal.

You know, that one.

See, because until I can actually find a doctor willing to help me inform my immune system it needs to knock that shit off, which I believe may be possible with low-dose naltrexone, I’m existing on a strict low-histamine diet, and my dudes, please allow me to tell you precisely how much…

IT FUCKING SUCKS ASS.

I mean, not the results, of course. We’re over a year in now and the results continue to be ever more mind-boggling the longer we go, the details of which comprise a significant part of our upcoming story. But for our current purposes, just know I’m forced to avoid essentially anything aged, fermented, preserved, leftover, packaged, or otherwise consisting of or containing anything from a long and complicated list of specific whole foods and commercially-used ingredients, including most medications, such as NSAIDs and even my fucking stimulant medication, which I haven’t taken in six months.

And yes, you can feel sorry for me. I’ll allow it.

HOWEVER!

Because my obnoxiously hyperactive immune system will be busy working its oft-misplaced but highly powerful magic on COVID, I can most likely sneak all manner of questionably-edible foodstuffs in the back door while it’s not looking (although I’ll probably just use the front door like most people do–but hey, no kink-shaming), without fear of a veritable litany of symptoms cropping up. Meaning yes, I’ll also be able to take OTC cold medication to help with my COVID symptoms, the other silver lining here.

I mean, sure, I’d rather just not have COVID in the first fucking place, but I’ll take my wins wherever and however I can get them these days, you know what I’m saying?

And because, while eminently laughable, to be sure, my ultimate goal is actually to keep both the blog and the podcast plates up and spinning simultaneously going forward, I decided to write this post for you all today.

You’re welcome.

Now please excuse me while I go drown my COVID woes in those ginormous bags of candy I bought at Costco the other day.

And maybe some Mucinex.