Time to read: 11 minutes.
In this week’s newsletter:
The Timbit Times
Kate Film Club, 27 of 52: “The African Queen”
French Study
We Can Have Nice Things
I’m writing this week’s newsletter with a monster of a headache. But the past week overall has seen a bit of improvement. I’ve now been on oral amphotericin B for about a month, and I think it’s now safe to say it’s definitely been bringing some gains. I’ve been able to come closer to keeping up with dishes on my own, which is an encouraging milestone. I still need rides to appointments but if I keep improving like I have been, I may be ready to try driving myself to an appointment soon and see how it goes.
In other slight improvement news, my doctor suggested trying horse chestnut extract for the increased hypermobility I’ve been experiencing since we started antifungal treatment a couple months ago. In his experience, it only works on a fraction of his patients, but I lucked out this time, because I’m one of the people it seems to work pretty well for. My chiropractor even commented on Friday that she can feel a difference when working on my spine. I hope this results in my cervical spine starting to stay in place better again soon—I’ve only been on it for a week and a half so far so I suspect the effect is still building. The next time I see my doctor I’m going to ask if we could even increase the dose since it seems to be going well for me.
I’d mentioned last time getting some latest gut test results back: I try to run a Biomesight test every several months to track impact of treatment. One thing we’ve been trying to better manage is an overgrowth of bilophila wadsworthia (bad guys), which I was thrilled to see is now the lowest it’s ever been since I started doing Biomesight tests a couple years ago. Sutterella (also bad guys) has been increasing, though, which I’ll want to keep an eye on. The other good news is my poor flatlined at near-zero bifido population (good guys) has started to increase for the first time ever in these most recent results. We’re going to add a couple things to hopefully keep supporting bifido and other overall gut improvements, before I start Lyme antibiotics in a few weeks.
Which brings me to the last medical things update I’ve got this week: next month I’ll be heading to stay with a friend in Ann Arbor while I do the early rounds of antibiotics for Lyme and Bartonella. These medications could really mess me up before they start getting me better, and so I’m arranging for a homecare service and meal service and generally planning to be near-incapacitated for several weeks. It’s a bit frightening to plan for one’s own debilitation, but I’m so thrilled to get see my friend and provide each other company while I do something rather scary. The especially tricky part will be getting myself out there—even with my recent small improvements I think I’ll barely able to physically manage the travel, and I’ll probably have a couple day crash upon arrival. I’ll get wheelchair service in the airport terminals, but the other key part is that I need a travel chaperone. I have a good friend who is trying to make it work to fly with me, but I’ll put the call out here in case that falls through: If you’re a person who likes random adventure and wants to fly first-class from PDX to DTW on someone else’s dime the week of Sept 9, drop me a line. (Edit Aug 13: Good friend has confirmed flying with me!)
The Timbit Times
I’ve never been much of a “take things out of the container they came in just to put them in another container” person. I adore home organization shows but that particular strategy just seemed more work than benefit to me. But living in a tiny home that’s 236 sq. ft. means I need to optimize every cubic inch of storage space! I have a pantry cabinet under the stairs, but stacking a bunch of oddly-shaped items in there made it difficult to see what I have at any given time, and to easily access what I need. So I found some containers that are just about the perfect size! Unexpected new hobby of tiny home life: spending a lot of time looking at the exact listed dimensions of various products.
I ended up loving these containers so much that I got extra for organizing my tea baskets. (I’ve organized one of two tea baskets so far, I gotta buy more containers!) I like them both for storing loose leaf teas as well as tea bags from a bunch of different half-empty boxes—another way to optimize space in a tiny home kitchen. I think someday I may want to experiment with some sort of sliding shelf in my pantry cabinet, since it’s very deep and having to take everything out to get to the back is a pain. All in good time.
Kate Film Club, 27 of 52:
“The African Queen” (1951)
I know this is one of Katharine Hepburn’s better known movies and widely acclaimed. Humphrey Bogart won an Academy Award, while Hepburn was nominated along with the director and the screenplay. But the title made me worried going into this: are we about to call a white lady a queen of Africa, even metaphorically? Please no. The good news is that the title actually refers to the name of the boat that much of the film takes place in. The less good news is there’s a scene at the very beginning that’s some sort of superposition of racism (painting the native villagers as musically uninclined?) or maybe a joke with the two white missionaries as the punchline (why would native villagers have any interest in learning the music of two strangers who’ve imposed themselves uninvited on their village anyway?). One thing for sure is that scene dragged on far too long.
Anyway, if you start the movie at 5:30, you’ll skip all this and you won’t really have missed anything. And after this first scene, the action gets going pretty quickly. Hepburn’s character and her brother are missionaries who believe in their work (even if misguidedly so) and are determined to follow their calling despite the heat and other challenges of remote life. This isn’t so much glorifying missionary work as it is setting up our understanding of Hepburn’s character for the journey she’s about to face in the rest of the movie. And let me tell you: I had no idea what this movie was going in. I thought it was some sort of fluffy romance, the way I’ve heard people talk about it in the past. It’s at least a romance, but it takes place in German-controlled Africa at the start of World War I, with the ever-present threat of violence and death. Also Hepburn is 44 in this movie, and both she and Bogart are understood to be middle-aged characters—so the story has quite a bit more heft than your average romantic drama featuring youngsters.
I’m not going to tell you too much about this movie because I actually think going in having no idea what to expect is the best way to watch it. But to tempt you into watching it, allow me to list out the ingredients: you’ve got a devout middle-class British lady who discovers she enjoys the thrill of near-death experiences, a gruff working-class Canadian guy who’s been making a living taking his boat up and down the river while drinking too much, both suddenly thrown together by circumstance amid a backdrop of war, and having no clear route to safety. They learn to lean on each other by taking turns being the strong one. Yeah, that about sums it up. Oh and the ending is dramatic and spectacular and worth every bit of the journey.
Rating: 4/5 – With the caveat that I suggest you start watching at 5:30, where the missionaries are singing the “Amen” to the song.
Where to watch: Included with Amazon Prime. Available on Apple via a free trial of Paramount+. (So, also included already if you have Paramount+!)
Quote: “Could you make a torpedo?”
French Study
This past week marked the first time I was a little startled (in a good way) to discover I’d learned something I didn’t realize I’d already learned! I joined a new Coucou class this week, this time at their “Expert” level. This is one step up from the level I’d been taking classes at recently; I was so interested in this particular class topic that I decided to try it and do my best. After my first session this week I realized this is probably the level I should be in now anyway.
So, the pleasant surprise thing! I’ll briefly explain the details. In English, whether we’re making someone <adjective>, or making someone <verb>, we use the verb “to make”. Like so:
- I make her happy.
- I make her smile.
But in French, you use two different verbs depending on whether you’re making someone <adjective> or <verb>. Like so:
- Je la rends heureuse. —> “rendre”
- Je la fais sourire. —> “faire”
(Translations are the same as the two lines in English, in order.)
And it was funny because when the teacher asked us if we knew which verb to use when—not providing us either verb, but rather explaining the sentences he wanted us to make and asking us if we knew how to construct each—I didn’t search my brain in an attempt to retrieve a studied fact. My brain just went something like “hrm how would I say that naturally?”, and before I knew it, both sentences plopped out of my brain fully formed and I then compared the verbs in each.
And I am 100% sure I’ve picked up the above distinction thanks to the amount of French tv I watch. Other than my Katharine Hepburn movie watching, most of my video media is French these days. Brains are wild, man. Sometimes they learn without us even trying. Every time larger and larger portions of sentences just present themselves from my brain seemingly out of nowhere, instead of me having to cognitively scrounge for every word in my second language, it feels like flying. It is, given how physically disabled I am at the moment, the only avenue available to me to have that feeling. That’s probably why I’m keeping at it, despite the very real slog that learning another language can be. It is a slog, and, the payoff can be next-to-the-Divine. Intellectual ambrosia.
I picked French to study for reversing family language loss reasons. I’ll admit I didn’t really understand before that learning a new language could be this fun; I was doing it out of a sense of duty, a desire to put things right in the world, to feel like my overall efforts in life have had purpose. But I can absolutely see myself learning a third language someday, once I’m happier with how far I’ve gotten my French skills.
We Can Have Nice Things
A recurring challenge with my current level of illness is finding things to do with my time that don’t push me past my exertion thresholds. Folks who are familiar with severe or near-severe ME/CFS know well that one of the most difficult experiences is when you’ve improved just a smidge well enough again to be bored. You’re still so sick you can’t do much, but your brain is online enough to be like “well what the fuck? this fucking sucks. we can’t do…anything?” To protect this small amount of improvement I seem to be experiencing currently, I know I have to prevent myself from trying to do too much too soon. This is where cozy video games come in.
I finished playing through “Strange Horticulture” on Steam the other day, and I absolutely loved it. It’s sort of…goth cozy, I would call it. You run a small plant shop in a gloomy town where it’s always raining. Various characters come in asking for plants with differing properties and powers and you have to consult your manual to figure out what plant to give them. There’s also a map function where you explore nearby towns and forests (via text narrative cards) to find new plants. As people visit your shop, you begin to put together that there’s a darker narrative at foot in the town. Your choices determine the ending! And after the main story is done, the game gives you an opportunity to finish identifying all of the plants if you like.
I highly recommend “Strange Horticulture” if you’re looking for a pleasantly distracting video game with great story building.
Kate Violette 