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midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Cate
@midcatecrisis.bsky.social
4.1K followers 1.3K following 4.8K posts
Chronically ill, autistic, demi/greyace
(mostly in bed, mostly homebound)
ME/CFS and probable LC
😷😷😷

Interests: climate, COVID, disability justice, parenting

Ltd cog energy, don't tend to follow back.

Toronto, Canada
She/her/they
Posts Replies Media Videos
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Book cover with a blue tinted dog with a wagging tail looking up toward a glowing yellow moon. Text reads For Laika in big text and The dog who learned the names of the stars in smaller text. Under that is that’s Kai Cheng Thom illustrator Kai Yun Ching. Under the book cover are publication details that read For Laika : the dog who learned the names of the stars Thom, Kai Cheng, author. Contributors: Ching, Kai Yun, illustrator.
November 3, 2025 at 1:51 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Beastie Boys known to let the beat
Mmm, drop
Garmin heart rate graph showing a HR going up and down between 68 bpm and 105 bpm in waking hours and then falling steeply for a couple hours in the afternoon.
October 17, 2025 at 9:27 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
I can find the links to specific products if you want them.
Photo of a bed, a white set of drawers is visible beside it and two grey organizers with pockets hanging from the headboard.
October 1, 2025 at 2:51 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Fan-fucking-tastic
Text on white background Welcome to The Mayor’s Note Don’t recognize this sender? Unsubscribe with one click Mayor Olivia Chow recently imported your email address from another platform to Substack. You'll now receive their posts via email or the Substack app. To set up your profile and discover more on Substack, click here.
July 9, 2025 at 12:37 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
But the content warnings are separate and specific and I think you can make it so books with a specific warning don't get recommended to you.

This is Fried Green Tomatoes content warnings:
Black text on white background, from StoryGraph: CONTENT WARNINGS Submitted by users as part of their reviews View summary Graphic Racism, Racial slurs, Domestic abuse Moderate Rape, Death, Cancer Minor Cannibalism, Alcoholism, Murder
April 6, 2025 at 3:43 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Informational image Text: (Right corner) AAG AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of GEOGRAPHERS (Left corner, large) DO WE KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE?: ORGANIZING COVID-SAFER COUNTER-SPACES (Underneath, smaller) 2025 AAG Annual Meeting - Detroit Friday, March 28, 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Room 410B, Level 4, Huntington Place Modality: Hybrid Panel - In person/ Streamed (Bottom left) Questions? Contact Erin Clancy at eclancy2@wisc.edu (Bottom right) Masks provided and required for in-person attendees. On the right is an drawn image of someone with short hair and shading suggestive of breasts lifting a procedural mask to their face.
March 16, 2025 at 1:47 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Informational image Text: (Right corner) AAG AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of GEOGRAPHERS (Left corner, large) DO WE KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE?: ORGANIZING COVID-SAFER COUNTER-SPACES (Underneath, smaller) 2025 AAG Annual Meeting - Detroit Friday, March 28, 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Room 410B, Level 4, Huntington Place Modality: Hybrid Panel - In person/ Streamed (Bottom left) Questions? Contact Erin Clancy at eclancy2@wisc.edu (Bottom right) Masks provided and required for in-person attendees. On the right is an drawn image of someone with short hair and shading suggestive of breasts lifting a procedural mask to their face.
March 16, 2025 at 1:46 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
With alt text for disabled creators, re: effect on Etsy transactions for now.
Black text on white background: As you may know, tariffs on goods imported to the US from Canada went into effect today. These regulations are evolving, and we are keeping a close eye on updates from official government sources. As the US regulations stand today - 4 March 2025 - the de minimis exemption remains. This means that the vast majority of Etsy orders can currently enter the United States duty-free because they fall below the $800 value threshold.
March 4, 2025 at 7:16 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Having PEM because you were in pain yesterday (gallbladder) just adds insult to injury.

My kids found a comic to cheer me up, though. From TheAwkwardYeti.com
Four panel comic, with a liver (reddish brown, kinda triangular) interacting with a gallbladder (green and round). Panel 1 Liver: what is it, gall bladder? can't you see I have a lot to do? Gallbladder: [holding up stones] I maked these Panel 2 Liver: [looking angry] you made STONES? Panel 3 Liver is pushing gallbladder away. Liver: YOU'RE JUST SUPPOSED TO HOLD WHAT I GIVE YOU! Liver: GET OUT! GO ON! Panel 4 Gallbladder sits alone, hugging stones, with welling tears. Gallbladder: I maked these the Awkward Yeti [dot] com
March 1, 2025 at 5:36 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Just noticing OG post didn't have alt text so resharing the image with alt text, for citation see original thread. It's a trash argument, as the original thread noted.
Text: One of the defining features of the social-justice orthodoxy that swept through American culture between roughly the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 to Hamas's assault on Israel in 2023 was the policing of language. Many advocates became obsessed with enforcing syntactical etiquette and banishing certain words. "Wokeness," as it's known, introduced the asymmetrical capitalization of the letter b in Black but not the w in white. It forced Romance languages like Spanish to submit to gender-neutral constructions such as Latinx. It called for the display of pronouns in email signatures and social-media bios. It replaced a slew of traditional words and phrases: People were told to stop saying master bedroom, breastfeeding, manpower, and brown-bag lunch, and to start saying primary bedroom, chestfeeding, workforce, and sack lunch. At the extreme, it designated certain words— such as brave—beyond redemption.
February 17, 2025 at 4:12 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
From Canada (it's apparently locally variable):
Screenshot of a Google maps map of the Gulf of Mexico, which is labeled "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)"
February 11, 2025 at 2:19 AM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
It took me like 3 tries to remember how to take a screenshot and this is the word I got so that's a wrap on 2025.
A post. Very bottom edge of Merriam-Websters profile picture and handle visible at the top. The post reads "Take a screenshot of this GIF, and whichever new word you land on is YOUR word for 2025. Godspeed." On a white background is the word "spaghetti" and the GIF is paused at the 0:01 second mark.
January 1, 2025 at 4:37 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
With alt text:
A screenshot of a dictionary entry. Noun Schreibtischtäter m (strong, genitive Schreibtischtäters, plural Schreibtischtäter) 1. desk murderer, mastermind; a person who arranges for (orchestrates) the commission of a crime without directly committing it.
December 8, 2024 at 10:55 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
I want to share a book that brought me a lot of straightforward delight recently.

It's really the BlueSky-est of books - bawdy, ridiculous, and hilarious. It's a the most transcendent shitpost (almost autocorrected to ship post, lol) in book form.

Strongly recommend the audiobook format!
Book cover of Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, narrated by Casey Jones. (All words are upper case.) The cover is teal and the title is centered on the purple shadow of a ship framed by two serpent tails. To each side is a symmetrical curling wave. There are three sillouetted figures in yellow - on the wave to the left in monks robes, on the wave to the right in pirate's clothing, and a third lies cheekily posing on "wind".
November 25, 2024 at 8:04 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Title says Nov 25, 2023-Nov 22, 2024 and then Weekly Averages. Line graph with months marked on the x axis and "stress" as a score from 0-100 marked on the y axis. The line is mostly stable bumping a bit above and below 25. In the month marked February, there is a noticeable steep rise that probably reaches around 35 before falling off in a bumpy way. The line tracks a bit above 25 at the end in October and November.
November 22, 2024 at 11:30 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Title says Nov 26, 2022-Nov 24, 2023 and then Weekly Averages. Line graph with months marked on the x axis and "stress" as a score from 0-100 marked on the y axis. The line shows a quick spike up to 50 in November and then falls to move around 25 in December. Stays a bit bumpy through January and February before becoming a bit smoother after March. Still a bit spikey and drifting slightly above 25 by the end of the year.
November 22, 2024 at 10:03 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
In the spring of 2022 I reread the ME Action pacing guide and noticed the part about smart watches and setting high HR alarms. I bought a Garmin. And it had this HRV functionality too. I spent the summer still trying to do things. And my body battery got lower and lower and my stress went higher.
Title says Nov 27, 2021-Nov 25, 2022 and then Weekly Averages. Line graph with months marked on the x axis and "stress" as a score from 0-100 marked on the y axis. The line climbs steadily from 25 or so to 50 between August and September and then starts to fall until October when it rises again through November.
November 22, 2024 at 9:34 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
I refuse to join Bluesky - I don't want to become part of a grecco chamber.
A Grecian temple (from the Acropolis, I think the temple of Athena) photographed from below against a blue sky. It is bare stone pillars holding up a crumbling sort of roof.
November 16, 2024 at 9:39 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
You've been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you?

Kind of a good news, bad news situation?
Text at the top says Superstore in blue letter with a cloud around the end. It's a cast photo of Superstore, with everyone looking determined, mostly with arms crossed and heads held high. They are all wearing blue surgical masks and some have yellow rubber gloves and cleaning products.
November 12, 2024 at 2:22 AM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
This poem should exist over here.

"Elegy for A Mask Mandate"
Ellen Samuels February 28, 2022
Elegy for A Mask Mandate For a year, maybe two, I knew that you loved me. I saw it in your eyes, the windows to the soul, the only part of your face I needed to see to believe. For a season, maybe two, you went with me everywhere, holding hope like a parasol over our heads. I thought we'd created a new world, where the sick and the well could be citizens of the same country. I held your disinfected hand at the theater, in the grocery store, places I hadn't gone for years. I knew there would always be the resisters, the ones who since childhood called me queer, cripple, lazy, hysterical. But you muffled them with your hand-sewn cotton, your filter inserts, your N95s. We all learned to speak a new vocabulary, to understand what it means to protect each other so we all survive. In my home now, in my lonely bed, I'm still speaking those words to the silent house: [here italicized] My mask protects you. Your mask protects me. Ellen Samuels, February 28, 2022
October 26, 2024 at 2:38 AM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
And it was quite a fall. For me it's the last two years. Neverending disappointment in people who should know better.
Elegy for A Mask Mandate For a year, maybe two, I knew that you loved me. I saw it in your eyes, the windows to the soul, the only part of your face I needed to see to believe. For a season, maybe two, you went with me everywhere, holding hope like a parasol over our heads. I thought we'd created a new world, where the sick and the well could be citizens of the same country. I held your disinfected hand at the theater, in the grocery store, places I hadn't gone for years. I knew there would always be the resisters, the ones who since childhood called me queer, cripple, lazy, hysterical. But you muffled them with your hand-sewn cotton, your filter inserts, your N95s. We all learned to speak a new vocabulary, to understand what it means to protect each other so we all survive. In my home now, in my lonely bed, I'm still speaking those words to the silent house: [here italicized] My mask protects you. Your mask protects me. Ellen Samuels, February 28, 2022
October 26, 2024 at 2:34 AM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
So added MCT oil to my diet starting last Thursday evening and this is what my body battery has done (this in spite of taking a car ride on Saturday and breaking down on the side of the highway for an hour in the heat before a family member rescued me).
Screenshot of a Garmin Body Batter graph, which looks like bars with a white dot at the bottom representing the lowest part of the day and a blue dot at the top representing the highest point. The graph covers 4 weeks with a bar for each day and is generally highly variable with a fairly short "climb" each day. The lady 5 days show the body battery charging higher, than any other 5 consecutive days with a greater climb.
August 5, 2024 at 7:11 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
Tip for if you have a lower cognitive exertion threshold but you're *bored*. For the first couple years I was sick I only read JAFF/Pride and Prejudice variations because I knew all the characters and the story beats even if they were mixed and match. I then realized I could handle most romance.
Tweet from @Naomi_D_Harvey reads: "Something for those new to ME or cognitive PEM: If you struggle to watch TV or read, consider sticking with familiar TV or books only. It takes less energy to read something you’ve already read than to consume something new. Difficulty level also, kids/youth books = easier."
July 28, 2024 at 3:12 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
I really wish people would focus on the creepiness and the lack of boundaries and leave "weird" alone. A lot of us have done a lot of work to make our "weird" a loveable and wonderful thing.

I feel similarly when people make "we shouldn't have stopped giving these people swirlies" jokes.
Dinos and Comics 4 frames Red Dino: i love you. Blue Dino: you don't think i'm a weirdo? Red Dino: no, i do. Red Dino: you're the weirdest and best person I've ever met.
July 27, 2024 at 8:25 PM
midcatecrisis.bsky.social
I read this on Twitter (a place I still go for information relating to ME/CFS and LC) and it really stuck with me. I think a lot of things could be sorted out if people kept this in mind.
Tweet from @mssinenomie reading: "Ok everyone I’m really weary of some of the hot takes of what is and is not ableist. I am a wheelchair user with muscle dx. Not hiring me to be a fire fighter is not discrimination. It is not ableist. Assuming that because I can’t do that job I have no value would be."
July 12, 2024 at 12:03 AM