• mood: sore
• listening: my partner playing Overwatch in the background

this post is going to be a whole lot of nonsense placeholder text, but with a little more point than that. I'm still putting all the pieces together on this site, but it's shaping up pretty nicely. I definitely am out of practice, though. the last website I built from the bottom up was almost two years ago now; I have only maintained it since then. I haven't had to build an entire theme or do anything with JavaScript. I began a Python course for work a couple of months ago and found it remarkable how rusty I am with code. (then again, I've always favored the frontend to the back, and PHP has always been my backend language of choice.) (idk tho maybe it's not anymore)

so right now I'm suuuuuuuper sore. I think I'm getting trigeminal neuralgia, which is a very "I am a hypochondriac" thing to say, but let me cook. my body does weird things. here is a short list of despicable things my body has done to me in 2025 alone:

• the flu. this is not remarkable except I got my flu shot. whenever I get the flu, I get this postviral vestibular thing for like a month or two afterwards and develop random dizzy spells. also, I get hella bad migraines from it.
• in March, my eardrum fucking exploded. like, from the inside out. I went to urgent care and they scoped me and found blood coming out of it. I had just gotten so many ear infections that it finally said enough is enough and took action.
• I caught Lyme disease. mind you, I work from home and I don't go outside. so I spent all of August in bed. it was easily one of the worst things that has ever happened to me health-wise.

so, yeah, taking inventory of the ways my body likes to turn on me, you might begin to see why I'm concerned that my trigeminal nerve is going on strike.

anyway, I was sitting there at my desk today talking to a family member about what happens when I die--it's open enrollment week at work, so we get to pick out what life insurance we want--when suddenly I started having trouble speaking because the left side of my face got, uh, squeezy, shall we say? it was like the muscle where my jaw hinges began to spasm and I felt an intense earache, toothache, and jaw pain all at once. eventually it chilled out,but without leaving a bit of residual tingly soreness that I'm still experiencing. naturally, because of the Topic du Jour, my first assumption was that I was passing away right then and there. and then it occurred to me: uh oh, this is a thing that people experience. so I looked it up and, sure enough, this can be a sign of trigeminal neuralgia.

we'll see how well this post ages. anyway, what a great first impression I've made on you lot. my name is The Country Bat and I'm in terrible shape lmao.

here is a short list of cool things about my life right now, though:

I'm absolutely loving my Sonim XP5900. this is my first real week of using it. for the most part, my smartphone is now obsolete. I read to bed every night, instead of doomscrolling and getting into fights with Madeline Pendleton lmao. I have fun on here playing with my silly little code. once my microSD card comes in the mail, it's game over; it holds 128gb, and my vast music collection is still a mere 19gb. and anyway I'm just going to listen to Life is Killing Me and When the Kite String Pops on repeat.

it's time for an autumn wardrobe refresh! I do this thing once per season where I "rotate stock" with my clothing collection. this is because:

1. I have so many clothes that they don't fit in all of my storage space
2. I cycle aesthetics and get sick of them real easily, usually about every 2-3 months

I'm thinking to go with the Y2K vibes, I'll do 90s-00s goth? like, baggy low-rise pants and also flowy jewel-toned skirts? sick.

I get to wake up every day to a really handsome guy helping me into my robe or blankie and make coffee.

but by far my favorite thing about my life these days is that my kid is getting really into writing. this was supposed to happen--not in the moralistic sense of "supposed to" but in the naturalistic sense. hyperlexia and literary prowess are all but carved into both sides of her family tree. one time, I met a third cousin of mine who was born in the 60s and raised in the Brezhnev-era USSR, from a side of my family where adoption occurred, so distance and legality forced everyone apart. her career and hobbies? a software engineer who enjoyed writing and gaming.

it was therefore only a matter of time before my own child took up this family tradition, but it's still just... alarmingly beautiful to enjoy works of art that your child has created, and particularly when they're as good at it as she is. it's truly an honor to enjoy her writing and talk to her about it!

so there you have a glimpse into my world. I will probably get bored of this like I do every blog I've ever worked on and abandon it in a few months. so, I'm sorry for that. 'til next time.