Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,
Happy Pride!
Image: One of my latest gnomes, with a brown body, pink nose, blue beard, and rainbow cap.
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, knitting a lot of gnomes, easing back into some onsite work, and playing a lot of the brain-soothing mobile game Dots. Most recently, I listened to the Fiasco podcast season about the AIDS/HIV crisis in America and a series called Will Be Wild on the January 6 insurrection. I've been reading queer romances including A Lady for a Duke (historical with a trans protagonist) and Sceptic (paranormal featuring a team of ghosthunters); my most recent non-fiction reads have Left Behind (about the Democratic party of the 90s) and Between Heaven and Russia (about Russian Orthodox converts in Appalachia).
Image: Deep pink columbine photographed in our neighborhood.
One piece of really good recent news for our household is that the federal government has recognized my decade of non-profit work and forgiven my outstanding $84k of student loan debt, mostly from graduate school, through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program! We are still waiting to hear about Hanna's application, which is slightly more complicated, but hopeful that before the end of the year we will have both received confirmation that our debt has been cancelled. While PSLF is imperfect (all student debt should be cancelled and education available as a public good) it is helping our family toward more stable financial footing, and I am relieved and grateful.
Image: Teazle in a white cloth basket on a windowsill looking into the room with a startled expression.
I obviously missed sending out my April and May newsletters, with other things on my plate, and I plan to take a few months off this summer, in anticipation of a busy work season and other demands on my time. You can always catch up with me on Twitter or Instagram and I'll be back in the fall. It's possible we will have welcomed a new kitten into our household by then, to be a sibling cat for Teazle, in which case I will have ALL THE CUTE KITTEN PHOTOS a person could need.
Take care, in the meantime,
Anna
Happy Pride!
For the queer folk: Be gay, do crimes.
For the straight folk: Drive the getaway car. 
Image: Infant me in 1981 already prepared for Pride in a t-shirt with an embroidered rainbow on it.
You can read my latest medical update, if you haven't already heard from me, over on the blog. I won't replicate the long version here, but the tl;dr is that my health and treatment are holding steady. We are getting used to household rhythms constructed around the two-week cycle of chemotherapy treatments, and I am slowly sorting out what is and isn't possible and enjoyable to do in the context of the pandemic and my own current bandwidth.
You can read my latest medical update, if you haven't already heard from me, over on the blog. I won't replicate the long version here, but the tl;dr is that my health and treatment are holding steady. We are getting used to household rhythms constructed around the two-week cycle of chemotherapy treatments, and I am slowly sorting out what is and isn't possible and enjoyable to do in the context of the pandemic and my own current bandwidth.
Image: One of my latest gnomes, with a brown body, pink nose, blue beard, and rainbow cap.
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, knitting a lot of gnomes, easing back into some onsite work, and playing a lot of the brain-soothing mobile game Dots. Most recently, I listened to the Fiasco podcast season about the AIDS/HIV crisis in America and a series called Will Be Wild on the January 6 insurrection. I've been reading queer romances including A Lady for a Duke (historical with a trans protagonist) and Sceptic (paranormal featuring a team of ghosthunters); my most recent non-fiction reads have Left Behind (about the Democratic party of the 90s) and Between Heaven and Russia (about Russian Orthodox converts in Appalachia).
Image: Deep pink columbine photographed in our neighborhood.
One piece of really good recent news for our household is that the federal government has recognized my decade of non-profit work and forgiven my outstanding $84k of student loan debt, mostly from graduate school, through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program! We are still waiting to hear about Hanna's application, which is slightly more complicated, but hopeful that before the end of the year we will have both received confirmation that our debt has been cancelled. While PSLF is imperfect (all student debt should be cancelled and education available as a public good) it is helping our family toward more stable financial footing, and I am relieved and grateful.
Image: Teazle in a white cloth basket on a windowsill looking into the room with a startled expression.
I obviously missed sending out my April and May newsletters, with other things on my plate, and I plan to take a few months off this summer, in anticipation of a busy work season and other demands on my time. You can always catch up with me on Twitter or Instagram and I'll be back in the fall. It's possible we will have welcomed a new kitten into our household by then, to be a sibling cat for Teazle, in which case I will have ALL THE CUTE KITTEN PHOTOS a person could need.
Take care, in the meantime,
Anna