u/NeverSayBoho

I'm a week out from a ~150 mile hike where I will be in the backcountry, without access to a shower for up to a six day stretch. Where I will be pretty damned dirty and sweaty and have to filter my own water, have a 2oz bottle of soap, a 5oz (for now) first aid kit, and also be a solid days hike and a hitchhike away from a pharmacy. Weight and fuel usage (so boiling water) are factors but I'll carry the weight if it means treating this piercing right and not making it worse.

My rook was pierced initially about 19 years ago at 16g. I had issues with the healing process and the piercer at the time brought me down to 18g. For various reasons, it's been about four years since I wore jewelery in it. Back in May when I was on a mini vacation in NOLA, I somewhat impulsively decided to put both my rook and industrial back in - with a professional piercer. She said my holes were still open, but they both required stretching and she ended up putting a 16g back into my rook.

After a few weeks, both piercings more or less settled down just fine. Until yesterday, when I noticed swelling of my rook. Rook is currently swollen, and there was a fun bubble of light yellow pus and blood this morning.

Right now I am treating with warm compresses (heated up wash cloth wrapped clean paper towel) and a saline spray and hoping that it will get less angry in the week ahead. However, it's clear I need to be prepared for some sort of backcountry treatment.

Right now I'm thinking about 1) buying an irrigation syringe and gently rinsing out the piercing with filtered water twice a day after washing my hands with soap; 2) carrying my saline spray with me and spraying it down after rinsing it out; 3) possibly asking my doctor for a round of antibiotics to carry just in case. I am already *on* antibiotics for a different thing, so it's extra annoying that this piercing is acting up now.

Any other thoughts or ideas for piercing care in the backcountry? Bonus if you're also a backpacker and get the limitations that I'm working with.

I'm a week out from a ~150 mile hike of the Long Trail and my body is a mess. I got a UTI, then the antibiotics gave me a yeast infection, then despite being on antibiotics my rook piercing decided now was a great time to be infected. I'm optimistic that the UTI/yeast infection shit will sort itself out before then, but it could be weeks before my piercing stops being angry at me.

(Rook piercing is about six months from having been re-done after a few years of not having it in, it's not really a new piercing as I initially got it over a decade ago, but it was basically stretched back open in May, so functionally I suppose it is.)

How have other long distance hikers navigated cranky piercings while going long stretches without a fucking shower?

Right now I'm thinking about 1) buying an irrigation syringe and rinsing out the piercing with filtered water every day; 2) carrying my saline spray with me and spraying it down twice a day; 3) possibly asking my doctor for another round of a different type of antibiotics to carry just in case.

Any other thoughts or ideas for piercing care on the trail?

I work in a nonprofit in a fast paced field. I've worked with my boss for over four years now, and a year ago I was promoted to a management role. My role is one part subject matter expert and one part management of my direct reports and one part thinking about how the team works together, implementing processes and policies, and trying to prevent burn out in a high burn out field. It's an awkward spot to be in because...

My boss is the problem that leads to turn over and burn out and I am at my fucking wits end.

He does shit like assign things out and then he does it anyway and does not communicate this to his team, regularly creating duplicative work. He completely rewrites everything because he's concerned about us having a uniform voice...but that voice is just his voice and speaking frankly, it's not always better. And it's a waste of everyone's time for him to completely rewrite everything, even the work of strong writers.

He has significant FOMO and absolutely cannot just... delegate stuff. So he insists on being all up in the business of every project. Jumps in, does stuff, doesn't communicate what he did to the person who is leading on the project, and then expects folks to pick up the pieces behind him while running to catch up. We've described it as a runway train and we're just running alongside trying to jump on the car while it's moving.

At the same time, he complains to me that he's doing too much. But he's doing too much because he can't let go of anything. He acts like a one man department chaos goblin who cannot be contained by policies or systems, even the ones he came up with himself.

He has a team of smart, well qualified people and his inability to trust his team is actively hindering people from doing their job, and actively hindering people's professional growth, and is actively making the entire department worse off on all fronts from product development to efficiency to burn out to job satisfaction. The second most knowledgeable team member after me is halfway out the door. If I wasn't trying to not upend my life anymore than it already has been recently, I would also be looking for a new job because I feel like I've done what I can and staying much longer will just professionally stunt me.

I am the only one on the team that he hears feedback and "no" from, so I'm often in the position of being a buffer between him and the rest of the team. It's bonkers how off the rails it gets when I am out of the office. The turnover rate would be significantly higher without me and even with me as a buffer, well. I hate hiring.

I *have* given him feedback, specifically on the impact of his habit of assigning things and then doing them anyway. For my own projects that I'm working on with him, I've started stepping out when he gets all up in my business. For example, this morning he joined an external call that he did not need to be on for a project I am leading on. I said we didn't need both of us on this call, and I was happy to stay so he could use this time to do other things. And when he insisted on staying, I left and indicated that if he didn't want that time, I would be using that time to do other things for the same project.

I am ready to yeet him to the moon. Is there literally anything else I can be doing to manage up this chaos goblin of a manager? It'll be awhile before I can leave.

I do not need advice. I know how to cast on, and I know how to estimate how much tail I need to cast on. I know how to not twist stitches in the cast on.

Even when you know these things, even when you've been knitting for 30 damned years, sometimes there's still a fucking project which inevitably has 200+ stitches to cast on where you have to rip it out and start over countless times in a 24 hour period for one reason or another.

Just slightly too short of a tail, way too long of a tail and not wanting to cut it, accidentally twisted anyway, weird lose stitches that would have made the edging less attractive and even, this last one was a stitch in row 1 got caught in an apparently losing interchangeable needle and messed everything up.

Happens to the best of us occasionally, and sometimes it happens MULTIPLE TIMES ON THE SAME PROJECT.

And I swear if this next round of casting 222 stitches on doesn't take, I am lighting shit on fire.

Edit: once again, not looking for advice. I understand the impulse to give it is strong.