u/photodialogic

I was reading an article about how to donate specific things & came across this -

“Your old bras are welcomed with open arms at the Bra Recyclers, a Phoenix-based enterprise that has sent more than four million bras to homeless shelters, schools, foster programs, and other nonprofits all over the world. As Elaine Birks-Mitch-ell, the founder of the Bra Recyclers, explained to me over Zoom, bras are not just about fashion. For girls in developing countries, they make it possible to play sports and attend school without embarrassment.”

& thought of how many of us have bras that we can no longer use bc we have different (or no!) breasts than before treatment. If you needed an excuse to clean out your bra drawer, here it is.

A stack of old New Yorkers fell into my lap & I’m currently reading an article about Taco Bell.

“There are Taco Bell Cantinas, with liquor licenses” (including one in California that’s oceanfront & has fireplaces lolllll stop it)

I go to the galleries in Chelsea at least once a month & always pass the Taco Bell Cantina when I’m over there. Even though I loved running for the border after a long night at a bar or club in my hot mess years, I am now a BWmoreT; it never crossed my mind to go there as a sober adult after a midday art walk…but now my curiosity is piqued, so I went onto their yelp to see if they serve alcohol. No info. Pivoted to the Taco Bell site, where they also don’t advise on that fact but they do refer to it as a “restaurant” so repeatedly & with such earnestness that I feel like they might?

Can my BWTs who have indulged there tell me if I can really get a margarita to wash down my Crunchwrap supreme? Does it meet or exceed expectations? Does it rise from Mall Food Court to BWT approved? Should I head there after the next opening i go to?

A dear friend of mine, an iconic NYCBWT, recently had a destination wedding that I wasn’t able to attend due to some health stuff. Now that the couple is back home & I’m relatively more on my feet, I was looking to send them something to celebrate their marriage.

They’re a very NY couple - both from other countries but met & fell in love here & went on to have the most perfect Manhattan baby - so I wanted something that leaned into that about them, either overtly or by virtue of being crafted here/unique to here. I’m open to gifts that are NY-centric & ideally artisanal (she works in GLAM, so the arts are a big part of our friendship/her life; beautifully crafted stuff would be great) or outside the box (e.g. an envelope with gift certificates to restaurants near them in Harlem so they have an instant cache of date nights).

I’m basically starting from scratch idea-wise I always give cash, but for them, I would like to be a little more personal, especially in light of the fact that I wasn’t able to be there in person.

Please, BWTs, give me your best recommendations!

What the title says. Basically looking to see how many people just worked on their set themselves vs took a class vs any other things (no classes but reading books & watching YouTube videos on craft, etc)

I’m a fair, fair woman. In the depths of winter in my youth, I would have to buy ‘porcelain’ foundation. We’re talking white, here. & while after a couple decades’ worth of summers in the sun, I’m a bit darker, I will still never have a tolerance to the sun.

When I finished radiation, my burnt skin skin was especially dark toward the center of my chest. I figured it would peel off in a month or two & my normal skin would be underneath.

It’s been 6 months since I finished radiation & it was still there. I’ve been pretty good about putting on this THC/CBD balm on lately & tonight, as I was rubbing it in, my skin started pilling up under my finger in little rolls. It was all the burnt skin, just sliding off my body.

My “cleavage” has had what I can only describe as a dirty-with-sand look all year, rough, super uneven & didn’t match me at all & now it’s just…gone. It has left THE softest glowing baby skin in its place.

Like the most aggressive chemical peel in the world 😩😂

A friend recently reached out bc she has someone in her life who’s about to get expanders & has anxiety/questions & wanted to speak to someone who had gone through it vs just hearing their doctor’s version of events. (the siren call of this subreddit for many of us, I think)

As much as I’m generally private - no IG or FB or TikTok, most people I haven’t seen since my diagnosis don’t know - I’m actually really open to this & told her to pass along my info. Partially bc I feel like all the trash I’ve endured needs to be mined for any way to make other people’s experiences easier. We need to alchemize our individual suffering into communal care, right? & partially to pay forward all the advice & care other patients (here & in my real life) gave me when I was in her position

But the only thing is, I’m currently still going through it so I feel like, as much as I have my firsthand knowledge & did tons of research, I’m not going to know it all or even probably remember everything I went through with them.

All this to say - if there’s anything you wish you knew before you got expanders, anything that you felt helped you with pain/scarring/sleeping/healing/complications throughout your time with them, anything I might be forgetting that she should talk to her doctor about? I plan on listening & answering questions but I wanted to be a little proactive in putting something together for her.

I’m craving an old school southern breakfast. Please help.

But right now I am so fucking mad about cancer.

I want to sign up for an art class with my daughter & it’s once a week but it’s the day after my chemo so id miss at least every third, probably more. It’s too expensive to do if we aren’t going to all of them (especially since I lost my stupid job for being sick) & even if I had the money to throw away, I’d still be mad about how many we would have to miss.

I’m just so sick of my life being impossible to plan & lead. Just laying in bed crying tears of frustration that it’s taken so much from everyone & I can’t even give my baby girl this one things.

UGHHHHHGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

She & Juelz announced her pregnancy at the season 9 reunion & I’m halfway thru season 10 & she still has a flat stomach. Am I bugging? How did she do this? Did the hiatus go on so long in between those seasons that she had the baby & bounced back?

How does Ma know the eggs she gives the doctor are all double yolk eggs if they’re still in the shell? How in the prairie witchcraft would she know that 😂

For example: Would I find the Kardashians trying to shove nipples down America’s throat at the Met Gala as annoying as I do now?

Because OH MY GOD STOP TRYING TO MAKE NIPPLES HAPPEN WTF

I’m with a regular PT but have felt like each session exacerbates my condition. Did some research & apparently standard PT doesn’t help/makes it worse in 50% of patients.

Parsonage-Turner is pretty rare so if I lived anywhere else, I wouldn’t think it was possible to find a PT who was well-versed in it but this is NY, the whole UES is basically the medical district so I’m really hoping someone has a recommendation.

I need my arm back 🥺

I got a PET last September after finishing chemo/before my mastectomy.

PET looked good. I believed that all the chemo I suffered thru did what it was supposed to do & killed all the cancer in my body.

Then the next month, I got my DMX & the pathology came back that there was cancer in all 48 samples they tested from the tumor bed.

I got my “one year from being diagnosed” PET results this morning & it’s one line of “no suspicious uptake” after another…but I can’t believe it. I just think back to being devastated by finding out that not only had there still been cancer in me when they said there wasn’t, I was even more upset that they didn’t know it was there. I feel like my body is great at hiding it & I hate it. (I hate feeling like that, not I hate my body. My body, I somehow still love)

How do I believe this?

I have always been a note taker & I like the idea of having a handy place to keep things that will come up a lot (e.g. conjugation charts, accent mark rules, etc.), so even though I’m not doing a traditional school class, I just ordered myself a notebook for my language learning.

For those of you who are teaching yourself, however you’re doing so, & have a notebook: how have you organized it? Charts in one spot, exceptions/notes in another, or by word type or what? I want it to be as intuitive to navigate as possible.

(Also open to any book recs that people have found helpful re: language learning. That’s the one avenue I haven’t explored in my autodidactic path but I’m interested)