I’ve been absent from this blog since my last post in early June, although my posting frequency had been slowing down since the beginning of the year. I didn’t choose this three month blogging hiatus. In fact, I was more or less dragged away – down into the depths of my sickness with lupus. I was too sick to put even the shortest of blog posts together, and for a while I had no idea when I would be well enough […]
Category: My Life
Koopa the Traveling Pet Budgie.
Allow me to introduce Koopa, my four year old pet budgie, emotional support animal, and pint-sized travel companion. She is named after Koopa Troopa, a turtle-like character from the Super Mario series. She loves to eat corn and climb in my hair. Koopa also loves to fly laps around our home and requires constant supervision. I love her so much it hurts. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Koopa is that she travels with us! People, especially dog or cat […]
On Being Thankful for My Spouse as a Chronic Illness Sufferer.
Mr. Meena: husband, engineer, son, roller coaster fanatic, birdy daddy extraordinaire. My spouse is all of these things and more. But his most recent title is “carer”. My husband cares for me, but not just in the usual manner of a husband caring for a wife. He is a carer; he takes care of me because, as a chronic illness sufferer, I can’t always take care of myself. While any chronically ill person has huge burdens to bear, it may […]
A Lovely Blog Award + More of My Favorite Bloggers.
I am delighted that Rhiann from My Brain Lesion and Me found my blog worthy of A Lovely Blog Award. Rhiann is a fellow chronic illness blogger from the UK who lives with a neurological condition. I’ve found her blog to be very relatable and also lovely. One of my favorite posts by her is 2017: A Year for Grace, where she talks about showing kindness to yourself as a chronic illness warrior when it’s hard to follow through. A Lovely Blog […]
Diagnosis Number Three: Lupus.
Lupus? Are you kidding me? I thought it was never lupus. In November of 2015 I began suffering from debilitating pain while living in Germany. This pain, along with other symptoms, has made it very difficult for me to function normally. Going to the doctor in Germany (several doctors, actually) turned out to be less than helpful, and so I’ve looked forward to the start of this year when I’d be back in the United States and my health insurance deductible would reset. So far, […]
100 Days Back Home.
I never thought I’d be so deeply dissatisfied after returning home. I thought that transitioning from expat to repat would be difficult but overwhelmingly positive. I was wrong. Mr. Meena and I were gone from the United States for 13 continuous months. As we neared the end of our time in Germany I was rather desperate to be reacquainted with my family, certain luxuries from home, and my native language (not that I was ever successful at learning German beyond ordering coffee). Yet, […]
2016 Yearly Digest.
We had a rough start to 2016. Mr. Meena and I ushered in the New Year from our hotel in Schweinfurt, Germany while trying to understand why all the Germans were watching an obscure British skit. January 1st marked four months since we had arrived in Germany and I was still struggling to adjust to life there. I hadn’t made any friends in our small German town (Mr. Meena had his friendly coworkers, fortunately) and I felt like moving abroad […]
The Liebster Award 2016 and Some of My Favorite Bloggers.
You could call the Liebster award the chain email award for bloggers, because each nominee passes it on to between five and 11 other bloggers. It’s also a bit enigmatic; I wasn’t able to figure out exactly who started it (it seems that the original blogger deleted their site), only that it likely began in 2011. But since the goal of the award is to share the love with fellow small bloggers, i.e. bloggers with 200 followers or less, I […]
10 Reflections on Having Family Visit Us Abroad.
We spent 226 days in Germany before we had our first visitor. And after the first one arrived we had a flood of them; our rotation of various Meena family members lasted for 29 out of 44 days from start to finish. After all this time by ourselves in a foreign country it was a bit startling to suddenly have family around again. There were all sorts of emotions to process as we prepared for the visits, spent time with […]
Most Popular Posts of 2015.
I published my first post on July 8th of this year and went on to write 47 more blog posts over the past six months. So far I’ve had over 2660 post views by 899 readers from 30 different countries! That’s pretty cool. I learned how to change my blog theme, deal with my site going down, and how to improve my mobile site. It’s been a great journey and has helped keep me sane as I transitioned back into housewife life. I’ve enjoyed […]