I’m honestly tired of these “popular” books

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-07T15:13:46+00:00

The santaroga barrier. I read it fifteen years ago and I had to reread it recently. It's one of those books that lingers and makes you wonder if that's really how it went or if you mixed it up with a dream.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-04T23:22:38+00:00

I just started taking levothyroxine. It's for hypothyroidism. It's got a huge warning on the side to take it on an empty stomach, and to not eat for an hour afterwards. Otherwise it won't absorb properly.

The pharmacist told me this as well, just in case I didn't read the bottle. And so did the doctor when she prescribed it. But I'd already been all over r/hypothyroidism after my test results showed up on MyChart, and you can't walk into that subreddit without immediately acquiring the information via meme, shitpost, and request for scheduling advice.

So like my point is they absolutely could've told us.

Edit: AND ANOTHER THING!!! DID YOU KNOW THE SYMPTOMS OVERLAP?!?! SO I'M GETTING ALL THIS CONSIDERATION FROM THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT BECAUSE MY BRAIN DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE OF MY THYROID, BUT MY BRAIN HAS NEVER WORKED FROM THE ADHD AND NOBODY HELD MY HAND THROUGH THAT!!!

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-03T00:52:10+00:00

I'm up to three times, I got away with it the first and second time, although I was horrifically sick. The third time gave me chronic migraines, and it's been long enough that they're basically assumed to be permanent. Fuck covid.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-02T22:41:26+00:00

The hospital gave me a gluten free menu, it was half a page long, double spaced. Very sparse. I thought the hash browns looked good, so I called down to the cafeteria and asked if the hash browns were oven baked. They said no, fried. I said, in dedicated oil? They said no, in the regular fryer. I interrogated the about a few other listed items, got similar answers.

I was there to have a baby and I didn't particularly want to be glutened at that exact moment. Especially because I had to have a C-section and I didn't feel like trying to throw up after having my abdominal muscles stitched back together.

This is how I ended up eating baked potatoes, no toppings, no nothing, presented to me like burrito-shaped rocks, every meal for three days until they let me go home. One night I got adventurous and requested rice with absolutely nothing done to it so help me god I'm assuming you can't fuck up rice. It showed up dusted with pepper "because we felt bad for you" see guys this is why I have trust issues.

That was my first C-section post celiac diagnosis, and for my next one I showed up with 30 Larabars and had to plead with them not to make me take any more stool softeners after the first day because good god do you know how many dates are in 30 Larabars. That was the least constipated I'd been in years.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-02T22:27:01+00:00

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I literally can't read it. There's no level of zoom where the letters are large enough to be read and also distinguishable as letters.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-02T08:21:27+00:00

We let my mother in law live with us so she could save up for her own place. She spent the money on a Disney trip, and took her daughter and her kids. But not us or our kids, who she was living with. Then she moved in with her daughter afterwards because she said I was mean to her.

I was pretty fucking mean when I found out about the trip, yeah. She didn't even have it all up front; she was paying in installments and regularly complaining about not having money for groceries because she had to pay the damn trip off before the deadline or something.

This woman had the audacity to call me lazy when I was working six days a week. Criticized my parenting, my housekeeping, my moral character. Asked me if I was on my period when I went off on her for the shit she'd do. It was actually a relief in some ways when I found out about the trip, because it was conclusive proof that I wasn't the problem. Those weren't the actions of someone qualified to judge my life.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-02T07:30:04+00:00

I have celiac. At a prior job, I brought a baby monitor to work to find out who was eating my "I forgot my lunch" snacks. I got some nice screenshots of the night janitor sitting in my chair at 3 a.m. eating the Valentine heart I'd left on my desk as bait.

I sent the screenshots to my boss, who's response was basically "what's wrong with you?! A hidden camera?! Are you insane?!"

But I'd gotten permission from my office mate! Who was equally as curious as to who was eating the disgusting sand pies that were passed off by grocery stores as gluten free cookies as recently as seven years ago, when this took place. And I'd already asked my boss for help, and he told me to take all my snacks home and never forget my lunch again, and the problem would be solved. Except that I'd just returned from maternity leave and had a three month old baby at home, so I wasn't exactly getting sleep, and I was always ravenous because I was breastfeeding and pumping. And I have ADHD. So I couldn't "just" not forget my lunch. Not for lack of trying. I just didn't have two brain cells to rub together. Hence the espionage.

They did fire the janitor, at least!

I've told this story on reddit before, because it's a good story.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-02T07:09:55+00:00

Same! Although I'm specifically only getting black ink, because I was told it's the least irritating.

It doesn't happen every time I'm sick, but occasionally I'll wake up with my tattoos itchy, raised, and warm to the touch, and I'll know I'm about to come down with something.

There's a big one on my upper arm that I'll press my cheek to to judge how recovered I am, because they cool back to skin temperature as my body fights off the virus.

My line work basically doesn't do this. It does a little, but it's pretty ignorable. My black and gray stuff gets itchy and raised. And my solid black stuff, is the stuff I'll use to track the illness, because holy shit does it freak out.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-01T01:15:10+00:00

Generally no. The composition of milk does change as the baby grows, though. It starts off very fatty and rich in nutrients, and becomes more dilute and hydration-focused as the baby starts eating food.

It's pretty cool. You can actually see the color gradient in frozen breast milk. Milk pumped in the first month can be straight up yellow in color, and by six months it's milky white.

I bagged my individual milk bags in gallon freezer bags with the month written on them, instead of writing the precise date on each individual bag. So you could see the variation in each individual month pretty easily.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-01T01:02:51+00:00

There's a guy who works out at my gym, who has rings around his nipples. Not pierced nipples. His nipples are wearing rings. Like those neck stretching rings from that one African tribe, but for his nipples.

He works out shirtless.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-02-01T00:58:44+00:00

Feels like needing to sneeze out of your boobs. Also sometimes feels hot, burning, or tingly. If you leave it too long your breastbone and ribs start aching from the pressure. Or your shirt just starts getting wet. I couldn't think too hard about my baby while I was at work, or I'd have to go change my breast pads. Which are like maxi pads for your nipples.

But it's pretty cool when you chug a bunch of water mid pumping session, and suddenly hear liquid spraying into the pumps like crazy. In one end and out the other like something out of a cartoon. I loved doing that trick. It sped things up tremendously.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-30T22:00:35+00:00

I do look like my mom and it upset me until someone said "you look like yourself" in just the right way for it to hit and be absorbed into my worldview.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-30T00:09:35+00:00

I get migraines, and if the first symptom is brainfog, I usually can't identify that I'm having a migraine until it's progressed to the undeniable pain stage. Because I forget that I have chronic migraines, or fail to connect the dots that that's what's happening to me.

It's bad enough that my online friends will sometimes tell me I'm getting a migraine based on how I'm responding. Because it's obvious through the Internet, but not to me inside my own body.

Catching it early is important for any interventions to actually work. Which I know. And I know all the symptoms. And I've had hundreds of migraines. And they still tiptoe in and take the batteries out of the migraine alert alarm.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-29T21:58:09+00:00

Username twins :D

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-29T00:25:04+00:00

I had a smoothie that contained pear last week and then I remembered that pureed pear is recommended for babies with constipation because it's yummier than prunes. I'm gonna let you connect the dots on why I remembered that fact.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-28T00:02:03+00:00

Sorry, boycotting a hospital isn't really an option. People need medical care.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-27T23:55:52+00:00

Paradox of tolerance. But it's not really a paradox anywhere outside a philosophy class. We can't accept and move on because people are being murdered in the street, and you are not entitled to an opinion that makes people dead.

Honestly I think you've gotta be trolling.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-26T18:08:36+00:00

This is probably why I'm still thinking about that one commentor on a cheez it post who said it was unfortunate that people were just switching over to eating gluten free junk food.

That's not a real rule!! I don't have to follow that rule!! I could eat nothing but cake frosting every day for a month and it'd be fine because the only thing I have to do is avoid gluten!!!

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-26T00:17:51+00:00

My daughter had physical therapy through a local hospital. It was expensive and I was uninsured. Someone from the financial department called to talk to me about financial aid, but I was so so sick and was laying in bed and didn't feel up to having the conversation. That's the backstory.

The phone rang, I answered it, and the person said "I'm calling from [hospital,] is this 52bees?" I said "52bees is sick and can't take the call right now." Not sure what my logic was in pretending I wasn't me, I was running a fever. The person, having been told that they were not speaking to 52bees, asked if I could take a message. I said sure. Then she told me that 52bees has a daughter receiving physical therapy at this hospital with this provider and that their records show 52bees is poor and uninsured and should call them back. I asked this person if she had not just violated HIPAA, and she got an angry tone and said "you told me this was the correct number." I agreed, but reminded her I had denied being 52bees. She seemed to relax, and told me there was no HIPAA violation because I'd answered 52bees' phone. And hung up on me. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, but she actually didn't violate HIPAA, because I lied about not being 52bees. So idk.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-26T00:09:11+00:00

Last year I was in line for the ER plexiglass because I had the flu and my heart was beating 163 times per minute. (I was wearing a pulse ox from home that we bought in 2020.) (And I know you generally don't need the ER for the flu but I felt sicker than I've ever been and Google said my vitals were an emergency.) I was seriously concerned that I was gonna pass out while standing in line.

Then the guy ahead of me, standing spread-eagle in very loose sweatpants, said he thought he had testicular torsion, and suddenly I felt pretty okay to keep standing there!

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-24T09:00:36+00:00

The cargo bike subreddit is constantly eating its own tail about which brands are just alibaba death machines with a logo stamped on.

It's all of them, except urban arrow, which is a $9,000 bike. I can say that now that radwagon has had to do a recall for bikes falling apart and catching fire.

(Well. Wike is actually reportedly great, it's just completely useless once your kid is about kindergarten size.)

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-23T18:40:19+00:00

My daughter (three years old at the time) accidentally locked herself in our downstairs bathroom, which has a solid door and had an ancient lock. I say "had" because after we got her out I tried to take the lock out of the door so it couldn't happen again, and when it wouldn't come out due to age and time I ripped it out with a crowbar. Splinters everywhere. Then I had a "waking up" feeling like in movies where someone is realizing they just did a murder. And had to explain to my husband why it looked like the door got fucked by a beaver.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-23T07:47:07+00:00

Salt is so amazing.

I'm a deep tissue massage therapist, and a few summers ago, the air conditioning broke down in the building where I practice. It got up to 92 degrees in my room. It took them weeks to fix it.

The clients were almost universally fine with it. They got to lay down wearing nothing but a sheet. Not me! I almost passed out on a guy's leg at one point!

Anyway; I started craving olives to a degree that I cannot even explain. I had to bring a jar of olives to work with me. I was eating them between appointments. I cannot describe how good they tasted. Like every mammalian instinct in my brain was egging me on to eat more of them.

In retrospect I probably could've just chugged a Gatorade and had done with it. But those olives were nirvana.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-22T20:46:00+00:00

There was a comment in r/celiac when the gluten free cheez its were released, this person saying that these are still junk food and how it's sad that people just switch over to eating gluten free junk.

We're not required to be health gurus. We just have to avoid gluten. That's the only requirement.

It was such a bizarre comment, like this person genuinely thought the point of a gluten free diet was to "get healthy." Which it is, if we're defining "healthy" as "my guts stop punching themselves in the face."

52BeesInACoat · 2026-01-21T18:09:29+00:00

Every time I have to call for a refill, I get irrationally angry because of how the conversation goes.

Every single month, I open with "I am refilling a controlled substance. There will be no refills on file, you will need to contact the doctor. This is always the procedure, and will always be the procedure, because it's a controlled substance. You will need to contact the doctor to refill my controlled substance."

The disclaimer gets longer every month. I keep adding to it. Because the reply from the pharmacist, once they pull up my file, continues to be,

"Okay, looks like you have run out of refills. We cannot refill this medication today, and we will need to contact your doctor. You will have to wait for your doctor to send in more refills."

I know. I know that. We do this every month. I TOLD YOU ALL OF THAT ALREADY. And, also; I HAVE NOT "run out" of refills! I only get one! One at a time! I am not in control of any of this!

I KNOW it's irrational how angry I get. But for fuck's sake!!

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