Cate

@midcatecrisis

I have had myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) since 2020 and spend the majority of my time in bed, of necessity. Mostly homebound. I used to be a climate activist, but spend any available energy parenting now. FUNCAP 2.5 Toronto, Canada Autigender She/they 😷

1,270 Following4,257 Followers5,830 Posts

Bluesky

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Cate@midcatecrisis· Jul 4

Monarch butterfly feeding from a bright orange butterfly milkweed flower. Orange on orange.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Jun 3

With alt

bright colour crayon borders, each item illustrated with a small diagram, text reads

COOL OUR SCHOOLS!

A MAXIMUM INDOOR TEMPERATURE
STANDARD FOR SCHOOLS

RETROFITTING SCHOOLS WITH AIR CONDITIONERS OR HEAT PUMPS

BUILDING UPGRADES LIKE INSULATION, ENERGY-EFFICIENT WINDOWS, COOL ROOFS, AND EXTERIOR BLINDS

TRAINING AND GUIDANCE FOR EDUCATORS ON RECOGNIZING AND RESPONDING TO HEAT STRESS

Ontario
Jamie West
Member of Provincial Parliament, Sudbury
Député provincial, Sudbury

Cate@midcatecrisis· May 23

Don’t have Instagram or TikTok but managed to grab these without having an account. There’s a version with laying flat in bed if you can’t hold a plank. #plankME #plank4ME

#plank4me
challenge
Image of a woman in workout clothes wearing a mask doing a plank.

Hold a plank to raise awareness for Myalgio Encephalomyelitis

Record yourself doing a plank somewhere fun, or holding a plank for as long as you can. Tag a friend/mutual to do the same, and upload the challenge (feel free to time lapse/speed it up) and use the hashtag #plankME!
Finally, if you're able, donate to our fundraiser!
Donation link:
Link to OMF donations

Cate@midcatecrisis· May 12

I was able to go down to my garden and take a few photos of the spring flowers this weekend. It’s been a while!

Pink redbud flowers clustered on thin branches.

Delicate purple bog violet flowers slightly in shade against green leaves and some soil.

Bright and cheerful marsh marigold blooms against a vivid green backing. They look somewhat like buttercups but more robust.

Cate@midcatecrisis· May 8

But fundamentally it’s a CBT study and sounds like it might also included Graded Exercise? So boooo

Text reading

Intervention/Treatment
Other: Dynamic neural retraining system
• Description: The DRS program includes the following components: 1)
cognitive-behavioural therapy; 2) mindfulness-based cognitive restructuring; 3) emotional restructuring therapy; 4) neural linguistic programming; 5)
incremental training; and 6) behaviour modification therapy. DRS offered in this study includes a 14-hour online course followed by a 12-week online
"LIVING DRS" group support program. The 14-hour online course includes a variety of exercises, instructional videos, and a workbook.
Upon completion, participants are offered a 12-week LIVING DRS Group Support program which provides individuals with support in how to best implement DNRS into their daily lives with the help of a trained facilitator as well as peer support.

Participant Group/Arm
No Intervention: Wait-list control group
The waitlist control group will complete the experimental intervention after 4 months.
During the waiting period, they will continue to receive usual care and will be asked to not participate in any other new treatments.

Cate@midcatecrisis· May 8

It sounds like they are doing some objective measures like metabolomics profiling and microbiome testing? The flyer (which my husband threw out before I could snap a photo) mentioned wearables as well (and didn’t mention mind-body?)

Text reading

Mind-body interventions (MBls) focus on how the brain, mind, body, and behaviour interact to improve health and well-being. These techniques help people become more aware of themselves, take better care of their health, and boost mood, quality of life, and coping skills.
MBIs use the brain's ability to change (neuroplasticity) by reinforcing certain thoughts, feelings, or behaviours that support changes in biology and function. MBls may influence physical health by affecting how the brain and body communicate through chemicals such as hormones and neurotransmitters. Objective fMRI evidence shows that practising MBls can change brain structure and function. This makes MBIs a potential good fit for people with chronic illnesses like ME/CFS and LC, which involve complex interactions between the brain, immune system, and hormones.
There is no rigorous peer-reviewed evidence that DRS is effective. Our study will address this question using subjective and objective measurements in a multiple-methods wait-list randomized controlled trial.

Text reading

There is no rigorous peer-reviewed evidence that DRS is effective. Our study will address this question using subjective and objective measurements in a multiple-methods wait-list randomized controlled trial.
The objectives of this study are to: 1) examine the effectiveness of the DNRS program for individuals diagnosed with ME/CFS with and without Long COVID, compared to a treatment-as-usual wait-list control group on a range of patient-reported outcomes including health-related quality of life, fatigue, pain, anxiety and depression and objective measures including daily steps, heart rate variability, and sleep; 2) quantify metabolic changes through untargeted serum metabolomics profiling, 3) determine if metabolomics screening can predict treatment responsiveness to DRS; and
4) identify the microbial signatures of large bowel microbiota in Long COVID patients pre and post MBI.
A descriptive qualitative study will also be conducted in a sample of participants to learn more about their experiences during the trial.
Official Title
Mind-Body in Long COVID and Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis Study (MILES): A Patient-Centred RCT

Cate@midcatecrisis· May 8

So the ME clinic I saw sent me information about a study called the MILES study (“RCT of Mind-body in Long COVID and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis”). My immediate impulse when they told me about it at my last appointment was “hell no”, but the study does seem more complex than I originally thought.

Text reading
Study Overview
Brief Summary
We are studying the effect of a mind-body treatment for people with Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
(ME/CFS) with or without Long COVID (LC). Our team recognizes that ME/CFS and Long COVID are serious, debilitating, biomedical conditions.
ME/CFS can affect many different parts of the body, such as the nervous system, immune system, and metabolism. It is hypothesized that central sensitization (i.e., when nerves get too excited) may influence these complex conditions and may make symptoms worse.
This study explores a mind-body program called the Dynamic Neural Retraining System™ or DNRS

Cate@midcatecrisis· Mar 27

Looks like I might have a chance to sit outside with some coffee or tea on Monday! 🤞for good AQ and mild weather.

Weather display

Toronto, ON
Mon 30 Mar
DAY
18°C
sunrise symbol 7:03 am
Sunny. High 18.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Mar 4

Phone Zap (for those who can do zooms and calls) on March 11 re: education funding in Ontario. #BetterCallPaul #FundOurSchools Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

On the left and image of a phone screen reading ONTARIO PARENT WITH KIDS IN A CRUMBLING, OVERCROWDED, UNDERFUNDED
PUBLIC SCHOOL
is calling

To the right reads Register Here:
Ontario Families
PHONE ZAP for Education
Wednesday.
March 11th 7:30 pm
On Zoom

There is a QR code and the hashtags BetterCallPaul and FundOurSchools

Cate@midcatecrisis· Feb 6

Typewritten poem with visible corrections in whiteout and pen.

"next to of course god america
i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth o
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

Cate@midcatecrisis· Feb 6

I think this is my favourite page so far. Based on the colours and the books I would guess I was perhaps in Grade 13? (Which was a grade we had in Ontario back in the day before the government cut it.)

Handwritten page, colours alternating with each quotation. It reads

"All of us are better when we're Ioved."
Alistair MacLeod
from No Great Mischief

"Grandpa died from jumping up in the air and trying kick his heels together twice."
ditto

“Explaining the facts of life to
those who have as yet no interest in such a subject and who would probably be more interested in eating cookies. "
ditto

"She sat very still inside her happiness.”
Elizabeth Hay, A Student Of Weather

"But knowledge is one thing, hope another."
dito

Cate@midcatecrisis· Feb 1

I found my little book of hand harvested quotations and poems in the back of my designated disorganized drawer. Want to see what a painfully earnest little teenager I was?

A white page with evidence of several earlier pages torn out of a notebook. Written in big curvy print with blue and pink gel pen reads My Book of Wise, Magical
and Beautiful WORDS.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Jan 11

My kiddo made some paper flowers for the cozy corner in her classroom. So, timeline cleanse.

A bright rainbow of paper roses in varying sizes arranged in two rows. They are displayed on a green floor of a grey basket. The warmer colours are arranged to the left, moving to cooler colours at the right.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Dec 25

My kid (13yo) made a tree topper

Yellow painted 5 pointed star on top of a Christmas tree, leaning at a fairly aggressive angle.

Grey 5 pointed star with a tube coming from the bottom, molded from cosclay.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Dec 6

My kid: Can we get a star for the tree? My husband: We have a star at home. The star at home:

Very sad looking star made out of chopsticks, bits of shiny gift wrap, and a toilet paper roll. It has very clearly been made by a young child.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Nov 3

Book cover with a blue tinted dog with a wagging tail looking up toward a glowing yellow moon. Text reads For Laika in big text and The dog who learned the names of the stars in smaller text. Under that is that’s Kai Cheng Thom illustrator Kai Yun Ching.

Under the book cover are publication details that read

For Laika : the dog who learned the names of the stars

Thom, Kai Cheng, author.
Contributors: Ching, Kai Yun, illustrator.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Oct 17

Beastie Boys known to let the beat Mmm, drop

Garmin heart rate graph showing a HR going up and down between 68 bpm and 105 bpm in waking hours and then falling steeply for a couple hours in the afternoon.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Oct 1

I can find the links to specific products if you want them.

Photo of a bed, a white set of drawers is visible beside it and two grey organizers with pockets hanging from the headboard.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Jul 9

Fan-fucking-tastic

Cate@midcatecrisis· Apr 6

But the content warnings are separate and specific and I think you can make it so books with a specific warning don't get recommended to you. This is Fried Green Tomatoes content warnings:

Black text on white background, from StoryGraph:

CONTENT WARNINGS

Submitted by users as part of their reviews

View summary

Graphic

Racism, Racial slurs, Domestic abuse

Moderate

Rape, Death, Cancer

Minor

Cannibalism, Alcoholism, Murder

Cate@midcatecrisis· Mar 16

Informational image

Text:

(Right corner) AAG
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of GEOGRAPHERS

(Left corner, large) DO WE KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE?: ORGANIZING COVID-SAFER COUNTER-SPACES

(Underneath, smaller) 2025 AAG Annual Meeting - Detroit

Friday, March 28, 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM

Room 410B, Level 4, Huntington Place

Modality: Hybrid Panel - In person/ Streamed

(Bottom left)
Questions? Contact
Erin Clancy at eclancy2@wisc.edu

(Bottom right)
Masks provided and required for in-person attendees.

On the right is an drawn image of someone with short hair and shading suggestive of breasts lifting a procedural mask to their face.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Mar 4

With alt text for disabled creators, re: effect on Etsy transactions for now.

Black text on white background:
As you may know, tariffs on goods imported to the US from Canada went into effect today. These regulations are evolving, and we are keeping a close eye on updates from official government sources.

As the US regulations stand today - 4 March 2025 - the de minimis exemption remains. This means that the vast majority of Etsy orders can currently enter the United States duty-free because they fall below the $800 value threshold.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Mar 1

Having PEM because you were in pain yesterday (gallbladder) just adds insult to injury. My kids found a comic to cheer me up, though. From TheAwkwardYeti.com

Four panel comic, with a liver (reddish brown, kinda triangular) interacting with a gallbladder (green and round).

Panel 1
Liver: what is it, gall bladder? can't you see I have a lot to do?

Gallbladder: [holding up stones] I maked these

Panel 2
Liver: [looking angry] you made STONES?

Panel 3
Liver is pushing gallbladder away.

Liver: YOU'RE JUST SUPPOSED TO HOLD WHAT I GIVE YOU!

Liver: GET OUT! GO ON!

Panel 4
Gallbladder sits alone, hugging stones, with welling tears.

Gallbladder: I maked these

the Awkward Yeti [dot] com

Cate@midcatecrisis· Feb 17

Just noticing OG post didn't have alt text so resharing the image with alt text, for citation see original thread. It's a trash argument, as the original thread noted.

Text:
One of the defining features of the social-justice orthodoxy that swept through American culture between roughly the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 to Hamas's assault on Israel in 2023 was the policing of language. Many advocates became obsessed with enforcing syntactical etiquette and banishing certain words.

"Wokeness," as it's known, introduced the asymmetrical capitalization of the letter b in Black but not the w in white. It forced Romance languages like Spanish to submit to gender-neutral constructions such as Latinx. It called for the display of pronouns in email signatures and social-media bios. It replaced a slew of traditional words and phrases: People were told to stop saying master bedroom, breastfeeding, manpower, and brown-bag lunch, and to start saying primary bedroom, chestfeeding, workforce, and sack lunch.

At the extreme, it designated certain words— such as brave—beyond redemption.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Feb 11

From Canada (it's apparently locally variable):

Screenshot of a Google maps map of the Gulf of Mexico, which is labeled "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)"

Cate@midcatecrisis· Jan 1

It took me like 3 tries to remember how to take a screenshot and this is the word I got so that's a wrap on 2025.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Dec 8

With alt text:

A screenshot of a dictionary entry.

Noun
Schreibtischtäter m (strong, genitive Schreibtischtäters, plural Schreibtischtäter)
1. desk murderer, mastermind; a person who arranges for (orchestrates) the commission of a crime without directly committing it.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Nov 25

I want to share a book that brought me a lot of straightforward delight recently. It's really the BlueSky-est of books - bawdy, ridiculous, and hilarious. It's a the most transcendent shitpost (almost autocorrected to ship post, lol) in book form. Strongly recommend the audiobook format!

Book cover of Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, narrated by Casey Jones. (All words are upper case.) The cover is teal and the title is centered on the purple shadow of a ship framed by two serpent tails. To each side is a symmetrical curling wave. There are three sillouetted figures in yellow - on the wave to the left in monks robes, on the wave to the right in pirate's clothing, and a third lies cheekily posing on "wind".

Cate@midcatecrisis· Nov 22

Title says Nov 25, 2023-Nov 22, 2024 and then Weekly Averages. Line graph with months marked on the x axis and "stress" as a score from 0-100 marked on the y axis. The line is mostly stable bumping a bit above and below 25. In the month marked February, there is a noticeable steep rise that probably reaches around 35 before falling off in a bumpy way. The line tracks a bit above 25 at the end in October and November.

Cate@midcatecrisis· Nov 22