The Mighty Return!

Oh shit, it's March! Where have I been and what have I been doing? Great questions, wish I knew honestly.

In all seriousness, a lot has been going on and it's caused a mixture of feeling inadequate, anxiety and just feeling like it's too late to give any sort of an update without it feeling like I had abandoned this blog. I don't know how to really describe the feeling of for some reason not being allowed to return, but that's not true at all, of course I can always come back to this and a break is ok as well. Even if this one was longer than intended that doesn't mean that I can't come back or that I should beat myself up further about not doing this weekly blog.

So I guess I'll give some small updates about things one at a time.

I did finally get to swim with my full tail on. No images or anything sadly because - drum roll please - it doesn't fit!

BUT! This is a good thing!

So when I originally measured myself I was 250 pounds, I sit closer to 235 now so although I don't seem to have noticed it with my ever day clothes, my tail definitely does. Granted this isn't only reason it doesn't want to stay up but it's a large reason. So I will say, if you order a custom made tail from FinFun and you are larger, do NOT, I cannot stress this enough, do NOT follow their measuring instructions. They tell you to measure around you belly button, don't do this, measure above your tummy bump. If you're confused as to why, think of wearing thigh highs, your leg shape can be broken down into basically a funnel shape no matter how big you are and without the fabric getting high enough again where the leg starts to go back in, the sock will always roll down. Same concept here, if you don't measure around your middle at the point where it starts to get a bit smaller again then it will always slide down especially once you get it wet.

Other advice I have for this, it just to make sure you have someone to help you with measuring, I didn't and I'm certain that made the length measurements off cause it's just so hard to get vertical measurements on you own.

I honestly wish that they would have a separate measurement guide for larger bodies but I can't fault them for anything further than that really. Incorrect measurements are my error and losing weight is nothing to blame for either of us really.

Didn't you notice when you got it that it was the wrong measurements and why not contact them about it then? Yes... I did, of course I did. However.... welcome to the chat anxiety. I did shoot off a support email about it and they had no issues offering to replace it of course, but remember how I was talking about the feeling like I had put off writing this blog post for a couple weeks and then I felt like it was too long and I couldn't return? Yeah, welcome that train of thought again. So I planned to get someone to help me get my body measurements, but by the time I had someone to help and we had the time, I felt like it had been too long. Of course the longer than anxiety has me putting it off the longer it's been the less likely I feel like they will do anything about it. Eventually I decided to just alter it myself for one of the issues it had so I definitely can't return it now.

So.... income more planned alterations to make it stay up.

Looking on the positive, it will make a very basic tail a little bit custom.

ON TO THE NEXT UPDATE!

How's the breath holding coming? Alright, I had pulled a muscle really bad just over a month ago and it hurt so bad I couldn't do anything at all and I mean that. Sitting hurt, standing hurt, laying down hurt. If I didn't turn my bed into a hospital bed basically with pillows I wouldn't have gotten any sleep. I practically had a week of no sleep anyways as is. It hurt so bad and I will be honest, it still hurts sometimes cause now it just wants to stay tight so I'm having to pause and stretch that muscle out periodically through the day. All I can say is at least it's my left arm and I'm right handed.

With that being said, I had a solid week of not being able to practice in water very well at all and not being able to practice static breath holds at home at all because it just hurt. So I needed to take a week off at least, which is what started this break I went on. Then the second week I did plan to come back and give an update but I still feel like I didn't have a lot to talk about and after that.... well you can reference the first section all over again, lol.

So not a lot of progress has been made really. My longest static breath hold had gone down to 45seconds so I'm not too thrilled about that. However in the water, I still am staying around 20 seconds with now reaching 25 seconds a couple of times. Progress regardless even if it did pause for a while and I've only recently been able to get back to 20 seconds.

How's the distance swimming coming? Not bad! I hadn't tested myself in that in a while but I did manage to swim the length of the deep pool plus turn around and go back the other way the other day. I didn't make it all the way back on the return trip but I got pretty far. I would say my average is more to to swim the length once and get turned around. I need to figure out a better way to turn around that doesn't expend a lot of energy cause I think that's the main problem honestly.

Now I think my main updates on the mermaid side of things are finished, I wanna put into the end here some personal thoughts about.... things.

First I want to say thank you for all those I see that read this, I honestly didn't think anyone because a few of my friends would check out this blog but I regularly see numbers that tell me it's gotta be reaching people outside of my friend group, so thank you!

Now for a small personal life update, I have been in talks with a surgeon to get top surgery, which is so exciting! I'm so happy to finally get that done! However, as exciting as it is, it has lead me to realize that people I thought were allies, aren't. I don't want to go into details about it but I will say my mom and dad are not super supportive and that's no surprise, I thought my aunt was supportive and so I told her what my doctor appointments were about and... she told me parents. Now before you think maybe she didn't know I didn't want them to know, she knew, I had expressed it openly to her more than once. I still believe she thought it would help and maybe help my mom at least realize they were destroying their relationship with me, however of course it didn't do that. I got to listen to my mom be mad and passive aggressive about how I'm going to destroy my body. Safe to say I'm pretty sure it had the opposite effect that my aunt probably was thinking it would, I think she's in denial over how crazy my parents have gotten into a lot of those fascist conspiracy theories.

Anyways! I would say let's focus on positive things, but there's not a lot of positive to talk about recently.

I broke my phone screen about a week ago. I've dropped my phone a million times from my hand level at home over hardwood floor, over tile floor, and not a scratch... it gets dropped like a foot off the ground from my sweater pocket as I pick it up and it's screen is completely shattered. I pay for extra coverage so I've been trying to claim to get it covered but I never hear back from my claims and when I check on the claim it says I don't have one, so I submit another, I get another confirmation email saying they'll be in contact within 24hours. 24hours later, I haven't heard a thing and check, apparently no claim. I'm losing my mind!

Then I chipped my tooth, fuck.... don't know on what! Either way, I go to get that fixed and while I'm out getting it fixed, I lose my bus pass. Shit. At least the busses take credit cards too, NOPE! For some reason it would not take my credit card that day. The bus driver was nice and let me get home at least still. So I call the places I ran my errands at and nope, no card was turned in, so it's just lost forever. Annoying thing is that because I have a disability card I'm out being able to run errands for a few weeks until I pay the fine for losing it and a new one is mailed. Of course there are still errands I HAVE to run and I'll just have to bite that bill and added cost as well.

Then I'm thinking my three bad things had happened back to back rather quickly so it's all done right?

HAHAHAHAHA you poor naïve fool!

My recently fixed tooth, yeah, it broke.... the new filling they put on to built the tooth back to normal, just popped off.... while eating soft hashbrowns yesterday!

At least I've got a dentist appointment today but still, I'm not too happy about this. I'm supposed to get a cavity filled but instead I'm gonna have to get the same tooth as last week fixed again.

Personal life aside, a lot of things are going wrong right now, I want to make it perfectly clear, of course I stand with Ukraine and my heart hurts to see everything they are going through. I don't want to get political so I will leave it at that and the simple statement that I do not think that the world is doing enough to help.

For now I will leave things off as usual with a message from my mermaid cards.

"The feminine power is a radiance that shines from women and girls who are securely anchored within their bodies and souls. Fill of tenderness, love, beauty and grace, the feminine power is soft yet strong. Now is the time to welcome this power - it is your right to be beautiful, inside and out! Awaken the queen insdie you and let her blossom.

Not a woman? Not a problem. look for opportunities to get closer to a woman in your life, be it your mother, sister, lover or wife. try looking through her eyes to help you get in touch with your feminine side and allow her spirit and compassion to influence some upcoming decisions."