Update on UGHs

Wars, etc., do be that way

Hello darling readers, welcome to this week’s edition of Crone Life, my personal newsletter about personal things, focused on me and my journey toward taking aging seriously after ignoring it for so long. Among other things.

This week’s post, following on last week’s cry of despair, describes things that make you go UGH.

AMERICAN UGHs

There’s a WAR in the Middle East. It was Benjamin Netanyahu’s idea. Trump fell for it. That’s a gift link, if you don’t subscribe to the Times.

The American military has blown through its weapons stockpile, despite spending $900 billion a year on the military budget. That link’s kinda tl:dr, so here’s the same thing in The New Yorker, presumably better edited. The budget numbers are just staggering.

Even shorter version: we have plenty of troops, and money. But we are using up too many of the really nifty, expensive weapons, like Tomahawk missiles, too quickly, in a conflict with an enemy we could probably just drop bombs on, the old-fashioned way. Also, the biggest and most up-to-date aircraft carrier in the Navy, the Gerald R. Ford, has been out of commission since a laundry fire in mid-March. The Ford has been deployed since last June, which is a record. I don’t know how the sailors and crew feel about that, but surely serious damage from laundry room fires is not a good sign.

The American military also seems to have run out of food, or no longer understands logistics. We had GREAT logistics during WWII. WHAT HAPPENED? I have heard it bruited about that this is due to the dismissal of many officers of color or femininity, or both. Warfighters don’t need no stinking logistics.

All an illustration of why you shouldn’t put people in charge who think things would be simple if they could just do it their way, ignoring the reasoning that if their way was so great, it would be everybody’s way.

Anything based on the assumption that large groups of people (e.g., Iranians, women, fill in the blank) you don’t know personally are stupid is never going to turn out well.

Remember that aphorism–”You can have it good, fast or cheap, but not all three at the same time?” The Trump regime is predicated on instant gratification, which is, let’s face it, expensive. Bombing Iran in June 2025 (remember?) seemed to work out OK, Venezuela worked out OK. Trump’s war machine seems to be running out of OK results now though. Expect visible cracks, widening and widening (like that damn gyre).

GLOBAL UGHs

JD Vance schools the Pope on Catholic doctrine. This got a lot of people’s dander up (at least in the NY Times Letters pages). I am not a Catholic, but I thought Catholics believed in the Pope’s infallibility? Also, what about the zeal of the convert? Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. Shouldn’t he be more familiar with doctrine? I am sympathetic to anyone’s spiritual journey, but his seems kind of half-assed, if sincerely felt. Another tl:dr but I’m not going to try to summarize it for you any further. I’m tired.

SUBSTACK SUCCESS UGHs

Sita, author of the Substack The Art of Dressing, made a good post about the social media underpinnings of Fashion Substack. It can have a bit of “the popular girls won’t let me sit with them” feeling. But these writers are reaching out for followers in a way that she hasn’t been, as she acknowledges. Merit doesn’t prevail without some kind of marketing strategy.

Em Seely-Katz wrote about being “Substack’s Biggest Loser” on her own newsletter, Esque. I wanted to comment that she didn’t need to worry because I am Substack’s biggest loser, but who am I kidding–I’m not trying to make a living here. I’m not even in the game. But you should read her and follow her, she’s good.

I had been feeling kind of bad about my own Substack, because my reader numbers seem to be stuck in the mid-480s. I know this is my own fault–I like to write about different topics. If I stuck to book reviews, or shopping, my emotional diary, or the experience of moving from the Big City to a mostly rural area, I would probably be doing much better in terms of readership numbers. Writing about foreign policy, logistics, military history and theology is probably not going to catapult me up the leaderboard. I don’t think there’s even a category I fit in, since Substack in its wisdom left out “women’s issues” or “getting older.” The category Crone Life probably fits into best is Culture, which could mean anything.

Looking at the leader board for that category, I can see that the ones that are doing really well are

1. Writers who came in with a large-preexisting social media following

and

2. Writers who have worked really hard at getting themselves out there.

I’m in neither category. Though I wish I were rising on the leaderboard, I also know that my commitment to this Substack only extends to the writing of it. I list the reasons for that in the next subsection.

PERSONAL UGHs

Knee

During the afternoon late last week my right knee started to ache and feel tight. I couldn’t bend my leg or stretch it out fully. I endured walking for work, including climbing up to the top floor and back down again to show an accepted student the antique keyboard collection. He really wanted to play a harpsichord or clavichord but they are all locked shut and anyway, I didn’t want to spend too much time up there because my knee was killing me. At the end of the day I had to walk way out to the edge of campus because all the other spaces had been taken by families arriving for Accepted Students Day. My knee was buckling constantly and I was afraid I would fall over sideways.

When I got home, I took a look and realized that my knee was swollen up like a grapefruit, had purple spots like tiny bruises, and felt warm to the touch. I was in so much pain at that moment, though, I couldn’t even google the symptoms. I barely had enough energy to try to ice the joint. I took a hydrocodone left over from my tooth extraction and got in bed.

I woke up sometime around 2 am and managed to look up the symptoms. Apparently this kind of thing can happen with an arthritic joint that’s experienced a previous trauma. Ding-ding, that’s my right knee. Suggested treatment consisted of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). I mostly just do the R and I parts because I am lazy. I stayed home the next day and iced my knee continuously while watching the rest of Season 2 of Paradise.¹ I know they say you shouldn’t ice continuously, but my shoulder surgeon said it was fine, so I do it. I guess if your skin turns red and white and numb, though, it could be a bad sign. There’s my PSA for injury treatment.

I iced my knee continuously for 2 days and it’s much better now. It still hurts, but I can bend and straighten it and walk more or less normally, although not without pain. I’ll probably go back to work tomorrow, but I’m going to hold off going up and down stairs. This will be tricky as the library has six levels and the motor of the ancient elevator (installed in 1931) caught on fire in March and has not yet been replaced or repaired.

Fibromyalgia

I have a nerve condition called fibromyalgia, where your brain processes pain in an abnormal way. For me, this means that I often have joint pain that feels like the symptoms of the flu, but don’t actually get sick. I also get weird areas on my skin that feel “buzzy” and hurt when touched, although if you rub them deeply, they will temporarily hurt less. But these areas look totally normal. There’s no visible reason why they should be so painful.

Other fibromyalgia symptoms, other than widespread physical pain without apparent cause, are fatigue and foggy brain. I experience these as well. I often come home from work so exhausted that I need to lie down. I wake up after what I thought was a good night’s sleep and feel as though I need to rest another day. Sometimes I feel like I just can’t think at all.

It’s hard to explain fibromyalgia to people who aren’t familiar with it, but it’s a chronic pain condition and it’s not really treatable. Fibromyalgia pain doesn’t respond to normal OTC painkillers. I just started taking a medication called amitriptyline, which is a failed tricyclic antidepressant. Its overwhelming side effect is that it makes you really sleepy. You’re supposed to take it 12 hours before you need to wake up. After 6 weeks or so, it’s supposed to make fibromyalgic pain better. I’ll check in at the end of May to let you know how well it’s working for me.

Veronica’s Corner

She continues to be a very happy and most beloved little kitty. Her funniest trait is the cute little noises she makes, from the loud meows to get your attention to the tiny squeaks resulting from touching her unexpectedly. Sometimes we stroke her just to hear the “prrts” and trills.

I wrote this in dribs and drabs. Sometimes that’s just how writing is. Please click the little heart to show you appreciate my efforts to post through the pain.

1. So good, also so laughably bad, can’t wait for the next season.