Content Notes: grief, pet loss, chronic illness, food insecurity mention, medical context

Welcome to The Crippled Cryptid

Disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and survival without the performance.

If you’re new here, hi. I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Unwilling amateur cyborg.
Occasional chronic illness and disability advocate.

Medically complex enough to make my chart a jump scare.

I cope with sarcasm, snacks, and narrating my life like it’s a field report. Most days are lived in a haunted meat suit with a questionable warranty and a long-standing feud with my nervous system.

And on Tuesdays… we document it.

The appointments.
The adventures.
The spirals.
The “we left the house and now we have a story” moments.

Sometimes that story is just me in a waiting room, mentally drafting a rant while staring at outdated magazines.
Sometimes it’s “we found a place after and the food was life-changing.”
Sometimes it’s both.

I spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, but when I do venture out into the wild, I’m rarely alone.

The Party

Luna
Medical alert service dog.
Guardian. Enforcer. Service Dingo™.
Public access professional.
Emergency “we need to sit down right now” decision-maker.
Sweet… until she absolutely is not.

M&M
My Player 2.
My soft place to land.
Snack provider. Voice of reason.
The one who makes sure we eat after appointments and occasionally drags a bad day into something gentler.

The Yard Yeti (BJ)
Keeper of home base.
Guardian of the Wi-Fi.
Strong “I support you from this chair” energy.

This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.
Disability without apologies.
Life as it actually happens.

Messy. Mundane. Occasionally magical.

Welcome to the Cryptid Dispatch.
Field notes from the chaos.

Dispatch Log: Easter, Then vs. Now

This week wasn’t about leaving the house.

(We did. Food bank run. Acquired pecan milk, which feels like a side quest reward I haven’t unlocked yet.)

But this dispatch? This one is about Easter.

Not the church kind. The memory kind.

When I was a kid, Easter meant dye-stained fingers and plastic eggs hidden just well enough to feel like treasure. My brother, my mom, my grandmother. When I was really little, my grandfather too, before we lost him in 2005.

Mornings were for egg hunts and baskets. Afternoons were for family piling into the house. Oma and Opa. My great uncle and aunt. My cousins, Cody and Chris.

We’d search the yard like tiny, sugar-fueled archaeologists.
Candy. Coins. The occasional jackpot egg.

And every year, without fail, we never found all of them.

Summer would roll around and one of us would stumble across a forgotten egg in the grass like it had been waiting for us. Time capsule. Bonus round.

After Oma and Opa passed, Easter quieted.

It became ham.
Mashed potatoes.
Corn for the Yard Yeti.
Split pea soup from the leftovers.
Hot ham and cheese sandwiches the next day.

Traditions don’t always disappear. Sometimes they just… soften.

But after my grandmother passed, Easter shifted again.

Quieter still. Different shape.

The Kind of Easter We Have Now

Now, Easter looks like thrifted joy and small rituals.

A Rae Dunn bunny that says “Easter Love”, which M&M absolutely grabs by the ears just to get scolded by Aunt Lise over video call.

A pink “Happy Spring” pot that does not, and will never, hold flowers. Only plastic eggs.

Last year, we took Luna to a doggy Easter egg hunt.

One we would have loved to bring Bear to also but, he didn’t like that many other dogs.

This year, we didn’t.

Because life doesn’t pause for holidays.

Matt, my brother, lost his family dog Frost that day.

Fourteen years of love is a lifetime. And still never enough.

We knew her. We loved her.
And somewhere, if there’s any kindness in the universe, she’s running with Bear and my mom.

Luna knows something is different. She’s been giving Matt every ounce of softness she has.

Not replacing. Never replacing.

Just… filling the quiet with warmth where she can.

Grief and joy don’t take turns. They sit at the same table.

The Easter Egg Experiment (aka: “My Dog Is Smarter Than Me”)

M&M and I decided we were still going to have an Easter egg hunt.

Because joy doesn’t need to be canceled. It just changes shape.

We cut up bison jerky from the food bank and hid pieces inside seven plastic eggs. There’s something grounding about making a full holiday out of what we were able to get that week.

The Yard Yeti distracted Luna while we hid them.

The moment she was released?

She locked onto the first egg like a guided missile. Bright robin’s egg blue.

Retrieved it. Paused for a quick tinkle. Multitasking queen.

Then she brought it back.

I opened it. Gave her the treat.

She watched.

The plastic egg made that soft little click under my fingers as it opened, and her ears perked like she’d just been handed the answer key.

And that was the moment everything shifted.

The Learning Curve

Second egg: yellow.

She brings it back. Sets it down.

And instead of handing it to me?

She starts pawing it open.

Because she had watched me.
And she understood.

When I tell you I sat there, on the pavement, just staring at her like I’d accidentally raised a tiny, fur-covered genius… I mean it.

She found every egg.

Opened all but the first one by herself.

That’s not just training.

That’s problem-solving.
That’s observation.
That’s trust and communication clicking into place.

That’s her learning how to learn.

And that curiosity? That problem-solving?

That’s the same mind that catches the subtle shifts in my body before I do. The same instinct that turns her from soft to serious in a heartbeat when something isn’t right.

I got it all on video, because of course I did.
(@Luna.the.Service.Dingo and @The.Crippled.Cryptid, because I will never not brag about her.)

Post-Hunt Rituals (Midwest Edition)

It was cold, so we went inside and called Aunt Lise.

Then came the food.

The kind of food that feels like continuity.

Cheese Ball Protocol:
Velveeta, cream cheese, onion, garlic, ham, Worcestershire sauce.
Rolled, chilled overnight, coated in ham.
Served with crackers or veggies.

No chaos. No raisins. We behave in this house.

BBQ Little Smokies for the Yard Yeti
Because sometimes tradition is “this is what he likes” and that’s enough.

The Ham Event™

9.75 lb spiral ham.

Glaze packet… but corrected.

Maple syrup.
Orange juice.

Hot honey.
Spices.
Basted every 30–45 minutes for 3.5 hours.

And when I tell you this ham was so tender the bone slid clean out when I lifted it?

That was the moment.

That was the victory screen.

We pivoted. No electric knife. Just vibes and a very sharp kitchen knife.

Mashed potatoes got upgraded to cream cheese mashed potatoes thanks to food bank butter, cream, and a little bit of kitchen magic.

Lumpy. Perfect. Correct.

Yukon gold potatoes, obviously.

Corn for BJ.
Brussels sprouts for us.
Pineapple with the ham, because we have taste.

Evening Questline

M&M and I played Fortune Street while the ham baked. I won. As I do.

Started Mario Party Jamboree. Paused for dinner.

Ate in the living room. (Frunchroom, if you’re feeling regional.)

Watched Moonfall (2022).

And listen.

That movie? Not what I expected.

High rating incoming. BedJail™ Broadcast pending.

Luna Rating 🐾

Engagement Level: 12/10
Egg Detection Skills: Elite
Problem Solving: Terrifying (in a “she’s smarter than me” way)
Nap Interruptions: Minimal
Human Monitoring: Active but relaxed

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Would absolutely hunt eggs again. Possibly invent new methods.

Closing Thoughts from the Field

Easter isn’t what it used to be.

But it isn’t gone.

It’s just… different.

Smaller. Softer. Built out of what we still have instead of what we lost.

A dog learning how the world works.
A meal that came together just right.
A day that held both grief and joy without asking either to leave.

Field conclusion: successful holiday. Service Dingo™ approved.

If your life feels like a series of strange little side quests…

You’re not alone.

Some days are big.
Some days are just “we survived the appointment.”

Both count.

Thanks for coming along with me.

-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.
(Occasionally field-tested.)

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa

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If you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, stable, and still wandering when I can:
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility