Pizza, Thrift Store Relics, and the Man in the File

Case File Tags: identity shift, inherited history, quiet revelations, storm season, found family (adjacent)
Content Note: family discovery, parentage, identity shifts, grief-adjacent reflection, chronic illness

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.
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. Sometimes there’s coffee. Those are the best days.

Today’s brew: is Bones Coffee: Dark Side Chocolate Truffle with vanilla sweet cream creamer.
Today, there’s also electrolytes. Because your ghoul is rocking a migraine.

Look, Illinois weather is rioting. Okay?

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Sometimes it’s a waiting room and outdated magazines.
Sometimes it’s life-changing food.
Sometimes it’s both.

The Party Comp

I don’t venture out alone.

Luna is there.
Medical alert service dog. Guardian. Enforcer. Service Dingo™.
Professional “we need to sit down right now” decision-maker.

M&M is there.
My Player 2. My soft place to land. Snack provider. Voice of reason.

And holding down the base:
The Yard Yeti. Guardian of the Wi-Fi. Champion of “I support you from this chair.”

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

Messy. Mundane. Unexpectedly good.

Cryptid Dispatch Incoming

Today’s report is quieter.
I’m a little more sore after all the walking yesterday, I won’t lie.

But heavier in a different way.

The Ancestry saga is over.

At least… the searching part is.

Now we’re in the part where we live with it.
Build something with it.
Figure out what it means when your past rewrites itself and hands you a new chapter mid-story.

At least… kind of.

Because like I told you before, he was always there in little ways.

He built the deck.
The one around my pool, too.
And the fence around the garden. Little things I grew up with.

Little things I built stories around in my head growing up.

So maybe he wasn’t here physically in a way that I could see, feel, or touch.
But things he had made had been.

And that counts for something.

Field Notes: Rain, Needles, and Regret (The Buffet Incident)

Monday: We left the house around 12:30pm.
Pouring rain. Full commitment.

Destination: Crystal Lake for allergy shots.

I got to tell Tracy and Julie (my favorite nurses on the planet) about my dad.
Still weird to say. Still real.

By the time we left, the rain had cleared like it had somewhere else to be.

So, M&M and I walked four and a half blocks to the Asian buffet.

And listen.

I don’t enjoy leaving bad reviews.

But when the floor feels like adhesive, the tables are sticky, and the breaded shrimp still has the vein in it…
And I don’t just mean a little oversight. I mean thick, black, gunky everywhere in every single shrimp.
Needing to rip off every shred of breading and play 9th grade bio dissection to fix it.

We have entered consequences territory.

And then came the final boss.

Christmas music.

On April 27th.

Not one song. Not a mistake.
A full festive ambush.

“Santa Baby” in spring feels like a threat. A personal one.

And yes, I did go say something. Kindly.

I was laughed at, told it was “just in the shuffle,”
And then immediately subjected to nothing but Christmas music.

Which felt… intentional.

So yes.
Two stars were earned.

Will we go back again in a couple months and see if we just caught them on an off day? Probably. We loved this place dearly.

In the past they were 5 stars every time, and this was our first bad experience. Everyone is entitled to a bad day.

Recovery Quest: Thrifting

The thrift store, however?
A redemption arc.

M&M found a microbead pillow.
A sacred relic of the 90s.

My grandfather got me hooked on those, and now I can’t sleep without one.
So naturally, I passed this lifelong dependency along.

I found:

• A Torrid hoodie, white and deep purple tie-dye, snap sides, absurdly soft
• Lightweight, flare-friendly, perfect for summer-ghoul lounging

(I’m currently in it now if that tells you anything)

We also scored:

• A pristine Disney Pocahontas popcorn bucket from the 90’s with the lid
  → now officially a Sour Jolly Rancher Gummy Vault™

BJ (Yard Yeti) is coming home to:

• Walking Dead pants, comic-style print, ridiculously soft
• About a dollar, which feels like we got away with something

He’s loved zombies since he was tiny.
Still has his oversized “don’t git bit” pajama pants from when he was little.

Some things stick.
Some things matter.

Base Upgrades

We also acquired:

• A Halloween welcome mat: “only here for the treats”
• Two outfits for Luna:
  • Christmas sweater (pickup truck + tree, elite) also matches our Christmas decorations, bonus.
  • Rae Dunn Snoopy Halloween onesie (future post-surgery armor)

Because yes.

She will absolutely test boundaries if given the opportunity.

She might be the Service Dingo™, but she is still a dog.
And surgery is stressful for anyone.

Ask me how I know. I’ve got my own coming up in July.

We’re setting ourselves up for success here, not failure.

Sunday: The Part That Still Feels Unreal

My dad came over.
Still getting used to that sentence existing.

He brought his wife. (We loved her.)

Jack Skellington socks and shoes.
Chucky backpack.
Immediate vibe alignment.

We made M&M’s famous pineapple upside-down cake in the morning before they got here. (Extra cherries, obviously.)
Ordered pizza.
Sat around and just… existed together.

And the wildest part?

BJ didn’t disappear into his room.

He stayed.
Talked.
Laughed.

We’re talking about going camping together.
Thrifting.
Board games.
Dice.

We’re building something.

Slowly. Carefully.

But it’s real.

And I’m loving every second of it.
Even the parts that feel a little surreal.

🐾 Luna Field Notes: Emotional Support, But Make It Dramatic™

Luna, for the record, is fully on board with the new additions to the party.

She loves Mike.
She loves Kim.
She loves anyone who understands that her purpose in life is to be adored at all times.
And that she isn’t just cute. (Well, yeah, she’s cute. But she also has a job to do.)

They played ball with her.
They gave her attention.
They participated in what she considers her second full-time job.

And when they left?

She laid on the kitchen floor.

For twenty minutes.

Not sleeping.
Not resting.
Just… dramatically existing.

Staring into the middle distance like a Victorian widow awaiting a letter that will never come.

Occasionally sighing.
Watching the door. Just in case they came back.

Refusing to move.

Because her new friends had the audacity to leave.

I cleaned the kitchen while she processed her grief.

She did not assist.
Moral support was implied.

She did, however, make it very clear that this was a deeply emotional event
and that she would require additional pets to recover.

Which she received.

Along with an extra blankie for nii nii time, because she apparently needed the extra support.

She also got to take her witch toy to bed. For emotional reasons.

Because I am weak.

I think she already considers them part of the pack.

That’s okay, Lu Baby, us too.

The Cardinal

While they were here, a massive red cardinal landed on the deck to eat from the bird feeders.

And he said,
“You know what they say about cardinals, right?”

And I said it before anyone else could.

“They’re loved ones checking in.”

We’ve had a lot of them this week.

So yeah.

I’ve been wondering.

Maybe it was my mom.

Maybe it was her way of saying,
“I see this. I see you. This is okay.”

I’d like to believe that.

The Aftermath of Finding

I used to have:

My mom.
My grandma.
My two brothers.
And M&M, and Aunt Lise, obviously.

A very small, very tight world.

Now?

It’s expanding.

Not replacing.
Not rewriting what mattered.

But adding.

And that’s a strange, beautiful, disorienting thing.

I also think it’s pretty fucked up that Kim mentioned this puts me at 9 brothers now, not including M&M’s.

Like… what the hell.

So many boys.

From One Cryptid to Another

If you’re low on spoons, grab a couple from the snack table.

Drink some water.
Take your meds if it’s time.
Eat something, even if it’s small.

If your life feels like a string of strange side quests… you’re not alone.

Some days feel like DnD with a character you didn’t build.
Some days feel like Jumanji and someone already vanished.

Some days are big.

Some days are just:

we survived the appointment.
we survived the body.
we survived Bed Jail™.

All of it counts.

-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid

Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.
(Occasionally field-tested.)

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa

There’s never pressure to donate.
Reading, sharing, or simply staying is more than enough.

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