Field Notes on Bigger Worlds, Unexpected Family, and the Return of Wandering

Case File Tags: chronic illness, disability, service dog, regained independence, family, Father’s Day, Quebecois cooking, recovery, books, gardening, Jeep life, ordinary joys, summer adventures, accessibility, personal growth, mobility, found family

Content Note: Mentions chronic illness, disability, medical trauma references, family estrangement, Father’s Day, upcoming surgery, discussions of regained independence after a prolonged period of limited mobility, and reflections on family growth and changing relationships.

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.

Sometimes there’s coffee.

Those are the best days.

Today, there are electrolytes and coffee.

Lots of them.

Because your ghoul is rocking Summerween like it’s a personality trait.

Today’s flavor is a mixture of blueberry and blackberry electrolytes. And Jingle Java coffee.

Weird mix, I know, but something about cinnamon vanilla iced coffee just hits, even on hot days.

Since I can’t find the pear Liquid I.V. flavor anymore, which is honestly a tragedy, I’ve apparently decided this one is my entire identity now.

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Sometimes that story is just me sitting in a waiting room mentally drafting a rant while staring at outdated magazines.

Sometimes it’s, “We found a place afterward and the food changed my life.”

Sometimes it’s both.

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

Luna is there.

Medical alert service dog.

Guardian.

Enforcer.

Service Dingo™.

Public access professional.

Emergency “we need to sit down right now” decision-maker.

There’s also M&M.

My Player 2.

My soft place to land.

Snack provider.

Voice of reason when I have none.

Which is often.

I’m a very stubborn cryptid.

And, in spirit (and usually at home), the Yard Yeti.

Keeper of the home base.

Guardian of the Wi-Fi.

Champion of, “I support you from this chair.”

This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.

Disability without apologies.

Life as it actually happens.

Including the messy.

The mundane.

And the unexpectedly good.

If you’ve been here before, welcome back.

If you’re new, you’ll find your footing.

Welcome to the Cryptid Dispatch.

Field notes from the chaos.

📡 Cryptid Dispatch Incoming…

Some adventures are road trips.

Some are big milestones.

And some are realizing you can run to the store for a Frosty, throw the ball for your dog, and sit on your deck with iced coffee while the weather behaves itself for once.

This week’s field notes are about the quiet kind of freedom.

The kind that sneaks up on you wearing muddy paw prints and carrying grocery bags.

Today’s report includes life updates, quiet revelations, and something that changed my life in a way I didn’t expect.

This isn’t a rant.

Just a “we left the house” post.

Something that still feels a little wild.

A little bit of adventure.

🎃 The Great Pumpkin™ Era

If you haven’t been keeping up with the blog, I’ll say it again:

Your resident Cryptid is mobile again.

Yeah, I know.

I’ve been saying it a lot lately.

But until the excitement wears off, you’re probably going to keep hearing it.

Sorry.

After seven months, we were finally able to get a vehicle.

She is a 2019 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk.

And yes.

I’ve already named her.

She is The Great Pumpkin™.

Complete with a Stay Weird bumper sticker and conversation-heart jack-o’-lantern decals on the back window.

Don’t worry.

That’s not the last of the customizations.

There are pumpkin tire valve covers too.

Though if M&M keeps adding puppy paw prints and dog-themed accessories, I may have to start calling her the Pupkin’ Spice Latte.

Which, for the record, is also the name of the in-Jeep Wi-Fi.

I’m not saying the Jeep is becoming emotionally-support-coded.

But I am saying there are paw prints involved.

And honestly?

How could I be upset?

Luna is one of the biggest parts of my life.

Every time I climb into The Great Pumpkin™, part of me is still a little surprised that I can simply decide to go somewhere again.

Seven months ago, that freedom felt impossibly far away.

Now the keys hang by the door.

And that still feels a little magical.

For a lot of people, getting in the car isn’t something they think about.

For seven months, every appointment, every errand, every outing depended on someone else’s schedule, someone else’s availability, someone else’s ability to get me there.

I don’t think I realized how much of myself I’d tucked away while waiting.

Not because I wanted to.

Because sometimes survival gets very small.

Sometimes it has to.

So, every trip right now still feels a little like getting a piece of my world back.

And today I officially hit order after designing her name badge.

Looks like she’s a real Jeep after all.

They grow up so fast.

🌻 The Quiet Shape of Freedom

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how recovery, both physical and mental, doesn’t always look the way people expect.

Sometimes it isn’t getting cured.

Sometimes there is no cure to be found.

Sometimes it’s getting a little piece of yourself back.

A driver’s seat.

A bookstore.

A mall trip that turns into a story.

A service dog asleep beside you.

A book you’ve been trying to finish for a year.

Sometimes that’s enough to remind you that life is still happening.

Seven months ago, most of these stories wouldn’t have happened.

Not because they were extraordinary.

Because they were ordinary.

And sometimes ordinary is the first thing disability takes away.

The ability to decide you want to leave the house.

To wander a store.

To solve a problem together.

To go looking for gummy candy and accidentally come home with a Mothman.

That’s what makes these little adventures matter.

🍲 Hosting Our First Big Event, Father’s Day, & Bouille

If you didn’t know, you’ve either been living under a rock or you’re like me and haven’t had a father to celebrate with.

Sunday was Father’s Day.

The first one I’ve ever actually celebrated.

And of course that meant having my dad over.

You know, I think I’m getting used to saying it.

Both out loud to M&M and to you guys.

So that’s a start.

M&M and I went all out.

We made bouille. (boo-yee)

Which, if you don’t know, is basically a Québécois French Canadian beef stew.

Thanks to her amazing Aunt Lise, who gave us her grandmother’s recipe, we were able to make it the traditional way.

Beef chuck roast.

Lots of garlic.

Onion.

Cabbage.

Carrot.

Potatoes.

Rutabaga.

And the most delectable bouillon you’ve ever tasted.

All cooked low and slow in this massive roaster that M&M and I found at the thrift store that looks exactly like the one her mom and Aunt Lise grew up with.

Because if I can find the things Lise had or has?

I do it.

Because you cannot beat perfection.

I cook everything in that roaster.

Bouille.

Turkey.

Ham.

You name it.

That is my hosting hub.

We put it right in the middle of the table after Lise taught us how to set everything up.

The nice white plates came out. Dessert plates.

M&M folded silverware.

We wanted it to look good.

Okay. That’s a lie.

We wanted it to look perfect.

My grandfather came, and we got to meet him.

He told us stories about the grandmother I unfortunately didn’t get to meet.

Stories about his family too.

He showed us pictures.

We got hugs.

And he said it tasted like something he’d had when he was young, since he’s from the same part of Canada that M&M’s family is.

Which honestly?

If that isn’t the world’s biggest compliment, I don’t know what is.

M&M made her famous pineapple upside-down cake.

Of course.

How can you have an event without that girl’s pineapple upside-down cake?

I don’t know what kind of magic she sneaks into it, but it’s one of those things you just don’t get sick of.

One of my stepbrothers even came.

Meaning Luna Bean got to see her Grandpaw.

Her Great-Grandpaw.

And her Paw-n-cle?

Okay.

I’ve got to come up with a better pun.

Your ghoul only has so many bad ones in her.

But it was a good day.

Even if it was raining.

Luna still got to play with her balls and put muddy little toe prints everywhere.

Again, I really don’t mind so much.

I was happy.

So was everyone else, I think.

And that’s what matters.

🌎 The World Got Bigger

Something else I’ve been sitting with lately?

Until pretty recently, I could count all of my family members on one hand.

Honestly, I could’ve put all of us in one room and still had space left over.

A lot of space.

That was my normal.

That was my entire understanding of what family looked like.

And then this year happened.

Now there are grandparents and stepbrothers and family recipes and stories and old photographs and people who knew people that I didn’t get the chance to meet.

There are hugs.

There are invitations.

There are conversations that start with, “Did anyone ever tell you about…?” and suddenly I’m learning things about myself, my family, and where I come from.

It’s weird.

Not bad weird.

Not uncomfortable weird.

Just…

Standing-in-a-room-you-didn’t-know-existed weird.

The kind of weird where the map of your world gets redrawn.

I don’t think I realized how small my world had become.

Part of that was disability.

Part of it was circumstance.

Part of it was survival.

When you’re surviving, your universe can become very small.

A bedroom.

A few safe people.

The same walls.

The same routines.

You adapt.

You have to.

And then one day you look up and realize there are entire branches of your life you haven’t explored yet.

I’m thirty-one years old and somehow discovering that my world is both much bigger and much softer than I thought it was.

I’m still getting used to that.

I think I will be for a while.

But I don’t hate it.

Actually?

I think I like it here.

And it hurts me that this is the first time in a long time that I think I’ve said that out loud.

🌿 Banana Frosties & Yard Work

The Yard Yeti busted his ass in the yard yesterday.

Lawn.

Weed whacking.

Taking down the weeds that have been trying to stage a hostile takeover during the heat wave and rain.

Everything is growing well.

Maybe a little too well if you ask me.

Including the weeds.

I’m also trying to figure out how to safely remove all the weeds from the garden without hurting the plants we actually want there.

I need more gardening gloves because I genuinely don’t know what happened to mine after the Great Earwig Migration of 2025.

I hate those little fuckers.

Almost as much as I hate the flies we have going on this year.

They’re huge.

Black.

And somehow more annoying than usual.

I’m trying to keep them away from everyone, everything, and obviously Luna.

As thanks for all of his hard work, we ran down the street and grabbed the Yard Yeti a banana Minions & Monsters Frosty.

Because yard work deserves compensation.

Preferably in frozen dessert form.

Even better because our mom loved the minions, and there’s just something fun about walking into the house and yelling “BELLO! BANANA!”

📚 Finding My Way Back to Reading

Thankfully, when I told you that I thought I was finding my way back to books, I don’t think I spoke too soon.

I’m really enjoying reading again.

And I know this is something that’s going to help carry me through surgery recovery in the next few weeks.

That makes me happy.

Because for a while there, it felt like I’d lost a piece of myself.

It’s nice finding it again.

🐾 Luna Watch

Miss Bean is officially 100% off watch.

We’re twenty days out from surgery, and while her stitches aren’t completely dissolved, the vet thinks she’s healing beautifully.

Unless she starts bothering them or something changes, she’s been cleared to go back to daily pup life.

Which is exactly what she wanted to hear.

As I sit here and type this from the deck, under the umbrella in beautiful seventy-three-degree Illinois weather, she’s begging me to throw the ball.

Which means your ghoul is throwing the ball.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my baby.

I think we all know this.

It’s wild how much life changes in seven months.

Going from barely leaving my room to sitting on my deck, writing beside the best dog in the world, feels a little unreal sometimes.

When I go somewhere, she goes too.

Even if it’s just running down the street to buy the Yard Yeti a Frosty.

I like to think this is the kind of easy life is supposed to have in it.

And of course, there have been trips to Reese’s Barkery for two pounds of assorted treat salad.

Because someone deserves the world for being the absolute best girl.

🐾 Luna Rating Scale™

Category	Rating
Snack Quality	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Emotional Stability of Humans	⚠️ Questionable But Improving
Couch Recovery Efficiency	11/10 Would Nap Again
Chance of Mom Overdoing It Again	🚨 Elevated
Peanut Butter Cookie Compensation	Still Inadequate

🐾 Official Statement from Luna Bean, Service Dingo™

🐾

I have conducted a thorough investigation.

There are more humans than previously reported.

Some of them give pets.

Some of them say I am pretty.

Some of them smell like outside and grilled food.

I have decided they may stay.

I also have concerns.

The humans keep putting me in The Great Pumpkin™ and then taking me on adventures.

I don’t understand why we aren’t doing this every single day.

The orange chariot has air conditioning.

Sometimes it goes to stores.

Sometimes I get snacks afterward.

Sometimes we visit people who think I’m beautiful and perfect, which is objectively correct.

I have also discovered that having a bigger pack means there are more laps, more hands available for ear scratches, and an increased chance that someone accidentally drops food.

I consider these favorable developments.

Current Recommendations:

🐾 Continue family gatherings.
🐾 Continue car rides.
🐾 Continue adventures.
🐾 Increase snack distribution by approximately 400%.

Final Assessment:

Pack is growing.

Morale is high.

Ball remains life.

🐾

Luna Bean
Professional Service Dingo™
Head of Security & Family Integration Specialist

👻 From One Cryptid to Another

Seven months ago, I was waiting.

Today I have an orange Jeep, muddy paw prints on my deck, books stacked beside my chair, family recipes on my table, people I didn’t know I had, and a Service Dingo™ demanding I throw the ball again.

The body still hurts.

The appointments still exist.

Surgery is still coming.

But my world is bigger now.

And I think that’s worth documenting.

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

I keep extras there.

Drink some water.

Take your meds if it’s time.

Eat something.

Even if it’s only a few bites.

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

Some days feel like D&D with a character you didn’t build.

Some days feel like Jumanji and someone else already disappeared into the jungle.

Some days are big.

Some days are just:

we survived the appointment.

we survived the body.

we survived Bed Jail™.

All of it counts.

The Summer of Adventure is still on.

Even if adventure looks like a local fairground.

A root beer stand.

A family dinner in pajama pants.

Or a dragon-hatted gnome riding shotgun in an orange Jeep.

It still counts.

Current Status:

Part cryptid.
Part cyborg.
Fully mobile.
Mildly unsupervised.

Thanks for coming along with me.

-Sky

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

💜 Reading, sharing, or simply staying is more than enough.

There is never pressure to donate.

But if you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, stable, and still wandering when I can, thank you for being here.

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility