iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 17h

Got a major jump scare walking by my neighbor’s garage!

Garage with creepy Halloween decoration on garage door that looks like the door is partially up with Pennywise the clown sneaking out and “I see you” written above.

Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I made this pumpkin oat bread that came out very pretty, but despite upping the sweetener and mixing in Reese’s chips in with the chocolate chips it somehow still tastes too “healthy.”

Pumpkin oat bread, with a brown top studded with chocolate chips.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

His reason for being annoying was because he needed me to vacate the couch so he could properly arrange the blankets and cushions for his morning nap.

Benny the boxer mix looking perturbed because he’s been interrupted in the process of arranging his blanket nest.

Benny th boxer mix peacefully sleeping on blankets and couch cushions arranged to his liking, so that he can drape his neck over blanket-covered cushions while the blankets are piled underneath him.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

He is being very annoying and nosy but it’s also so cute!

Close up of Boer mix’s nose, tilted slightly up toward the camera.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think this was a great book for addressing the predominant American cultural factors that shape grief and I appreciated the attention it brought to the validity of grieving companion animals. However, now I really want to read a book focused on the anthropology of death and grieving!

Cover of "all my dead cats and other losses: practicing good grief in a culture that fears mourning" by s.e. smith, againt a colorful backdrop. The cover is in shades of a beige, orange, and blue, with thick stripes in contrasting shades. The first stripe at the top is beige, and has the "all my" text of the title in large, dark blue lowercase text. The next stripe is a sky blue, and has "dead cats" above in the same texgt as the first line of the title, and then "and other losses" below in small, beige letters. The next stripe is orange, and features an illustration of paw prints leading to a window-like portal that reveals a starry sky. The next stripe is beige, and has the subtitle in small orange text. The final stripe is dark blue, with the author's name in large orange text.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

While the intention was to forestall ethnocentric judgements of those practices, I felt it could have been explained with more cultural sensitivity.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Towards the end, there’s more detail given about ancestor altars in multiple cultures—and an astute comparison to how core Christian rituals enact a similar process—but I didn’t like the way smith addressed that outsiders might find these rituals “primitive” or “creepy.”

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Religious and cultural rituals practices--such as sitting shiva--mentioned, but not fully explored.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I would have loved more about specific culture rituals around death and the role of religion and spirituality. The beautiful prologue got my hopes up that there would be descriptions of Greek mourning practices.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Through interviews, smith explores how the predominant white American culture, capitalism, systemic racism, ableism, private equity, and the horrors of the American healthcare system shape the space we have to grieve.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The subsequent chapters explore topics sudden deaths vs. anticipated deaths, guilt and disenfranchised deaths, and explore issues of euthanasia in both companion animals and humans.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I also really appreciated the first chapter, focusing on childhood grief, which made me recognize how angry I still am about how things were handled when my mom died.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I really loved the prologue, where smith describes their early childhood in Greece roaming around cemeteries and charnel houses, and how that shaped their relationship with death.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Each chapter focuses on the loss of a particular cat, and uses that context to consider a wider topic around grief and death.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Smith explores mourning in American culture, using the deaths of their cats as a starting point for considering wider cultural issues around death and grieving.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Time for another book review! My next book review is All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture that Fears Mourning, by journalist s.e. smith. #Booksky #NonfictionBooks #Grief

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Aww Ash reminds me of my Maisie! I miss having a chonky purry kitty around so much!

Black long-haired cat curled up on sugar skull blanket by skull throw pillow and colorful quilt.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The essays cover a wide range of experiences, and it gave me some perspective to think about how part of the challenge of menopause is it’s a life transition that encourages us to question the gendered aspects of our identity.

Cover of "Bloody Hell! Adventures in Menopause from Around the World" Edited by Mona Eltahawy. The cover is black, with a blue stripe along the right edge that says "unbound anthologies." The title is in blood graffiti-like script, centered around a pair of lips. The subtitle is in three rows, alternating in orange-ish yellow and red script, in a smaller text with a similar style as the title. The "edit by" and author's name are in slightly smaller similar script, with the "by" orange and the rest of the line in red.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Overall, I appreciated reading the collection. As Eltahawy notes in her introduction, “Menopause is shit. Menopause amazing.”

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

--one of women experimented on by J Marion Sims (the “father of gynecology” who performed non-consensual, unanesthetized surgeries on enslaved Black women) and while it was powerful storytelling, it was pretty horrifying to read.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There’s also one essay by a Black reproductive justice activist who structured her essay around storytelling from the perspective of Anarcha Westcott--

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

As to be expected with an essay collection, there was a lot of diversity in writing styles, so it was a bit uneven. There’s one essay where I found the style really tough to get through, and there was a point in the middle where reading several in a row felt like a slog.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

--the challenges of being a bisexual woman accessing gynecological care in Turkey or how menopause introduces a new dimension for considering gender transition for a non-binary person.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In these essays, we are introduced to considering what menopause is like for a Black woman navigating an HIV diagnosis and cancer--

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So often discussions on menopause focus on the experiences of white cisgender women, and consider menopause as a challenge co-occurring with parenting teenagers and navigating heterosexual marriage, and it was great to read so many diverse experiences.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What I really appreciated in this collection was that Eltahawy was intentional in recruiting a diverse group of women and gender minorities, including non-binary and trans authors.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In this collection of essays edited by Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy, a diverse group of authors explore their experiences with menopause, and their essays are separated by zine-like illustrations highlighting key phrases from their narratives.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Time for another book review! My next book review is Bloody Hell! Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. #Booksky #NonfictionBooks #Menopause

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I have prism film on my bedroom window, and the rainbows are best right around the equinoxes.

Rainbow rays against a white wrought iron bedframe decorated with purple wisteria.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It makes for engaging storytelling, but it becomes a hindrance to pushing back the already-anthropomorphized gendered biases. And I wish the early chapters were edited to consistent with the conclusions at the end.

Cover of "Bitch: On the Female of the Species" by Lucy Cooke, against a colorful backdrop. The cover is a bright reddish-pink color, with the title in large white text on the lower half of the book. In the "i" of "Bitch," there is a hyena standing, holding part of the letter in their mouth as though it's been bitten off, forming the dot to the lower half of the "i." The subtitle is in smaller yellow text below, with the authors name in slightly large white text below that.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. There were parts I really enjoyed, and other parts where I felt like the anthropomorphizing went too far. It makes for engaging storytelling, but it becomes a hindrance to pushing back the already-anthropomorphized gendered biases.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I also was dismayed that there were a couple of points where she repeated outdated/inaccurate information, such as stating that wild female chimps don’t bond and only have competitive relationships, or that female bonobos are the only apes that engage genito-genital rubbing.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

At the end of the book, the final chapter provides a very different perspective, and she notes in the conclusion how her perspective changed in the process of researching and writing the book.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

However, what I found frustrating is that she started the book from describing the biology of sex in binary terms, discounts the possibility of gender in animals, and in the early chapters, describes animal behavior as being motivated by getting their genes into the next generation.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What I liked best about the book the way she foregrounded key figures in feminist biology such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and Jeanne Altmann.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

To counteract that, she introduces readers to the work of feminist biologists and describes a variety of animal behavior, from spiders to bonobos.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

She highlights her frustration with her zoology education—as she noted multiple times, Richard Dawkins was her tutor—because of the way that Darwinian sexual selection has been applied to describe females as passive and males as active.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The book has an entertaining and engaging approach to animal behavior, and Cooke is a good storyteller, though she notes at the beginning that she intentionally anthropomorphizes for storytelling effect.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In this book, she highlights the active role that female animals play in evolution, as well as highlighting the researchers who study them.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Time for another book review! My next book review is Bitch: On the Female of the Species, by Lucy Cooke, who is a documentary filmmaker with a master’s in zoology.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I have a pair of Manitobah boots I love, but the first thing I did was put superfeet inserts into them. And then the cozy inserts over that layer.

Michelle standing in the snow with only boots and leg warmers visible. The boots are black with a pink, blue, and yellow flower pattern with an ombré pink and blue checkered at the top, and a tassel at the outer edge. Above them are striped crochet leg warmers in shades of purple, pink, blue, green, and yellow.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Making beet-radish soup in my pumpkin cauldron. The radishes are because I accidentally bought them at the farmers market last week thinking they were small beets. This week I actually got beets, and decided to try throwing the radishes in.

Red soup full of chunks of beets and radish, with bay leaves and herbs.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Collected some goldenrod, once it’s dried I’ll play around with some herbal infusions!

Goldenrod stalls spread out on dish towel.

Bunch of goldenrod hanging upside down from doorknob.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It is! I miss it. And I especially miss this girl, though she passed a couple years after I moved away.

Michelle in pink corduroy jacket petting the forehead of a Paint horse.

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Dr. Michelle A. Rodrigues 🐒 @marspidermonkey.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Had to dress a little witchy to see Practical Magic and I love my moon pendant from @peculiarityshop.bsky.social with my silver moon dress!

Michelle wearing a black velvet dress with a sparkly silver crescent moon pattern, and a necklace with a crescent moon with sparklers from the opal inlay.

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