Month: April 2022

ulcer post op – family story

sometime in 97 or 98 this happened… Paul got an ulcer

I found him passed out in the john after a bleed. Shit happened pretty fast after that.

The post op nurse at RCH got my attention after Paul was out of surgery. “This is not the day to have a talk about your relationship! Do not sign any papers, make any large purchases, make any emotional demands and DO NOT let him drive. He appears rational. He is not.”

He FLOATED over the bedside rails, (I know that sounds ludicrous, but I ain’t lyin’) came gently to earth and bounced/floated over to the post op nurse, speaking continuously and in an almost scarily cheerful voice about what a great experience getting his blown ulcer mended was. ‘They sprayed something down my throat and I didn’t feel a thing.’ I looked at the nurse. She nodded, to agree with my mental email to the effect that he wasn’t feeling a fucking thing now, either.

I went to get his post op meds in the same mall as our doc Peggy was (at the time) and after I told him to stay in the car (Stay in the car for Chrissakes I’ll get it, but NOPE) he floated over to the office counter, yelled for the doc to come out and fulsomely thanked her for the surgeon recommendation. He was all but hanging on her neck and crying. I bet Peggy doesn’t even remember that, not that she’s obliged to, but damn it was funny afterwards. (At the time, thanks to my autism, I was suffering TORTURES OF PUBLIC EMBARRASSMENT)

I told him I was going to tie him to the bed to prevent him from floating away but as soon as he got his shoes off and sat down, he said, “I should probably lie down,” and HUT he was unconscious for another six hours – which was a relief, I was scared he was going to get on the phone and start telling randos that he loved them.

If you show your true personality in those circumstances, I guess Paul’s a sweetheart. It really was one of the most adorable things he ever did.

 

Recovering

Jeff is fine, but it wasn’t a fun extraction. Codeine is good to have if you need it.

12011 words. Things are about to take a turn.

I’ve done my brain exercises this morning. Strangely, I feel better when I do; less foggy, a little more awake.

In honour of Settler Saturday, please support Mari. That’s her paypal link. She is Ojibwe, disabled, the main breadwinner in her household, a writer of some note and @wordglass on twitter. TEETH SHOULD BE COVERED BY UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE and that concludes this post.

Staying off the internet

Since pundits are talking about a nuclear war, I think me not looking at the internet today is perhaps a good idea. Thankfully I have a long list of chores both mental and domestic to go through and that shouldn’t be a problem.

A new bird flu jumped to humans – at a correctional facility in the US where the inmate infected WAS CULLING CHICKENS. Jesus god. One of the epidemiologists I follow is all O,o

11843 words

I am very much hoping everything goes okay for Jeff today.

Follow Friday – check out the shinies!

 

 

Garbage day

As a matter of some urgency, Jeff needs that tooth pulled. The earliest it can be done is tomorrow. In the meantime, he’s got pain relief.  Buster continues to recover from his wound. I tested negative again. I will cease testing at this point until and unless I’m symptomatic.

two kudos – one of those same people left the ever so helpful review “This was great!” but what can you do? Not everyone writes reviews like The Tattooed Archivist, may angels drop pain au chocolat into her upstretched hands.  That was for ‘The Reviewer’, which I’ve provided a link to <—- that way.  11456 words on “Totally Boned” – oh, did I not mention that the short fiction I’m working on is called “Totally Boned”? Well, it is.

 

If you don’t care about my fanfic just skip the next para.

I’m going to stop reporting on kudos etc., unless it’s something choice, because now anyone can go and look at my stats, and I don’t need to wave it around up front to prove that people are reading my stuff. I’ve written 350K words of posted fanfic and another quarter million at least of UNposted fanfic. Still want to post “The Sword That Cries Ruin!” at some point but I have to figure out how to end it without ‘fridging’ Sylvie (an original character/romance interest for Sam Winchester, NOT Eileen, nor, alas Rowena, why is it Sam always goes for older women unless they’re feeding him demon’s blood? I blame in-character childhood trauma) and I kinda already DID ‘fridge’ Sylvie once in the story – she reverts to being a tree and goes dormant, so making her ‘die’ twice seems excessive even to me, even if multiple deaths and resurrections is a ‘Winchester thing’. I’ve been ALL OVER FANDOM and have never found anyone else who made the connection that the angel Cassiel, the one Castiel is based on, has a ‘sword that cries ruin’ and I’m going to use it as a lovely McGuffin to blow up a cosmic witch. She sure needs blowin’ up by the time she’s finished with the Winchesters. There is also a ‘girl with powers’; she’s been adopted, along with the rest of her hunter siblings, by Dean and Cas, and her powers consist of being ABSOLUTELY FEARLESS (her first encounter with Crowley, she almost knifes him and Dean abashedly must ask her not to knife the king of hell, and the second time she comes upon Crowley sleeping in his bath and scares the shit out of him), totally committed to being a hunter (she has her own illustrated book, like John Winchester’s), hardworking and observant. Also a complete ball of mush about Dean. She obeys Cas, but Dean’s got her number. I want to finish that story, but since it’s an AU that stays as close to canon as possible, what I really need is a beta reader familiar with canon.

 

 

None of you are going to look

My destiel fic links have been posted to this site. Just trying to collect all my weirdness in one place. If you do go looking, I have to warn you. It’s adult men falling in love and having sex, so if you’re not into that, don’t follow the links and read; simple!

It’s under ‘Pages’.

And why would a cis woman write this stuff?

Because it’s fun, and because there isn’t a problem with the two partners being ‘equal’ the way there is in the rest of the culture. Seriously. That’s the biggest reason. Plus the principals are cute.

I do not participate in Wincest. I try not to judge the ones who do, but given that destiel is canon and their take isn’t, I shouldn’t judge. It was a pyrrhic victory, but #DESTIEL won.

Much exceptionality to yesterday

Guest 23 arrived, and I have a poem in it. I very carefully sat and read the entire thing, in order, when I received it, and I am very very grateful to be published among such amazing manipulators of English. All of the poems spoke to me and three in particular moved me to tears. I think Dave did an amazing job of editing; the flow of the poems, one to the next, is deft and compelling.

Then the FluentPet board got delivered. I’ll be setting it up shortly. I will report back in due course.

Ran dishwasher, cleaned up Buster’s abscess a bit more. It’s yucky, poor lamb.

AND I managed to send off 1000 words to mOm. One kudo overnight, 11424 words.

Still a little WTF about having a tire explode less than two metres from my face, while I was looking at it. I may end up giving the damned bike to someone who’ll actually use it. I want an electric trike with a trailer, but there’s no place to put it, so no.

Jeff is experiencing terrible tooth pain but he’s received antibiotics and will probably have the tooth removed shortly. Sadface. I do not enjoy it when I can’t do anything practical to help people in pain except maybe stay out of their way.

 

BANG

JESUS GOD that just about made my heart stop. Under Jeff’s supervision I was trying to bring my bicycle up to rideability after a couple of years in the shed, and I’d been adjusting the tire pressure. I rolled it around and I was looking RIGHT AT the front tire when it blew, scaring the entire shit outta me and flecking me with this plasticky watery bright green paint. Jeff and I have no notion what the hell it was, but… yuk.

Feeling very sorry for myself. Jeff said I could just roll it up the street to the bike place but screw that noise, I’m going to borrow the bike carrier from Paul and take it there that way, and then after that I’m going to offer it to Katie, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll sell it. It’s got lovely MEC panniers and is otherwise fit for use, sigh.

I suppose you want a picture but I don’t want to be reminded of how I felt when shit flew into my face.

Testing again today

I’ll be testing myself again for COVID today. Paul reports a violent headache (worst he’s ever had, he says, or so memorably bad it’s wiping out any recollection of a worse one), malaise and aches, no fever. He was coughing pretty well constantly and because I’m a total moose – I said sorry my misophonia is driving me nuts with you coughing into my ear like a fucking artillery piece and said I’d call him back later. He says he can’t tell whether he caught it in the states or not and here’s me thinking to myself that he hasn’t bothered telling anyone he was exposed/exposed himself to. e y e r o l l he certainly didn’t tell me, if Katie wasn’t a goddess among women and the matriarch of our family I wouldn’t know. Imagine that. Okay, don’t, it’s none of mine anyway.

I woke up at two with a headache (I get migraines, not headaches) so I immediately got up and made coffee and drank it and I feel fine now.  I have been feeling a little weird in my body the last few days but…. who knows.

11251 words (YAY progress finally, and likely more today – right now our trio is having a public discussion about exactly what lies to tell and to whom and Brad does not want to describe the first set of kidnappers) and FINALLY a single kudo, on the fic about the cult-survivor and the mechanic.

My face when I learned Elon’s buying twitter:

Image

Teresa Zgoda took this pic in 2017 Taenia solium (tapeworm) microphotograph

I continue to watch what’s going on in Ukraine, but it’s the false flag shit that Russia’s doing to its own people that’s really got my attention right now. They’re shooting themselves, quite literally. And the PRC is helping the state propaganda efforts. It all entirely sucks.

I’ve reupped at mastodon: I can be located here: https://social.tchncs.de/@TheCorrection

The bum I um

I feel like a bum! I still haven’t written a proper thank you letter for the books and newspaper clipping from Onti Mary, I haven’t written a word of fiction in days, my room got messy again…. and I don’t care.

I’m retired, I’ll get over it.

watched My Spy

It’s on Netflix, and it’s really funny, most enjoyable.

Very mellow day; no Alex because Paul’s got COVID. I tested myself with an RAT and came up negative, which given I was in a small room with Paul for two hours the other day as we were singing and playing (maximum exchange of aerosols LOL) means that I’ll be retesting in a couple of days.

It’s so weird… still no kudos. It’s like people have stopped reading fanfics or something. Misha Collins came out as bisexual (I wish I could state how this makes me feel without sounding like a widgeon) so there should be an uptick in readers at the very least.

WH Auden wrote a blow job poem. I’m not linking to it here because it’s not er his best work but it sure is er something. Anyway it’s called the Platonic Blow if you’re insisting on finding it on line and reading it; the only reason I munch on it is that it’s AMAZINGLY LIKE FANFIC. Like, a lot.

Buster’s abscess broke yesterday and it was profuse without being vile. I touched it up with some peroxide and we’re keeping an eye on it in case it starts oozing or smelling. We’re definitely keeping him indoors because he’s getting injured, sometimes quite badly, every time he leaves the house.

I baked up the leftover noodles with milk and cheese and it was very tasty with the leftover green salad.

 

remarkable day

Jeff and I got up and went for a walk yesterday morning, just walking around the neighbourhood. The birdies were loud and it was a very pleasant walk. I’m thinking TWO WALKS IN TWO DAYs Allegra must be feeling better (finally, and I do), and then Mike called and we went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore park. I told him to take his camera and he got:

heron

eagle

log booms

skyscapes

and unfortunately the chickadees were not interested in coming to me because it was the wrong time of day, but it was still a lovely walk and one of the crows walked right up to me and begged.

(I didn’t start limping until I was coming up the walkway for home.)

On the way home Mike picked up some marinated halibut and we joyfully stank up the whole house, likely the neighbourhood, likely the city, likely all of solh temexw, cooking it (Seriously I can still smell it with every intake of breath so I can only imagine what horrors Jeff is experiencing) and I made green salad with avocado and boiled up some herb fettucine noodles. Then we watched the dubbed first episode of the anime ‘Ghost Story’ (weird, also funny) and the boys started ‘The Batman’. Since I didn’t watch the whole movie (at eight pm I announced “I’m cleaning up and taking my drugs and going to bed,” and abandoned them mid-movie (I’ll be candid; I can’t review the movie because I didn’t watch the whole thing, but it was not impressive to me), and I slept until 4:40 a.m yeah!!! So I have no idea how long Mike hung around for, but go me for setting boundaries. Also, we consumed no alcohol – Mike has quit and I’m not supposed to and Jeff rarely drinks and only drinks beer when he’s feeling good already.

Yes, it was a remarkable day – I got in two walks! At some point I hope Mike will send me pics, I’ll fire off an email to him now.

On a completely different topic, and late, I’d like to thank Unca Garry for helping pOp with the Camaro. pOp really needs that car available for drives in the country (he’s retired, go around him) and Garry made that possible. I couldn’t see him when I last went, even though he was in Victoria, because of the plague and having to be considerate of the immunocompromised (Alex has has one shot but the baby has not and we could all still carry it without symptoms) so thank you Garry and sorry I missed you Diane.

And tonight I get Alex. I have work to do before he gets here…

No words, no feedback from AO3. But the publication for the ‘Guest’ that my poem will be in creeps closer!!!

The Hul’q’umi’num’ word for heron

smuqw’a’

closest I can render in IPA (a colonial tangle if ever there was one, but the only thing that helps) it’s

Some dialects it’s smoke-wa, no soft ‘th’ at the end.

I spent part of the morning listening to what my consulting animal is called in many Indigenous voices; from the homophone of ‘Paul’ (yup, some solh temexw languages call a heron a word that sounds like ‘Paul’ which is funny to me) to the rolling assemblage of stately consonants and vowels that is the Kanien’kéha word for heron.

Still feeling most uplifted

Yesterday was so lovely, and I always enjoy seeing Ryker, and although I didn’t see Alex yesterday I get to see him tomorrow.

I feel like I have a little bubble of love and care inside me that wasn’t there yesterday.

Wordle in four, Lumosity brain stimulation accomplished, now to get at some stuff I’ve been feeling too overwhelmed to even poke at.

Local photographer

Paul Cipywnuk made photo this at Fraser Foreshore this am.

Katie took me and Ryker walking at Deer Lake – she got to see a single garter snake. Then she ‘threw together’ a spectacular meal and went down for a nap, and Paul and I sang and played, and then I came home and hung out with Jeff watching TV and now I’ve taken my last food and drink and pills of the day and as early as it is at least I didn’t nap or drink alcohol and from the walk I’m feeling pleasantly tired….