gwyn | Recent Entries

So I was a bit wrong in my last post when I said Hazel had been here for 3 weeks; it turns out it was only 2, which means that now she is at almost 2 months with me. I've learned a lot about her, and she is quite a little minx kitty and a rascal, but also the sweetest little girl in the world. She loves to meet new people, and will run to the back door to greet me sometimes (occasionally though the running is to try to escape). She is also very aggressive about getting me out of bed in the morning, which includes hooking me with her claws in various parts of my face, sticking her nose literally in my nose, biting my nose or fingers with her two remaining bottom fangs, and bapping me in the face and head.

I'm very concerned about her constant scratching, and took her to the vet for her first checkup. The vet says it could be one of many things, and the first thing I'm going to try is cutting out chicken in her diet in case it's an allergy, and chicken is the most common one. But this will be hard, because chicken is really the only thing she consistently likes. I've had to throw away so much food because she will happily starve if it means not eating something she doesn't like.

The worst case scenario though is that the stomatitis is still heavily present in her mouth and is causing the skin itching. I thought it was just dental disease, but it's apparently really an immune system problem, and the vet said her mouth still shows some redness, so she could be having an immune response because the two remaining teeth are still causing the stomatitis, or there's a root or something left over from the extractions she went through when she first came in to the shelter system. Poor little bug.

The terrifying thing is that taking her to an animal dentist could be "very expensive"--3 to 6k. Which is why I'm starting with food allergies first. The one thing that worries me too is that it could be an environmental allergy, and like...what would I even be able to do except rehome her? I don't think I could handle that, I already love her to pieces. So in the meantime, I just have to keep working on this and hoping she doesn't scratch herself raw--the vet did say she felt like her scratching is very low level, and what they call "barbering" (scratching away the hair or shortening it) isn't super bad.

She is extremely...I don't want to say clingy, because that sounds bad, but maybe attached or something. She wants to always be with me, which sometimes isn't super convenient. She's utterly silent, so sometimes I am totally surprised by her appearing behind me. And she's also very very talkative. I like talkative kitties.

I've had the rescue's crate since I brought her home, and had hoped to get it back to them before now but it never worked out, but I finally got my friend to agree to come with me for a day trip and we're going on Thursday and making a fun day of it. Hilariously, it's hot all week except Thursday when it's maybe going to rain.

I have so many medical appointments coming up that my head is swimming. I heard from the Swedish Cancer Center and they couldn't schedule me in August, so I am going on the 31st to meet the ARNP who works with what looks to be my new oncologist for my intake appointment. I'm supposed to have next treatment a month from my last treatment at Dr. Li's office, so I assume I'll be at least scheduled for that at their infusion center, but right now I know nothing. There's a certain...well, not merely frustration, but a kind of irritation at not knowing what's ahead, because so much of this illness is never knowing what's coming down the pipe, waiting for your lab work results and so many tests over and over. And of course it's nobody's fault except the evil fucking overlords at Optum and United Healthcare and you can't get mad at anyone except this faceless vile corporate entity.

I've been rewatching The Pitt to try to get into the headspace to be able to write my FTH stories (and also just because I do love everyone in that bar), but first I have to write the MCU story for

minim_calibre. I fear that I cannot write anymore. I'm really worried about this. It's reminding me a lot of not being able to write after my sister died, and man, that took me over a decade to be able to do more than a Yuletide story or two. 😬

Current Music: New Rules-Dua Lipa

It's been three weeks now that I've had new kitty and things seem to be going very well. I did have embarrassingly bad stuff with the ferry on the way over, less said about that the better, but I did make it down to Gig Harbor and the instant I met her, I was in love. She had been sitting in the foster person's window well, and as soon as the door opened, she came running to meet me, and loves to head-butt and rub her face on yours. She's such a lovebug that it's bananas: she just wants to be next to you or on you or rubbing against you at all times.

So it was no question that she was coming home with me. The person who runs the group and the foster coordinator had said something funny to me--"I'll go get her from the prison and we should be back in plenty of time"-- and I thought maybe that was their inside joke about a shelter with cages or something. But as I was driving down, I went past a sign that said "Women's Correctional Facility Purdy" and multiple signs saying "Do not pick up hitchhikers." I still didn't quite put two and two together but at the foster's house, she mentioned the prison again, and at my confusion, she finally said "Oh, did she not tell you about the prison program?" Apparently this rescue group has connections with one of those prison programs where they train dogs (most commonly) or work with cats to make them adoptable (in this case, they work with feral kittens and feral adults who show interest in being with humans, as well as other cats that are going to be adopted).

The first time I saw one of these programs was on Pitbulls and Parolees, and I thought it was so cool--the inmates learn really valuable skills that can translate to the post-prison world, and they get to take care of another being that depends on them. Most of these programs have waiting lists, because everyone wants to be part of them. The inmate who cared for Hazel (what I have named her) gave me a great list of things she likes, her behaviors, etc. I've always thought these programs are so cool and I've been joking that Hazel was in prison before she came here, but it's the first time I've had direct experience.

She settled in really fast. She's just really even tempered, and she loooves to chase her tail, anywhere, any time. (She even chased her tail inside a paper bag that I was putting clothing to donate to the food bank's clothes line and fortunately didn't destroy the clothes, but did destroy the paper bag.) She desperately wants to go outside, so I have to figure out some kind of catio situation--she escaped the other day and immediately beelined under the deck, so this needs to be addressed. But she was a perfect angel on the drive home, not even making a peep on the road or on the ferry, which is loud and stinky.

She has the tiniest, sweetest meow, and dainty little feet like Olive's, but they are deadly when she puts them on like my femoral artery and it reminds me a lot of my dear miss Ollie. At night, she wants to be so right up on my head that she does this Alien face-hugger thing and it's this horrible battle of wills because I cannot breathe but she just tries over and over and I have to keep pushing her away. I do love her, but she has definite opinions. She is a bit of a chonk, but I think I can get her weight down a little. And she had all but her bottom canine teeth removed because of dental disease, but she can still bite, as my nose can attest. Her finickiness with food is slightly annoying, though.

( Pics of Hazel )

Yikes, can someone tell me how the hell to make those pictures normal size??

In other news, I had chemo last week and Dr. Li came in with "big news": the fuckers who bought the Polyclinic, where I have been going my whole adult life and which had a great reputation around the area for like 80 years, are shutting down his department. So no more hematology oncology. So he has two months to find placements for all his hundreds of patients, and there are limited spots where those of us in active treatment can really find this type of care. It's not that you can't go to a general oncologist, but they don't know the ins and outs of this very weird rare cancer, and blood cancers have their own special needs. I really don't want to go to Fred Hutch, despite it being a premier cancer center, for various reasons, so he's going to try to send me to the system I had radiation at and still see a doctor as well as a physical therapist at, but I don't know how long they're going to maintain their identity, since they "merged" with a large Catholic hospital system a few years back (I have very strong feelings about women's health at Catholic hospitals and am really angry that multiple Catholic systems are now running most of the hospitals here). I have no idea what to expect, if I'll get another horrible oncologist like the one I had at the beginning, or what. I'm filled with anxiety.

Because he's a great doc, though, he was careful to go through the calendar and my treatment schedule to make sure my prescription for pomalyst, the thalidomide analog that basically keeps me alive, will get phoned in before shuttering the office so my treatment isn't interrupted (though I have no idea how this whole thing will work and how soon I would be able to see my new doctor). So as of July 31, he's in early retirement (as is his great receptionist), and I will have to get used to a new normal somewhere else that I know nothing about.

Man, I'm so glad i have a cat with all this happening. I would hate to not have something to snuggle (her fur is SO SOFT). I still miss Blues like mad, and I still cry a lot about him, but it helps so much to be able to kiss a kitty head.

Current Music: That Thing You Do!- The Oneders

You know what isn't fun? Finding out you have a gas leak in your furnace. I had the plumber come out last week to look at a drain in my utility sink, which is next to the gas furnace and under the gas tankless water heater. Fortunately no drain problem (I was worried because it seemed to not be draining and I need to clean up all the cat stuff--and dog stuff, which I've held on to for too long when I should have donated it long ago), but the guy said as he was leaving that he smelled gas, but it had disappeared so he wasn't certain. I stuck my head back there and also had a brief whiff of it, so I called the gas company.

I guess they treat everything like that as an emergency even if you say you can't always smell it, so they sent someone out right away and he said as soon as he walked in the door "oh yeah, I smell gas." He was funny--very blasé about it all, but he worked on it for some time (while his meter beeped frantically and loudly the whole time OMG) and found that the threads were stripped on an elbow joint, which means it's been like that since October when it was installed.

Talk about nerve-wracking. I'm amazed that somehow my house hasn't exploded. This is the second time in the past few months that something could have burned down my house. Did you know that GFI electric outlets have a finite lifespan? I did not either! I found this out when I heard some racket from a GFI outlet in my kitchen and then this loud, terrifying pop. I had to replace four other outlets that were put in at the same time, at a fair cost, to avoid something like that happening again. Not that all GFIs fail as spectacularly, but they do fail I guess and it'd be great to not have your house burn down when they do—but apparently no guarantees! I'm also seriously side-eyeing the city inspector who signed off on the new furnace. I called the furnace folks and I was hoping they might call me back--I told someone what happened, but I would love to talk to the higher-ups more about it. I don't want to bust anyone's balls, but man, I think this is pretty important.

So that was fun. I've been trying to keep it together the past few weeks and mostly failing miserably--a lot of this stressful stuff might have been easier to handle if I didn't burst into tears on a constant basis. I just miss Blues so much. I keep finding myself starting to talk to him, and I tend to sleep really late because there's no need to get up and feed a cat. It feels weird to eat (especially a turkey sandwich, because he adored deli turkey and ham) without him pestering me endlessly to share. I'm barely going through my usual amount of milk and half and half because I'm not sharing it with him.

I missed the deadline again this year for signups for Into a Bar. I'm annoyed with myself, since I really wanted to do it this year so that I could get back into writing mode--it's a light challenge, low stakes, and so much fun that I felt it might really help. I owe two Fandom trumps Hate stories and I really want to start them, but I feel...shaky, I guess. It would be horrible to disappoint my bidders.

The reason I missed the deadline though is...maybe good? I don't know. I was heavily on the fence about whether I should get another pet what with my health issues. People are living up to 17 years or so with myeloma now, but the *average* life expectancy is still around 5 years, and often when it comes back (it does always come back after a remission), it comes back hard. But of course, Saturday night I drifted over to Petfinder...

I've always wanted a dilute calico (or tortoiseshell) and that was one of the types I am always looking at, but I figured the likelihood of finding a senior one was low since they are rare (I've looked at Petfinder sometimes and you don't see one anywhere at any age). But of course this exact time, there was a lovely senior dilute gal listed with a rescue way down near Chehalis, and the local gang, on our Sunday zoom calls, was like "do it do it do it" and saying it would be a mitzvah since she's 12, and next thing I know I'm trying to put in an inquiry. Petfinder just wouldn't work for me so I ended up using good old-fashioned email from their website and they got back to me last night. We set a time for a meet and greet for Wednesday, and it turns out this little gal is in Gig Harbor, actually, so since I live next to the ferry terminal, I can take the ferry over there.

I will let you know how it goes. I'm a nervous wreck about taking the ferry (it's the only ferry in a residential area and it's really stupid and challenging to get queued up for it) and I've never driven over there, only been a passenger. But it just doesn't make sense to drive over an hour south and then another hour north when I'm literally blocks away from the ferry. I still feel like I'm doing the wrong thing, I worry I could take a turn for the worse, etc. etc. But they say she's a total sweetheart and she's so pretty in her pictures. And I'm lonely.

Okay back to trying to de-doggify and de-cattify the house so she won't be overwhelmed if she does come home with me.

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Bigmouth Strikes Again

It's been quite a while since I updated; it's kind of embarrassing how much I've fallen down on the job of posting. I had all these thoughts about The Pitt (I feel like I am watching/fanning a different show than anyone else and I'm having a hard time wanting to discuss it with anyone because I feel so weird and out of step; basically I love a lot of the characters or events others seem to hate and I feel a lot like Abed in Community: I guess I just like liking stuff) but then things kind of took a turn anyway.

My best friend and little buddy, Blues, seemed to take a sudden turn for the worse last weekend, and by Monday I was worried enough that I started calling the home euthanasia vets that friends had used. We made an appointment for Wednesday morning, but I wasn't sure he would last that long. I spent the next two days just trying to do anything that would make him happy or comfortable, as he was clearly having a hard time. He mostly wanted to be in the sun on the deck, as we were blessed with quite a few days in a row with sunshine, which is rare at this time of year in Seattle. Then I tried to find long things to watch on TV where I wouldn't want to get up and move around so he could sleep on my lap for as long as possible. Aliens director's cut ftw.

He got quite perky on Wednesday morning and yowled till I let him out--in the pouring rain, shaking my head forever at him and his obsession with being on or under his beloved deck--and then the vet came. I had a lot of doubts that I was doing the right thing because he'd been so much livelier, but she pointed out some pain signs and other things (and he was still really wobbly too) and I decided to go ahead. I honestly think he was gone with the sedative before the pentobarbitol even came along.

The house is so empty. I talked to him all day long, we had all these weird little rituals and I picked him up and smooched him dozens of times a day, and at night he was always on my left side and now when I put my hand down there, I have no kitty to pet or tummy to rub. I can't stand not being able to kiss a kitty head. He loved endless tummy rubs and toebean rubs--he was not one of those cats who ask you to scritch their tummy and then try to rip your face off after one minute; you could literally never stop scratching his belly and he would be fine with it. He hated being brushed, but you could play with his feet, his tail, his ears, his nose, and the scritches, and he was fine. Every time I get up, it's just so... There's no kitty greeting me and demanding food. Or winding through my legs and tripping me and nearly killing me. He was sometimes a very challenging cat, as anyone who's been on my friends list probably read over the years (the worst was the bite that almost put me in the hospital when I also had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic), but the good far outweighed the bad.

I don't know what I want to do. I've only lived a few years of my life without a pet. But I have no idea how long I'll be doing okay with my treatment and I'm not sure I'm feeling like looking or fostering anyway right now. It's so lonely, and he was all I had left. He was my sweetheart.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: America-Only in Your Heart

A few weeks ago, we lost

spikedluv suddenly, and now we've suddenly and tragically lost

minoanmiss. It's always devastating to lose anyone in our community, but it seems even worse when it's people who have such a presence within it and bring so much joy to it. My heart really goes out to everyone who was close to them, and to their families.

There are still a few days left in the FTH 2026 auction, if you'd be interested in bidding on my fic-writing services. My entry is here, or you can use that to find other people in the auction. I hope this year will produce a lot of money, god knows we need it now.

Current Mood: sad

Escapade was much fun this year, though as with last year, stupid cancer fatigue put a damper on a lot of things. The best panels were the one for The Pitt and Murderbot, though I would have enjoyed the Murderbot panel more if a) it hadn't been at nine a.m. on Saturday morning and b) hadn't been dominated by one really obnoxious person. The moderator did a yeoman's job trying to rein her in (seriously, I really admired her skills at hardassery), but I had really hoped to talk about Gurathin in the show and the final episode, how SecUnit's memories might have changed him, etc., but that didn't really happen. And when I started talking about him, in typical fannish fashion, someone immediately countered and diminished my comment with how he wasn't what they thought he should be from the books and yadda yadda, so I never really got to make my point. Maybe next year?

But it was good to see people, even if I didn't get all the time I wanted to glom on some folks (

par_avion, I'm lookin' at you). Still, there were a few wonderful surprises where some folks I adore and haven't seen in years came to the con, because their fannish brains had been kickstarted by Heated Rivalry. I am so not into that show but the fact that it brought them back out into fandom makes me feel more warmly towards it.

I woke up Sunday morning to news that LAX was in chaos because the Nazis in the government (and I use that term loosely) had decided to shut down TSA precheck and global entry, but after a while that got walked back and by the time I got to the airport, things had settled down a bit and it was fairly quiet. Then the flights started getting canceled by the East Coast blizzard (poor par, she was stuck at the hotel till Wednesday night), and the Mexico flights were stopping because it seemed like half of Mexico was on fire, and it made for a really surreal experience. And now today I woke up to the news about Iran and I just...I really often wish that this fucking cancer would just take me out. This world is just so fucking horrible, and I feel so utterly helpless to do even the tiniest thing about it.

I mean, I have signed up for Fandom Trumps Hate (

fth2026offerings) (god i hate that fucker so much that i can't even stand to use a perfectly good verb because it's saying his name), but if I get even a bid over my $10 minimum, I'll be shocked. I've done auctions before, but I don't feel like I make much of a contribution, and I know throwing money at some of these horrors are at least some small way of helping, but I'm just not someone who'll generate that kind of money and I can't make many donations of my own.

Still, I'll hope that maybe a friend will feel sorry for me and buy me ;-D . But I have to admit, the basics of this auction confuse me--listings are on DW here, but a lot takes place on Tumblr, and I'm confused about how to publicize my listing. I was able to reblog the auction roundup listing for The Pitt today, but I don't know how one goes about promoting their own listing. Has anyone done FTH before and would be willing to give me some advice? There's only a couple days for browsing, so I would love to see if I could at least generate some attention if someone wants a fic for Marvel, The Pitt, or Fast Color (hah). I feel like in the past, I've seen people's contributor listings on tumblr, but I just don't know how that goes. Ugh, I'm so out of touch.

I broke my toe on my left foot *again* this morning. My third and fourth toes are so fucked up now. I know there's not much to do about it but tape them and take pain relievers, but jesus your toes really make a difference in walking. And I'm seeing a new sports medicine doc about my fucked-up knee, so now we'll have to see how it might affect my walking even more (I have an MRI this week). So much excitement, but as I said to a friend, at least it's not about the cancer, lol. I'm such a fucking klutz. I think I should probably get some of that bubble wrap with the really big bubbles, and put it around the legs of my bed--it won't solve everything, but those legs have definitely contributed to a few of the breaks. This time, I heard a little snap sound!

Current Mood: infuriated
Current Music: Take Me Out-Franz Ferdinand

So many times, I've sat down, intending to post, but I'm so consumed by anxiety and stress from ::waves hand around:: and my general life crap that I can't seem to do it. There's this part of me that just can't believe--I mean, literally can't believe--what is happening in this shithole country. I don't doomscroll much, but it's impossible to avoid everything.

My mom was from Minnesota, St. Paul specifically but as anyone who's been there knows, it doesn't really matter which of the twin cities you're from, they're just across the river. I've spent a lot of time there, even though the half of her siblings who stayed in Minnesota had families that were never great to those of us out here in the PNW. (It's funny, out of her six sibs, three stayed there and three moved here.) A part of me does kind of want to know what is happening with my cousins, but we've really lost touch, and I think one of the few I've stayed in some vague kind of touch with is pretty conservative, so... So as much as I've tried not to get into a doom spiral, it's really freaking hard. And it's not like these jackboot fucks aren't also in our own cities, especially in these blue states.

I'm considering doing the Fandom T***ps Hate (I hate that fucker so much I can't stand to say his name and it's ruined a perfectly serviceable word) auction, though I'm really struggling with the idea of it. I loved doing the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction some years back, and got to do both a vid and a fic. But at this point right now, I don't think I have anything to offer that anyone wants; I haven't found anything to replace Cap fandom and a lot of the smaller fandoms I could write don't even generate other signups at Yuletide. So like a minimum bid of $5 wouldn't exactly help the auction much when I can't generate any interest because of my goofy list of unpopular fandoms. There used to be these Yuletide stalwart fandoms every year like Kings, but a couple years ago when I wrote for it, even people who used to be into it didn't read the fics. I don't know, I can't decide. I'd like to contribute, but I feel like what little I could do wouldn't make much of a contribution.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that I am not into the popular thing, once again. I have not been swept away by Heated Rivalry, and definitely am reminded of that feeling when it seemed like there was literally no other person in all of fandom who didn't love Stargate Atlantis, and how isolating that was. It was kinda nice after Captain America: The Winter Soldier to be in something popular and huge. That's rarely been the case for me--even in hot fandoms, I would always be into the "wrong" ship or something, so Stucky was pretty wild for me.

I could consider adding something popular like The Pitt, but I'm also not sure if I could write in it; I haven't been reading fic much, for some reason I can't concentrate enough for that, and so I don't know what I might be able to do in it. There are definitely shows/movies I'd love to try to write but don't feel like I could. I have always admired people who can come up with ideas for just about anything they like, I'm so envious of that. I don't know what's wrong with me!

In non fandom news, I'm still mostly hanging in there: my numbers are holding steady and I think the cancer part is mostly okay, it's just the other weird stuff that's plaguing me. There's something really weird and wrong with my knee, and my hands are so bad and constantly painful that I'm not sure what I am going to be able to do about it. But I have chemo on Thursday so I am planning to talk to my oncologist about it all. Sometimes the obvious things are things I can't do because of the cancer or the drugs.

I had been in the middle of a Schitt's Creek rewatch when I heard that Catherine O'Hara died, and I am just so heartbroken. She has been one of my all-time favorites for so long, and there were two wonderful things she did in the early '80s when there was that short-lived revival craze of anthology shows such as the '80s Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, The George Burns Comedy Week, and this movie a lot of the SCTV crew did called Really Weird Tales, that I think few people ever saw, let alone remembered. If you want to laugh and enjoy her as much as I do, you can watch both of these on YouTube, they're not the best quality but I loved them so and it's great to know at least one or two other people remembered these shows. Her segment of Really Weird Tales is called I'll Die Loving and the George Burns one is called The Dynamite Girl (the link to RWT is the whole movie, but the George Burns one is her segment alone).

My house is redolent of anise and molasses and sugar and all the good spices from baking cookies all day. I have this ancient recipe from my mom's side of the family for these anise cookies that almost no one likes, and I used to make them with Dad all the time but I find it intimidating at the best of times, and these days aren't exactly the best. But I had to type it up a few years ago for someone on metafilter, and so I decided to try my hand at them on my own with a little help from mlyn, and while it didn't go great, it also wasn't a total disaster, so I figured I'd try again this year because I've missed them. There's just really nothing else out there like them, and much as I like pfefferneuse, it's not nearly close enough, though that's really the only thing in the spice/uncommon-in-America flavor profile cookie I know of. Also since I never really know if I'm going to be around in a year, I wanted to enjoy them while I could.

Back a few years ago when I made them, I asked

musesfool, baker extraordinaire, for some advice on the recipe, because baking is just a mystery to me and I'm quite bad at it. She had some really good advice, but did I go look at it to refresh my memory before I began starting on the dough? No, I did not. So I made a lot of mistakes. Dad and I found it was best to let the dough sit in the fridge overnight, and the baked cookies are better when they sit for a day or two before icing, so it's kind of like a three-day extravaganza, and with my fatigue issues, I also have to constantly sit down. I am just fucking exhausted now and I still have more to do!

It makes so many cookies (and that was after my dad cut the recipe down three times!) that you're just baking and baking and baking. I had to shut the oven off and go sit for a while, in between big batches. But now they are baked and I will try to ice them all tomorrow, or at least as many as I can handle, so I can share them with the only people who wouldn't hate them. They don't taste terrible for all that I fucked up, but I can really tell I messed up mixing the early ingredients, and wish I'd read the instructions and musesfool's advice before I started. What a dumbass. Also, it's really a lie that turbinado sugar or succanat can substitute for white sugar. I didn't want to go out just to get sugar, which I thought I had enough of, but it does not turn out the same without white sugar and they are liars.

I bought myself some stuff to make a little Christmas dinner for one, but my stomach was roiling today for most of the day, and ended up just eating a bagel and some of the cookies that caught and were too burned to give away to anyone.

Now that I am so exhausted and the house smells so good, I think I'm going to head to bed early--I stayed up too late last night anyway, because it's my tradition to always watch It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve and then I was poking around in the Yuletide archive for far too long. I was so shocked that it opened in the middle of the day yesterday! I didn't see a whole lot that looked intriguing, since I'm so out of the loop on fandoms these days, but there's definitely some stuff to read and I was really thrilled to see that Rose Lerner's book True Pretenses had a fic written for it this year! So I had to read that one immediately.

Anyway, I hope you had a great holiday if you celebrate, and a very nice Thursday if you don't, and I will respond to all your kind comments on my last post soon, I promise.

Current Mood: exhausted

Happy Christmas Eve Eve, if you celebrate! I had big plans today to take advantage of the fact that there was no rain predicted for once (if you're unaware of the recent horrific weather in the PNW, check out some news to see the flood and wind damage we've experienced for weeks now) and go up to the clinic for a blood draw, since my primary care physician wants to see how my thyroid levels are doing now that I've been on the thyroid medication for a couple months. But I've been trapped here waiting for UPS to come to deliver my main chemo drug; I have to sign for it so not only can I not leave till they come, I can't even take a shower.

I'm extremely unhappy with UPS now for a lot of reasons, most of them still including the fact that I'm out $700+ because of the returned laptop that some asshat didn't bother to scan in. There are no options that will help me--everything requires that the tracking number be in the system, which is the very problem I have. The pickup person didn't put it in the system. And the company that it's supposed to be returned to won't do anything, either, so I'm just...screwed. And now I'm stuck here in my house waiting for my meds, which were supposed to be here this morning (they always wake me up early). Booo UPS.

I was feeling pretty low last time I posted, and I think I haven't really improved in terms of my mood. It's mostly the financial issues, but also the health stuff, and what next year will bring. I've been trying to find out about financial assistance for my chemo med that costs $23k a bottle (the one I'm waiting for) but it's looking like I won't qualify because of how much I messed up my taxes this year, or at least, I've been looking at the thresholds and it seems like because of what I screwed up on, I'll probably be just over the limit. I did sign up for the Medicare thing where they cap out of pockets/copays to $2k and allow you to spread it around over time, but I also signed up for that last year and the Part D drug insurance I had never did that. I basically blow through all my deductibles and copays right away, because when I get that first bottle of obscenely expensive Pomalyst pills, the $3k copay wipes out all the remaining balances. So I'm not sure what to expect in '26. And also I have a feeling, since that two thousand dollar cap was put in place under Joe's administration, they're going to do everything they can to get rid of it. America!

Sometimes I find myself feeling so bitter about all the lucky people I know who are able to get out of this country. There's nowhere for me to go, no place that would take me since I'm not rich (which would overcome my disability and age issues), and I just wish so much I could go somewhere else more sane. But I also think, good for them, get out while you can.

And while I was dealing with all the money stuff, it was like, I got a notice that my Dreamwidth account was expiring, and then my Editorial Freelancers Assn. dues were...um, due, and I was like, sure. Why not. Of course. But some really lovely person out there gave me six months of paid time, and I wish so much I knew who you were so I could properly thank you. It really came at such a perfect time, just struggling with that hopeless feeling, and reminding me that there are so many nice people out there. Thank you so much, friend! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

I know I should not be putting more stuff on my credit cards, but I have decided that I'm going to Escapade next year again. Fortunately it's not ridiculously early like this year, and hopefully I won't have to drive home from the airport in a blizzard, but while I'm still physically able, I want to at least see some of the folks who will be going and just be in Southern California again. There wasn't a lot for me to do fannishly this last time, but just being around folks is enough.

For a while I wasn't able to continue with my reading, which bummed me a bit since I had been excited about catching up on books, but I'm back to it at least for a while. I left off The Golem and the Jinni about 1/3 of the way in, so I restarted that, and I'm also hoping that even though I'm not doing Yuletide again this year, I can go through the archive this time and find some fun stuff to read (last year, I somehow missed reading Yuletide entirely). I'm not doing anything as usual on actual Christmas, except I'm going to try to bake the ancient anise cookie recipe that no one else likes that Dad and I used to make. It's very challenging even when you're healthy, and I found it very physically taxing last time I did (2 years ago), but I feel determined.

mlyn helped me with the cutting out and baking part, but since it's the actual holiday, I figured I'd be doing it myself. It could be very interesting.

And then I need to schedule an appointment with the endodontist after the holiday, because my worst fear came true and I will have to have a root canal for the tooth I had a crown replaced on last year. She warned me it might be a possibility, but still...everything was going great till a few months ago. The oncologist has stopped the infusions of zometa because of the necrosis of the jaw risk, but NGL, that whole thing still scares the shit out of me! Though I managed to walk out of chemo a couple weeks ago without getting my new chemo schedule, so I don't even know how soon any of it can happen!

I hope those of you celebrating this holiday have a great time. Thanks for listening to me whine this year, I really hope things will be a bit brighter this year for all of us.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Christmas Wrapping-the Waitresses

Every time I think of posting, I'm so overwhelmed by how shitty my life is right now and how nearly suicidal I feel that I can't do it. I'm just too depressing. It just seems like it's never-ending and I'm literally throwing money in the toilet and I feel so alone and hopeless. It's funny, I've never cried over the cancer diagnosis (diagnoses, I guess, since I'm being stalked by it), but I'm literally sitting here sobbing in front of my computer because of all the things. It's just. All the things.

A short list (it looks long, but it's the short list): I bought a new used laptop from Back Market when my old 2012 workhorse started having these weird spasms and would shut down. The new one, a 2020, I picked specifically because it had an intel processor instead of the new M1 chips, because I had a couple older programs that are crucial to my work that I wasn't sure would run on an M1. It went great until last month, when it wouldn't boot at all. I sent it back to the refurbisher and they said they couldn't repair it (a lie, I'm positive) so would send a replacement. Unforch, it wasn't what I ordered (it had an M1), so I had to mail it back via UPS last week (before turkey day).

Even more unfortunate, apparently UPS "never picked it up" from the mailing center, it's not in the system, so they won't give me a refund. Back Market forced me to do the refund option instead of sending me a replacement again since that's their policy. So assuming I would have a refund coming, I bought an entirely new 2020 just like the first one.

But now I guess I'm completely screwed out of over $700. Which I really don't have. Because I cannot prove a negative, and the mailing center dropoff of course doesn't give receipts for prelabeled packages. Which, even if I'd scheduled UPS to come to my house and pick it up, I wouldn't have a receipt either, if I didn't think to like wait by the door or something and make sure he scanned it. So there is nothing apparently I can do, because no one has this tracking number and I can't prove I sent it. Maybe it was stolen, maybe the UPS guy was a fuckup, who knows. All I know is Back Market won't give me my refund. They were like "bye, Felicia."

Even better, I cannot get the new 2020 laptop I had to buy to work, by installing from my backup so I can port over all my crucial programs. Mr.

minim_calibre helped me with my first install problem when they came by on thanksgiving for min's annual drive-by pieing (she makes the best pumpkin pies, just like I would make them so now I don't have to make them myself!), and then again when I was having a completely new issue and he solved it, the day min and I went to see Wake Up Dead Man (which is cute! although the lack of a comma in the title is beyond irritating!). So those issues solved, I have attempted at this point to use migration assistant to get my old macbook air stuff over to the new one now probably 12 times, and it never works. The boxes are all checked, it says it's taking an hour or whatever to install from the backup, and nothing. Nothing in the restored files or any other folder they could exist in.

Apparently, you cannot use the apple genius bar for this type of thing. I was hoping to go there today but this isn't an issue they will assist with. They send you to articles, all of which I've read, and all of which tell you steps I have indeed taken. I did not have this problem with the laptop in April, which is making me even angrier. On top of losing over seven hundred bucks, I'll have to probably pay someone to help me be able to use this laptop, or maybe--I'm seriously considering this--send back the new one (with receipts this time so that means drive all the way to the nearest UPS store a half hour away and watch them while they scan it), then get a refund for it, and buy another one somewhere else. At this point I almost don't care about the programs and should just get an Mwhatever number they're on because getting a refurbished on is turning into such a nightmare. I keep thinking I might semi retire, but now I need money so I don't know. I just am not sure what to do.

Because on top of all this misery, my furnace was making dying noises and so I had to suddenly replace that. Furnaces are expensive, y'all. It was not a great time, but when they showed me the condition of the old furnace, I knew it had to go. It's beyond its lifespan, I knew that, but till now, it had been a pretty decent performer. The only good thing was that the new one has the same footprint as the old one, so they were able to put it right on top of the metal base, and use the existing pipe work for the gas and venting. It makes noises, but I was assured they were normal, though when it's blowing the air, it's quieter than the old one.

But of course, nothing ever goes right for me (seriously, this has been a longstanding joke with my friends, that I'm a walking Murphy's Law and whenever something can go wrong, it will, when it involves me), they charged me the full amount of over 8k on top of the 50 percent deposit I'd already given them, and when I called they were like "oh no! we'll refund it of course" but it's going to take 5-10 business days. I have to pay interest on that, since I put it on my credit card because I wanted to get the points, figuring I'd just move money over right away from my line of credit. It stings, since I will be paying for the roof for a while, and now this on top of everything...just so not what I needed. Financially, this has been a catastrophic year.

All my hopes of getting a new car (I love my Beetle, I do, but she's 20 years old now and there are parts of her that are literally falling apart and sometimes can't be replaced) have vanished now. I don't know what to do about the new laptop yet, I'm just sick and sad and hopeless. I'm taking a new drug because I guess my thyroid is hypo now?? which everyone is like, could just be normal happenstance, could be related to chemo, shrug, but I'm not super fond of some of the side effects. I'm supposed to talk with her about it at end of December after I've been on it for two months. But it sounds like one more drug I'll be on for life, however long that is.

I've been trying to not make this horrible list longer, but I may have to have a root canal, but won't be able to do it for quite a while despite tooth pain (still have to get to the dentist but ya know, funds) because one of the chemo drugs I get infusions of has a major side effect called necrosis of the jaw. Like. It's horrifying. If they do dental work that goes into your jaw bones, zometa can cause the jaw to become necrotic (dead) and your teeth come out, etc. See? Horrifying. Someone in my support group lost a huge section of his jaw and all his teeth to it, and had to have everything rebuilt. They say that they now know a lot more than they did years ago, so if you stop the infusions for 3 to 4 months or something, and don't have them for a month or so afterward, it should be okay. But I'm not sanguine about my chances.

Anyways. I'm sorry for so much doom and gloom. I did have a lovely birthday, so there was that! It was an exceptionally rare sunny day birthday--I can count on one hand the number of times it's been sunny on my birthday so it was extra nice because I treated myself to a mani-pedi and was afraid I'd be out walking in flip-flops in bare feet in pouring rain. (Tho as it was, I stepped off the curb and my foot was immediately covered by mushy leaves and cold water, so ha ha, it happened anyway.) Then my friend Keith and I went out to a pricey seafood place I really wish I went to more often (should fix that), here in West Seattle, and they do all this nice stuff for your birthday including giving you the really good tables with the spectacular views across Elliott Bay to downtown Seattle. Their special that night was lobster, and I am nuts for lobster, so perfect timing.

I think I might try to find somewhere in the budget (ha ha ha ha) to get a mani-pedi more often. One of my meds has ruined my hands and feet, my skin is like slick paper and the edges of the nails peel away all the time. Not necessarily for polish, but just to have someone help me maintain them, because it's hard on me at this point, especially my feet. We'll see, I guess.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: Heroes - Tove Lo

I made it! I don't know how I did considering the amazing disaster that my life has been this year (I keep tempting fate by thinking things can't get worse and then they do!), especially the past couple months. (Perfect example was yesterday, where I was sweating like a pig from putting up some decorations and wiped out from fatigue and also couldn't get my new replacement laptop to work and so I was sitting there sweating and crying from frustration. My life, man. Sweating and crying. What.)

Anyways, I finally finished the WIP I started five freaking years ago, posting as a WIP because in the past, that kept me on track and I was worried about finishing so I wouldn't let things slide. And then I did anyways! But it is now done, and just in time for my annual birthday fic posting. I don't imagine anyone reading this at this point, but in case one person does, well, here you go.

Reverie (58115 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Shuri
Characters: Steve Rogers, Shuri (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanov, T'Challa (Marvel), Ramonda (Marvel), Ayo (Marvel), Nakia (Black Panther), Okoye (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Virtual Reality, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, of sorts if you squint hard, Wakandan Technology, Wakanda (Marvel), Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Black Panther (2018), Friendship, Family, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Protective Steve Rogers, Action/Adventure
Summary:

“Exitus!” Steve shouted, slamming his hand against the door where the mandala should have been, and suddenly he was on the chair in his room, gasping. In this world.

Steve lowered the glass to his lap and looked up at Shuri. His heart was beating way too hard and fast. “You were right,” he said, sitting up. “He’s glitching. I don’t know if I can get him out.”

Current Mood: exhausted

Frankenstein made me sick! Not because of the gore or anything, but for the first time in six years, I caught a freaking cold. I mean I knew it was a matter of time before I picked up covid or a cold or the flu if I was insisting on going to the movies, because I cannot go to a theatre and not eat popcorn. It's simply not possible. So I end up unmasked for most of the running time. But I had forgotten how terrible a cold can be, and it's lingering and lingering for me (yes, I've tested many times, and while I know that home tests show false negatives all the time, I'm pretty sure the tests are right and it's not covid). I'm so sick of the coughing and snot.

All that on top of surgery on my back for melanoma (a word I've dreaded my whole life, what is it with me and cancers starting with M?) in situ. Which isn't as bad as it could be, but is still fairly bad and scary, and the biopsy site on my forearm is "something we have to watch" and got infected, so that was fun. I have to go in to the dermatologist tomorrow before chemo because I have a "spitting suture" on the back. But otherwise, she said the surgery margins were good and they got all of it, so I just have to cross my fingers that the spot on my forearm doesn't get worse. Cancer just stalks me.

Anyway. I thought I'd try to do that alphabetical list of fics that's been going around as a distraction. I just picked things mostly at random, not for any real reason, I guess. (And following the rule that A and The don't count as first letters.) I have learned through this that I have an inordinate amount of stories starting with I and L and W. I should work on that.

A: And the Whirlwind (Logan, Laura)
B: Better Left Unsaid (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
C: Cellies (MCU, Captain America, Thor, Bucky & Loki)
D: Dipping Toward the Light (Sunshine (2007), Mace/Robert Capa)
E: Every Picture Tells a Story (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
F: Five Cakes Marcus Thought Were Bombs and One He Knew Was Fire (The Bear, Marcus)
G: The Gift of Forgetfulness (Pacific Rim, Herc Hansen/Stacker Pentecost)
H: Heliotrope (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
I: I can't remember how this started (but I can tell you exactly how it ends) (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
J: Just Passing Through (Schitt's Creek, Captain America, Bucky Barnes, David/Patrick)
K: Knight-Errant (The Expanse, Amos Burton/Chrisjen Avasarala)
L: lucida/ obscura (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
M: The Moon Cannot Be Stolen (Life (tv series), Charlie Crews & Ted Earley)
N: Not My Cross to Bear (The X-Files, Skinner/Scully)
O: On Beds of Sorrow (The Fast & the Furious, Dom/Brian)
P: The Perfume of Kismet (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
Q: nothing!
R: Reverie (Captain America, Black Panther, Steve/Bucky) OMG I'm almost finished finally
S: The Sun Was the First Star We Knew (Sunshine (2007), Mace/Robert Capa)
T: There Must Be a Joke In Here Somewhere (The Middleman, Captain America, Wendy Watson & Bucky Barnes)
U: Urban Legend (Captain America, Steve Rogers)
V: The Valorous Vampire (Buffy, Angel & Buffy & Spike)
W: Welcome to the Party, Pal (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Captain America, Steve Rogers & Jake Peralta)
X: x=y (The X-Files, Mulder/Scully)
Y: You Can Have the Town, Why Don't You Take It? (What's Your Number? Ally Darling/Colin Shea)
Z: nothing!

Current Mood: sore

A while ago,

minim_calibre asked me if I'd read any Kate Atkinson and I said I had, but it was very long ago--I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum and the first Jackson Brodie book after I fell in love with the Case Histories TV series with Jason Isaacs. She ended up buying me two books she'd read, Life After Life and A God in Ruins, and I finally had the chance to start on the first one, which is like four inches thick so felt pretty daunting. I'd been so busy with work (some truly awful, awful books [mygodihateYAsomuch] and one really good one that I wasn't sure I could do it, but I really wanted to keep my reading streak going. It's been so wonderful to reclaim the reading part of my life, I can't even tell you. It's also hugely inspirational to my own writing when I'm reading really good fiction--or heck even nonfiction.

If you've never read Life After Life, I can highly, highly recommend it. It'd be easy to say it's essentially a time loop story/multiple timeline tale, where little decisions or events have history-altering effects both personal and global, but that barely touches on the story. I just loved it and I'm looking forward to the related book about one of the characters, I hope it's as un-put-downable as Life After Life.

I discovered there was a BBC four-part limited series of it a couple years ago, on Prime in the US, and it was...okay. It should have been at least six episodes, though, because a book that sprawling requires a lot more time--there were significant cuts to the story that I think any fan of the book would be a bit twitchy about, and a major change to the ending. Still, a lot of good actors and it was nice to see some of the characters come to life.

It's just so nice to feel like I can read again after all these years. Like when I have my nose in a screen, it's because it's something that adds a little value in my life, rather than the horrible garbage of everyday life.

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a pumpkin patch and U-pick farm, because she's very into the gourds and cucurbits for art, and I wanted to have a nice outing. We lucked out and got the most spectacularly perfect, sunny day in the 70s, and I found a couple of beautiful pastel pumpkins (one kind of a mottled salmon and blue-green and the other a pale blue) as well as a starfish-shaped gourd to buy, even though I've never been into Halloween at all. I'm not sure if I'll put them out on the back porch or the front, the front's pretty crowded and small, but I think that's the "obvious" place for a Hallloweeny decoration. I also bought some apples from the farm's produce side, and the best sweet corn on the cob I have ever tasted in my life. It was so good we were texting each other about it. If I didn't live over an hour away, I would have driven right back there for more corn.

Everyone always says fall is their favorite season, but I think if you live somewhere where it is relatively dry in October, and the leaves change early, sure, it'd be fine, but in the PNW it's just suddenly cold, super wet, and miserably gray. The leaves are just soggy masses, so you don't get to wander outside in piles of dry leaves, wearing your woolen sweaters and scarves, feeling the sun on your face while you drink your punkin spice bullshit drinks. Nope, instead you have to wear your Gore-Tex jackets and waterproof shoes and hope your street won't flood when the heavy rains have nowhere to go because everything's clogged with slimy leaves. Bleh. Give me spring any day.

My numbers have been holding steady at a place where it looks like remission, though no one wants to say it is. I could have a bone marrow biopsy, and may still do that, to determine whether I really am there, but honestly, then I'm just going to be doing pretty much the same thing I'm doing now, because I'm essentially doing what Dr. Li does for maintenance on people who've gone through stem cell transplants or the new hotness, CAR-T cell therapy. I am sure there'll be some fiddling with drugs, but considering the nightmare of the insurance situations right now, I don't know what will happen.

I had a mammogram today and a DEXA scan (which just seems so nuts to me, as it's for osteoporosis and I feel like having bone marrow cancer means that osteoporosis is kind of a silly thing to worry about), and next week I go to the dermatologist, and hopefully I will get some of these things done before the nazi pricks can take everything away.

As always happens, at the mammogram, the technician, who was nice and did a pretty good job of not hurting me, mentioned knowing someone with multiple myeloma who's had it for 18 years now. I cannot tell you how often someone tells me about their family member/friend/co-worker who has it and who's lived with it for X years, and I just...I have to smile and say oh wow. I HATE IT.

It used to be a death sentence, but until just recently, there were new drugs being approved constantly so the survival rates and times have been increasing constantly, but it's by no means an easy survival for most, and there is no such thing as a "cure" where it disappears completely. It always comes back, and I've been confronted a lot lately with that because some people in our support group have died, both of whom had lived with it for a long time, going back into treatment each time it returned. It always does. Ugh, I wish people would shut the fuck up about it. I know they think they're being positive for me, but it's just not as simple as they think.

Otherwise, I just keep plugging along. Blues is definitely getting pretty frail and fragile, but his appetite is great, so I'm hoping he hangs on for a while longer. He has a concerning thing on his lower jaw that might be a cyst or might be cancer or anything in between, but it's in a tricky spot, so all we can do is watch it for now.

I know there are other things I wanted to talk about--including my rewatches of everything from the X-Files to the Good Place--but I'll save that for another post, this one's long and boring enough!

Current Mood: contemplative

WorldCon was fun! A lot of the things I was stressed about were things that turned out to be totally okay, and I think the con comm and the venue both did a great job of setting things up for people with disabilities, although I do want to send some feedback about a couple things if I can figure out where. I definitely overextended myself in terms of trying to make it to panels and events and meet up with friends, considering I'd limited my attendance to just Friday and Saturday. But I got to meet up with Caroline Stevermer and a very old friend of mine named Tim, as well as

mecurtin and

seekingferret and of course

wickedwords, and

mizmak ventured over the mountains to meet up with Caroline, which meant we also got to spend time with her (not at the con), so it was like having some of the Media Cannibals gang back together. And I ran into

kormantic while she was minding a table in the dealers' room.

Of course, there's never enough time to really spend with people at a convention, and WorldCon is ginormous so it seems even harder to get together with them (probably easier if you're staying in one of the hotels). I was intending to go to dinner with

mecurtin, but somehow, standing in line at the restaurant, this overwhelming fatigue came over me (more than my usual incredible fatigue) and I ended up having to bug out. (I'll spare you my Lyft nightmare story but suffice to say there was definitely some time there where I thought it's a really good thing I don't carry deadly weapons on me.) Fortunately, she was generous enough to come over to my part of town to have lunch with me Tuesday, which was awesome.

My biggest problem was that I was constantly overheating because of my chemo drugs, which make me insanely sensitive to heat, and so I was always ducking into the gender neutral restrooms to mop at all the sweat drenching me. What an unbelievable drag on your fun that is, to just have water dripping down you and being damp all the time (moist, the most hated word), it's just so fucking awful. I did find myself, in all the panels about writing and such, kind of thinking more about the final chapter of my Bucky and Steve in a virtual world WIP, and I think I'm at a point where I can really tackle it finally. (Of course, as I've said previously, every time I'm ready to try to write, I manifest work, and sure enough...I manifested a proofread that arrived today. Clearly I should not be allowed to possess this power, and I would love it if someone else would harness the power instead.)

The new Summit convention center building is light years better than the original convention center, which was built in the late '70s/early '80s. We haven't had any real rain for months here, so of course it rained hard on Friday, but at least most people weren't given only rain as their Seattle experience, since it cleared up by Friday night. I would have loved to attend the masquerade, as that's my favorite event, Friday night, but I watched it streaming and it's just...not the same, you know? It was fine, but it just doesn't compare to being able to really see the cosplayers on stage and get the full range of what they're doing. I've heard there's some whining about the Hugos, as usual, but I didn't watch that.

Highlights were definitely hearing

marthawells reading from Queen Demon and the (May 2026) new Murderbot Diaries book Platform Decay, as well as her Q&As, and a really cool panel on queer representation in SF that included Matt Baume, whose videos I watch a lot where he discusses the history of queer people in TV and movies. There was also a neat panel on dystopian fiction that looked at how in the global south, it's not future fiction, it's been part of their lives for a long time, which unfortunately I couldn't stay for the whole thing for because I was sweating so bad and the room was packed and just...ugh. But what I did hear was great.

I also literally ran into Martha Wells in the art show--I totally thought she'd be surrounded by a phalanx of security or something, so I was all awkward and stupid and just like completely blanked-out on what to say and I'm sure I came across as a total moron. But I knew going in I wouldn't be able to handle anything like a book signing line, so I never expected to be able to just say a quick hello. (I mean, yes, it's a con full of world-class nerds, but still. There's awkward and then there's awkward.) And I kept running across a couple of authors I sort of vaguely knew from my days of going to Norwescon more often, and it almost got to be funny, just kind of waving at each other but not really saying anything, over and over.

I only had a couple of interactions with people who were kind of crappy and a little ableist; and I even was able to make the trek to the Taco del Mar over at the old Convention Center, where I used to get lunch every week back when I worked down there. I miss that place so much and we don't have any of their shops near me anymore, so I revved myself up and hiked over there on Friday, and on Saturday went to Starbucks, because the in-building options weren't great for me. I wish I could have worked things so I had more time to have meals with folks and chat, but at least I know that next time, if I can go again, I have to allow for more time for everything. The art show was pretty cool and I found an artist I really want to buy something from.

All in all, my first WorldCon was a success, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to talk my BFF into going to next year's if I'm able and the cancer isn't too bad. I sincerely doubt after Anaheim, the con is coming back to the US for a good long while, not with so many people afraid to cross our borders.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: chappel roan

I don't think I've mentioned before (well, because I never post, so how could I have) that I'm going to WorldCon this month, because it's in Seattle and I figure this is the only chance I'd ever have to do that. I don't have any particular interest in the Hugos or things like that, but I've been going to SF cons since attending my first Norwescon back in 1983, I think, although that definitely tapered off after I discovered what we used to define as "media fandom" back in the day. It was a way to separate SF cons, which were primarily literature based in the olden dayes, from the kind of fandom as we know it now, which encompasses a much wider array of stuff, especially TV/movies. I'm so old, I remember the sneering way the gatekeeper wannabes talked about people who were at cons for Star Wars and Trek or even Road Warrior or whatever. Kind of ridiculous, when you think about it.

ANYway, I'm actually pretty nervous about it. I'm only going on Friday and Saturday, and of course it looks like a lot of the panels I want to see are in the late afternoon/evening (especially

wickedwords ' fanfic panels). So that means I'll be basically without any place to rest or relax (I don't know, maybe they'll be better than Emerald City Comic Con, but there was literally no place to sit and rest if you were less than perfectly abled, or even sit and eat most of the time, and there will be a couple thousand more people at WorldCon than ECCC) except on a floor or what have you, and since I live here, I'm just going to take a lyft in or maybe the water taxi. And my fatigue has been through the roof lately; I've been trying a new drug and it's making things actually worse, plus this month is turning out to be just bananas crowded for me. I just need time to regroup but there isn't any.

I thought about getting a hotel nearby, but I'm not sure it'd be much better; when I hurt, I hurt. The room blocks are all sold out, too, so anything would be pretty pricey, plus I'd have to wait to check in, and then check out, when I'd be doing con stuff, so it seems fairly pointless.

I do wish I could go to some of the other days' events, since

marthawells is the GoH this year, but, well, cancer always has other ideas. WorldCon does seem kind of different in that they don't frontload all their best stuff on Fridays and Saturdays; it's a long con, and I would love to go to a couple other days, but that's not in the cards. I also wish so much I could go to nighttime events, especially because I love masquerade contests, but I know my limitations. I will have to look into whether having a day pass for Friday will allow me to see the streaming masquerade event...

I'm hoping to see

mecurtin, and I think a few other fellow fans here on DW are going, so if you might want to meet up at some point (I honestly don't know what to expect about going through reg on Friday, I had a horrendous experience with Sakura Con years ago, where I was trapped in line for six fucking hours and it left my body broken in a way I've never recovered from, but WorldCon does have an accessible line so fingers crossed), I would love to see people, just because I'm afraid of being lonesome--and also, being able to see people will help with the stamina part, I think. And of course, if you want someone to roam the dealer's room, I will definitely be looking to do that.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: welcome to the boomtown--david & david

Ugh, there's nothing like having to get a new roof on your house. Just the whole thing: the heinous cost, especially at a time when tariff bullshit/supply chain/tanking economy makes that 100 percent more devastating, the having to get multiple bids, then the having to tell people you went with someone else when they're awesome too...it's like something specially designed to make me miserable. I ended up getting bids from some great roofers, and it came down to two and it was so hard to make a decision, they were within a few hundred dollars of each other and they both had 4-star ratings everywhere and lots of good references. But I'm such a coward, the part where you have to tell the one company that you went with the other one is just excruciating omg.

Anyways, in about a month to six weeks, I'll be getting a new roof on the house. Poor Blues will be a wreck, but I don't know where I can really take him so he doesn't have to deal with the noise. I didn't have him when I did the kitchen remodel/addition, and Olive was the chillest cat you could ever have and she was fine with the construction (she literally slept through jackhammering my old concrete back stairs out), but my little sick, decrepit old man Blues will NOT do well in this situation. Home ownership sucks sometimes, so much.

I've been doing small things sporadically here and there--a tiny bit of writing, a bit of reading, lots of watching things. It doesn't feel like I ever accomplish much of anything; some days, the side effects are just awful enough that I don't really have the wherewithal to get much done. I'm trying to do accountability buddies with

belmanoir to force myself to walk at least a few days a week, but if I'm having a lot of side effects, even that can be hard to make myself to do.

I *have* been watching things on TV, though--I signed up for a couple months of Disney and Max so I could watch a couple shows there, even though I couldn't really afford it. But the most important one to me was Andor, and so I can't regret spending the money.

Andor season 2 was just...wow. Holy crap. SO FUCKING GOOD. I mean, I can always find things to quibble with or critique, but when something is that amazing, it's just easy to handwave the details. What an incredible series, what an incredible season, what an incredible showcase for good writing and real production values instead of plastic manufactured crap filmed in that giant egg thing they call the volume. The costumes, the sets, the acting, it's all astounding and adult in the best way. I want to talk more at length about it, but I'm still digesting it all, and I need to sit down and rewatch it again, really take it in now that I know where it's going.

While I had HBO Max (or just max or whatever the fuck it's called), I figured I'd try The Pitt, even though I swore off hospital/medical shows a long time ago (I think anyone who knows my history, especially with regards to my sister's death, knows why). But I couldn't escape it on tumblr, and so somehow ended up deciding to give it a whirl, and...well, it is definitely as good as most people say. I do hate the medical show thing where everything has to be ramped up to 11, like, regular medicine in an emergency setting isn't dramatic enough, no, we have to have a mass casualty event. Okay.

I liked most of the characters, and while I've never cared about Noah Wyle, I will say that as Dr. Robby, he was much more appealing to me: I simply can't resist the broken, damaged, compassionate, competent guy who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, fuck my life. And also, *of course* I fall for the piping hot mess of a dude that is Langdon--he has a total WWII Bucky thing going on with his looks (tell me he couldn't be Bucky's double in First Avenger), so it just figures. I *had* to go for the guy with Big Problems who's a little bit of an asshole underneath the really good doctor veneer. I absolutely loathe Santos, every minute with her was torture, and I couldn't stand Javadi, either, with her perpetually wide eyes and grimaced mouth. They are both awful. Lest this sound like I just hate women characters, everyone else I loved, especially Mohan and McKay and Collins and OMG Dana. I adore Dana, I am really hoping she's coming back. And Dr. Ellis, I think was her name? at the end there, please tell me she's going to be front and center next season. It's funny, too, that I despised Shawn Hatosy after Southland, like, he was just the *worst* character ever and so obnoxious that it seemed like it had to be because of the actor, so color me shocked that I kinda...love him? on this show as Abbot. Very weird.

After Andor, I went over to Netflix to find something mindless and soft to watch, and checked out Mike Shur's latest show with Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside. It was very cute, but I couldn't get over the fact that this retirement center, which was very much like my dad's luxurious retirement center (in that it had the same apartment-->assisted living/memory care-->nursing facility progression structure), had only 100 residents and all those incredible amenities. Like, there is just no way to run something that incredible (it made my dad's place look like a dump) with so few residents, especially in the middle of downtown San Francisco. It would cost like $10,000 a week. It's a charming show, but I just could not stop thinking about the financial structure the whole time I watched. But if you're looking for something soft and short, it's a good show, especially if you enjoyed The Good Place.

And as so many people are, I'm enjoying the hell out of Murderbot. I really side-eyed the casting of ASkars as SecUnit, but I have to say, his inherent weirdness and goofiness is really turning out to be an asset. Some of the changes to the stories threw me a bit, but when I went back and rewatched the eps knowing what the changes were, it felt a little less jarring, and now the show really feels like it's hitting its stride. I am excited about Friday nights! I love the casting for Dr. Mensah and of course, the glimpses of Sanctuary Moon are just the fucking best. And anytime John Cho is on my TV is a good time.

Current Mood: crappy

Hey, if you are going to theatres to see movies these days, I can highly recommend Sinners, with Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, and Hailee Steinfeld. It's about twin brothers (played by Jordan) who return to their town in Mississippi in 1932 to open a juke joint, and run up against vampires. I'm not much of a vampire person at all, but I think this would probably satisfy both the vampire loving crowd as well as the crowd like me, because the whole first hour is mostly a slow build of who the twins are and who the people in their lives are, and what's happened to them to make them what they are (not the least of which is of course generational trauma from racism), and also background for the character who becomes central to both their story and to the vampires' story.

The music is fucking off the charts amazing (Ludwig Göransson does the soundtrack and a lot of the music stuff) and worth it alone. There are two music sequences that left me kind of gobsmacked. I've never seen anything like it.

There's definitely gore and jump scares, but overall I didn't find it too horror-y, more like a modern monster movie in terms of the violence and such. It was definitely R-rated, with some very sexual scenes. Anyways, if you were considering it, I loved it. (It was directed by Ryan Coogler of Black Panther fame.)

Somehow, every time I make space to finish my WIP or read a new book (eeee, I am finally reading things I got years ago and have never been able to tackle and I am excited!), I manage to manifest new work. Every single time. And of course, I cannot use this manifesting power for anything like money, which I am in desperate need of because I fucked up my taxes big time this year and things are gonna be pretty dire, plus my IRA and such are in the toilet because of the fuckwads in power. So I do need the work (I actually had to say no to a book because of another project, but I was glad to be able to because it sounded like extremely hard work since all the YA fantasy I get from them is utter garbage and I haaaate working on YA), but I would also like a little time to do fun things, and the deadlines I usually have are ridiculous.

I feel like I am kinda semi-retired; I don't want to take on as much work as I used to and that's fine for me. But now...with the disasters in the thing that sadly rules our lives, the stock market, and the threats to Medicare and Social Security, as well as the cancer treatment, I constantly doubt myself and take work on I shouldn't necessarily. Plus I have to get a new roof. So that's (ha) literally hanging over my head. I suppose I will just keep shoving on.

Speaking of work, I had a fun thing happen a couple months ago. I never go to LinkedIn, I don't care about it at all, but I had read of a setting change that I did not like, so I went in one night to reset things, and it seemed to be perfect timing because there was a direct message from someone sent a few hours before I logged in. I don't get notifications so I would never have seen it otherwise. She was a reader of the magazine I used to work for till they ditched me in '23, and had been a copyeditor for years in different publications, and so she started by complimenting me on my work for them for all that time (like, it wasn't insincere at all, she really did pay attention to how well edited it was and I loved that because I too pay attention to mastheads and stuff) and asking if she might be able to find out a little bit about the job listing for an editor to work on the magazine.

I'd known that the publisher, J, had lost his editor (he'd asked me a few times to be more of a managing editor type, but I never wanted to) to a full time job, and I was stepping in that month to help him get the next issue out, but I hadn't realized he'd posted the job on LinkedIn--apparently you can list a job for free for three days, and he was deluged with applications even though it's just a part time freelancer type gig, you're not really employed by them per se. Anyway, I wrote her back and said I'd be happy to to tell her anything, and the more we talked, the more I realized she would be absolutely perfect for the role, that she couldn't be more like me in the way she approached copyediting and proofreading, and she personally was a musician as well and it's a music magazine, so she's a subject matter expert.

I didn't know if my making a rec for her would help, but J seemed interested and happy to have something like that, and out of the four or so candidates he'd talked to with the best credentials, the personal rec from me helped seal the deal and I think he knew that yeah, she couldn't have been more perfect. So she got the job, and sent me a sweet gift after even though I told her she shouldn't. I miss the magazine, but I guess I don't miss the flakiness of J and the designer, both men (insert eye roll here) who I had to treat like I was herding cats sometimes, but you know, editing stuff about the history of sunburst Fenders or the history of Prince's fave guitar were kind of awesome. I do miss that. But I told her if she ever needed any backup, I'm always around and happy to help and since I sort of created some of the style guide, it's not like I don't know the ins and outs. I guess as long as I'm healthy anyway.

The guy who leads our multiple myeloma support group had some bad health stuff recently, and was going through a pretty grueling treatment to try to get him back to remission. But he told us today that he is in hospice right now, and so things are ending for him in his efforts against it. Every time we get an announcement that someone from the group, past or present, has died, it's like a short sharp shock that this thing is just...really fucking awful. There is no "cure" per se, just remissions, and it always comes back, and some people go through multiple treatments and get into remissions. Every time I've told someone I have this, they go "I know so and so has it and they've had it for 11 years and they're fine" and I'm like, you don't know what getting to fine is really like. But people are so casual about it, because most of us in treatment or remission look fairly normal. Not like movie cliche patients.

Anyways, that's made me ridiculously sad. I have treatment this week and I'll find out what my oncologist thinks about where we are. My fatigue has been through the roof, I'm wiped out all the time. I know that's partly why I'm on the fence about Worldcon, just because...what am I going to be like in August? I never know, this whole two years has been such a fucking weirdass roller coaster. Ugh, sorry to be maudlin. I do get this way sometimes.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: monsters and angels - voice of the beehive

The past month has been kind of nutty, both medical wise and work wise and even fandom wise. Too much activity, I am always fatigued and I cannot handle everything happening so much. And some of my dear friends are really, really going through it in their lives, and I have so little help to offer.

This time of year is always tough on me anyway. Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary of my twin sister's death, to the exact day even (she died on a Wednesday night, I'd been in her hospice room just talking with her, holding her hand, telling her what was happening on the TV because it was Alias night and she couldn't see well, so I was describing stuff for her, and then before it ended, she was gone, because she wanted to do something she wasn't physically capable of doing and it took the last life out of her). It's left me feeling very shaky. By Saturday of that week, we'd had a get-together at her house, which was way too many people, but friends of hers who'd moved away flew out just for that "service," a couple even coming from the East Coast on 24 hours notice.

So I always feel very bad as it is-- and it doesn't really end until after April, because Dad and I had to keep going down to San Diego to deal with the estate, get the house cleared out for sale, etc. I think the estate sale/garage sales we had were the worst, but there was a special hell afterwards where I had to clear out her office, which had at least a hundred photo albums full of people I didn't know, and I had to throw them in the trash. It was beyond awful, and Dad wasn't much help because of his physical limitations. Anyways, I wrote about all that back when it happened (on LJ, but the posts have been imported here), so I won't repeat everything, just that...20 years feels like nothing. Like I can see all the things clear as day and they still hurt just as much. There's a void in my soul I can't ever fill or see around.

I've had people tell me I just don't want to get over it. I don't know how to explain what being a twin, and losing one, is like to people who are single-birth folks; I don't understand what it's like to not be born with someone else, so I'm clueless about how to respond to those comments. They're just incredibly cruel.

When I had to go on Medicare, I lost my therapist, so it's been months since I've been able to talk to someone. I won't say he was the best therapist, but I still literally don't know what you're supposed to get out of it anyway, beyond having someone you can just complain to for an hour. But he left the group he was practicing with since they got bought out by the evil Optum (subsidiary of United Healthcare, whose CEO got shot in the street), and called me recently to tell me that the new group does take Medicare and he is now certified for that. I have no idea what Medicare will pay for, it's super confusing about mental health, or the supplement I have. But I have an appointment with him next week, so I'll see how it goes.

I thought I might have to have hand surgery because of arthritis in my thumb/base of my thumb, but for once the doctor (who I'd seen way back at the beginning of the pandemic for my left hand extreme arthritis pain, though he's now at a hospital instead of my old clinic: I guess the entire orthopedics department just up and moved over the Swedish hospital orthopedics when Optum came in, bless them) said "I have good news!" It turned out to be tendonitis--there's definitely arthritis in the joints, but in this case it was the tendons and sheaths being inflamed in a big way. He gave me a (very painful) shot in the joint at the base, and within a few days I was starting to be able to hold on to things again and actually turn the car key in the ignition. Yay! I had really been braced for the worst because that's almost always what happens.

Treatment continues apace. I've been down on the major number they look for, so it's possible I could get to that mythical remission stage, but who knows. To be honest, with the state of the world, I kind of wish the cancer wouldn't be so painful to just let me go off into that good night. The world's a shitshow. They're going after everything that will literally keep me alive. But I've never seen anyone I loved die without immense, horrific suffering, especially my sister. She suffered so horribly, as did Sandy, and I just don't know how or why those people who are said to "die peacefully surrounded by family and friends" get there, because it'll be painful for me, I think.

Every time I have plans to sit down and finish my Steve and Bucky in Wakanda WIP, I get an editing job with a terrible deadline. It's like some kind of summoning spell. I carve out time, the publisher writes me about a job, I need money, so...there it goes. I am fucking determined to finish this soon.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: how deep is your love-calvin harris

I guess I neglected to tell a lot of people I was going to Escapade this year, because quite a few people seemed very surprised to see me. Oops. It was kind of a last-minute decision; I'd been waffling about it because I haven't traveled in five years and of course the cancer, but I really wanted to see people, only a lot of folks wouldn't be able to go due to the really early date they'd set (just...January 31, not a great time). But when they mentioned they were having trouble meeting the financial obligations such as room blocks, I decided just before Christmas I'd go. At least I would see my darling

killabeez, which is enough reason! And

kerithwyn and

hafital were there, and from my Seattle crowd,

wickedwords, so I was really happy to just lounge around and yak. Seeing people's actual faces in person is just...there's nothing like it, especially when it's folks like

cesperanza and

cathexys, who I haven't seen in yonks.

It was...very hard to get in the travel groove again. I've never traveled with a cane, of course, and that took some getting used to, but only a few people were dickish to me for being slow, and a lot of people were helpful. I went down on Friday so I missed a hefty portion of the con, and left on Sunday afternoon, so if I go again I think I will definitely not do that. It's just so...expensive. Everything is so much more expensive for less return now, hotel rooms being the best example of that. But I did get to see a lot of people I like and this year some extra special guests came, and that was wonderful spending time with folks I haven't seen in absolute ages, and hanging out in people's rooms or going to Starbucks or whatever. And of course, talking about fic and vids, or fandoms (I only went to a couple fandom panels, since I arrived too late for Star Trek, but it was fun to listen to people talk about Deadpool and Wolverine).

I got weirdly busy with work right beforehand, too, which maybe was good in the sense that it kept my mind on something else besides traveling and also the state of the world. I have been so anxious since the election that my oncologist is concerned, because my blood pressure is sky high when I go in and that's not a good thing with the main drug that's keeping my cancer at bay. While it was nice to have something else to keep my focus on at the con, as well, it was hard to avoid, especially when everywhere you go someplace has multiple TVs blaring news and you cannot escape it. I tried to avoid political conversations, but inevitably when you're in a population that is so hugely affected by hate, it takes over the spaces.

Something fannish that was fun was that I got a related work notification while I was in LA--someone had done a podfic of one of my Sunshine stories. I don't have a lot of podfics so it's always such a thrill when someone does that, especially because I love the way fans continue each other's fannish creations and make new things. And it's a lovely podfic too, I love the reader's accent and the way she handled so many things in it. If you enjoyed the movie Sunshine (where science ice prince Cillian Murphy and military hothead Chris Evans [to steal from

bond_girl] play enemies to friends to lovers across the stars--okay, WE think they do, they think they just hate each other) and you like podfics, it's really good. Dipping Toward the Light [podfic] is here.

And last but not least, I read another book! I know, I know, it's ridiculous, but it's just been so long since I've been able to read! This time it was a graphic novel and it was really fascinating. It's about an AU version of our world, where wishes are a thing that can be mined and bought and sold, and they don't always have the obvious effects the person making the wish expects, especially if they buy third-tier wishes. It takes place in Cairo, and there's a glimpse into a world that most of us don't know much about, and it's insanely creative. The writer did so much research and created such a dense, layered world, it's kind of astonishing. It's called Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohammed and the title basically means "your wish is my command."

Current Mood: indescribable

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gwyn

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somniloquence

lube & ire

Recent Entries

Talking in my sleep at night

Doin' that thing you do

Now I know how Joan of Arc felt

Life gets so hard when you reach the end

No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls

I know I won't be leaving here with you

There's a kiss at the end of the rainbow

Already in the oven, nice and hot

It's RSVP, no thanks, no party lights

all we're looking for is love and a little light

Fic: Final chapter of Reverie

Just a memory of your face

Love's such an old-fashioned word

h-o-t-t-o-g-o

Welcome to the boomtown

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

Movie rec

There's a peacefulness and a rage inside us all

Is it like the ocean, what devotion are you

Oh, the places you'll have gone