#I've been sick three or four times since December

[sailoreuterpe]

I'm so tired of being sick. No one but me wears a mask at work, I literally have customers come in and fucking joke about being sick, this fucking country doesn't have any safety net for people who get sick (no paid time off, no universal healthcare). I hate it here.

[cutestkilla]

Happy Sunday folks and thanks for the tags today @j-nipper-95 and @you-remind-me-of-the-babe! Thanks for alllll the tags over the past many, many weeks when I’ve shared nothing @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @ileadacharmedlife @ic3-que3n @hushed-chorus @artsyunderstudy @forabeatofadrum @larkral @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @fatalfangirl @whogaveyoupermission @shrekgogurt @palimpsessed @stitchy-queerista @blackberrysummerblog @shemakesmeforget.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, I have in fact been a busy little bee working on fandom stuff. I spent February making four (more like six because one is a composite of vignettes) illustrations for @captain-aralias' Year 3 Picture Book story, which I’m really excited to share when the time comes. For now, have maybe my favourite little baby Simon face I've ever drawn:

I’m a baby artist, so that many illustrations was A LOT for me and I haven’t written a word of anything since I finished my exchange fic on December 31st, though I have been thinking a lot about my “Wedding Fic” and how I want the second half to go. (Canon divergence in which Simon and Baz both end up at a WoM wedding the week before 8th year starts.) I’ve outlined it three different ways, in fact… ANYWAY, I do have many words written of that since I started working on it 7 months ago, so have some Simon/Jamie that I might end up dropping:

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “That you have to babysit me and miss the rest of the ceremony.” “Are you kidding me?” Jamie replied, cheeks reddening. “You’ve done me a favour. I can’t cast that spell either. A bit rude of them to expect everyone to be able to, if you ask me.” “But my magic… it must be bothering you. It makes my best friend sick all the time when it gets like this.” “Not really, mate,” Jamie smiled. “Maybe we’re just magickally compatible. If you average us out we might come out to one normal magician, eh?” I laughed, for the first time in the entire day. Actually, if I’m honest, more like for the first time in at least a month.

Tags back to everyone mentioned above, and a few extra taggies for: @facewithoutheart @aristocratic-otter @ivelovedhimthroughworse @technetiumai @onepintobean @raenestee @moodandmist @otherworldsivelivedin @thewholelemon @bookish-bogwitch.

[puzzledmemories]

((i think i'm just on the tailend of this virus. i'm moving around faster today, i can talk easier, still got a concoction of symptoms but i feel like i could go back to work tomorrow, if tomorrow wasn't part of my regular weekend. having an, essentially, five day weekend was kind of nice, honestly... just wish i wasn't sick for it. i have a lot of vacation time to use up by the end of the year and four days left to plan it, so i should start planning it. which i say because, i wouldn't be surprised if my body was trying to make me rest and this was its way of forcing me...but i also wasn't the only person in the house that was sick, so, shrug emoji.))

((i did some non rp writing today to feel out how writing was for me... gave me a pretty bad headache that i had to rest a couple of hours from. the second round of it wasn't as bad, though. tentatively, i want to get back into the swing of things rp-wise tomorrow. i just. head in my hands. being sick is so boring. i've been sick for a week and it's been way too easy to overextend myself with simple things, so i've been very bored.))

((i appreciate everyone being patient while i recover. i've been told this past week that i've been downplaying my symptoms at work, so i probably have here as well; i think this past week is the first time i've taken sick time at my current job for actually being sick since i started, and i've been working there since december 2022. i took, essentially, three days. so my ass is definitely being kicked. i have a tendency to be a workaholic, though... i'm very hard on myself. so we'll see how i am tomorrow, but i'd like to be on here at least a bit!))

((..my car had to be jumped today. i have to drive tomorrow for an appointment, so if it has to be jumped tomorrow, i'm gonna scream.))

[marmotsomsierost]

I have been sick since fuckin. What day. The fuckin 16th of december is when this bullshit started. It is JANUARY FUCKIN FIFTH. That saturday i woke up, coughed (not super unusual with this persistent stupid postnasal drip crap) so hard i puked all of the little i had in my stomach out (super unusual) and had a scratchy throat for the rest of the day. Didn't think anything of it. Was feeling kind of but not really better towards evening. Then, decorating the tree, cough drop in mouth, i go to fling a string of lights up and inhale said cough drop, which lodges just below my thyroid.

I do not die. The dog and the husband are not convinced. I use actual words to mention the not dying thing. They are...slightly more convinced.

Sunday i wake up with sensation in throat, not like pain, not raw, just like...there's something there that isn't normally there. Have minor cough and very raspy voice. Sinuses mostly clear. I wake up on the 20th and have literally no voice. I need my voice to be able to triage people. I call out sick. I go back the next day, it's fine. Still little cough, mostly clear sinuses, just suddenly a tenor. This continues until the 25th.

Dinner on christmas i find annoying to eat. It's like my throat has decided it's full and the stomach goes 'eh okay sure let's stop' in weird agreement. I go to work the next day.

I have turned into the crotchety old man you never see out of scooterdress with snus in his lip and a suspicious possibly-sentient coffee mug in one hand and the other hand tucked into the front of his bibbed pants. Basically Bjørn Sundquist. Anyway.

I now have a coughing wheezy rasp where by the end of the night i will cough all the air out of my lungs, die, gasp in air, cough that out, die again, then am able to breathe again. Unfortunately not shiny and chrome. Still. I call out the next morning, have a video visit, get some antibiotics and an inhaler, we're good to go right.

Wrong. Turns out pretending really really hard that you don't have a fever does not actually get rid of said fever. I call out again. I'm off work the next three days anyway, that gives me a nice block of time to finish my antibiotics and get back to normal.

There's no tech for the two days before new year's day so when i show up despite sounding like a zombie everyone is all 'oh thank god you're here' and 'we have a tech?? We have TWO TECHS?? Yeah!' But about four hours in i keep getting the concerned face and side-eye of concern and avaunt foul beast from the rest of the ED. The doctor tells me i sound worse than half of the patients. The PA listens to my lungs and says something like 'wow with that cough i figured your lungs would be shit but they're actually really clear'. The loud triage nurse says 'well hell marmot's been coughing for weeks and she's still here' loudly several times in earshot of patients whose chief complaint is 'cough since this morning' and the night shift triage nurse tells the charge nurse that i can stay in the back, he wants to keep the front plague-free.

I almost call out yesterday. I had the phone in my hand but an alert went out that the evening tech called out and wednesday was a shitshow so i was like okay, i'm not that bad, i'll go in.

I should have called out. I have alarms set for when to take the sudafed and the cough medicine and the inhaler because time is fake at the best of times and this ain't the best of times. I survive to the end of the shift. I blow my nose before i leave and my ears pop- the right clears fast, the left clears by the time i get home.

I'm off today. Cough is demonstrably better in frequency if nothing else, even without regular doses of medicine. I get home from dropping samus at the vet (she's fine) and blow my nose again, and ears pop. Left ear won't clear. It doesn't hurt but it is driving me absolutely batshit insane. It's like juuuust on the edge of fucking with my equilibrium. I've tried gum. Decongestant. Antihistamines. Soak in hot bath in our dwarf-ass tub as best i can. Am about to try broiling in a shower.

I'm so tired of this crap. Where is bones with a magic lung-fixing ear-clearing pill when you need him.

[catchingbigfish]

writing plans for the rest of 2023

aka, yet another accountability post i'll laugh at in a few months when i realize how off track my plans have gone again

i am freakishly close to done with the first draft of Conversion; i'm at 57k words as of right this very second, and i'm trying very hard to not go past 90k words on the first draft (even though i think it could edge closer to 120k if i let go with full reckless abandon), and really, my target is to make it a tight 80-85k words. plus, my weekend plans to swap my office and bedroom (who the fuck decided the largest room should be the place you sleep?? that makes no sense!) have been thwarted by my fiance getting sick again, so if i run another few 4-5k days in a row? i might knock this out within the week.

on top of that, i'm enrolled in julia inglis's new shadow doll course (it's a shameless indulgence of mine) which starts august first, so it seems like the prime time to consider exactly how i plan to spend late summer/early fall and nanowrimo this year. here's my current plan:

finish the first draft of Conversion by July 31. this seems very doable so far, unless i really do let go and indulge in all those side conversations and small subplots boiling around in my brain.

spend all of august really delving into the shadow doll course, giving my brain a serious break from writing, and channel all that energy into other types of creativity. this also seems doable, but there's a chance i'll be forced onto a business trip in late august. if that's the case, it'll probably be three or four days, and i'll go ahead and do my first read-through of conversion on the trip. (i read So It Goes way too early and i realize that now -- i have to find a way to force myself to give it at least three weeks before i read through Conversion.)

spend september working on a developmental, high-level, birds-eye-view revision of the first draft of Conversion. if all goes according to plan, i'll use the first few weeks to draft new character sketches and go back to tidy up any mischaracterizations from the characters developing along the drafting process, tighten plot points that i think are dragging, and do a new zero draft based on the first draft plus any new additions i think are necessary, then spend the last few weeks doing the actual drafting for any new scenes i need (and hopefully, for the love of god, creating actual chapter breaks in there). this also seems doable.

get Conversion ready for alpha-readers and zero draft the sort-of-sequel Apostate (👀) in october. yeah i'm basically fully committed to this idea now, lol. the working title is Apostate because i'm terrible at titles and i think it's a fun counterpoint to the title Conversion. i've realized my original cult fiction concept works unreasonably well as a follow up to Conversion (and that's one of the two reasons the ending changed so dramatically), so i'm going for it. i'm not confident i can do this all in october, but i'd love to do nanowrimo again this year and draft Apostate during the month, so this is like my stretch goal. also, i'm not comfortable calling it beta reading just yet, but i'm hoping to get Conversion to a point where i can hand it off to some people who can tell me if it's working, where things are lacking, and any glaring issues i can't see because i'm too close it. (if all goes according to plan, i hope to make a call for alpha readers in early october and have the draft handed over by november so i can force myself to only work on Apostate that month! i wouldn't expect readers to actually dive in until after november, since most likely, they'll be doing nano too -- but it's just the best way to motivate myself). this is definitely the goal i see most likely to fall off track.

spend november drafting Apostate. again, the entire concept of writing Apostate is definitely the weakest link in my plans, but it would be so nice to do!

take december off. seriously, if i actually do this in the way i want, i will need *so* much of a break it's unreal.

[chibinightmares]

サッカリン染め承服 «🌸» Saccharine-dyed Compliance

It's been seven months and twenty-six days since your contract was nullified with the Navy and seventeen days since your last day of work.. overall, it's been a busy ride, hasn't it?

Ever since your newfound lover came into your life rather unexpectedly last September, it seemed like things had finally gone in your favor.. at least, until you started to feel.. burnt out. Three-to-four months into your very first job, it felt as though you were making your way up.. a little too fast. Going from a simple employee to a rather shitty and confusing company to becoming the Lead-in-Training for your club's team, it all was too fast.. and the worst part was, you never wanted it to begin with.

You knew your nature well, easily guilt-ridden and simple to trick, but why was it that your boss' words could sway you so easily? You knew this job well, hell, your own mother had spent four years in utter misery because of it.. but then.. why was it that you were becoming too competent to say no?

Of course though, as you'd soon come to find out, this would come to have consequences.

It.. felt weird and scary to feel burnt out for the first time-- almost as though you were letting everyone down by wanting to quit in mid-December.. seeing your name as "Employee of the Month" no longer filled you with a sense of pride.. but rather disgust. You always hated being in the spotlight ever since childhood but seeing your name on that piece of paper on the cork board made your blood boil.. it felt as though your co-workers would come to expect more from you.. even if you knew that wouldn't be true.

It wasn't until January, when your mother convinced you to stay for at least another month, that you found out your boss, the very person who managed to push you this far, was quitting.

..and what followed the days after she quit was hell on your mental health.

Constant back and forthing between not being able to do your job because you knew too much and trying to make it so everyone else could do theirs had made your body weak, sick even, till the point where a possible hire came in and brought a sense of false hope.. a false hope that made you panic when you heard he didn't take the job.

It was horrible until you decided that you had enough.

When February came around, you made your decision. Of course, your boss' employer had offered you a sense of relief but your mind was set in stone.. "you know, when we get a new supervisor in, all the weight of what you've been doing will be lifted off your shoulders,"-- what bullshit to hear.

Though when the day came, it felt.. strange.

The last day of work came and went and.. you went home happy. Happy to have experience but happy to relax finally-- happy to finally feel as though your life was your own again.

It's been seven months and twenty-six days since you felt free, having kept your contract nullification hidden from those around you until you returned home from visiting family out-of-state, and six months and twenty-nine days since you started your first job.

Adulting has just begun and with it, you're lucky to have your partner by your side.. the one who helped you understand it was normal to feel what you felt, who held you close as you got sick from overexertion.. the same boy who you never thought you'd get to hold in your arms as you slept, finally feeling at peace rather than on your guard, damn near 24/7.. the same one who tells you he loves you.

It's an odd feeling to be loved for once.. but it's a welcome thought, nonetheless.

It's been a while since I've made a proper post and well, who would've thought that this would be it.. it's nice to vent once in a while.

[psychicdragoncoffee]

Books

I believe I might have a bit of a problem lately.

I sometimes go to these book sales that take place at a library offshoot that sells used books from the library or books that are donated.

The sale in question mainly involves filling up a tote with whatever you find that you want. Sometimes I can completely fill up the tote. But not every time. Not if I go to every sale.

Then after that, I could go to another store to buy even more books. The first time after moving I didn't do this, but the other two times I did. The first time I did this I went to Target later and picked up four more books.

Then yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble and got three more.

The problems...

I have growing piles of books and don't have shelving space for these books. The only bookshelf I have is exclusively bought for manga. I will have to get more shelves for my growing book piles.

Unless I'm hyperfocused on the book I'm reading I'm a really slow reader. I got my copy of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes probably in November and I'm not even halfway done with it. Though I do admit I haven't even picked up the book once in December. Since getting that book the two sales happened and I have bought 7 new books [Not including what I got from the tote sales because I have no idea how many I got during those sales] Nor does this include the books I got for Christmas [5 addition books, 6 including a manga. I'm not including manga in all of this.] And this doesn't also include any books I get from Book of the Month either. [5 Books in November, 1 in December, 1 in January though I gave that one away since I had no interest in any of the books for the month.] And then I forgot at least three other books. One was a cookbook, one a used book that my mom had an extra of, then a book about muscle and weight lifting.

So lately I have been trying to progress in the book I've been reading; even if it is just reading a chapter a day. Since I had gotten sick I'm mostly been sleeping crocheting or reading.

I have a server I have made to be like a book club. It isn't very active right now, but I'm hoping it could encourage me and others to work through their TBR piles by talking to each other about these books.

[dawnowar]

Post from the future 12/30/2023

Now I'm back up and around, im starting to exercise again and i'm trying to be a person but im sleepy all the time and im coughing like crazy and I have so much gunk in my lungs and it replaces itself as soon as i cough it up.

I'm basically going to work and doing Jazzercise classes because i only have to the end of the month to get in 17 more classes to get my t-shirt and then i sleep and thats about it.

The bronchitis is sickness #5 in a row.

I've been sick since the end of the first week in October save about four or five good days and a day and a half i was in some denial and tried to be OK for Halloween.

I decide to write off the rest of the year and just work and get my tshirt. Also i end up with unexpected bills for having had to tear the shed down at the same time my vacation was happening and getting sick and missing work and the cat had a thing i had to take him to the vet for (hes fine) and i'm just eating a lot of junk and getting fatter and fatter.

When im sick i eat whatever im craving and im certainly not eating low calorie and exercising. When im sick 5x in a row for basically three months which includes the eating holidays... well I have definitely gained back some pounds i took off before Setzer to look good in my outfits.

December is diet sabotage month anyway so im eating the holiday foods without guilt and i'll get back to diet and exercise in January.

I keep exercising to get my tshirt through December so im flabby but im not out of shape. Hoping that gives me a head start in January.

[blot-squisher]

So, I've been working as a delivery driver for the past year and one month for Chick-fil-a (yuck, I know but I needed the money, I have kids to feed).

During the entire time I worked there, all of us were told that if we received three write ups in a 30 day period, we'd be terminated. Well, in the past 60 days, I've gotten four. The first was back in late November because I got super sick and couldn't find anyone to cover my shift. Same thing happened again in December. Got sick, couldn't find coverage. Late January my son got sick at school and I had to leave early to go pick him up. Got a write up for that. Then, Tuesday night I got food poisoning and had to call in for my Wednesday shift. Obviously couldn't find coverage because it was 9:30 pm and my shift was the next morning at 7:45.

So! Today, I was just kinda like... I'm gonna get fired. I couldn't find coverage and that makes three. They just fired another driver and he had doctors notes for his call ins (they don't care!) Worked my shift anyway and before I could clock out, sure enough, my direct supervisor asked me not to leave until he could talk to me. Bet. I asked if I was being fired.

That was when they decided to tell me it's three write ups in a 60 day period, not 30, and since I called in the night before and not the day of (minimum three hours before my shift when the store doesn't even open until 6:30???) I was put down as a no call no show even though they knew I wasn't going to be there. :)

There have been other issues, getting worse over the past few months and if ya'll want the deets I'll gladly share. I'm honestly so relieved to be done with that whole thing. Now I can spend some quality time with my husband and kids while we get ready to move back to his home state. <3

Pretty sure I’m getting fired at the end of my shift and I just don’t care at this point 🙃 I’m so tired of this dead end job. Please. Fire. Me.

[thebattleisoverbut-thewargoeson]

TW: Sexual coercion, stealthing, women on contraception.

A friend of mine, E, is getting married in a month's time. Last weekend was her twice-postponed hen do (owing to the 'vid pandemic), arranged meticulously by her best friend, B. We stayed in a glorious Airbnb, with the Friday night involving games, a piñata, an outdoor jacuzzi and karaoke. Late Saturday afternoon, we went to the cocktail-making class which one of the hens, E's colleague, had booked.

During this, I went over to speak to B and A. I caught the tail end of B saying '...as soon as I came off them, I was fine. My body went back to normal'. She explained to me they were talking about contraception, then asked what my favourite form was. My initial response was: 'My personality does the trick!' before I told them that I'd been on a couple of contraceptive pills in the past which had led to multiple ruptured ovarian cysts, involving agonising pain and being rushed to hospital from work. These have always coincided with me either beginning the medication or ceasing it. Just over eleven years ago, I had an Implanon inserted into my upper arm which did prevent pregnancy when I was r*ped shortly afterwards however, six months later (having been celibate for that entirety), I had a period which didn't stop. When I went back to my GP surgery, they opted to put me back on the Pill for three months, AS WELL AS still having the Implanon in my arm. This prescription ran out just before that Christmas and when my period started that December, it didn't stop once again. I returned to my GP surgery in January 2012 and had been bleeding for six weeks by that stage. This time, I saw my usual female GP and she booked me in to have the Implanon removed and tested me for anaemia, given my prolonged menstrual bleeding.

I also disclosed to B and A, hesitantly, that I'd always been pressured into going on the Pill because every partner wanted to 'fuck [me] without a condom'. I used to be uncomfortable with asserting boundaries and instead of standing up for myself, I went along with it: visiting my GP, discussing different Pill options (ruling out any that could interact with my epilepsy medication) and taking contraceptive Pills as prescribed, purely so that my partner could relinquish any responsibility with regards to to sexual health or unwanted pregnancy in pursuit of his own pleasure. B confessed that her husband kept complaining about having to wear a condom after the birth of their second child four months ago. I suggested that her husband could go on hormones or get the snip if condoms bother him so much. A sneered that men don't want to go on contraceptive Pills because of the side effects, to which I replied: 'So it's fine for women to deal with headaches, migraines, nausea, weight fluctuation, mood swings, ruptured cysts, disrupted periods, acne, changes in libido and who knows what else?' She could only shake her head.

This conversation would've sobered me up, had I not already been drinking mocktails. Having not seen most of these women since our late teens when we were in sixth form, here we were at E's hen party thirteen years on, voicing our disheartening and disenchanting experiences with male partners pressuring us to sacrifice our body's natural hormone levels in order for them to enjoy 'raw' sex. Following instances of my last partner withholding contraception (telling me he'd put on a condom when he hadn't/ removing condoms without my knowledge or consent), meaning I had to seek emergency contraception, I've been celibate for over a year now and honestly? I have no desire to fall off that wagon. Often, I felt like I was just chronically unlucky when it came to this, yet clearly women everywhere share similar experiences. The hen party drove home that even in 2022, women are still expected to aspire to and prioritise events such as engagement and marriage to a man. There are separatism women's movements in Japan and South Korea for women who are sick of dealing with this nonsense. Perhaps it's time that women everywhere followed their lead. In fact, it's long overdue.

[astralscrivener]

⭐ for at skyfall!! :D

first of all: i love u

second of all. this is a long one so i'm putting it under a read more, but first, for anyone who doesn't know what at skyfall is:

can i interest you in a klance and adashi fic where shiro and keith get kidnapped and adam joins the castleship crew

fanfic writers: director's cut!

OKAY SO it's silly. it's so silly. the very very basic premise for this one had been sitting in my google docs for four years. since senior year of high school, bestie!!!! FOUR YEARS!!!! i'm almost done w college that's how long the basic premise has been sitting there!!

here. i can provide a screenshot of exactly what it looked like in my notes. it was a google doc full of things i could use as potential fic titles or chapter titles bc i STRUGGLE with titles so it was handy to have some notes for that. the edit history on this bitch goes back to december 17, 2017, aka peak of the voltron fandom

ID: a screenshot of a google doc. in bold and italics, "skyfall / at skyfall", followed by six bullet points: "multichapter probably, or a oneshot, either way it has to deal with kuron and someone has to come close to death, focus on the downfalls of the two previous black paladins (shiro & keith), black paladin lance, klance for reasons". End ID.

and so you can very much tell that this was in the era when everyone thought lance should have been the black paladin, and also that time when everyone knew kuron was a clone from like the minute he entered season 3 but they dragged the plot out for three and a half seasons. ANYWAY

like many other people, 2020 sent me spiraling back into klance because quarantine truly was the time when people just went back into old hyperfixations. like i was still actively writing and interested in klance, but hoooo the panini brought the brainrot back in full force, and so i wanted to write angst. it had been a long time since i wrote angst. and i wanted a long-term project that wasn't the fix-it fic and also wasn't a modern au. i wanted the paladinsverse dammit. and then lo and behold i found this in my notes and went "oh. i can use this"

i ended up scrapping the kuron thing mostly because i missed shiro and i was sick of the little clone bitch, and also my feelings on BP lance have gotten more complicated, and ALSO i wrote the original premise when no one had any idea who the fuck adam was, and ALSO i've gotten way into the broganes dynamic, and so with the Glasses Of Hindsight on the plot became: shiro and keith having to survive together, keith and lance secret relationship, adam joins the castleship crew

i still chose "at skyfall" bc black lion guardian spirit of the sky and blah blah blah, but the focus is a little less on the whole "black paladins" thing and more on like, the team's bonds as a whole. and also i'm a sucker for devotion, be it platonic romantic familial whatever, so jot that the fuck down. really i just want more hurt/comfort. more "how far would you go to protect the ones you love." more "what would you sacrifice to keep them safe." and so during the past few nanowrimos i just began. writing chapters. and yelling about them. and now i'm six chapters deep and proud of the way it's coming along

(and thank you for editing them my wonderful beta bestie <333)

thank u for this ask!!!