#legal health stuff

[contentment-of-cats]

Just give me the coffee, I will do the rest.

Loki is settling in. Mostly, he wants to eat and sleep. The few times I have let him out of the Borg Cube, he's been out for 10 minutes, gets overstimulated, and runs back to his Safe Place. Right now he is learning how to play with toys, and loves his scratching posts and pads. He's been through so much. I have asked that the ex get a visit from his karma.

Unpleasant Subject Ahead

Another thing that this whole thing has driven home is how important it is to get your affairs in order - even if you don't have cancer. Loki's mom was getting a divorce and fell so ill so fast that she was unable to make her own medical decisions within days of admission. Even if you are getting a divorce, even with an actual protective order, your spouse is still the legal default person to make decisions for you. They are your legal heir. If you don't have a legal spouse (marriage certificate), it's your adult children, if you have no kids then your parents make those decisions even if you're a legal adult. If you have no immediate family, then your extended family gets called in.

Power of attorney legal and medical

Will for personal property

Living trust for investments and real estate

Medical orders (supersede those of the POA) such as Do Not Resuscitate

A health care directive like this one.

It's hard to think about, but when your surviving extended family is a mess (like mine) you want these things in order. Hell, have them notarized so that a judge can look at the plaintiff and say, "What the hell is the matter with you?"

Golden Treadmill

I'm strapping myself in with another 'write to spec' contract. Yep, it's more porn. I negotiated for one every six weeks from February to November. I need to visit Amazon and stock up on barf bags and brain bleach. I did say that I won't write noncon or (yes, this is a thing) racist tropes. It's hard for me to write hardcore body horror. I might be writing horrible porn in order to pay off my medical bills that makes my pussy slam shut like an angry clam, but I have standards. That being said, the editor delivered the advance to my freelance bank account and the outline to my inbox.

Whoo boy.

In my defense, I did not know that 'monster fucking' was commercially viable.

Cat in the Kitchen

Rediscovering food has been a wonder. As promised, my rearranged innards make it trial and error, but the errors seem to be self-correcting. Gut flora does come back, but I have not been brave enough to venture into my spicy Indian, Chinese, and Mexican foods.

I've been making casseroles/hotdish because they freeze well and sometimes the fatigue renders me incapable of anything other than pushing a button.

For casseroles/hotdish you need:

Vegetables: Frozen works fine. Canned is saltier, so if you go canned use 'less salt' brands. If you are using mushrooms, frozen, fresh or dried is best. I find canned mushrooms have a very weird metallic taste.

Starch: Potatoes, rice, pasta/noodles, bread. Yes, tater tots count.

Protein: Can be vegetable protein, beans, canned tuna or salmon, or meat. Smoked salmon is delicious in casseroles and soup, so I go to my local deli on Friday to get lox ends and trimmings.

Sauce: Canned soups (cream of ____), jarred or canned pasta sauce, or packaged cooking sauces and gravies.

Topping: Cornflakes, tater tots, cheese, potato chips, stuffing, etc.

Flavor: Dried herbs, onion and celery, garlic, spices.

Slowcooker meals are great, too, and follow the same rules as casseroles/hotdish. But my favorite caserole dish is my Gran's Lancashire hotpot - lamb neck chops, potatoes, onions, and more sliced potatoes on top for a crispy lid.

Back to work.

[boredinagoodway]

ANYA EATING BURGER

She's SO CUTE. I need to FEED HER. I want to LISTEN TO HER SORROWS. I desire to FIX HER.

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

im so infinitely stressed rn i need to get off here

[lickthebloodoffmyshovel]

Filled out my name change, and gender marker change forms! Hopefully by the end of the month everything will be done, and I won't have to ever deal with my deadname again.

[lickthatbattery]

miraculously managed to snag a intake doctor's appt that is Next Friday instead of what originally looked like having to wait until OCTOBER so i'm feeling pretty good about that

[anarcho-masochist]

My alters: please use the symptom tracker

Me, who is very paranoid about mental health data being used against me and also cynical about the value of reducing one's mental state to numbers as one's primary mode of analysis, for Obvious Fucking Reasons: I think we should drop our phone off a building

[mapsareforbraindeads]

need to be 18 desperately (i want tattoos)

[xviruserrorx]

I really hate having to depend on people to get very very important things done

[hiimcanadia]

"Trans people have been illegally taking hormones for decades and if HRT gets banned that's an option that will be available and many people will probably take" and "oh my god do not share detailed information about how you are actively illegally stockpiling a controlled substance on fucking Tumblr (or any social media frankly)" are two statements that can coexist

[transgender-catboy]

oh yeah. this whole death thing is like. wild.

apparently one of my aunts died recently

[nexus-nebulae]

another childhood bucket list item obtained: i finally have a snuggie

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

.

[of-galaxies-and-black-holes]

recalling life events got me fucked enough to be writing song lyrics again.

[beneaththebloodylake]

ive been reading too much ace attorney fanfic and its sort of pissing me off, apparently im a bit of a snob. if i had more time id be very tempted to write a case fic which goes uncharacteristically into legal details and technical stuff, but make it actually accurrate to the correct system

[genderkoolaid]

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. [...] By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly. The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,” New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. “[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.” His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: “[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic,” read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisons—that long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner’s office. Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country’s poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those “who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff.” And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. “Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes,” proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.

This isn't particularly relevant to anything specific. I just wanted to remind everyone this is something the US government did.