#was in fact covid and did in fact get me good after 2 years of carefulness due to this exact eventuality

[averlym]

hi, i see you are on hiatus, but thought at some point you might like to hear that january 28th is henry’s deathday ~ holiday anon

another one bites the dust (haha because you hoover dust)

[covid-safer-hotties]

The next pandemic is inevitable. Australia isn’t ready - Published Sept 23, 2024

(Before you Americans yell at me, It's already the 23rd in Australia. This is very late-breaking)

I thought this was a really good breakdown of the current situation given the government-approved covid denial we live in. Long, but worth a read.

By Kate Aubusson and Mary Ward

Top infectious disease and public health veterans at the nerve centre of the state’s war against COVID-19 are sounding the alarm.

NSW is less prepared today to fend off a deadly pandemic despite the lessons of COVID-19, say top infectious disease and public health veterans at the nerve centre of the state’s war against the virus.

And we won’t have another hundred years to wait.

NSW’s gold standard Test-Trace-Isolate-Quarantine and vaccination strategies will be useless if a distrusting population rejects directives, refuses to give up its freedoms again, and the goodwill of shell-shocked public health workers dries up.

A panel of experts convened by The Sydney Morning Herald called for a pandemic combat agency akin to the armed forces or fire brigades to commit to greater transparency or risk being caught off guard by the next virulent pathogen and misinformation with the potential to spread faster than any virus.

“It’s inevitable,” says Professor Eddie Holmes of the next pandemic. A world-leading authority on the emergence of infectious diseases at the University of Sydney, Holmes predicts: “We’ll have less than 100 years [before the next pandemic].

“We’re seeing a lot of new coronaviruses that are spilling over into animals that humans are interacting with,” said Holmes, the first person to publish the coronavirus genome sequence for the world to see.

“People are exposed all the time, and each time we are rolling the dice.”

The independent review of NSW Health’s response to COVID-19 opened with the same warning: “No health system or community will have the luxury of 100 years of downtime.”

Pandemic preparedness needs to be a “permanent priority”, wrote the report’s author, Robyn Kruk, a former NSW Health secretary, “rather than following the path of those that have adopted a ‘panic and forget strategy,’ allowing system preparedness to wane”.

Why we don’t have 100 years to wait for the next pandemic The World Health Organisation has declared seven public health emergencies of international concern since 2014, including the current mpox outbreak.

Climate change is turbocharging the factors that coalesce to create the perfect breeding ground for a pandemic-causing virus, including population increases, bigger cities, and better-connected global markets and migration.

“Animals will be forced into more constrained environments, and humans that rely on those environments will be again constrained in the same environments. There will be more wet markets, more live animal trade that will just increase exposure,” Holmes said.

“It was clear that we weren’t ready [for COVID],” said Jennie Musto, who, after seven years working for the World Health Organisation overseas, became NSW Health’s operations manager for the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre, the team responsible for NSW’s COVID-19 contact tracing and containment.

“Everyone had preparedness plans gathering dust on a shelf, but no one was actually ready to respond, and so everyone was on the back foot,” Musto said. “Perhaps none of us really thought this was going to happen. We were waiting 500 years.”

Who would willingly become the next doomed whistleblower? Eddie Holmes, known for his repeated assertion that SARS-CoV-2 did not come from a lab, is deeply concerned that when the next pandemic-causing virus emerges, chances are it will be covered up.

“My worry is that if the virus appeared in a small population, say, somewhere in Southeast Asia, the people involved wouldn’t blow the whistle now, given the fact that you would get blamed,” he said.

Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who tried to raise the alarm about a virulent new virus, was reportedly reprimanded by police for spreading rumours and later died of COVID-19.

The global blame game, culminating in a deep distrust of China and accusations that the virus was grown in a Wuhan lab, is why Holmes believes “we’re in no better place than we were before COVID started, if not worse”.

“I work with a lot of people in China trying to keep the lines of communication open, and they’re scared, I think, or nervous about saying things that are perceived to counter national interest.”

From a vaccine perspective, our defences look strong. There have been monumental advancements in vaccine development globally, driven by mRNA technology. In Sydney this month, construction began on an RNA vaccine research and manufacturing facility.

“But the way I see it is that nothing has been done in terms of animal surveillance of outbreaks or data sharing. The [global] politics has got much, much worse,” Holmes said.

Combat force Conjoint Associate Professor Craig Dalton, a leading public health physician and clinical epidemiologist, called for a dramatic expansion of the public health workforce and the establishment of a pandemic combat force that would routinely run real-time pandemic simulations during “peacetime”.

“No one is upset with fire brigades spending most of the time not fighting fires. They train. A lot. And that’s probably how we need to move,” he said.

“We need exercise training units so that every major player in pandemic response is involved in a real-time, three to four-day pandemic response every three to five years at national, state and local [levels].”

The federal Department of Health and Aged Care recently ran a health emergency exercise focused on governance arrangements involving chief health officers and senior health emergency management officials, a spokeswoman for Health Minister Mark Butler said. The outcomes of this exercise will be tested later this year.

Dalton said desktop simulations and high-level exercises involving a handful of chiefs didn’t cut it, considering the thousands of people working across regions and states. He instead suggested an intensive training program run in the Hunter New England region before the 2009 H1N1 pandemic provided a good model.

“We were ringing people, actors were getting injections, just like a real pandemic,” said Dalton, who once ordered a burrito in a last-ditch effort to contact a restaurant exposed to COVID-19.

Our heroes have had it The expert panel was emphatic that our pandemic response cannot once again rely on the goodwill of the public health and healthcare workforce.

According to the Kruk review, what began as an emergency response ultimately morphed from a sprint into an ultra marathon and “an admirable (yet unsustainable) ‘whatever it takes’ mindset”.

They were hailed as heroes, but the toll of COVID-19 on healthcare workers was brutal. Workloads were untenable, the risk of transmission was constant, and the risk of violence and aggression (for simply wearing their scrubs on public transport in some cases) was terrifying.

“We got through this pandemic through a lot of people working ridiculous hours,” Dalton said.

“You talk to a lot of people who did that and say they could not do it again.”

Tellingly, several expert personnel who worked at the front lines or in the control centre of NSW’s pandemic defences were invited to join the Herald’s forum but declined. Revisiting this period of intense public scrutiny, culminating in online attacks and physical threats, was just too painful.

So long, solidarity Arguably, the biggest threat to our pandemic defences will be the absence of our greatest strength during COVID: the population’s solidarity and willingness to follow public health orders even when it meant forfeiting fundamental freedoms.

The public largely complied with statewide public health orders, including the stay-at-home directive that became the 107-day Delta lockdown, and other severe restrictions prevented many from being at the bedside of their dying loved ones, visiting relatives in aged care homes and attending funerals.

“My worry is that next time around when those sorts of rules come out, people may say, ‘Well, don’t worry about it.’ They relax it in the future. Why don’t we just not stick to the rules?” said Professor Nicholas Wood, associate director of clinical research and services at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance.

“I’m not sure we quite understand whether people [will be] happy with those rules again,” he said.

Dalton was more strident.

“I tend to agree with Michael Osterholm … an eminent US epidemiologist [who] recently said the US is probably less prepared for a pandemic now than it was in 2019, mostly because the learnings by health departments in the COVID pandemic may not make a material difference if faced with a community that distrusts its public health agencies,” he said.

“If H1N1 or something else were to spill over in the next couple of years, things like masks, social distancing and lockdowns would not be acceptable. Vaccination would be rejected by a huge part of the population, and politicians might be shy about putting mandates in.”

As for the total shutdown of major industries, people will struggle to accept it unless the next pandemic poses a greater threat than COVID, said UNSW applied mathematician Professor James Wood.

The risk of the virus to individuals and their families will be weighed against the negative effects of restrictions, which are much better understood today, said Wood, whose modelling of the impact of cases and vaccination rates was used by NSW Health.

“Something like school closure would be a much tougher argument with a similar pathogen,” he said.

A previous panel of education experts convened by the Herald to interrogate pandemic decision-making in that sector was highly critical of the decision to close schools for months during NSW’s Delta lockdown.

Greg Dore, professor of infectious diseases and epidemiology at the Kirby Institute, said the public’s reluctance to adhere to restrictions again may, in part, be appropriate.

“Some of the restrictions on people leaving the country were a bit feudal and too punitive,” he said. “Other restrictions were plain stupid, [for instance] limitations on time exercising outside.”

Meanwhile, the delays to publicly recognise the benefits of face masks and the threat of airborne transmission “ate away at trust”, Dalton said.

“We shouldn’t make those mistakes again,” he said.

Transparent transgressions Uncertainty is not something politicians are adept at communicating, but uncertainty is the only constant during a pandemic of a novel virus.

Vaccines that offered potent protection against early iterations of the COVID virus were less effective against Omicron variants.

“[The public], unfortunately, got hit by a rapid sequence of changes of what was ‘true’ in the pandemic,” James Wood said.

Political distrust can be deadly if governments give the public reason to suspect they are obfuscating.

The expert panel urged NSW’s political leaders to be far more transparent about the public health advice they were given before unilaterally enforcing restrictions.

There was a clear line between public health advice and political decision-making in Victoria. The Victorian chief health officer’s written advice was routinely published online.

In NSW, that line was blurred as Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant stood beside political leaders, most notably former premier Gladys Berejiklian, at the daily press conferences.

Public health experts said that they looked for subtle cues to determine the distinction between the expert advice and the political messaging during press conferences, paying attention to body language, who spoke when and who stayed silent.

“It is fine for public health personnel to have a different view to politicians. They have different jobs. What is not OK is to have politicians saying they are acting on public health advice [when they are not],” he said.

The ‘whys’ behind the decisions being made were missing from the daily press conferences, which created “a vacuum for misinformation”, said social scientist and public health expert Professor Julie Leask at the University of Sydney.

“The communication about what you need to do came out, and it was pretty good … but the ‘why we’re doing this’ and ‘what trade-offs we’ve considered’ and ‘what dilemmas we’ve faced in making this decision’; that was not shared,” Leask said.

The infodemic In the absence of transparency, misinformation and disinformation fill the vacuum.

“We had an ‘infodemic’ during the pandemic,” said Dr Jocelyne Basseal, who worked on the COVID-19 response for WHO in the Western Pacific and leads strategic development at the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, University of Sydney.

“The public has been so confused. Where do we go for trusted information [when] everyone can now write absolutely anything, whether on Twitter [now called X] or [elsewhere] on the web?” Basseal said.

A systematic review conducted by WHO found misinformation on social media accounted for up to 51 per cent of posts about vaccines, 29 per cent of posts about COVID-19 and 60 per cent of posts about pandemics.

Basseal’s teenage children recently asked whether they were going into lockdown after TikTok videos about the mpox outbreak.

“There is a lot of work to be done now, in ‘peacetime’ … to get ahead of misinformation,” Basseal said, including fortifying relationships with community groups and teaching scientists – trusted and credible sources of information – how to work with media.

In addition to the Kruk review’s six recommendations to improve its pandemic preparedness, NSW Health undertook a second inquiry into its public health response to COVID-19, which made 104 recommendations.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said: “We are working hard to ensure the findings and recommendations from those reports are being implemented as quickly as possible.”

The expert panellists spoke in their capacity as academics and not on behalf of NSW Health or WHO.

The ‘As One System’ review into NSW Health’s COVID-19 response made six recommendations 1. Make governance and decision-making structures clearer, inclusive, and more widely understood 2. Strengthen co-ordination, communication, engagement, and collaboration 3. Enhance the speed, transparency, accuracy, and practicality of data and information sharing 4. Prioritise the needs of vulnerable people and communities most at risk, impacted and in need from day one 5. Put communities at the centre of emergency governance, planning, preparedness, and response 6. Recognise, develop and sustain workforce health, wellbeing, capability and agility.

[grace-williams-xo]

RAMBLING THOUGHTS AFTER FINISHING PART TWO. GONNA ADDRESS MY P1 THOUGHTS FIRST. SPOILER WARNING.

1 & 2: I think Debling could’ve worked in the second half, and I’m kinda sad Cressida didn’t get a happy ending. The Creloise fell of a CLIFF after ep 5 but I think it could still be saved

5: no cishet man has ever loved his wife more than Anthony Bridgerton I’m gonna be ill

6 & 12: kanthony’s absence was felt BAD in the finale, I think their reactions to LW were sorely needed. Also Jonny and Simone have both said they’ll be at every sibling’s wedding and stick around for years but they missed Francesca’s??? Also felt their absence too much then. They’re both booked and busy I think we’ll continue to only get a couple episodes a season from them

8: Francesca did get to thrive happy in pt 2 my baby I love her

9: I think they managed to disconnect the mondrich plot even further like 😭 once again, I don’t mind them their plot just feels very empty

10: Pen and Delacroix CONTINUE to be my fave duo I love them so freaking much and they can never get rid of it

13: Portia’s growth this season continued to be 10/10 I loved her and Penelope’s relationship it really showed what it’s like to be closely related to people you oppose and the process of needing to forgive and understand them for your own peace of mind

14: that was not how I was expecting Colin to find out about Whistledown

15: Marcus felt a little rushed in part two but I think I need to watch the whole season together to fully decide

17: this was indeed the longest 27 days of my life I got Covid day after it dropped lmfao

MY ~NEW~ THOUGHTS:

We finally got character development from Cressida and if they write her out I’ll be inconsolable (as will Jessica Madsen)

I hope they paid Golda Rosheuvel good for her feet exposure. Worth more than titties in this economy

I feel the need to tell everyone that £5000 in 1815 is in the realm of £500,000 today and we cannot brush over the fact Penelope has made herself the equivalent of a literal millionaire

Anthony has two moods ‘I’m obsessed with my wife’ ‘I want to win this game’ like it is comical how drastically different his facial expression is in the game of charades compared to pretty much every other scene

Anthony saying the marriage is perfect and not hard work and Kate being like BOY I will humble you,,,, doing the lord’s work I love her so much

At some points I felt like Francesca was fighting Anthony for ‘Violet’s least favourite child’ award lmao

John saying he’s off to look at the wainscotting was unfairly funny

Cressida in the red dress is even better than I imagined fuck even if she’s not gay then I am

Peneloise back together the universe is healing I love my babies all we need now is creloise lovers and peneloise friendship simultaneously I don’t like it being one or the other sue me

However much Brimsley is getting paid isn’t enough,,,, Hugh Sachs the man that you are

I adored Penelope’s wedding dress so much and as bitter as I am still about no kanthony wedding in s2, it felt kind of right somehow for Polin to be the first wedding we properly see in this show

Most of the costumes and makeup feel like they got worse,,,,, big ‘I hired a 14 year old’ energy. I don’t need historical accuracy but I would like a modicum of care and the costume/hair/makeup dept looking at a single historical reference from before 1850,,,, please

We all got the bi Benedict we’ve been asking for and I appreciate it, and recognise that he needed Tilley to explore that, but I still would’ve preferred if they first main queer experience was not a threesome

If they go straight into benophie in s4 (which idk, I’m so torn bc I feel like F, E and B all could work well next season) then I also feel like bi Benedict was just them throwing a bone for 5 mins but meant nothing

The CONTENTIOUS Michaela Stirling,,,,, I was undecided until I saw it but that was the definition of gay panic from Francesca and it worked so well I am so excited.

As your resident peerage expert, it is much easier for women to inherit titles in Scotland than England so I wonder (not that anyone on this show knows anything) if that was a reason they chose Francesca to be sapphic [general peerage info and female inheritance info if you care]

On the above, if they can canonically end racism with one marriage then they can end homophobia with one marriage as well

We all know Eloise was the easy and obvious choice to be the queer love story but part of me does kind of like them not taking the easy route, and them going something more unexpected, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want Creloise/Sapphic El like they had eight children let’s be honest

Finch’s sneeze and Phillips’s “now Varely! The bugs!” were unfairly funny

Everything Lady Danbury said to Penelope about suspecting her and what not felt very in character and you can fight with the wall idc

Did they tell us the name of Polin’s baby boy???

Hyacinth saying she thinks of Gregory as the family pet,,,,, girl you an icon walking amongst mere mortals

Predictions I got right:

Anthony didn’t kill Colin, but “are you gonna duel your own brother” lmao I was on the right track

I knew Polin would win the Featherington baby race and I love that for them (but why were Prudence and Phillipa pregnant most of the season, barely showing, Kate was showing almost immediately, and then in the epilogue the sisters all had baby’s similar-ish ages???? Give the writers room a calendar please)

I SAID FROM DAY DOT THAT THE FURNITURE THEY BROKE FROM SEX WAS A CHAISE I CANT FIND THE POST BUT I KNEW IT I FUCKING KNEW IT WHERE DO I COLLECT MY PRIZE SOME OF YOUR GUESSES WERE TRULY FUCKING COOKED

Okay that was too long if you made it this far I’ll make you cookie ily

[jmtorres]

Hi, this is random, but would you mind sharing more about your gut issues/long covid? (I.e. diagnosis, treatment). I have chronic fatigue, and gut issues that are definitely linked to that, but all of my doctors are being extremely useless about it. (No worries if this is not the kind of info you want to share with a total stranger on the internet)

(This is in reference to my comment on this post)

@reptilerex I appreciate you recognizing the sensitivity of this ask, I am going to go ahead and answer it because I feel like the likelihood that you or someone you know (or even others of my readers) are struggling with long covid and finding adequate medical help vastly outweighs the minuscule probability that you've hacked into HIPAA records and are planning to dox me lol

so in the immediate aftermath of my first bout of covid (despite vaxxing and masking regularly, I'm up to two now 😭) my obvious symptoms were fatigue – going to the grocery store would wear me out for 2+ days – and a 20 year-old scar from a car accident reopened, which sounds like some scurvy ass bullshit, and I do wonder if the fact that my friend @niqaeli, who knew that long covid symptoms are highly correlated with MCAS symptoms and was encouraging me to start MCAS otc treatments like vitamin C supplements, helped. (worth noting that while I didn't hear anything about old scars reopening as a covid/post covid thing before it happened to me, but when I told people about it, they were like "oh yeah, that happened to me or someone I know" SO often) My doctor sent me to a wound specialist for that, and they kept poking it trying to figure out if there was some embedded shrapnel that they hadn't realized was in there originally, but ultimately it just healed back over much redder and angrier than the first time.

so then, the fatigue. My doctor had me wait three months because it wasn't officially long covid until three months. obnoxious as hell. I found out the DMV accepts long covid for a disability placard reason and got my doctor to write me a DMV form about how I couldn't walk hardly any distance. she was willing to do that before the three month mark.

I was Johnny on the spot coming back three months after, the first thing she did was send me for a chest x-ray because the obvious/expected reason for fatigue is you're not getting enough O2 in your blood. There was nothing wrong with my lungs and we were kind of at a dead end until I presented my doctor with more options.

I mean, I was kind of like, my PCP is being useless, I have a PPO, why can't I just go directly to a specialist, but it turns out specialist won't take you without a referral because reasons. I had heard rheumatologist is as good at figuring out weird vague shit so I tried to book there but when I told them long covid, they said that wasn't their department. They said I needed to go see an immunologist which sounded wrong to me, but there was a pretty good HIV specialist immunologist in the area that I tried to book with who said no that's not what long covid is. someone recommended a Long Covid Specialty clinic in a city that is 2 to 5 hours away depending on traffic and I knew I wasn't making that drive in my current condition so was like somebody local gotta help me.

so I went back to my PCP and said to her that I had learned from disability communities online that sometimes a rheumatologist can be helpful. And she said OK we can do some blood tests for inflammation markers to see if I can justify a referral to a rheumatologist. (and I thought of my weird scar issue and thought gee I better have some weird inflammation markers)

So I had some inflammation markers pop and I got a referral to a rheumatologist, and they were actually willing to see me. The rheumatologist ordered so many tests, like an unbelievable number of tests. I think they drew like eight vials of blood. Plus other samples. The rheumatologist was basically like let's look for anything and everything.

I had a borderline response on Calprotectin. To quote from the explainer in the test notes:

Calprotectin in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis can be five to several thousand times above the reference population (50 mcg/g or less). Levels are usually 50 mcg/g or less in healthy patients and with irritable bowel syndrome.

so I wasn't high enough to qualify for IBD outright from that test results, but I was high enough that it flagged to the rheumatologist, and I had reported a family history (brother has IBD), so he said that was enough to diagnose and started prescribing me for that.

The thing is, rheumatology is an ass backwards way to get an IBD diagnosis and I was having another symptom that I hadn't reported because I was a dumbass and this is the apocryphal frog boiling slowly thing. I was having fairly regular loose stool/diarrhea. if I had told my PCP that could I have gotten a referral to a gastroenterologist and gotten a less ass backwards diagnosis?

I hadn't told my PCP about loose stools for two reasons:

I didn't think it was relevant to the fatigue, and in fact, I still didn't think it was relevant when the rheumatologist called it, and I was really surprised when taking medication for IBD did actually turn out to help the fatigue

I knew I was lactose intolerant, so I thought it was already explained. However, the rheumatologist and I had this exchange:

Him: so do you still drink regular milk or just Lactaid?

Me: Lactaid

Him: then you shouldn't still be having diarrhea

Me:…

I can't remember the first med he started me on because I was only on it for a couple of weeks before we had to switch. (it helped a lot when I could tolerate it but about every three days I had to throw up and then I felt awful and didn't take the med for a couple of days and you can guess how that went.) the one that I went on long-term that actually worked without side effects for me was mesalamine/lialda. I also started experimenting with some dietary changes, the low FODMAP diet is intended for IBS not IBD, but you are still expected to have IBD triggers so I was playing around with that.

for a few weeks, I had incredible improving energy. It was crazy.

then I made what I can only now think of as a mistake in trying to be proactive about my care. because I had stumbled ass backwards into an IBD diagnosis and I felt like I should have gastroenterologist confirm it, and I went to go see my brother's gastroenterologist. he wanted to do a colonoscopy and he asked me to go off the mesalamine for six weeks so that he could see what my colon was like without treatment and it was the worst fucking six weeks of my life. Hated it. colonoscopy results: he didn't see anything fucking wrong and would not diagnose IBD or prescribe mesalamine based on what he found. I said, but the mesalamine improves my symptoms, what does that mean? He said, it means keep seeing your rheumatologist.

I went back to the rheumatologist and told him about the whole debacle with the gastroenterologist and he was like "so how did he explain your inflammation readings?" like CHECKMATE. And he concluded that any lesions I had must be in the small intestine, not the large intestine and so were not seen by colonoscopy.

I kept taking mesalamine. My improvement was slower after the break from it which sucks but I did get back to normal lab work within six months, hallelujah.

Follow up: MORE stuff that might have been avoided if I had gastroenterologist regularly, had gotten an IBD diagnosis from a gastroenterologist, or had mentioned my shitty symptoms in the immediate: the gallbladder bullshit this summer

I had my second round of covid in May and I didn't notice a lot of fatigue coming out of it, though I was more cautious with myself the second time around, but I was sort of holding my breath for what horrible nonsense is going to come out of this now? so then I had what I thought was a really bad case of Gerd that didn't go away for two weeks even though my Gerd usually resolves in like a day. I went to my PCP twice during this period and then ultimately ended up at the ER when I realized my pain was in my side not central anymore and I was worried about appendicitis. It wasn't appendicitis. It was my gallbladder. and it came out that night. overall, I am very happy with how the hospital handled the emergency for instance, I didn't realize until two weeks later that I seriously could've died because they were so calm about it the whole time but like they don't do same-day surgery unless death is on the line, let's be real.

but here's things that could have been helped if I had better gastroenterology care:

I didn't find this out until I was researching gallstones after the fact, and I would like to think a gastroenterologist would have warned me whereas the rheumatologist wasn't super aware of it but: IBD can lead to gallstones because one of the ways a cholesterol gallstone forms is, if you get an imbalance of bile and cholesterol in your gallbladder; your body wants to recycle bile by reabsorbing it at the end of your small intestine, but if you have IBD, sometimes it loses the bile instead of reabsorbing it, and then you get an overabundance of cholesterol, turning into a gallstone the size of a golf ball

I told my PCP it was a case of Gerd that wouldn't go away, but I didn't tell her I was also having diarrhea. Diarrhea is not a Gerd symptom. Maybe if I had just fucking told her she might've recognized or could've sent me to somebody who would have recognized it as a gallbladder symptom before it turned into an immediate emergency

tl;dr don't hide your gut symptoms from your doctor because you "think" you know what's wrong with your guts or that it's not related to your other problems or you're embarrassed or what the fuck ever just tell them that you're shitting yourself because it might turn out to be important

[dear-ao3]

how i met my boyfriend - the designer axe story

as promised, since we have both now graduated the statute of limitations has expired on this story and i can now share it all with you.

some notes: ra is resident assistant and this story occurred in august of 2021. i wrote this all out the day after it happened almost 2 years ago. we did not actually start dating until october 2021 after we both realized we were in love with eachother. yes, we are still together as of may 2023.

without any further ados, the much anticipated designer axe story.

so part of RA training is that we have to make door decorations and bulletin boards for our halls and buildings. i had finished my door decks at 1 am sunday morning and the bulletin boards weren't due until 9 am monday morning. so i had all of sunday to work on it.

my building has no less than seven bulletin boards per floor and an additional 4 on the entrance floor. i dont know who the hell built this building but we need to have a serious talk about when too many bulletin boards is too many fucking bulletin boards.

so i was in charge of three on my floor. one about me, one covid policies and one sloth (his name is sam and i love him). and i am a chronic procrastinator. so i finished my about me and got through about 95% of my covid one by like 9pm and had to go back to the res life office to cut out a few more letters and get some scrapbook paper.

at this point its probably important to know that the only people on campus at this point were the RAs, some students getting mentoring training, and a few random first years here for an early arrival program. plus some staff.

now, i need you all to understand that there are 42 RAs. all of us have the same deadline. all of us had between 2 and 5 bulletin boards to complete. plus door decks. and room condition reports. so we were all moving at literally 600 frames per second, 120 miles per hour, or about as fast as a child does when they are told there's cake.

which is to say, we were all frazzled and stressed out of our minds.

so i open the door to the res life office at around 9 pm to cut out the word "but" in orange construction paper and grab 2 sheets of purple scrapbooking paper. in the office are the four RAs that were on duty that night, plus a good 7 other people are running around asking about glue sticks and construction paper and keys.

i knew that i only had my sloth board left to complete so i decided to take my sweet ass time, knowing that i was in need of a good break (and also im just a procrastinator) so i cut my letters and grabbed my paper and stood at the desk for no less than an hour talking to everyone about things like the fact that i fell out of a suitcase when i was 2 and that tamper proof lids exist because of the chicago poison pill murders and the flagship l.l. bean store in maine. it was very productive.

so i finally slink back to my dorm at around 10pm, very confident that i would finish by midnight and could watch some netflix or something before i went to bed. if only i knew what was in store for me.

i enter my dorm building and walk to the elevators. and then. one of the RAs from the third floor was like "oh saph. [another RA in the building] is looking for you."

and me, of course, didnt bring my phone to the res life office so i didnt know this.

i go up to the second floor and see one of the RAs from the second floor and another from one of the other buildings working on a bulletin board. they say "oh saph. [the same RA in the building] is looking for you."

i run up to my dorm and discover that somehow we missed the bulletin board by the downstairs elevator. seriously there's too fucking many bulletin boards. and they were asking me to do it. because they wanted to put covid policies on it.

and i know i said this story was about axe body spray. and it is. we are getting there.

so panic sets in because its 10pm and i still have two whole bulletin boards to make now. one of which i have nothing planned for. so i threw some soup in the microwave (because i had forgotten that dinner existed) and opened my laptop.

thankfully, i could reuse some of the same stuff from my own covid policies board in my common room. i just had to print it. which meant, yep you guessed it, another trip back to the res life office!!

at this point i think i had taken a grand total of at least 7 trips to the res life office that day alone. its a good 5 minute walk. not terrible, but just annoying enough that you hate yourself a little more every time that you have to do it. and now its 10:30pm. i am starving. i have two boards to complete. it was crunch time.

i make it to the office and this time i had no time to sit around and debate how popular l.l. bean is. i had policies to print and letters to cut.

as im struggling with the printer (because those fucking things can smell fear), someone else in the office starts loudly discussing timothee chalamet.

and now, this is where you want to actually pay attention because this man would be the reason i ended up only getting 4.5 hours of sleep.

said man in question is quite the character. he's in my grade and im pretty sure he's a polisci major (and maybe creative writing? there's some kind of writing) and he plays lacrosse. i dont really know how to describe him other than the fact that the first interaction i ever had with him was two years ago at freshman orientation when he complained to me in the dining hall that there was no milk for his protein powder.

that interaction is in my top 10 favorite interactions ive had in college.

but the one we are about to unpack definitely takes all of the cake.

so here i am, struggling with the printer and my tiny knock off dongle. the other RA on my floor starts discussing timothee chalamet's outfits with the protein powder RA.

and so apparently the protein powder RA worked in some major fashion designer brand corporate something or other thing over the pandemic. he told me which one but i was so shot and only thinking in construction paper and glue and staples that i didnt process any of it. but it was a fancy one. the store that is.

and so here's what happened:

me: "timothee chalamet? isn't he like, 17?"

protein powder RA and the other RA on my floor: "nah he's like 25. ive checked."

yet another RA: "yeah i just googled it."

me, a wimbo: "oh im thinking of finn wolfhard. but i dont think he's 17 either."

listen before you slam me, remember it is like 11pm and i have to still do 2 bulletin boards and we have training at 9am the next morning.

so protein powder RA pulls up some photo of timothee chalamet and starts telling me about all the brands he's wearing and i literally said "i understand all of the words that you're saying separately."

and he said "exactly!! he's just so great that when you put it all together you can't understand it!! he's just too perfect!!"

and the i made a detrimental decision.

there is life before this decision and life after.

i said "well. bring your fashion designer knowledge into the lounge and help me decide what color to cut my letters."

and he said okay.

so after severely debating the different color purples that we had and listening to the finer points of the fashion industry, i noticed something important.

he smelled like axe body spray.

see i bet you thought i forgot the point of the story. i did not.

let it be known that we are juniors in college (that's 20-21 years old if you dont know). axe is very common in middle and high school boys locker rooms. i have vivid memories of avoiding that hallway so i wouldn't be choked.

so im trying not to inhale too deeply because the smell has permeated my mask as i cut my "covid safety" letters in the color this man has dubbed "light lilac" and half listening to him talk about the fashion industry.

but i finish quickly, somehow escape the smell of axe, and grab my laptop and print outs before tagging along with the same protein powder RA and the other lax player RA back to the dorms. its now 11:15 pm. i still have 2 bulletin boards to complete. my soup is sitting in my microwave in my dorm, almost forgotten about.

halfway back from the office i realize that i forgot my dongle. i say so out loud and protein power RA says that he will go back and look because he's just that guy who likes to help. i say okay fine. and i sprint to my dorm building, drop the print outs and letters downstairs for later, and start the sloth board.

several minutes later, my soup has been inhaled, my papers glued, a sloth cut out, and im sitting in a mess of construction paper and staples in the hallway when i get a text from protein powder RA that quite simply said:

"its not there. do you need help with your boards?"

and me, being me, because i am exhausted and in need of company, say "yeah sure."

by the time he finally shows up, he's changed his outfit.

as a side note, every time ive seen this man during the last 5 days of training, he's been wearing a different outfit. oh and he works for lulu lemon. forgot to mention that.

but alas, here he came, holding my papers and reeking of axe as he walked down the hall to me, who is failing to staple a sloth to my bulletin board.

so for the next two hours i did my boards and he sat and talked. he wasn't physically helping me, but he was helping me stay awake, cause this man is a ball of fucking energy, and that was very important.

i only remember about half of what he said but essentially he was talking about how he was trying to be a better person than the one that he was freshman year. which is admirable. but he does still reek of axe.

at around 1 am i finished my last board and went upstairs to clean up. he came with me and sat on the floor and continued to talk while i cleaned up my disaster of paper and staples and glue among other things. at this point i was so relieved that i had finished that i was actually able to engage in the conversation, which was surprisingly deep and interesting.

and then. its about 1:45 am. i am about to wash my dishes so i can shower and go to bed. because remember that i need to be at training at 9 am the next morning.

and he says something about trying to be a better person again. and me, in all my sleep deprived glory, says:

drum roll

"and yet you still wear axe body spray."

and all hell broke loose.

i would like to preface by saying that he freaked out in a very joking matter and was not actually mad at me. but he was definitely disappointed and in shock. the next hour pretty much consisted of:

"are you kidding me? this is prada something something cologne and all these celebrities wear it!! how dare- it could not POSSIBLY SMELL LIKE AXE!!! well i guess its a little dry and axe is kind of dry smelling...bUT I SPENT SO MUCH ON THIS BOTTLE and the lady sold me on the larger one and it was like 150 bucks and UGH i cannot smell like axe! you know i got four compliments on how i smelled today??! and you're telling me i smell like fucking- *sniffs shirt* no! there's no way!! well i mean... no i cannot. i cannot smell like designer axe. damnit saph! im gonna have to sell this whole bottle now cause i can't use it! BUT ITS PRADA!!"

for an hour.

but it was very entertaining.

eventually i dragged him to the common room cause i needed to do my dishes and sleep and he continued ranting about it there, going as far as to call his best friend (who was asleep) and another RA and ask them if he smelled like axe. i meanwhile was laughing my ass off and 12 kinds of tired but couldn't find it in myself to care.

eventually he decided he needed yet another opinion. so he went to find the other RA on my floor, which, if you remember, is the same one who was thirsting over timothee chalamet with him in the res life office all of those fateful hours before. but that RA was nowhere to be found. so he ran down to the common room below us and scared the shit out of three freshmen.

and he asked these freshmen if he smelled like axe.

the answer was yes.

after that he left because it was 2:30 in the morning, and all the while he was yelling about how he was going to come to training tomorrow with different shirts with all his different colognes on them and have me sniff them because he couldn't smell like designer axe.

and i did the only logical thing. went upstairs to my my dorm and made him a door deck that looked like a bottle of axe that had a post it on the front that said "designer."

and so. now you all know not to buy cologne because its expensive because there's a good chance it will just end up smelling like axe.

and i didn't get to smell his other colognes because i almost passed out in training and left to take a nap. but maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

we’ve been dating for a year and seven months and just graduated college :) and in a fun twist of events, prada no longer makes that cologne anymore.

[djarins-cyare]

✨Questions Tag Game✨

Thanks for tagging me @burntheedges 🩵

Of course I’m going to add GIFs and images. Did anyone really expect me to post something without visual aids??

[photos are my own (apart from the one immediately below, which is from here), and unless otherwise credited, GIFs were made by me during office hours when I was supposed to be working… 🤫]

Do you make your own bed?

Not in terms of making it look all neat and tucked in, no. But that’s because I’m a teensy bit of a germaphobe, and humans naturally sweat at night, which means you must leave your mattress uncovered for a while after you get up to ensure it airs. So, for most of the day (because I forget to straighten it up), my bed just looks like this:

(Just for fun, how many Mandalorians can you spot in the pic?)

Favourite number?

It’s always been 2, and my reasoning used to be that all good things come in pairs. But having discovered my autism in recent years, I’ve come to realise it probably more likely represents the maximum number of people I’m most comfortable interacting with at any one time. So it’s a manageable number. It’s also an even number. And it’s a prime number (in fact it's the only even prime number). It’s a pretty number – it has a nice curved top and a solid, sturdy base. It stops 1 from being lonely, so it’s a kind number.

Is this a weird answer? All of these are really logical reasons to me!

[GIF found here]

What’s your job?

It’s become so specialised that I no longer have a job title, but I started as a legal PA for one of the senior partners at a Legal 500 law firm in London. I flirted with the idea of qualifying as a solicitor but realised there was no way in hell I’d be comfortable standing up in court and speaking in front of lots of people (and I work in the criminal law department so not keen on casually chatting to criminals either). Instead, I decided to become The Person Who Knows Everything.

So now I write briefs to Counsel, proofs of evidence, funding applications; I analyse evidence, conduct legal research, advise the solicitors on their cases; I train paralegals and admin staff; I do a load of data analysis and make pretty spreadsheets for the bosses; and I manage the firm’s IT needs because I can do computer stuff too. I’m basically their go-to girl for anything that seems complicated or time-consuming… and I don’t have to wear a stupid wig in court.

And the best part is, during Covid lockdown, I demonstrated I can do 100% of my job from home, so I was allowed to move 150 miles away, and I now only have to visit my office two days a month! 🙌🏻

Downside: the arduous and random nature of the job means I’m never up to date and always very tired.

If you could go back to school, would you?

My original plan after getting my undergrad degree was to do a Masters and PhD and become an academic, but I put all that on hold for my (now ex) husband so he could finish his PhD and first postdoc. I’m very glad I never went back, though, because I realise that academia is not the place for me… see above comment about not being able to stand up and talk in court to understand why standing up and talking in a lecture hall would be equally nerve-wracking for me. So, no, I’m content with my current level of schooling.

Honestly, university was more about learning how to ‘adult’ properly than obtaining any useful knowledge on the course anyway (she says, routinely using concepts learnt on her fiction writing modules when crafting Mando fics).

Can you parallel park?

Yup. Narrow roads and a lack of parking spaces in the UK kind of make it a non-optional skill here.

That said, I do sometimes see people desperately trying to line themselves up to get into a space and making an absolute farce out of it, so I guess maybe some people here think it’s optional, but I’d rather not have that kind of stress, so I practised until I could do it easily.

[original GIF found here and then cropped]

Do you think aliens are real?

The way this is phrased… do I think they’re real? Like, do I think the grey ones with big black eyes are anally probing residents in certain sections of North America on a regular basis? Hmm, no. Too many episodes of The X-Files. I mean, Fox Mulder: yum, but I really Don’t Want To Believe, thanks.

But, I remain open to the idea that alien life has evolved elsewhere in the known universe. It’s inconceivably huge, after all. There’s nowhere near enough data to prove (or even speculate) either way – just look at the Drake equation, which has been used to both ‘prove’ and ‘disprove’ the possibility – so I’ll reserve any kind of judgment until some real evidence appears.

Can you drive a manual car?

Yeah, of course. It’s the standard driving test in the UK and allows you to drive both automatic and manual – you actually have to specifically ask to learn only automatic if you decide you can’t handle gears. And, like, it’s all muscle memory, so it’s really not as hard as people think once you’re used to it. I tried to drive an automatic a few years back and found myself involuntarily shadow-shifting the gears!

[original GIF found here and then trimmed for length]

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Mostly, I don’t feel guilty about indulging in pleasures these days. I used to be really affected by social pressures (back before I discovered my autism and still felt like I had to ‘mask’ and fit in), so I used to feel guilty talking about my hyperfixations, but now I couldn’t care less. I shall consume them endlessly and unselfconsciously. It’s very liberating.

Any phobias?

I suppose the answer is sharks, which has no sensible basis for being a phobia because I’ve never had any real encounters to make me fearful (thank fuck!). In fact, I walked through the shark tunnel at SeaWorld just fine as a 7-year-old. Unless that planted some kind of seed of terror, I don’t know. Not sure when it really took hold, but I can’t even look at photos these days. It’s their damn teeth. Someone’s going to have to give me a tooth report on Gladiator II before I can go see it.

The hell if I’m gonna put a photo (or God forbid a GIF) of a shark here, so, umm…

Favourite childhood sport?

Two answers: (1) Football (AKA soccer). I played for a girl’s team when I was about 11, but it was only because the boy I liked was into football. I couldn’t give a shit about it these days, and I don’t think I ever really liked it – I was just ‘masking’, as I did for most of my childhood, but I convinced myself I loved it.

(2) Karate, which I decided all by myself that I fancied doing, then found I was actually quite good at it and excelled at it for a while. But I was 9, and they decided I was so good that I should go and join the adult class (age 14 and up), which I hated, so I quit.

[GIF is one I already had saved from Reddit a while ago, but I can't find the source anymore, so sorry for not crediting the maker]

Do you talk to yourself?

Sometimes, but not often. I live alone, so I occasionally just need to exercise my vocal cords lol. It also depends on what mood I’m in. On an average day, no, I don’t really feel the need to fill the silence, but if I’m excited/animated/annoyed in some way, I might say stuff aloud. Basically, if I’m inclined to utter curse words for any reason, I’ll probably use other words aloud too.

[GIF found here]

Tattoos?

I only have one right now, but I plan to increase that number someday. See photo below; I used to have chameleons as pets and got this tattooed near my right hip when I turned thirty to commemorate them. It’s really small.

I would like to get a phrase in Mando’a inked on me somewhere, probably “Kaysh meg miit’gaana, oyacyi”, which means “she* who writes, remains” [*substitute chosen pronoun – Mando’a doesn’t distinguish genders], and is a Mandalorian proverb teaching that you can live forever if you leave behind written words. I have it engraved on my iPad.

Favourite colour?

Very much the blue (with a hint of green) end of the colour spectrum. For something soft, duck egg blue, or for something bold, teal. See the colour of the titles in this post.

I also like the colours of hyperspace and would happily snuggle up with Din in the cockpit.

Do you like puzzles?

Yeah, I guess. I don’t dislike them. But I don’t really do them much. In terms of the crossword/sodoku/brain teaser sort, I might choose to do them in specific settings, like on vacation when I inevitably need to offer my brain something different than whatever book I’m binge-reading.

In terms of the jigsaw type, I have short phases of thinking, “Ooh, that’ll be fun!”, trying to do one, getting bored, and then forcing myself to finish. Last time that happened was Covid lockdown. Took me a year! Though, to be fair, it was one of these bastards…

Okay, I’m done. I realise I’m very late to the party, and a lot of people have already done this one, so sorry if you’ve already participated. No pressure (and no need to illustrate with gifs and images, I just can’t help myself)… 🩵

@604to647 @beefrobeefcal @d4rm4nd4 @feral-ferrule @gracieheartspedro

@joelslegalwhre @littlemisspascal @magpiepills @penvisions @quicksilvermad

@secretelephanttattoo @studioghibelli @syd-djarin @the-mandawhor1an @zaddymandalorian

[cherryblossomforest]

Ooo I forgot to update, although I'm not sure anyone would care...😅

It wasn't covid. I figured it out early enough and retested multiple times just to be sure. It was faulty because it was out of date lol. I was rundown though, my body's engine light was on and I needed a few days to focus on getting it semi okay. Back to my normal I guess..

It was nice to just focus on me and everyone left me alone. It felt good to have that time. I've also finally got into a semi-habit of drinking 1.5l of water each day. One step at a time I'm looking after myself better and better!

Also, I'm back to writing my books which feels very good 😌

Off topic. One thing that I've been very aware of is that since going out more the last maybe 2 weeks (memory hiccup) I've been approached by a loooaad of people just complimenting me. On one of the days when I actually dressed up properly, I started counting - I know it sounds big-headed but I did it after venting to my cousin about my confusion because I generally feel ugly and she told me I'm not and to count - and from what I remembered it was 14. I got called a Goddess, someone compared me to Queen Tuya from Prince of Egypt, someone said I should model. There was just a lot going on! When I was telling one of my male friends on another day and he didn't believe me, someone literally came up 2 minutes later to compliment me and he was literally laughing because he thought I was lying. Now I don't think I'm the prettiest person, very far from it, but to be complimented this much does feel nice but it also makes sense why I avoided this for so many years out of fear, because of my history.

Today I took my sister and the niblings to a huge park and I decided to climb up one of the hills (knowing I'll be in bed for the rest of the week lol) and it was crazy hard. At one point I was on all fours climbing up and my niece was laughing calling me crazy 🤪. Anyway, when I finally got down this random guy came up to me when I was sitting next to my sister. He was like "Did you just climb that hill on a crutch?!" When I said yes, he asked me why and I said why not... because why not?? He asked me how old I was and he was like "Any girl that climbs a hill on a crutch like you did is my type of girl, can I get your number?" My brain started spinning because I wasn't expecting it. I can't remember what I said but he was respectful when I declined and kept it moving. Thankfully.

This is the type of attention teenage me struggled with. People don't believe me when I tell them how much attention I get. Now that I'm a healthy weight and not so depressed, it gets overwhelming fast if my trauma brain is turned on. I'm not complaining in the sense that I want people to feel bad because it's never that deep. Like womp womp! But I think I'm realising that as a kid/teen it actually was a lot. It makes sense that my Anorexia was so bad and that I fell so deep into it. As a teenager having grown men treat me like how I'm being treated now was scary, especially with the things I had gone through. Now I'm learning to embrace it and keep it humble because at times I attract this certain type of It Girl and I'm Not about that. Inwardly, I don't always feel pretty but I know for a fact that I have pretty privilege so this isn't something I feel comfortable talking about most times because I get it... people are genuinely like "Shut the hell up you're beautiful why are you complaining?" And I promise it's not supposed to come off like That. It's more me navigating this with an extensive trauma background. Anyway, I often forget I'm mid to late 20s and not a teen, but as I'm getting more and more present in the now I think that's starting to shift which helps a lot! :)

[planetkiimchi]

celebrating lunar new year | x.dj

chinese title: 过年 (guò nián). read the chinese version here!

featuring: childhood friend!xiaojun x hendery’s younger sister!reader (all dialogue is in cantonese)

summary — xiao dejun completely lost contact with you, his first love, when he moved to korea to become a trainee. this year, he's back in china to receive an award, and he sends a red packet to you with your brother as a messenger, with a note inside telling you where to meet him. when you see him again, you realise nothing and everything has changed, all at once.

word count: 1556 words

author's note: happy lunar new year! this is my first time writing a piece in chinese (the piece was originally written in chinese and then translated to english), so if there are any weird grammar quirks please forgive me 🙏 wishing you good health and smooth sailing ahead! 🧧

note 2: also this was based off the tencent entertainment awards but i realised uhh hendery wasn’t there ?? it was winwin all along ?? anyway no way im changing this after writing it so pretend hendery was there instead of ww

if you liked it, REBLOG it.

The door creaks open, and you hear someone carefully locking it, and the sound of shoes shuffling on the floor. It's already midnight, how could there be guests coming over? you wonder. You get out of your bedroom, and see that the "guest" is, as a matter of fact, your beloved brother.

"You're finally home!" you cry out, collapsing into your older brother's arms in unspeakable happiness. Hendery has left China to be an idol for more than eight years now, and besides Lunar New Year, he's usually too busy with work to come home to visit. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the last time he came back to China was three years ago.

He rubs your back comfortingly, ruffling your hair. "Bet you weren't expecting me, huh?"

You nod. "Did you tell Ba and Ma that you were coming home? If they had known, they definitely would have insisted on fetching you from the airport."

Hendery smiles softly. "Yeah, I knew they'd do that, so I didn't tell them. I was planning to give them a surprise this time."

Watching his familiar expression, you find that you've missed your brother. You've missed his mischievous, laugh-inducing antics, and the times when he's nicer to you as well. You really wish he could stay a little longer.

"Actually..." Hendery hesitates for a bit, and you feel your heart plummet from the top floor of the building as you watch him anxiously. What on earth could have made him come home so suddenly, at such a late hour?

"Actually, I have to leave again quite early tomorrow morning. There's no way I can come with you to visit our relatives. I've been very busy with work lately, and this time, I'm in China to receive an award, not for a holiday. Tell Ba and Ma 'Happy New Year' for me, okay?"

You can't hide your disappointment, and a few tears silently roll down your cheeks.

"Okay," you say, nodding your head determinedly. Hendery has come home, this in itself is a good thing, you tell yourself. Don't cry!

Hendery hugs you tightly. "I'll sleep in the living room tonight. If you don't see me in the morning, you'll know I've left for work."

"Then... when will you come back again?"

"I don't know yet. But I promise I'll come back to visit you as soon as possible, alright?"

You raise your pinky finger. "Promise?"

He nods assuredly, hooking his pinky with yours. "Promise."

—

The next day, you wake up early on purpose. At 3.30 am in the morning, you blink the sleep away from your eyes, slowly sitting up in your bed. Your bedroom is as dark as ink, without a single sliver of light. You hear a sound coming from outside your door, informing you that your brother has just awoken as well. You quickly get dressed, getting out of your room.

Hendery doesn't dare to use the flashlight on his phone to shine light on his luggage as he rummages through it, clearly looking for something.

"What are you looking for?" you ask curiously.

"My toothbrush, of course! What else could I be looking for?"

You sigh in exasperation. "Men." You kneel down next to him, turning his shoulders towards the toilet as you suggest that he goes to change first. At the same time, you'll help him look for his toothbrush, and he can just use the toothpaste you have in your house.

"Sure." With this singular syllable, Hendery takes his clothes to the toilet to get changed.

You roll your eyes, and easily find Hendery’s toothbrush in his luggage. After he’s brushed his teeth, he runs his hand through his hair, smoothing it down. He’s packed his things and is ready to go when his eyes widen, having just remembered something.

“Oh, right, Dejun said to give you this.” Hendery hands you a red packet. “I told him not to, but he insisted, so I have no choice but to give you one as well.” He places yet another red packet on your palm.

“Okay. Please thank him for me.”

“Then… Wishing you good health and success. Take care of yourself, you hear me?”

“You too,” you tell him. It’s always been Hendery that doesn’t sleep enough, yet he’s always the one reminding you to take care of yourself whenever he sees you. Hendery doesn’t know how to take care of himself, but he cares for everyone else without fail.

Once he’s left, you impatiently open the red packet. But what interests you isn’t the sum of money inside it, rather, it’s the note that’s left inside the red packet. Seeing the neat, even script, you immediately recognise it as Dejun’s handwriting. Your name is written on one side of the paper, and there’s writing on the other side.

I’m finally back in China. Missed me? Hendery said he’d give this red packet to you, so I believe today should be the day we’re receiving a prize. I’d like to invite you to come. The address is written below. If anyone asks, probably my manager, tell him I was the one that invited you. See you soon!

You hesitate for a second, but the decision isn’t hard to make. There can’t be any unimaginable consequences, anyway, right?

—

You’ve never known what regret is. Your entire life is built upon decisions you’ve made by yourself, and your brother has always told you not to regret your choices. If you regret something that you’ve done before, then you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You’ve lived by these words ever since he first said them to you.

But when you see Dejun again after all those years, you think you finally know what the word “regret” entails.

He’s taller than you, and he’s grown more muscular as well. Despite this, his resplendent smile and mellifluous voice hasn’t changed at all. Your name falls from his lips, full of questions, fear buried in the dulcet tones of his voice.

You freeze, staring at him blankly. When you’ve recovered, you smile tentatively, trying to dissipate the tension in the air. “Dejun-kor.”

“Happy New Year,” he offers.

“You too.”

“Long time no see, you’ve changed plenty.”

“Long time no see. You… haven’t changed one bit.” His cheeks flush at your words, eyes lighting up, and he takes two large steps towards you, enveloping you in a warm embrace.

Suddenly, you see Hendery’s silhouette. You push Dejun away, as if scalded by his touch.

“Little fool! What are you doing here?” You cast a frantic glance at Dejun, mouth opening and closing like a fish in water, but no sound escapes your lips. How should you explain this? 

“I asked her to come.” Dejun’s words turn Hendery’s attention from you to himself, and Hendery’s gaze turns from amused to stormy.

He roughly grabs Dejun by the collar. Dejun flails in his grasp, fighting to pry himself from Hendery’s strong grasp. “What are you doing? It’s not like that! I just invited to come watch our awards ceremony. I didn’t do anything to her!”

Hendery’s expression remains upset, steam billowing from his ears, but he lets go of Dejun. He doesn’t even look at you when he asks, “Is he telling the truth?”

“Yes. You shouldn’t make a racket here, there’re too many people around. Why don’t you talk it out without fighting?” You try to suggest.

Hendery takes a deep, long breath. He glares at Dejun, spitting out the words, “Fine. Go on, what were you trying to do?”

“I just wanted to see her again. She may be your sister, but she was—is—also my friend. Since none of us is spending the new year with our family, I wanted to at least spend it with someone aside from just ourselves. Is there anything wrong with me inviting her to come watch us?”

Hendery may be rash and hot-tempered, but he’s not unreasonable. He knows that what Dejun is saying makes sense, so he says nothing, storming off unhappily. Dejun turns towards you with a sheepish look on his face, about to apologise, when you cut him off.

You pat his shoulder comfortingly, saying, “It’s not your fault. Hendery’s just like that.” Before he can respond, you catch sight of Kun’s outstretched hand, and take it, introducing yourself.

“Sorry, we have to rush off. It’s almost our turn to go onstage. See you later!” He says, and you wave at their disappearing backs.

—

When you woke up that morning, you never would have thought that today would go the way that it went. You were so grateful that you were able to meet Xiaojun and Kun, not to mention being able to have a reunion dinner with them. Sitting in front of that table, watching them crack unintentional jokes as they happily ate their food, you found that you enjoyed it very much.

Kun was the first to stand and say goodbye to you, followed by your brother. Dejun was last, holding you close to him as he whispered in your ear. “When I saw that you had come, I felt indescribably happy. If there’s ever a chance, I’d really like to spend another Lunar New Year with you.”

His words rendered you speechless, unable to do anything but tightly hug him, whispering “thank you” over and over again.

if you liked it, REBLOG it.

[steve0discusses]

Ep 46 Pt 2: Seto is Sad Now

I just want to take the time to fully appreciate Seto and Yami on the back of this horse.

You can’t tell me that the image alone of them on horse back where Seto is just on the back like it’s a motorcycle or something? Two cousins trying not to be weird about this mode of transportation while the tall one sits in the tiny seat?

 (which by the way, I didn’t realize it at the time, but uh my condolences to the shippers of Yami and Seto, they are...damn! They sure are cousins, aren’t they? Like a reverse Sailor Uranus/Sailor Neptune situation right here. Well, you still got modern Seto, but...sooo many lost fanfics out there, I’m sure, who were...probably not happy with this revelation.)

So I had to look this up because I’m not a horse girl, regrettably, I do not know enough about horses to know if two grown men can fit on the back of a horse without busting that horse’s spine in half. But, what I found out is: you don’t do this to a horse. I mean you can, but you shouldn’t.

Thing is...Yami is technically a kid in size, if memory serves, Yugi is still less than 100 lbs.

Maybe this horse is OK? this horse they occasionally use to skate down mountainsides? It’s not a real horse anyway, and honestly, this whole idea of the two on a horse is very funny to me so who cares.

(read more under the cut)

Also speaking of scientifically incorrect things in Yugioh, this was also very funny,

FAR BE IT FROM ME to get all technical and make some weird youtube video about all the historical inaccuracies in TV shows (which damn, I sure do hate those videos) but I can still laugh at it when it happens.

Bro just told me “bold of you to trust Google” and he’s correct. For all we know some AI just lied to me just now, so if you know some deep lore about trebuchets don’t be afraid to speak up.

Their horse pulls up to the line of out of touch trebuchets and warriors flanking the city, where we reunite as a cast minus Karim.

Yami then dumps this on me and it was so outlandish I could not tell if this was canon to the manga/original translation or if the dub decided this would be OK to do.

Just let the man die! He divorced his wife on horseback and then did not raise Seto, he abandoned this boy to kill thousands of people, just let Aknadin freakin die. Please, Yami, this is not up for debate, Yami. Let Aknadin freakin die he hella deserves it.

Agh, Dartz all over again, I swear this show didn’t used to feel the need to redeem it’s villains, youknow? Or maybe it was always like this but I forgot because of freakin long covid wiping a year of my life, I don’t freaking know. But if/when Aknadin comes back I genuinely can’t see how he and Seto could ever fix their relationship on this planet Earth.

Anyway, speaking of being tired beyond your ability, Yami remembers just how many fireballs he took to the chest today and decides to just keel over. Good thing he didn’t do this on the back of the horse.

Relatable, honestly, this is what I do nowadays when I have to stand too long because I decided to cook 2 things instead of 1. Yami just has long covid, he’ll be fine. Just find a couch and do a big sittie, Yami.

Like damn, Yami, maybe should’ve let Seto at least drive the horse?

And so the trebuchets fire off with all this animation that a bunch of people looked at, and after them, these scenes passed over like 100 more people’s hands, and no one at any point said “yo they used sleds instead of wheels in Egyptian sands, right?” and they were...like they were from the wrong anime really, but please admire the wings on these “trebuchets”

freakin nerf guns made out of logs hahaha.

Anyway, Bakura noticed.

Sad Seto starts botching it so poorly that it, in fact, triggers the end of the world.

Could’ve been Isis commanding the troops. Or Grandpa. Or Shad- no wait, no actually...

...probably shouldn’t be Shada.

But I think that Isis would not have needed that necklace to know throwing logs at the enemy would not work. Especially since this particular enemy is like...all log.

Thanks for the America shout-out Yugioh, my warm and fuzzy patriotic vibes go off in my heart every time I see lady liberty in an apocalyptic setting, not gonna lie.

I make fun, but it really did take Yami a while to figure out what the hell Bakura was implying here.

Lets admire the guy in the very back who looks like he just lost his glasses so he’s just gonna sit it out directly on the ground.

I will not revise the death count. They died. They died right in front of me. This is clearly a ghost.

They’re just back now. They’ve done this before where they magically come back to life, it’s never explained, and I’m used to it. Rex and Weevil are god tier and it’s never ever explained. I’m ready for them to die again every time I see them on this show. But this show will never let go of these bastards because like...well I don’t know, really, but it feels like the show runners REALLY like these two and I’ll let them have their comfort OCs.

LISTEN.

So I know I was going to put a towel on this boy’s enormous smiling dong, but it would, in fact, make it more obscene to put the towel on him in this particular scene than to go without the towel.

And yes, it did grow larger than the last time we saw it, and no... I don’t think we should analyze that.

Meanwhile we have run out of useless logs and their out of place trebuchets.

Blue Eyes just sitting on the bleachers being like “no dawg, it’s fine! I’m fine, we’re all fine!”

And then we uh, killed Shadi.

It happened so quickly I think the dub actually removed a scene where he gets hit. Like suddenly Yami’s in danger, then it cuts away, and then Shadi is just on the ground like “you get em buddy” and he kicks it.

What an unceremonious way for this creep to die.

And of all the times! He has been threatening to die this entire season! And I guess it’s better than getting bricked in the head by Aknadin, but still...a lightning bolt huh?

And in case you were like “so why is he this weird ghost that haunts us 5000 years later?” That’s apparently answered in like the movie, from what bro tells me. I forget which. I want to say it’s Dark Side of Dimensions, that movie I keep threatening to watch. He hasn’t seen it either, he doesn’t know.

Anyway, we made it through another episode, and yes, it was Shadi who died.

I cannot believe how long Grandpa has held out this season, can you? I can’t believe it at all.

We’ll catch up again next episode, where...it feels like this is the finale guys. Wow. We’ve come so far. And again, I wish I was in a better state to write, because I feel like I used to be a lot more in depth and just...more analytical. 

But really, this season is just pretty freaking weird. Like there is stuff to analyze here. There are things to get out of it. But I spend so long being like “and then this weird thing happened, and that weird thing happened” that I’m still just stringing together the nonsense and I’m not really appreciating the forest for the trees.

But I’m sure those things will come to me in time, if they really are that important to glean from this season, even if it may be in some later episode or some sort of post-season essay I feel like writing (I probably won’t). But until then, we’ll just admire the dickface they convinced 4kids to put on TV.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[crimeronan]

god i know i keep half-tongue-in-cheek saying that my dad is literally belos owlhouse but. i've apparently gotten a little desensitized to Just How Bad He Is (because i have ESCAPED, YAY) & so today has been a delightful adventure.

i wrote an AITA post from his POV about stuff that happened several years ago, bc i was curious about how bad he'd get dragged - i updated the timeline but the Only fact i changed was the reason for his Woes (i blamed COVID economic struggles, which actually makes him a Hero compared to the truth. the truth being so ugly i'm not gonna detail it here good god).

i kept it true to POV by only using things that he actually did say to me at the time about why he was doing the things that he was doing, & blocking out all the relevant info about why the wronged party (me) was so upset, & having him praise his daughter (me) and go "i love her so much :) she's so smart and independent and i would never hurt her :)", & having him half-assedly admit he might've sounded unreasonable/angry/malicious, in a way that was clearly supposed to earn Good Dad points for being so Willing To Admit Imperfections, despite a continued constant doubling-down refusal to answer questions about actual important shit or fix anything ever.

cannot emphasize enough that this was not a fictionalized/embellished/creative POV. the only points of fiction were 1) my dad did not write these things on reddit, he said them to me in real life word for word instead and 2) this happened many years ago, not like... yesterday.

anyway the thread blew up and the commenters were all so kind and genuinely worried for me (as in, the daughter) and offering so much help that i hopped on a diff account to be my past self so i could reassure people i'm okay & had a plan in motion for gettin' the hell outta dodge. because i felt REALLY BAD that they didn't know i..... did in fact get out. people were so nice it made me actually fucking cry jesus CHRIST. i had in fact perhaps forgotten that these things were all as bad and worrying as they were

now. this is all a very serious and harrowing-sounding prelude to the actual point of this post, which is. a bullet list of some of my FAVORITE FUCKING RESPONSES. revel in these with me i had so much fucking fun. i have taken DOZENS AND DOZENS of screenshots to peruse whenever i need a healthy dose of Perspective

here they r:

you are CARTOONISHLY EVIL?

HOLY ABUSE BATMAN

DO BETTER. RIGHT NOW.

did you even listen to yourself writing this. HOW

there's something seriously wrong with you. like on an intrinsic unfixable level

hey this happened to me too! my parent died and i had a party about it btw

your daughter is never going to speak to you again after this

(note from the future: yeah)

you're going to act confused and sad when she goes no-contact aren't you

(NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: HE SURE FUCKING IS)

i think you are creating your own problems and then getting mad at them. maybe instead you could not do that

is this ragebait. i can't imagine anyone this horrible actually existing

this isn't ragebait. i can tell this isn't ragebait because I Know This Kind Of Man So Intimately

you are the asshole on literally so many levels i'm going to write a 15 paragraph response line-by-line dissecting everything wrong with you

are you aware that you're lying or are you literally this incapable of 2 seconds of honest self-reflection

i need to donate to a gofundme for your daughter right now immediately

(note from the future: i am not going to scam people by pretending a long-done sitch is a current emergency on gofundme. have no fear.)

wow. okay i'm gonna go hug my mom and thank her for not being you

you are Actually Literally Empirically the Actual Literal Worst Parent who has Actually Literally Ever Existed

HOW FUCKING DARE YOU????

WHO DO YOU FUCKING THINK YOU ARE.

I AM A 57-YEAR-OLD MOM OF FOUR ADULT CHILDREN AND THE MERE THOUGHT OF DOING ANY OF THE THINGS YOU HAVE DONE HERE MAKES ME PHYSICALLY NAUSEOUS

these vibes are so skeevy. leave her the fuck alone????

along with ASTONISHINGLY accurate inferences about exactly what was happening with the daughter (me) in all the missing missing reasons & like..... exactly how the situation was So Much More Ugly And Horrifying than an innocently confused i'm-so-well-intentioned dad-POV post would have you believe.

so. anyway. that was literally the most validating experience i've ever had in my entire life. i know i've said he's a bad guy before but i also always forget just how far beyond the pale he is. like wow that was. that was not a normal average human experience to have growing up huh.

IN CONCLUSION.

if you guys are ever wondering why i am the way that i am about, like........ anything....... everything....... whatever......

just remember.

i was raised by belos owlhouse.

[mamadoc]

1, 2, 11, 20😊

1 - Talk about someone who changed your life.

Okay. I took far too long to think about this. Since we're all in a post 6x6 and TTPD era, here's a vulnerable, tortured answer.

I had a very close friend for several years. My husband and I were very close to her and her husband. Our kids were friends. We went to the same church, all loved to travel, had similar interests and tastes, had all lived internationally, went on double dates, etc. We even considered having them raise our kids if my husband and I both passed away. In sum, we were super close.

Then COVID hit. As a doctor COVID was difficult. I struggled a lot because I was taking care of sick patients. I recall one tearful day of talking to a pregnant mom who was about to be transferred to the ICU and was saying goodbye to her other children. It really wasn't safe or comfortable to go to work for a long time. I wasn't really dealing with it well, especially with the people around me treating it like it didn't matter. I was really depressed for the first time in my life.

This friend didn't understand that or if she did, she didn't care. So, when I said I wasn't interested in going out in public and having any type of birthday celebration for my birthday (who wants to celebrate turning 41 anyway?), she started attacking me on a personal level. I was already in a dark place and instead of being a good friend and supporting me, she just keep sending me hateful messages.

That was the first and only time in my life I considered suicide. I reached out for help and got it. I wasn't in that dark pit for a long time. I'm much better now. I mostly have my sister to thank for that.

I brought her flowers for Valentine's Day with an apology note a few weeks after that. She never apologized. I brought treats to her a few weeks after that with an apology note explaining why I felt so hurt. I tried to call to explain how I felt so that I could heal. She never answered the phone.

I'm still not sure what I have to apologize for or why she never seemed to accept or offer an apology. But that was two years ago. We still don't talk. Our husbands don't talk. Our kids don't play together anymore. For a long time, I didn't like going to church because I knew I'd have to see her.

Most of that is better now. I'm just sad for a lost friendship and for the dark place I had to crawl out of.

I've used a slight modification of her name for a character in one of my stories who betrayed Lucy. I thought that might be therapeutic, but it just brought the situation up to the surface again.

Uhhh... I can't believe I just wrote all of that. I'll try to keep the rest of the answers a bit lighter.

2 - Talk about something you really want to do.

I LOVE to travel. I've been to 47 states and 16 countries. My husband and I had all of our plans in place to get to all 50 states before we turned 40. Then COVID hit and all of our plans were dashed when travel shut down. We're going at a slower pace now, but we're getting close to it. #48 (NM) in October, #49 (HI) July 2025 as a 20th anniversary trip, and #50 (AK) the summer of 2026.

11 - Share something you're proud of.

According to AO3's stats, I've posted over 339k words since I started posting 7 months ago (plus another 9-10k chapter I hope to finish tonight). I know there are those that blow me out of the water (Ahem, ahem @girlintotv and @centralperkchenford) with their numbers, but I'm pretty proud of that as a first-time writer and working mom with 4 young kids.

20 - Share with us a random fact or two.

I'm afraid I've already overshared. *yikes* But here we go.

I'm the oldest of 6 kids. The first 4 of us are all 23 months apart, then 27 months apart, and 25 months apart. So, we're essentially every 2 years for 10 years with all of our birthdays clustered together. 3 boys and 3 girls.

I had the chicken pox for my eighth birthday. My grandparents came to visit for my birthday, but they were afraid of getting shingles. So, I had to stay in my bedroom on the second floor, and they stayed on the first floor for the whole time they were visiting. I still remember standing in the hallway near the dining room while they sang happy birthday. One of my siblings blew out the candles for me and my mom brought me a piece of cake in the hallway. (Man, I'm still rocking those depressing TTPD vibes, aren't I?) I was officially not contagious the day my mom came home from the hospital with baby #5 in our family, and I remember being so excited to be healthy enough to hold my baby brother.

Sheesh. Now you probably won't ever ask me anything again. Between TTPD, 6x6, and the angst I'm supposed to be writing right now, I'm coming up with some strange answers.

Sorry to be the Eeyore in the crowd. Thanks for asking me to play though.

Ask game

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Bonnie Petrie

When Garret Beckner was 37 years old, he started having chest pains.

“I remember going to the doctor and getting that checked out,” Beckner said. “They said, ‘Hey, you're almost 40, type 2 diabetic, with a sedentary office job. Let's check your heart out.’”

At the time, Beckner was a pretty typical American office worker, with his "butt glued in a chair" at least eight hours a day. He hiked some on weekends with his wife and baby daughter, and his type 2 diabetes was well controlled, but, he did do a whole lot of sitting around.

“So they gave me the stress test,” Beckner said. “They gave me all the different diagnostics, and looked at my heart. I had no issues.”

Beckner said his heart was declared healthy, and he was then referred gastroenterologist who diagnosed him with acid reflux.

“So at least as far back as 2017 I know that my heart was in good condition” Beckner said.

He had no reason to believe that had changed when 2020 rolled around, and a novel coronavirus moved into town.

The Beckners had what he describes as a strong, reinforced bubble that included other COVID-conscious people. Their daughter went to daycare, but it was an in-home situation with other people in their bubble.

They made it through the first year of brutal COVID waves unscathed. But the coronavirus caught up with them eventually.

“We'd moved to San Antonio in October of 2021. We wanted to be closer to family. We were kind of chasing a dream,” Beckner said. “We couldn't find an in-home daycare, so we had to bring our daughter to one of those places that’s got multiple rooms, multiple classes.”

Within a week, Beckner said, his daughter had brought COVID home. All three of them got sick. His daughter shook it off quickly. His wife got quite ill but then recovered quickly and fully.

For Beckner, it was not like that at all. He didn’t recover quickly. In fact, he said, he hasn’t recovered at all. Beckner developed long COVID, and while trying to uncover the causes of his multiple, debilitating symptoms, his doctor sent him to a cardiologist.

“They said we'll do the full workup, kind of similar to what I'd had done years prior,” Beckner said. “Only this time, I couldn't make it through the stress test. I couldn't even get through it.”

Beckner was quickly scheduled for an angiogram, a test that would look at his coronary blood vessels to see if they were blocked. He was sedated for the procedure, and when he woke up, the person who performed the test was by his side.

“I just remember seeing his face as soon as I woke up,” Beckner said. “He was like, ‘you have three clogged arteries. We're gonna have to get you to a specialist.”

But wait, Beckner thought, he was only 42, and when he had that cardiac workup back in 2017 he got a clean bill of health. This couldn’t be right. But it was.

“Literally seven days after that consult, I was in surgery” Beckner said. “I had three arteries on the left side that were basically completely blocked, and if they didn't get me into surgery for bypass…inevitable heart attack, it was a matter of time.”

His heart had been a ticking time bomb.

And Beckner is not alone. Research beginning early in the pandemic and continuing to today has consistently found that for at least a year after being infected with the COVID virus, people may be at increased risk of developing a new heart-related problem. Those problems can range from blood clots to arrythmias to a sudden, catastrophic heart attack.

What’s going on? Researchers are slowly beginning to tease that out, and the answer may come down to a single word. Inflammation.

In this episode of Petrie Dish, Bonnie talked with Dr. Dara Lee Lewis, a Harvard Medical School instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women’s, and director of noninvasive testing and co-director of the Women’s Cardiology Program at the Lown Cardiology Group in Boston.

[redbullcateringfiction]

Chapter 7 -

Cantata

Arabella is the executive assistant for Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff. 10 years into her career, it looks like the tide is changing, and she's beginning to question her relationship with him. Is it something more, or nothing but an idea lingering in her head?

F/M, Fluff, Boss/Employee Relationship, Romance, Pining, Love, Slow Burn

Seventh chapter below the cut or click here for AO3

Click here for the previous chapter on Tumblr, and click here for a list of all chapters

(Total: 30502 words thus far)

Sorry about how long this chapter took. I am, in fact, getting a literal PhD. So sometimes I have to focus on that and not Toto Wolff, although it is really hard. There's a joke somewhere in there about fanfic authors. Feel free to make it.

~redbullcateringfiction

“So…how was dinner with Toto?” Bono asked. 

“How did you know about that?” I shot him a glance.

“You do know that you’re in a hotel filled with your coworkers, right?” He responded. Fair enough.

“Well…it was nice,” I shrugged. 

“That’s good, that’s good. Hey,” He said softly, grabbing me by the waist and pulling me in. This was never good. Bono only ever pulled me in for a whisper when he was about to tell me something very, very bad. The list of previous times was short.

The engineering supervisor had just fired the craziest person on the team. It’s good to be a little crazy in Formula 1, but Gino had taken it 5 steps too far, and was lucky to have not gotten hit by a car. Anyway, the engineering team desperately needed me to distract the media and coordinate his removal with security in such a way that no one would happen to notice the short Italian man being dragged out by his ear.

My mom collapsed during a race. Turned out to just be heat exhaustion.

In most recent memory, Lewis has COVID. I had just spent a few hours with him and Toto, in close proximity. 

Bono had a talent for lowering his head in such a way that no one could possibly hear what he was about to whisper to you, and this was no different. “Look yourself up,” He whispered, while simultaneously gently letting go of me. This could not be good. At the same time, my phone buzzed with Jeffrey’s contact popping up for a phone call. This has to be bad. There is no alternative. 

I declined his call, and immediately went to Safari as Bono looked over my shoulder. 

“Who was that?” Bono asked.

“My lawyer.”

“Your lawyer? You have a lawyer?” He asked, with such a sudden expression of shock.

“More a friend who’s a contracted lawyer. A lawyer friend. Who I have a contract with. A friend who is a lawyer who I have a contract with,” I explained.

“You said ‘contract’ so much I’m starting to think it’s some sort of freaky 50 Shades thing.”

“Jesus, Bono,” I complained. 

“You have to admit you made it sound like that.”

“Fair,” I groaned, finally typing my name into the search bar.

Trending ~ 1 minute ago - It’s not silly season, right? How is there F1 drama already? with a picture of Cathal and me from years ago.

Trending ~ 1 minute ago - Why is Cathal Lynch obsessed with his ex-girlfriend? Cathal Lynch appears in… 

Trending ~ 1 minute ago - Cathal Lynch shows for Pre-Season Testing wearing Red Bull shirt 

“Jesus, you gave me a scare. That’s not that bad. He’s just being weird again,” I sighed, turning to Bono. My heart rate started to slow down. Bono raised his eyebrow. 

“And yet…you’ve clicked on none of them,” Bono sighed. “Keep scrolling.”

I did as he said. Suddenly more recent articles pop up. 

2 minutes ago - Four Odd Bottles releases new song, “Bitch”, moments after Cathal Lynch spotted in Bahrain  

4 minutes ago - It’s time to cancel Cathal Lynch: “Bitch” is a retelling of Radiohead’s “Creep”…and somehow creepier  

8 minutes ago - Was Arabella a “Bitch?” A lookback at Cathabella 

10 minutes ago - “Bitch,” please. How Arabella Lazaar used Cathal Lynch to make her seem more integral to Mercedes than she really ever was 

23 minutes ago - “Bitch,” is a great song. Sorry, not sorry.  

45 minutes ago - Is “Bitch” that bad? The conversation on new Four Odd Bottles song takes over Twitter. 

48 minutes ago - Expletive-filled song by Four Odd Bottles is the newest crazy ass song from a fucking creep  

“Oh…oh no,” I sighed. 

“Listen, I wasn’t going to not tell you,” Bono explained, grabbing me by the shoulders again. “Here’s the thing. And listen to me carefully. This is about Cathal. Not you. Public Relations is about to call Toto and ask that he puts forward a request to have him banned, even if temporarily. I had them wait until the two of you got back. Are you still listening?”

I was, but I couldn’t blame him for asking. I knew my eyes had glazed over. “Yeah, yeah. PR. Banning. All that.”

“Okay. Arabella, this guy is a fucking creep. But we’re going to fix this,” Bono explained.

“No, no. I will,” I sighed.

“No, no. You will not touch this. Yes, it's almost entirely your job, but this is the time you pass off a responsibility to someone else. And you will absolutely not listen to that song. Do you understand? Do not listen to it. It’s fucking weird,” Bono pushed his hair back.

“I imagine it is. I also get the sneaking suspicion I should listen to it,” I explained. “I can’t understand what’s going on without it.”

“Arabella, all you need to know that’s going on with it is that your ex-boyfriend is still writing songs about you, but this one is just plainly mean and weird. And he used you as a publicity stunt for it. Like, c’mon. That’s what you need to know about it.”

“Arabella, come over here for a second,” Toto called, suddenly appearing in the hallway behind me. Shit. I stepped towards him, and he grabbed my shoulder. That had now happened a bit too frequently in the past few minutes. I know this is a shit show. But this must be a real fucking shit show. “I’m sure you already know about it. After all, no one can really seem to keep their mouths shut. Anyway, I’m about to call the FIA. This is the first time something like this has happened, so don’t hold your breath. Hopefully though, they’ll seek to make an example out of this kind of behavior. Regardless of how messy this is for you , no team should be dealing with shit like this. Bono!” Toto suddenly called out.

“Yeah, yeah?” Bono asked, nearly running over. 

“Who invited the little…Lynch? Who invited Lynch? Do you know?”

“I’ve asked around. Don’t think he was invited by anyone,” Bono shrugged.

“Oh, good. I was worried someone had invited him. Since he just showed up with a paddock pass, this is a different situation. Alright, I’m about to make the call. Arabella, I know it’s difficult, but I need your complete focus, alright? 100%. This is no one’s problem, except his. Thankfully, this has to be a violation of something. Yeah, celebrities are publicity stunts in and of themselves, but usually they’re invited.”

“I’m just going to head off to Lewis’s team meeting while you make the call, okay?” I offered.

“Of course you will. Schatzi, you’re brilliant. This is why you’ve been doing this for so long. Only you could handle this,” Toto smiled. He patted me on my back and walked off, immediately hopping on the phone. 

“Alright then, let’s go,” Bono answered, guiding me to the meeting room. As soon as we walked in, all of Lewis’s team quickly set down their phones and looked at me with horrified looks.

“If I can keep my mouth shut about this, everyone else can, alright?” I nodded. “Toto will be in here in not 5 minutes. If we aren’t talking strategy when he comes in, he’ll keep us here all night.”

~

“Okay everyone. Goodnight. See you all in the morning. Bright and early,” I waved goodbye to Aero. I looked at my watch. 9:35pm. We had really pulled it off with plenty of time for many people to get a full night of sleep. Except the engineers, but that was by choice. Many of them would be practically foaming at the mouth at the gate wanting to run in and get to work on the car. All night they would discuss different strategies to turn everything into a well oiled machine. For many of them, the driver is just driving their good work. Yes, a good driver makes all the difference, but to them it's their car.

“Arabella,” Toto called after me. I had gone into autopilot and started walking towards the elevator without a thought to whether Toto needed anything from me. I turned around with my hands up.

“Sorry, sorry. What’s up?” I asked, approaching him. 

“You’re absolutely brilliant,” He said, opening his arms and giving me a great hug. First kiss, second kiss. Each cheek, just a brief touch. “Just absolutely brilliant. No one but you, yeah? No one but you. Okay, I have good news.”

I looked up at him as he finally let go. “Yeah, and what’s that?”

“He won’t be let in the gates tomorrow. Or all weekend. Or all season. Temporary ban for the season. Turns out it's a violation of some rule to use a paddock appearance for personal gain when it’s not written into your contract. Since he wasn’t invited, the contract was pretty explicit in not allowing that,” Toto explained. “Bad news is when he gets turned away at the gates tomorrow, I expect the press will be all over that. But it’s not too bad. The FIA won’t name you or the team as the cause or anything. Just plain breach of etiquette. I can only imagine what ridiculous thing that psycho will say about it though.”

“Thank you. Really, thank you,” I answered. “Did PR have any notes for me?”

“They’re hands off of you if I’m honest. Main concern is the look for the team. Even had to call Red Bull’s PR since he tried to make it seem like they invited him. I recommend you take a look at the new news if you want a laugh about it. Crazily enough, I was the 2nd call to the FIA. Red Bull had already called them about it to get him banned because of the implications,” Toto laughed. Yeah…I have to admit. It’s kind of funny when you think about it. I laughed with him.

“So…I can do what I want when it comes to it?” I asked. 

“I know you very well, and I imagine the worst thing you could manage to do would be good for the team. So, yes. Whatever you want. I trust you more than them,” Toto smiled. 

“Well, let me think about it, yeah? I’ll let you know before I go through with it,” I explained.

“Don’t bother. Like I said, I trust you.”

I gave him a look with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, well now I’m concerned. What is that supposed to mean?” He asked with a slight giggle.

“Speaking about it at all? Is that fine?” I asked.

“I had no idea what you were about to say. Don’t mess with me like that, Arabella! Yes, of course, speaking about it is fine. Just nothing stupid, obviously.”

I nodded. “Well…I ought to be off to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I shrugged. 

“Oh, of course. Goodnight,” Toto nodded, as I wandered towards the elevator. As I arrived in my room, I stared at my phone. My mind begged me to check to see the updated news. Afterall, who could resist reading the various essays that weren’t really about themselves, but were instead about their ex-boyfriend talking about them. We had dated for some time, but not nearly long enough for Cathal to still be this pissed off about it. In fact, I had started to doubt whether he really still cared, or was just using a shitty microcelebrity like myself to constantly relaunch himself into fame. All the songs he had written about me when we were together were just crappy love songs, but they had so many little suggestions as to who the woman (or women) might be, that the fans and media couldn’t resist speculation. Since we have broken up and he has yet to find another muse as satisfactory, instead he just keeps milking a years-old break up. 

It would be sad if it weren’t so frustrating. I never really quite liked the spotlight. Yes, I had been photographed with several celebrities, especially drivers and Toto, but there was always an understanding among the media that it was nothing more than business. Maybe a few F1 articles might mention me by name, but nothing quite like the sudden spur of attention I got when Cathal “accidentally” went public with our relationship. I tried to make it work after that. I had just spent 2 weeks being the face of a multi-year search for “the girl,” and then spending the next several months being the center of attention because I was a famous singer's partner. Not to mention, I also happened to be brushing shoulders with a world-champion driver and was the certified micromanager of a world-champion team principal. 

But after the breakup, nothing for Cathal changed. I guess things for me didn’t change either. I kept the same exact life going. Maybe he figured since I hadn’t really had some sort of breakdown, quit my job, and moved continents, that I hadn’t moved on, and he gave himself permission to keep going on and on. But I have changed. I have moved on. Cathal only remains relevant in my life because he forces himself to be. I can’t allow myself to give him what he wants by obsessing over the news articles. Nothing will change for now, at least until Cathal is turned around at the gates tomorrow morning.

Instead of torturing myself, I called Jeffrey back.

“What time is it there?” He answered instead of a hello. 

“Not even 10pm, calm down,” I explained.

“Well, have you seen the news?”

“Obviously, I’ve seen the news, Jeffrey.”

“Sorry, sorry then. Have you heard the song? It’s fucking amazing. He manages to sound like a misogynist, a lemon, and a weasel all at once,” Jeffrey laughed.

“No, Bono told me to avoid it.”

“Bono? Like, Peter Bonnington? You’re friends with Bono?” Jeffrey asked, sounding so very impassioned that it began to feel like he didn’t believe me. 

“Yes, Peter Bonnington. And yes we’re friends. He’s practically my work husband.”

“I thought your work husband was Toto,” Jeffrey cackled, evilly.

“Very funny. Listen, I called you back not to be your court jester. I called you back because I need your help.”

“Oh, you finally admit it, yeah?”

“Jeffrey. I will cut you out right now.”

“Alright, alright. You did sign a contract though.”

“Jeffrey!”

“Fine, Arabella. I’m listening.”

I took a deep breath. “I need to do something. This time Cathal took it too far,” I explained.

“You don’t even know how far though, Arabella. Not without listening to the song,” Jeffrey groaned. “Before you do anything, you need to understand the full scope.”

“I’m not listening to it.”

“Fine, don’t. Let me explain it to you at least.”

“No quotes.”

“No quotes, got it. Alright, get in your head for me the song Creep by Radiohead. It’s not quite a cover, probably to avoid any copyright issues with him writing a freakish song, but it’s similar enough for you to imagine. Then, he must say ‘bitch,’ 40 times. Basically, the whole argument in the lyrics is a woman who tries to appear incredibly nice but is trying to keep some sort of hidden motive under wraps. That motive? An obsession over a celebrity that she constantly stalks. But instead of her calling herself a bitch, it’s the celebrity calling her a bitch. The funniest part about all of it though, is that he is obsessing over you.”

“Is that quite as funny as you think it is?”

“Oh…yeah, I guess not. I guess…it’s just creepy.”

“No, it’s hilarious,” I laughed. “He just seems like an idiot, doesn’t he?”

“More like a stalker who completely misunderstood the appeal of Creep. Absolute nonsense.”

“Well, what do you think I should do about it?”

“Honestly, you could just write an extremely short tweet and it would probably destroy the European internet. This man competed in Eurovision with a song about you.”

“Yeah, and didn’t even qualify,” I mumbled. “Anyway, no. I want something serious.”

“Well, then, write a statement. I’ve got a friend at The Guardian. It’ll be published in 20 minutes.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” I replied, starting to mess with the skin on my fingers. An unfortunate hold over from my more anxious days. 

“Not at all. He’s an editor for the essays column. If you write it well, we can get it published. But I’d wait until the morning at least to see what happens when he comes through the paddock.”

“He won’t be coming through the paddock. FIA issued a temporary ban. He’ll be turned around at the gate,” I explained. I could hear Jeffrey tap his fingers, and I waited for his response.

“Write the essay tonight. Get it to me in the morning. Just remember, I’m 3 hours behind. You have to send it before 6am there, so I can make any necessary edits,” Jeffrey ordered me.

“Hold on, hold on! What do I even write about?” I asked. I picked my fingers faster.

“You know what to write about. Send me a cute headshot for the article too, and any pictures you might have of the two of you together,” Jeffrey continued.

“No, no I do not. I am an assistant, not a writer.”

“Oh hush. Give me everything, I’ll take out anything that needs to be gone.”

I took a deep breath. “Alright.”

“Alright, go on and write! Talk to you in the morning.” Jeffrey hung up. I sat staring at my phone for a few seconds before jumping up and grabbing my laptop. There was no time to hesitate. I sat my fingers on the keys and began to write. 

~

“I’ve got a surprise for you!” Cathal smiled, as he threw down an envelope onto the couch. 

“What is it?” I asked, barely looking up from my computer. He picked the envelope back up and placed it in my hands.

“Sundae, don’t touch my laptop,” I sighed, setting my computer off to the side. Sundae immediately began typing on it. I couldn’t shoo her away. It was too cute. I opened up the folder he gave me and there sat a whole bunch of pamphlets. 

“Uhhh,” I began filtering through them, just picking up on little details here and there.

“I booked us a resort in Morocco! We can visit your family!” Cathal cheered. I looked at him. I could feel my eyes nearly bulging out of my skull. I tried to tone down my expression, but my face was fighting my brain.

“So we can do what?” I asked. I couldn’t have possibly heard that right.

“Oh no. Did I mess up? To visit your family,” Cathal remarked, quickly sitting down next to me. This sent Sundae right to his lap. 

“No, no. You didn’t mess up. Not a mess up. Not one at all. I just wasn’t expecting it,” I smiled. 

“Oh, good. It's during the winter break. Ramadan is then, right?” Cathal asked. 

“Ramadan is in May this year,” I explained.

“I thought it was a winter holiday?” Cathal questioned. 

“It’s a Lunar calendar. It was in January in the 90s or something.”

“It can’t be a Lunar calendar. Don’t Jewish people have one too? Chanukkah is always around the same time.”

“They have leap months,” I explained. 

“Oh…sorry. Well, when will it be during the winter break again?” 

“Like…10 years or something?” 

“Well...hold on...actually, I don’t know if I can reschedule it out that far.”

“I actually think visiting during Ramadan would be the worst possible time considering I’m not religious,” I explained.

“Oh, then good!” Cathal smiled. Yeah. Awesome. I can’t wait. 

“This was really nice of you. I’m so excited to visit them.”

“Great! Yeah. Maybe we can make it an annual thing.”

“Let’s not. I mean…I’m just not close to them. I’m happy to visit my parents in the Netherlands, though.”

“I thought you were super close to them. You visited them every year, didn’t you?”

“As a kid I did. It’ll be good to see them though. Don’t worry. I’m really excited,” I beamed. 

“Good. Quit scaring me though. You’re making me worried I did something wrong.”

“Sorry.”

~

I kept writing, and starting over. I’d write the whole thing, and start it over again. There was no way I’d be happy with it though. Every edit and every change only made me more frustrated. I do know that it’s time I finally put this to rest. So as I desperately searched for the words to say that in a way that would make sense, I kept writing. I wasn’t thinking about what I was writing, just the words I wanted to use somewhere, at some point. By the time I looked down, I had it. 3am. A whole 3 hours early. I sent it over to Jeffrey. My phone buzzed just a few seconds later.

Jeffrey: I’m looking it over now. Passes the smell check though. Go to bed. 

No way he read it that fast. I stared at his text and started to think of a snarky reply to his order, but he was right. I didn’t have much time to get a lot of sleep. I would have to smush 8 or so hours into only 3. I shoved my face into the pillow, trying to force the sleep to come. Instead, I think I just suffocated myself until my brain was deprived of enough oxygen for me to be knocked out. 

It worked though. I woke up just 3 hours later, and rediscovered what I already knew. You cannot possibly smush 8 hours of sleep into 3. I decided to spend most of my morning routine trying to get rid of any signs of sleep deprivation on my face, and thought I did a pretty good job. I stepped out of my room and knocked on Toto’s door. 

“Coming,” I heard him call. He swung the door open, and there he stood in the process of buttoning up his shirt. 

“Oh, how did you sleep?” He asked, turning his head as he looked at me. 

“Shit, do I look tired?” I asked, trying to adjust my hair as best possible.

“It’s a common greeting in the morning, is it not? You look fine,” Toto smiled. He took his hand through his hair and stepped to grab his bag. I caught the door with my foot. “But you must be tired if you thought that was the implication, yeah?”

“I think I sort of…forced myself to go to sleep somehow. I don’t feel too tired though.”

“That’s a lie,” Toto smirked.

“Yeah, that was a lie,” I sighed.

“Alright. Let’s go. First day of the season. First day of the season!” Toto cheered.

Tag list: @daddyslittlevillain, @littleheaven

[try-and-try-and-try-again]

This is really random but I feel like I want to get it out and I don’t know where/who to so I’m getting it out here.

I am quite upset by my dad at the moment. In many ways he is wonderful. He supports me so much, more than he should have to. I feel bad that soon after he retired he basically ended up dropping his retirement plans and becoming my almost full-time carer but he has never complained and in fact continues to say he is proud of me and does so much.

However some of his views really bother me.

1. On Palestine - every time anyone mentions the atrocities going on he says everyone’s oversimplifying things. That Israel are not acting unacceptably, they are retaliating and defending themselves from Hamas. That Palestine started it etc. As if it makes what they seem to be doing less atrocious. I never know how to respond to him. He just insists everyone else is wrong.

2. On Covid vaccines - he attributes almost every death that happens at the moment to complications of the Covid vaccines (and says this is being covered up on purpose). He says it must be the case because people have died from blood clots etc. following vaccination but I feel like he is cherry picking data. He says they should never have been rolled out, the pandemic was an exercise in controlling people and making the vaccine/pharmaceutical industry large profits. Yes, governments did act questionably and wealthy people made a disgusting amount of money from the situation but to say that’s what the pandemic was all about when so many people died of Covid, especially at the beginning and everyone was so terrified… I feel like he is missing something. (Also he joined a rather sketchy seeming website called ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ which seemed to be used by lots of questionable figures).

3. Climate change - he says climate scientists are spreading panic, also humans can’t possibly be expected to drastically change their lifestyles, it isn’t fair so we should carry on business as usual. When I looked round environmental science departments at universities he’d try to pick arguments with climate scientists (when he has a college qualification in horticulture). When he was younger he used to be in Friends of the Earth. Now this.

4. Trans issues - he says it’s good that waiting lists for GICs are stupidly stupidly long and it’s really hard to access them because gender affirming care is not to be taken lightly and people are just confused about themselves and should be forced to take time to make decisions (but 7+ years for an initial consultation to just discuss things? Really? And what about all the time before asking to go to a GIC?). He says the Cass report does have validity. He says the new rules about no gender neutral bathrooms in new buildings and segregating trans people in hospitals are not unreasonable. (He also recently changed his mind about accepting my coming out as non-binary which kind of hurts).

5. Science - he says science in general, and particularly the medical field, is not trustworthy. That it is all funded and influenced by the government and Big Pharma and other corrupt corporations even if no conflicting interests are declared so no research is reliable. And he says “science isn’t about facts, it’s about debate” and that no one is letting things be debated. He is not a scientist. Why is he so sure he can claim this? He preached the words of YouTube ‘experts’ who make claims about things in fields they are not qualified in and YouTube doctors who say mainstream medicine is completely wrong and give diet and lifestyle advice etc. that personally I find quite unsettling. He says ‘well x says the data actually shows this’ and I say ‘have you actually looked at this data yourself?’. He says ‘no’ - he just blindly trusts these YouTube ‘experts’ opinions.

He is 76. And spends entire days trawling through Google on his laptop. I don’t know if that is worth mentioning. I don’t know, so many of his views sit uncomfortably with me and I just don’t know what to do or what to say to him. And he upsets my sister too because of some of these things so maybe it’s not just me being overly sensitive and wrong.

[wendytestabrat]

kyle’s hypocrisy in season 19 rant #2: his internalized bigotry (FROM THE VAULT [2020])

This is to add onto my post from before about how Kyle was being ignorant assuming David was from Mexico even though he was from Idaho. Honestly the line in “Stunning & Brave” where Cartman is in the hospital bed and he tells Kyle “You and I are bigots” hits so hard now. And Kyle is like “no you’re a bigot”. And I remember when I first saw that I just assumed Kyle was right and it was just Cartman saying dumb shit as usual, but no Cartman was right about Kyle being a bigot too. I liked that Cartman was trying to own up to everything in that moment but it sucks that Kyle was too stubborn to admit to it too. I mean yeah Cartman is WAYY more bigoted than Kyle but that doesn’t excuse the shit Kyle has done. First of all Kyle constantly fat shames Cartman, which is wrong and in that moment Kyle called Cartman fatass again and Cartman literally said “no more fatshaming Kyle” lmaooo. So he basically denies being a bigot but then proceeds to fatshame Cartman. Kyle you’re not making sense. But anyways what I really wanna talk about is the fact that Kyle is pretty much just as insensitive towards Judaism as Cartman. Which may sound surprising because yes, Kyle is a Jew, but it’s not like he’s proud to be one or we ever see him embrace his religion. No, Kyle is ASHAMED of it. Kyle is self conscious about being a Jew which is why he gets soooo offended by Cartman making fun of him for being one, he’s not defending his religion because he’s proud of it, it’s because he probably agrees with Cartman that being a Jew sucks, and he’s embarrassed. (Ya’ll SJWs don’t flip out at me, I’m Jewish too LMAOOO). If he was actually proud to be a Jew then he would just ignore Cartman or laugh it off and not make such a big deal out of it. There was this episode I honestly don’t remember but Kyle literally acted just like Cartman towards his parents, I think he was trying to ask his mom and dad for something and they said no so he was like “don’t be such a Jew” and Sheila flipped out at him for saying that. And Kyle can be quick to turn on his religion like in “Passion of the Jew” after Cartman told him to watch the passion & he believed that the Jews killed Jesus or whatever djsjjs. He literally WENT TO CARTMAN’S DOOR to tell him he was right about Jews. And I think that we really see Kyle’s insensitivity towards his own people play out best with his cousin Kyle. Kyle is embarrassed of his cousin, bc he’s literally the epitome of a negative Jewish stereotype, and in the episode where cousin Kyle shows up for the first time Kyle literally says in his own words “I’ve spent 5 years in this town trying to make a good name for Jews and this stereotype shows up and wrecks it all” Wow. You know what that tells me? Kyle pretty much views Jews as terrible and thinks the world only views negatively of them. I mean yeah there is anti-semitism out there but the fact that Kyle gets so hyper-sensitive about it and doesn’t know how to just shrug it off means he’s really just playing into the anti-semitism himself and making shit worse. And in the older episodes with cousin Kyle, they mostly just show Kyle being embarrassed by him, but in TFBW we see Kyle straight up being a DICK to him. That really shows how much of a bully Kyle is in my opinion, and since he’s so used to Cartman ripping on him for being Jewish he probably thinks it’s okay to pick on another kid that’s more of a Jewish stereotype than him.

update 2024: i have my receipts as usual ⬆️ and yes i’m gonna brag abt this again but i love how i was ahead of my time pointing out how kyle has internalized anti-semitism before anyone else did lol. cartman’s kid deadass called kyle a “self-hating jew” in the post covid episodes lol

[livingandthriving]

A year ago today I went to see my doctor, hoping to get some answers (and treatment) for my increasingly severe respiratory issues. She ruled out asthma and sent me to the ER to get some tests done. Little did I know I'd end up hospitalized for 3.5 weeks.

(This is going to be long, sorry.)

They tested me for Covid and allergies, and when those came back negative they did a CT scan, and that was when they saw I probably had some type of lymphoma. They did not tell me this right away, just that there was a lot of fluid build-up around my lungs, among other things. Getting that drained was Not Fun (I almost passed out). I was admitted to the hospital proper after that, and spent 10 days in the Pneumology ward hooked up to O2 and getting the pleural effusion drained every few days while waiting on an official diagnosis. They did tell me on day 2 that they'd found what might be tumor and needed to do a biopsy to confirm, so when the diagnosis turned out to be Hodgkins lymphoma I was not completely surprised, but it still felt unreal. (Mind you, when the hospital psychologist came in with the doctor to break the news, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be good.)

The doctor was quick to reassure me that my prognosis was good, but there was clearly no time to lose since I was promptly transferred to Lyon to start chemo. I got my first helicopter ride out of the deal: they were concerned about potential traffic jams on the highway and didn't want to risk it while I was still on oxygen. My best friend's response when I messaged her to tell her this was to suggest I hum the Mission: Impossible theme while in the air. I didn't, but the crew found her suggestion hilarious. 😂

I made it to Lyon without incident, and my parents arrived shortly after I did (traffic was fine after all) to find that I was already something of a celebrity: apparently they don't get many patients come in by helicopter. Upon learning this, Best Friend's sister requested my autograph. (There's a reason I'm good friends with this family.) 😆

The next day was a blur of procedures, culminating in getting hooked up to my first round of chemo that evening. I was a little concerned about potential nausea, but thankfully the anti-nausea meds they gave me beforehand worked beautifully. I was still exhausted afterwards, though. That would be my default state for the next few months.

A few days in, it was determined that poking a new hole in me every 3-4 days to drain the pleural effusion was highly impractical, especially since it was going to take a while to go away, so I got a drainage tube put in. It was Supremely Uncomfortable (I was on morphine for several days), but within a few hours they were finally able to take me off oxygen! Being able to breathe normally never felt so good.

I got to go home in between rounds of chemo, which was very nice, even if I wasn't back in my own room (I had twice-daily nurse visits and it was easier for me to be in the guest room downstairs).

Going back for the second round was definitely different: no helicopter, I was able to walk in, and I knew what to expect this time - well, mostly. I didn't anticipate having to stay a couple of extra days because getting a new Picc line put in proved challenging. It's always something, isn't it? 😅

Thankfully that was the last time I had to stay at the hospital for more than a few hours: the PET scan I got a few weeks later showed that I was in remission, and I was able to do the rest of my chemo as an outpatient at my local hospital. Aside from two sessions getting postponed due to illness/low white blood cell count, that all went smoothly and I had my final session in January.

Early February I got another PET scan which confirmed that I was in complete remission, at which point I could focus on recovery. This is definitely going to be the longest part; I was told it can take up to 2 years to get back to normal. The fact that I'm already back at work, albeit part-time, is pretty good, all things considered.

So, how did all this affect me emotionally? The first few days in the hospital were probably the hardest, because something was obviously very wrong, but I didn't know what. In spite of that, I had a sense of peace and that God was in control (the song The Goodness of God was stuck in my head for days). That peace persisted even with the diagnosis, which is definitely a miracle because I'm generally prone to anxiety and jumping to the worst-case scenario. Instead, my reaction was, "Welp, this is gonna suck, but I'm going to make it." It helped that I had lots of people praying for me.

Even so, there were some rough moments. Losing my hair a few weeks in was especially difficult. I knew it was going to grow back, but I think that was when everything really started to sink in. Having to cancel my travel plans for the fall was another hard pill to swallow. Not being able to go to church was probably the hardest.

How am I doing now? Well, I'm still processing everything (hence this post), and likely will be for some time. It still feels a little unreal to tell people I had cancer. It's not one of those things you ever think you'll have to deal with, at least I didn't think I would. But here we are. I will say the fact that I'm starting to really process it all now is a good sign since it means my brain is no longer in survival mode. Hopefully that will continue.

I could go on, but this is already very long (kudos to you if you made it this far) and it's late, so for now I'll just say I'm grateful to still be here. Oh, and if you start having weird symptoms, don't wait to see a doctor.