Since nothing big is going on, I thought I’d give y’all a “behind the scenes” look at life here.
As much as I complain about being here, and I do despise it, I want to make sure y’all now that there ARE a few wonderful people who work here. Now, like anywhere else, most workers here are…generic 9-5ers – they do what they gotta do to get that check then go home. They’re ok, I get it.
A thankfully small percentage hate it here and make sure it shows. They’re rude, caustic, lazy, insolent, insulting, “wall holder-uppers”. You know the type… There are several here who just need to work elsewhere – or be flat out fired.
But thank God there are the precious few who have a willing, helpful heart. They are the backbone of institutions like this. Here I WILL name names – fuck the rules, they deserve a mention – Taylor, Angie, Donna, Destiny, and Ellen, thank you for making this hellhole liveable. I wish we could clone a thousand of each of you.
Another thing you might want to know about these kinds of places is that there is no privacy. None. At all. Everyone from housekeeping to administration can just walk right into your SHARED room as they perform the perfunctory knock. They never wait for the inmate to say ” come in”. Oh, no, they all just waltz right on in.
Inmate, erm, resident privacy, dignity, and respect are the afterthought that comes after the actual afterthoughts. We are the lowest of the low – everyone is more important than we are.
I don’t know about other places, but in here there is no division of inmates according to health status or care needs. Screamers, constant babblers, and occasionally violent dementias are housed right alongside, and sometimes in the same room with, the totally bed bound, the dying, and those needing little actual care. Yeah. It’s as bad as you think, and sometimes worse.
Well, I didn’t set out to write a novel so I’ll stop here. This is just what I do when I can’t sleep for worrying about all the house bills and money and when am I gonna get my legs and how my dog is doing now that she’s all alone in the house.
You don’t know how many times I’ve started writing things like this just to give my feelings a place to go. It doesn’t really help, per se, but it doesn’t hurt, either.
Anyway, here is the mandatory PayPal link. Your generosity and kindness are the ONLY income I have until I get back home and SSI kicks in.If I get to place a Wal-Mart order for gum, personal supplies,and deodorant,, it’s because of you fine folks!
Have a good one!
~Mer
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The good part happened first. On Tuesday I received a message on my home phone (why I keep the cable/internet/PHONE “on” while in this crap-zone . It’s speedy af but necessary.) from Carolina Amputee and Orthotics – the place where my legs live. So, I call back after lunch…annd she’s — you guessed it — gone to lunch…
As we likely all know, I have telephone anxiety. I’m pretty much ok AFTER I’m talking, but MAKING that call? Torture. So I call “Sherry” back Wednesday. She’s nice, but more importantly, she’s COMPETENT. She is the one handling my insurance stuff at the leg place. Apparently she couldn’t make heads or tails of my paperwork or the claim denial, etc., so she did the smart thing and called Medicaid, explained everything, and asked THEM what THEY thought she should do to get the claim approved.
Genius!! Call the people who make the decisions and ask THEM what they want!!
LSS, they had her refile it, and by her best guesstimate, she MAY hear back from them “as soon as 7 to 10 business days”. Now I ain’t holding my breath…we all know how this shit goes — we’ve seen this movie before — but its nice to know someone else is on the case.
Light, however faint, at the end of the tunnel is still light, right??
So there I was, walking (rolling?) on sunshine, thrilled with the possible progress, thinking about going home to my cat and dog and recliner and my own bed, when about 3 hours later the proverbial rug was pulled out from under me.
Tosha, my friend who’s taking care of my furbabies and house while I’m wasting my life here, texted me. She walked into my house and found my cat dead.
That killed me. My poor Galen. I hadn’t even gotten to hold him since last June. My poor boy. I’m having a really hard time dealing with this loss.
I feel like he had given up on waiting for me, I mean, he had no reason to think I would ever be home again. As a friend said, he was yet another victim of the system.
It’s hard to explain or describe to people who don’t love animals the way I do, but I feel kind of numb inside, like I don’t have anything else to give. Galen was one of my two main reasons to hurry up and get back home and I can’t help but think that if I’d been there, he’d still be alive and fine. That thought stabs.
This is his grave site now. Tosha and her husband buried Galen for me. Ill never get to hold him or love on him again.
So, yeah the best worst or the worst best day indeed.
And OF COURSE that was NATURALLY the day my PayPal fundraiser expired. Of course.
I hate to put that link in a post like THIS, and I’m currently leaking heart break fluid from my eyes, but unfortunately needs must. I’m so fucking tired of being “the needy one”, of hurting, of missing my little furbabies.
But anyway, here’s the link. Anything you can send will be VERY MUCH appreciated.
So…*draws lines in dirt with imaginary toe*… Anybody still around?? I suck at posting and keeping you guys in the loop. I know I suck. I’m sorry that I suck but…I still suck.
To say that a lot has happened since my last post is a laughable understatement. To say that a shit ton has happened is way more like it. To make a very long, depressing, angsty, shit-filled story somewhat shorter (and hopefully excuse my absence), here goes:
Sometime in June — after several weeks in the hospital, the surgeon committed surgery on my one remaining leg to separate it below the knee from the rest of my leg. So I no longer have any feet. Or ankles. Or much calf. Erm…no cankles for me??
A couple days after that, I was shipped off to a glorified rest home to heal up and wait for my new prosthetic. You know, where people go to die? There really IS no “therapy” department here. There’s shitty food, half-assed employees, domineering admin, no privacy, and rules meant to make your stay as miserable as possible, and no real “therapy” department.
Yes, I’m still stuck here. My leg was deemed healed in August and the new rig for my newly shortened right leg was ready in September, but the slowassed insurance part of the prosthetic company was lagging so by the time they had the paperwork ready to finally file it was the end of September and my insurance changed October 1st.
Naturally.
So it’s now the middle of fucking JANUARY and I’m still stuck in this hellhole. Meanwhile the household bills continue to accumulate, my dog and cat continue to forget me, my projects gather dust, I miss my home…
I MISS MY FUCKING ANIMALS AND MY FUCKING COFFEE MAKER!!!
Oh, and we can’t have coffee makers of any kind here.
Naturally…
This place sucks skanky ass.
My muse has flown away in terror and the little bitch didn’t take me with her. And I just the other day recovered my WP password because I am a stressed out, frustrated, irritated, somewhat (understandably) depressed (and legless) idiot.
So…these have been the (monotonous, boring, sucktacular) days of my life.
If not for a couple of truly amazing, fantastic, Godsent ladies (Fairy Godmother…Demented Elf), I would have utterly snapped by now. They have TRULY saved what sanity I have left.
That’s about all, I guess. There are millions – MILLIONS – of little things I could write about, especially about my time in medical incarceration here (that’s what it feels like), but I’m just thankful that you guys care enough to read THIS drivel!!
I won’t lie – I do need help so I’m putting the PayPal link here, but remember – only ever send what you truly CAN afford, and ANY kindness no matter how small or big is both appreciated and needed.
P.S. I have no idea how this will “read” since not only is it being done on my Kindle but the layout of WP has, of course, changed yet again.
Welcome to the latest phase of “This Shit Is Too Crazy To Make Up Part <gestures vaguely>”
Things Involved: Nervous Breakdown, Impaired Mobility, NoShows, Ambulance, Barking Dog That Will Not Shut The Everloving Fuck Up, Cussing Angels (probably)
First, keep in mind that All The Things are still wrong with my right foot and that Things Suck Ass with my fake leg, still, for reasons. Even after ALL THESE WEEKS, my insurance case manager has STILL NOT FOUND ANYONE TO COME OUT THE DR-ORDERED EVERY OTHER DAY TO TEND MY FOOT, and somehow Dr Goncalves has still SOMEHOW still not managed to send a new Rx to the RESTORE POC prosthetics place to get me fitted for a new insurance-covered leg. After being reminded to do so twice. By me.
Now, add in to that I’m still edema’ing like a fkng champ (hey, restricted mobility + impaired mobility + sluggish heart problems + oh, can’t actually take a PEE PILL WHEN YOUR MOBILITY IS IMPAIRED, NOW CAN YOU = yeah, you’re gonna swell up like a turgid blob) AND I have a raging UTI. (See OH, TAKE A PEE PILL FOR THE EDEMA EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE IMPAIRED MOBILITY – IT’LL BE FUN!!) UTIs affect different humans in different ways – it’s not a one-size-fits-all crapfest for men/women (yes, men CAN and DO get UTIs – urinary tracts are body parts, not sex parts).
So, on Friday I’m feeling pretty damn shitty, no energy, nerves are shot. I still don’t always sleep well at night unless I (over)medicate myself and I never know exactly what time the helper person will actually get here b/c she sucks at scheduling.
She’s also let me know way before hand that she’ll be gone Fri night-Sunday on a little trip with her bf – nbd, I’d asked twice to be sure her boss knew so they could get someone else in here on her days off. I also made a point to schedule a small food delivery on Friday just to take the pressure off the weekend.
So from 1pm Friday onward I’m expecting the UTI med to be delivered from the pharmacy (by a series of very sweet little old men, honestly – they’re great), expecting the groceries to be delivered between 1-2, and expecting the day lady to get here by 1 to deal with all this. I’m sitting here feeling awful, just wanting to cry, die, or disappear under a bed somewhere with just me my dog and my cat…when I hear lots of noise and banging at the door.
Groceries? Old men bearing meds? Aliens? Fuck if I know – it’s a little after one and Tosha isn’t here. So I’m screeching for whoever the fuck it is to come on in, come in, COME IN, COME THE FUCK ON IN, the dog is barking non-fucking-stop, and…eventually, finally, eventually dear Tosha finally hauls in, comes through with some groceries, then comes through with a USPS MAIL TOTE filled up with all sorts of mail, then more groceries, dog is still barking her ass off, and I just want to guzzle a gallon of Absinthe and call it a month.
The meds guy is usually here at right at 1`pm on delivery days so I’m worried about why whichever “he” might be running late, so I just take a deep breath, call the pharm, and enquire as to the health of whichever he is on duty. (It’s meds, you know, and they’re little old men and the world is not kind.) Meanwhile dear Tosha is acting pouty at ME b/c SHE was running late but she’s putting groceries away. I get off the phone (“he” was having to help someone put together a new wheelchair and would be along) so I started looking through The Massive Mail Dump.
I have no idea why it was all held for so long. There were bills, generic grocery/etc ads rolled together, crap mail, A COUPLE OF CARDS FROM YOU GUYS, and SEVERAL Amazon deliveries in the thin plastic bags all together. I weeded through it all as best as my slightly feverish brain could deal with, wondered why @walmart hated me so much that they would deliver me dark green bananas, and finally the meds got here.
I took a med, ate…………..something, shooed Tosha away b/c I was tired of dealing with her pouting at me for her running late, and went to nap in my chair. The mail, everything, could wait until I felt more human.
The bananas would probably outlast me.
Cue Saturday – you guessed it – nobody came. At all. I called the care worker company, A Primary Choice, and come to find out dear Tosha hadn’t even told them that she wouldn’t be working this weekend. Nope. So I absolutely spilled the beans on her. Their scheduler had no idea that she needed to send someone over y’day or today. So I did without help I really needed yesterday.
Today, she sent over “I can’t do that” Patty. My foot felt like I’d stepped in water. I can’t let my foot be wet. My foot is supposed to be being changed every other day to help keep it dry. This is not happening. “I can’t do that” Patty – you guessed it – couldn’t do that.
Fuck it. I called 911, asked for the non-emergency version of them, was encouraged to tell the very nice dispatch lady exactly what I needed, did so, and within 30 minutes a very nice paramedic person came into the house, followed my exact “”see it done every time at Wound Care”” instructions, gave me his card if I need their help again in future, and left.
Naturally Happy barked most of the time.
More things happened but honestly, I need a fucking nap.
(Remember, what’s donated to me really IS the ONLY money/income I have.and NOTHING is free anymore – Walmart gave me the funniest look when I asked about free paper towels and cat litter…)
Somebody keep an eye on those green bananas, ok? They look shifty.
~Mer
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So life is strange, y’all. And confusing. And convoluted. And I can’t even blame it all on Mercury being all Retrograd’y and shit. Ok, I mean, I’ll blame most of it on that anyway, but, well, you know. That’s what Mercury is for, right?
See, things have been strange. Case in point, I’ve had a revolving door when it comes to “home health care aids”. My situation is dire enough to warrant someone helping me out at home 2.5 hours a day, 7 days a week. The problem is finding a local/local-ish home care company that not only has available employees, but available employees who are DEPENDABLE and HEALTHY and NOT TOTAL NUTCASES who actually WANT TO WORK. *sigh*
People are weird.
Other Things have been going on, too, things seemingly designed to fuck with my life, so if you have any prayers, positive energy, vibes, good thoughts, anti-hex charms, whatever that you want to send my way, GO FOR IT.
As far as the Sweetest story goes, I’m working on the second chapter wherein we meet another well-known character. I figure some of you will be surprised while others…maybe not? I mean, it’s not like you guys KNOW ME or anything… … … (*insert manic giggling here*)
My foot is *gestures vaguely* footing ever so slowly right along, I guess. It’s just gonna take time. Lots of time. Lots and lots of time.Meanwhile my poor little body keeps getting chonkier and chonkier. Bah.
I still haven’t heard anything from DSS about the SSI claim. I wonder how they expect me to pay my power, water, internet, phone…etc…etc…bills during the unGodly long wait? Oh, that’s right, they figure if they wait long enough people will die and they won’t have to pay?
Fetid twaticles.
To end this on a sweeter note, warm chai tea is awesome! I mean, I love my coffee but sometimes a girl’s gotta have her tea, too, ya know? Lovely little cool snap going on right now – perfect for hot coffee, hot tea, hot chili, etc. Love this kind of weather!
Hugs and HAPPY NORTHERN HEMISPHERE ALLERGY TIMES!! (My b’day is May 5…I don’t think I’ve ever had an unallergic b’day, lol.)
Not a chapter and not an update – just a wish for EVERYONE to have a Happy Easter, or a Happy Sunday, whichever you want.
It makes me a bit sad that I’ll likely never met the vast majority of you in real life because I do feel like we actually, at least in part, know each other to some extent. It’s like we’re fam who just happen to live in each other’s computers, lol.
But in the end, we are all just walking each other home.
Safe journeys, and I hope to have the rest of the mini-ficlet completed soon.
Things…have been a mess, lol. In general it’s been a GOOD mess, but also a paperwork mess and a “nurses visit and ask lots and lots and lots of questions but don’t actually DO anything” mess and a “lots of appointments here and there and having to deal with ‘transportation’ issues” mess and a “you have some home health help but not all the carers assigned to you will be dependable or even all that capable” mess (the one assigned to help me today is barely more ambulatory than I am…), but yeah, overall it’s good.
My wounds seem to be doing ok…they’re supposed to be monitored daily but I guess having Wound Care look at them once every other week is fine…
Most of the soreness from disuse then sudden overuse has resolved itself, finally – still crutchin’ real damn slow (I ain’t stupid, much) but that’s ok. Having to sit 99% of the time is wearing on the nerves, though. I would dearly love to get back into my writing but my brain is still stress-farting and trying to hide in itself. At best, y’all would get gibberish.
In other news, have y’all heard about how True Blood is being shown on a “regular prime-time” tv channel now? It is, but…I just can’t bring me to watch it. Beehl was bad enough the first time around – why would I want more of THAT??? Ew. Are y’all watchingit?
I just can’t. Plus it would probably make my doggie sick. (snicker)
As part of the “got sent home after being in the hospital a long time” thing, I finally got approved for a program called “Mom’s Meals” wherein you get mailed a huge box containing a cooler packed with around 14 portioned heat-and-eat meals that you keep in the fridge then microwave. It’s supposed to make eating a bit easier for the newly discharged. They’re…not good, honestly. Some are okish but it’s like they poured frozen vegetables into the veg side of the little tray and somehow expect them to be fully cooked after only heating them the recommended minute or two. The two “breakfasts” = a scrambled egg and half a cup of oatmeal sludge with some sort of weird syrup poured over it. The point behind me mentioning them is that if you hear of someone getting them, don’t expect them to be getting something great. It’s…easily fixed food to prevent starvation. Not truly horrible but deeply unsatisfying. But food.
(And they use whole wheat bread which I can’t stand.)
(And the 3 cute ikkle widdle juice boxes included are sized for kindergartners.)
Meh.
I do love that the home help I’m getting does the dishes, sweeps, brings in boxes, cuts up boxes to throw away (no actual recycling center around here convenient enough for anyone to take the boxes to for me, sadly), checks the mail – lots of stuff that I can’t do (cutting boxes down hurts my hands and it’s hard to do while sitting down anyway). It’s too bad that the company can’t find more reliable (and energetic?) help but hopefully things will even out soon. Either way, I’m still grateful as fuck for what help I *do* get.
(Plus if I fall and die, I know that at least someone will find Happy and Galen before they suffer. That’s a huge worry for me since I can’t afford the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” thing.)
Speaking of finances…for all the help I’ve gotten so far, none of it is financial. I’m still in just as bad shape as I ever was. Still haven’t heard anything at all from SSI/D. Still have no help with last year’s huge property taxes I still owe. Still have no help with the necessary bills – phone/internet, power, water, etc. etc. etc. I THANK GOD do have “food stamps” – not rollin’ in the sweet, sweet gub’ment food money, but it truly is a tremendous help. In that one way I feel like I’m at least getting back some of the tax money I paid in over the duration of all my working years so I’m not at all ashamed to get it now. Hell, I paid it in!
(Never did understand people being mean about others receiving government help when they need it – the people receiving it very likely paid for it with the taxes taken out of their work checks so they’re just getting their money back. And I will beat with my crutch anyone who tries to mock like single moms trying to buy stuff to make a cake for their kid with “food stamp” money! If people are hungry, you feed them, dammit. Yeah, not a fan of bullies…)
Anyway, so that’s how things are thinging here. Happy and Galen are still lying at/on my feet – to physically prevent me from ever leaving them ever again? Happy is personally insulted at all the new people traipsing in/out of the house – it’s HER house, dammit, and she certainly didn’t give all these new people permission to be here! She barks…and barks…and barks… She’s old, though, and set in her ways and is not at all used to ANYONE other than me being in the house, so I can’t complain at her. Much.
Oh, and it’s apparently Spring, now. *glances out window, rolls eyes* Happy Spring??
~Mer
This is HappyDog and GalenCat in their usual position – at/on my fake foot, lol. Figured I’d rather use their pic for the ubiquitous PayPal link photo as they’re far cuter than my fake leg is!
Last time, I was home for a grand total of 4 – four – days before being sent back to the emergency room.
FOUR. DAYS.
That’s not even enough time to get the musty, closed-up smell out of the house. Poor Happy-dog barely had time to get used to me being home before I had to leave her poor little butt again. (Galen’s too cool for school so doesn’t show a lot of emotion…he thinks, lol – silly kitty.)
They’ve both taken to sitting right at (and, for Galen, sleeping ON) my feet this time around. I think they hope it’ll keep my ass at home finally. I feel bad for them. I mean, sure, they had someone come by every day or three to scoop the litter box, clean up after Happy, feed/water them, and talk to (Happy wouldn’t let them close)/pet (Galen’s a pet-hoe’bag) them, but it’s not the same.
Happy made a point of telling me so.
Loudly.
Ikkle (old) baby girl has NOT left my side FOR ONE MOMENT since I’ve been back.
Ok, so I was discharged late Friday afternoon, got home, VERY VERY SLOWLY did the bare minimum to be moderately comfy, annnnnd sat my exhausted, mentally/emotionally stressed-the-hell-out ass down and CUDDLEED THE FUCK OUT OF MY FURBABIES.
I missed them so, so, SO MUCH.
There may have been some staring blindly at the walls, too.
It took forever Friday for my brain box to shut the hell up enough for me to go to sleep but sometime Saturday early morning, I finally got to sleep AND IT WAS THE BEST SLEEP OF MY LIFE. Never, ever make the mistake of thinking you can get any sort of REST in a hospital.
Then the phone woke me up. Saturday morning.
*sigh*
I swear, anyone who ever spends more than a week in the hospital should be given a day planner and a private secretary to handle all the calls and notes and appointments and paperwork that springs forth immediately thereafter.
Saturday, thought, was one of the worst days of my life, physically speaking. Keep in mind that I had spent most of February and March horizontal in hospital beds NOT wearing/using my prosthetic or real leg. All the progress I’d made with my getting used to the fake leg? Gone. It was almost as though I’d never worn one before. My real leg? It had basically forgotten what that whole “standing” and “walking” thing were all about. Comfortably bearing my body weight? Both legs were all confused by the concept.
I was so sore Saturday when I tried – TRIED – to get up to go to the bathroom I cried. Peeing my pants almost seemed like a viable solution to the Nature Calling problem. Almost. I knew, though, that there was only one non-medical way to resolve the problem and that was to use the LOUDLY SCREAMING muscles, joints, and bones to work out the lactic acid and get my ass going. So, ever so damn slowly, and quite shakily, too, I crutched my way to the potty room. Granted I set up housekeeping on the throne for a bit to recover and overcome the absolute and extreme dread of WALKING BACK, but…BY GOD I DID IT.
Later…ok, much much later, I grabbed my courage by the balls and made myself crutch to the kitchen – OMG, COFFEE – then crutched back. The only other crutching I did on Sat. was back to the bathroom – I’m ballsy but not a pain lover – but still, I did it.
Sunday was a smidgen better, not much I’m sad to say, but almost vaguely tolerable. It was still very, very painful. Today, yeah, still sore and a little shaky (Friday evening at home I was horribly shaky and honestly should not have been up by myself in this house but when you have no one, you gotta do it yourself or you don’t do it at all), but I’m…getting there.
NOTE: If you’ve spent more time horizontal than vertical, expect muscle soreness and weakness, bone soreness, joint soreness, and a general shakiness when you DO get vertical. Also, prosthetics will not feel, act, or work the same because the shape and condition of your limb end will change.
Ouch.
Anyway, so I’m back home, at least for now, and my pets have told me I’m never, ever allowed to leave again. (Don’t tell them but I have an apt tomorrow…which is its own gripe but I won’t bleed your ears with it.)
So – how has YOUR Feb/March been? Better than mine, I hope! The weather has been weird EVERYWHERE so I hope y’all have been safe??? Dry??? Not blown away or snowed in for days on end???
It won’t be world-shattering and my financial problems are far, far, far from over, but: I’VE BEEN APPROVED FOR MEDICAID!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOW I can get my leg socket replaced, get another liner (that fits) and that kind of severely annoying) stuff, not to mention that when I figure out how to get actual transportation to/from doctor’s visits, I might could even see about getting healthy.
If Medicaid will pay for insulin, I might can even get the diabetes under control!!! (Right now I use the cheapie “$25/vial Walmart” stuff when I can but if you don’t have $25 dollars, you still don’t have insulin.) Having to ration insulin, and sometimes do completely without, has already caused a noticeable increase in neuropathy pain and a decrease in my eyesight. Maybe Medicaid will help with that??
The not-so-great news is that Medicaid will not pay for the bills accumulated BEFORE the Medicaid approval date. They would backpay for some things, depending on how recent, but all my previous leg, medical, medical-related, and not bills don’t qualify date-wise, so I’m still on the hook for those.
As well as my regular day-to-day daily-life bills. It doesn’t matter if I’m in “SSI limbo” for months – power, water, phone/internet, and other daily-life expenses (toilet paper, dog food, toothpaste, etc) still have to be bought/paid somehow and I don’t think I have enough body parts left to sell…
That being said, I can’t wait to get the whole Medicaid thing going. I’m sure it will be rife with complicated paperwork and hoops (all gov’t things are), and I still have no transportation lined up (I’ve heard it’s possible but I don’t know the hoops yet that I have to jump through), but yeah.
Oh, and get this: I have to go BACK to the leg-chopper surgeon to get an (another) Rx for a fake leg for Medicaid to pay for it. What, do they think my leg automagically regrew while I wasn’t looking?? It’s a calendar date thing, but still. Like, srsly, is a PROSTHETIC LEG something ANYONE would lie about??? The dr’s office (really nice office workers) knows the deal and we had a good laugh over it when I called them to ask about it all. We agreed that it’s ridiculous.
Anyway, I’m grateful to have something GOOD to tell y’all. I hate being whiny and depressing and only ever having something bad or worse to bring to the table. When I go quiet, it’s because I’m probably in a bad head-space, in a lot of pain, or something else icky and gross and I don’t want to drip my gloom and doom all over you.
Y’all are my sanity, my genuine friends who live in my computer! I want to bring only happiness, some chuckles, a couple sentient spiders, and fun into your life and really wish we could come out and play, have coffee at 1am, share hugs and cake and literally be there FOR EACH OTHER when times are good AND bad. No one would ever understand that you are not JUST “my readers” – you are actually a part of my life that I value very highly.
So, that’s the latest! Hope y’all are doing well, and if you are or not, do let us know. We care. I care.
Ok, so my last post sucked. I was (rightfully? understandably?) *DEEPLY* angstified. Depressified. Surly at the world-ified.
I mean, I still am, sure, but I have had some small measure of success and would far rather THAT be my latest post, so…here.
First let me state that I have very strong phone anxiety. I hate picking up the phone and then talking into it. Phone = foe.
But I managed to make not one, not two, not three, but FOUR calls yesterday.
That’s a win, right?
I had something else to humble-brag about but dang if I can remember NOW what it is/was. Brain fog…I don’t recommend it. It surely wasn’t about my dog’s horrendous, deadly, toxic, foul-miasma farts…
A sad news is that I’ve had to let my homeowner’s insurance die plus I still owe for ALL of last year’s property taxes, both of which hurt. This is my parents’ house, my “mom’s” house. Tears are involved.
Oh, just remembered: the good-ish news is that IF I’m able to jump through all the right hoops juuuuuuust right, I might be able to get a percentage break on THIS year’s taxes. We’ll see, eventually.
Did I mention that I despise paperwork, too?
Cause it’s icky.
The leg guy (Kevin, if you care) is supposed to magically appear on Monday. I need the socket (the part that my liner-encased leg goes down into) replaced (again) because the end of my leg is naturally still shrinking and the (super expensive PLASTIC) socket is too big (again) plus I need a new liner (the thing that goes over my skin and attaches the socket to me) because it’s loosening (too big now plus wearing out) and other generic but expensive leg stuff. But hey, progress, right?
Anyway, I’ll stop nattering in your reader-ear for now. Just thought I’d share my “I’m proud of me” good news now that I had a little.
Ok, we all know that I suck at human’ing these days, right? If I can get it wrong, fuck it up, hit it sideways, I for damn sure will. Between COVID, the ensuing Long COVID, the unexpected death of my Dad, the emergency amputation (my second, go me?), fog brain (see Long COVID) which fucks my life up at every opportunity, and the FLM’s, well, flightiness, amongst other issues, things are not going well for me.
For the past 2.5+ years.
To that end, I had recently bitten several (BIG ASS’D) bullets, swigged down several bottles of (totally imaginary) 100-proof rot-gut, girded my mythical loins, and applied – again – for social services assistance.
I was denied the first time around “back when” which made me feel like unwanted one-legged trash. You have no idea how very, very much I despise doing that kind of paperwork especially after last time, how much I despise talking on the phone…it’s all one humongous gooey slimy ball of hide-under-the-bed anxiety for me.
But I got started anyway.
Even though the last time I tried I was denied. (That really hurt, y’all.)
Which increased “this time’s” anxiety x infinity.
So, good news: I am eligible for some food assistance – yay, food is good.
So, bad news: I am NOT eligible for “disability”, which sucks abject ass because that part took SO LONG to jump through the hoops that NOW the power bill, water, phone/internet/cable, credit card, and several others are due and I HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY THEM.
If things had gone the way they’re supposed to, shit would be settled by now and while I would NOT have been “swimmin’ in tha dough”, I could have at least paid the bare-necessity bills and things would have been, well, good-enough.
But nooooooooooo….
If I’d KNOWN I would be denied, I would have spent THAT time applying for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) instead – it’s a different thing from “disability” and bases its decision on a different sort of criteria. I’ve heard from several trustworthy people who know about it that it’s hellishly hard to get, that the hoops they make you jump through are more along the lines of “harassment” than anything, and that I desperately need an “advocate” to help me do it.
So of course I tried for “disability” first. Common sense, right?
*pfft*
SSI takes lots of “running around” to get since it’s based on a person’s inability to work. Running around?? Ha! I don’t HAVE transportation. I do have a car…that doesn’t run…that I can’t physically GET to simply because I can’t WALK that far. I don’t have literally ANY friends who live anywhere near my area anymore. I could maybe hire the lady who (isn’t very dependable) comes by one day a week “3 weeks out of 5” to put my trash into the outside trash can for city pick-up but…that takes moolah. *sigh* Eh, the extended list of tragic little problems that nibble away at my soul is way too long to bore you guys with here.
So, while I *can* eat (a little), within a few days I won’t be able to cook, or see, or be online, flush my toilet, talk on the phone… Why am I even still alive at this point??
I just do not know what to do. Part of it is the brain fog (it really can be a very serious problem), and a whole freakin’ lot of it is INCREDIBLE amounts of anxiety (how could I not me????), and part of it is EXTREME frustration and IRATE-NESS at a whole butt-load of shit BUT ESPECIALLY having wasted very precious time applying for the one assistance that I – unknowingly, but hindsight = 20/20 – would be denied when I could have at least been in the process of applying for the one I’m slightly more likely to be granted…eventually…after jumping through every hoop invented by heartless bureaucrats. Maybe.
Got any handy-dandy thoughts, prayers, good juju, vibes, rich great-uncles hanging around? Send’em my way, please. Feel free to kick my ass, too – I am so, so, SO frustrated at myself for (agreed, unknowingly, but this shit really sucks) wasting so much time on the one application process only to be denied when I could have been spending that time…UGH!!!!! If I had been approved, I could have at least, if nothing else, called up the necessary-for-life companies and TOLD them that “money is expected to be deposited on X date” and worked something out with them.
But noooo…. I’m not allowed to have luck THAT good.
Well, let’s wrap up the pathetic whine’ry. Thank you for coming to my TED Whine??? I’m gonna go cry some more. I feel like such a disappointment, such a loser. I try so, so hard and then shit like this just keeps happening.
Ok, so in my brilliance I decided to wait a bit to give any straggling readers a chance to pop in and comment…then a head cold caught me (Why would we CATCH a cold? Seems like a dumb thing to do, ya know, like…who tf is running around CATCHING colds??) so I was singularly unimpressed with the world for a while…then FALL ALLERGIES struck.
NOW that colds have been flung off and the allergies have settled a little and everyone who would comment has done so, WE HAVE RESULTS!
THE WINNER: ANYTHING! LOL! You guys are the best!! THE WINNER-WINNER: THE MOON!
You, my kind, wonderful, kick-ass readers have spoken! I’mm’a have to do a thorough reread complete with note-taking and whatever level of focus my fog-brain will allow, but thankfully I still “feel” the “tone” that first sparked the story. The loneliness they both felt at first, that disconnected feeling they unknowingly shared, that “I have everything I thought I wanted but now that I have it, it’s just not…right” realization that, yeah, they both unknowingly share… Hopefully FLM will agree with me and direct my fingers into heroic feats of FINALLY FINISHING THE STORY.
Is this where I’m supposed to admit that I had the beginnings of a new plot the other day? I mean, it might have been the cold meds or oxygen deprivation or something but…yeah, I had to stop myself from typing the premise out of respect for all the UNFINISHED stories that litter my past like bad decisions made at 2am in questionable Waffle Houses.
*sigh*
Those were the nights…
The 4-minute fries were great but the coffee was awful.
Your reviews, btw, made me smile. And made me a little weepy. All prayers, all good vibes and juju, all good thoughts, are ABSOLUTELY appreciated more than you know. You guys really are a cut above – the true cream of the reader crop. Thank you for that. I don’t deserve it, but I really do appreciate it.
So…gimme a bit to do the reread/notes/playing with the brain-fog, then we’ll see if the FLM returns to roost for a bit. Hey, it’s getting colder (shockingly fast at that!) so maybe she’ll wanna rest on a warm shoulder??
At least it’d give my cats something to stare at…well, one would. The other would want food. Again. The dog would just give me a judgemental side-eye and go back to sleep. She’s old; she’s allowed.
Ok, time to wrap up the meanderings – thank you again for your kindness, your patience, and your support. You all deserve the best and most snuggliest vampires who clean houses AND do the windows!
~Mer
PS: Now watch, I’ll get part-way through Moon then BAM – inspiration will strike for a totally different story… FLM is truly not a dependable figment…
But I couldn’t figure out how to do one with the wonky layout WP has now.
So, write in the comments (*sigh* if the comment section is actually showing right then – if not, the just refresh until it magically appears…) WHAT STORY YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO WORK ON FIRST.
Yeah, you heard me.
I can PROMISE nothing, nothing at all, but I am definitely interested in finding out which of my WIPs y’all would most like my muse to visit if that FLB will agree to do so.
She hasn’t been around in quite some time what with death and amputations and brain fog and pandemics and personal losses and the fact that, yeah, she’s a flighty little bitch and I don’t blame her a bit... But I need something pleasant to concentrate on. No idea if it will do any good, but hell, nothing else is working.
Whu-whaa??
See, despite my best efforts and prayers and pleas to the universe, my life is going even further down into that damnable shitter – “money” has plummeted to the point that I’m not sure which bill I can pay this month and that gut-twisting panic is taking “mood” and “health” right along with it.
Talk about a hay ride from hell. DO. NOT. RECOMMEND.
Now that I know all too well how cold and cruel the world really is, I desperately need to force my attention elsewhere, especially while I still have power, to try to keep from focusing solely on what a pathetic waste my life is. Keep in mind that whichever fic “wins”, lol, will have to be reread with a fine-toothed comb (why did I make some of my plots so twisty??), so please don’t expect anything soon. Or at all…I know I’m worthless. (FREE ADVICE: DON’T HAVE BAD HEALTH AND BRAIN FOG IN AMERICA.)
And on a totally different and completely unrelated note,anybody got any Cliff’s Notes on my stories?? Inability to focus and concentrate have severely impacted my ability to even remember my plot weavings, much less keep them straight, and THAT RIGHT THERE is the main reason my writing has suffered.
So, if you still have a favorite WIP fic after All This Time (and OMG thank you if you do!!!), please let me know in the sometimes-appearing comments section which one it is, and if there are more than one, please list them in order.
And know that you guys are the best readers a writer could ever have. Yes, I admit it, I still go back and read y’all’s comments and reviews when my soul needs a little nudge. I also know that I’ve lost a lot of readers/followers over time because I’m no longer a productive member of the fanfom, and that’s totally understandable, but to those of you who have stuck by me, who have reached out and become genuine friends with me despite my failures and giganto boxes of whine, you badasses are the fucking BEST. You deserve literal gold for putting up with me and I heartfully appreciate every single one of you.
Ok, I’ll hush up now and wish y’all the best day. Hugs and obligatory PayPal link below as well as a hopefully-appearing comment box…if it decides to show…
So yesterday I got the latest sooper-dooper Covidious booster – Pfizer Bivalent, for those of you who are interested – and today, buddy I’m feelin’ it. It’s NOT horrible – fatigue, coughing, runny nose, ARM SORE AS FUCKTATOES, and kind of bleary eyed, but NOT HORRIBLE.
Honestly, the reaction thus far is only ever-so-slightly more than the usual booster blues.
These are MY reactions, though – your mileage may vary.
I don’t know about y’all but I keep hearing differing opinions about The State of Covid. Me? Until I’m told that Covid is dead and gone forever, if there’s a booster, I’mm’a be getting it. All I know is that Covid is alive and well and happily sprouting new variants – has NOT mysteriously disappeared along with common sense and all my money – so, yeah, if there be a booster, there be a me.
Now, I *was* going to get both the booster AND the flu vax, but my butt chickened out. Why? People on crutches do not need the dizzies. So that vax will happen in a couple weeks after all the booster blues have faded away into obscurity. I’ve only ever had very mild reactions to the flu shot and HAVE had a VERY VERY NASTY flu so, yeah, I want that flu shot…just want to be sure the reaction to it is as mild as possible.
Can’t be brave on crutches, y’all.
Obviously I’m a total supporter of safe and researched vaccinations. And, even if the vax may seem “too new”, if the effects of catching the disease are probably worse than any reactions to the vaccine, I’mm’a be baring my arm and doin’ the gimme.
You do you. Do your logical, common-sense’ical research, and make your own decisions about what’s best for you and yours. Just be sure to acquire your information from actually trusted sources and weigh your own pros and cons. Y’all are smart – use those luscious brains boxes!
I…don’t really have a lot more to say. Oh, ok…(*huffy huff*)…I could rant FOR DAYS on corporate greed, the recession nobody wants to admit we ‘Merrikinz are in, political…everything, the fact I can’t pay my leg off, the fact that I’m not emotionally prepared for Fall/Autumn (since I never actually had a winter, a spring, or a summer…), the fact my cats and doggie are getting older and I’m not emotionally prepared for that, either, but… Ok, I’ll shut up now.
Here’s what I want to know:
HOW ARE YOU DOING??? Are YOU prepared for the season’s change? Are you and yours doing ok? How are you guys handling the continuation of Covid, of the flu season, of all the germs that breed in schools/work/etc? Are you eating as healthily as you can given how bad food prices have soared with no relief in sight? Are you taking your antihistamines for seasonal allergies? ARE YOU HYDRATED ENOUGH??
(WP here seems to have problems keeping the COMMENTS section open, so if it’s not showing, refresh or come back later. I do – always – have it engaged, so if it’s not there, glare at WP.)
We’re a community, y’all. Sure, we’re 99% online-only but it still counts. I care about you and, for reasons I will never understand, you care about me. So, let’s share our tips and tricks and support, our recipes and gripes, and our wins and losses and triumphs.
Share, yo.
Hearts and kittens and puppies (and awesomely cute baby bats!),
~Mer
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Obligatory PAYPALlink because, ugh, I do still need thehelp
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Like it? (I knew you had great taste!) Spread The Word:
Hello again you fine gorgeous human-like beings! Just thought I’d plop into your inbox with greetings and salutations and probably some saltine cracker crumbs.
Sorry about that.
Did you know you can dust away crumbs with an unused paint brush?
Well, now ya do…Lol, ok, so, show of hands (like I’mm’a be seein’ that…I’m not a stalker!) —
How many of you automagically change into pajamas once you’re home for the day? How many of you STAY in your jammies if you’re not leaving the house that day?
And by “pajamas/jammies” I mean “clothes comfy enough to sleep in that may in a former life have been fleece/jogging/yoga pants or shorts, worn/stained-but-good/ok-has-holes-but-still-works tee- & other shirts”.
Or do you change into “2nd tier” – comfy clothes that you don’t mind being seen in but that aren’t bedclothes/jammies?
I go both ways – jammies unless I’m expecting company.
Can’t say I’ve ever been into “haute couture” or whatever passes for high or spendy fashion – comfort is my jam, THEN appearance. Sure, I used to try to fit the occasion/blend with the room to at least some extent (well, I’d be the one in red in a room full of black but the “style” would be mostly the same), but it always had to be comfy.
And preferably with pockets.
By “comfy” I mean pretty much loose enough to swim in, lol – no restrictive waists (except for during high school but HIGH SCHOOL ANYTHING DOESN’T COUNT), no huge Vs that my boobs could escape through, nothing so tight that you could see panty or bra lines…but the clothing DID fit, for the most part.
Now? *PFFT* If it’s not stretchy, loose, and flowing, I ain’t wearing it. That said, once an item starts looking its age, all worn and frayed or misshapen or way-too-baggy, it becomes – you guessed it – PAJAMAS.
Well, sleep clothes by any other name.
And that is what I wear around the house (unless I’m expecting company and even then sometimes…). I see absolutely no reason to go ’round with a fitted waist or neckline in my own home (that I owe taxes on that I can’t afford).
Don’t wear shoes inside, either. Ok, I always wear one on the left “foot” to stabilize the fakey, but mah right foot? Socks.
So, back to the point of all this, what about you guys? Jammies? “Comfy clothes”? Or do you go rogue and keep your “outside clothes” on until bedtime? If you do, what is your secret??
Jammies rule.
UPDATE (if you’re bored):
Nothing wonderful. Have a smaller socket now, can’t say if this newest one is better or worse, but it’s there. The remaining leg below the knee is shrinking right along like it’s supposed to. Yay? Phantom pain still exists.
I’m tellin’ ya, if you want to “work on your patience and endurance”, just lose a leg…
Ok, don’t. DO NOT RECOMMEND. Course, dating an egotistical, hydrogenated, flatulent, high-sodium pretty-boy boyfriend would test your patience and endurance, too, but you’d get to keep your leg. Been there, done that, no repeats.
Your mileage may vary…
COOKING ADVENTURES:
Ok, I love potato salad but I haven’t been physically able to MAKE potato salad since…well, June 2021. So, I was finally able to make it – not exactly the normal way b/c leg but…I DAMN WELL DID IT. I might have been out of sweet pickle relish and couldn’t use as many eggs as I’d like (have you seen egg prices lately???), but yeah, POTATO SALAD WAS MADE. AND EATEN. ALL OF IT. (But thankfully not all at once, lol.)
That was a big win I wanted to share with you glorious folks.
I still have some potatoes and even have the sweet pickle relish now and onions and a couple eggs left so I might just pull up my britches and do it again, too!
SO THERE.
Ha!
Yes, these days I *am* easily amused…
Now, I also tried to make my own hot dog chili. I just do NOT like the canned stuff anymore – they’ve all changed their recipes (cheapskates) so to me they all taste either bitter or slimy or both, so…
It did not turn out…like I wanted. It’ll be perfect for burritos though, but alas, not for topping a hot dog.
Bummer.
*shrug* Happy burrito’ing I guess!
The dog liked the blob I gave her, so there’s that.
Cooking for me is now a difficult, sometimes painful, usually frustrating chore. I do what I can but unfortunately “healthy” usually has to be replaced by “ease” or “convenience” or “cost”, and while that’s NOT good, it DOES help keep me fed, which at the end of the day is the win.
I *have* perfected the art of tossing a bag of microwave veggies in the box and nuking them, so there’s that, fwiw. That’s what I call “healthy convenience” that’s actually healthy AND convenient. Also, boring, but hey, veggies are veggies. Add a little salt and butter or oil and “ranch” or “italian dressing” seasoning and a fork an’ call it done.
Any kitchen wins/oopses you’d like to share with the class? I promise we’ll be laughing WITH you, never AT you. But I love celebrating your wins with you and if you have great (BUT SIMPLE!) recipes, I’m all ears!
OTHER STUFF:
Have you been having a good summer?
Are you ready for it to end or do you need a few more months?
Is it hot where you are? Are you staying cool? Hydrated? Deodorized and de-frizzed? Dry? Heat is gross.
Got kids? Are they in school? Are you ready for all that mess to start back?
Do you have your in-car plug-in coffee makers primed and ready to go with a quantity of those little cups of coffee creamer?? Hey, it’s survival, y’all…
Some friends have posted their kid’s school lists – the humongo expensive lists of crap kids are expected to have on their person when they go to “free” public schools here in the States…and these lists are insane – and expensive.
It sure looks like all parents are pretty much expected to pay for lots of extra things for their kid to take to school that will actually be handed out to “the class”? Well, that’s what it looked like to me. “Free” public schools do not appear to actually be…free.
It’s insane.
Please be careful and take care of yourselves. A friend of mine with three kids had one kid catch COVID during the first week…who gave it to her hubby. The second kid caught it during their second week. Third kid has amazing immune powers. (Their district apparently started on the early side.) I’ve heard varying reports that COVID is quickly on its way to becoming endemic (like flus) but Idk. I haven’t studied virology or the history of pandemics. I just know that too many people got too sick and too many people died or lived but with insane complications (like me – long covid sucks).
Ok, that’s depressing – tell me something good!
I’m sure I have other things I wanted to toss into this word salad but since I’ve forgotten them (brain fog), post what YOU want to talk about!
Take care and all the hugs in the world to anyone who needs them,
~Mer
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Obligatory “Prosthetic Leg and Medical Bill Fundraiser” PayPal link:
**COMMENTS ARE ENABLED but I’ve heard the comment box sometimes isn’t showing up for some, so..refresh? Idk what the deal is – all I can say is that comments are enabled on my end. Keep trying though because I want to hear what you say!!**
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Greetings, salutations, and coffee, y’all! Thought I’d check in and see how everything’s going.
Here (in the US) we’ve just waded through Mother’s Day. Yay. For all of y’all whose moms have passed on, I totally get it – mine escaped Earth’s gravitational pull back in 2011. I miss her; I envy her, annnnd I miss her. We did NOT have the best relationship, at least, not all the time – we were two entirely different people ( for one thing I’m Taurus and she was Sagittarius) and that’s not always a good thing – but I did love her dearly and she loved me back dearly.
We had jokes, lol, and what I would describe as “verbal memes” (way before memes were a thing), though, and she was wicked smart in the strangest ways. But she’s gone, been gone now for years, yet it’s still like it was yesterday that we were joking about the 4:10 to Yuma.
So I totally get it when people don’t want to “celebrate” Mother’s Day for some reason. Maybe your mom wasn’t anything near what could be described as a GOOD mom. Maybe she just plain didn’t exist. Innumerable family dynamics, and non-family situations, exist and it would be far beyond my grasp to even try to include them all. Just know that you are seen and loved.
And the moms who never had a chance to BE a mom whether because their body didn’t cooperate or the blending of that particular set of genetics just wasn’t viable, or maybe Strange Things Happened and it for whatever reason didn’t…happen. And the wanna-be moms who’ve just never met the person they’d like to be “the dad” – that’s me, still haven’t found someone whose genetics I’d like to immortalize.
I also feel very badly for the moms who have lost their children – including those moms whose children didn’t make it safely into the world in the first place. You’re still a mom – even if the miscarriage (and what a lackadaisical word for devastation!) happened at X-number of weeks…YOU ARE STILL A MOM and I grieve for your loss.
And about Cat moms and Dog moms and, hell, Ferret and Birdie and Snake and Guinea Pig and and and moms – yeah, I totally get that, too. I know exactly how strong that love is between a dog and her/his girl and a cat and her/his girl. Our pets ARE family. So they totally count, too.
So there’s that…another (sometimes it feels really forced) “holiday” in the midst of 2020-2022 crisis. Because we need MORE potential drama, right? Ugh. I really envy you guys who still have both parents and you get along well enough to chat with them often. You’re lucky. **imaginary hair flip in your direction**
I don’t like “forced” holidays. I get it – mothers and fathers (the good ones) should be honored and “giving them their day” is a way to do that, but it shouldn’t have to be made into “a day” for it to happen. But it is a way to remind the forgetful that it needs to happen, so there’s that I guess.
Anyway, update time on me, I guess – you can skip if you want…I’m NOT that interesting. What I am, though, is…still broke, still hurting, still on crutches, still aggravated by an insane number of inconveniences and frustrations and UGHs. So, nothing’s changed. I still to this day need about $3,000 to finish paying for the crappy-fitting leg (yup, even the cheapie ones aer SO expensive that I still owe THAT much and they are wanting their money), and that’s not including all the money I still owe on all the other stuff.
May I respectfully suggest NOT being un-wealthy in America? It’s not a nice country to be broke in. Pretty scenery in places, though, for whatever that’s worth.
And – y’all can join in the bitching now if you want – as in all countries I suspect, food prices are SOARING, even dog and cat food prices are at extortionate levels now. Even the price of used-to-be-cheap CHICKEN is astronomical. I have 2 cats and a doggie – they are NOT vegetarian…they’re animals who eat meat…ugh. It’s like the capitalism system actively wants them (and me) to starve.
I could see businesses/corporations/WTFE raising prices SOME to meet the higher prices of shipping/transportation, gas, costs of ingredients, etc., but not to this point. But that’s just me. I want everyone to survive as best they can so they can thrive later. Silly me.
So, how’s it going with YOU? Are you guys making it ok? Do we need to create a commune type situation where we can all live together (but separately…I snore and my dog doesn’t really like other people…) and share meals and household tasks and tell stories around campfires at night with marshmallows and gaze at the stars and have coffee and cake and bacon and pancakes and eggs together in the mornings?
Sounds like a plan to me!
Or I could just be hungry.
Love and hugs and only light swats with the crutch from me,
~Mer
PS: the up-to-date Paypal fundraiser link reclines below – feel free to click if you want!
This is just a “the old fundraiser expired so I had to create a new one so here’s the new link” update. Said link is oh-so-very-conveniently located below…for, um, your convenience and, um, stuff.
Oh, wait – I *DO* have a teeny tiny update – I’m using a smaller “liner” now! That’s a good thing – what needs to happen over time is that the “cut off point” of my affected leg (I detest the word “stump” – I AM NOT A CUT TREE!) has to “mature” which means that the flesh at and a ways above the “cut off point” needs to atrophy + release fluids + become more compressed. This takes forever. And yes, it can be pretty painful.
The liner is the silicone/gel/whatever thing that goes next to my skin and has the pin at the bottom that clicks into place to attach and hold the prosthetic leg to me. It’s made of tacky, kind-of-adhesive’y material so that, if it fits properly, it can’t slide or be pulled off my leg. It’s stretchy up to a point but is meant to have a pretty firm hold. It’s what attaches the mechanicals to the fleshy bits.
Compression is good. It’s what helps provide a stable base for walking. I’ve already compressed (shrunk) out of the first “socket” (the wide top part that my leg end goes down into). That first one was huge in large (ha ha) part due to post-traumatic swelling and wound insult, water retention, and because life. My leg guy was kind of shocked by how quickly I shrunk out of it. So anyway that was replaced but the liner…wasn’t.
It’s a money thing – NONE of this stuff is cheap no matter how badly it’s needed.
But…about 2 weeks ago there was no choice – the worn-out, out-of-shape old liner HAD to go. The gaps and ill-fit meant that, because it was so big and stretched out now, it technically COULD lose hold and, unlikely but potentially, release both itself and therefore the rest of the leg. Again, highly unlikely but still a relevant concern, plus the ill-fit made the leg/leg interface even more “wobbly” and “squishy”…not good for stable walking. (Ok, imagine a too-large condom on a less-endowed “staff”…it would still kind of grab onto the skin but wouldn’t necessarily STAY there no matter how much the guy tries to claim it’d fit…)
So eeny way, that’s a yay for me! Yes, there’s still tons of stuff I need or that would make my life at least a little easier to bear, but I will absolutely take the happies when I can find them.
Especially when it means being able to ditch the badly fitting leg condom with the pin in the bottom… *snort*
So, that’s my li’l update. Oh, and the convenient link is conveniently plopped below (have to re-do it because it expires after a little while). Have a great rest of March? (It’s strangely cold here…I don’t mind a bit!)
Do you know why I’m not currently working on any of my WIPs? It’s because…let’s be honest here…I would end every single one of them in two chapters or less with a story-specific version of “Ugh, Sookie, your farts stink!”/”Well, Eric, your skin is cold!” and then they would all part ways with varying degrees of ennui/disgust/eye-rolling and continue living long boring/short boring lives.
It would be a travesty but that’s the mood I’m in, man, and these characters deserve hella better than that mess. Well, except Beehl.
As an example of how things are going, I’ve written out directions on How To Scramble Eggs (when you have to use 2 crutches and 1 fake leg). It’s up if you’re bored enough to read it.
My toilet may now be fixed (WHEW!!) but I’m three debit collection agencies and one very very part-time helper short of being anywhere near happy with my one-legged lot in life. I really liked the last lady who helped some by taking out the trash/rolling the can to the curb and doing once-weekly grocery pick-ups for me (I still don’t have a ramp to even exit my house so I can’t even take the trash TO the trash can much less go get then bring in groceries.) but she has mysteriously disappeared for a week now. And she really liked my cats, too. I hope she’s ok but there’s been no contact at all so I’m worried about her but also worried about how to get things done around here that I physically can’t do.
Although it’s apparently not worth anything, I do have a resume up on Indeed and floating around in various places on the interwebs and have applied to (but received absolutely no responses from…) INNUMERABLE places. It has to be remote/work-from-home for obvious reasons and it’s becoming glaringly obvious that the Universe despises me.
I have skills! I promise!! Why can’t I get anyone to see that?????
I’m sure I’d be useful to…someone…somehow…I mean…I can proofread…check for content…enter data…blink slowly at cats…
Brb, gonna cry a bit. Feeling useless is no fun.
Plus I have ALLERGY EYES.
ALLERGY. EYES.
Do not recommend…
But, yeah, that’s why I’m not even TRYING to write – Eric, Sookie, Godric…hell, even Jason wouldn’t appreciate it. Andre probably would, though – he’d approve of my “off’em all” inclinations. He’s kind of an ass like that sometimes. It’s why we don’t normally go to him for advice on such things.
Yes, that’s him with the evil snicker in the background. (“We can hear you, Andre…”)
He said that he doesn’t care – murder/angst/torture ARE in his blood for a reason – but he also reminded me to post that obligatory PayPal link again. <<—– There, does that count? I figure y’all are as tired of seeing that spendy-ass’d prosthetic leg as I am.
Is it bad that I still despise Beehl? Andre said he doesn’t mind, that nobody likes him, but Andre isn’t always the best judge of acceptable behavior. I like that about him. Our outlooks coincide frighteningly often…hell, we’re probably related…
Ok, I’ll hush with the nonsensical rambling but you don’t have to – ramble all ya want in the comments. Y’all are great and I love reading what you have to say! I can’t believe it’s March already – how’s it going for you find folks? I hope you’re kickin’ ass and fuck taking names in whatever you’ve got going on. We all deserve some strong wins right about now.
Squeeezy hugs and Andre-esque advice to everyone,
~Mer
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I’ve had to update (ok, “redo” since it expired) the fundraiser for my prosthetic leg and the mountain of medical bills incurred when the hospital decided I didn’t need Leftie anymore, so instead of frantically updating my past posts with the new link, I’ve gone full-on lazy-brazen and decided to just post it in a new, you know, post.
THE VET BOARDING BILLS! YES, I have finally – miraculously! thankfully! – paid those off!! If I could dance I’d totally be dancing right now!! AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!! Srsly, thanks to donations and what tiny-little I had saved up, I have finally paid off the truly ludicrous, lube-free vet-boarding fees. (Talk about highway robbery, y’all, srsly. Three pets being boarded over two and a half months made that office literally THOUSANDS…and one cat came back with MORE MATS. Fuckers.) It was a necessity at the time, though, since I had no one to care for them.
But I still have a long, looong way to go. Anesthesiologists, some doctor who looked at something once, another doctor who looked at an x-ray or something, a different doctor who, Idk, did…something, apparently…and another doctor who…oh, and the extreme cost of a fake leg. Your jaws would drop if you saw how much greedy companies want for a metal and plastic leg. And I got the cheapest option, too – it’s not like I’m a ballerina or triathlete. I just wanna be able to walk my dog, wash the dishes, sweep, maybe even get OUT of the house and buy some groceries. *sigh*
I don’t even have a ramp TO get out of my house. There are ramps on Amazon that WOULD work but GOOD GRIEF they want blood money for them.
So, yeah, the fight goes on. And on. Annnnnd on…
Hang on whilst I sigh despondently. I’m getting far too good at doing that.
Oh, and my toilet has decided that NOW is a GREAT time to become clogged. Clogged. Because why not? I’ve tried plunging (try THAT with a fake leg…) and I’ve tried an enzyme “pro-environment” declogger. Nothing works. Know any free plumbers, anyone? Cause I sure don’t but I guess I get to start calling around tomorrow. Who needs groceries and electricity anyway, right?
If I could get down on the floor I would be hiding under my bed. But I can’t so I’ll sit here and whine at you guys.
Send Toilet-Unclogs-Itself vibes??
Y’all are a great bunch – thank you so much for listening. I try not to whine too much but sometimes life enjoys smacking me around just a LEEEETLE too much.
~Mer
(Also, srsly, thank you so much for your time and patience – you guys truly are the best readers a writer could ever have! I love y’all so much!)
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Yes, you heard that right – after a hiatus of HOW FREAKIN’ LONG I have managed to write A Thing. I know! Shocked me, too!I’ll add it to the site proper-like later…if I remember how. WP changed w/o my permission, y’all. There has been cussin’ involved.
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An Eric and Sookie Valentine Short
A/N: This one-shot is set in no particular time, no particular story/Universe – it’s just a one-off where there’s no Beehl, no Fellowship of the Ri…erm Sun, no Sams or Alcides or Fairies or whatever runnin’ around clouding the issue… It’s just Eric and Sookie spending time together getting to know each other without interference. (The way it should have been.)
This is probably dumb but it’s my first attempt at writing in HOW MANY YEARS NOW? *bangs head – THE FLM’S HEAD – on desk* Do hope y’all enjoy it anyway. It’s for you.
Enormous kudos go out to our lovely, patient, and absolutely amazing ○Kleannhouse○ for taking time out of her day to chisel and bang this mess into something readable. Naturally I then had to go mucking about in it again afterwards so ALL mistakes are entirely mine.
○○○
Someone stomped into the kitchen.
That was Sookie’s first clue.
The second clue was that they’d apparently entered via the back door instead of making an entrance via the official front door.
The third clue was a soft thump as something landed somewhere in her kitchen.
Something was up.
What the hell is he doing, she muttered to herself with a glare toward the kitchen. The timing and the lack of readable thoughts told her the kitchen-invader was a vampire. The fact that they’d came in the back door meant they were either a regular visitor or at least felt at home there, so she wasn’t concerned about her safety…yet.
Wait a…
Eric.
She figured it had to be Eric.
Stomping around… Things thumping… Bad mood, maybe? Impatience? Something.
He’d better not break any of gran’s crockery.
She sighed. Here she was all wrapped up nice and warm and comfy on the sofa with a well read and reread book in her hands and an old movie playing on the possibly even older tv (the sound was down so she could concentrate on her book, of course; it was more for background noise than anything) and tall, blond, and handsome had to come stomping around in her kitchen of all places (why the kitchen?) and disturb her peace and quiet!
It wasn’t that unusual for Eric to stop by, though.
In fact, here lately he’d been dropping by oh-so-casually about every third night or so.
Sometimes they had lively discussions where it seemed he delighted in getting her riled up over this or that, but a lot of times they’d just sit and watch whatever was on late-night tv or maybe pop in a movie.
To date he’d somehow managed to increase her old-movie collection by about quadruple.
She had to admit it was kind of nice, sometimes…ok, usually, and he always acted differently to how he’d act in that silly club of his.
But what was he doing here now and in her kitchen at that?
With a begrudging huff she marked her place in her book and started to unwrap herself from her cozy throw-cocoon but then stubbornly decided to wait it out.
If he wanted to talk to her, he could come find her.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have manpire senses at his disposal.
Then she heard the freezer door, two cabinet doors, and the refrigerator door open and shut.
Then – was that…what did he need with…?
Book forgotten, Sookie dislodged her wrappings as she slowly sat up, her concentration focused on the odd noises coming from her kitchen.
When she heard what had to be eggs being cracked – she’d lived with her gran far too long to not know what that sound meant – she couldn’t stand it anymore and had to investigate.
Barefoot, in baggy sweatpants and a half-tucked t-shirt, she padded to the kitchen door and…stared.
Eric, tall blond Viking vampire that he was, was standing at the counter glaring at egg goo as it dripped from his hand.
Apparently he’d missed the bowl that looked like it had flour in it.
A subsequent glance about the kitchen told her that no, it wasn’t flour. On the table was an opened box of chocolate cake mix, three tubs of store-bought frosting, and a container of strawberries.
“Eric, what in the world are you doing?”
He looked up at her as she dashed to the kitchen sink and grabbed a paper towel and didn’t speak until she’d wiped the recalcitrant egg from his hand and the counter.
“Tonight starts Valentine’s Day,” he stated as though that clarified anything.
“Yeah, and?”
She pulled him over to the sink and pointed at the tap for him to wash his hands, then tossed away the paper towel’d bundle of squished egg.
“I have to oversee the club tomorrow night as it will be packed.”
He didn’t seem pleased by this fact, and Sookie had to snort. She knew exactly how some of Fangtasia’s Finest would dress and act.
To her surprise, he continued.
“Pam assures me this holiday is important especially to females who like to receive things that they like, so I have bought you a cake. You like cake.”
He nodded with purpose.
“Now I have to make it.” He glanced down at his now-clean hands.
“Somehow.”
Once he was back at the bowl, however, he stared down at said egg…then at the eggs already in the bowl, then back to the egg in his hand.
Shaking her head and trying to control the huge grin demanding face-space, Sookie walked over and held her hand out.
While Sookie stood there with her jaw dropped, Eric sped back to the refrigerator and withdrew another egg.
“Here, gimme that.”
With unashamed relief, Eric gladly placed the dratted egg into her hand.
No more was said as she expertly cracked the egg and added the remaining ingredients until she handed Eric a wire whisk.
“Here, give this a good stir,” she instructed the bemused blond giant while she dragged out cake pans and set the oven to pre-heat.
She figured his vampire whisking skills would be better than hers for a lighter, fluffier cake.
He did as instructed and watched with clear curiosity as she buttered the cake pans and then put flour in them…only to knock it right back out.
Humans, he thought for the billionth time, were weird. Why did she put flour in pans then dump it out? And what was with the butter?
This cake-making proposition was becoming more unfathomable by the minute.
And it had all started out so simple, too. Pam had remarked…remarkably casually for her… that human females liked receiving things on Valentine’s Day and that they liked receiving things that they actually liked.
Eric knew Sookie liked cake, and that she liked ice cream. The ice cream – butter pecan because he recognized the scent – was easy enough to procure and he had even remembered to place it in the freezer part of her refrigerator when he’d first arrived.
It was the cake that was proving…untrustworthy.
Sure, he had inspected the baked and decorated cakes available in the market but they were all garish and weird, and they smelled like acrid chemicals. When an elderly lady nearby had mentioned to her bedraggled cabbage-scented companion that cake mixes might be a better idea, he had silently followed them to that section of the store only to stare in dismay at the numerous offerings.
How many types of chocolate cake mix did humans need?
With an eeny meeny miny moe, catch the Loki by the toe he’d grabbed the chocolatiest looking mix only to then be confounded by the concept and vast number of cake frostings in small containers.
To err on the side of caution, he’d selected three of the blasted things in different flavors – dark chocolate, cherry vanilla, and butter pecan – then fled to the fresh fruits section of the store.
At least he recognized strawberries.
Sookie calling his name interrupted his musing.
“Eric, that’s enough. That cake’s gonna be ten feet tall if you don’t stop.”
With a laugh she took the bowl from his hands, placed the whisk on a plate that had mysteriously appeared on the counter, and proceeded to divide the cake mix between two of the weirdly floured pans.
Once everything was in the oven baking, she grabbed the whisk and he thoroughly enjoyed watching her clean the lucky thing with her tongue.
“Stop starin’,” she said with a blush as she turned away and walked to the sink.
(The tiniest of wee giggles came from the top back corner of the kitchen. The little spider had been watching since the Vampire had hurriedly stomped into the kitchen and then had the audacity to flip on the overhead lights.
Once fully and reluctantly awakened – spidering was hard and it’s not like the tastiest fliers were nocturnal, damn it – he’d settled in to watch the cold-blooded invader be beaten by…an egg.
An egg.
And now the blond giant was pouting at a kitchen tool.
It was proving to be an entertaining night.)
“So, what’s with all the cake frosting? And the strawberries?”
Sookie hoped he didn’t notice what had to be a cheeky grin – of course she knew the date. She had to give him credit, though, since he was definitely putting some effort into whatever it was he was doing. But three tubs of frostings? For one cake?
Eric shrugged.
“I purchased three of them hoping you would like at least one. And the strawberries… Well, you like them. There is also ice cream in the freezer,” he added proudly.
“Ice cream?”
He could almost see her ears perking up at that.
Sookie darted over to the freezer and, sure enough, there sat butter pecan ice cream in all its delicious glory.
With a squeal and Eric-pleasing haste, Sookie was soon sitting at the table with a bowl, a spoon, an ice cream scoop, and the all-important ice cream.
Knowing that people should be praised when they did a good job, she grinned at the Viking sitting at her table trying not to look too smug.
“Thank you, you did good!”
It wasn’t long before Eric was jealous of the spoon, too.
He sat quietly watching as she obviously enjoyed the treat, and pondered why it was important to him to do these things for her, to please her.
Sure, he easily acknowledged that he’d enjoyed her company more and more these past couple of months, and it hadn’t taken him long to realize he would rather visit with her at this old house than in the club he was enjoying less and less these nights.
A loud, malodorous all-you-can-drink buffet was handy and all, but at the end of the night he still had to shower off the smell as he did not want that miasma to follow him to bed.
Sookie’s house, though, smelled…pleasing. Yes, there were odors of “old lady” and baking and wood and so forth, but Sookie’s sweet scent overrode it all.
His eyes flicked around the kitchen as Sookie bit into whatever a butter pecan was. Perhaps it should be strange that he would be so oddly comfortable in the old farmhouse, but for whatever reason, he was. It was quiet and clean, and certainly much more intimate than the club where he had to maintain a false front before minions and dinner.
He found the differences pleasing.
Eric gave a mental shrug; nothing about this had to make sense, did it? Not really, no matter how often Pam would snicker at him as he left to visit “the little blonde fairy”.
His thoughts were interrupted when Sookie reached for the three cans of frosting.
“Why these three?”
Sookie thought Eric’s indignation was cute.
“Well, you made good choices. This one,” she held up the butter pecan cake frosting, “will be good on another cake but these two will be perfect. We can put some of the cherry vanilla between the layers and cover the whole thing in the dark chocolate. That’ll work out great.”
“Do you know how many different types of cake coverings there are? I barely narrowed it down to these!”
He quirked a brow. “Some of the cherry vanilla? What will you do with the rest?”
“Eat it on pancakes later,” she answered with a grin.
The ageless Viking nodded wisely. He had no clue what she meant but she was smiling and that was good.
They chatted while Sookie put away the ice cream and washed the few dishes now dirtied. Afterward she made herself some coffee and handed him a warmed blood beverage he tended to stock in her refrigerator.
Eventually the cake was baked and cooled and deemed ready to frost.
Absolutely out of his depth, Eric stared in confusion at the off-set knife-looking tool now in his hand.
“Here,” she said as she handed him the cherry vanilla frosting. “Grab up a bunch of frosting with the spreader then smear it around there,” she pointed to the top of the bottom layer of cake.
He hadn’t minded leveling off the cake – using knives was in his blood warm and cold both, after all – but…well…smearing?
“I would rather smear this on you,” he replied faux-seriously with a smirk.
“Eric, hush. Wait, hang on a sec, let me drizzle some of this Maraschino cherry juice on the cake first.”
He thought the red syrup smelled far too much of chemicals to be healthy but stood aside anyway.
Then, he slathered. After leveling the top layer of this convoluted cake and allowing Sookie to repeat the drizzling to her pleasure, he found himself covering the entire cake with the dark chocolate frosting.
He decided he was, in fact, quite good at it.
Naturally.
In short order and absolutely unwilling to wait, Sookie served herself a slice of the newly made cake and tossed a handful of hulled and rinsed strawberries on her plate.
The evening had felt pretty much like every other evening Eric had spent with her – fun, easy going, flirting both gentle and lurid, some teasing, lots of conversation about things that mattered and things that didn’t…but it was also a bit more, somehow.
Sure, there was unexpected cake.
The cake was delicious.
But…it was a Valentine cake, one that she’d had to help make at that, but still, he’d thought of her and brought it to her and had even tried to at least start making it.
For her.
She looked over at Eric and, yes, he looked a bit smug at his obvious success, but he mostly looked comfortable, relaxed – he looked right at home.
A glance at the clock showed it was a little after 1:00 am and so, with a soft smile and warm eyes, she reached over and covered his hand with hers.
“Thank you for a great Valentine’s Day, Eric. You did a great job and I loved it.”
Slowly a true, real smile graced his lips as he turned his hand to hold hers.
“I still want to smear the frosting on you.”
○
(The spider tsked and shoved his weary head – hey, spidering was hard work! – into the corner of the wall. Great, the Viking had scored big with Ms. Landlady…great…wonderful…now if they’d just turn off that damn light and go watch a movie…in the other room already!)
○
All tsking spider-creatures aside, that’s it, folks. It’s meant to be a brief “scene” showing This Eric and This Sookie takin’ the slow route toward getting to actually know each other. I hope it didn’t suck too badly – my writing fingers are incredibly rusty, but I wanted to give you guys something for you time and support. I’m incredibly lucky for being able to write for the best fandom in the fanfic Universe.
In other news, well, there ain’t none, so there’s that. Excepting the above, FLM is still being her aggravating self but I am dearly hoping that “this” calls her sweet li’l ass back home ’cause it truly aggravates and frustrates me that I’ve left stories unfinished. I know – it’s not like I ever planned for my life to go swirling down the cosmic toilet and that *waves hand vaguely* things happen, but still. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to the stories, either. (My bad, totally, for having more than one going at a time instead of holding them until they’re completed BEFORE posting, but I’m not that organized…or sane…)
Anyway, I hope you liked it and feel free to comment below. Hope you have a great Valentine’s/Galentine’s/Palentine’s/Pawentine’s Day! 💗❤️💗
So this post is meant to accomplish three things: words, link, then more words from yours truly. (There ended up being more words than I’d thought there would be, lol – sorry?)
WORDS: First of all I need to tell y’all that your kind thoughts, words, hopes, and well wishes absolutely mean the world to me. I should probably be embarrassed by how often I click over to reread the written evidence of your kind souls, but I’m not. When life gets me down, which it does with amazing and sad regularity, your words lift me up; they make me smile; they make me want to overcome the latest struggles of the day with a grin of “bloody-minded” determination.
Your words have brought me to tears and I ain’t even kidding. It’s a good thing (ok, so my house is dusty but that’s irrelevant, right?). You really are a fantastic group of people.
LINK: A very kind reader let me know a bit ago that the fundraiser link has expired. The thing with PayPal Fundraisers is that they only last a specific amount of time before they auto-close. At that time a new fundraiser has to be created. I’m not technologically sure I can go back and update the old links so, um, here:
A srsly huge batch of kudos to the lovely reader who brought this to my attention. Mongo hugs and thanks, TD!
MORE WORDS: Gotta say, so far this year doesn’t look remarkably different to the past two years. COVID is still covid’ing right along, people are still having to be hospitalized, hospital room and nursing shortages are getting worse in waves here and there, people are still dying, social distancing and viral-aversion rules still apply, stores are still low on the oddest things (saltine crackers?? – weird), that feeling of impending doom is still…dooming right along…
*sigh*
But you know what? We’re humans and we’re…inventive. Creative. Sometimes we’re as dumb as mossy rocks and sometimes we’re as brilliant as the night stars over dark fields. We’re not perfect – more “perfectly imperfect” than anything – but we’ve got guts and determination and a strong sense of “fuck that shit, I ain’t goin’ down without a fight, dammit”. So we’re gonna make it, somehow, some day. We’ll get there.
What we’re experiencing now is most likely the transition to a new normal. I detest that phrase, seems like a cop-out to excuse the bullshit of the moment, but in the long-run, we ARE in the transition phase to a “new normal”, and you know what? That’s ok. If I were healthier, I would be using this time to clean my house of the clutter from my parents’ marriage and my old apt…I’d be organizing, tossing, sorting, donating…all that good stuff. I’d be examining what I actually WANTED to do when avoiding deadly viruses isn’t the Order of the Day. I’d be dreaming of places I wanted to visit or visit again, making lists of the friends I value and making plans to meet up (even though mine all live in my computer), stuff like that.
This is a time for self-focused action, reflection, creation, organization, and other words ending in -ion that bespeak movement, shedding baggage, going forward, plopping down roots (mobile and not) to build on in the future. This is the time to clear off the dust, cut up those empty delivery boxes, take the dog (and, hey, the cat, too, if you’re brave and have lots of Band-aids…) for long walks, writing crappy poetry, changing out that old drawer hardware, sitting near beautiful scenes and relishing the fact that YOU are YOU.
You are precious and are the only version of YOU that has ever or will ever inhabit our Universe. Appreciate yourself for who you are (I certainly do!); celebrate all the extraordinary aspects of yourself; change the bits you genuinely don’t like (fuck society’s perceptions and rules – you know what’s good and holy and right FOR YOU and striving for THAT is what you should do for yourself) – and fuck the rest.
It’s your life; live it as best you can. We are all in differing circumstances. Some of us CAN give the world a ginormous fuck-it annnnd some of us can’t. Some of us CAN flip off the rules and do what we want while others have to at least pretend to follow said rules until times are better. But through it all, you are the only one responsible for your thoughts. You are the gatekeeper to what goes into your heart and mind and soul, so make it FANTASTIC. You ARE beautiful! You ARE brilliant! You ARE capable and able to do the most amazing things with sometimes precious little to work with!! YOU are miracles made real with dirty feet and stars in your eyes!
Fuck the world – celebrate YOU.
And that, my friends, is a hell of a lot of words, lol. I hope they helped you to feel even a little of the kindness, comfort, and joy that your words have given me.
Y’all are the best.
~Mer
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This year, how about let’s drop all notions of silly things like “resolutions” or “plans” and just huddle in our jammies in a blanket fort (heated or a/c’d depending on your location) with a good book and a cup of something eminently sippable, yeah?
When I was a kid I was always soooo excited to stay up and “watch the ball drop” ’cause there was some sort of indefinable magic associated with The Coming of the New Year!!
Now? Yeah, not so much. There will be no resolutions or plans and staying up to watch the ball drop? Nah, probably not. Damn thing never bounces anyway…
New Year’s Day or Eve or whatever. Yay. So like is everything gonna ALLUVASUDDEN change because the date on the calendar did? And if it DID change, would it even be for the better??
Between all the old, new, and future COVID variants and associated and/or unassociated health, financial, and weather disasters… there are just too many disasters running rampant for me to have any hope for that. It ain’t like THOSE things will suddenly disappear.
*sigh*
Oh, 2022, I’d love to have oodles of faith in you and your magic but…
Srsly. Don’t even look it in the eye…
Eeenyway, what about y’all? What are your New Year’s plans? The night of, the day after, etc.? Are y’all gonna bother with resolutions and plans and hopes and such?
Also, here is a place to tell us about the GOOD things that happened to/for you this year. Acknowledging the bad is necessary for reality and mental health but we can ALSO acknowledge – and revel in – the good, too. I hope plenteous good things DID happen for y’all this year. Just because the universe flushed my life down the toilet doesn’t mean that I begrudge you your wins!
LAY IT ON ME, BAY’BE!
Did you kick his/her unworthy ass to the curb? Did you get that book/play/’script published? Did you finally pop that hidey-ass’d “bone deep” zit? Did you finally find a back-scratcher that actually works? Did you manage to get that one specific plant to bloom? Did you meet the love of your life?
TELL US! Let us celebrate with you!
To conclude whatever this was, I really do hope you beautiful, glorious wee beasties have a thoroughly amazing year in 2022.
I hope your personal Universes collectively decide to make up to you for all the bullshit of the last two years. I hope your coffers are filled and overflowing with currencies legal in your area, that all your health problems miraculously resolve themselves, that any family/friend problems do the same. I hope that all who are important to you accept you for the glorious entity that you are, and I hope that your imaginations work overtime to bring light and magic and resolutions and that maybe, just maybe, you will have a truly fantastic year.
I wish for these things myself, and hope that all our wishes come happily, completely, and irrevocably true.
Before I sign off on this wonderment of meandering, I want to thank you for your generosity. Your kindness whether in word or in deed, or in both, means the absolute world to me. When I say that every little/huge/tiny bit helps, I mean it. It means my cats and dog can eat; it means my lights are still on and that I still have internet. It means I owe a bit less to the vets and to the leg people, to the ambulance people and the anesthesia company and the… It means I slept a bit better those nights. It means that you are priceless and beyond wonderful.
Love, coffee, goodwill and a non-shitty 2022 to all,
Also a link but as a pic of my awesome furbebes(the ones who were boarded for over 2.5 months thus the humongo vet boarding fees since I had no one to care for them):
Go hug your pets. Now.
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First of all, y’all made me cry. I would say “shame on you” but these tears were weird…they were from happiness and gratitude and…and good things. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about them but between your amazingly kind words and generous donations, said weird tears were definitely warranted.
So, thank you. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for clicking on the PayPal link.
But most of all, thank you for caring. Thank you for reading my words and giving a damn about how it’s been going with me. The fact that you care enough to to help with words and donations warms my heart. Our specific community may have dwindled down some, but the hard-core warm souls are still right damn loud and proud. Heh, I knew y’all were the best readers a writer could ever have!
In case anyone missed my last post, this is what I’m talking about:
To my shocked amazement, I’ve recently received several comments from my beautiful readers enquiring as to my continued existence.
Y’all make my heart sing because I truly thought I’d been, well, not exactly forgotten – more like allowed to just fade away into the beloved ether.
I haven’t been posting anything because it would mainly be whining, complaining, bitching, moaning, and other words ending in -ing that denote general and specific problems with the Universe and y’all just do not need to be brought down by my problems – y’all probably have enough of your own without me adding to it.
But eeenyway…
Ok, fwiw, I still exist. I’m not the same person I used to be and, honestly, none of us are. We can’t survive in a global pandemic with all its accompanying mental, financial, physical, and emotional trials and tribulations and NOT be changed in some fundamental way. It will likely take YEARS for all of us affected by this bullshit to “unpack all this damn baggage”. The death of a beloved, and last, parent during all this simply makes every single thing infinitely worse.
I won’t wax lyrical (again) about how hard the loss of my last parent has been for me. If you still have your parents and care at all for them, hold them close, get their stories and voices and images down in some permanent way, and if you have already lost one or both…then you already know.
Now, let’s discuss current, relevant life matters that are likely understood by far too many of us if you want.
Tell me your stories.
You need a place to vent, a place to scream out into the Universe? Here ya go. Please, feel free to use my comments section to do just that. It might/might not change a damn thing but it CAN feel “a bit less bad” when you release your dramas, your heartbreaks, your aches and sorrows and trials to the Universe. Hell, use ALL CAPS if you want – it’s YOUR story.
Me? I’mma do it right here thus giving you wonderful beings a glimpse into my current life. Skip to the end if whining/horror bores you.
I’m broke. I desperately need a job (and the job market is so great, right), only, because of my shitty health, such a joyous thing is not easily attainable. I need medical care but…no insurance because no job. I need a work-at-home job because my health is not only laughable but also super-vulnerable – I catch the virus, I die. The end. The cats and dog starve because I live alone. Not a good scenario, right?
The vaccines are a lovely thing and I would get Shot 1 tomorrow if it were possible but, like many others, my county isn’t being given nearly enough vax – TL;DR = it’ll likely be April or, more likely, May before I can even get Shot 1.
I still haven’t gotten/likely won’t get that second stimulus payment (that supposedly exists) because of weird loopholes, either. Oh, and for the shit cookie on top, my car hates me and is possessed by an evil entity that interferes with that whole “battery and ignition” thing.
So, my life sucks ass because of money, health, red tape, stupidity, and evil car entities.
And the cats’ litter boxes need changing again.
Wheee!!
However, I am not alone in being handed a shit sandwich followed by a shit cookie. While some people probably are doing just fine and I am glad for them, there are multitudes of us who aren’t.
So, let’s commiserate. There is an odd power in unity even when it’s “just” online. I might not be able to help y’all financially but I can certainly give you a safe place to vent and hopefully some mental/emotional comfort, too.
Y’all truly are the best and definitely deserve all good things. Consider yourselves hugged and mauled by puppies and kittens (and baby dragons and unicorns if you’re into that sort of thing)(lol).
WP sure has changed, man…hope this posts right and that the comments section is actually still enabled!
Weird.
Love y’all!
~Mer
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Addicted to Godric...Eric...Andre...(Sevrin) 