ravena_kade: (Default)
ravena_kade ([personal profile] ravena_kade) wrote2025-06-01 08:12 pm

(no subject)

The wedding finally came and has gone. The wedding itself was beautiful. The Bride and Groom charming and appreciative of all their guests. The Priest had a lovely message and shared memories from his life that pertained to the ceremony of marriage.

The bad was the total chaos of the cousin. Np surprise. I have travelled with a sword group and those road trips were simple by comparison. I have volunteered with a friend and taken a dozen developmentally and physically challenged adults on trips and it was fine. This was just so ...so...sooooo.....

Friday we left to go from Boston to Worcester to the hotel. It's only 1. hours, but no one can follow directions. I know where I am going, but no one listens. When we arrived to a restaurant for lunch I help the 96 year old to the rest room. She soiled herself. I clean her up. Sigh, but it is what it is. Do it quietly and allow her dignity. Then the cousins ask me to take stroke cousin to the rest room. She can't open doors or sit down without help. We go in and I get her situated and she tells me she needs to be changed. She wet her undergarment 6 times in the trip. She had a clean on in her bag, but nothing to put the soiled one in. She just wanted to leave it on the floor...NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo. I swear the depends weighed 6 pounds... ad I got wet. Sigh. Then we go to the table, but the chairs are too high. They tried a booth but we couldn't fit her in. They had high tops but she couldn't fit in that either. Finally someone brought out a chair from the kitchen and it worked. Sigh. Every time we stopped for food for the weekend it was the same.

At the wedding they sat me in between the 96 year old and the stroke cousin. I cut up the 96 year olds steak for her. As I ate stroke cousin pushed my plate and pushed hers towards me and said "Cut my food". No please or thank you. And when she wanted things she would poke me with her cane. She also spilled coffee on my new coat.

Today was check out day. Dad and I were ready at 8 AM...we could have been out of there at 5 AM, but spinal surgery cousin was riding with us. We left at 10 AM did not get home until 4:40 PM because of bathroom breaks and stopping for lunch...where we had the chair issues again. I think I was frothing at the mouth when I got home.

I am truly surprised lead cousin hasn't snapped yet. She deals with this all the time. While I like to think I play well with others, in the end I am not a heard animal.
tielan: Avengers team (AVG - team)
tielan ([personal profile] tielan) wrote2025-06-02 10:22 am
Entry tags:

hockey report

Played two games yesterday, physically feeling okay - a bit achey, but that's nothing unusual.

team ruminations, more my thoughts than anything else )

--

Anyway, the second game (team 1, A grade) was hard in terms of feeling like I was good enough for it, but...easy in terms of being more like my comfortable style of play. Also, I was able to run for most of it in spite of having played a game an hour earlier. Fitness is going well, but the chop-and-change of Team 2 is just doing me in. So much back and forth.

I missed an otherwise 'sure' goal during the game - right place, got the ball, missed the goal! Too angled, it hit the outside of the goal, not the inside. GRARGH.

Would have been a really nice one, too, dammit.

But again, cross-goal tap-ins. More of what we need to do in Team 2.
stonepicnicking_okapi: otherwords (otherwords)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-06-01 08:19 pm
Entry tags:

My poem: #22

This week's poem prompt was a prose poem with guidelines and structure.

#22 by okapi

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw lights, cameras, overlarge plastic containers, and ants. It was as if earth, fine and granular, had become water, and water did not exist and had to be invented, yet air persisted in whipping and cried grainy tears when its waves did not crash like they should. You told me it was nothing special, but the war against the elements, the fans, the umbrellas, the misters and de-misters, told me you lied. Couldn’t imagine? You do me an injustice. I can imagine everything. Animal, vegetable, mineral. Horrible, banal, sublime.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw another desert because there is no such thing as destination or arrival or satisfaction. Not for the likes of me. It was as if I were wandering purposeless forever, but at least the scratches fade. Some scars erode, and others are half-hidden by shifting dunes. You told me everything would be fine. Liar. You didn’t know. You did your best. I couldn’t imagine half a century, but there it went like precocious child star become barely legal become sexpot become vixen become MILF become grandma become the bones beneath the blooming desert rose.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw my pen had run out of ink and my penmanship was horrid and I was ignorant of the animals, vegetables, and minerals I should encounter. It was as if a drunken scarab beetle had crawled across the page, swerving, swearing, dropping its housekeys in a vain effort to call it a night and sleep it off in the margins. You told me not to slouch. You told me it wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t go back if I tried. The best is yet to come. Just ask the ants.
sine_nomine: (Default)
sine nomine ([personal profile] sine_nomine) wrote2025-06-01 05:04 pm

Tomorrow may be the day

Dr. IM is pretty set on tomorrow being the day I go home. I pushed back. I just don't feel well enough, even with 24/7 caregivers. I have written him a note but it's unclear if he will see it. Stuff is definitely improving but is it enough? Not sure. I am definitely not feeling well, which means the antibiotics are working. But this is rough.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-06-01 10:34 pm
Entry tags:

vital functions

Reading. Finished: a comfort reread of your blue-eyed boys, which fit the bill excellently. Have only restrained myself from launching straight into (even if I could) make a deal with god (and for that matter the other two series) on the grounds that I need to reread Prophet (Helen MacDonald, Sin Blaché) so that I can properly appreciate [personal profile] rydra_wong's a word you've never understood.

You see, I read the first two paragraphs, had a lot of feelings, and promptly decided the way to Maximise Feelings would be to do the reread I didn't set off on immediately after first finishing it.

Thus far I am going "my goodness, I forgot a lot of the detail here". Spoilers... )

I have also listened to a little bit more of Furiously Happy (Jenny Lawson). There are definitely aspects I don't love (like, as someone who is taking an antipsychotic for non-psychosis reasons, and someone who can at this point go entire years plural without any significant episodes of even very mild psychosis, the way antipsychotics are discussed makes me... a bit twitchy), and I'm annoyed by how much more disruptive needing to reread sentences is in audio than in text (and how much more frequently I'm needing to do it), but also it turns out rather to my own surprise to be a thing I can listen to when I'm not doing anything else with my brain, provided I don't mind not really retaining any of it for longer than about five minutes.

Eating. I have been fed a slightly ludicrous amount of (more-or-less responsibly harvested) wild asparagus this week, which has been A Delight.

A Variety of other things, courtesy of having someone else doing meal prep all week. Still suspicious of Nutritional Yeast, mind.

FIRST STRAWBERRIES from the plot.

Growing. Swung by the plot this evening (courtesy of significant support from A) and in addition to STRAWBERRIES: Read more... )

stonepicnicking_okapi: holmes in silohuette (holmessilouhette)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-06-01 05:10 pm
Entry tags:

Sherlock Sunday: The Final Problem

And so we come to the end of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes with "The Final Problem" published in November 1893.

Here's the summary:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson encounter the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. Holmes is convinced that Moriarty is the "Napoleon of crime" and is determined to bring him down. After a confrontation with Moriarty, Holmes decides to flee the country with Watson to avoid Moriarty's retaliation. They travel to the Swiss Alps, but are eventually tracked down by Moriarty. In a climactic confrontation at the Reichenbach Falls, Holmes and Moriarty struggle and both fall to their deaths in the raging waters below.

There are many alternate-canon theories about the end of Holmes. They are organized into categories in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

1. Moriarty is imaginary. 2. Moriarty is innocent. 3. Moriarty lives. 4. Moriarty lives. 4. Holmes is guilty. 5. Holmes killed the wrong man and 6. Faith of the fundamentalist (Holmes did die and the later resurrected Holmes is an imposter).

A page from ACD's notebook. For December he writes 'Killed Holmes.'
acd notebook

The great thing about canon is that you can re-read them many times and always remember or find something new.

"Did you recognize your coachman?"
"No."
"It was my brother Mycroft. It is an advantage to get about in such a case without taking a mercenary into your confidence."


So I wrote a ficlet for [community profile] vocab_drabbles about Mycroft as brougham coachman.

Title: The Brougham Driver
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Character: Mycroft Holmes, original feline character
Prompt: 149: Alterity
Note: set in "The Final Problem"
Summary: Mycroft Holmes after dropping Watson off at the station.

Read more... )

And I absolutely love the pool scene of BBC Sherlock, especially borrowing of the banter from canon at the confrontation in 221B between Moriarty and Sherlock and the Moriarty reveal. I thought this was really, really well done. Not so much the resolution in Season 2.



So the plan is to post irregularly through June, July, and August, focusing on The Hound of the Baskervilles and pick up with The Return of Sherlock Holmes the first Sunday in September.
flamingsword: LINKS! (LINKS!)
flamingsword ([personal profile] flamingsword) wrote2025-06-01 04:45 pm
Entry tags:

Links etc

Violet Affleck's essay in Yale Global Health Review links COVID denialism to climate denialism: https://yaleglobalhealthreview.com/2025/05/18/a-chronically-ill-earth-covid-organizing-as-a-model-climate-response-in-los-angeles/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/gileads-trodelvy-with-keytruda-cuts-breast-cancer-risk-by-35-trial-2025-05-31/ “Gilead's Trodelvy, with Keytruda, cuts breast cancer risk by 35% in trial” Admittedly it is only for a specific subset of triple-negative breast cancers, but those are an aggressive and fast-moving set of cancers. So yay! Good news!

https://www.audhdflourishing.com/podcast/episode/4217e513/101-time-cannot-be-wasted - Y’all, Mattia Mauree cannot keep doing this to me - they walk into my house and then they say something that hits me where I live. I feel like I’ve been very gently murdered. It’s good for me to look at ways my life aligns with other people’s, but for serious y’all, sometimes I just cannot with all this personal growth. Anyway it’s a good podcast but if you were a parentified kid, maybe go in prepared for some light emotional manslaughter.

https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/how-curiosity-rewires-your-brain-for-change/ How Curiosity Rewires Your Brain for Change, in BigThink magazine.



The other day I got cat pics, and the fur babies are doing well. Then that reminded me to send him stuff, so today I sent Ghost some old pics of him and his friends. He’s doing okay, too, I think? I’m like 60% sure he’s no more miserable now than he was when I decided to get the divorce, anyway.
stonepicnicking_okapi: lemons (lemons)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-06-01 02:55 pm

June!

Here is my monthly planner spread for June. The theme colors are peach & orange.



And Happy Pride! This is the collage I post every 1 June. My best so far, I think.


osteophage: photo of a leaping coyote (Default)
Coyote ([personal profile] osteophage) wrote2025-06-01 08:36 am
Entry tags:

You Can Make A Website

If you have any doubts, then you're the target audience of this guide. Many people hesitate or even write off the possibility of making a website due to common misconceptions, poorly-written instructions, or simply feeling unsure where to start. So to help you over those hurdles, this guide is designed to address some of those misconceptions, walk you through resolving certain mental blocks, and present you with some tutorials to help get you on your way.

The first misconception to address is the idea that you don't already have what it takes to begin. Many people hesitate because they think in order to make a website, you need to spend money (you don't) or that you need to engage in advanced computer wizardry that a normal person could never possibly understand (this isn't true either). There are only a few things you truly need:

  • the ability to connect to the internet
  • an email address you can use to sign up for services
  • the ability to read and handle looking at large amounts of text

If you can check off all of those boxes, then you have all the prerequisites you need to follow this guide.

Crossposted to Neocities and Pillowfort.

Read more... )

stonepicnicking_okapi: okapi (Default)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-05-31 08:01 pm

The State of the Ficcery: May 2025

May Word Count: 37,851

Writing: So I cranked out two explicit BTS fics for [community profile] super_effucktive [formerly known as Dick or Treat]. I also did a series of four short ficlets for my Yahtzee prompts in the original Dracula fandom and posted on [community profile] the_scent_of_lilacs. I managed the 10 of 20 challenge on [community profile] sweetandshort

I have another set of Yahtzee prompts, and I have three more categories I could fill before it ends (June 18/25) but I don't know if I am feeling motivated to do that. Part of me wants to cut bait.

Because in June, I am going to be focused on my case fic exchange fic. There is a certain voice I need to capture in my head, and it's tricky (not quite as tricky as Bertie Wooster but a challenge in its own right) so that takes mental bandwidth, clearing the mechanism.

Poetry: I am almost caught up on my 52 poem prompts. This week's (which I haven't done yet) is prose poem. 3 poems done in May. I liked Stacy. I think that one worked properly.

Reading: 7 books which brings me up to 30 for the year (which is fine. I have no goal with regard to number of books read).

I just realized I haven't done a Book Bingo update since the end of March so I should do that in June. I listened to The Guest List by Lucy Foley for the multiple POV square. It was okay. Nobody was especially likable and it was 'public schoolboys kill someone and finally face consequences 20 years later. lol' I have at least 3 more I can fill already so I need to sit down and update that. Also I have 2 in my TBR which fill slots. I think the hardest one is going to be the TV Movie Tie in because I don't watch TV or movies so if there are new things in this category in the mystery/detective genre, let me know. And I've already read all the Murderbots.

I am reading the Inspector Rebus in order and I've just finished #18 & #19. Unfortunately, I've already read the ones that had TV episodes about them. I read a short story collection by Tom Mead, the locked-room magician author I've mentioned before.

Crafting: 8 spreads & 6 cards and my Alma Thomas jigsaw puzzle.

June's color theme will be peach/orange as well as rainbow for pride. There is a different kind of craft I could do in June. I may break it out.

Heath & Fitness: 16 days of yoga. But my weight is up from the first of the year. I need to stop eating junk. That's most of the problem.

Personal: I turned 50! Wow! I applied for my AARP card even though I am not a retired person. I'm just old. The boys' father went to Kenya for 10 days and returned safely. Maintenace issues (leaks and mice) persist. And they are redrawing lines for schools so we will more than likely be moving by next spring.

And the big news, I got an email late on Friday saying to call the home health agency for an interview!!! I got it too late to catch the HR office open but I will be calling Monday morning!!

June is Pride! On y va!
thatyourefuse: ([wv] I've made a huge mistake.)
in fandom years, I'm Elaine Strich ([personal profile] thatyourefuse) wrote2025-05-31 07:17 pm

(no subject)

oh my goddddddddddd I am never going to get out of this scennnnnnnne
sine_nomine: (Default)
sine nomine ([personal profile] sine_nomine) wrote2025-05-30 10:37 pm

A very long story very short and super elided

The other day, Dr. IM and Dr. Hematology were talking about how I was fine to go home. Pretty much right then right there. I pointed out my primary presenting issue was cellulitis, which had not resolved, that we had just changed meds, and that New Dr. ID wanted to monitor the switch closely, noting we might have to go back to IV instead of PO. So I asked about that, and they backed down.

Today, Dr. IM comes in and says we really have to talk discharge, I point out the current efficacy of the new meds - including some unexpected but welcome stuff happening, note that my hemoglobin is still pretty darn low and, "if you send me home today, it's going to take all my hard fought energy, I am going to sleep for two solid days, and I will likely totally lose my appetite again, right after it has started to return."

He replies, "I just can't justify it to Medicare."

"Medicare? Why do you have to justify it to Medicare?", I ask.

"Because you have Medicare..."

"I don't have Medicare; I have Cigna, and it's a self-funded policy. I am sure that my employer would want me here as long as it takes to actually feel better."

"Oh. Why did I think you have Medicare? Okay so we'll keep you over the weekend, and revisit on Monday."

OMG. I now have so much sympathy for folks with Medicare... because it is clear that their models don't include comorbidities.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-05-30 11:52 pm

tiny delight

Yesterday, on the drive, we found the greater part of a small light blue eggshell. (Dunnock? Starling?)

We have also, with the rain, been seeing (and relocating) lots of gastropods, so I suggested we move the eggshell into gastropod territory.

Checked back this morning, and while the blue is mostly intact the inside surface has been very clearly significantly monched. V v pleased to have provided delicious snack and also by CREATURES in general :-)

stonepicnicking_okapi: journal (journal)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-05-30 09:45 am
Entry tags:

Collage Journaling: new stuff and purple

Showing off some of the new stuff I got with my birthday. Some music paper and art paper and new washi tape.

But it wasn't purple enough for me.



Unlike many collage folks, I rarely put human figures or faces in my collages but this lady seemed liked she belonged.

tielan: brown chicken looking at camera, white chicken in profile (garden 01 - pumpkin vine)
tielan ([personal profile] tielan) wrote2025-05-30 08:06 pm
Entry tags:

gardening in winter

It's Friday night, 8pm. I'm tired.

Think I'll get a wash and go lie in bed with the cats around me and read.

Here, have a garden update.
yuuago: (Promare - Mad Burnish - Rest)
yuuago ([personal profile] yuuago) wrote2025-05-29 06:42 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Ahhh, summer wildfire season. +31C and smoky as hell. Lovely.

Time to stay inside with the shades down and all the lights off, I guess!

(Ugh, eew, I can even smell it inside. So gross.)
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 ([personal profile] azurelunatic) wrote2025-05-29 04:39 pm

Unlucky

A hundred years from now, chroma key colors are going to be considered unlucky to wear in a set of professions like newscasting, and nobody is going to quite realize why.
stonepicnicking_okapi: otherwords (otherwords)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-05-29 02:29 pm

Poet's Corner

Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

-------

My prompt was 'insects' and technically worms aren't insects, but they are in a section of Hamlet with maggots and that's how I came by them. I tried to do a poem in the manner of the one above. The title and references are from that section of Hamlet (Act 4, Scene 3).


we fat all creatures else to fat us by okapi

worms, those that feast on beggar and on king,
Hamlet’s only emperor for diet, his certain convocation

of politic, the ones who supped on Polonius, the ones that baited
hooks so that kings might progress through the guts of beggars,

twice coated, by slime and by scale, these worms
did not note the variable service of fat and lean,

and never once did they shove a fist of too many plastic
wrappers

to the bottom of the bin
and wince

at the crinkling
stonepicnicking_okapi: Miss Marple (marple)
stonepicnicking_okapi ([personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2025-05-29 01:47 pm
Entry tags:

All of Agatha: Endless Night (1967)

This series of entries is commentary on my lifelong quest to read all of Agatha Christie's works in UK publication order. It was begun in January 2021.

Endless Night (1967) was a slog. None of the characters are likeable and because I have been consistently reading so much Christie, I recognized the plot points and guessed what was happening very early on. It's very much like Death on the Nile in some respects but without the Nile to make it interesting and intriguing and the other amusing characters to make it fun and Poirot and Race. Much of it was just tedious from a reader point of view but not, perhaps, from a ficcer point of view working out how the misdirection and manipulation is being done. The narrator's name is Michael Rogers and the poor rich girl is Ellie and the secretary/companion is Greta. And I'm not sorry I'm done with it. Here's a summary:

A newlywed couple faces a series of mysterious events and threats after building their dream house on a cursed land.

Next up: I've discovered to my great consternation that I skipped over a couple of books in the winter. So I will go back and do The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side and The Clocks, both of which I remember very well and have enjoyed.
muccamukk: Sam Beckett with no shirt. Text: "Quantum Leap: I watch it for the writing" (QL: No shirt!)
Muccamukk ([personal profile] muccamukk) wrote2025-05-28 09:36 pm
Entry tags:

Music Wednesday


Gender seems to be occurring.