Now I know just where my heart is

[gwyn]

Eeeee, it's intoabar sign up time! In just two years, this has become my favorite challenge. Each year, I've got my assignment and then freaked out about finding any kind of story for the characters, but each time it's turned out well, and even gave me ideas to use in crossover fics that weren't for the challenge but inspired by it. I'm struggling with what to request for this year, but I'll figure it out before signups close, I'm sure.

Thanks so much to everyone who said supportive things after my fiasco with getting my first COVID vaccination. What a difference a couple weeks make: about ten days ago, the city announced they had thousands of appointments available, so I sat on it for a while and then decided to go ahead and make an appointment at the mass vaccination site near me, so I wouldn't have to drive off peninsula again during weekday rush hour. (They say our bridge will be repaired by mid-2022, but they haven't even started designing the repairs or picked an engineering firm yet, so...I remain doubtful.) I didn't really trust them not to cancel on me without explanation, but then a few days after that, they announced they were now taking walkups at all the city's mass sites, so I figure that even if they fuck up again, I can just show up somewhere and get the jab.

I still want to get up to the cemetery; I wasn't able to bring flowers with me last time and it would be nice, after all that tough digging around to find the flower vases on both my dad's and my mom and sister's plots to actually use them, but this way I can do it on a weekend when the traffic sitch will be different and the limited routes out of here less crowded.

Thursday I'm taking the feline to the vet, and I'm glad my appointment situation shook out so that I had my second shot on Friday, because I have a feeling I'm going to get the second-shot whammy like most folks I know. I won't be in a state to take the cat anywhere, let alone sit in a hot car for who knows how long while they check him out. I wish they were doing regular checkup appointments, because his teeth are so unbelievably bad, but they're still not allowing people inside. But his arthritis (and the teefs) is getting so bad, he really needs to be looked at. He hasn't been to the vet in well over a year, outside of the emergency vet when he was so sick last summer I was pretty sure he was dying. No one's ever been able to tell me what might be causing these emergency episodes, and I wish I could be in the room with the vet to talk about it--talking on the phone in the car is just...it's not conducive sometimes to explaining things and it's not like Blues can tell them himself.

I've discovered a new health problem of my own, which I cannot afford to treat, like the other health problems I have (horrendous deductible means out of pocket financial bloodbaths). The other day I noticed a sudden new weird little bump on my left palm, and there was like this dent in the hand above it, leading toward my ring finger. It had not been there the day before. I googled "weird bump dent palm under finger" expecting that nothing would come up with such a bizarre string of words, so of course, right away something called Dupuytren's disease (or contracture) came up and my heart sank. I looked at it and was like, yup, that's it, that's exactly what my hand looks like. I'll have to have the doc confirm it, for insurance at least, but it's pretty obviously that. And there's no cure, and most treatments are invasive. Some people only get mild cases, some people have really advanced cases where their fingers contract so much they can't be straightened. Just what I needed, claw hands, especially on the hand that's already so painful from arthritis it's impacting my work.

At some point, I need to sit down and write out thoughts about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but I have such complicated and not always very good feelings about it that I've been hesitant to say much at all. People get so...riled up if you don't unabashedly gush. But I've been asked a number of times what I thought and one person even sent me a tumblr ask noticing that I'd been remarkably quiet about it, so I guess I should say something.

The Oscars were SO WEIRD this year. I don't necessarily mean just because of how they held them to deal with the pandemic, but just...everything else was so strange and off kilter, and I loathed the choice to eschew performance clips in favor of the presenting actors standing there telling the nominee how amazing their performance was. Man, fuck that noise. And it ended so awfully, with the way they set it up under the assumption Chadwick Boseman would win best actor and they'd end the show on an emotional note, but then he didn't, and Anthony Hopkins wasn't even at the London awards gathering location to video accept, so they just went "we accept on his behalf, good night." And once again, Viola was robbed and it's just so infuriating. It was nice to see a lot of great formalwear, but it's not surprising that it was so incredibly low-rated. Also, man I hate watching the show alone, it totally blows. I've been having Oscars parties annually since I was like 20 until very recently, and I couldn't even live text with minim_calibre because she doesn't have live TV but we're still not fully vaxxed yet so couldn't get together. Watching that fiasco alone was unbearable.

Also, Husavik was clearly the hands-down best song, fight me. It's maybe the best best song they've ever nominated, and shame on them for shunting the song performances off to a pre-awards show that most of us didn't even know about so didn't see live.

Comments

[gwyn]

Yes, apparently radiation is the only effective noninvasive option, but I hear it's very difficult to find someone to do it, because they are nervous about people getting tumors or whatever. I'm old enough that I don't care about tumors 20 years down the line. The US is just basically shit capitalism and litigation.

[ratcreature]

Wtf? That sucks. They are doing it here in Germany, even though people are quite worried about any possible radiation risks from anything. I mean we are phasing out our nuclear power, even though it means burning coal for longer which is tragic for the climate, meant expensive compensation for nuclear power plant owners, and also comes with a bunch of regular pollutants that are carcinogens and cause lung issues that kill people faster.

Tbh if I was anywhere in the US Pacific Northwest I'd worry more about that famous superfund nuclear weapon production site that apparently is never getting cleaned up but has been periodically leaking radioactive stuff all over the place, increasing radiation even quite a bit away from it.

Anyway, fingers crossed then that your problem just stays mild into the future.