I keep seeing gif sets for Outlander going past my dash and getting excited to see Sam Heughan in a kilt again (the man has excellent legs and I am weak, weak, trash) and then I saw a picture of Diana Gabaldon and had this weird transportive memory moment where suddenly I am 18 years old again working in the tea house on Sauchiehall Street and I’m taking the order of this really polite American couple who keep telling me about all the tourist things they have done here and asking me if I have been up to Inverness and visited XYZ. And I’m just there for the tip man, Americans tip so good I am just giving it my all, laughing along and chattering away, I’m one step away from doing a jig for them if it will get me a tenner I can keep to myself.
And then the husband goes off somewhere, and it’s just the dark haired lady sitting up by the window seat watching the Glasgow world go by, and I refill her cup several more times and talk her into trying the freshly baked shortbread and soon she’s my only table left and I’m just sort of lingering nearby polishing cutlery. And then this dark haired woman with bright eyes turns to me and says “you said you’re going to college for literature, right?”
I confirm, yes, that is what I said, but then for some reason I say “I figure I should try and teach or something. There’s not much stable work for writers.”
And there’s this frozen in time moment where she turns to me and says “oh you’re a writer? what do you write?” and 18 -year-old me only has half-baked ideas and is too embarrassed to say, so I just sort of shrug and say “nothing yet, some sci fi I suppose…” and then I get asked “have you read a book series called Outlander?”
It’s only my customer service facade that saves me, because yes, I had read Outlander, everyone and their nan, has read some of Outlander, because everyone and their nan wants to commit several types of sin with Jamie Fraser but other than that I think the book is awful. It was like the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time but without the stalking and the psychosis. So I say, “yea, I’ve read it” and she sort of half laughs and says “You don’t sound that enthused.” and I sort of shrug and say “it was all right, it waffled a bit for me. You can tell the author has never been to Scotland either.”
And on the conversation goes for several more moments before this lady turns the conversation back to what I want to write and I admit I really don’t know but I just want to write eventually and she smiles and nods and then she hands me a business card along with my ten pound tip and tells me “when you’re published let me know” while I smile, nod and glance briefly at the card—remembering vaguely the name Watkins and an address in Arizona—then move on with my life.
Until this very moment in time, over a decade later, I am sat frozen on my couch watching this dark haired woman speak about how she came to write Outlander, and then an image of her husband comes up and I’m just like no, no, no so I look up her website and his last name is Watkins and they live in Arizona guys…guys I’m not 100% sure, but I think past me might have told Diana Gabaldon her book was shit.
I was attempting to add maple syrup themed things to my amazon wishlist because people are practically yelling at me in my inbox to add food stuff to my wishlist that I can eat and I found this gem and I am honestly losing my mind:
It’s a classic [City Slicker Girl] with [fancy glamorous but stressful job] is forced into [Rural Environment By Circumstances Outwith Her Control] where she meets [Rugged Rural Area Man Who Juts Wants To:] *spins wheel* “build barns and make maple syrup and be left alone to raise his coyote in peace”, formula right there and honestly I am HERE FOR IT
Oh god it isn’t properly formatted for ebook, why have the maple gods forsaken me.
{Edit} The main dude’s name is Rick Stannard, he’s a rugged manly man with loner tendencies, a pet coyote he rescued from the woods (pretty sure they belong out there bud) who builds barns with his bare hands and harvests maple syrup for his Aunt Joy’s maple themed store. Aunt Joy is of course, an absolute sass factory. I did not expect to be making a cameo in this book, but there you have it.
It’s also been implied that Rick has medical PTSD so even if he turns out to be a total walnut I’m still going to defend him. He is my nephew after all. He’s also a dumbass who just tripped in the snow by attempting to run in his snow shoes, sprained his ankle, blacked out and nearly froze to death while his pet coyote looked on contemplating the merits of going full feral.
Our main city slicker gal is named Lily Hindsdale and she’s super pissed her grandma died and she has to leave her swanky city slicker job to go to “the wilderness” (aka, Vermont) to take care of her grandmother’s estate. She’s giving off serious corporate villain vibes atm, as she plans to sell her grandma’s land to the resort building company she works for, and “bring civilization to these backward living people”. She may yet have some redeemable qualities but I’ve yet to ascertain any. Frankly I’m hoping the coyote eats her.
Update: Lily has no redeemable qualities.
Just in case any of you were doubting that Aunt Joy is actually me.
[edit]
Okay so Lily also has PTSD related to being in the wilderness. I think she got mauled by a bear or something as a child but we don’t know yet.
Rick is also a poor patient and keeps trying to walk on his busted foot. He’s also dazzled by shiny looking women who look like “they belong in make up commercials” and suffers from “meandering laundry list of descriptor syndrome”
You guys, she’s not like other girls, she’s not one of the wild folk like his rugged Vermont cave people, she’s elegant and refined. With skin. We know this because she’s wearing a cream-colored scarf. Also that’s an odd phrasing I can’t get over, “hung to her thighs”, it’s like the author tried to avoid the cliche trope of describing something as “clung to her thighs” and my brain is just…not parsing it. Hung, hung to her thighs. Surely “skimmed” is a better descriptor? “that skimmed her thighs”.
Actually now that I look at it this whole sequence is out of order.
He starts at her face, goes to her legs, then to her coat, and then her scarf? When surely his gaze could just have easily skipped over her taking in detai—you know what fuck it I’ll just rewrite it:
“A woman stood impatiently in the doorway, brushing the curls of her strawberry blonde hair away from her face as she waited impatiently to be let in. She was not one of the locals who frequented the store—Rick felt certain he would have remembered a face like hers, with her glowing warm tan and piercing blue-green eyes. She certainly wasn’t dressed like someone prepared to brave the Vermont winter, but he couldn’t help but let his gaze linger on the cut of her rust colored dress coat, the fabric hugging her figure and skimming just short of her thighs to reveal long shapely legs clad in skinny black jeans and designer boots better suited to the runway than the mud and snow. She was like no one he’d seen. Not since he’d left New York.”
Like, I mean, I know I’m just a lowly smut peddler who does this for a living and all that, but if the most fascinating thing about the beautiful woman standing unexpectedly on your doorstep is the cream-colored scarf she’s wearing
Or maybe he just has a scarf fetish, who knows. I’d be down with that.
Okay so he invited her in and she’s not sat down three seconds before she insulted his entire home, his business and his way of life and told him she wants to buy up all his land to make a tacky hotel resort and bring some “class” to Vermont and my hard headed fictional nephew did the only plausible thing. He’s going to let the coyote eat her.
Wow great book everyone, so glad it just ends there and there isn’t 300 more pages of this. Yep. Yep.
I’ll say this much, at least the author is aware that her main character is a completely unlikable corporate shill and seems to have an intentional sense of humor about it lmao.
Anyway, I’m off to bed, see you all in the morning when I will likely look at my life choices and still decide to keep reading this sticky maple mess cause gosh darn it, I want to know where the pancakes feature in all of this.
Fluorescent lights are absolute sensory hell for me and they play havoc with my ability to focus and rest cause not only can I hear them (no one else can, but I can. I can also hear the fridge humming to itself from two rooms away so yay auditory hypersensitivity), the light itself is just awful for working in. It’s like an asmr experience for my eyes but with a cheese grater.
In our house we switched over to daylight bulbs. You might not be able to do that if your fixtures are designed for fluorescent
only like our kitchen light is, but the way weget around it is to use lamps instead of the overhead lights, so that the light pools around the room in strategic spots, rather than just blaring down like the baleful eye of Sauron. It’s far more relaxing and restful for my eyes, so I don’t get as visually or mentally exhausted as easily. In my bedroom I have a Philips sun lamp alarm clock which mimics natural light, and can be put on a timer at night to gradually dim down like the sun setting, which can be really good for unwinding and preparing yourself for sleep. (It’s also great at waking me up in the morning. No more blaring alarms for me, just a gradual increase in light that makes my body think the sun is coming out and it’s time to rise and shine.)
So yeah, if you can maybe invest in a couple of cheap lamps (floor or otherwise) that you can dot around the place, and get some daylight led bulbs. I think ours is “soft white” which has a yellow tint to them rather than that retina searing blue-white light which makes you look great in selfies but takes up more mental spoons for those of us with processing issues.
Anyway, I hope some of this was helpful? Light and sensory issues are such an individual thing to try and deal with, but I know exactly what you mean about the
fluorescent lights. It’s a pain in the butt, especially cause other people don’t always get it. Light is light, right? Turns out not so much…
My therapist is making me retake the ADHD test to see where I score now that my brain is firing on all cylinders again, as apparently severe b12 deficiency can mimic ADHD symptoms (it was certainly starting to cause dementia like ones in me, which was terrifying to say the least) and she wants to see where I land. Whether I’ll be more hyper or more inattentive or if I’ll score lower. I’ll let you know how it goes.
*wheeze*
I scored higher. I specifically scored 20+% higher on the hyperactivity spectrum of the scale, giving me a new total of being 98% hyperactive with occasional bouts of inattentiveness. My therapist is just like “oh…oh no…oh dear” I’M YELLING
Me: “So what you’re telling me is, my attention span is even worse, but now I have the mental energy to hyper fixate on them with clarity and actually keep up with all my multiple projects and hopefully finish them, is that what you’re telling me?”
Therapist, making strangulated noises over the phone: “Please don’t. You’re still recovering, please don’t start working on multiple things at once. Pick one project and try to stick with it. What about the…the vampire one?”
Me: “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
Therapist: “The gay one.”
Me: “…..I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific…”
As a general rule of thumb, angels did not need to sleep—not in the same way humans did. But there was something restful about the ritual of a nightly routine which Aziraphale enjoyed greatly, donning his tartan flannel pajamas and brown comfortable slippers with all the reverence and solemnity of a monk preparing for midnight mass. If a midnight mass ever involved a hot cup of cocoa and a good book in front of a roaring fire. But there was something different about tonight, something that needled away under his skin like an itch that no amount of ritual familiarity could sooth. Not even his old flannel bathrobe and his favorite armchair—a measure he reserved only for the most fraught of occasions—was enough to quell the prickly chill working over his skin as the thought he’d been trying to avoid for some time came crawling to the forefront of his mind. Crawling being the operative word.
We can run away together, he’d said, Alpha Centauri, lots of space up there, no one would even notice us…
Pernicious anemia fucking sucks. You know what sucks more? Megaloblastic Anemia.
Jesus, Joy, you don’t do things by halves, do you? If they’ve come up with an answer, do they also have a cure?
It’s immediate treatment of the b12 and folate deficiency to try and stop the damage being done to my nervous system and heart. Normally it’s injections but given I’m a high risk for anaphylaxis due to the preservation methods used to keep these injections stable they’re running frantic trying to find an answer that won’t further stress my heart. I’m taking massive doses of oral supplements to try and slow the free fall but blood transfusion may be necessary to stabilize things in the interim, which is not also without its risks but given my blood cells are prematurely self destructing and potentially damaging my kidneys and liver (testing ongoing) we’ll do whatever it takes to beat the absolute shit out of this thing.
To clarify for some folk, this is not new. This is the condition I’ve likely been living with all my life and it has been gradually getting worse over the years until it hit critical point when the symptoms start manifesting in god awful terrible ways and become incredibly dangerous and hard for doctors to ignore. People can live their lives for some 20 odd years with pernicious anemia, always feeling sick, always fatigued, plagued by general malaise and various mental health symptoms, and never get diagnosed until it’s too late.
If I hadn’t been pushing tooth and nail for a b12 serum test because my dentist mentioned my mouth ulcers could be caused by b12 deficiency, none of these follow up tests would have been carried out and my condition might never have been found and I’d have continued to worsen, being told my chronic fatigue syndrome was simply worsening until it eventually killed me.
So for the love of god if you’re reading my blog cause any of my symptoms ring a bell for you, get your b12 levels checked, not just thyroid or basic iron test, a full b12 serum and folate test with a full CBC blood test for comparison with a methylmalonic acid (MMA) test and also a mthfr test (mutation that stops you absorbing b vitamins)
Rule this shit out before you let anyone diagnose you with chronic fatigue and brush you aside for the next ten years cause if it’s a chance it’s malingering pernicious anemia you have a finite window of time for treatment before damage becomes permanent and good god if I can save anyone else from going through this, well, it won’t be worth it because there is nothing worth this, but it’ll give me solace.
Take care of yourselves loves, advocate for yourselves, be fierce, be relentless. Thrive. You deserve it.
Finding adequate pain management is difficult, especially with so many doctors becoming reluctant to help chronic pain patients thanks to the scare mongering over opioids at the moment, so in every literal sense, I feel your pain and I sympathize.
For me pain management is tricky as I react so negatively to medications, but if you do not have a pain specialist already, try and find one and see if there’s anything else they can do for you, or if there’s a med tweak that might help.
My biggest pin relief comes from weekly massage and physical therapy, without it I get acid build up in my muscles and it starts to feel like I have shards of glass under my skin. Not all insurances cover it (mine doesn’t) but it can be extremely beneficial for those of us with chronic pain. It can hurt a lot at first, particularly things like deep tissue massage, but if you start out gentle and work your way up it can really help with things like circulation and muscle spasms or breaking up painful adhesions that might be the cause of some pain. Plus it can just feel good to take a time out and stop carrying extra tension in your body all the time.
Acupressure, reflexology and basic therapeutic massage are all great ways at lowering inflammation and stress levels, and that can go a long way toward helping your pain.
Another thing I started doing this year was cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain management. The therapy itself doesn’t lessen the pain, but it does give me a better mentality for coping with it, which in turn helps with my stress levels and how well I’m able to manage it. People have noticed more and more recently that I’m enforcing stricter boundaries online with how far I’m willing to go in order to help or explain something, and this is a huge part of it. I’m also doing it in real life, and have cut out a lot of toxic and draining people who made demands on my time and energy that I simply don’t have to give. I’m always telling folk never to set themselves on fire to keep other people warm, and by golly gosh it’s high time I took my own advice cause if my mental health is shot to pieces, I can’t cope and I’ll just lay in bed and cry and cry and cry because everything hurts so much all the time. If I’m in a better place mentally, I’ve got more energy reserves to cope. It doesn’t make the pain any less, but it does help me not to fall into a pit of despair every time I have a flare up.
I also always try to take the time to do something nice for myself, whether it’s making sure I get my haircut every six weeks to keep down on maintenance, enjoying a nice bath or letting myself go to bed early to read a book, I make active time to treat myself with kindness and to do something out of enjoyment and not obligation. So much of my energy is rationed in terms of trying to have a functional life, it can feel like such a waste of energy to just do something that you’ll enjoy, and that’s just not true. Tonight was our anniversary and I wanted to feel fancy so I used a wine glass to drink my water with. Sounds ridiculous, but it made me feel special and normal for a split second out of a thousand moments of feeling like crap. Be kind to yourself and allow yourself small joys. They add up.
I appreciate you answering! I’ll try CBT out because I have noticed that when my mental health is bad it gets a lot harder to endure and they add on to eachother making the mental problems and the physical pain worse. I’ve been trying to figure stuff out with my doctor but he is a bit unsympathetic so I’m in the process of trying to get a new doctor. I might try acupressure as well thanks for the suggestion! I appreciate it a lot, I’ve been dealing with various issues for a while and reading your blog posts about getting better and healing helps give me hope.
You are so very welcome. When I first started blogging I could hardly ever find anyone who was dealing with my types of issues, and that feeling of isolation alone was unbearable. I never wanted anyone to feel like that, so I’m glad to know that me talking about these things helps. It makes living in the public eye somewhat more bearable lol.
If you wind up struggling with CBT or find it doesn’t help, another thing I’ve been using to great effect is EMDR. It was initially supposed to just be helping with my PTSD but we’ve actually found through trial and error that it’s very good with helping to deal with the stress of always being in pain, so that’s another option.
Good luck, and I wish you great progress on achieving a better quality of life💖
The sheer number of people mistaking me for @systlin in my inbox at the moment is astounding so let me make it easier for some of you.
@systlin : plant witch who raises bees and has a whole host of other terrifyingly awesome skills
me: the witch who is allergic to all nature and cannot go outside because even though I don’t believe in gods, the bastards still have a sick sense of humor.
Which one(s) of you all have the terrifying rose? @systlin, right?
Both of us actually, but mines is called Demon Rose cause unlike Systlin who manages to somewhat contain hers, mine has taken over that side of the house.
Everything about this thread is golden
It knows full well I have a machete and armor and will use them if it crosses me
Excerpt from the non-existent book, How to Identify Your Internet Cryptid.
