Apropos of not very much, it's very strange to realize one day that a guy you went to high school with now looks like a cross between David Tennant and Elijah Wood.

Interview was this morning at about 9:45 AM; over and done by 11, including a roughly 20-minute massage sampler (neck/shoulders/back).

Regina (not actually named Veronica, no matter what my subconscious chooses to believe) was very friendly, and made comments along the lines of "Denise has final say, but I have a lot of influence!" and "So when you're working here..." and then belatedly remembered, two minutes before I left, to say "and after your interview with Denise, we have a couple other people to look at and we'll let you know!"

Denise, here, is the owner of the spa.

I have a second interview, with her, on Tuesday afternoon; apparently she was either not present at the spa or too busy between now and then to do one sooner.

I am hopeful, and trying really damn hard not to get my hopes up any further than they already are. In fact, I'm trying to quash them, so I don't end up too disappointed.

But it was a pretty good interview, at least, and Regina complimented my massage (and comfortableness in giving massage, too). So that part was good.

I just hope I don't blow Tuesday's miserably.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning! This may or may not result in tears.

Also, I have completely deleted my subscription list for now. I am spending too much time reading and not enough time actually doing things and/or writing about them. We will see what happens with that, I guess.

So apparently I accidentally graduated without realizing it! Last Saturday. When I had the CPR/First Aid class that I'd been putting off since October, actually, seeing as how I was so convinced for a while there I could take it somewhere other than school, and it was offered on Rue's birthday.

Anyway.

I went in to the school today in an attempt to get a missing list of phone numbers so I could finish the ONE LAST THING I still had to do, and ... got told by the Dean of Students and then the Executive Director that, actually, they'd gotten tired of having me around, and while they were very proud of me for finishing up, they REALLY WANTED me to be DONE, so good luck, congratulations, now scram!

Cue astonishment. I'm not entirely sure this has actually sunk in yet, either; I've been attending this school since February last year.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, following my CPR class and Rue's 5-hour driving class requirement thingie, she presented me with a mug. Because she'd had breaks, in her class, and her class was held in an office in the mall, and so she'd gotten bored and had wandered off to Things Remembered, just around the corner.

She got me a shiny mirrored-silvered-glass mug, with a great big maybe-brushed-steel oval plaque thingie on the side, and she'd had it engraved with my name.

Now, as it happens, the woman who did the engraving got something misaligned; if you look at the mug you will see that the engraving is just enough off-center to be noticeable.

I think it is amazing and perfect and awesome and just for me.

Originally, Rue got it because we'd just gotten word that I could have my testosterone covered by health insurance (instead of costing about $100 per bottle; admittedly a nine-month supply, but still a hefty bill up-front). So it was a "congratulations, your man-powers are coming!" gift.

But when she was filling out the form for something-or-other, possibly the engraving order, someone or something at the store asked her the purpose of this gift, and provided several likely culprits as checkable options. Including "Graduation."

So it turns out that, five days early, Rue was the first person to realize I'd graduated – long before I realized it, anyway.






Now what?

FUN FACT:

Testosterone (the injectable sort) and metaxalone (better known in some circles as Skelaxin™) have a delightfully synergistic effect when it comes to nausea and dizziness!


(Thus ends Day One of my second puberty.)

so I kind of thoroughly destroyed my computer a day and a half ago, to the tune of "there is absolutely no way I can afford to replace or repair this right now," and so I will be even more absent than usual for the next unpredictable while.

there's a computer at school (where I am now!) and there is a computer at home that has no monitor currently and may or may not ever manage to make it online (since it also needs an ethernet cable that might be longer than any that are currently made) and I only have a month of school left and need to make up about forty more massages in the clinic, more or less, so it's not like I'm going to have time to do anything anyway, so ... possibly I'll be able to start posting again after graduation (June 19th)! and maybe it won't be until I get a replacement computer, which will probably be some significant amount of time after that.

in the meantime, I hope everyone stays safe, and if something needs my attention either email me or Rue because that's probably the best way of getting me. (I doubt I will look at any sort of RSS feed / reading list / et cetera, at least between now and September.)

at some point I am going to post a (filtered) picspam (a smallish one, I think!) and ramblespam about some of the many fictional characters (almost all male) swimming around my head.

(there is no lifeguard on duty.)

there are currently two people who have expressed interest in seeing this. one of them lives with me and the other one did not miss the small note posted previously.

If you are interested in seeing this, by which I mean seeing the way the inside of my head works and getting a VERY rough idea of who many of my noisiest characters are, this is the place to tell me that you are interested!

(if it is ~the future~ and you are looking back through my Old Entries and see this, because for some reason you felt the need to swim back this far having added me or while deciding whether to add me, and you are interested, go ahead and comment anyway and I'll let you know where it is once I've added you to the filter, whoever you are.)

over the last ~week Kodian's driver's-side wiper blade has been dying. this is a highly conservative estimate, actually; it's probably been actively death-rattling for more like three weeks, and at some point within the last week the broken part went from being loose in the middle and connected at both ends to flapping freely from one end. this is bad!

yesterday, taking Rue to work and calls etc., it was kind of rainy in the afternoon. rainy weather + lack of windshield wipers = even worse!

so... I've been needing to get Kodian an oil change, and figured I would get the wipers replaced at the same time, since the passenger's side wiper blade wasn't really all that much better (streaky, splitting, still attached at least), but then I spent about three hours yesterday going over our budget and plan between yesterday and the end of April, and in order to remain feeling good and confident, the oil change is going to have to wait.

but then it started raining, and the weather forecast said: it is going to KEEP raining, man, you might want to get that wiper blade so you don't die in a tragic accident, because that will really blow your plans out of the water.

good point, weather forecast! said I, inside my head, where I talk to weather forecasts I remember from days previous, since they aren't being broadcast anymore and wouldn't hear me anyway.

so after Rue's final calls, and the meeting she didn't actually attend because of the lengthy call, I made the autocratic ruling that We Were Going To Get The Wiper Blade Replaced, Right Now.

step one: AutoZone. roughly a week ago I priced their blades at $10 each.

result: AutoZone is closed by 8pm on Sunday evening. Dammit.

step two: Wal-Mart. annoying, but hey, they're not the corporate scumbags they used to be (I've read articles about this and everything!) and I'm fucking broke so it's not like other places are in my price bracket anyway.

result: two wiper blades, the correct size for a Nissan D26, total cost less than twenty dollars (barely).

step three: replace wiper blades manually, without help from a trained mechanic.

I really expected at this point I was going to end up calling my dad, actually. he's very helpful when it comes to car/truck/vehicle maintenance stuff! especially when it comes to the stuff that can be done by one's own self without requiring the use of trained mechanics, and identifying the difference between that sort of stuff and the stuff that does require same.

and then I read the instructions included on the inside of the package, and figured I'd give it a try before calling him.

result: in the space of about two minutes, the old wiper blades were removed and the new ones were in place; we also verified that they work, both in the sense of making the wet stuff leave the windshield clear (it was still drizzly), and in the sense of fitting on the windshield and not hitting each other. (apparently the little computer thing in Wal-Mart that guides you through the selection process is not completely full of shit! hooray.)

driving Rue to the hospital for her shift this morning, driving home, and driving to school, I have continued to be very glad for functional wiper blades. the most terrifying drive I have taken in my life was this past summer, when the wipers fell off the bar controlling them and completely stopped working, while I was driving down the highway at 60mph in a raging downpour. (I am never, EVER doing that again. I am also not allowing myself to spend any time viscerally remembering that, because I need to get back in the truck in about fifteen minutes to go get Rue.)

net result: I feel powerful and manly. I FIXED MY TRUCK WITHOUT ANYONE'S HELP AT ALL.

RAAAAR.



a brief note in case any of you didn't follow my complete lack of clear explanation, and the tags didn't clear it up: Kodian is both one of my characters in one of the universes I share with delight and, as a result, the name of the truck I bought last summer, a 1990 Nissan D26 pickup with a stripey custom blue paint job (applied by the previous/original owner). since Kodian-the-character is a shapeshifter who goes back and forth between white-Bengal-tiger (for a given value of Bengal that involves me frequently using the phrase "magical fantasyland", anyway) and a human, except for the many years he got cursed to be stuck between the two by a really cranky earthmage. uh.

¬_¬

at some point, kind of like Rue, I'm going to be doing a semi-pictorial spampost about a lot of my characters. a lot of them have very strange stories. this might be a good point to speak up if you'd be interested in seeing that post. there might be another note later in case you miss this one.

student, to Lee (teacher): Hey, you're a nurse... how long does it take to get rid of a UTI?
Lee: Are you on antibiotics?
Student: No... mostly natural stuff, cranberry, you know...
Lee: *GIANT, AUDIBLE ELLIPSIS* I wish you the best of luck with that.

theoretically speaking, I'm taking Neurology right now, in massage school.

It's a three-week-long class; roughly 36 hours total, discounting breaks (with, more like 42).

delight has been talking to me about neurology terms for months, dumbed down enough for me to understand her without having to actually teach me neurology. that's cool; after all, I'm supposed to be taking this class, so she doesn't have to explain it!

Right now our teacher is alternating between talking again about CranioSacral Therapy (which has already been covered in this school) and showing small video clips from the internet without ever actually explaining which site he's pulling things from. (He gave us a list.)

There is a teacher here, Lee, who is a very good teacher. She's a former nurse who is now also a massage therapist, and she teaches Anatomy & Physiology, and she's a very good teacher! Apparently this guy, Harout, who is a chiropractor, had some sort of conflict in mid-November, early December, and so the last class that sat through Neurology had Lee teach it, instead.

I am so damn jealous right now. I can learn things from Lee. This guy is ...

He mumbles.

He reads off the page without clearly explaining why things are on the page.

Our first quiz is on Thursday morning, probably bright and early, when I am at my least functional. I told him straight up on the first day that I have ADD; while he was accepting of the fact that my attempts to pay attention to him sometimes masquerade as completely ignoring him, that doesn't mean he has any suggestions remotely as to how I can accommodate for the fact that he's a bad teacher for me and I can't learn from him! oddly enough.

I really, really desperately hope that I can somehow work out some other way of learning this stuff. I don't want to have to beg and cajole and blackmail Rue into teaching me neurology. It's not her job! It's this guy's job! I don't think he can do it for me!

I have my doubts that he can do it for the majority of the class, frankly! and have no idea why he doesn't have any assistants; this class is large enough, and the school constantly prides itself on having such a low student-teacher ratio, that most of our classes have three teachers (or, well, one and two assistants). Harout is all alone. And mumbling.

I think I just gave up on even pretending to pay attention to this class.

The thing that sucks the most is that I want to learn this information. I keep hearing that neurology is a goddamn fascinating subject! the tiny little pieces Rue has talked about have been fascinating! and this guy keeps putting me to sleep, even with stimulant drugs and coffee!

I have no idea what to do today.

"Dear" Karl.

DO NOT FUCKING SIT NEXT TO ME ON MY LEFT AND TALK IN YOUR VOICE AT YOUR LOUD NOT-INDOOR VOLUME WHILE I AM ATTEMPTING TO LISTEN TO THE TEACHER.

I am going to KILL YOU.

(Or, more likely, I'll get frustrated at not being able to HEAR or FOCUS on ANYTHING I ACTUALLY WANT TO and come into the library and bitch you out where you'll never see it, because I don't want to be expelled for murder.)

MAIM.

"So basically, the fascial system is like the Tupperware of the body."

went to see Doctor Q, my Primary Care doc who I see about every three months and who is really generally a Pretty Cool Dude.

he investigated my fingertip, which has turned even more interesting colors than it was last night when we were bandaging it.

end result: don't actually clean it again, not today, because it was thoroughly cleaned last night and cleaning it again will make it probably start bleeding again; bandage it up again. tetanus shot, because I'm not sure when the last one was and lockjaw is Bad; Mom said she usually gets hers on the decade, for easier remembering, so now I guess I will be, too.

keep it clean, change the bandages every day or so, don't be a stupid moron as regards massage class next week+. this will probably take 2-3 weeks to heal in total, and most likely part of the skin isn't going to heal but will instead be replaced in due time.

my hand is now wrapped up in a ridiculously expansive bandage, considering the entire injury takes place over about half a square inch of my finger. a picture will show up at some point after I've figured out how to take a shower, because my hair looks stupider than usual.

(answer probably involves a plastic bag and some tape, and possibly some assistance. or a bath, instead.)

important to add: Dr. Q is missing two or three fingertips from a freak alligator/snowblower incident many years ago; he pointed out that I could just get rid of my fingertip if it was going to cause me so many problems (as this is the same one that has gotten a second-degree burn from making pancakes at age 12 and was smashed in a church window a few years later).

I told him I'd consider it.

I know I'm a little late in the month for this, but if I was ever going to live the movie Groundhog Day I would like another chance to get today right.

Horrible unhappy mood, arguments, broken mugs (my two favorites are now both shattered), cut-up finger.

( bitching )

Today seems to have been incredibly quiet, mostly.

Admittedly I keep feeling as though someone's lurking in the doorway, because I hung up the first coatrack of any sort that we've had since I moved up here three years ago – a wall-hanger, as opposed to a stand-alone – and it's got a lot of heavy bulky coats hanging on it where my peripheral vision is used to white walls. But other than that, uh.

Did more housework today. Still miss Rue, but she's coming home tomorrow, which makes me very happy and excited. (And terrified; the place isn't PERFECT for her, and I want it to be! Stupid noise ordinances.)

I'm also sleepy enough to admit that this post isn't going to gain more interesting content.

hey, so, today's my older sister's birthday! that's pretty awesome, right?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL!

I love you, I hope it's awesome and you have a great time, and I'm sorry that I still can't afford to ship you your gifts. :(

SOMEDAY.

I made the bedroom my bitch.

(Unfortunately, it's still not done.)

please remember that it's January, and you live in the part of the country known colloquially as Hey, You Idiot, It Snows In January Around Here.

please remember that snow has a tendency to sit on top of vehicles, and that your apartment complex's snowplows will not plow in the immediate vicinity of vehicles. they really don't plow the snow off the vehicles themselves, either.

please remember that if you are going to shovel snow off your truck, having the shovel, like you did remember, is a very good start! it is not, however, the only thing you need to remember.

please remember that your loafers are not snow-appropriate. you have boots. they are, in fact, winter boots, designed to keep your feet warm and dry, and therefore they are the footwear you should be wearing while shoveling snow from any one location to any other.




On the other hand, I can feel all my toes, they don't hurt, and the rent check made it into the mail on time. Even if my feet and hands were about half-frozen by the time I got into my truck.

so I'm totally doing a great job of keeping up on this once-a-day thing! right. okay.

on or about December 18th, Rue got me a really nice ring, one that is powerful and manly and everything I could possibly have ever wanted in an engagement ring. She did this despite the fact she'd already spent nearly as much a year or so before on another engagement ring.

(That one, though, was a ring for a woman. This is not.)

this ring makes me so happy. it has every day since December 18th, despite the fact that my hand reacts to the inside of it (sterling silver) enough that I'm left with some patchy blackish spots on the inside of my finger. I don't care. this ring is absolutely worth every moment of it.

honestly I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do this ring credit. it makes me happy, is the thing. and it does that because of Rue, because she makes me happy. every time I look down at it, even nearly a month later, even when I've had a ring on that finger for over a year ...

I'm reminded how lucky I am to have her, is what it is. It's just a hunk of silver, is this ring. It's an attractive hunk of silver, and it's obviously handmade, and I can guess – from classes in jewelry-making I took most of a decade ago – how it was made. But it's still just a chunk of metal, in the end. The important part is Rue.

so here we are in a new year, and I have a splitting headache. (later: I have realized the cause of this, and want to kick myself. oddly enough forgetting hormonal pills for six hours will cause side effects!)

anyway. ¬_¬

so I took Rue to the train, and managed to make it there on time. we didn't get a lengthy farewell as she had to board basically right away. she's going to be gone from today until sometime on Sunday in a week+, and probably I will mope around miserably whenever I'm not either talking to her, at school, or somehow magically and completely distracted.

I will say that it feels too weird, and by that I mean incredibly fucking weird, to sleep in bed alone. so I've already given up on it; my plans involve sleeping on the futon, possibly in couch format, the entire time she's gone. we'll see if my body will hold up to it, I guess.

I miss Rue. :(

um I should add, considering how jumbled this entry is: for the most part, the new meds I started about a month ago do help. the problem is that they only help for about eight hours and I took them at ohhhhh about 10:30AM, so they've worn off so hard. plus, that headache I mentioned earlier.

I think at this point I'm going to give up on this entry containing much in the way of logic or sense, and save my original plans for it for tomorrow, because then hopefully I will be able to form complete and coherent sentences, and therefore will succeed in my goals.

I'm aware that this post basically lacks all content, and definitely lacks all brevity, don't worry.

I did want to add that I want to go back to updating daily, because there was a twelve-month-straight period (possibly slightly longer? idr) in which I actually did update every single day, and looking back on that, it makes me happy, to have something that made me feel so productive for a while there. We'll see how successful I am at it, I guess!

Apparently when you go to a therapist's office, say "I think I have ADD," describe your life and describe ADD by doing so, they don't necessarily make you fill out a questionnaire or anything!

that may have been the most productive hour of my entire life.

and now: to conquer other doctor's offices, especially when nobody answers the damn phone.

(and then to collect my Rue, and figure out some way to celebrate, I guess.)

so this one time, we were at the Metro 20, and I went into the men's room and discovered that it was the most well-equipped men's room I've been in in my life.

in the stall was the sports section of the paper and a bottle of Spic & Span disinfectant.

it was amazing.

---

I won't be going there again soon, though, because Rue has come down with swine flu, and so I get to hang out and take care of her through her time of quarantine.

since technically this makes me quarantined too, I ... think. ish.

(meanwhile, despite spending massive amounts of time around her, my only sign of illness has been a slightly-sore throat last night that hasn't been bothering me today except for when I went several hours without anything to drink. similarly my sister, despite picking up a wretched case of mono about two months ago [which I think means she has three more months to go before being considered clear of it], has not gained a case of flu yet despite a lot of traveling around with her boyfriend, who does now have a case of it.)

also, Tamiflu is a) real and b) fucking expensive. I bitch about the cost of my anti-inflammatories, but those are at least a 30-day supply for $80 ... not a five-day supply.

I really want this for my birthday, in the 16 fl oz. size.





... unfortunately my birthday was over a month ago. *unbearably sad*


In other news, as of November I'm going to end up with a surprise two-month break in school before taking afternoon classes instead of morning classes! This is an 80% good thing.

yesterday afternoon I had a surprise meeting with the executive director and the dean of students at my school, wherein they informed me that all my classmates had, Survivor-style, voted me out of class.

unfortunately it wasn't described in such an amusing fashion at the time. (Rue's the one who came up with it, this morning.)

my immunity (gained, presumably, from the combination of my 4.0 grades and my Really Fucking Awesome Massages on faculty in the middle and at the end of my Foundations of Massage class) means only that I have been invited back to participate in a later season, or rather more clearly and less metaphorically, I'll start taking classes with the full-time students who just started last month, once they've actually caught up to where I am. (they have some ways to go.)

I'm supposed to talk to the dean of students again early next week and figure out when those classes actually occur.

in the meantime, I'm home today; I'm finishing shiatsu and eastern path because both of those classes are concurrent with the senior full-time class, those who started in February at the same time as me. they're graduating in November, which is why I can't just hop up to join them – they've had about twice as many class sessions as I have, and there's no possible way for me to make all those up.

at the very least, Dan and Laura are Displeased with the rest of my (former) part-time class for making them do this, which they've never had to do before. (coincidentally, I'm also the very first transitioning transperson in the ten years the school's been open. are these related? nobody's said for sure either way. you decide!) and at least half of the decision that I shouldn't stay in that class was for my own safety and learning, and I know that. they're also aware of the issues with how all my living expenses are currently dependent on my remaining a full-time student in good standing (with full-time defined as "at least 12 class hours per week"); due to shiatsu that will remain true until November 11th, at which time either we've figured out what I'm doing or I'm going to be in potential trouble with the 599 program. guess which one I'd prefer.

I just kind of want to throw the rest of my class off an island into a nasty undercurrent, to conclude the Survivor metaphor.

So yesterday was my birthday, and it was... actually pretty all right, by which I mean awesome in most parts and never worse than okay. Saturday; no school, no work. Slept in (a tiny bit, both by falling asleep early and not leaving an alarm set), lazed around, had a shower and breakfast. Ended up cleaning the kitchen (because I had slacked off in doing so on days that weren't my birthday) so that there was space for Rue to make a really badass awesome chocolate cake (with chocolate chips! my face when she offered to include them, let me show you it, it was like :D but even moreso).

And she also got a really awesome bouquet of flowers which she hand-selected and hand-arranged and includes lilies, and can I say that every time I smell them lilies end up my favorite flowers again? I forget, and then I remember, and go "oh, right, THAT was why!" They're all fairly purple, too. There's a picture on the good camera, but the good camera is missing its cable, so those will have to wait. I'm not going to take pictures by holding up my computer.

There were a lot of really awesome conversations, too, which for safety's sake I'm not going to even attempt to relay.

We had dinner at a place called Teagan's, where the waiter made my night a hundred times better by teasing Rue (who was having trouble picking something, I don't even remember what) and saying "or should I just ask him?" – between that and actually being a really good waiter, he definitely deserved his tip. Thanks go again to Rue's mother who donated money towards dinner out of nowhere, because that was also awesome.

After dinner, we stopped off at the grocery store – riveting, I know – to get the ~free reusable bag~ for it being my birthday, and then assorted Stuff to take us to the next level of gas discount (... it was worth it! I have no regrets!) and then we went home to drop off the leftovers, go through presents, and then headed out on a long drive to Vermont. At ten.

The presents I have currently are all from Rue, and included this really fucking awesome pottery mug (pictures of this thing will show up eventually, at least on dailybooth) and a non-feminine wallet that will keep me from carrying around three pounds of crap because it's too small to hold it all, and Rue wrote and printed out a story that had me laughing gleefully for like five minutes straight (... or not straight, whatever, there was definitely at LEAST five minutes of laughter that night).

The drive was really nice, too – a trip to Bennington to get cheaper gas (hence the stop-off at the grocery store) and then a roundabout trip home, wherein we decided it was probably a good idea not to get lost and depend on zarhooie to help us out since, even if we were at the screwed-up rotary near her home she wasn't there... unfortunately we didn't get home until a little after midnight, but there were still substantial birthday wishes from Hans waiting for me also.

And this morning, when I checked my email again, there was a message from my sister who apologized for not calling with the birthday dirge, because all the phone numbers she had for me were defunct. Whoops! (Situation remedied; I told her to call and leave it as a voicemail but I have no idea if or when she actually will.)

There was also a ~phenomenal and glittery~ post made by Scout, and I still want to print out the sun-and-moon and hang it on the office wall. Unfortunately I think it won't keep glittering if I do. :(

My parents have promised they sent me something on Tuesday, but it hasn't arrived yet, so we'll figure out if it ever does (I'm hoping it will by Tuesday, though, when the holiday weekend is done). And if my classmate had bothered answering her phone, I would have nothing hanging over my head anymore and could enjoy tomorrow at least as much as yesterday.

I'm going to try anyway, though.

I hope all of you have had a wonderful weekend, wherever you've been.

Hey, so, a year has passed since I've updated! No surprises there.

Things:

• My birthday is on Saturday and I will be the grand age of blackbird pie.

• I hadn't thought about that until just now but I think that I really like calling it that.

• I have (decent, local) health insurance now! This is actually why I started this post. It doesn't actually cover me until October 1st, and my other coverage ended on August 31st... sort of... and so I'm really desperately hoping I don't have any problems over the next month. Also that I can figure out how to pay for my damn medications, since I'm pretty sure they're not going to be copay-only until October. *glum*

• Theoretically I still have Old Health Insurance for an unspecified period of time until the college where my mother works gets around to telling the health insurance agency that I'm not on the list. And then the health insurance agency has to send a letter proving that I've had coverage up until Monday, so that the new insurance will cover my bevy of pre-existing conditions.

• My truck really needs to get a new exhaust manifold, which sucks because – especially due to probably having to pay $51.99 out-of-my-pocket for medicine in the next oh three days – I really can't afford it. Midas quoted me $400; Rue's coworkers suggested that a non-chain local guy would probably do it for more like $250 but we haven't actually gotten in to see him to confirm that yet. Meanwhile I sound like I have no muffler... but only when going uphill or speeding up. Or driving on the highway like I do kind of frequently. Ugh.

• One week ago I had a sore throat; last weekend I had all the misery of a headcold; as of now I'm still kind of stuffed up but mostly clear. Oh colds, you suck, I'm glad you weren't worse and at least I was competent to do things like ... think ... most of the last week.

• I probably have ADD, in the very literal sense, and in conversation with my mother the other day discovered that, although when I was a kid she hadn't thought I had it (after all, I was constantly reading! I'd lose myself in books for hours at a time, even when I was supposed to be doing things like chores or schoolwork, and everyone knows that kids who can read and enjoy it don't have ADD!), in more recent years, having learned more about the condition, she actually is pretty sure I do. I think it's very reassuring to have my mother tell me that I'm not wrong, here, and also in theory this is going to help me out a lot with getting a diagnosis and some form of treatment with it.

• Admittedly, I don't see my doctor until October (although at least I didn't have to cancel that appointment, which was scheduled much earlier), so it's not like it matters all that much that I'm about 98% certain I have it (and so is Rue and my mother both!). Also I don't know if he can diagnosis it, as a family care doctor, but the odds are pretty good I ... think. At least in kids. Also also the phone call I had with the health insurance people pointed out that mental health medications aren't covered in the medication coverage policy, which sucks. On the other hand, the guy on the phone, who works for the insurance company, pointed out that if the medication is prescribed for a different, non-mental purpose, then it's 100% a-okay and "an exception will be written in to allow you to have that medication."

So basically, I don't think I've ever been as grateful before that I have fibromyalgia, with its documented cognitive focus effects. :D!

On the other hand, this is not so much going to help me with getting medication or treatment for gender identity disorder. :(

(I mean, hell, I already tried having the gynecologist's office prescribe testosterone to kill my killer periods. It didn't work.)

I did not want to spend this afternoon on the phone with doctor's office after doctor's office after doctor's office, with a side of oh-so-helpful insurance claims people.

:|

later that night I talked to my dad for ~40 minutes. I was still very upset but never got so upset as to be completely freaking out.

basically I am incredibly grateful to Scout for what she said, as ... had she not said that I probably would have been a lot more combative when Dad said essentially the same thing.

the end result is probably not as bad as I was expecting. he said he had sent a check to pay for medications and the application/first month fee of HealthyNY on Wednesday, and while it hasn't shown up yet it will probably arrive tomorrow. he also suggested that, when I can, I might send Mom an email and try to explain exactly how she'd hurt me, although maybe without recriminations.

I'm supposed to call and complain to the billing department of the gynecologist I saw back in May (which, since I'm supposed to schedule a medical check-up, shouldn't be too difficult) in which I'll point out that I was not, in fact, a well woman at the time (leaving aside, even, the fact that they knew at the time I wasn't a woman), and so submitting the claim to my insurance that it was a well-woman visit means that the insurance is not actually paying the bill that they should be paying, since obviously if I was going to see the gynecologist while healthy I would have traveled All The Way Back To Kansas to visit Dr Useless.

the benefit to contacting the gyn's office, along with scheduling new check-up, is because then the insurance will cough up the $300ish that Dad can then use to pay for two more months of HealthyNY.

if all I had to do was talk to doctor's offices and my dad, I think I could handle this.

it's the part where, at some point, I'm going to be talking to my mother again that still has me uncertain and apprehensive. we're too much alike. we react the same to being upset and hurt and attacked. we're often not very good at communicating what we actually mean through emails.

I have no idea how well this is going to work.

We got home from school today about a half hour ago to a notice from the bank that my car insurance automatic payment had bounced, and the bank was charging us $34. We're not in the hole right now because my unemployment/599 Program payment arrived last night, which more than makes up for it, but the bank also didn't actually pay Progressive, so who knows if Progressive is going to charge me extra to make up for not paying them, too. (I get to call them when I calm down from what happened next to ask them to try to make the payment again, if the log-in-to-website method doesn't work.)

My insurance bill is $50.50. My medication bill, filled about two weeks ago, was $51.99. My medications are supposed to be paid for by my parents – this, and another that's going to show up in the middle of next week which is unfortunately $71.99 or so. I talked to my dad about this on Sunday night. If he sent a check for those, it sure as fuck hasn't shown up yet. And honestly, considering how he wanted to conflate this with the health insurance issue, and the way he said he'd tell me his answer on Tuesday and on Thursday I still haven't even heard from him to say he got my email from Monday afternoon, I wouldn't actually be remotely surprised to find he'd forgotten to send it, or had decided he wasn't going to until he had made his decision about everything else, too.

I called Dad at home. He wasn't there. I left a message and asked to be called back.

I called Mom at work, and caught her on the second number. I tried to ask what had happened, where the check was so I could pay for my medications, that the lack of it – because for the last several months, that check has shown up around the 25th, and here it is the 6th with no check – has cost me at least $34 and possibly more like $64.

"Bethany," she says, in a sharp tone, trying to get me to shut up so that she could talk over me, and I lost it just a little.

"Don't use that name." I was already in tears from Progressive. I sure as fuck didn't need this. "I asked you in email weeks ago to call me Brady –"

"Well, I don't like that," my mother told me.

"Then call me B! I don't care, but don't call me that! That is not my name."

She said, in one of the most sarcastic tones I have ever heard her use in my life, "Maybe I just forget things sometimes."

I tried to keep going, to keep saying that I was incredibly hurt by her callous dismissal of this matter, that she was ignoring me and insulting me as a person with what she was saying and doing, and it was so, so fucking obvious that she didn't give a good goddamn fuck.

But I tried.

And I tried to say: No, there isn't time to sit around and deliberate and come up with a list of questions that you haven't asked me, because in nine days I don't have health insurance anymore. I wanted to say: Sure, there's a sixty-day window after that where I don't count as missing coverage and my fibro will still be covered, but there's only about forty-five days before I don't qualify for HealthyNY anymore and will have to pay a fuckton more for private insurance; do you want to do that? Really? I wanted to say: What the fuck makes you think I have the good luck to stay out of the hospital if I don't have any health insurance? This is how this shit happens. Don't you read?

And instead –

I don't even know what she said, anymore. I don't know what her sentence was supposed to be. I know that she said something that boiled down to: I don't have to accept that you are actually a man, because you were my little girl and I raised you that way. I don't have to accept that my refusal to refer to you as male, that my refusal to refer to you by the name you have chosen to accurate represent you, crushes your soul and rips your heart out of your chest. I don't have to care about the fact that I'm deliberating with your father about whether or not we're going to pay to keep you healthy for the nine months between now and when you can afford to do it yourself, and I'm not even talking to you about my deliberations. It doesn't matter that, if we refuse, you're out of good options, that you will probably end up incredibly sick and hospitalized from it with no way to pay for it. I don't care.

And then she set it off by saying "B", in an even more sarcastic tone, where I could hear the air quotes and the bitterness.

And that was it.

"I'm never speaking to you again," I said, and hung up the phone.

I ended up almost puking from how hard I was crying in the minutes after that, and most of this post has been written through blinding tears. I ran Rue out of the room with how much I'm radiating my upset and hurt. I feel so fucking goddamn bleak.

I am willing to try talking to my father. I hold out zero hopes for him to behave better than her, at this point. And I don't know if I'll be able to swallow any of it at all if he pulls this with me, even if it does mean that I'm completely fucked for healthcare for most of the next ten years or whatever. Theoretically speaking, at least one of the hospitals in the area is supposed to have a healthcare program for people who are just shy of fucking broke, for people who send out just as much as they take in but take in too much for Medicaid or any of the other virtually-no-cost public health programs. (Did you know that the federal stimulus money screwed me over on that one? I qualified by one dollar, and now I don't by twenty-four.)

So, later, when I can try to talk without crying, when I don't want to just scream until I rupture my vocal cords because of how much this hurts, I'll go to those hospitals and talk to them and try to find out what my options are.

And I feel like a fucking moron for thinking, even for a second, that maybe my parents would care and support me.

(Rachel? You are welcome to come visit any time you want. But Mom isn't, and I don't know if Dad is.)

Rue: stretchers, in case anyone was curious, haven't got any cardiac activity.

on the drive to school, pulling off the highway, all of about fifteen-twenty minutes ago: I'm listening to We Started This Op'ra Shit, with the chorus of happy people singing that GeneCo's got it, you know you want it, baby, GeneCo's got it –

I stop at the light, look right at the lawn sign, and see "GEMCO'S BUYING". No shit I read that as GeneCo first.

I look left, and on a van two lanes over, I see Aurora: Because You Care on the back.

What? I think, and realize what the passenger door says:

Aurora Caskets, Aurora, IL

I just.

What.

I was tossing around the phrase "Collaboration vs. Utilization in RPGs" the other day, which I'm aware by itself sounds like a ridiculously pompous phrase – what actually happened was I was trying to boil the concept down to the fewest possible words, and those were the ones I got. I think the concept itself is fairly simple; it started out as a comparison in the back of my mind the other night, and I managed to tease it out and actually look at it. When I did that, I thought something along the lines of "... oh, well no wonder I feel that way!"

So, to explain it, I'll start with the comparison.

( I'm cutting this because it's kind of long and I'd like to be polite, but I'd really like it if you'd read it anyway. )

for the record, this is my advice:

when you know that your truck's windshield wipers aren't working, whether or not you know why they aren't working, and you leave for school and note that the sky is a semi-menacing grey and the lights are dim enough that your eyes aren't hurting from the sun, don't be surprised when it starts pouring on you.

go ahead and panic while you try to drive with 10% visibility, but don't be surprised.

(I made it to school fine, more or less, except for the massive stress; if it rains at all on the drive home, though, I am so fucking waiting it out.)

The following conversation has just happened, courtesy Facebook (which I always type as Facbeook):

Greg (my ex-fiancé who I have not seen nor substantially communicated with since 2004):

Why the name change?

Brady:

Coming out as a transman.

Greg:

Sorry just ain't clicking in the old head. Please explain.

Brady:

I realized over the course of the last few months that I don't actually identify in any way as female, and instead identify exclusively as male, so I've changed my name to reflect that and am working on arranging medical treatment for sexual reassignment.

I asked Rue if she thought I'd been succinct enough, and she just smiled.

I guess we'll find out as time passes if I just gave a farm boy from Kansas an aneurysm!

Meanwhile, those other things I talked about writing – several of them have had progress made! And I have my final in the Most Annoying And Difficult Class In The Entire Curriculum tomorrow morning bright and early, so any good luck will be most appreciated. ♥

This is today, so far:

α.) Remembered at 7:55, while still in bed, that I had an appointment for a blood draw at 8:10.

β.) Despite this, and despite needing a shower, was only fifteen minutes late.

γ.) Got to school late, and used last currently-available grace. >:(

δ.) Originally unremarkable class (full-body integration! I think I'm the only one excited by this) became remarkable when Laura (the teacher) said, essentially, "uh, so Tara [Dean of Admissions] is making a Virtual Tour video to go on the website, and wants some people doing massages for the classroom tour. If you guys are willing, pack up and go downstairs to the South Classroom, okay?"

ε.) Managed successfully to squeeze a full-body massage into a single hour, without any big lapses or left-out bits, while being filmed for two separate takes. While wearing a piratical bandanna to keep sweat out of my eyes, no less!

ζ.) While leaving class, was caught up by Grayce [the office manager / receptionist], who said that Rue had called to say she was going to a Hazmat Issue at the YMCA, something vague about a chlorine fire? (Grayce looked so bewildered. Apparently she'd missed the fact that Rue is an EMT and also trained in hazmat.) Thanked Grayce, and explained this.

θ.) Went to the DSS in order to resume foodstamps, since Rue was not ... at home ... at all. This mostly entailed sitting for half an hour and waiting for someone to remember I was there; during this time a man who wanted to evict people from one of his apartments (from what I gathered, DSS was paying their rent, and they kept trashing the apartment and causing a lot of damage he had to pay for, and he was sick of it) who also looked disturbingly like a cross between Bill Nighy and Donald Rumsfeld made racist statements at me! Very disparaging. I was straight-up all :| at him. I don't think he noticed, though, or the way that his "especially, pardon me, black people" was incredibly fucking offensive. Even though I'm not black. :|

η.) And then I tried to get health insurance, since I won't have any in mid-August (and will be utterly and totally fucked) if I don't do something about it. I was pretty sure I didn't qualify for Medicaid, so I wasn't going to apply for it, but the woman at the Family Health Plus office told me to go there first anyway, and bring prescriptions if I had any, because that way I wouldn't have to wait until August for an appointment. This was helpful information not subsequently provided by the woman in the Medicaid office. I now have a lot of paperwork to fill out and take back on Monday afternoon, and also on Monday have to go back to my doctor's office (which makes it, technically, four times in one week!) to get new prescriptions.

ι.) Mind you, I got prescriptions from him on Tuesday. And realized, last night while dropping them off at the drugstore, that I have refills for at least ten months for one of them, and probably at least six for the other. So I really, really feel fucking ridiculous asking for yet more prescriptions.

κ.) When I got home, I talked to Rue, who is still at the chlorine fire (and also still now, as I write this), very hungry, warning me not to go outside or let the outside in until she says it's okay (which means no open windows or, uh, the air conditioner, and it's about 80˚F out there today; thank fuck we only have north-facing windows), probably having more fun than she'll avoid feeling guilty for later. No area restaurants are helping the emergency services personnel by feeding them. I would go get food, but I can't afford to feed anyone but just her. :(

λ.) This list was not originally going to be numbered in this style, and then I decided to anyway.

μ.) I'm also very hungry, so despite the fact we have no toaster while I strongly desire toast, I will attempt to eat something light. (Because, after all, sooner or later Rue is going to need to be fed, too, and eating with her is polite and often tasty.)

today we went to a mechanic's shop to buy a truck.

this is true except in all the ways it's a lie; we went to a mechanic's because the chief of the body shop was selling me the truck, and I needed his signature on a couple pieces of paper (technically only one, more on that later) in order to go to the DMV. that was fine, that was easy, it was signed and all was well and good and we went out to the parking lot, got in Rue's car, and it wouldn't start – of course – because it was humid, and that is the car's one problem, with humidity and having been recently driven. we were at a mechanic's shop. unfortunately, Rue's car is a Toyota, and the mechanic didn't service Toyotas.

when it eventually started, as it is prone to do, we drove to the DMV; we went into line for Information; ten seconds passed, approximately, and a woman asked me what I needed. I said I wanted to know if I had all the right paperwork to register a truck from a private sale; she started looking through it, and handed me back a few pieces, and threw away one of the two pieces I'd gotten carefully signed because the truck is too old to need that page filled out. At some point, after several minutes (which also included updating my registration, what with having moved a month ago and forgetting to change my address-on-file) I realized that, hey, was this actually just information?

"do you have payment?" she asked, and looked at the checkbook I was holding, and I said yes, of course, I just thought I'd have to go stand in the line (and gestured). "oh," she answered, "I thought I'd save you that, since there wasn't anyone standing over there then."

all told, the total time spent at the DMV to register a vehicle and change two ID addresses (as Rue did hers also) was maybe as much as twenty minutes.

goddamn I'm glad I don't live in Manhattan today.

Anyone in the local area -- within about a half-hour's drive of me, anyway -- who would like to be one of my massage practice victims clients, now is a really good time to get in touch with me about it!

AJ, Hope, Kate, and Megan, I am especially looking at the four of you.

(Also you, John, although as you've gone before you are not at the top of the list; sorry.)

Please email me or send me a PM or even just leave a comment, whatever; usually I need about an hour and a half's block of time for paperwork and massage, and a space that is preferably at least 10'x5' for the massage table to go. If you do not have such a space, there are pretty good odds that there is such space in my living room as soon as the last boxes are gone.

You fill out some paperwork, including a brief (confidential!) medical history and (afterwards) a reaction page.

You get a free massage, usually about an hour's duration.

So please! Get massage and help me out! I need to practice on you!

today was supposed to be simple: school, then car insurance, then maybe DMV trip. all of this overwrote our invitation to see Hope, AJ and John and the girls, of course, along with writing off the barbecue, which I hope was delicious.

What was not delicious was the surpriez groupwork!!1 thrown at me in my last half-hour of class; I loathe group work. I never find it to be a good learning experience. I can use it as a teaching experience, maybe, but that only works if I want to teach at the time. I didn't. And this half-hour, which wasn't even all spent working (show of hands: who actually expected everyone to work straight through to the end of class? yeah, didn't think there were many), had me so supremely unbalanced and off-kilter that I did, in the end, call the teacher and tell her that I cannot be surprised by group work like that. I was very nearly crying at the time I was talking to her, actually, /TP*EURL /KREBLGT.

Fortunately, this school believes in being supportive the way very few other things do (corset companies and some bridge architects, maybe), and so she hastened to reassure me she would offer as much lead-in as she could, and I was always welcome to excuse myself from working in a group and find some other way of reviewing whatever it was we were supposed to review.

Unfortunately, while that helps in future, it didn't do anything to calm me the fuck down. And so I've been on or over the edge all afternoon, making poor Rue's life miserable (and probably her mother's, too). Meanwhile, Rue helped me get a good quote on car insurance this morning, and I can't actually apply for it yet because I don't know an answer about my parents' car insurance and I don't have the VIN for the truck. :|

I called my mother, and left a message, at something like... oh, just under seven hours ago, I'd guess.

More recently I called my father, to get his voice mail right away, and my mother, twice, to get her voicemail after delay and then again right away, and I also called twice to talk to Ben (the guy selling the truck) to find out when we were going to do the paperwork, since apparently it's not legal to sell the license plates along with the vehicle, and there's some pesky law about how your vehicle is supposed to have plates when you drive it around ...

Current projected monthly costs, for my records and if anyone's curious: $45.85/mo or $243 for six months for car insurance with Progressive; the DMV is going to have my ass a few times over, too, with a $20 use fee and a really unclear other charge for plates/registration ... I'm not sure how much because I have no idea what they class the truck's weight as. :|

I also don't know if I want to get commercial plates or passenger; the DMV does a better job of explaining the difference, which is mostly "in the long run, commercial plates are cheaper; in the short run, passenger plates let you stay on the parkways when you're downstate."

I'm just not sure which of those poses a bigger problem.

Other than that, and the fact that Dad and Mom and Ben have all still not called me back and I've been writing this off-and-on for about 45 minutes ... urrgh. I don't even know what to think.

I have no idea if I'm going to have this thing this weekend, although I need it. And I have ... well, far more of an idea, really, but in a negative light, about taking a Saturday trip to Ithaca. It would be fun; it would also be expensive, and I don't have food stamps outstanding in order to pay for my food without cash; I have never driven to Ithaca before in my life, although I think I may have been there once or twice; I should probably get used to the style of once-a-week-or-two stock-up grocery store trips anyway, before attempting to transfer food 300+ miles...

The Nissan is probably going to have fuel economy that is at least as good as the old New Yorker. That doesn't mean it's near as good as the Corolla, and all three of them are blown out of the water by a Prius... so I understand why they like going, and certainly the food that results is far and away the best quality I've met up here outside of, idk, Chez Sophie or whatever – as it goes, though, this Saturday's probably out for us after all.

And at ANY MOMENT, Rue could shake me awake on a Sunday and tell me that she's being judged and pinned to the examining board RIGHT NOW, and then I will flail a lot, try not to freak her out, and hope that she is her normal outstanding self, one of the best trauma assessors in the state (five stars! from the guy who designed the system!), and anyway just like every other time I've told her she'll do great, she'll prove me wrong by being OUTFUCKINGSTANDING instead.

So there.


Apologies for the disjointed nature of this post. I now return you to your regularly scheduled reading list.

um so –

does anyone local to the area have a cordless drill that I can borrow, in the event that I never do find the charger for ours?

it would be really nice to have a safe and functional bedframe so that we can sleep on our new mattress tomorrow, and there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to screw all these damn screws in by hand.

Nevermind – I was wrong! And successfully did in fact screw all those damn screws in by hand.

so um apparently I haven't posted anywhere since last Sunday! I don't even remember what the hell I said last Sunday.

( week in review )

so, uh, yesterday I got into a car accident!

I am mostly okay, except for the predictable flare and probably some whiplash; the other woman involved decided, after walking around to inspect the damage to her car and being a bitch to me, to complain of neck pain and get back in her car so the police would think she was a better person.

(I'm bitter.)

I went to see my doctor, who very conveniently was able to see me about an hour after I left the scene, and very kindly gave me a prescription for hydrocodone (also known as Vicodin) 5/500, which means five milligrams of the good stuff and 500mg of acetaminophen per pill.

(Now it's Saturday! um.)

I'm not sure what else to say, honestly. The police report is vague and seems unfavorable and also flatly contradicts physics and my memory, so we'll see if the other driver (the Raging Bitch™) decides to cause a fuss of some sort, in which case I will bring so much fuss the CPD won't know what hit them. (I might get my grandmother involved! When she's involved and the shit gets thrown down, her opponent will be on hands and knees cleaning shit out of the carpet and whimpering meekly for WEEKS. ... so to speak.)

I just want to include a note, here, that invisionary and passerine deserve all the good karma reserved for this half of the week in this corner of the universe; not only did they gracefully allow us to show up way too early on Wednesday and kidnap their kitchen, but John also kept Rue around all morning on Thursday so they could do some of our laundry (for free. FREE. No quarters were harmed in the cleaning of this laundry), and then John took Rue to the scene so that she could make sure I was okay (as the EMS folks weren't doing a very good job, really), and later, after the visits to doctor and drugstore, John and AJ even more graciously let us come over and lean on them a lot.

I think I had about the brain capacity of their infant daughter, being highly unable to focus on anything but The Incredibles for more than about two minutes at a time, and yet somehow AJ didn't seem to be annoyed with me! And we said we'd help with dishes after dinner and then flaked upon realizing how late it had gotten, so I feel super guilty, and if not for the fact that it's way too early and if I'm going to do anything other than a short nap and a shower before going to the parade, it's probably ... a long shower, so I can't exactly go head over there now for ninja dishwashing.

It's a nice mental image, though: someone sneaks into your kitchen, in the dead of night, utterly silent ... and in the morning, all your dishes have been perfectly cleaned and put away.

We had a busy weekend with invisionary, passerine and esteleth – long drive to go to a better grocery store, then dinner and a game of Settler's that turned into "jesus christ it's pouring! when we tried to follow it up with going out to ice cream late at night with a classmate of mine.

Sunday involved the latest outbreak of menstrual rage and a reminder to get the appointment for a gyn visit, now that Mom's finished coaxing the insurance to find its ass with its hands. One of the kitchen cabinets is rather worse for wear, but for the most part I think we survived.

Yesterday was mostly spent trying to get new glasses for me, with a side order of getting a new mattress (although we will not be able to pick up or use said mattress until we're at the new place).

Today I got an 86 on my Myo midterm, which was not the best grade in the class, but was significantly better than many. Unsurprisingly, ten of the sixteen points I lost came in the "fill in the blank" section, as opposed to multiple choice. Much more surprising was the fact that I got the twelve points for the diagram right.

I woke up this morning in a flare, or at least in flare-like symptoms.

I have taken 200mg of tramadol in the last twelve hours alone. :|

In happier news, I got a DailyBooth. So far I haven't forgotten to take pictures.

Today we are somehow mysteriously combining a trip to Planned Parenthood so I can stop poisoning myself with estrogen as the lesser of two evils, possibly a massage so that on Friday I will have enough logs to turn in, and dinner with invisionary, passerine and esteleth. I believe Rue is also making cookies, although that might end up changing if her health doesn't get better than mine.

edit: and I forgot that she was taking some part of a shift today, too, so I really have no idea when anything's happening but that might put the massage off until tomorrow.

( school complaints )

I really love having a Dreamwidth account, and have a tendency to keep up on my read list a lot more thoroughly than I do my LJ flist. At the same time, I really wish I had more people here, or more people who would update more frequently. I always end up very sad when the only thing on my read list in the morning is people's automatic Twitter posts from the night before – not because I hate Twitter, although I drastically cut my follow list on Twitter last night as I was spending way too much time looking at it and I don't have a cell phone now anyway, but just because... there's a level of carelessness to a Twitter aggregate that isn't usually there, in an actual crafted post.

Write moar!

(I feel as though I should have brought crochet or knitting to class today. I would feel productive, which is important because I really, really can't comprehend anything that's being said out loud today.)

I do occasionally feel altogether perturbed when Rue tells me that I have, once again, been mentioned in IRC.

Especially in the context of Calontiri doom songs.

It is really just amazing how noisy a class of about forty people can be when they try. :|

Brachialis has been the most popular muscle so far today; I don't know when everyone else is supposed to present them, since only ... not even a quarter of the class has gone so far. Maybe on Monday, I don't know.

The midterm is next Tuesday, and is worth 30% of the grade in the class. There are 60 multi-choice questions which I will probably not fail, 10-12 fill-ins which I probably will due to stress and fog, 10-15 diagram items which will probably count as fill-in and also fail, and four application questions worth four times as many points each.

We are not done for the day, once done with the test; there's only being done until 11:20, and then spending ... most of an hour, apparently, going over the test afterwards, and a meditation to calm down everyone who has given themselves conniptions over the test.

Today I realized, in trying to draw pterygoids and temporalis muscles on the diagram provided, that the diagram was a piece of shit. The skull was entirely cartoonish instead of being anatomically relevant, and I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure that I won't ever be able to learn the placement of a muscle in reality if I have only memorized its place on Elmer Fudd. (For example.)

Apparently this means I need to spend a fair amount of time with a copier and papercrafting supplies, in order to fix this.

I currently have five four invite codes for Dreamwidth (or, uh, dreamWIDTH, as I persist in teasing) that I am not presently using.

They are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Comment or email or somehow get me your email address if you are interested in using one of these, because I'm pretty sure that every person from my former list of interested parties has already gotten at least one, so they're open to whoever wants them.

While I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure that that dream I just had involved Lexie writing fic in which Toby Ziegler and Sarah Palin had a tumultous, historical affair on the streets of Manhattan, because he'd been in charge of keeping her parents/family in long-term powerful positions in the conservative government of New York City.

I'll let you take that one in.

(Other dreams: waking up so that Marcus and Linnet could go to our favorite diner, which is not open 24 hours, at about 3 AM; Marcus sitting on Linnet's flowers after the grocery store clerk kept groping all her customers so that she could stay awake and be sure they were real; getting into an argument with Rue about whether she was driving my car home from Ben & Jerry's – verdict was no, and as soon as we got home I realized I shouldn't have been driving because it was in fact 3 AM, no matter how light it was out, and therefore I hadn't slept enough to be driving ...

The most terrifying thing about these dreams is the way they flow so seamlessly into each other. After we got home, I still couldn't "sleep" and ended up reading Lexie's fic. And then we ended up at WPI mocking a frat house that looked like a church, and one of my massage school classmates who's dropped out of the program was back, because apparently we had a field trip or something because class was being held in front of the frat house church that day ...)

... don't judge me, I forgot to take my Ambien last night. :(

(I've never even watched The West Wing...)