i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Hope to do a more detailed entry later but this has been a very full week, some unfun (interviewing and training new caregivers to replace my graduating students; the training process always sucks and is stressful, and I keep having to remind myself it always sucks and always gets better) but some fun. Craft fair last Sunday, Whole Earth Festival (kind of a hippie-vibed craft fair plus music plus some activities) today. It was hot, around 90F, and we were there for 2.5 hours, but sunscreen plus UV-protective cooling hood (purple of course) plus plenty of water plus frequent shade breaks all made it okay.

I am tired and, for the moment, content. :)

Another bug dream last night - cw for insecty badness

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One thing I am discovering is that I hate how I look right now.

It's not new -- not liking photos/videos of myself has been the case for a while -- but it hasn't come up much because I don't really do mirrors. But I'm taking progress pictures of my ear, and a) it looks horrible; b) I'm still adjusting to how much of the ear had to go (only like 1/5, but more than the hole-punch taken from my nose ten years ago, which needed no reconstruction); and c) my throat makes me look like a bullfrog (I tend towards double-chin-ness anyway because my head is fixed at a slightly downward angle, but it's super puffy lately because of the submandibular flareups I've been getting)

At least I have cute shirts and cute earrings ...

One thing I forgot to mention in my update yesterday is that yesterday's procedure was significantly more involved than I expected.

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I can't wear my hearing aid, which is on that side. My glasses sit a bit askew for now. And my ear hurts.

The second, longer run of prednisone seems to have restored most if not all of the jaw mobility (yay for being able to eat bagels again) but it also has given me some fairly impressive insomnia.

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The other thing of note this week is finally getting into the dermatologist for the Suspicious Blob on my ear. I forget when I first noticed it, and I'm pretty sure I brought it up to my main doctor several times, but she thought it was just benign. But it's been growing, and then in December it got randomly bleedy, and my audiologist sent a note to my doctor about "a lesion on the ear".

Dermatologist (who is awesome I love her) agreed it looked sus, and chopped it off. (The blob, not the ear.) Top edge of ear is awkward to bandaid, but if you do it right with the right shape bandage you can get an elf ear effect, woo.

Pathology came back as basal cell carcinoma, which I had a spot of on my nose in 2016. BSC is one of the least scary types of cancer: slow moving, easy to treat if you get it early, and nowhere near as scary as melanoma. (And 'treat' is generally just an outpatient surgical procedure, no radiation or chemo.) I'll be having a Mohs surgery in a bit over a month to make sure all the cancer cells got removed, and I'm not really worried.

...except for the bit where I have to get up at at least 6am, eww.

Back in 2015 I wrote an anti-ode to prednisone. Last night my brain came up with another verse, so I'm posting the revised version for posterity.

(Youtube version of the original is here)

Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
How fucked-up are your side-effects!
You make my mood go here and there
And make me sweat, like, everywhere
Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
How fucked-up are your side-effects!

Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
You make me so unhappy
Because I'm hungry all the time
I can't think of a proper rhyme
Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
You make me so unhappy

Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
I really dislike taking you
The anti-inflammation's great
But all the rest is cause for hate
Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
I really dislike taking you

Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
I can't wait til I'm done with this
You taste like shit, and what's more wrong
You made me filk this stupid song
Oh prednisone, oh prednisone,
I can't wait til I'm done with this

We're on the final boss fight of the campaign. Said boss is hovering over a deep pit -- bad for melee, unless they have some form of flight.

My character rolls the highest initiative.

She is a L20 owlin monk. She has flight. She also has a) 70 feet of movement per turn, and b) magic items (and a feat) that gives extra damage for distance moved in a straight line just before the attack. Oh, and a potion that does bonus

First roll hit a nat 20.

Rolling 20 means damage dice are doubled; if you would normally do 2d6, on a crit you roll 4d6. Between the damage roll (doubled), the extra monk ability I always like to throw in (also doubled, plus poison for a round), and the bonus damage for straight lines (doubled), I did 119 points of damage.

I also have a feat that says if I get a critical hit, all attacks against that creature have advantage until my next turn.

So... a pretty good start.

I love this character.

(...I got a crit the next turn too.)

...which I'm sure has ~no~ correlation to having gone to the free thanksgiving meal my church did

two types of salad, turkey, ham, sage stuffing, peas and shallots, roasted brussels sprouts / carrots / onions, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, potato rolls, and like eight types of pie (including: pecan, pumpkin, sweet potato, apple, chocolate cream, key lime, and idk what else) with real whipped cream.

All homemade, all insanely good, and there was even a centerpiece that was a handmade cornucopia made out of bread and containing actual fruots and vegetables.

I ... am going to go into a food coma now, lol

The first cat in the dream was a shorthair tortie -- mottled black and orange. Jumped onto my lap and then right shoulder, and demanded scritches. A kid nearby asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. My first reaction was "I don't know" but then I realized I did know because torties are 99% female. (The way I explained it in the dream was "orange boy cats can be all orange or orange-and-white, but not orange-and-black", which happens to be largely true IRL too. (Technically a boy cat that's XXY and heterozygous for this trait could be orange/black, but XXY is rare and only about half of them have a mix. But I didn't go into that.)

Then a big fluffy black cat jumped onto my left leg and swatted at the first cat, as if to say "my turn now". He was wearing little black "saddlebags" containing little foil bags, plus a note saying "feed me", so I opened one of the packets for him. It had a moist puck of wet food, and he chowed down quite happily.

There was an orange girl that, even in the dream, looked a lot like my former girl Monkey. She was lounging in an open drawer, and next to her was a skein of yarn the same color as her, which I snagged to bring home.

There was a sleek black cat lounging on the top level of a cat tree, well out of reach for pets but supervising. Not sure if boy or girl; somehow I knew that the fluffy black was a boy and the orange was a girl, but this one had no vibes.

And lastly there was a calico, white with patches of black and reddish orange and also yellowish orange; the oranges were slightly metallic looking. She reminded me of koi fish. Very pretty, but I didn't get a chance to pet her.

(This was an excellent dream and I'm glad I remembered so many details 💜)