i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

So I finally reached the point of action with the head-shaving thing; stopped dithering, and made an appointment. For today.

It was originally scheduled as a shave with razor, but I got a call this morning saying the barber got sick (argh) -- unknown if covid but did I want to reschedule? I didn't really, so I switched to clipper-shave, which more people there could do. Not complete hairlessness, just dark fuzz.

I had my morning aide braid my hair (simple braid, not anything fancy) and cut it so I could keep it. Then went in and had the shave. Clippers tickle a little, as it turns out.

They had good covid policies: staff vaccinated and masked, customers masked. She never fully removed my mask, just unlooped one ear to buzz that and then re-looping. And it was fast; I was in there for maybe ten minutes including paying.

The result is AWESOME.

I love the feel of air currents against the back of my head-- it was windy when I got out and I just spun around giggling because it felt so good. I like the way my pillow feels when I get into bed. Every one of my aides so far wants to touch it, and I like being "petted".

I just. I love it. So much.

I'm too tired to add pics (I wish it were easier to upload images to DW; that's one thing rav uses to do really well) but I did post one to Twitter -- https://twitter.com/isabeautiful/status/1493419537332465666

(The cryptic tweet was after braid cut-off, but there are a couple IRL people who follow my Twitter that I wanted to notify before I said anything publicly.)

Tomorrow is awesome. I mean, going to be.

Point the first: Hamilton on Disney Plus.

Point the second: summer update for animal crossing. SWIMMING. WE GET SWIMMING.

Point the third: I might be able to set up a way to play AC in bed, which will let me get some of the night critters.

Point the fourth: my roommate found me strawberry cheesecake edible cookie dough. Omnomnom. (I'm torn between making cookies out of it and then just it straight.)

Point the fifth: I am no longer feeling quite so gutted every time I think about Ravelry. I still a, annoyed at how things went down, but I've kind of stopped giving a fuck.

Sixth: HAMILTON. OCEAN SWIMMING. DID I MENTION THESE.

Part ichi is here

So, okay. Where was i?

Ah right:

I have a new not-a-job (!!!!]

( teal deer: online cat herder )

My mom thinks I'm crazy for doing this -- she worries that it's Too Much -- and I can't explain to her either why it isn't (and she has no idea how vicious my brainweasels can get or how deep my self-loathing can go) or why it matters to me that I'm doing something. Luckily, she's not the boss of me, so I don't have to.

#

Language updates:

Tomorrow's Duolingo will make a 750-day streak.

I don't know how. O.o

I'm mostly doing low key Spanish stuff, figuring that a little each day will keep that part of my brain happy even though I'm not devoting Lots Of Learning to it.

I'm also still doing WaniKani for learning Japanese kanji (though since the characters are borrowed from Chinese, there's some overlap, and I was very amused to recognize 牛肉 as "cow meat" on a beef menu item at a Chinese restaurant). The kanji are getting tricksier and more complicated looking, though I do have to say that WK's method is pretty effective.

The only down side is it doesn't teach grammar, and I haven't found a really good thing for grammar. Duo sucks (it's better with languages that are similarer to English, really). Memrise is awesome but horrible at accessibility (I think I did a rant on this but teal deer; on iOS the kanji are tiny and there's no way to zoom; on the computer, all reviews are timed, in that you have 15 seconds to think of the answer and type it out; and they don't have a "kana but no kanji" course, just an everything version where I can't read the kanji, or a "no Japanese characters" version that hurts my brain, partly because I have to transliterate it into hiragana in my head anyway to match up with the rest of my knowledge, partly because they do things like "arigatō" where I'm used to "arigatou"; it's pronounced as a long closed o vowel, but written as ありがとう and とう is (to)(u).) There are textbooks, but I can't use physical textbooks.

I do have one app that does give basic grammar, so I'm doing that in parallel with learning the kanji. And hopefully some of it will stick, lol.

Meanwhile, my roommate is taking beginning Japanese this quarter and so we're doing super bad Japanese at each other. Like, she's started saying tadaimas' when she comes home, and I say okaeri back at her. Today she learned about telling time, which I can sort of do, in the sense of "..........uhhh, roku ji, uh, san... jyuu... go... fun. Uh, desu," (六時三十五分です = it's 6:35) Basically long pauses between each syllable, and I am of course better with translating written Japanese into English than trying to get English into Japanese.

#

Part three of updateyness will come ... sometime not right now.

Health: is kind of on the crappy side of good. Still have fatigue. Still have hand pain, plus fingers are going wonky. Wonkier. (Fun note: one finger is doing a weird click-shift thing when I flex it back, i.e. hyperextension. The hand therapist gave my hand a weird look because apparently that's unusual. Half my finger problems are reduced mobility and half the problems are too much mobility. Only me, lol.: Had headache Sunday and Monday, Also, yesterday my chair decided to Not Tilt for like twenty minutes, while I was at maximum sideways tilt, which meant my back was in screaming agony by the time it decided to behave again.

I did finally break down and get a mask because of air quality issues from fires -- vogmask.com has masks that are good at filtering and also look cool. (I got the rainbow parrot one. If I remember, I'll upload a pic of me wearing it. (I wish DW had Ravelry's photo-upload interface and backend and stuff; it's so *easy* to add pictures there,)) Air quality here hasn't been as bad as Seattle-etc, but visible ash and haze seems to be the new normal for fire season.

Reiki: is still awesome. I'm doing a lot of it, with someone that ... okay, so, some Reiki practitioners just kind of wave their hands above the body (to manipulate energy stuff or whatnot), but others include physical touch, like a very gentle massage, and my reiki person is one of the second sort. Which means even if reiki were just new age mumbo jumbo, the sessions are a way for me to a) relax and n) GET TOUCH. Which is huge. I do not get enough touch (my aides dressing/washing me don't count) and I crave it SO MUCH, especially not being in a romantic relationship. And I still don't know how or why reiki *isnt* just new age mumbo jumbo, but somehow it works. It's not magic, it doesn't cure stuff, but it pain levels and stress levels always go way down after a session.

Oh, and for IHSS purposes it counts as a medical appointment XD

IHSS: had my yearly re-evaluation thing. I was worried they would take away hours. I actually got *more* -- it's up by an hour a day (!!!). Granted, that still leaves gaps where I don't have sides available (it works out to s bit under 7.5 hours a day), but it's a really really good result.

And I am mostly not in an aide crisis any more. At one point I was down to two caregivers -- V doing weekday afternoons and K doing everything else -- but I've hired two more people. S is super awesome and I want to keep her as an aide forever. J is ... 90% awesome and 10% frustrating (she picked some stuff up really quickly but there are other things she just can't get at all, like how carabiners work) but at least she's reliable. I still don't have someone for Sunday mornings -- K gets me up after her other client, which ends up being like 12:30 at the earliest -- but I'm not quite in as much fear about someone getting sick.

However, I am going to have to start searching for a new roommate soon, and wahhh I donwanna. It's annoying and hard and I don't like change wahhh. But current roommate is leaving in December so ... meh.

Pet news: Everyone is still adorable. Yahtzee does not look his age (he still looks and acts four-ish -- he'll he 9 next month wtf). And in huge news, Loki, who has been in a cone since December, is FINALLY back to being a cat rather than a lamp. I have no idea what if anything changed, but he stopped trying to attack his tail through the cone, so last time I was at the vet she let him out to see what he would do and he gave one halfhearted air-chomp in the direction of his tail and spent the rest of the time grooming and then exploring the sink. So we tried taking the cone off and leaving it off, and it's been almost a week now with no blood \o/ I'm not quite declaring complete victory, because I'm kind of waiting for the other show (paw?) to drop, but for now, both of us are a lot happier.

That's enough for now, partly because I should be getting to sleep' but I have part two to write up, including such things as Not-a-job news, crafting updates, design updates, language updates, and other things I'm forgetting.

So I have some very important news: I HAVE A NEW CHAIR OMG.

It's not perfect yet; there are all sorts of minor tweaks and changes that have to be made. (And because I am so physically inflexible, the wheelchair controls need to be positioned very precisely, and there are all sorts of awkward things like deflating the seat cushion a bit to make it more comfortable means the armrests are too high, etc.)

But. But! It is shiny and new, and *fast* (6mph top speed), and the suspension is amazing, and it has all the features I need including the lateral tilt, and the display has a clock, a speedometer, an odometer, a resettable trip odometer -- no streaming video though, lol.

I'm still switching back and forth between the chairs until the things that need resolving get resolved, but soon the most important question will be how to bling it up to suit my personality :D

( pic )

It is 68 outside.

(20 Celsius, for them as prefer that.)

Two days ago, it was 108. (42.2 C)

...can it please be like this for the rest of the summer pleeeeease?

(Also I went by the library and picked up a couple of audiobooks -- Thud! by Terry Pratchett, and Strange Brew which is a collection of short stories -- for Things To Listen To While Crocheting, so I is happy.)

I made my approximately-weekly trip there to get bread (I like their bread and it's not a bad price), and decided I wanted to post about why it is awesome. So, in no particular order...

1. Free coffee samples. It's not unique to them, but I pretty much always like the coffee they have available, and a couple of mouthfuls of hot caffeinated goodness always perks me up

2. Peppermint brownies. I hadn't seen them before, but sort of had to get some >_>

3. Cranberry pistachio biscotti. omnom.

4. Brandy beans. Kidney-bean-shaped hollow chocolate with a brandy filling.

5. Dark chocolate coconut caramel bars.

6. Peanut butter filled pretzels, which I did not actually acquire this time but they kind of tempt me because yum.

7. Mac and cheese -- frozen dinner thing, but it actually is made with Real Cheese and tastes pretty damn awesome.

8. Parmesan asiago rosemary rolls, which I have not tasted yet but look awesome

9. Confetti rice with baby corn and lemongrass and ginger

10. Surprise free chocolate.

...k, that last one takes a bit of explanation. So I go to check out, and they card for the brandy beans (which I knew but forgot to get my ID out for), so I have my aide get my ID for me out of the thing it's in. She puts it back, and then goes to close it, and I have her get out the credit card, and the following exchange occurs.

Her: Oh yeah, that'd help.
Me: Yeah, they generally like me to pay for stuff.
Her: (joking) Maybe they won't need it this time.
Me: (joking) Yeah, all I have to do is tell them it's my birthday month, right, and I get everything for free, isn't that how it works?
Her: (snickering) For the entire month. Yeah.
Cashier: Actually, I can't do that but I *can* give you one of these chocolates (gesturing to the small display set up at checkout). Just pick one out and it's on the house.
Me: (lots of blinking) You sure?
Cashier: Absolutely.
My aide: Hee, you're so spoiled.

So I ended up getting a Rittersport (dark chocolate and hazelnuts, omnom) \o.O/

eeeeeeeeeyay GW2 is almost here \o/

(GW in general holds a special place in my heart. It was my first ever MMO sort of thing, and I have all kinds of ridiculous love for it. I don't think that GW2 can hold quite the same levels of personal awesome, but I am so very much looking forward to this you have no idea)

( character creation plans )

YOU GUYS I HAVE SO MANY FICS I CAN'T EVEN.

/flail/


Dark!Valdemar fics:

how many will the heralds take
Forced Teaming
One True Way (Arrows AUness! *glee*)
Errors in Judgement (and omg yay for awesome disabled characters \o/)

Little Mermaid fics:

Work in Progress
The Skin Beneath the Skin (which utterly killed me in a few places)

Mulan story:

A Life for a Life, A Heartbreak for a Heartbreak


/flails more/

All of these stories are made of epic awesomeness I can't even have words! ...the fact that it is 2am and I have had rum and eggnog probably contributes to the lack of wordiness.

But you guys. Awesome stories! Yuletide authory people, if you are someone that wrote for me I LOVE YOU FOREVER.

Today I:

a) conquered a Pattern of Evil for someone on ravelry (and it really was hideously written; my eyes were crossing trying to figure it out)

b) managed to get 700-odd words in one half-hour sprint, and 600 in a later 20-minute sprint

c) got not only the desired 2k words today, but 3k -- 3122, to be precise

d) which also put me over 10k total words! (11258 total, which is also only 750 words shy of the 2k/day goal I was setting)

My favorite bit was ... I won't c/p the words here because the execution sucks. But I love the concept.

Basically, I had already decided that (since I was poking loving fun at Valdemar anyway) the unicorns should come from this sacred Grove. Which is where our band of heroes is headed to try to see if there happen to be any unicorns hanging about.

My brain decided that there were trees still there, even though there is a crater a mile deep and some distance around from the Grove (think a semi-physical magic bomb, except that the trees were left standing).

Then I decided that the magic bomb of doom had turned the trees to something like glass (cribbing shamelessly from the Jade Sea in Guild Wars).

...and then I found myself writing about how the whole thing was basically one gigantic windchime.

I never would have come up with that in a million years of planning. Lizard hindbrains are awesome sometimes.