cornerofmadness

So I had to get up a 630 AM (about 2 hours before my usual wake up) to go 90 miles north to the neurologist. I woke up 20 minutes early. I'm lucky because at 7:20 AM my primary care doctor's nurse CALLS me. Are you fucking kidding? At first I thought something happened to my parents because no one calls this early and my phone doesn't tell you who it is until the second ring.

Why is she calling? Because she tracked down my thyroid scan and the doctor wants me to go see an endocrinologist and do I need a rec? (it should be in my file that I do not as I see one every 3 months). Now I'm late talking to her and the rains really sprouted the orange barrels this week. Holy crap. I still got there on time in spite of the fact I had to pull over on the highway because a fucking TICK was walking across my dashboard. Not today Satan.

And no one bothered to tell me don't go in the main door at the hospital. No I had to go around to a wing and to the basement but rather than say get in your car and go around they walk me all thru the hospital. And in spite of my appointment being 9 AM he was already 1 hour behind. He gave me his person cell if I want meds other than gabapentin for the trigeminal neuralgia (keep in mind I know his mother in law and wife so it's not that wild).

He agrees this is trigeminal neuralgia which he said "is known to be one of the worst pains you can suffer" (yes I shall agree). And he confirms what I knew. The main causes of this are vascular malformations (which my collagen disorder makes me prone to), aneurysms and tumors so I need an MRI of my head (yes, please, let's look at my jaw too) but he also said it's possible the thyroid goiter could be triggering this and I hadn't thought of that (even though it's on my test on thursday that thyroid affects neuro....)

I'm done with him so early I can't go to the Italian deli so I go back to Chillicothe and bumble around the mall until it's time for my vascular study which is a biggie this time, both legs...in a hot dark room with a former student. I'm half asleep (no, let's be honest I kept nodding off). From there I slid right into the vascular surgeon's clinic and he gave me good news. He thinks there's no way the symptoms in my leg are neurogenic claudication and that my stent is holding up so well that he's backing me down to once a year scans. YAY.

I even found time to go to Rost (I like their brown butter latte which yes has butter and yes it is delicious) Driving around Chillicothe however wasn't easy because Bridge street has 1001 red lights and the winds are 30-40mph and the redlights are bouncing so hard you can barely see them. Also I don't know what it is with this town but this is the third time in the last 6 months where I see one gas price that I'll go get gas after I shop and 45 minutes later it's changed. I didn't even notice until I almost pumped. Kroger's jumped 50 cents in that 25 minutes I was in there. Luckily other gas stations hadn't caught up so I got the cheap gas (by the time I left town an hour later they'd all jumped that 50 cents)

Rocket gave me a laugh tonight. He ate and wanted outside. I saw two kids under the age of 6 and told him he didn't want out. He didn't believe me. Ran out onto the porch took one look at the kids and noped his ass back inside until they were gone. (which also tells me that when he's been out there the kids have bothered him trying to play with him).

And they were all on sale and I'm shoving them into my mouth like I've not seen food before Also thankful they're soft because my mouth is lit up like a Christmas tree with nerve pain

Yesterday, someone left their bedding in the wash all damn day. I didn't move it before it started to rain and I'm done at 230 on Mondays. got it washed only to find the big dryer still had that bedding in it 36 hours later (the other bedding was on the folding table). Whatever. I put my stuff in the other dryer and went up to Kroger.

Got back to find out the dryer didn't work and it looked like it still had time on it...did I forget to hit start? I try it again, half hour later still cold and wet. Drag numbnuts bedding out of the good dryer and toss it on the table. At least my stuff is dry now.

I finally got my prompt out to my first auction win. It's similar to the one I sent the other auction win but I think both have the potential to be good stories. Looking forward to them.

Now for me to get moving on my story. I did get a little writing done on Between Hoping and Hurting only to have the editor go into Spanish and everything is underlined. I can't figure out how to change it back (okay I looked at it 2 seconds and said that's a problem for future me)

Since we have some surprise rain today, let's have music monday be songs about rain.

( my songs are so old )

So I decide to try the gabapentin. I'm supposed to take 3 a day. Let me tell you, if I did that, I'd be in a coma. Holy shit, no wonder my uncle was always kinda out of it and said his head was floating. Damn straight it was. Someone asked me today 'are you okay?' nope my head is floating. I'm not sure where I am. My feet and hands aren't connected. A LOT of people knew I was out of it. Students could see it. Nope, just nope to this drug. Maybe at night but let me tell you it took more than 8 hours to feel right again.

Not only that it can cause serious hypoglycemia (and it did) so I'd be afraid to take it and trying to sleep. And I DO have pain, I'm just too high to care. Thank god I don't have epilepsy which this drug was developed for. There has to be something better than this.

I came home, called the clinic and left a note for my endocrinologist about the thyroid nodules to see if she wants to do something more than wait 6 months.

I make my donations for fandom trumps hate and nothing is emailed to me for proof of donation via paypal. I go in there and start messing around and see that it was pulled from money waiting on me, about 80$ I go to transfer it to my bank (puzzled as my royalty check was not that high sadly) but there's no bank account. Thinking it might be that issue with my bank again. I try to chat but their AI bot is worthless but hey there's a phone number. OMG what happened next

it's a second account that is linked to my other account with one small alteration in my email (which is why I didn't get the emails) I'm like HOW? I've had my account 20 years with my email and my bank. He's like no you've had it for 24 years (oh right, I started PayPal when I was hitting eBay hard in FL) but you created a second one 8 years ago. No I didn't. Yes you did.

The only thing different was the newer one didn't have an underscore in the email name. The only thing I can think of is I accidentally did this giving it to a publisher (because 80$ would be about right for a short story and there were a couple I swore I never got paid for...) So long stupid story short I ended up transferring everything to the old account and life is hopefully good.

That was until I started getting things packed up for spring break and now ALL of my sandals are MIA. I have a vague memory of putting them all in a bag to go into my suitcase but where did I put that. At 10pm I gave up the hunt.

But all the jaw clenching from this is making my face hurt again but not nearly as bad as monday.

And then dinner was awful. I usually get a Rotisserie chicken because it's decent enough protein and takes out dinner prep two days a week. This was hands down the worst chicken ever. I think it died of old age. Jesus. My knives are sharp but I couldn't saw through this. I took a bite of a hunk I did get off. Hard, rubber, I swear I was eating cartilage. I'm not even sure I'm saving this for the cat.

I made pancakes instead. sigh.


What I Just Finished Reading:

Disco Witches of Fire Island -Blair Fell

Silent are the Dead - eh, not going to read another I don't think sadly

Murder by Cheesecake - Golden Girls mystery, yes you read that right. Not all that funny unfortunately and I wasn't a fan of all the St Olaf stuff but it wasn't a bad mystery (read it cover to cover in the ER)

Pine & Merrimac - an interesting dark mystery graphic novel

What I am Currently Reading:

Another Fine Mess - a paranormal thing, just starting it

The Tomb of Zeus - a 1920s mystery set in Crete


What I Plan to Read Next: lightweight paperbacks going into my luggage because Mexico will let me bring in a computer or a tablet but not both (and I can't read on my phone, too small, too annoying)


And here is February's reads. You know the drill, I love talking books so if you see something you want to chat about, let's hear it.

You Must Not Miss YA Horror

Mother Nature horror graphic novel (by Jamie Lee Curtis)

Ghostlore Vol. 2 horror graphic novel

We Called Them Giants horror/SF graphic novel

When the Bones Sing YA rural horror

Mozzarella Murder mystery

The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories Gothic horror

Angels of Death, Vol. 1 horror manga

H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth horror manga

Carmilla Volume 2: The Last Vampire Hunter LGBT/horror graphic novel

Rare Flavours horror graphic novel

A Grim Reaper's Guide to Catching a Killer mystery/paranormal

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich LGBT/fantasy romance graphic novel

Yesterday it was the flash drive today it was my phone (on the charger) which means I can't get into my teaching software luckily I only need that to put in grades so the students had to wait until tonight for the test scores. They didn't do badly.

today was the soup potluck at work. My pasta fazool was a hit but only 2 of us remembered and the other soup was sausage/potato (one I don't like and the other I shouldn't eat) I sipped the broth of that. Not bad.

The nerve pain is better today, just a dull ache (getting worse as I type this) thanks for all the well wishes. I appreciate it. This is awful and because I forgot my phone I didn't get the scheduling call.

Fannish 50 this week is another why is fandom like this. Lately I've been seeing A L OT of content creators across multiple fandoms and some not-even-fandoms but they're creating for YouTube or TikTok (in my case it's either true crime, history or cooking). Several of them are railing back against people pushing them to create.

To be fair some of that is how YT and TT work. If you aren't constantly creating, you're demonetized and your channel is hidden or penalized. That is one helluva lot of pressure to produce and the fans take their cues for that.

What I see a lot of lately is fans pushing and pushing. The creator says stop asking, I have a day job, I'll get to it when I can. The fans don't stop and you get the creator saying ask one more time and I ain't doing it period and then fans jump in calling them mean etc. It's quite eye rolling. I will say the video and graphic artist who get hit with this more. Authors get a bit more leeway.

We also get the marching order type of fans. The fans tell YOU what you need to be creating. Not asking, flat out telling the artist what has to happen. We've already talked about how Maggie Stievater burned her series bible for the Raven boys due to this and ended any chance of future spin offs.

When I was writing Buffyverse in the early days of FFN I had two fans who constantly commented to my stories with marching order for what I needed to write next and what each character needed to be doing. It got to the point I'd wince when I'd see a comment from them.

This came to mind with this video (CW, graphic violence, blood)


I didn't look to see if the comment is still there but it was Oh I don't think Valentino is so bad. He wouldn't hurt Angel, he's damaged too, yadda yadda, I know Angel wouldn't hurt him back like this (obviously not watching the same source material as the rest of us because Val is canonically sexually, mentally and physically abusive on screen) That I could deal with but they actually said, see Val as I do and do a video bringing MY view of Valentino/Angel to life.

I saw that and thought, are you serious? You came in to tell them how they did their video wrong and expect them to redo it to make you happy? Who does this? I can't even imagine doing that to someone.

It's not a surprise that we're seeing content creators burning out especially on youtube and tiktok.

So again, be kind to your creatives. They're people too with lives of their own.

Saw a meme the other day that said it's like Summer and Winter are fighting for custody rn and man that is it.

Saturday - 25

Sunday - 65

Monday -72 PICK A TEMP (not 70 damn it)


Today I had to race up to Chillicothe to get my crown. I get there and they go...your appointment is next monday. Oh fuck no it's not. I ASK YOU THIS SPECIFICALLY. You fucking texted me. Long story short, they worked me in. I tell the dentist about this (My staff is good, working you in like that, dude you missed the point) and about the guard, sorry about that. He shrugs and said I don't know about that, I don't deal with the money end...OMFG and then his tech tries to guilt me by saying 'we'll use your guard to show people what they look like.' You seriously want me to believe that me canceling within 4 hours was not enough time to stop your lab? then fine eat the cost. Even the dentist looked confused. But what bothered me was I had to sit in the waiting room for about 40 minutes (so they could work me in) and his receptionist called like EIGHT people for that guard so I think he convinces everyone they need one (and he had me sign off on refusing mine which okay I'd do that too so I couldn't come back on him if I break another tooth)

So I'm over this dental office. My face is swollen again. Held a frozen smoked mozzarella ball against it which helped.

How about a little twist on music monday? Every week a new letter represented. You've seen this challenge before. So the group/solo act has to start with the letter of the week and if you want you can borrow this for you blog or drop your music into the comments here. Let's have some fun with this. Share some music with me

Letter W this week this week ( have some music in no particular order )

that's how I feel. So the reason we aren't working on the other tooth is just what I thought. It needs a crown too and my insurance pays for one. (see you in January upper left tooth) The dentist was running way behind BUT my ebook mystery I just started was pretty engrossing so fine whatever. I will say it was a rough one. This tooth is way back so getting an x-ray sucked it (and they cut my lips trying to jam the bite wing back there).

My tooth wouldn't go numb (common with me) but finally it was ground down (and boy he held onto my jaw HARD this time probably to keep me from gagging on that goop to make the impression) Now my face feels punched hard. One more visit to go. My insurance only pays half so here' 600$ and I got my contacts today too which was another 120$.

Another story rejection came in today but they were kind enough to say I was in the top 15% so I appreciate that

I need to call the vet. Rocket's tail is healing but the 40$ I pissed away at Tractor Supply is killing me. That particular anti-flea med has done NOTHING. He's completely covered in fleas. I want to see if they know anything that does work around here (we're seeing high resistance)

I got the last bits for my costume including a third wig. I tossed the small wig (well put it away for something else) and tried fitting these two together and spiking it. Luckily the dollar store had a lot of craft crap I had no idea they had (they also have pregnancy tests which...scares me) so I was also able to find an owl christmas ornament, a bit too white for Owlbert but at this point who cares. I attached him to the wig (after I basted the two of them together so pray for my stitching this weekend) and I propped Eda's spikes on the owl. This wig is gonna weigh a ton. I am terrible with working with hair.

In spite of the early labs, today went well even if I bored a passel of h.s. school visitors. They bring them to a computer lab because that's exciting. If nothing else I got to see baby quail hatch out.

And it went better than expected at the dentist (in spite of it taking 2 hours). The tooth doesn't need crowned. He rebuilt the broken bit with amalgam. He had done the same thing with the one I had the crown on last year and hell that lasted 7 years so...here's hoping. He was surprised it didn't hurt since the dentin was exposed. However it took three injections to numb the damn thing up.

Then I got home and tried to upload stuff to my tablet and I've been having issues with it. It keeps saying it's full. The only thing I can think of is when I'm deleting stuff it's not going away but I don't see how to empty the recycle bin without emptying EVERYTHING off the storage.

And then I turned on Jana's stuff to see that the infighting has reached a fevered pitch and a lot of people are quitting the genre I write in. I haven't seen the issue but I know mostly what it is (I've been avoiding social media for a while) people deciding you can't write this or that because you AREN'T this or that etc etc. Very tired old arguments that I'm staying away from.

And then I turned on my laptop and the only things on was the edge browser's homepage and the solitaire app and up springs the antivirus program saying it caught a virus and I have to restart to finish getting rid of it. Let's just say it failed. I'm sick to my stomach. I haven't even had this two months. I've packed it up and I'll take it in and see if my IT guys will look at it for me. How the hell can you get a virus thru an app or a homepage? I loathe computers many days.

And to be honest the bad stuff didn't happen just at home. L stopped by to tell me about our mutual friend the one with cancer. She was trying to put a positive spin on it and maybe multiple myeloma does have a good cure rate but you could see she was struggling to tell me this. Our friend's entire axial skeleton is involved in the cancer and a visible lump formed on her breast bone in just the last week. I'm really afraid it's too late. Sigh.

I've been so depressed I haven't been writing. someone come poke me into it.

And to top it off the toilet backed up.

I do have some fun things to share

cat lady cocktails

Help bring STEAM education to life by supporting the Museum of Science Fiction's first micro futuristic world’s fair.

I celebrated with a little cherry crumble.

I saw the surgeon again today. He's convinced now that the problem is definitely the deformed hip joint. Sooo not only do I have to have the shot into the nerve in the front of my leg and I have to go into a special clinic and have a needle jammed into the joint itself and have it injected. I bet that'll be fun.

I picked up my emergency contact lenses and my meds.

At work we got a new projector for my power points. It was fantastic. Yay.

I'm a traveler at heart but on the way back from spring break I stopped at a rest stop and picked up those travel brochures for my own area. I'm going to play traveler here in the hills. I've seen a lot of it already but not all. It'll pay off for my next Athens trio story if nothing else and I should have a lot of fun doing it. Now if I could only write.

My poor tongue is missing a sliver where I caught it on that broken tooth. It hurts and I am sad.

Happy birthday _omega_man

Even if it is the fake tooth the dentist is going to jam into your mouth and call a crown, just hanging out there in a plastic baggie like beads at a craft show. The crown is one. It feels weird. Every time I bite down it feels like it's being shoved down.

Mother Nature, I am NOT amused by the fact we had one week of spring and launched directly into summer. It's been in the 80s which is ridiculous in April. I had to dig out the fans and dust them off and had to have the a/c on in the car so my hair wouldn't get messed up by putting down the window.

And windows opened means I can hear the fucktards I live with. Mom did find a house that might be possible. it’s not a bad house Yeah, it's kind of blah on the outside but the inside is nice, really nice and it's out in the middle of nowhere. Okay that shed needs a little Krylon on it or something. My only worries would be deer and the knife-wielding maniac ready to go all In Cold Blood on me.

He was shrieking today about someone blocking him. this is the idiot who ALWAYS moves his truck to block the path to the apts AND the other closest spot to park (i.e taking up 2 full spots and the walk way) We've complained. Even the landlord has warned him. Today someone had enough and pulled around his shit truck and took that spot and blocked the truck in. Kudos for doing what we all wanted to do.

declutter day 345 item tossed-Landlord’s logo key chain why kept-Gave it to me when I moved in why tossed -Why would I want this?

Monday was President's day, T,TH and friday are off because of the weather. I find it rather amusing. Tuesday we deserved to be. Today and tomorrow we're off due to excessive cold. I'm laughing at that but I guess it's a matter of perspective. In Rhinelander, Wi, a 10 degree day and a 10 below degree night were WARM. We spent weeks at minus twenty degrees as a high with minus forty wind chills. Never once did we have a two hour delay let alone a day off. It was all suck it up pussywillows and get here. We also seem to forget that there is a whole country north of us who are probably laughing at us.

Speaking of which have a little frozen Niagara Falls. It's beautiful. And when you hear me talking about going to Athens, I usually mean I'm going to Ohio University's campus and we're most often on Court Street. Too bad I didn't get to see Princess Anna sings about the weather. He's marvelous.

I finally got around to shoving rags in my doors. It was so bad that when I shoved an old pair of shorts that I plan to cut into rags in it, into the top of the front door, an entire leg was dangling outside. THAT is how big the gap is. Raised the apt temp by 4 degrees without having to touch the thermostat.

So the fucking tooth...He can't put the crown on until March 9th unless I take off MORE time. I might call back on monday and say, can they find me a mon/wed and just cancel my upper level A&P. this blows. And I'm not even sure if he can make the crown in-house or if I'll have to wait. Betting on waiting. He can't even put a new temp on til next wednesday. I'll buy more tubes of the stuff when I'm out tomorrow for PT.

( TBBT spoilers )

declutter day 329 item tossed-3 calendars why kept-Used them why tossed -I’d like to tell you they were all 2014 but that would a lie