bulletproof dress and sunken armor

I'm going to make a separate DW, I think, dedicated entirely to the world from this project (which I am still working on) and doing side stories and things with the characters and getting to know the entire world more. I enjoy it, and it seems like a lot of people were interested in it.

So I'm looking for a) anyone who might be interested in reading so I know if I should post the name here somewhere, and also b) if anyone wants to recommend prompt comms. I intend to do rainbowfic even though I often have trouble with one-word and/or quotation style prompts. It's brain stretching.

I have been reading. I have been too overwhelmed by life to comment or to post. I need to amend that vaguely. Here are some things:


1. I got that job, I started that job, I finished training. I now spend most of my life in a busy urgent care clinic in Hell's Kitchen. Overworked and underpaid, but it's really nice to be doing something, even if I am nervous about how beginning grad school will screw with my schedule/availability and hope they won't fire me! (I really need the health insurance, too. Even if it will eat half of my paycheck.)

2. Dad is on hospice now; we have been given the vague prognosis of "maybe weeks or months," but he has multiple organ failure and no intake. We'll see. He's actually feeling somewhat better, which surprises no one, I think.

3. The housing market terrifies me. Spouse and I do not make enough between us to afford a studio. Once we have to stop living in mom's house, we're in huge trouble. I cannot do roommates. Not will not, but actually cannot. I would never, ever sleep. I don't trust people. I couldn't even have roommates when I was in the dorms in undergrad, and had to prove my OCD was bad enough I needed to be given a single. The fact that that worked at an overcrowded state university just tells you a lot about how much I can't cope with roommates.

The 3 question book survey a good proportion of my reading list does. With links! Now updated with shortened links that aren't going to cause issues like my original links did.

What are you reading right now?
Two things, which is very rare for me -- and still, only sort of. I'm proofing the audiobook of Thorn Fall, which means having to go through and slowly read along to the audio to check for errors. There have been a few, so I'm glad the time is being taken to do it. LB is also paying me to do it, which she didn't really have to do, but I won't complain! I'm not really an audiobook person because I tend to zone out, so it's definitely some good practice for my attention span considering I'm going back to school at the end of August.

And in terms of actual text-reading, I'm about halfway through Shattered Palms.

What did you just finish reading?
An advance review/copy proofing version of Star Nomad, and that one isn't an Amazon link because it doesn't have a preorder. Within the last two weeks, I also read Twisted Vine and The Bloodless Assassin. You can assume I recommend them all, because I wouldn't link something I didn't like. Or mention something I didn't enjoy.

The Bloodless Assassin is also hitting lots of "diverse books" points, and I even made a rec post on tumblr: none of the characters are white, one of the two mains is clearly coded as dark-toned Black, the monarch has a same-sex lover and nobody regards this as anything more than normal, etc. (There are basically no white people in the Lei Texeira series either, but there is one who is a major character.)

What do you think you'll read next?
Either the Kalayna Price book that T got me (though it has a love triangle so I'm a little wary), the sequel to Star Nomad whose title I am unaware of, or the seventh Lei Texeira book. I'm trying to make the Lei series last and not massively binge them, but it's hard, because they're good and my 1-Click goes to a credit card so it takes me a month to notice how much I'm spending on ebooks.

I also really want to get the sequel to Bloodless Assassin, but I do have to be careful with the money. And it's tempting to go back to Thorn Fall's first book, Torrent, but I distinctly recall that that was one where it's a rusty start and I definitely tell people that if Rust & Relics' weirdness is the kind of cross-genre weirdness they enjoy, the books get better and stronger as the series goes on.

I'm waiting for a phone call about a job offer, right?

So I've gotten four calls today from numbers without a custom ringtone (which means I'll usually ignore them) ... they have all been out-of-state area codes that I've just ignored and then listened to the voicemail. None of which has had anything to do with the job, of course: three hang-ups and one scam.

I'm reading a book series now (I only meant to read the first one, but got sucked in, goodbye money) where the main character's dog, a character in her own right, is named Keiki.

And despite knowing the dog is named after the plant, because like me the protagonist keeps orchids, I can't help but think of nanila and her little boy.




In other news, I'm going to the new students' social tonight for grad school, and am just like ... I am the most socially awkward person on the planet, how terribly is this going to go?

Personal statement writing for graduate school is just about the most awful process I have ever experienced except for being involved with lawsuits.

Especially when they provide no length guidelines, and in order to adequately tell my story it takes up a considerable amount of space, cluttering up areas where I would rather talk about what I want to do with some of the shit I have done (or, rather, have experienced that I'd rather have avoided, but gives me an, as I put it, "unique outlook on some areas of health promotion").



But in order to add something positive (and also related!) to this post, here's a link: CVS offering naloxone prescription free.

This is a hodgepodge of different people's variations on this meme, now, so I'm not even sure where 100% of the questions are sourced at this point. 2015 was most likely actually the worst year of my life, even if there were also some really good things in it.

( Without further ado, meme. )

Especially since we're probably both going to be working in Brooklyn -- he definitely is, and I haven't found a job yet because I have no decent work history and am supposed to wait until after finals to start applying (plus the registrar still has a minor screwup on my audit which means I may not get my degree at the end of the month, which is a problem for another day) -- the idea of living with my parents for at least the next few months and possibly longer seems somewhat tiring. Just tiring, not unpleasant, and I am so grateful to them I can't put it into words.

It seemed a lot more tiring, though, before after spending three days there we came back up here and while I love our apartment and having privacy, everything is also so lonely.

And cold, though right now is an exception.

Cold and lonely -- and inaccessible, because there's no public transit anywhere -- isn't a fantastic way to live. When I was down there dad was completely snowed from chemo so I kept checking on him, and then stopping in to talk to mom about stuff; my restless stim walking in circles had actual aims. Here, I just tripped into a mop bucket as the highlight of my accomplishments.

I'm making lists; lists about why I'm glad to be leaving here, lists about good things about living with my parents. I may post them.

(My aunt also made me feel so much better about it when she left me a facebook comment that was basically, "so are you moving back to help your folks out?" when finding out I graduated on Sunday; she didn't make it sound like "lol you're in a permanent relationship and supposed to have your act together as adults living together and not both crash in someone else's house because you can't come up with a security deposit," but like "your family is having a hard time and your moving in is a good thing.")

Non-awkward way of telling professor you've had one class with, "So, my dad is dying of pancreatic cancer -- slowly -- and next class is his birthday, so I won't be here"?

... I'm pretty sure is nonexistent, so I will just be saying that.

Tiny ETA: Some people have left some really interesting comments to me in response to other comments, or just really kind comments, and I haven't gotten back to them because I'm in end of summer term project chaos mode -- I have not forgotten you, if you see this post and wonder. ♥

Ugh, no, seriously, I am realizing that my lack of having more than 15 icons is contributing to my inability to post regularly. That is so dumb, self, stop, you do not have the money for paid time with what little you are getting out of DW use right now.

Well, my doctor decided to refer me to genetics (which will be one of two clinics, and it's totally a luck of the draw which one calls me in the next 3 days for an appointment, they're both very good) in order to settle this BRCA gene thing once and for all. Now that both of my parents are clearly positive and both have resultant cancers, as well as my mom's grandmother, my female cousin on my mom's side, and my dad's sister, in the way of preventive medicine we're getting me figured out sooner than later.

And what I'm actually afraid of is discovering that I don't have the gene.

Because I expect to die from cancer. Everyone in my family does, on both sides (except for my mom's mom, who is currently in hospice due to ... the autoimmune disease she and I share that no one else has!), and my genuine fear is of discovering I'm wrong about that certainty in my future. I'm prepared for prophylactic surgeries, I'm prepared for making advance directive decisions. Those are things I can and will do. (I honestly hate everything about having nipples anyway. Take 'em. When you start spontaneously lactating at age 11, you don't want your nipples at 26, because believe me, you already hate them, and they have no benefits.) Finding out everyone was wrong, and despite both of my parents being positive, I'm not? That shakes my existence. And I hadn't realized until today that that is the reason besides cost that I was putting off the test.

(Cost is no longer an issue, thanks to being on a state exchange health plan - they're required to cover genetic testing for people in my risk group. So thanks Obama. Not sarcasm.)