(no subject)

I've managed to give away both of the Christmas cacti. The local niece took one, and her older brother wanted the other. Scott's sister said she was willing to look after the plant while her daughter is away at school. It's a little weird seeing the shelf by the back window completely bare, but it's also a huge relief to know that I'm never going to have to water the dratted things again.

Our niece came down Monday evening to discuss character creation and setting. The niece in Seattle was in a text chat with us. I don't think we'll do that again because the local niece kept talking out loud and not bothering to include the Seattle niece.

The Seattle niece has a strong preference for a secondary world fantasy setting (which, to be honest, I kind of expected). We compromised by letting the local niece keep her character idea but saying that he'll fall through a gate into the fantasy setting.

Character generation will be a PITA, but I run dice-lite and tend not to take character sheet numbers as absolute. The Seattle niece is having a bit of trouble with that idea because character creation is full of a gazillion fiddly details. RuneQuest has more of that than Call of Cthulhu does. I've asked her to write me some backstory for the character she wants to play; we'll meet on Discord again, and I'll work through a skill list with her. I'm not planning to run in Glorantha (I don't have the sourcebooks and am not interested in acquiring them), so some of the skills on the character sheet will be irrelevant, and some things not there will need to be added.

I currently have four open exchange fic assignments. I need to do a little organizing so that I remember my priorities and due dates. We Die Like Fen is a flash exchange that's doing four rounds this month. Defaulting on that wouldn't be terrible, but I matched with someone I've wanted to treat in several exchanges past.

I'm doing a pinch hit for Crossworks, also for someone I've wanted to write for before. I have assignments for Exchange no Jutsu and for Battleship. That last isn't a standard exchange. It's a two team challenge to play Battleship by writing fics with specific tags attached. I'm on Team Void. The other team is Team Abyss.

I've started writing the least urgent of these four fics. I suspect that I'll end out throwing out all of what I've written so far because it's me groping for world building details.

I'm still working on the medical edition of What's Been Going On In My Life, but it's very tangled. It's like a three dimensional maze with randomly occurring chutes and ladders and no actual exit.

What's been going on (the medical version) part 1 of ??

Most of the last several years has been my physical functioning declining steadily but in ways that either don't respond to normal treatment or that have treatments that that aggravate other physical problems I have.

Since 2016, I've lost somewhere between 70% and 80% of my hand function. I can still type, and I can still do some things on my phone, but my ability to do anything at all goes downhill as the day progresses and my pain levels get higher. I don't think that my doctor is actually listening about the hand function because she's chosen to focus on my blood sugar as the primary thing.

My hands, she says, will feel better if we get my blood sugar under control. I do not think that's how osteoarthritis works. I really don't.

Also, I think that, if she were actually serious about the blood sugar control, she'd have given me a testing kit years ago instead of just assuming that my a1C tells all. I can't tell what helps/hurts in the short term, and I'm prone to physical exhaustion and mental issues that are helped by food (exponential improvement from food relative to improvement by sleep or rest) and not affected by caffeine or by hydration.

I've asked about a testing kit, but she keeps putting me off. Right now, she's saying that only an endocrinologist can do something in that direction. I'm pretty sure that's bullshit because the prick the finger testing kits are pretty basic equipment.

I don't particularly want to have to prick my fingers, and the hand issues might be a problem, both the tremor and the osteoarthritis, but we need more nuanced information. I'd really like to know where my blood sugar is when I'm experiencing certain physical and mental symptoms.

( Cut for discussion of medication side effects, both physical and emotional )