Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Partner is dying. Brain cancer caught up, chemo didn't take. I never even got to see her face to face. She didn't get her name change so they'll bury her with that fucking name.

Anything I promised here is on hold.

Fuck cancer

[altered]

The hardest parts, no particular order.

1: I have never had to seriously grieve before. I do not know how to handle it.
2: We share a second partner, who is already in a permanent deep depressive state, and who I'm in poor shape to support, and who has no one the fuck else but me. I don't know if it'll survive this, and I don't know if I can survive a third loss so soon.
3: Oh. Right. I'm still recovering from a recent breakup, so this hit me harder than it probably otherwise would have.
4: I never got to fucking hold her.
5: No one's gonna remember all of her. There will be only one name on that grave, and it'll be the one that was never hers. No one's gonna remember Dara, Fox, Val or Nye. No one's gonna remember Cadera, or Laurel. This isn't just one person, it's a whole group sharing a mind. And no one will remember. My memory isn't worth a fucking thing, I don't even remember MYSELF most days. I can't write her story, I didn't know her long enough. She was isolated and alone most of her life. There's no way to properly reconstruct those lives now. There will be no history to write. Just a dozen people, one body, erased.
6: If anyone but me and her other LDR partners had given a single solitary fuck, this probably could have been avoided. 6 months after the diagnosis that she should have been on chemo, derailed by her trash-fire live-in girlfriend. Finally got on it, the course finished last month, and it was all too fucking late.

Anyway. Done shitting up the thread.

[Scribbly]

I feel like I can't express myself lately.

Over the past few months even basic points that should be easy to get across are constantly causing misconceptions and arguments at work, in my personal life, everywhere.

I haven't been able to write fiction in years and now it feels like I'm losing nonfiction too.

Ever since I was a kid I kind of considered words to be my thing.

I don't really know what I've got left without that.

[Da6s]

After 11 years out, I've circled back to the ski resort industry. This time on the business side rather than the front lines.

For you old salts still kicked around on here, no idea if I'll have any new resort chaos stories to share, but who knows. If and when they occur, they'll go in Or Kill Me as before.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

The hardest parts, no particular order.

1: I have never had to seriously grieve before. I do not know how to handle it.
2: We share a second partner, who is already in a permanent deep depressive state, and who I'm in poor shape to support, and who has no one the fuck else but me. I don't know if it'll survive this, and I don't know if I can survive a third loss so soon.
3: Oh. Right. I'm still recovering from a recent breakup, so this hit me harder than it probably otherwise would have.
4: I never got to fucking hold her.
5: No one's gonna remember all of her. There will be only one name on that grave, and it'll be the one that was never hers. No one's gonna remember Dara, Fox, Val or Nye. No one's gonna remember Cadera, or Laurel. This isn't just one person, it's a whole group sharing a mind. And no one will remember. My memory isn't worth a fucking thing, I don't even remember MYSELF most days. I can't write her story, I didn't know her long enough. She was isolated and alone most of her life. There's no way to properly reconstruct those lives now. There will be no history to write. Just a dozen people, one body, erased.
6: If anyone but me and her other LDR partners had given a single solitary fuck, this probably could have been avoided. 6 months after the diagnosis that she should have been on chemo, derailed by her trash-fire live-in girlfriend. Finally got on it, the course finished last month, and it was all too fucking late.

Anyway. Done shitting up the thread.

I did this one. Not all the details are the same, and I had better wedges into the places to make my voice heard, I don't want to discount the extra difficulties you're going through, but you're not alone in trying to mourn someone you loved that the world is doomed to remember wrong. It's hurts like hell. Write down everything you can. It doesn't matter if you never show it to anyone, it's important.

[Doktor Howl]

I feel like I can't express myself lately.

Over the past few months even basic points that should be easy to get across are constantly causing misconceptions and arguments at work, in my personal life, everywhere.

I haven't been able to write fiction in years and now it feels like I'm losing nonfiction too.

Ever since I was a kid I kind of considered words to be my thing.

I don't really know what I've got left without that.

I feel you there on the fiction thing.  I haven't written anything more than a couple of pages since late 2015.

[altered]

Updates:

Partner is NOT dying, AFAIK. She's having intermittent cognitive issues and aphasia as she goes through recovery (brain tumors suck) but it's been confirmed that to all appearances, she's fine. She thought she was dying because she misunderstood the doctor due to her aphasia.

That was still fucking terrifying, though.



I have started going gluten-free due to unintentionally giving myself a gluten challenge that began with about 1800 calories of sausage gravy and stuffing for breakfast, and ended with a near-emergency hypoglycemic episode two hours later. It's week two of this and there are some serious changes I've noted.

1: I'm eating less. Like, noticeably less. QGP can tell you how I used to eat, but yesterday I had, in order:
--1 quarter of a 10 inch pizza
--1 large bowl of black rice stir fry
--1 small bowl of chocolate ice cream
and after that, went to bed full and happy.

2: More energy. The past two days I have woken up to basically full functionality in under two hours of being awake. Yesterday I had no caffeine, and maintained a high-energy-high-brainfog state into the late night. Today I woke up in less than a half hour, and I'm having an energy drink because I suspect the brainfog has to do with insufficient B-vitamins (remember, I got actual fucking scurvy last year, so nutritional deficiencies are a big CHECK for me). Regardless, I'm HERE. I'm PRESENT. That's new! Especially given I woke up one hour ago.

3: Better sleep, or at least better absorption of sleep meds. Normally I overdose (3x recommended amount, doctor approved for me specifically) on sleeping meds and wake up in 5-6 hours. Last night, I did the same overdose, slept 9 hours, woke up feeling refreshed and healthy. I'm going to lower that to a 2x overdose for the next two weeks, and see if I can stop taking sleep meds altogether over time? But, genuinely, HUGE improvement.

4: Better mood? Not much, but no deep depressive episodes since I've begun this. Well, at least none if we don't count "my partner is going to die far away from me because of her shitty live-in partner", which even if it ended up being okay I sure don't count as a deep depressive episode, depression is kind of reasonable there. Also less easily frustrated, etc. Have I mentioned I don't have a doctor, so I'm not on any psych meds at the moment? Yeah, so this isn't a better absorption thing, this is a legitimate mood shift.

So uh, celiac disease seems reasonable to presume, or at least some level of gluten sensitivity.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Updates:

Partner is NOT dying, AFAIK. She's having intermittent cognitive issues and aphasia as she goes through recovery (brain tumors suck) but it's been confirmed that to all appearances, she's fine. She thought she was dying because she misunderstood the doctor due to her aphasia.

That was still fucking terrifying, though.



I have started going gluten-free due to unintentionally giving myself a gluten challenge that began with about 1800 calories of sausage gravy and stuffing for breakfast, and ended with a near-emergency hypoglycemic episode two hours later. It's week two of this and there are some serious changes I've noted.

1: I'm eating less. Like, noticeably less. QGP can tell you how I used to eat, but yesterday I had, in order:
--1 quarter of a 10 inch pizza
--1 large bowl of black rice stir fry
--1 small bowl of chocolate ice cream
and after that, went to bed full and happy.

2: More energy. The past two days I have woken up to basically full functionality in under two hours of being awake. Yesterday I had no caffeine, and maintained a high-energy-high-brainfog state into the late night. Today I woke up in less than a half hour, and I'm having an energy drink because I suspect the brainfog has to do with insufficient B-vitamins (remember, I got actual fucking scurvy last year, so nutritional deficiencies are a big CHECK for me). Regardless, I'm HERE. I'm PRESENT. That's new! Especially given I woke up one hour ago.

3: Better sleep, or at least better absorption of sleep meds. Normally I overdose (3x recommended amount, doctor approved for me specifically) on sleeping meds and wake up in 5-6 hours. Last night, I did the same overdose, slept 9 hours, woke up feeling refreshed and healthy. I'm going to lower that to a 2x overdose for the next two weeks, and see if I can stop taking sleep meds altogether over time? But, genuinely, HUGE improvement.

4: Better mood? Not much, but no deep depressive episodes since I've begun this. Well, at least none if we don't count "my partner is going to die far away from me because of her shitty live-in partner", which even if it ended up being okay I sure don't count as a deep depressive episode, depression is kind of reasonable there. Also less easily frustrated, etc. Have I mentioned I don't have a doctor, so I'm not on any psych meds at the moment? Yeah, so this isn't a better absorption thing, this is a legitimate mood shift.

So uh, celiac disease seems reasonable to presume, or at least some level of gluten sensitivity.

Yay for partners not dying! Terrifying as shit but better than the alternatives.

And I'm glad to hear the current diet seems to be helping. TW Joseph had a hard dietary reset that seems to be doing him some good too. Fuck the fad dieters, but at least there's more options for the genuinely gluten sensitive these days.

[Cain]

Glad to hear things are looking up, a little bit.

And yeah, gluten sensitivity options are so much better these days. I went to school with someone with Celiac disease and she used to have to eat these horrible plain looking things. Much like the vegetarian options, the companies involved have stepped up their game some and some of it actually looks pretty appetising these days.

[altered]

The main problem is it's hugely expensive. And it REALLY doesn't need to be. Take GF pasta, for instance: buckwheat exists and is gluten free, and buckwheat noodles have been a thing forever. But these days I can't even find pure buckwheat soba around here -- it's 50% wheat or, in a couple cases, pure wheat. Why? That isn't even fucking soba anymore. So I'm gonna have to order it, because every other alternative costs two to five times as much as a box of cheap durum wheat pasta, of course.

The big surprise to me is that Cheerios have no gluten tax. They have gluten-free oats, and that's for all their cereal.

[Scribbly]

I feel like I can't express myself lately.

Over the past few months even basic points that should be easy to get across are constantly causing misconceptions and arguments at work, in my personal life, everywhere.

I haven't been able to write fiction in years and now it feels like I'm losing nonfiction too.

Ever since I was a kid I kind of considered words to be my thing.

I don't really know what I've got left without that.

I feel you there on the fiction thing.  I haven't written anything more than a couple of pages since late 2015.

It has been tough. Maintaining focus is a challenge and I think there's a lot of reasons for that.

But.

A friend pointed me in the direction of some really interesting philosophy. The sort of thing that is making me reevaluate everything. And I am writing again, just to try and get my own thoughts in order.

I don't know where this will end yet but it is good to have that feeling again. Having to really try to understand something difficult and new might be just what my brain needed.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I PUT IN MY TWO WEEKS BITCHESSSSSSSSS!

[Doktor Howl]

I PUT IN MY TWO WEEKS BITCHESSSSSSSSS!

Does this mean you get to have a life again?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I PUT IN MY TWO WEEKS BITCHESSSSSSSSS!

Does this mean you get to have a life again?

9 to 5, no weekends, work is something I actually want to be doing and am good at (gonna be at a print shop, doing a little customer service a little design and possibly some typesetting). This is absolute lifechanging shit

[altered]

Another release with my name loosely associated! My friend Mabel's debut EP, featuring Garry of Memorrhage on vox. Did mix feedback, provided moral support when she doubted herself, and was the one who linked her up with Garry B for the release. Must-hear if you like Mick Gordon's nu-Doom work, Sepultura, etc. She's also just a really cool person.

https://silicloneliquid.bandcamp.com/album/excessive-parosxym