Best of Intentions and 8th-Horizon

[maygraderhema]

I swear I really did intend to update more often. Then I get distracted.

I'm doing well, face healing nicely. I did opt in to do a course of immunotherapy due to the size and type of melanoma, but I've not had any problems with it except for a little fatigue and I only have to go every three weeks. It is about an hour away (which pretty much everything is, and most of my doctors. Have I mentioned I live way, WAY, out in the country now? Cause I do.) The upside of the drive is that's it's really pretty, there's a Starbuck's on the way (I know, I know, but I really love their bacon gouda sandwiches,) and I get to drive across Lake Oconee every time which is gorgeous. Otherwise it's cows churches and mobile homes, all the way, bay-bee!

I'm not really into anything fannishly at the moment. We opted out of cable when we moved, although Mel does have ROKU and so gets Disney and a couple of other channels. I do have Netflix and Prime, and while some of the stuff that's been recommended to me is pretty good, nothing has really snagged my interest enough - not characters or worlds. I'm still poking at an SPN story (AU) based on artwork from Petite Madam, and it's kind of clear in my head, I just can't seem to type the words out. I've even tried recording myself doing dialogue out loud while in my car (which is something I've always done, just never recorded it) but I'm weirdly self conscious about it. My brain gets hung up on the dumbest things sometimes.

I have a sad, because eighth-horizon seems to have vanished. Her website is gone, and I tried to contact her when I realized it, but the number I had for her went to an automated voicemail, so I'm not sure it's actually her number any longer. And none of the email addresses I had for her seem to be working. I do have her actual address, but it's probably a good 20 years old so I'm not sure it's good either. My deepest hope is that she's okay and has just given up on fannish pursuits. Even on her journal here, most of her work linked back to her website. I've been racking up the hours on the internet archive because I love her work so much and didn't want to lose it. I already had most of stuff saved to my hard drive but not all of it. I really hope she's okay -- she's one of my favorite people I've met through fandom (although to be honest, with very few exceptions, I've met all my favorite people through fandom. ) She's just a clever, funny, smart, beautiful woman and I miss her.

I hope all is well with all of you who may read this as well. I've been thinking a lot about fandom lately -- not so much the writing part, but the people. I do miss that sense of connection when I was active and I think that more than anything is why I keep poking at it, hoping I'll catch that spark again and rejoin my people.

And I've just reread Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver for the umpteenth time. I'm not sure what it is about the story that has so caught me, but I've probably read it 100 times at this point -- and I mean that literally, I'm not just skimming. I also Got her short story collection. I've not finished it yet because I specifically bought it to take with me to my immunotherapy treatments and it is absolutely the perfect collection for that. The treatment only last about a half hour, so I've been absolutely oblivious while it's happening as I dive into Naomi's amazing story telling and world building brain. It's called Buried Deep, and I highly recommend it.

So, if you are so inclined, tell me what you're u to

Comments

[the_shoshanna]

Hello!

I'm glad your face is healing and you're generally doing well health-wise, it sounds? That must have been so scary. (And some of your past posts describe big troubles with your insurance refusing to approve meds; I hope that set of problems is better too.) Where you live sounds beautiful and I absolutely could not cope with being so rural/isolated, heh.

Thanks for reminding me about Naomi's collection! I enjoyed the Scholomance series and loved Spinning Silver, but the TBR pile is so high (plus the fact that cheesy fic, both fan and pro, is my self-soothing practice of choice these days) that I don't know when I'll get to it. But I will someday!

I am still liking where I live, too, and I'm trying not to spiral from the events of this week, and I miss being an active part of fannish circles too.

[maygraderhema]

Yay! I'm glad you still like your house, especially since, as I recall, you two had some stuff to handle that you were not expecting. We feel *settled* is the best way to put even though there is still a ton of work to be done.

And I whine about the distance for everything but honestly, back when I was working, my office was 17 miles from my house, but I regularly spent an hour and a half on the road each way because of the Atlanta traffic. So even though things are further away here, I actually spend less time on the road than I used to. It's a trade off of sorts. Country life is very different than suburban life, but not so much so that I feel like an outsider, even though I am, LOL.

I'm still fighting with the insurance company which is frustrating. I'm supposed to shift to medicare next April assuming Trump doesn't gut it before I get there. So, we'll see. We've tried a new med, which seems to be working but they don't want to pay for either. We at the point of saying, so give us a list of meds you would approve and we'll start there.

Morons.

[the_shoshanna]

Yeah, the house has had its . . . moments, but we love the kitchen we ended up with. The next project is already also having its moments, which have so far cost ~$3K and a delay until next spring, but, ugh, we want a front porch and mudroom so there it is.

An hour and a half to go 17 miles? Ai yi yi. I hear you about shorter travel times, but part of what we love about our new location is being able to walk to so many of the places we want to go.

Gah, insurance companies. Sympathy.

[gwyn]

Wait, what? Melanoma!? OMG I must have missed some posts, that sounds terrible. I am terribly sympathetic to the fatigue, it's so effing awful and truly one of the worst parts of treatments. I clearly need to go back a bit in your posts! Sending you all the good vibes.

[maygraderhema]

Just one, because it happened really fast. I noticed a dry spot on my cheek last October, but wasn't too worried about it. But by December the dry spot had grown to a mole the size of the end of my thumb. I saw a GP in February and we thought it was just a benign basal cell. The biopsy came back as malignant melanoma and was too big for her to excise it in the office. So off to a very fast round of consultants and then surgery to clear it all up. It all went amazingly well, and the immunotherapy is really just a precaution since this is the second cancer I've had. Your journey has been an absolute nightmare, and this, while a little anxiety inducing, has been way easier than my breast cancer surgery, so I count myself very lucky,

{{{Hugs to you}}}

[halfshellvenus]

Oh, gosh, I hadn't heard about the melanoma. I hope things go well with healing and the follow-up treatments for that.

I'm so sorry to hear that you haven't been able to get a hold of Barb. She is one of my favorite people in the world, but I know that losing her mom (and then the awful situation with her bullying boss and getting wrongfully fired) really broke her badly. I kept hoping she would come back from it, but I've mostly only seen her on Twitter since then, and I haven't been active over there in years. I hope you're able to reach her somehow, and let her know how much we love her.

I have a better understanding of her levels of grief, after we had a house fire and had to move into a rental house for several years while trying to rebuild our house from the ground up (date to move back in is Thursday, almost 3 full years later). That just knocked me flat and numbed me, and the second year in we lost my older brother and my mother, and my husband started the first of 3 major surgical/injury recuperations in two years. I couldn't gather the energy to talk on the phone or even email with my family, and making decisions for the house rebuild? HAH. I had to go to the max on my antidepressants and add Abilify in before I became even remotely functional at that point. Without that, I would never have made forward progress on the house, and the insurance company might have given up on us completely.

So, yes... I can see how too much deep grieving all at once could just change a person permanently. I hope that's not the case. I hope she's out there doing better, and cracking people up with her beautifully twisted sense of humor. And if you're able to get in touch with her, please let me know!

Hugs and good wishes for you in these trying times!