General Update

Primary computer is home again, I'm writing on it now, but since I'm still supposed to be keeping my left foot above my heart I'm mostly sticking to the gaming console because it's downright hard to use a laptop while supine and with primary computer there's also the fact that it's heavy.  If it slipped and fell on my head it would hurt.

I'll get a better idea of what the future looks like on the coming Thursday.  I won't be able to walk, but if I'm lucky they'll tell me I can stop worrying so much about foot elevation and if I'm very lucky they'll let me back on my hormones so my brain won't be fucky on account of being off of them.

Would be nice to have a clear head, a lack of tired, and an ability to contact my muse.  I could write stuff.  That would be good.

I'm still subsisting on delivery food because . . . you try cooking with your foot above your heart.  Unless you're a figure skater, then you probably do have that kind of flexibility and control.  Delivery food is still expensive.

-

Property insurance is due on the 20th.  *pause while I look around* I seem to misplaced the thing that says how much it is.  Usually around $250 I think.  Or $270?  *does a search* It was $272 once.  That's probably a good bet.

I've kind of been focused on other things.  Sometimes to the point of using money on them that would normally go to bills.  Hell, I think I had to pay more than half that to get primary computer backed up which they didn't fucking do properly, but I'll get back to that.

I haven't been the most on top of things so there have been late fees and a few utility bills that didn't get paid last month and so rolled over into this month.  It works out to $202.58 more than I have.  Sort of.  Maybe.

I've got more than $200 (but definitely not $474.58) from two months of patreon but I haven't been the most on top of things, like I said, and I don't know if I'll be able to get the money to me in a form I can use to pay bills before the bills are due since I basically started the process of getting the money . . . two minutes ago, and the first thing it does when you screw with those settings is put a hold on withdrawals as a security precaution.  The hold isn't excessively long, but neither is the amount of time I have before bills are due.

I think that's all of the money stuff, so we can go back to other stuff.

-

My sister's life is an unending catastrophe these days and given that my parents aren't exactly sympathetic (they excuse their actions based on the stress they've been put under without ever seeming to realize that my sister is under way more stress than they are since she's the one being fucked over) I get hit by the exhaust more than somewhat when our worlds intersect.  She can't keep it all bottled up, I get that, and so I understand that she has to vent, but it isn't pleasant.

Nor is the fact that my parents vent at me about her.

-

I've played Gravity Rush and The Last of Us (including the Left Behind DLC) all the way through, and I'll have stuff to say about that, mostly The Last of Us, as soon as I'm not so fucking tried and mood-screwed.  Which, unfortunately, might mean, "At some point when I've returned to my hormones and they've had time to build up to appropriate levels in my body," whenever the fuck that might be.

With Gravity Rush having been played I think the only thing left on my "I've wanted to play this for years, but haven't been able to because I've never had a console" list is the Kingdom Hearts series, which I've been interested in for so God damned long I don't even remember what kicked off the interest.  I just remember it kept coming up, and I kept thinking I'd like to play it, and I kept finding out, "Nope, not on PC."

Unfortunately, the console that I have it on won't have the early games until March 28th, I honestly thought when I added that to the wishlist that it said Februrary 28th.

Regardless, significant progress on the "Actually play the games I've pined for" front.

-

Regarding this computer, the fucked up story of it's repair is something I'm going to have to spend a whole post on, but the salient point for now is that the drive that the computer is actually supposed to run off of was completely ignored.  So it's working, but it's not working the way it's supposed to be working, and that'll really show up once I actually have more than an email client and internet browser installed on here.

Unfortunately this can't be fixed remotely.  I have to bring it back to the store which is ordinarily no problem but I'm not walking with a broken ankle so I have to get into the logistical nightmare that is my family.

The short version of what happened is that they pretended the fast drive didn't exist and so put the stuff that needs to go fast on the slow drive.

-

I haven't made ficition in I don't even know how long, and that seriously makes me want to cry.  Well, it makes some part of me want to cry because I can feel my body being all "I should cry now" but the truth is that it seldom succeeds when it attempts that and I doubt it will this time.

-

I think my stitches itch but I don't know for sure because I've had two glimpses of my foot (other than the toes, which stick out) in the past three and a half weeks.  I can't even confirm for sure where the stitches are.

-

I feel like existing is exhausting and I should just lay down and let darkness take me.

-

Thursday isn't just when I'll meet with the foot surgeon and get orders going forward which will let me know if I'm still a dual citizen of foot elevation land and no hormone land.

It's also when a brief but important period will start during which I'll have someone, with working feet, helping me do the whole "eat, drink, stay alive" thing.  That'll, hopefully, be a welcome change.

-

I feel like I don't matter anymore.  I'm a storyteller, if I've lost the ability to tell stories (and I have, hopefully only temporarily) what's left?

-

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff.

Video Game Proposal: The Camera Person

Picture any game that mixes archaeology (er . . . looting) with vast quantities of gunfire.

Incredible finds, wonderful views, lost civilization, bad guys with Kalashnikovs, explosions, epic set pieces, the stuff good Indiana Jones movies are made of except a more modern setting so if the bad guys are Nazis they're neo-Nazis, so on, so forth.

Now imagine that the character the player controls isn't the action hero but a sidekick with a hand held (presumably flip out) video camera.

The game is about not dying, sure, but most of the killing is done by player character's friend/girlfriend/associate/whatever.  I wasn't initially thinking of the possibility of romantic involvement, but such a game would work great if you were controlling a slightly more violence-capable Sam traveling with her girlfriend Lara Croft as Lara uncovered, and Sam recorded, secrets that had long been hidden from the world.

Anyway, with the action hero doing most of the work on the violence side, your job in the game is to:

1. Not get dead
2. Record everything.  Did the bad guys just blow up an ancient tomb?  Get that.  Did they shoot your plane from the sky?  Get the shot.  Did action hero just set up a clever ambush with traps and stuff: make sure you're filming.
3. Manage the amount of battery and storage space so you don't miss something important because you filmed three hours of filler. (Probably have an option to turn this off in the difficulty settings.)

Running jumping climbing trees, taking a Pulitzer worthy photo while your up there.  (It doesn't all need to be on a video camera, there can be a still camera as well.)

For those who like puns, it would still be a shooter, just not shooting with guns.

I'm not entirely sure why the idea interests me, but it does.  You don't need to beat the bad guys, someone else will do that for you, you just need to get in a position to get the perfect shot of them doing it.

This is not the world I asked for

I want to live in a world where my dad didn't see me falling to the ground as an excuse to vent his frustrations (which weren't even directed at me) by gaslighting me and then yelling (really, really loudly) at me when I didn't go along with his lies about what happened, just like he did when I was little.

I want to live in a world where that didn't ruin my mother's already strained birthday celebration.

I want to live in a world where the closest thing to bad that happened while I was at my sister's house was her boyfriend and I both being reminded of the fact that we don't have and have never played Kingdom Hearts in spite of both of us really wanting to.  (I swear, when I put it on the wishlist I was convinced the first one, remastered, came out on February 28th.)

I want to live in a world where my dad's response to seeing me spin out of control onto the ground, with a bit of pain involved, is to hope his daughter is ok instead of weaving a tapestry of lies about how his son got there.

I want to live in a world where whatever perverse drive it is that pushes someone to show their dominance over another by replacing the victim's truth with their lies *takes breath* doesn't exist.

I want to live in a world where love, including compassion, trumps petty power games.

I don't.

Facing the zombie apocalypse on crutches, a game proposal

So, last post, it was a couple minutes at most before I found some packages that had been set aside when I was in too much pain to mail and discovered that The Last Guardian and The Last of Us have been given to me by nice people.  Thank you nice people.

That had me going back and striking out a bit of text because I think four settings should be enough that shifting through them will meet my story variety needs, thus things had changed.  (Still could really use delivery food money, advice too --if anyone knows the greater Portland area-- since the Chinese place I know is out of business now.)

Anyway, I started the first The Last game yesterday, and The Last of Us today.

In the opening a girl hurts her foot and can't walk.  Everyone knows what you do in that case: you carry her.  And that's what happened.

I saw myself in her.  A sprained ankle I can force myself to walk on once the initial pain dies down a bit (hurts like all hell, but I can do it), this broken ankle, though, it's different.  The reason I broke my porch was that my left foot grazed it, just barely a touch.  No weight, no force to speak of, and the pain alone dropped me.  I was standing, perfectly well balanced, and then I wasn't.  Sheer force of pain.

So I was thinking that If that happened I'd be utterly useless in the zombie apocalypse.  But then I kept on thinking.  If the zombie apocalypse happened now I'd already have crutches and the pain would be significantly less.  That would make all the difference.  Especially if I weren't as out of shape as I am now.  If I were in peak condition I'd be able to go long distances at speed with a lot of weight on my back.  A backpack is good for inventory, but if you think about it, I could be hop-vaulting away from the infected hordes with a child on my back.

(The child would have to do all the work since I couldn't hold onto them and crutches at the same time, but said work is possible.)

So provided the "I can't stand" injury happened before they stopped handing out crutches, I totally could have been the one carrying the can't-walk girl from the open instead of needing to be carried myself.

And this is how my mind works.  I find myself envisioning a game in which one of the main characters, who is on crutches, is giving the other main character a piggyback ride through the zombie apocalypse.

I wonder if the danger of things that can slide (a piece of paper on a smooth surface could spell your death if your crutch lands on it and you try to put weight on that crutch) would be a gameplay mechanic.

I think about how you'd have to stop to shoot because freeing an arm for the weapon requires not having it on a crutch.  I think about whacking zombies with one crutch while standing on the good leg and the other crutch.

I wonder if the person being carried would handle weapons.

I picture the Boston T (the subway parts) being fortified against zombie incursion and becoming where people live while Boston above ground becomes a massive open world to be crutched through as it decays in that verdant way New England places are consumed by forest if there's no one to mow the lawn.

Of course one must assume that if the player character is using crutches that shouldn't be the only way to get around.  I'm not specifically thinking of the luxury of a wheelchair because I imagine that post-zombie the elevators used for wheelchair access will not be powered.  Not until civilization really starts to rebuild.

I refer, instead, to butt sliding.  Also crawling, depending on the injury.

But sliding is the safest way to go up stairs when you're on crutches, and it's faster than using the crutches to do it unless there's but one step.

But mostly I have this idea of the zombie apocalypse on crutches, because zombie apocalypses seldom wait for a good time.  You usually don't get to go, "Hey, could you wait like six weeks so that I can walk?" and have the zombie apocalypse say, "Yeah, sure, How about earth day?"

Also, can I just say, they go through a museum and don't come out of it with so much as one sword?  Come on people.  At the very least you could have gotten a decent knife and not had to resort to shivs so weak the break after one use.  How do you even get them that weak?  Are they made out of a pane of window-glass?  Cause that's not one of the ingredients used to craft them, but it does seem to describe their durability.

When the apocalypse comes I'm totally looting the cool weapons from the museums.  My muse would be disappointed if I didn't.

-

A very easy way to make a plot would be if the crutch person were pre-surgery and so they needed to track down a surgeon, an anesthesiologists, other such people, drugs, equipment, so forth, and a sterile location where the surgery could be preformed without becoming zombie nomage.

Things you can do

Random list of things you can do to help me while I wait six weeks before doctors will let me even attempt walking.

• money
• gifts
• junk
• feedback
• the impossible

~ money ~

In my last post I mentioned how incredibly useful delivery food, the food in question at that time being pizza, is to me right now.  It comes to me and it doesn't require any preparation.  It's basically the only thing that's stopping my leg from making me go hungry.

Would tossing a little money in your Paypal help keep you in Pizza? (Or Chinese food or whatever else can be delivered in your neck of the woods.)

And the answer is most definitely: "Yes."

(Again there's a donate button in the upper right corner, or you can send me money through your PayPal account using my email: cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com)

With a lot of things there's lag time because I need to shuffle money through accounts until it eventually reaches the right place, but the paypal account does have a debit card that goes with it which means that I can pay for delivery using the money in the account the moment the money actually shows up in the account.

Delivery is expensive (why I've pretty much never done it before) and can't be done using food money, so if you want to do major short term help, and you have money, that's definitely something you can do to help.

Still on the topic of money, in the longer term I do have my ever-festering debt to slowly pay down.  Mind you, you'd have to tell me (you can include notes with a donation) that it was for that purpose because it's not like I have a separate pizza fund.  All paypal comes goes to the same place.

Last thing on the topic of money is that for the enduring long term, I have a Patreon account to accept monthly payments.  Speaking of, I've got to set up to get my money so far out of there so I can use it to pay bills.  I'm going to need it this month.

~ gifts ~

Not long before all this happened, someone gave me a gift certificate for socks based on them appearing on this list, unfortunately I only got to try on one pair before my left foot became unfit for socks, but they're really nice socks (thanks) and I like them and they're more than I'd ever get myself seeing as how I tend to get cheap stuff for me.

Some of the things on that list don't apply anymore (I finally got mason jars) some never made much sense (do I want a donkey?  Sure.  Can I care for one?  Not a chance in Hell) but some still apply (e.g. strong cups with large volume the better to hydrate myself.)  If you're interested in getting me something, contact me using the email above.

I can add things as well, I have an interest in playing cards and tarot cards, I know that proper runic divination uses sticks, but rune-stones are just cool looking. . . It may become apparent that I have an interest in divination.  Don't believe in it, but the interest is there none the less.

A universal remote, or any that works with my Toshiba TV, would be godsend right now.

~

There's this list which is about how I'll be spending a lot of my "supine with my leg above my heart" time.  I didn't have a console when I made it, and I put two possibilities on.  I have since cleaned up the list so it only has stuff that goes with the console (PS4) that I now have. (I dumped the rest onto this list on the off chance someone wants to get me a 3DS.)

So here's the deal with that list:

On the one hand, I think I'm good when it comes to filling time.  On the other hand I realized that playing console games the way I play computer games was a mistake.

Basically, I usually alt-tab out a lot and so even though I'm only playing one game what I'm being exposed to is a much more diverse set of stuff.  After playing Gravity Rush most of the way through I realized that I'd limited myself to one story, one setting, one set of characters, and so forth for way to long.  My creativity dried up.

The solution is simple: I need to switch between things instead of playing all the way through before starting another game like I usually would.  The problem is that for all of the gameplay time the games I have provides, there are [added:] nevermind. Just found some mail that had been set aside, probably when I was in pain post-surgery.  I've got four non-Gravity Rush settings now. [/added] only two settings (other than Gravity Rush, which I've kind of over-saturated on.)

So I don't need more games to keep me from cracking under the boredom that woul otherwise come from having to elevate my foot all the time.  But they would help me in taking proper care of my brain.  Filling the well and all that.

~ junk ~

Or obsolete stuff.  For example, if anyone recently got the latest mono-molecular edge GPU and needs a new home for the one they replaced, that's not junk by any stretch, but it would be useful to me.

So the category is more, "Stuff you don't want," but the title comes from the fact that I am interested in certain types of junk.  Sticking with tech for three paragraphs: While computer parts that work will be useful since I'm putting together a desktop for the first time in . . . ever, I also happen to find circuit board aesthetically pleasing.

Circuit board means not just computers, but calculators, and maybe phones.

I have long wanted to play Dr. Frankenstein to tech stuff, so I'd love to get the chance to make two things that don't work into one thing that does.  (And I once had a plan that involved taking a camera from a cell phone that couldn't phone and a lens-zoom assembly from a camera that couldn't camera and . . .)

Leaving tech stuff, I like fixing things in general.  For example, take broken ceramic duck, add thought and superglue, result: a sense of accomplishment and a fixed ceramic duck.  Despite what others think, broken things aren't junk, not really, they're three dimensional jigsaw puzzles.

~ feedback ~

You know how I make posts with fiction and stuff?  When people comment I treasure it an it reassures me that I'm not writing into the void.

I have never closed comments, so no matter how old something is you can say something about it.

I've been thinking about Ash a bit.  (A children's theater on tape rendition of Cinderella was played the morning I was at my sister's.)  That story is kind of rare in that it did get comments.  (Woo!)  Most stories don't seem to.

~ stuff you can't do ~

My dad did my laundry, I am now wearing clean clothes.  There was no way I could possibly get the laundry downstairs to the dryer, so I was kind of dependent on the kindness of others.

If I could just get someone to wash my dishes.

Or find the damned spiral bound notebook (maroon cover if my memory is to be trusted) that has my notes on everything in it.

post surgery ankle update

(Content note: I'm going to talk about the surgery and other medical things.)

So I mentioned how going off hormones to reduce risk of blodclot has fucked over my mood, right?

Well, that combined with other things kind of had me fairly messed up by the time surgery came around.  I'd barely slept, I was apparently dehydrated, and it had been a lot longer since I'd had a good meal than the required fasting period.

The surgery was actually a day earlier than expected because . . . Jasper?  So on Thursday morning I got dropped of at the hospital, early in the afternoon they had me get ready for surgery, and it was into the night before I got out.

You sleep through it, but waking up involves reconnecting with your body, which involves a lot of pain.  They have, after all, cut into you, fucked with your bones, and made internally vulnerable to attacks from Magneto.

To keep you from accidentally being killed off by the anesthesia they shove a tube down your throat.  My throat was already out of sorts because I'd recovered from being sick in some way or other but, as often happens to me, the cough had lingered.  My voice was kind of gravelly going in.  It was a photo-realistic depiction of gravel coming out. It was also dry beyond belief.

I did manage to get some food and drink before going to "bed" on a couch-like-thing at my sister's house.  (The nurses wouldn't let me go home, because I'd be the only human type person there.)  I didn't sleep.  I'd run out of sleep med in the lead up to the surgery.  Not like I could walk over and get it, maybe when I was stronger and lighter but when you're on the fatter and weaker side of things crutches are downright exhausting.  (I've never really been on the fat and strong or light and weak sides.)

As for getting someone to go and get it for me, phone calls are really hard and my mood being thrown out of whack really messed up any . . . I wouldn't even call them "attempts".  Plans I guess.  It messed up any plans to do that.

I managed to get the sleeping medication picked up for me when I was driven home

That was Friday, which was spent in a lot of pain until I realized that much of the pain wasn't directly caused by the surgery.  I was elevating too much and cutting off circulation to my left foot, and to a lesser extent the rest of the leg on the foot-side of the knee, downright dangerously.

The majority of the pain was because my leg was acting like it was freezing, and I somehow didn't notice that because it had shot straight passed the point where it could feel cold.  In fact, the parts in pain were the only parts that could feel anything, the rest was numb.  My circulation would appear to suck.  At least the way in which it sucks isn't indicative of a blood clot.

Any progress made at this time was, almost certainly, undone by the necessary returning of warmth and circulation to my leg.  Ideally you're supposed to keep things like that away from heat as it makes swelling worse, but oh my fucking god did my leg need to be warmed by the time I realized what was going on.

Then I slept.  One night's sleep isn't enough to get things fixed, and so yesterday is kind of hazy, and it was hazy at the time.

I ordered pizza.  It's way too expensive and I can't use food money to pay for a delivery, but right now I need food that has minimal preparation.  Unfortunately it can't last for long.  Even if I have something else for breakfast, which I didn't today, two large pizzas at two pieces a meal only lasts for four days.

Today I woke up and . . . have basically no idea what happened next.  It didn't stick.  Around noon I woke up again, but in a different place.  That I slept in daylight is indicative of just how little sleep I had leading up to this.

When I sleep at Lonespark's it involves pulling the shade, closing the door, and putting something over the alarm clock because the glow from the clock will keep me up.  Since limited mobility has forced me to abandon my usual sleeping spot, I've been laying something over my eyes while I get to sleep.  Once I am asleep it's easier to stay that way than it was to get that way, so the fact that the makeshift blindfold always falls off isn't too much of a problem.  (Also I don't have a bed to roll around on in new-location and restricting movement makes a blindfold less problematic.)

But to fall back asleep, without even trying, in a room with two unblinded windows connecting me to the sunny outside world, that's kind of absolute proof that I'd really fucked up the whole sleep thing before two nights ago.

And now, here we are.  The story reached the present.

I'm elevating my foot more cautiously, now that I'm in the habit of taking the post operation pain-med (and remembering that it has to be used in combination with acetaminophen) the actual surgery related pain is under control, and I'm still limited in what I can do by the need to elevate my ankle as much as possible without doing the whole "no circulation to my left leg" thing.

It's kind of hard to believe the surgery was just three days ago and I only got home two days ago, it feels like forever,

We're still friends, right?

(To avoid meta stuff involving my health and why you're getting rough unpolished work, skip to the first break.)

I don't think I mentioned this before, it would be easy to check but easy things are kind of the problem, but some things did come from meeting the orthopedic surgeon beyond, "Wow, swelling hasn't gone down enough, let's push back surgery a week (or more.)"

One of them is that I was told to get off my hormones to reduce the risks.  That's kind of fucked over my mood, and I'll be happy when I can be back on them.  Hence not having anything to post.  It's not the same as going off antidepressants, but it's not something you want happening to you.

I'm not exactly happy with the fact that I left the post on my ankle as the top thing through the end of February, though.  Tried writing something new.  No luck.  Tried looking at old unfnished posts and finishing.  Nothing there either.

So, here, have a draft of a fragment.

The last time I did anything to this is apparently 12/13/16, so blogger tells me.  Pity it doesn't record when when you started a post.  Anyway, it was around that time that I was working with Mishap (one, two, three) and so was in "thieving villains" state of mind.

* * *

When I wrote this I didn't come up with any names, I labeled them with letters.  This was another five person hero team, but one member left because of a conflict of interest (she fell in love with a thief) here's the what I electronically jotted to keep track of who said what and what role they were playing.

Old hero team:
L - leader
Th - one who turned thief
F - Friend
U - I couldn't think of a good word so urchin
T - Timid

G - Girlfriend, the original thief

Story begins:

* * *

Th "How did you expect me to earn a living?"

L "You turned your back on justice."

Th "Justice would be stealing the amulet and giving it back to the people whose ancestors made it, I don't seem to recall us ever doing that.  British archaeologists stole it the first time, we're just stealing it a second time."

G "If it's not going to be with the people who deserve it, why shouldn't we make money off of the eventual disposition of the item?"

Th "We have to eat."

L "There are honest ways to--"

Th "We're in a Museum, everything in here was looted, stolen, or otherwise taken without permission."

U "There is an entire wing devoted to the stuff robbed from graves, including some of the bodies themselves."

L "We are not having this conversation."

U "Sorry."

L "[Th] even after you left I'd hoped that you'd stay the course, maybe even make [G] honest.  I'm sorry --disappointed-- that you've become a common criminal."

G "We are anything but common."

Th "I'm disappointed that you're acting like I'm cackling while plotting to take over the world.  I knew I might have to fight for a new life, and I'm not going to back down just because it's you guys.  I could do without the whole judgmental self-righteousness though."

L "Fine.  We've talked enough."

Th *to F* "We're still friends, right?"

F "Of course we are, but that doesn't mean I'm going to step aside and let you get away."

*Th nods and smiles*

L *to F* "I can't--"

U "I can count the number of friends I have on one hand, you can't seriously think I'd turn my back on one because of a minor shift in her moral paradigm."

L *to U* "She's a criminal now!"

U "Not everyone has free food and lodging handed to them by the city, remind me to tell you some of the things I had to do before I--"

L "She betrayed us!"

T *to Th* "I'd like to think we're still friends, but that kind of depends on how much you hurt me in the coming fight, I think."

G "We're thieves, not killers.  I'm sure you'll be fine."