bits, bobs, other things I meant to mention today and somehow didn't

2012-12-22T01:24:22Z

[TW: POTENTIALLY DISTRESSING MEDICAL DETAIL] My period started yesterday, and all that gave it away was a mild ache in my lower back. This when I'm only on half dose of paracetamol - I successfully halved it several weeks ago, and unlike every other time I've tried doing so I didn't go back up to full dose after three days. So: either the amitriptyline is really doing its job, or I'm getting less pain... which would be a good thing, except that I suspect it's indicative of progression of nerve damage. ON THE PLUS SIDE, if it is progressive nerve damage this means I might be rid of the labial neuropathy one day. On the down side, that would be due to paralysis (yes, that is a thing endo can do). Er.
QuantumGIS. Unlike ArcGIS, it's not $2000 a licence, and it has useful help files. (Arc? Arc's manual says really cheerful stuff like THERE IS THIS THING YOU CAN DO IT'S SUPERCOOL BECAUSE OF REASONS LET ME TELL YOU HOW AWESOME IT IS and, er, never tells you how to do it.) Unlike Arc, it runs on things other than Windows. UNFORTUNATELY, files created under Windows that run perfectly fine cause, um, silent but immediate crashes of the entire sodding program when you try to open them under a Linux install. ... I was sad.
One of the things I did today was, er, write a (fairly polite) e-mail auf Deutsch to, er, the suppliers of my wheels. Based in Germany. Whose. Manual. Is, ah, provided in multiple languages, because that's helpful. ... the English and the German are mutually contradictory - somewhere along the line "nun" got translated as "not", rather than "now" - and I'd be inclined to chalk that up to a typo apart from some of the truly egregious other mistranslations.
... hold on is Buffy actually a series about Joss' ideal Manic Pixie Dream Girl oh dear goodness it is isn't it that's really rather distressing
In which I explain why I'm a bit of a disaster:
see I have a very great weakness for men who look good in formalwear while flirting with femininity and who will be _really wry_ at me while being musical
...
they don't have to be men though
...
sorry that was probably tmi
Custard. Isn't it the greatest?
Basil in raspberry trifle turns out to work really well.
How am I supposed to get chilli plants to fruit, anyway? Like, I've got the flowering down, but the fruiting not so much.
Corsetry! Isn't it great, though? And oh boy I am enjoying being secure enough in my gender presentation (for all that I am PERMANENTLY MISGENDERED) to feel okay about that one again.
Genitalia! Aren't they weird? Like, just sort of inherently? Not as weird as knees, obviously, but Pretty Bizarre nonetheless.
I'm feeling gently guilty about having spent £11 on a teal-taffeta-covered diary for 2013, but... teal. taffeta. How could I not?
I really, really enjoy spending time with my mother.
Beds are great.
I've been wearing that jacket, with all of the pins and so on on it, really quite a lot, and - every time I have the kind of interaction in public where I am Wearing That Jacket and Wearing My Docs and generally being a Pretty Stompy Queer Crip? But I am also polite and friendly and personable and thank people? I... kind of feel like I'm ~activisming~, in microcosm, in ways that are kind of terrifying but kind of exhilirating too. Does that make me weird?
I was whinging to pretty much anyone who'd listen about the Really Weird Looks I get for carrying my 30kg wheelchair up stairs at wheelchair-inaccessible Tube stations, and when it was Boything's turn he suggested I get a t-shirt that's plain on the front, with PART TIME CRIPPLE on the back (so it's only visible when I'm not in my chair). I... am very tempted to start making and selling those.
Relatedly, few things are more irritating than people ignoring my "no thanks, I'm fine, honest" when I'm trying to get my chair up stairs, because (a) that thing is heavy (b) most of the weight is in the back wheels (c) there's a REASON I'm keeping the back wheels on the steps (d) if you lift the back wheels OFF the steps and then move faster than I comfortably can, you ARE making things more dangerous, you ARE increasing the likelihood I'll trip and fall, and you ARE standing between, have I mentioned, a thirty kilo wheelchair and gravity, and that is a bad plan
That bit of ranting aside, I'm actually really cheerful. Sorry for taking up ALL YOUR READING PAGES today, darling subscribers. And do let me know about that one disasterfic. <3

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who only by moving can balance

bits, bobs, other things I meant to mention today and somehow didn't