the trick is to keep breathing

So last Thursday around 10:00 I had a bad fall and ended up in the emergency room, with both ankles basically busted.

Cut for discussion of injury. ( yeah )

Can’t really walk. Couldn’t really even stand the first few days without supporting myself on wheelchair / nearby table / couch / something else. Crown helped make the first floor wheelchair accessible and put together one of the basement beds for me to sleep on in my sunroom cause i cant do stairs. Feathers brought me down enough toiletries that I could brush my teeth and actually wear deodorant. My parents came to visit with groceries and fruits and lots of help getting everything set up so that I can survive first-floor-only for a little while.

Check-up with the ortho on Wednesday put me into a boot - good news; boot FAR better than cast! - and predicted about 6 weeks before I’m back to any normal kind of motions, with next check-up in two.

This certainly isn’t my first time impaired — I spent most of my senior year of high school on crutches or in a wheelchair for a variety of reasons. But that’s very different; you have friends at school willing to help you out so that they can use the elevator, and you have parents at home who still do your laundry and get your mail. I’m nearing 40 and don’t live with my husband for a variety of mutual personal reasons, and I’m kind of lucky to have a basement gremlin in Feathers at this point or I would be, just, you know. Boned.

All projects are behind. Drawing? Writing? Don’t know ‘em. Today for the first time I sat down at my desktop while in the wheelchair and while I can make words, it isn’t really that easy, or that comfortable.

My life as a cripple (patent pending) so far has been interesting. I have my grandmother’s wheelchair, which is great because I have it and didn’t have to pay for one, but not so great in that it’s made to be pushed, rather than for self-propelling. And wheeling myself around on carpet also not made for wheelchair ease is, well, fucking exhausting. I better have massive arms after this. I’ve had to rearrange nearly everything so that I can access it without having to stand up. Hell, even a trip to the bathroom is like a 20-minute quest montage from Lord of the Rings.

The poor cats are not adjusting very well at all.

ANYWAY! Friends! I will be literally useless for at least the next 6 weeks. I still plan on putting out fan stuff just to keep my own sanity, but will it be quality? Who knows! Will i open commissions again? Depends on the emergency room bill! Do i consider crying at least once a day? Of course!!

Love, Sev

I'm always surprised at how many hours there actually are in a day.

I really shouldn't be, because I've experienced this phenomenon once before, when I was still working my full-time long-day 40-hr-week job and also attending a 20-30-hr-week graduate lab class: if you literally spend every spare minute you have doing something, it's a lot of work. (And I mean it. Sometimes I see people posting, "I'm soooo busy~!" but if I've seen you posting 10K in fic in the last week, or reblogging tons of stuff on Tumblr, or otherwise hobbying-- maybe you're busy, but that isn't actually spending every legitimate moment you have on work-like things. I realize this makes me a judgmental ass and I'm sorry.)

But really, I'm still continually surprised at how much you can actually work in one day. Because I have basically spent every free hour I have had in the last 7 days helping to basically remodel a basement which is my responsibility to fix. I don't even have time to tell you everything handyman that I've done. But I'm just still for whatever reason surprised at how BUSY you can actually get. When you come home from work at 6:15 and change and eat and then drive up to the house at 7:00 and work until 11:00 and then come home and make a lunch and do the dishes and go to bed at 12 and get up at 6:30 and go to work at 7:30 and then do it all over again, for an entire week? I mean it, there is busy and then there is, "life sat on me." They aren't even really in the same order of magnitude.

Had I known the level of fucked this problem was, I wouldn't have started it now. But you don't know what's under the carpet until you pull up the carpet.

I thought I was busy before. Turns out, there were plenty of hours in my day that could be filled up with things that make me miserable.

I am stressed as fuck, I have gotten absolutely nothing done this week, my exchange ends this weekend, I am leaving tomorrow afternoon and I have not yet finished packing. This week has been just awful.

Some day I will turn this experience into a "Handyman How-To" post because I've actually learned a lot of fun shit. Today is not that day.

- - -

I just printed out all my itineraries and reservations and flight info and blah blah and it's basically a short novel, I've killed a tree doing it, it weighs more than my laptop, etc etc.

This trip-- I am not even looking forward to it. i'll be honest. Work is so awful right now, and there are a bunch of due dates WHILE I AM GONE, so I have to work ON my trip, and just. ugh ugh ugh first world problems etc but.

I carry my stress in my shoulders and neck, and I nearly can't drive a car right now. I am pretty sure my back is about to leave me for another woman.

Whirlwind tour of the US is as follows:
- to Boise this weekend for my cousin's wedding
- fly to Vegas Mon with family, night in Vegas
- drive to Grand Canyon Tues, two nights in GC
-- work due Wednesday, have to work Mon and Tues to submit Wed
- return to Vegas on Thurs, night in Vegas
- Fri, fly directly to Houston, spend weekend weeping in a pillow fort
- Sun, pick up Japanese BFF at airport and head off to the plant
- Mon, tour of plant with guest
- Tues-Wed, work at the plant
-- work due Tues, will have to work the previous week to compile it
- Thurs, return home

- THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, submit a report of the work I did on the plant trip to the Overlords because
- THAT WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY, our biannual meeting with the Overlords begins

- probably every day forever: cry into beer, from stress and frustration

- date of freedom: 20 June
- 21 June: lose self in Diablo III for three consecutive days

I am trying for serenity now and I'm not sure I'll make it. OH GOOD. When can I give up on everything and be a crazy cat lady hermit hobo who never goes anywhere?

ON THE PLUS SIDE, I now have an app on my phone that can send a postcard photo from anywhere for $0.99, so if you want a really dumb postcard from Vegas or the Grand Canyon, email me your address.

ADDITIONALLY ON THE PLUS SIDE, I've written 4 Korra drabbles in the past few days. On my phone. While in meetings or otherwise working. Seeing as I haven't written a thing since December, this is cool.

I HAD ANOTHER PLUS but I have forgotten it so.

THINGS I HATED IN SCHOOL: GROUP PROJECTS

THINGS BEING A PROJECT LEADER IS LIKE: FUCKING GROUP PROJECTS

Sure, I can edit your 10 slides down to 5 and fix all of your typos

why not



that's certainly what they pay me for