but the railroad track will bring me back when the lonesome whistle cries

[[Insert, belatedly, from the Editrix: I'm getting there.]]



I TOLD myself, I was not going to leave without blogging SOMETHING, because dear gods...February?! Was the last time I did??

Ignoring the eight unposted drafts, I may post them, I may not, they weren't "official"... whatevers...

Then THREE DAYS WENT BY...



So I told myself I was going to run all the shots so I could work on it offline! And...I spent the next two days largely unconscious. I....I Hate. This. Brain thing. SO much.

But okay. Okay okay fine, it's only been nearly a week, I'm still on...some kind...of track...and now I have pictures!

.........

And from two to now (7:26 pm PST), I have just been editing pictures. And they're calling me off for dinner.

I....I Hate. This. Brain thing. SO. Much.



HEY GUESS HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO FIX THE BLOG GUYS
GIVE ANOTHER TWO WEEKS *AT LEAST* TO FIGURING OUT THIS IMAGE WAS MISSING
DID I MENTION I HATE MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW?!

So expect a full review. Soon. At, uh...some point.



Also I really need to figure out what to do with the now four staggered half-complete builds floating over Cardew that were meant to be a new store....

AND THE BLOG CODE IS STILL BROKEN....

It...it...yeah. I'll get there. At some point.

'til you learn with age what you can’t do and then try and make a change

Eerie Aquarium's take on depression is hauntingly accurate. Some of the other conditions fit, some don't, but I get the concept. And yeah, being neurodivergent is terrifying at times. NSF...brains? Disturbing content, definitely. Touch of body horror? Mild gore. Soundtrack-induced dread?

Also, as an aside, since the last post was political, let's carry on:

Creator @bekahdayyy has put together a point-by-point refutation of anyone in your life who says they voted for Donald Trump because of their Christian faith. It's not about faith, it's about power. If you're in the position to be attending Thanksgiving, Christmas or other holidays with family and friends who voted for the orange loon, maybe print this out to answer any questions they might have.

But it's not just about the policies. Project 2025 is a comprehensive document covering many areas the writers seek to "improve". Among them:

• Defunding the Department of Education, including Pell grants for college, striking down special education programs, and taking all further education and schooling for children to pricy private (many religious) schools.
• Defunding the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare, and ACA, yes, it very much IS the same thing)--which will also include Medicare and Medicaid being cut by 90%, and removing all prescription price caps (including Biden's $35 cap on insulin. Also of note: food stamps will be taken from 93% of all Americans currently involved in the program.)
• No-fault divorce will be banned nationwide, leaving many women stuck in abusive situations to be battered, severely injured, or even slain.
• Another plan that will kill women is their purported federal abortion ban, allowing zero exceptions for rape, incest, or fetal malformations and the life of the mother.
• Try this one on for size; Dismantling the Marriage Equality Act and federally ruling that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman. Women will also, under the new ruling, lose their independent rights to separate financing, owning property, or--should the unlikely divorce be granted--their own children. and let's not forget, the Marriage Equality Act also insures that interracial marriage is protected. So that will be struck down as well. Guess Clarence and Ginny Thomas are splitting up next year.
• How about the rights of workers? They won't have any. Employers will be free to break up unions, to no longer offer overtime, to fire employees for any reason without fear of repercussions. And federally, employers will no longer have to worry about displaying bigotry or racism--they'll be free to make their workplaces as white as they wish.
• The military, and likely ICE, will be deployed to enact mass deportations. Far as I understand, the procedure will be arrest first, ask questions later--if at all. And let me quote from the document directly, as she put it so well:

  "1 in every 15 families is of mixed documentation status. American citizens will be subject to deportation if they have a family member living in the home undocumented...Denaturalization of immigrants who have received citizenship will begin. DACA will end. Our Asylum Program will be dismantled."

• This is a fun one--since Homeland Security was created as a bureau, the police already were partially militarized. But after Trump takes office? Police officers will receive prosecutorial immunity and be further militarized. Checks and balances on police overreach? What are those? Oh, and racial discrimination? Prepare for that to come back, in spades, as they receive a mandate to gun after anyone not white and conservative.
• Trump, through Project 2025, will give reparation to victims of discrimination...but of course, only the white ones. The plan is also to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after teachers, professors and alumni in colleges that practice diversity, equity, and inclusion (the dreaded "DEI") and fire them. Then tear down the colleges themselves, especially black ones.

Do I need to go on? Because I can go on. This document covers the appointees Trump is planning to push through, as well, and some of them are just as reprehensible, racist and lacking any skill sets for the positions they'll be taking over, as their chosen convicted felon is.



So, for anyone still reading along who voted for Trump? This is why I'm not interested in you being part of my life. We already had four years of him, when he was basically a gleeful, wheezing toddler with a hammer, breaking structures and yelling for hamburgers. He managed to put a tidy sum of money into his pocket from YOUR from being president those four years, too, or didn't you catch that he was charging the Secret Service hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent rooms in hotels he owned?

And you voted to put him in power again. I know there will be members of Congress fighting against his despotic desires, but he has said, multiple times, to multiple Cult 45 members, in multiple cities, that at the very least he plans to:

• Destroy education as we know it from kindergarten to college
• Ban teaching ANYTHING about African-American history; Japanese histories of children growing up in camps instead of houses (even though many Japanese-Americans during WWII were born in the US); anything about the contributions people of color have made to this country through invention, innovation, scientific, medical, legal and political advances; any reference to the near-genocide and seizure of land for indigenous peoples--essentially, anything that might hurt poor white peoples' feewings
• Destroy Medicaid and Medicare (so there goes my insurance)
• Destroy Social Security (and there goes my ability to pay rent)
• Destroy the Affordable Care Act (so there goes one of my love's insurance)
• Set high tariffs against countries he currently dislikes, which will drive the cost of EVERYTHING up (or didn't you realize what tariffs actually do?)
• Destroy the Veterans' Administration entirely (so there goes my other love's insurance, since she's a veteran)
• Remove responsibility for womens' medical care and bodily autonomy (and as a woman, I kind of take that personally)
• Remove marital rights guaranteed to men from women (and this alone, even were I not happy with the loves I have, would ensure I'd never marry), essentially starting the process to make them American citizens with reduced rights;
• Restrict food stamps to the narrowest possible sliver of citizenry (so, hey, I guess I don't need to eat anymore, right?);

--and AGAIN, I COULD GO ON--



Is it sinking in yet? Having any regrets on how you voted? Because I'm hearing that a lot, too--that Trump voters "didn't really understand", or "didn't know" he was proposing to sink so many ships. And for me, I mean, great, you have seen that your cult leader may not be precisely trustworthy, but COULD YOU NOT HAVE COME TO THAT CONCLUSION BEFORE VOTING FOR HIM?!??

But that's it. End of rant. I refuse to trust people who voted for me to starve, get sicker, or outright die. Just because the price of eggs went up. Oh, babies, just WAIT until the 200% tariffs go into effect on Chinese imported goods, or Mexican imported fruits and vegetables, and you'll be having to choose between paying rent, or buying a new skirt. Paying for necessary medical equipment or prescriptions, or buying a bag of apples. No more. No. More.

and the engine's failed again, all limits of disguise

It's October already, and no haunts have been visited in September. At all. I have no explanation. Also a lack of updating, there's that. To the point that I might have to reintroduce myself to anyone reading along.

So, hi, I'm dy--I mean, I'm increasingly impair--I meant to say, hi, I'm locked in a pitched battle with my goddamn neurologis--

Errr. Let's try again. I'm Em. Hi. The rest is flavor text.

Aaaaaanyway...I had decided to do something potentially ill-advised, namely--the 21 in 31 Challenge. Now, there are existing 31 Days of Horror challenges. I know that. This felt more my speed, though.

For example, here's HordesofHorror's list:



She's following down her curated list, and even managed an explanation for each one. And I've seen both "You have to make your list on day one and stick to it!" and "Pick a movie a day you haven't seen!" camps for the usual 31 Days Challenges. I planned to fall in the middle of the road: I wasn't making a list beforehand, but I would watch each film all the way down. No five-minute "this is too terrible to continue watching" waffling.

And I'd do my best to pick things I haven't seen.

And then...several days more went by, and...here we are. So we're starting with "The Last Ghost Hunters", filmed in 2021, currently on Tubi--because it may be the only one I have energy to cover. Their capsule description says:

"Terror is about to break loose when a team of ghost hunters get hired to explore a vacant country house where several people have disappeared forever."

Okay then!



Now, I could have sworn the house used in this film was one I'd seen before, and my mind was saying Black Mirror. I checked, but as far as I can tell, it's not that. Maybe it's just similar to a lot of other houses I've seen, that were built in the same era.



So first off the bat: they do the best they can. I think all the actors did the very best they could, trapped between poorly-green-screened ghosts and the Big Evil of the piece...essentially some dude in a gas mask. There was a lot of gritting my teeth to get through the runtime.



And I'm not great at giving reviews without spoilers, so let me tell you this was the best shot I could get of the green screen, and even here, it's pretty bad. Add in special effects--smoke, fog, fire, ACTORS MOVING, whatever--and the believability sinks like a flan in a cupboard. I'm not sure, had it not been a challenge, I would have bothered to finish it, frankly.

Adding in to the "not bothering" camp: I saw Platform 2 had arrived, so I figured, I should probably try to finish the first one...and I made it twenty minutes farther in and stopped. Nope. Just couldn't do it.

Same thing with Terrifier--I liked the original anthology film that spawned Art the Clown, but not so much his segment of it. Then the first Terrifier film came out, and I tried to get through it, and...Look. I don't mind slashers. I don't mind gore. But I do have to have some greater sense of character than "woke up this morning and decided to saw into people". I don't need much of a why past that, but I do need at least that.

I even figured, hey, if I'm lost, I'll go back, but let's jump directly to Terrifier 2, since Terrifier 3 had just dropped.

Big huge nope. I just don't like the character. And this is likely the year that cements not wanting to push my brain, because...it's dealing with enough.

Is it Halloween yet?

running out of time, better get out or get in

So, remember forever ago, when I said I'd be following up the /Vae Victis\ geta post with the rest of the shoes...that I've still been collecting, because I am an obsessive muffin...? Anyway, yeah, that's now starting to happen, but it'll be a while before it's all graphicked up for posting.

Something else did happen, though:



Ah, right. That thing I never celebrate came up. But this year I actually received an email from the Lindens?

And, of course, to follow that:



Yeah...For some reason the email, and in particular the image above, completely kicked the stuffing out of me for three weeks. No idea why. Maybe that I found myself appalled that the "average" SL resident visits 100 regions. That's almost criminal, the grid is WIDE. Same thing with the teleports.

But the last thing, I just do not believe. There have been times I thought I logged out, and didn't, and I come back to lots of blinking IM windows. Totally my bad. But I have never, not even once, left my computer on, running, and logged in 135 days. Not. Possible.

But the bigger reason I sunk into the tarn was...761. That's the number that's been ringing in my head, and it's more advanced now than in July, when the actual rez day, and the "My Year in SL" pic, happened.

That's over two years. I've had the Eternal Headache (and that name is comically apt at this point) for over two years.

And...that...that was kind of a lot.

So I'm working on remantling, and working--harder--on accepting the Headache is now a feature, not a bug. So goes all flesh, et cetera.



But hey! The Garden's been revised in Tannhauser Gate Station! That's good news, right?



Yep. Just peachy.

and you'll read your Erasmus on park lawns again

[19:45] Grimoire Hexem: no problem, sorry for the inconvenience
[19:46] ɐɹpuɐxǝlɐ (misssuicide.marshdevil): hi its me im the inconvenience its me :P

Soooo. The astute among you might have nooooticed a small change on the blog...in that it's reverted CLEAR BACK TO CONTEMPO so I have to start from scratch. I have one guy saying, hey, you could just convert to Wordpress, buy a cheap domain, I could host it for you--and while it sounds good, in theory, I don't think he understands exactly how much I'd have to port over. Some of the original blog images are already lost to time because I can't remember where I shunted them off to! Plus with hard drives dying right and left...it's a whole thing. A whole huge, ungainly thing.

But it will be fixed in time! I am working out how to do that since I managed to completely erase the changes I'd made to TRY and update the thing which hadn't worked so far and did I mention there's an anniversary I never wanted coming up? I am scarce but a fortnight from two...full...years...with the Eternal Headache.



Just so.

Well one other brief diversion:

[16:48] sxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: nice body
[16:48] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Thank you.

This was how "nice" the body was, by the way, when I was picking up something at Stiff. (Actually, strike that--this was the pic taken when I was at Dollholic.)

Then I got a friendship offer. So I pulled the profile.

The entirety of his SL bio is confusing:

I am Arab. an usa I like dealing with upscale people. I do not like dealing with people who are slaves to money. It is better for a person to be a slave to money than that.

So I asked. Of course.

[17:04] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Hmm. You really need a first life pic.
[17:04] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Now, is your 'slaves to money' line including shopping addiction, or do you mean, you're not crazy about anyone who spends Lindens in SL at all?

I didn't give him a ton of time to reply on this latter section, because I did have an elsewhere to be, as it happened.

[17:07] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): yeahokayfine, I'm needed in RL, so have a good diurnal/noctural span of time.

He's new, as in two-weeks-on-the-grid new, so I didn't want to spend the time it would take to really track down what about the Pripyat fashion doll he really loves, so let's just call it a weird moment and move on.

[[Note after publication from the Editrix: Few days later, I just switched the entire template back to basics and selected Soho Neon as the working template until I could figure out what to do next. Thing is...there may not be a next? I'd love to change the banner, and the background, but a friend told me my blog, which had been loading like molasses in winter for months, is now nearly instantaneous on load. So...we're here for now, I guess.]]

remember to breathe

I last posted in MAY?! Void stars, I'm losing my grip.

(Also, I still maintain Christianity would be on the rise if they listened to Reefer Madness's take...but I digress.)

So, what's going on? I am deeply delinquent on reviews. Events are opening at speed. It's getting darker, and I've forgotten what sun feels like on my skin.



In the meantime, a lot of thinking goes on when there's thinking at all, with intermittent static and snippets of strange commercials. But I'll try to do better about updates.

If I can.

(Oh, and this may be the first year in more years than I want to think about...where I don't cover Hair Fair at all. I have a lovely windblown long hair from Truth, and a starkly impractical, but beautiful, headdress from Azoury...and I only have those because a friend dragged me through one sim. So...yeah. Not getting that done is going on the pile with all the other things I'm not getting done.)

I have tangled things thoroughly, and I never meant to

Text of a card I just sent out to a love:

Sooo...I want this to be a short breezy capsule response, but...

Okay. Vague causes worry. So, I haven't fallen again, though there have been some near misses, but towards the end of Aprille there was a severe pain ramp-up. And I thought I could just wait it out, and then get back in touch with people.

And..Aprille became May. And May became mid-May. And pulling open the IM window so I can send this and/or talk to you...it's been over a month since I said anything!

I am so, so sorry. Yes, a lot of it can be attributed to just--head pain scatter, or concentration scatter, and I'm beginning to accept that these may be long-term things. But the bulk of it has been waiting--apparently in vain--for the pain levels to drop back down to...well. What I consider "normal". Normal it's not, but my usual state of ow-everything-hurts-why.

Along the way, I did talk my doc into a trial run of oxycodone. Unfortunately, I live in a town on the west coast that is considered "drug-seeking". I have done *everything* in my power not to have that label go into my file, up to and including taking the MOST conservative doses possible on new meds, and then ramping up--again, conservatively--on dosage if needed.

And I'm being insanely conservative with the oxy, too. I get 20 pills every time it's refilled, and if I took it according to package directions--"every six hours as needed for moderate pain"--I'd be refilling it every six or seven days. I'm only taking a pill when it's that or drink three cups of chamomile tea and go back to bed. And try to sleep.

But *all* of this is explanation, not excuse. I don't have one. I should have reached out, even if it was to say, 'hey, there's an incredible amount of ow, sorry I haven't been in touch'. I...well, as usual, I didn't want to worry people--which makes people worry more, and I really should connect the dots on those by now.

I love you. I'm sorry. Still working on the pain thing.

Em

but isn't it nice when we're all afraid at the same time?

Waking in the wee hours to news of another death, and not even one of mine. Following it down in a winding spiral to a song from AFP. Ten minutes of beauty. Ten minutes of devastation. Five minutes of tears that I fought against shedding, because this loss, on top of other losses, too many deaths in this year already, and the year before, and the year before that...

everyone's too scared to open their eyes up
but everyone's too scared to close them

And what do I have to top that, really? A changed body, a changed brain, a changed perspective. Growing fearful where before I was--well, if not fearless, then certainly stoic, and still looking forward instead of back.



"And it's a ride," Amanda sings. "It's just a ride..." That it is. Life, experience, love, that's all it is. Partnering so we have someone's hand to hold, teetering at the crest. Sitting with family, created, acquired, growing, introducing them to the concept of safe fear, because we know it will help them process real fear, later.

Same principle behind horror media, really.

everyone's reading the rules of engagement
and everyone's starting to doubt them
everyone's reaching to put on a seatbelt
but this kind of ride comes without them

I'm remembering one episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, where he came in from Outside, removing his work coat and his work shoes, exchanging them for his softer cardigan, slipping his feet into more comfortable sneakers, and preparing the lesson for the day. All the little routines viewers had become accustomed to--the door opening, his easy, guileless smile, the short walk down the short stairs. It was ritual, in a way, practiced to give his audience time to unwind with him, become open to his next words.



The episode I'm thinking of, though, is sadly one they no longer run in syndication. Because in this one, near the end of all the calm routines, when he raises the top of the aquarium to feed the fish--he finds one of the fish has passed. Floating belly-up, its small fins no longer moving, its gold-scaled body no longer swimming in idle loops around the tank.

And it's a small, quick moment, expressed in microcosm: his eyes subtly shifting, his shoulders tensing, then relaxing. Nothing a child viewer would catch, even, though rewatching that episode as an adult, I see the signs more clearly. Thrown--just for a moment, a handful of quick seconds--before he pulls back to teacher mode. Finding the best path to turn this into education, pitched in ways his viewers would best understand. And whatever the lesson was going to be, it was set aside for the lesson he had on hand: telling children across the country about what death is, what death really means. That it's nothing to fear; that it's okay to feel things about it. That our emotions, as children, sometimes feel very big, and very scary, but that that was okay, too. Death was just a thing that happened, to all of us. Death was a natural departure in this case, and accepting that was part of life, too.

It's just a ride. And we've got the choice to get off any time that we like...



It is the great equalizer, after all. The commonality of death. The universal experience we'll all have at some point.

Right?

everyone's trying to stay on the side
where the water's just boiling more slowly
frogs in a pot, well that's one thing I've got
at least some of the frogs in here know me

It's not a comforting song. It wavers, ever so slightly, an off-balance calliope, making music for whomever's listening in the shadows...or maybe for the shadows themselves. Her voice breaks at times, the pain in the chords palpable.

And it's not the first time I've heard it, I've had this album, There Will Be No Intermission, for years now. But reading on her latest loss, while listening to this song...it sank deeper this morning. The lightest touch of midnight's chill gracing air already warming, the beginning days of May already lurching towards summer's thick, leaden heat, and I'm reminded yet again of the cyclical nature of loss.

I want you to think of me sitting and singing beside you
the chain pulls us up and we know that we're all gonna dive

And stupidly, pointlessly, thinking on my own. Because it's not in the same league, is it? I'm alive. The world hasn't done me in, yet. That's acres away from mourning an entire person. And yet...ringing the changes. Because there *have* been changes. Six hundred and fifty-plus days, now, with the headache that never leaves me. I'm less sure, now, on the other side of that. Less brave on the other side of that. Definitely, after these months, cascading through a year and still going, less stable on the other side of that...

Possibly more stubborn. But at this point stubbornness is a feature, not a bug.

But we all go down, yes, and we all go down...and see what the ride's made us into, this time.

I want you to think of me sitting and singing beside you
I wish we could meet all the people who got left behind
the ride is so loud it can make you think no one is listening
but isn't it nice when we all can cry at the same time?

But what else do we have, really? What choice do we have? Isolate, or integrate; pull back or push forward. Strengthen our relationships, or let them slip away.

and as we switch from side to side
everything is gonna be just fine
everyone you love is gonna die...

Yeah. Whether you believe in heaven, or reincarnation, in nothingness or continuation, this is all we have. This, right here, right now. Ride's gonna stop sometime, so until then, we make the best of the ups and downs, the scary descents and the link-by-link ennui of elevation. And we can make the choice to be happy in those around us, knowing that they're in the same place, in cars ahead or cars behind. Maybe we'll walk out with them hand in hand. Maybe we'll never see them again.

It's up to us to do the good in the world that we can, because everyone's just trying to hang on for the next drop.

the alternative's nothingness
might as well give it a try...

What have we got to lose, after all? It's just a ride.

my heart feels dead inside, cold and hard and petrified

While I'm still failing at blogging the geta (I know, I KNOW I know), new fun thing dropped:



Behold, the "Oberon" Unseelie King Crown of Thorns from /Vae Victis\. It's currently at We RP which opened on May 4th. It should be available at the mainstore after WLRP closes.

I figured--save for the wings--I was fairly Unseelie in aspect...I'd try it out. I'm in Fantasy Faire anyway for the hunt. This is it straight out of the box, a metallic copper, and definitely intended for the masc-presenting set. But that's okay, I can fix that.



I meant to resize it there, but got involved in the FF hunt...It was a bit before I did the work it needed. (And, as always, /Vae Victis\ items are moddable so we can play with size, glow, transparency, position...it's a wide, wide world.)

This is it slightly angled, tossed a bit of glow into the mix for that unearthly feeling, and innit pretty?



And this is it flipped front to back, slightly buried in the hair, keeping the glow, and tinted appropriately purkle [[Warning from the Editrix, evil Book of Face link for Raglan Shire, there]]...Oh, hang on, I think I need to start with a fresh copy, 'cos this one needs to go with the outfit!



While we're waiting, since the ferret's looking something up for me, this is the HUD for the crown. Seventeen different options (I show off a few below), and on this one, there's no specific 'color' and 'metal' sections. Depending on a wide variety of factors, this could read as moonsilver to aged bone to steel pulled from the heart of a dead star, and more besides.



Now. Where were we? I had to jaunt off and do a thing, and in the interim found a face chain I hadn't worn in a while and changed the wings. So, figured why not match the crown to them?

And then the BeSpoke concert series started, which is a GREAT way to spend a Sunday--how can you beat good live musicians and at the end, a raffle for free heads?



.......Annnnnnnnnd then Em spent too much time in her own head and wanted to do something incredibly precious and twee and two days have gone by so now Em has given up because THIS IS GOING OUT TODAY DAMN IT...and there you are--a not-at-all-quick collage from the shots taken at BeSpoke, just to show you more of the colors.

Check it out if you like the look--as said, it will run you L$362 at the event, and it's currently at We RP until the end of the event (that's the actual direct-to-booth, or at the least, direct-to-event SLUrl).

I've got a three day headache and it's all in my head

It's the 30th of March. One day before Ostara. And there's been a lot of...well.



Conversations like the one below.

[18:43] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) hugs you
[18:44] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): I was just starting to pack things up for dinner. Though I don't know if I'm going to be in tonight--the pain of head and the head pain and did I mention the head? It's kind of distracting.

Which was followed soon by:

[18:43] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) smiles, tilting up her face for a kiss. Dinner's dragging its feet--or, well, his or her feet, depending on driver. I was going to go check on progress.
[18:46] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) will see how she feels, she may be taking the night off. The head is...bad. I feel like I should tuck a "Bridge out" sign behind one ear.

Yeah. It's been...it's been a day.


All of it, all the mysterious fatigue, the odd tremors, the patches of growing nerve damage...the headache that occasionally tries to kill me for funsies...it doesn't look great.

Though, I should say, anyone new pops up with a diagnosis of somatoform disorder, I'm just going to full-scale bite people.



At SOME POINT, which I'm hoping is today, but may need to be tomorrow--I'm putting out the rabbit monster from Ever Green. Even if it stays out after Ostara, because damn it, I bought it to put out, I AM GOING TO PUT IT OUT.

And...then decide on the rest of the night.

Time for Em to faw down again, maybe.



No, not really.


(And why yes, Noah Finnce's "3 Day Headache" was the song playing...very, very, *very* low as the background for writing this. Why do you ask?"

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year?

Yeah. I did it again.



So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part III: Return of the Back Issues. Or something. I didn't outright fracture anything, nothing in the spine was broken or out of place, no cracks in the skull--just brain sloshy and pain.



Okay, no actual dying. Dying would hurt less--er, I mean...Rephrased, I have a concussion, I'm in a ton of pain, because I fell back and hit nearly full-on (some fun new muscle knots in the left side notwithstanding) to the back and the back of my skull. And while I would adore having the freedom to just get effective painkiller, the US is still reeling from the opiod crisis so everyone's scared to prescribe much beyond a leather belt to bite.

I didn't even injure myself in a thrilling story-type way--I was on my way out of the apartment, I hit the elevator button, then tried to throw my coat on--and felt myself falling backwards. And failed utterly to stop the fall.

I remember swearing, loudly, and hearing someone on the second floor say they heard a thump--next thing I know one of the attendants is looking at me, saying "Call 911!"

Like, don't get me wrong, I like the fact that we live so close to a fire station, I like the men and women who work there--I just don't like looking up at a ring of them, from the floor, for the third gorram time.

So. WILL do the shoes. Will also work up a thing for the latest tattoo release. But my time at the keys for anything--SL, computer, or straightening out the desk--is limited right now. I will get better, but I think the universe is tired of playing at this point. So yes, I will be more careful and yes, I will rest when I need to (which right now is many hours at a time), and I will do my best not to let this happen again. This month.

(Because I'd love to promise "until next year", but void stars, it's been three falls already, and I was still recovering from the first two!)



I'll get there. It's just put even more time between me and recovery than I had before, and I had a lot of time before this trip to the ER!

it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me

I know. I know, okay? The last...if I'm being honest with myself...month has been...difficult.



Well...no. For a variety of reasons, including my brain's not useless, just hobbled, but mainly that if I actually hit my head on the desk, I'd scream and pass out.

Soooo. Part of the absence was, I got far too focused on finding high heels in SL, to compare them to the Daitengu all-but-stilts--(seriously, they pass so far into ridiculous that they circle around again into perversely amusing) and forgot that I didn't actually need to get (or demo) EVERY single fetish-height platform spike on the grid.

That's on me, I fully own that.

And there's--slowly, laboriously, I hate that building is so hard right now--rebuilding the Duchess' Garden in Tannhauser Gate--the new "origin" point to work out from being a set of giant redwood trees LOVE put out last week.

And last, the physical situation in RL...it is getting better, the upper tibial fracture healed, and at this point the dual hamstring injuries are, if not healed, substantially better...but there are still problems.



So yeah...lots going on, and I both need and want to get back to regular entries...or, well, entries at all...but it was becoming an overload condition on its own, the more days went by.

So, I am cutting my losses and will work on covering the stilts this week, and will pick up semi-regular coverage from there.

Including two AOs which I promised to cover...Yeah.



I'll get there. Everything's a process, right? Right.

made your mistakes and make me hurt

yes it's been forever since I've updated and my blog has been broken longer and I GAVE UP finally and went back to the old layout and I'll probably change my mind again and aaaaaaaahhh--

Reviews coming of very many things. No, really.

Stop laughing.

In injury news...



The orthopedist tells me the bone healed clean. Now, I just have to deal with the double hamstring injuries, which...now that we know what's going on...are s l o w l y starting to heal.

(I, of course, am being my usual relaxed, accepting, fully meditatively serene sort...which means I'm not resting as often as I should, pushing to walk more often than I should, and only elevating the legs at night, so...THAT'S going to work, yeah. Go me.)

So--things are going well! Or horribly. Maybe horribly well! Who knows?

I can't fix you

Drumroll please, the Duchess is BAAAA--

--wait. What's that word that means "back but only occasionally and Em still has to limp around once an hour and make whimpery sounds until likely January because no one's going to be doing physical therapy visits over the holidays"?

Oh, English doesn't have a word for that?

Well, damn.

In the meantime, let me present to you the horror.



The two footrests, while I was in residence, at least, never moved. Other footrests did. At one point we had four separate wheelchairs and ten separate footrests in various spots in the room.



A better close-up. Several of us swear these have to be the original curtains, because no one makes that shade anymore.



And one night, when it was exceptionally cold due to the big bay windows behind said gold curtains, I asked for a blanket...and they brought me one in avocado green.



I rest my case.

Off for walkies.

I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I'm meant to be

Hey, kids? Wanna know what's better than trying to human with a headache that never leaves? I'll tell you--trying to human with that headache and a fractured tibia!

It's...something, I guess.

Right now Em-beyond-the-screen's reality consists of:

1. Trying to put weight on the leg;
2. Trying to move and/or walk on the leg;
3. Trying to put weight on the leg AND walk on the leg.

Thrilling stuph, lemme tell you.

The lack of a computer, where all my graphics live, is also starting to make me twitch. Which also makes the leg hurt.

So...yeah. That's where we are. I am so, so tired of the original 1970s everything here, too. You think I'm kidding, but the curtains are Harvest Gold, the striped wooden seats--one in gold pinstriping with teak-stained wood, the other a wine, gold and black wider-striped affair--that chair looks like cherry wood, and who knows, it might not be staining, but actually teak and cherry wood!

And I don't remember the pattern name--it was something like Sunshine Meadow or Meadow Gold--but it's covering the floor, authentic sheet linoleum.

Don't get me wrong--I want to be here. I want to get stronger. I want to do the work. But everything hurts, and walking feels like knives stabbing my feet, and even laying down is a challenge, because at some point, the leg with the fracture will move, or shift, or muscle fibers will pull....just...Argh.

Or maybe auurrooolllgh... One of those.

But onward through the frogs, or something.

who by high ordeal, who by common trial

<i>(Obviously, this is going to be more RL than most blog posts.)</i><br />

<br />

You want some solid, white-knuckle action? We're talking high stress, low coping, chewing fingernails to the elbows insanity?<br />

<br />

Break a bone at the end of a holiday month. Extra points for the month following to be December. A <i>savage</i> amount of points additional if you're also an internet addict and nearly everything you like to <i>do</i> online involves the computer you no longer have access to.<br />

<br />

Challenge rating impossible if all the advent calendars start tomorrow.<br />

<br />

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/8rwm5gt/goddamn-it-intensifies-Danny.gif" alt="goddamn-it-intensifies-Danny" border="0"><br />

<br />

So...<i>obviously</i>...I'm not going to be around in SL until this thing resolves. I'm on official hiatus from Vae Victis until net presence increases. I may have to reschedule a surgery because I'm stuck in physical rehabilitation.<br />

<br />

I am just having <i><b>SO MUCH FUN Y'ALL</b></

I>...<br />

I'll post updates when I can, but "not a happy bitch" seems to be the steady state.<br />

<br />

lock it safe in an urnful of summer

Wanted to push to get at least ONE post out, and whilst doing that, decided to wander an event I hadn't finished yet, and whilst doing THAT, decided to say hello to a dear friend...

Three days ago, things were terrible. Two days ago, things were terrible. Yesterday, things were grindingly awful but for a couple bright spots--talking to you being one of them. And today my system is still reeling from the past three days of leading-up-to, and then actually-having, a crushing migraine, to the point that my entire system fought getting out of bed due to ow. I'm hoping it's going to get better from here?

...and then backspaced ALL of that to say

[15:20] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) says hello as she's wandering a random event.

I mean...I'm not outright lying,exactly, I'm just not...going into everything?



I know. I KNOW. But...it gets tiring answering The Question some days. I'm trying to be accurate while also not dragging everyone's mood down, y'know?

AKA, Em is Trying to Find the Balance. Or maybe balance in general.

"There's no right way to forgive a person who hurt you." Also known as Ladyknighthebrave's take on Mike Flanagan's A Haunting of Hill House. And it's a miniseries that has a lot to say, on a lot of topics, but Ladyknight's take on it, I think, is sound for the material. It's an hour of how we, as individual beings, process trauma, but also...how we, as families, process trauma.

And in the meantime, processing through new realities and new issues and trying to sort everything out. And still only a couple haunts for the year under my belt. Agh.