#personal updates

I kept saying to myself it wouldn’t take a year to get back to posting again, but here it is a year and change after my mom died and I’m just now poking my head back up from my grief shell. Hello, hi. I’ve missed you.

Where have I been? Mostly just here. I spent a lot of time doing a lot of nothing but feeling a lot of things, through which my incredible and always supportive partner J was at my side. We had a kind of crazy rollercoaster of an emotional year, what with planning our wedding while also grieving my mom, and we traveled a lot, laughed a lot, cried a lot and spent a lot of time alone with our dogs.

I spent a lot of time learning to rebuild. My mom had been the crux of all my support systems, even as an adult, and I’m still struggling without her, but I’ve been spending more time and effort on my sister and my extended family and they’ve been giving that back to me.

And then, in May, J and I got married under a 600yr old oak tree on a blustery, beautiful day with all our friends and family watching, and it was perfect.

I mean, just look at how joyful life can be?

We had our first dance together to Maggie Roger’s’ ‘Love You For A Long Time’, we listened to songs and stories and poems and speeches about how much everyone can see how in love we are and we drank probably way too much champagne. Well, I did. It was, in other words, a blast, and I would do it again every year if I could afford it.

So I’m married now, I’m healing, I’m turning 38 this Sunday, and I’m looking forward to starting my new life getting back into what I love doing. I’ve posted a few sneaky updates to my Patreon already earlier this week (iykyk as the kids say) but today is the day for AO3 updates so stay tuned, there is about to be a boatload of those.

I am so sick. I got what I thought was just a cold that turned into bronchitis that's trying its damnedest to move on to something worse. Thank god my doc heard 'fever and wet chest coughs with gross green shit' and had 'Nam flashbacks to my childhood pneumonia problems, because I did not remember any of that at all. He has since sent meds and strict instructions to call him the moment I feel even a little bit worse, bless him.

I'm also detoxing off of venlafaxine at the same time, since it both did and did not work for me, in that it did the job it was meant to, but also did several other side gigs it was very much not meant to be doing. I wanted to be able to take some cold medicine to manage the symptoms of the bronchitis, which you can't when taking venlafaxine, so I went cold turkey (after consulting my doctor, who tentatively agreed but made sure I have transitioning doses available in case it's too difficult).

This is a horrible combination, by the way. Holy crap. The vertigo. The fucking vertigo. I can live with the vague nausea and on and off anxiety - those will fade - but goddamn, the vertigo is wild.

I am typing this whole squinting from under my comforter, while staying as still as possible between violent coughing fits. Every time I cough I lose my position on the astral plane. The cat tries to help by nudging me periodically and screaming for food three hours early and I have to cling to the mattress so I don't fall off somehow, despite being in the dead centre.

Soooo...how's everyone else's start into 2026?

A belated New Year's Day! I had mostly been busy with work over the Christmas-New Year season. And finally on my break to catch up on the artworks that I have been working on.

So a lot of previews coming soon!

OMG! So I hate to bore you all with my continuing health saga instead of posting all the Sims content I have just waiting to be queued, but...2026 has been... something already and we're just into February!

So as you may recall, a couple of weeks ago my entire family was down with the HORRIBLE flu that's been circulating this year. Well, my husband has been working as much overtime as possible to make up for the four days he missed and we were all doing pretty good. At least at first. A good swath of the US had that huge winter storm pass through and while I grew up in a place that gets much colder and you usually don't see pavement between October and April, the state we currently live in doesn't tend to see more than a few inches of snow at a time. So of course my kiddo was out of school for most of last week and kids out of school equals imagination land all over the house 😂

Now I was still behind on getting the house and laundry and everything back in order between getting over the worst flu I've ever had and random Christmas decorations still up because we pretty much all got sick right after NYE. But I got done what I could while my kiddo followed behind me taking everything back out again. I even managed to rally forth and sew all the doll clothing I needed for my doll/ crafting blog I've been trying to get off the ground. Still haven't made the companion YouTube videos I had planned because of the lingering cough. And of course the article itself was up a good two weeks later than I'd planned. Anyway, of course my cough began to get worse again along with increased mucus and coughing fits so bad that my ribs began to hurt with breathing and I couldn't recline pretty much at all. All signs that I possibly had a secondary infection, possibly pneumonia or pleurisy.

** And interesting tid bit about me. I worked in public health for about 20 years. Back in about 2009 I managed to have a positive tuberculin skin test which follow up X-ray indicated I had contracted Tuberculosis, but my immune system had fought it off resulting in my diagnosis of Latent TB. Ordinarily this would be followed by months of a preventative antibiotic regime, but for whatever reason they didn't prescribe that for me and I didn't know enough to ask about it. Now I've never had problems with it, and the chest X-rays I got while still working never indicated any problems. That being said even though it typically takes an immunosuppressive disease to activate latent TB chest colds make me nervous. ***

So by Friday I was concerned enough to finally do the sensible, inevitable thing and schedule a doctor appointment. I have no problems with going to the doctor, I'm just too stubborn to admit I need one -- is it just me? Is it my age? I don't know -- I guess it's just that old "walk it off " mentality. Anyway, enough rambling, I was prescribed a hefty antibiotic, corticosteroid, pain medication and cough suppressant. I of course had a chest X-ray and just to make sure I hadn't actually broken a rib from the violent coughing fits a rib x-ray. Good news is that while extremely sucky, there is nothing too serious, thank God. And I'm already feeling MUCH better. My house, however, is complete trash at the moment so while I hope to get some actual Sims posts up THIS WEEK, it may be a little bit before my queue is filled enough to not run out regularly.

Date night with the husband. A trip to the aquarium/museum and watching Markiplier's Iron Lung!!!

Will update you on movie thoughts afterwards. We've been waiting for Iron Lung for YEARS 😚