#ver update

Life has been...hard. Insane. A fucking Lot. Some of you know my mother is permanently disabled with a slew of health issues and that I'm her primary caregiver. Or I was. Some of you might remember last year, when I was uploading All These Signs, some interrupted updates because there were some Big Scary Health things happening?

A very long story short. Last June, my mother had a massive stroke caused by a faulty heart valve. We caught it fast - like it was maybe a handful of minutes from when symptoms started presenting to the ambulance getting here? And she seemed mostly ok. Considering how big the blockage was, she was doing great - but the valve needed replaced, and her body wasn't strong enough, and we had to wait to see how she recovered. She had a few more smaller strokes over the course of the summer, but overall seemed mostly ok?

Memory problems aren't supposed to be genetic, but a lot of the supposed causes are, and they run in my family. We lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's ten years back, and my uncle passed from a mix of Alzheimer's and dementia about a year and a half ago. Mum was having moments of confusion but was still mostly clear? I want to say around February/March it started getting worse, but at the time she also had a persistent UTI (which affects her clarity as well), so we weren't thinking much of it. They replaced the heart valve at the end of March. She came home the next day, and within five days she had fallen and was back in the hospital. This was all right before Easter.

They said the valve was fine, but she had so much going on that all stemmed from her not taking her medications - and I missed it, because up until this point she hadn't needed reminding/help with that. She broke her good foot in the fall, and initially she was sent to a rehab because she couldn't safely be at our home while her foot healed. And things just...kept happening, all stemming from moments of confusion, until she was finally sent to the hospital to be evaluated. They were trying to see if it was another infection, another stroke, or something else. If this is baseline now.

She was officially diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia maybe two weeks back? Maybe three? I don't even know. Work has been crazy (when is it not, right?), and then all this on top of it. We're in the process of getting the paperwork in for long-term care, because there's no way she can come home and not have full-time care. She's fallen multiple times at the rehab, she's forgetting to put her oxygen on, she's not remembering to eat unless they make her, she won't take her meds unless they make her, she's started biting at her fingers off which...is a whole other what the actual fuck thing. And some times she's fine, just kinda foggy, and then there's times she doesn't even remember having a daughter. She keeps asking for Granma, and it's like in one breath she knows Granma's gone but then that shouldn't mean she can't call her.

And because of all the stuff that goes into the paperwork to get her the care she needs, I'm looking at moving this summer - and mum was a little bit of a hoarder, so I've been sorting through a lifetime of why the hell do we still have this while juggling her and the end of the school year and trying not to get sick myself between the weather/the plague monkeys (I love them all but everyone's been so sick this year) at work and just. (And that was a whole other panic, because I had no idea what was going to happen or if I could keep my dog or a million little stressors trying their best to break me.)

There have been no spoons. There are days I come home and just crash because there's nothing left. Some nights are the best sleep I've had in years because I'm not on tenterhooks waiting for something to happen with her - others I'm barely sleeping because the stress is jacking everything up. There are times I've had to turn my phone off completely because (before she kept losing her phone/forgot how it worked & we took it home) she would call every 10-20m throughout the night and I had work the next morning. My brother's already passed, and our dad passed years back. My aunts have been helping as much as they can, but mum pushed everyone away for so long because she was so scared of this happening - and now we're trying to dig out from her avoidance. And it just...what took years to happen in Granma and my uncle has taken weeks/months with mum. I'm handling it as best I can, but there's a lot of very complicated emotions that I don't have the time or spoons to process just now.

Someday things will settle, I'll let myself breathe again, and a therapist is going to make a fortune off me.

I like to say I'm a stress crafter. Creating has always been my outlet/therapy, but even that has been a struggle. I find myself trying to read - anything, not even fun stuff but the legal stuff I have to read - and I'm rereading the same sentence twenty times over because there's not enough left to process the words. I'm writing in 100-200 word bursts, little lines here and there because I've got nothing left. I'm playing with a lot of string, because stitches are easy and mindless and at least I can still make something pretty when everything else feels so dark.

...that was not a "long story short". I'm sorry. Some of y'all know what's been going on (some of y'all have been keeping me sane - you know who you are, and I love you guys so much 🖤🖤🖤). I feel like I kinda just went radio silent for the most part, though. A big part of it was the spoons. Part of it was not knowing how to process/say any of this - realistically we're looking at end of life, and I haven't been able to say that without breaking down until maybe a week ago. I still can't always.

But I'm still here. Mostly. I'm slowly finding my footing, bracing for the worst, and hoping things stabilize soon. I've always tried to find the silver linings and hold onto the sunshine, and it's been so hard holding on to that lately. I'm still trying.

But I promised y'all some fun and I have had some stuff kicking around?????

So here's some lines from the most recent docs I've been picking at. 😂

The alternate How They Met where Luka grabs Dingo's Ass instead of Marinette's...

He adjusted the ball cap he had shoved on his head before they had left the house (a poor attempt at a disguise) and walked up to her, swinging his hand back as he went.  Once he was beside her, that hand connected firmly with her ass as a Smack! echoed in the aisle, somehow louder than the crappy techno they were playing overhead, and that…was about where things went pear-shaped.

He knew before she shouted – before she stood – that the person in the radioactive puffy coat was not, in fact, his wife.

He knew as soon as he squeezed, his hand closing around an ass that was entirely too boney to be Marinette’s. He wasn’t sure who jumped back first: the stranger or him, but the next thing Luka knew he was leaping back, hands raised in the air (and batteries by his feet) as the stranger jumped and shouted again as their head smacked into the shelf above them, rattling the entire unit and every damn candle in the aisle.

The one where Sheila King is (still) trying to make Lingo happen by convincing Tom Luka's a Bad Boy...

So by the time Tom had deposited the bags in the dumpster and turned around, all he had seen was Luka, the boy he knew was very interested in his baby girl (and who his baby girl was likewise very interested in), staring at him with wide eyes and holding a lit vape pen.

“…Luka?” he asked, his brow furrowing at he stared hard at the pen.  “Since when do you smoke, son?”

And Luka, who was perfectly innocent but had too much of a History with Authority to know this would not end in his favor, did the only sensible thing a Boat Kid like him could do.

He threw the pen to the ground and ran.

The one where Luka is a bard trying to avoid becoming a myth not fall for Death...

He never fears her.

He has no reason to.

Until he does.

She’s only ever given him one reason to, in the end, and it’s the simplest reason of all.  Natural for most, and yet as it claws up his throat he can’t help but think that it’s wrong, not her, never her.

She is beautiful in her fury, and yet…somehow, through all this time, he has forgotten.

Or perhaps he has never let himself see.  Admit the truth that was so plain for everyone else.

For sensible people.

She is beautiful, but she is dangerous.

She is Death.

The unexpected Epilogue for Honeymoon in Paris that was never supposed to happen except Luka...

“And the reservation is under?” the receptionist asked, glancing up at them from her computer screen.

“Couffaine,” Luka answered automatically.  His eyes moved to Marinette, another one of those silly smiles he hadn’t been able to shake all evening quirking his lips as he squeezed her hand.  “Luka and Marinette Couffaine.”

“Luka,” she huffed, rolling her eyes.  “Not yet.”

“The paperwork’s been filed.  It will be true before we get home,” he said.  He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.  “Mme. Couffaine.”

“Ten days, Luka,” she said.  He pressed his smile to her knuckles.

“It’s a formality,” he said, making her snort.

“It’s a legality,” she insisted.  His grin grew. “That’s what I said,” he teased

The one where Marinette's running a 100+ fever and doesn't realize she was stumbling around her flat naked...

“You…you saw my butt?”

…shit.

“Um…” he said, so very eloquently, like the genius of words he was.

“Luka!” she tried to shriek, but it came out more of a gasping wheeze.  “You saw my butt!”

“It’s a very nice butt,” he said, as if that would make any of this better.  “Very…nice.”

“Luka!!!!!”

“I wasn’t about to let you hit the floor, Marinette,” he groaned, reaching up to scrub at his face with his hands.  He paused, remembering where those hands had been just a few short hours ago.  He swallowed thickly as his eyes closed.  “It…wasn’t just your butt.  That I touched.  In full disclosure.”

She had grown very quiet and very still.  He looked up, lowering his hands to frown at her.  She was standing beside him, her eyes wide, and he could practically see the blue screen in her mind.

“…Marinette?” he asked.  Her mouth had dropped open.  “Talk to me, Mari.”

“…t…t…touched????” she gasped, and his eyes widened as he realized his mistake.