#I know people who's family members have died from covid

[crabussy]

TO PREFACE. this post is ONLY about the people who openly boast about this and act like they're better than people who do wear masks. the rest of you, drink some water and I love you okay?

I'm so so tired of seeing people SO PROUD of the fact that they refuse to wear a mask. it is such a small, small inconvenience to you but its so important to you that you prolong the pandemic and cause more suffering and death. when you parade your ignorance around I want you to remember this number:

6,910,810

thats the number of deaths from covid-19. that's the total number of people who have died because of the virus as of August 29 2023. it's repulsive how you don't even stop to think about the elderly, those with autoimmune diseases, the already sick or disabled who have such a high chance of dying if they are exposed to even one person with the virus. My dad is now disabled from long covid. he hasn't been able to ride his bike, his favourite activity in the world, for over half a year. and he's one of the least affected by the virus. My friend (no longer around) with an autoimmune disease could not travel for three years because aeroplanes were such a high risk zone for her because people weren't wearing masks in such close proximity.

please I am begging you. inconvenience yourself. people are dying.

I know the death toll is dwindling and thats fantastic but it's not over yet.

#covid-19 #just ran into a brainrotting blog that made me want to scream #stop being so smug about the deaths you are causing #I know in a lot of areas covid is almost a memory of the past #but holy shit guys it's still around #at LEAST if you go to a place where there will be a high density of people do your part and wear a mask #just . god this is mainly directed at the jackasses who can't seem to give a shit about peoples loved ones #I know people who's family members have died from covid #death #death tw #disease tw #corona virus #I don't know if I'll keep this post up I'm just sick of people who flaunt the fact that they're endangering people

[swearyshera]

So we are at the end of the road on something that has always been about the journey, not the destination.  I’ve taken my time to gather some thoughts.  This blog has meant a lot to many people, not the least of which is me.  I’ve had a hard time these last few years – I think it’s been hard times for everyone, in one way or another.  Personally, I seem to remember discovering this blog not too long before I had a breakdown and handled it very poorly, making bad decisions that cost me a lot of friends, or at least people whom I thought were my friends up until a breaking point.  (Your blog was unrelated to this).  When I came out of hospitalization I had a few things to rely upon – a video therapy group was one, certain family members and, well, as silly as it sounds, hitting up tumblr for my daily dose of Sweary She-Ra to make me laugh. And then in mid-January, 2023, one of the people who was closest to me in my entire life died suddenly of technically unknown cause but considering his health issues, probably a heart-issue. It was sudden and devastating.  We shared She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together because he was kind of curious about it and I was a nostalgia-fan of the ‘80s series.  We both became massive fans of Entrapta.  In fact, my nephew / best friend got me into the fandom in the first place because he had a silly idea for a fanfic about Entrapta wrecking havoc in the Fright Zone just post first-season and had little confidence in his fanfic writing, but decided to pass along said idea to me, an inveterate fic-writer for many fandoms.  I was put through the wringer this year – it’s the first time I’ve been in partial charge of a memorial service.  I am feeling better now than I did at the beginning of this year because I’ve found the strength to keep doing things that he and I liked to do together and time helps.  And again, in all of this, I had a silly little comic where a sparkly purple princess calls people “twattingler,” others make liberal use of the word that originally meant Fornication Under Consent of the King, one character swears all the time but apologizes for it, one character is contractually obligated to use Ned Flanders style cursing and there’s a fourth wall breaker and an incompetent boss with indecipherable accent and Marxist unicorns and all the rest.  No matter what was happening with my emotions I could just… take a little break and look at the funny fancomic.  Sweary She-Ra for me has been like a warm mug of tea on a cold day or a bowl of baked macaroni and cheese with a butter-cracker crust made out of the old 1960-70 something Betty Crocker cookbook.  It’s been Internet comfort food that has been sorely needed at times.  So thank you.  I just want to thank you for this funny little fan project.  I don’t think you have any idea how much it has meant to your audience.  @freedfromthegalactichivemind

And I don't know if the audience has any idea how much it has meant to me!

When I started this, things were pretty shit, weren't they? Here in the UK we'd just come out of the second Covid Lockdown, with the third expected to happen imminently; the weather was miserable, we'd barely seen our friends in months, the world in general just sucked. And I'd love to say that I felt a calling to break through that with some humour, but no... it was nothing like that. This is what happened...

And so it all went from there.

I almost just went for random scenes as I thought of them, rather than starting from the beginning. But I thought "Eh, fuck it, let's see how far I get", and the rest is history.

Even as the storylines got more complex (bear in mind, I started purely with the intention to do the original script with a few swear words peppered in), I always wanted to keep things upbeat. The painful moments are those 'this is the good stuff, hurt me more' moments rather than actually horrifying things - I know there's been a couple of exceptions, but in general it's held true.

But I've always been driven by one thing - the world isn't very funny right now; it's stressful, sometimes downright terrifying. And if I can alleviate that for ten, twenty seconds per day and make that tiny bit of difference to someone, then I consider that a job done. I'm not out here claiming to have the cure for depression, or some kind of plan to save the world, but I (hopefully) can make a few people smile in the midst of all the shit that's happening, even if it's just for a moment.

So much has changed in the last three years, but this blog has been such a central part of my world, it'll be weird when it's over (maybe that's why I don't want to stop there!). But if this coming Friday really is the last chapter in this part of my life, I'll still be happy that it happened. And if you've ever smiled or laughed at the blog, I'm happy that happened as well.

#sweary she-ra origin story

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

So I’m 27 next month and I don’t know what to do. I had been studying at college/university in 2019 but dropped out due to my health, tried to get a job but failed, and then a family member died and the pandemic hit all in 2020, and then obviously there was all the lockdowns and I was forced into signing up for benefits here in the UK and it’s 2024, and I’m still unable to get back into work and I’m still seeing a psychologist and I just don’t know what to do anymore as I feel like my life is slipping past me and I’m not able to do anything about it, I know I’m not stupid and I know I’m capable and have career aspirations but also family aspirations. I’ve never had a boyfriend and while I want to have a good career I also want to get married and have children more so, I love kids and I feel like I’m never going to get either. I mean it’s three years until I’m thirty years old, and if I sign up to go back to university then it’s three or four years before I graduate and then years trying to build a career for myself.

Oh anon, I feel for you. I really do. I've several relatives who are (and were) similarly stuck - some of them were impacted by the pandemic years, and others were impacted by the 2008 global meltdown - so I know how hard you're feeling everything.

A few things to keep in mind first:

Everyone does life at their own pace. You are exactly where you're supposed to be because that's exactly where you're meant to be. You are doing just fine being right where you are. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you'll get to wherever you want to go, even if you take a few detours along the way.

When we judge ourselves by other people, we have a tendencey to compare our worst days to other people's best days because we're our own worst critic. (I blame social media for that - people only share the best things on social media which makes it look like everyone is happy little clams living picture-perfect lives while you're stuck down here in the muck trying to shovel out from two years' of rain.)

I think you'll find that there are more people who feel like you than people who'll say they're living their best life and they wouldn't change a thing.

27 is pretty young, and so is 30 for that matter. If you look at the whole scope of life, what is 'another 3 years' but a drop in the bucket, especially if it will make you happy? You may not have anything to lose if you go back to school now, if that's really what you want to do. But if your heart isn't it, or you'd be doing it because it's what you think you should do, then that may not be the right thing for you. And that's okay!

I don't know a whole lot about the UK in terms of career choices, higher education,a nd job opportunities so I don't know how practical or realistic some of my advice could be. But here goes.

Does it have to be a professional/academic program? Maybe there are trade schools or vocational programs you can look into instead. I think the UK might call it Further Education colleges? (We call it community college here in the US.)

And if you love children, what's stopping you from working with them now? You could become a nursery assistant or a midwife, a nanny or an au pair. You could volunteer with an organization that focuses on children or youth services, or maybe work for one as a receptionist?

One of the things I've learned from my cousins' experiences pulling out of the economic collapse or COVID-stasis is that sometimes the unconventional path is better, luckier, and more successful. So don't think you have to go for a professional degree. There are other options out there. They may be harder to find, but they're there.

I know you can do it, anon. You're already brilliant enough to ask for help, and trust me - that takes a ton of gut.

If anyone has any advice or wants to support our Hopeful Anon, please share in the comments or send in your suggestions! I will use the anon advice tag.

#ask #anon advice #you've got this

[opinated-user]

(reminder to never harass, contact or even bother any of the person i ever show in this blog. including LO herself) what a particular mess of an ask is this. let's go with this on parts. 1. first of all, are we leftist or are alt righters? you can't be both at the same time. 2. always. the left has cared about doxxing since forever. people cared when keffals was doxxed. people cared when other leftists are doxxed. only people who are terminally online go as far for tweets that children made however many years ago, and terminally online people are all over the political spectrum so i do question why make this a particular leftist thing that all leftist are equally responsible for. none of this is to say that any of us is loosing sleep over P, but the facts are what the facts are: LO had the personal info of P and use it at the first sign of a rumour she never even waited to see it was confirmed or not. we still don't know if it was confirmed or not. but we do know that LO was holding onto the personal information of P and could have caused harassment on her irl workplace. if Courtney is saying the true about P having people in LO's server, then LO was holding onto that information before any of this happened, simply because P was a critic of her and she was eagerly waiting any possible excuse to use it... and we're supposed to praise her for her "support"? after all the horrible things she said and lied about Courtney? i don't think so. 3. not to mention, a "poniont (did they mean poignant...?) strain of covid as a carrier brewing in their sugar bombs of a body" is certainly the weirdest attempt at an insult i have heard since this i started this blog. so if this is an ask from LO, congrulations, that was an original. i have a family member who died of covid though, so it's still rude, but at least original. saying that our bodies bodies are sugar bombs is unintentionally adorable, what a cute mental image, thank you for that.

#lily orchard

[bonefall]

Similar to how Storm felt like she was defending an abuser because victims do that, Thunder almost feels like a legitimate reaction to knowing you were abandoned and wanting to somehow make up for it as if it’s your fault even though it isn’t - and then the series is immune to Clear Sky being bad and Thunder’s rose-tinted glasses are just the narrative’s shitty lens. And like you’re right the dissonance between everybody acting like he’s great and his actual frustrating appearances is so strong it feels like it’s building to some kind of “actually he sucked the whole time” realisation and it just?? Isn’t. So like shit dude maybe if Thunder didn’t wanna be abandoned he should’ve simply been a cooler baby, obviously it’s not Clear Sky being awful /j

In my own family, there are two people in the generation above me who were abandoned by their father "I'm going out to get milk" style, and were adopted by a new man when he married their mother.

(also btw shitty biodad loved the taste of licorice alcohol which I think is the nastiest thing any human has ever invented so there really was not a Single Redeemable Thing about him. I'm gonna call him Licorice Biodad)

The older sibling, a boy I'll call... Hamilton, spent his entire life trying to get their biodad to notice him. They all lived in the same town, so there were times where Hamilton would work for him (not properly compensated obviously) or go out of his way to try and visit him. Saddest story I know is this one time the siblings walked across town to visit biodad's apartment, he answered the complex door, said "Ohh so nice to see you! I'll brb" and left them standing there. For hours.

Never came back out lol they had to walk home.

Licorice Biodad only died recently (survived covid somehow and died of old age). Hamilton spent his entire adult life trying to include the man in his life and never reconciled with how awfully he was treated. I never even learned the sad stories from Hamilton; I learned them from his mother and the younger, girl sibling. I'll call her uhhh.... Alexandria

Alexandria by contrast is what you imagine an abandoned child is like. She does not call Licorice Biodad by his name; she calls him 'sperm donor', is ADAMANT her adopted dad is her real, only dad, full of a lot of clear rage about how she was treated.

It probably factors in that every time Hamilton dragged Biodad back into their lives for brief stints of time, it always ended in Alexandria being dogpiled or humiliated in some way.

So, how I engage with adoption narratives is colored a lot by these two members of my family. Clear Sky's writer favoritism is uniquely painful. Thunder reminds me immensely of Hamilton, like it's a story trying to tell me that his destructive impulse was justified.

That the suffering he went through is completely correct because deeeeeep down, Clear Sky, just like Licorice Biodad, was actually a good person who needed the help to show it.

And I just think that's sickening. I think that's a disgusting thing to put in a series for young adults. They don't go far enough by just having Thunder leave his group and fight him at the first battle, because it's immediately undermined by framing Clear Sky as a sad boy worthy of forgiveness, despite his behavior not fundamentally changing.

It undermines my faith that these writers are capable of handling redemption arcs at all, when Clear Sky and Tom are the characters they think are redeemable.

#TW child neglect #Tw child abandonment #tw abuse #Bonefall Reads DOTC

[metatomatoes]

Long-ass personal story/rant under the cut. Feel free to skip, I'm mostly just writing this down to get it out of my system.

So, 2024 did not start out all that great, but it was manageable. And then February hit, everything proceeds to fall apart. Yay.

February 1

My beloved uncle John died of cancer after transitioning to in-home hospice care in early December. This one is rough. I'm very close to him and his family. I was raised by a single mom, and while I was very young my uncle was her go-to when she needed someone to watch me. That, and she wanted me to have an positive relationship with an adult male family member because I couldn't get that kind of social development at home. TL;DR he was kinda my surrogate dad when I was little and we never lost that bond.

The following week was kind of a blur of tears, grieving and prepping for my uncle's wake and funeral. I volunteered to do a reading/reflection at the service. I went to work, although I definitely was not at my best. For example, I accidentally purchased $800 worth of company swag on my personal debit card. Stuff like that.

February 9

My parter and I go to his wake in the afternoon and get home around 10 pm. Sad, difficult, exhausting, but also full of love and support.

Feb 9/10

I'm not sleeping well so I'm up late watching something, when around 1 am I hear water dripping inside a wall where that does not make sense for that sound to be heard. The upstairs unit in the 3-decker condo I live in is currently unoccupied, so I go up there to discover their living room radiator has a massive leak. We turn off the heat and the radiator valves, stopping the outflow of water and get as much of the water on the floor mopped up as possible.

February 10

Wake up to a water-soaked living room ceiling. Apparently the leak went on just long enough that a lot of water got under the floorboards upstairs, despite our best efforts to soak it all up. So, now we have pretty significant water damage that is going to have to be fixed at some point - fingers crossed we just have to strip and repaint as opposed to needing to have the whole thing re-platstered.

I can't think about all that right now though, because this day is also my uncle's funeral. It's a nice service. I read one of my uncles' favorite poems and give a short reflection, which goes well. Reception followed by family gathering. It really was good to see all my extended family, and people I haven't seen since my uncle John got married. (I'm quite famous among my aunt's family from their wedding, where I notably accidentally drank champange and gave a very enthusiastic performance as a "bop bop" girl when the wedding party was recruited to pretend we were a band at the reception. I was 6 at the time, so I do look a bit different now 😂).

Feb 12/13

I wake up in the middle of the night because my partner is burning up with a fever and tossing around like a fish out of water. Yep, he got the Covid - turns out my uncle Eric (who my partner and I spent a lot of time with over the course of the wake and funeral for my uncle John) tested positive when he got home on Sunday. Honestly I have never seen my partner this sick in the 8.5 years we have known each other! Neither of us have contracted Covid before now and this shit is no joke.

I have an oral surgery on Friday so I'm crossing my fingers I don't get sick as well.

February 13

At work, my amazing employee "A" of 3.5 years lets me know her last day is going to be March 1st. She's leaving for personal reasons which are 100% legit and I know it was a hard decision for her to make. Still, I am really going to miss this girl, as will everyone she works with on our team.

And on a somewhat selfish note, this also means a lot more work for me as I fill in for her responsibilities and start the recruiting process. So that's a lot to plan for, but at the time all I felt was just....loss. And pride, because I know it took a lot for A to make this decision and prioritize herself and her family over work. I'm just sad about it. And a tad overwhelmed, but I can manage, right?

February 14

Partner is still very sick, but by the end of the day he's starting to improve. Unfortunately, my wonderful cat Killick passes away in the evening. This was not out of nowhere - he's a senior cat who was diagnosed with hyperthyrodism a few years ago, which he never quite bounced back from despite our and our vet's best efforts. The last few months he's been losing weight, but we actually thought he was doing a bit better because his activity and social time was increasing. However, in the last week he hadn't been very interested in food and was sleeping more than usual, so we scheduled a vet appointment to see what was up, but it was not to be.

I miss my kitty 😭

February 16

Alas, I could not escape the Covid 🤒. I wake up with a high fever, achy all over and sweating. So I cancel my oral surgery and spend the next 2/3 days mostly horizontal. I do have some very creative fever dreams though.

Today

I am mostly recovered from Covid. I've spent the last few days getting my life back together as during all the above events and illness my partner and I ran out of pretty much everything in the house (like groceries and toilet paper) in addition to falling behind on things like house cleaning and groceries. We've also been spending a lot of time focused on our other cat, Mia, who is adjusting to being an only cat now. She's gettting there, and so are we.

I'm still a little behind at work, but catching up as I can. Luckily, my position allows me to set my own schedule and priorities and I have never been more grateful for that kind of flexibility.

Emotionally, I'm a little all over the place. I have broken down in tears over tiny things, like me forgetting an item at the grocery store. I have times where my mood is downright awful and I'm mad at everything. I have had trouble sleeping and maintaining focus, times when I'm hyperproductive and times when I really just want to do nothing but zone the fuck out. I know it's going to take time to find my equilibrium again, and I'm doing my best to give myself the grace to do that.

Anyway, there's no real point to this story other than FUCK this stupid shit show of a month. If you made it this far, thank you for reading, and I hope your month has been better than mine!

#personal #story time #this month has been awful let me tell you about it #messy metatomatoes #tldr #cw death #cw animal death

[feartheoldblog]

ok here goes i guess. full disclaimer ghost is the only band i have a shirt of so uh yeah i think their music is ok. also your post reminded me they have a new ep i havent listened to yet so ive been playing that all day.

the chronology is kind of split up by album so ill go by that

Opus Eponymous (good fucking metal album):

So ghost started out as a concept band of over-the-top tongue-in-cheek anonymous satan worshippers. That has since changed for a couple reasons I'll get into. Anonymity was a big thing for the first few albums, every song was credited as written by a "nameless ghoul" and they all wore masks and the frontman wore corpse paint and i think some facial prosthetics so you couldnt tell who anyone was. Of course some people had guesses (and they turned out to be right lmao). The frontman was called Papa Emeritus and he wore like evil satan antipope clothes and shit. There's also this whole "Clergy" thing which is like the satanic church ghost represents - they're also a band in lore, and their goal is to gain converts by getting fans through the music.

Infestissumam (my favorite album):

Papa Emeritus 1 was an old man and one day he died. I think. Or he retired or something. So to release the new album, we got Papa Emeritus 2, who was Papa 1's younger brother (still like in his 40s or 50s or so). It was still obviously the same guy behind the makeup but who cares its lore baby. I think they actually summoned satan? There's a reading of the first two albums as concepts of a group doing evil magic devil summoning and then a world where the antichrist is actually walking around doing stuff. Anyway I don't remember Papa 2 doing much.

Meliora (their best album but not my favorite. ):

Papa 2 got taken out behind the shed or something i wasnt really into the lore at this point. Being into Ghost and being into the lore is two very different things, you really gotta be paying attention to be in on the lore. Papa Emeritus 3 debuts with this album, which also marks the band's beginning of their shift towards a more poppy sound (the is Ghost metal? debate has been waged for years by the worst metal fans in the world [on both sides] and all i have to say is if you need music to fall into a definition of your preferred genre in order to like it you don't like music, you like putting things in boxes and sounding smart). Papa 3 was the youngest brother, and he was big into the limelight and rockstar image in a way his more serious older brothers were not. This was also a height of their popularity anecdotally (i swear i heard square hammer on the radio once). Papa 3 was a slut, he was absolutely the one to fuck with socks on. Which is funny, cause I had never heard that bit about him fucking with socks on but I do know a guy in real life who fucked with socks on. Crazy.

Prequelle (came out right before covid lmao their weakest album though imo):

Papa 3 was abducted by goons right at the end of their big tour. oh no what happened? They started putting out "Message from the Clergy" videos on their youtube (might still be there) which introduced our boy Cardinal Copia (not a member of the family) who was a mousy little clergyman, and Papa 0 who was like the head of the church (and a few nuns i forget their names). Also in one of those videos all 3 former Papas were killed (they were alive? huh). Prequelle is also where the lawsuit happened which, uh, was a big fucking mess to put it lightly. Band members of the previous three albums were arguing with the frontman about pay (which was an issue cause like i said before, all the songs were credited to an anonymous ghoul), and like limb bizkit says its all about the he said she said bullshit. anyway they had to break the anonymity to go to court, so people learned that the frontman was actually Tobias Forge (formerly of Subvision). This was the prevailing theory by the way not the hugest surprise. I'm not going to get into details of the trial (cause i forget really) but im sure you can find it on the fuckin sweden legal database or whatever. Anyway, the band did kind of break up over this - some of the original longtime members left and Forge continued with the name Ghost and a rotating group of musicians.

Impera (impera is good but when i listened to it i was also having kind of a major depressive episode so that may have affected my opinion):

This is where I largely fell out of the Ghost lore loop. I hear Copia got promoted to Papa 4 which is good for him, nice kid. He's in like his 40s too i think.

They're kinda like the Four Kings cause a new one comes in when the old one dies and if you don't do enough damage there's actually 5 of them. and their music sucks

THE FOUR KINGS REF 😭😭😭

ghost WISH they could have a cultural impact as profound as dark souls 1’s four kings battle and boss theme

thank you for the proper run down i was fighting for my life trying to piece everything together from the shreds i could find (i refuse to watch a 40 minute youtube video sorry i’m stubborn). it literally reminded me of when i first played bb and was like ‘what the fuck happened’, went researching and ended up even more confused.

also you’re so real for your comment on forcing music into really specific categories. why can’t people just enjoy something without arguing over stupid shit like that………… rock? metal? nah, they’re just cringe. embrace it and be free.

question to leave bc i’m a souls bro

who would win in a fight: copia or patches dark soul?????

discuss

#asks #this is all light hearted and affectionate btw #the fucking with socks on haunts me for personal reasons #papa no three please stop #well ig he’s stopped cuz he’s dead #i started watching the message from the clergy vids n they’re so silly i love them

[raincitygirl76]

The irritating thing about this article is that it totally fails to even mention the elephant in the room for elderly people: dementia. It’s not much good being able to potentially keep people alive until they’re 120 years old if for the final 25 years of their life they aren’t compos mentis.

I had a great-aunt who died 3 days before her 107th birthday. Up until age 89, she was remarkably physically and mentally active for someone of her age. At 89 she broke her hip, but remained mentally acute…until she was 92, at which point she started to get forgetful. The next 15 years were a long decline. I’d say the last 10 years of her life (from 97 to the eve of 107) were completely depressing. By 97 she was in full dementia mode, and it only got worse from there.

She kept on living for another decade after that, but it wasn’t much of a life. Most of the time she spent staring into space in her nursing home. She was too physically frail and also too mentally frail to continue living with family as she had before the dementia had set in.

She had lucid days, in which she didn’t actually remember her family, but did realize she had forgotten everything except her childhood and her young adult years. And she found this humiliating and stressful, to know she should recognize people, but not be able to.

The days when she was lost in her own world were in some ways better, from the point of view of her family members, than the days she was somewhat lucid, and angry about the gigantic holes in her memory.

If you live long enough, you will probably develop dementia. And none of the scientists interviewed for that article are addressing mental deterioration as well as physical deterioration.

The last decade of my great-aunt’s life was neither dignified nor happy. She couldn’t read a newspaper, or do a crossword puzzle (she was a crossword fiend up until her early 90s when her memory started to get patchy). I had a conversation with her when she was 102 in which she seemed to know who I was and had quite a lively conversation with me, until she called me by my grandmother’s first name.

I have a family resemblance to my (long deceased) grandmother. My great-aunt thought it was 1938, I’d just gotten engaged to her brother and was planning my wedding. It was an interesting conversation from a family history standpoint, but she wasn’t actually talking to me, her great-niece with whom she’d once had a fairly close relationship. She was talking to her future sister-in-law in 1938.

I had been warned she might mix living visitors up with other people who are long dead, and warned it was best to play along. So I pretended to be my grandmother, but I wasn’t really her. My great-aunt nodded off eventually, seeming content. It was the best visit I’d had with her since cognitive decline had set in. But in her mind, she was a young woman again in 1938, not a lady of 102 bedridden and living in a nursing home.

She went on for 5 more years like that (except getting a little worse each year), and death came as a merciful release. It left me terrified of developing dementia, and determined that if I do (which I probably will if I live long enough), I will use MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) as soon after diagnosis as possible.

Because the thought of my body living on long after my brain has exited the building repels me. I don’t want to keep going under those circumstances. Bear in mind that this great-aunt was merely the longest-lived relative of mine who developed dementia. Several others did as well. It’s a very cruel disease.

My oldest uncle was in the memory care unit of a nursing home in April 2020 when he died after Covid ripped through his nursing home. And less than a year later, his widow was also diagnosed with dementia. She’s still alive, but now also in a memory care unit. So my cousins will have lost both their parents in spirit before their parents’ bodies die.

And these billionaires who want to cheat death, do they really think they will be productively running their business empires when they’re 120? Because chances are they won’t. They’ll be in a very expensive nursing home, staring into space, reliving the glory days of their youth, or having relatively lucid days and realizing there are horrendous gaps in their memory and they don’t know who’s sitting at their bedside. And getting terribly agitated and embarrassed because they think they should remember.

Yes, there are people like Captain Tom who live to be 100 or more and don’t develop dementia, but that isn’t exactly the norm for centenarians.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-services-benefits/medical-assistance-dying.html

[buzzdixonwriter]

The War Came To Me

(I wrote this four years ago to someone I know.  I’m posting it here and now because the situation grew even more dire in those intervening years.  As a courtesy to the original recipient, I’m removing their name and any identifying information, but the message still stands and so do I.)

Why should I believe anything any Republican has to say?  The GOP spits on vets and tells 'em it's mana from heaven. They betray the best interests of their constituents, they do not believe in rule of law except when they can use it as a cudgel against those they dislike, they sold out every value they've ever claimed to possess to prop up this toad as long as it keeps them in power one election, one year, one month, one day, one hour, one second longer.

I remember having a conversation with a Republican several years ago when Trump was peddling his schtick about Obama's birth certificate. This Republican sounded almost gleeful over Trump doing this, making Obama respond to an outrageous racist demand, a demand never made on any other president of the United States.

Boy, do I remember that conversation...

And the poison that Trump spewed into the American political system then, the GOP supported it. Oh, the party used all the mealy-mouthed legalisms -- "Well, I don't know, could be interesting to find out" -- but that was a God damned* racist dog whistle and the GOP knew it and the GOP let Trump blow it as hard as he could.

The GOP let Trump climb on the stage in 2008 as a faux candidate so he could promote The Apprentice; okay, fine, maybe they thought he’d at least going to make a real attempt at securing the nomination.

Nope, just hype.

But then the GOP let him on the stage again knowing he was bogus, because he would stir up the white evangelical base the GOP. 

I know these white evangelicals, I grew up among them, I understand their thinking, and while all of them may not be hateful bigots, I'm hard pressed to think of one that isn't a white supremacist.

The Nixon and the GOP made their deal with the devil by catering to that crowd, a complete rejection of everything the Republican party used to stand for.

Then the GOP let Trump on the stage a third time, and this time with alt-right money and white evangelical churches openly supporting him and the Russians dropping their turds, he squeaked by a narrow electoral college win, losing the popular vote by the biggest margin of any candidate who won the presidency.

All this might have been endurable if the GOP put a leash on him and kept him from filling the cabinet with corrupt cronies who systematically looted the country.

But they didn't.

Behavior that would see any Democrat impeached or indicted, they turned a blind eye to. We can literally count the number of Republicans who stood by their principles on the fingers of one hand.

I have skin and bone and blood in the game. Soon-ok never used to get hassled by racists...until Trumo. I have Latino and African-American family members who face an increase in white hostility, gay and transgender friends and acquaintances more anxious about their personal safety than three years ago.

My mother-in-law died from covid early in the pandemic.  For that, I don't blame Trump directly, because even the best efforts to keep a disease out will eventually fail, and once a disease gets inside a community, some people will catch it and among them some die.

But not 63,000 in under 4 weeks, which is when Soon-ok’s mother died isolated in a hospital. She might have caught covid anyway even under the best testing and isolating conditions ala South Korea, but there wouldn’t been another 63,000 deaths in a month’s time (400,000 for the duration of Trump’s presidency).  

That's a screw up of several orders of magnitude.

She died alone and frightened and gasping for air.

I'm not forgetting that.

Ever.

So kindly stop telling me to back away from it.  That's not going to happen. The war came to my doorstep; I didn't want it but here it is.

  © Buzz Dixon

  *  God damned here used in its strictest theological context.

#politics #Trump #January 6 #insurrection #sedition #covid

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep 40 Pt 1: Kaiba Has Arrived and He’s Pissed

Woof I was gone a HOT MINUTE. Overall it was a lot of long covid fatigue problems, a lot of “wow I wrote this thing and it makes no sense because words don’t work right in my brain fog brain.” So I looked at my bro who also has long covid thinking “well maybe he’s well enough to write something” and he was like “I just put dry ramen in cold water and then set it on the stove I think I’m losing my mind.” so ehhhh not much I could really do about it other than wait it out.

So thanks for your patience, I always appreciate how low key and casual this blog is compared to literally anywhere else I post on the internet.

Last we left off, Seto had some time reflecting over a haunted eyeball, and came to the decision that he wants to kick Bakura’s ass properly and in person. So, Kaiba took a red eye flight in his Wifejet straight towards Egypt.

So he lands this thing directly in front of a museum. Not just any museum, too, THE museum from like S3 where Ishizu spooked Marik in a vault and he went “ughhh! Sis you’re so rude!!!” and then Marik leapt through one of those massive windows and into an itty bitty motorcycle side car. Seems like just yesterday that Ishizu was seething at him from that broken stained glass window while Odion slowly vroom vroomed that ridiculous Indiana Jones motorcycle into the sunset.

Bro brings up “hey, do you think they fixed that window” and I agreed that she probably just duct taped some plastic bags on it like a busted Sedan. Because if this family has like zero experience in anything, it’s any invention that lets in sunlight.

(read more under the cut)

Seriously, I thought they were dead because Bakura could so easily sneak into the vault to end the world. Figured “Wow I can’t believe the last remaining members of the Pharaoh cult freakin died offscreen while protecting their King. What a poetic way for Marik to go.” and nah, man, all three of them immediately ditched their Pharaoh the moment Yami turned around, lmaooo.

I freaking love how bad these assholes are at their one job.

And yes in the actual line of the show Seto was like “who are you?” and he very quickly played it off like a joke but we know better. The BRAIN DAMAGE on this child. Who, as you can guess is here because he want’s more Brain Damage, yes please.

So he gets right to the point, holding the Worst Orb waaaaay too close to his face.

Again, my postcovid senses are just screaming at this nasty ass germ ridden eyeball. Also I had Odion as the same font as Roland, which was an error I made before Roland became one of the most important characters on Yugioh (to me). So no, Roland is not here, although I wish he was. I just don’t have a font for Odion and I’m too tired to make one at this point.

God bless the storyboarder, that 👀 on Marik is sending me.

And so...I don’t exactly know what Ishizu’s plan is to somehow get Seto to join his friends in the Egypt hallucination. Or how Ishizu knows that things went South in the crypt when they thought he’d be fine. But, I look forward to Seto’s reaction to being in his distant past and treating that incredible display of magic with a single wet fart.

Hard to tell because Mana blends into the rock, but at some point she and the genie decided to play a game where she treats him like a trampoline and the rest of them have decided to just watch from afar. I mean I guess what else would you do at that point? Like nothing right? Like the only game they have at this point is Mancala or shoving your soul into a stone tablet and playing cards with it.

But if anything, the weird tableau gives Yami and the crew time to catch up.

(has too much long covid to check if I made basketball joke before, does not care, because it still is crazy to me that if Yugi had just played basketball none of this would have happened.)

Using her powers, Ishizu manages to spot Pharaoh talking to himself by the Nile, and so Shimon and the rest of the palace can breathe a sigh of relief.

So, Shada gathers an army of like 12 people (which I’m sure the animators mandated because of the crazy amount of crowd scenes in this season) so they can retrieve the pharaoh, brush the remnants of the Nile off of his hat, and then drive him over to Kul Elna to take back the puzzle from the rude town wizard.

Wouldn’t be Pharaoh unless he kicked his friends out of dangers way, even at the threat of losing the entire universe. off they go, on horseback even.

Part 2 you’d probably expect that we find out what Yugi and Co even decided to after they were stranded in the desert by their best friend. But we don’t. Instead, We’re gonna go to Kul Elna, and Yugi will just uh...take a nap I guess.

Anyway, I’m just gonna post this now, bro read through it, both of were like “yeah that’s a post.” At one point he had something to add, and I completely forgot what it was. I think it’s good enough! Hope you enjoyed the first post I made in like what feels like is 2 months.

As always, here’s the link to read these in chrono order

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And I’ll see you soon for part 2!

#Yugioh #yu gi oh #YGO #S5 #Ep40 #Yugi Muto #Yami muto #Pharaoh #Seto Kaiba #Joey Wheeler #Tea Gardner #Ishizu Ishtar #Marik Ishtar #Mana #A horse was also there #odion

[defira85]

death tw

I know that, working in health care - particularly a field like cardiac with higher risk of incidences - means I’m going to interact with death a lot more than the average person, I’m used to it. I’ve been in this field for over 10 years now

but i can say with absolute certainty that the last 3-6 months? the levels of death I am seeing are absolutely unprecedented. I used to get maybe 1 phone call a month from patient families with the bad news

right now I’m getting multiple a week. Sometimes I’m getting multiple a day

Covid is killing people. It’s killing people in huge numbers and nobody will talk about it because they didn’t die WITH Covid. They had the sniffles 6 months ago and a stroke last week. They had a cough last year and then their cancer relapsed aggressively. They were sick for two weeks with flu like symptoms awhile back and now they’ve died of organ failure

and it’s fucking hard to process your own personal grief with a sudden death, obsessing about whether it was another statistic, whether I should have done more to make my family understand the risks, the threat of death hanging over all of us from this fucking spectre consuming the world, when every day I have emotional patients and family members calling me to talk about their grief and I have to put on my faux counsellor hat and help them through their own pain

and the death doesn’t stop. I feel like I’m drowning in it

and nobody gets it. nobody wears masks. nobody even wore fucking masks to her funeral, and there where multiple confirmations of covid positive people in the crowd afterwards. People who sobbed openly and heavily as they insisted on kissing Tom on the face, breathing on him as he tried to stand stoically and let them have their grief for a moment while he shouldered it all 

it’s been weeks and neither of us show signs of it, thank god. I’m still struggling to get over the first one. I can’t walk some days. Tom bought me crutches for the bad days, and it feels like sometimes they outnumber the good days

I’m drowning in death and I’m so exhausted and I just got another call and I don’t know how to keep doing this without a life ring

#defira rambles

[superdillin]

CW hospital-related shit, PTSD-related venting below the tag I just need a place to scream

I feel like I cannot express to anyone how bad my PTSD is from this job the last few years. I am trying SO fucking hard to hold it together and I do, mind you. I hold so much together. I'm even holding together other staff members with PTSD, ICU doctors who routinely flashback and freeze during conversations and I have to improvise, I am leading the best team in the entire hospital and I'm doing it with no support from up top. Meanwhile there are people calling me and recording me trying to get me to admit covid was a hoax, people threatening my life and telling me they want horrible things to happen to me.

a few weeks ago a guy saw me on the street and recognized me and shouted "fuck you cunt" in the angriest voice I've ever heard come out of a human being. Because he knew someone who died from covid, and I wouldn't lie to him and tell him that it was a big conspiracy. Like knowing that there are people out there that hate me that much sits in my head all day, it is constantly rotating in there. When I have to ask someone to put on PPE, I brace myself for them to spit on me. When I hear sirens I literally am not where I am anymore, I'm in the middle of an empty street in 2020.

I defend patients but sometimes I have to defend them from their own family members rather than the doctors, and that has ruined my brain. How can people hate other humans this much.

Anyway, a patient shoved me against the wall this morning and I have to keep working, because this hospital won't hire anyone else who can do this job, because no one else WANTS this job, because what it pays is not worth being abused everyday.

I used to love healthcare. I used to shake off the worst days because I was helping people and part of something bigger and now I'm so broken.

#personal #rant

[billdecker]

I wrote about this a couple of days ago but I deleted it. It’s really personal. I’ve had two close members of my family die very close to members of the royal family. So this is about death, respect, and dignity, the difference between us and them, and all of this with the queen has brought up a lot of stuff for me and I have nowhere else to vent.

In June 1997, my Grandad died. He’d just retired and was on his first retirement holiday with my Nan. On the final day, he had a massive stroke. Two days later, he died. He wasn’t ill at all. He was a fit man. It came as a massive shock to us all and we all felt so lost because my Nan was alone. 

My two single aunties landed in the country just after he died. The govt of the country looked after my family incredibly well and with all the sensitivity that was needed. They gave my nan and aunts lots of support. Everything to do with my Grandad’s death on their side was handled impeccably. 

Then came his repatriation. 

Our govt wanted my Grandad to be cremated in the country because there was lots of red tape with bringing him home. My nan stood firm. We’re a huge family and the funeral needed to be at home. Because of superstition, my grandad had to be put on a commercial flight during the dark so that nobody would see. He was transported in a tin box, hidden in the plane. Nobody could know he was there except the people who would meet him. He was taken off the plane in the dark, again so he wouldn’t be seen. When he came home, my mum couldn’t say goodbye to her dad on advice of the undertaker because the air pressure had damaged him so badly. It further broke our hearts. It felt like he’d been treated as a piece of meat rather than a loved person. All of this took over two weeks to happen because of all sorts of stuff this govt’s end, and then we had to go through lots more stuff to do with the coroner’s court.  

Fast forward a couple of months and Princess Di died and she is bought home within a couple of days. Because she was the mother to an heir to the throne, she was given all these bells and whistles and dignity. She was not hidden in a plane in a tin box. I was 13 at the time and it infuriated my how just by design of birth and marriage someone was treated with a dignity and respect that my family were not afforded. 

I went back to school and a few weeks later a friend had a letter from William and Harry to thank her for writing to send her condolences. Over the summer, a friend of mine had lost her dad. She asked this other friend of ours where he condolenses were to her. The monarchist friend basically said that our friend wasn’t royalty so it didn’t matter. I don’t come from a monarchist family, but it cemented in me my distaste for them. 

Fast forward 25 years and 3 weeks ago my father-in-law died. We thought it was a peaceful death after he had developed pneumonia after having covid. We assumed that everything would be sorted as soon as it possibly could. His body has only just been released because the coroner has been having trouble getting responses from doctors with help. So an inquest has now got to happen. My husband is not only devastated in grief, but now he’s got on top of that the stress of not know when his father will be cremated for him to be returned to Ireland. But then there’s the Queen. From ten days of her death, she will have her funeral. Again, she is being treated with respect and so many other people are not in their death. 

And then there are people saying they feel like they’ve lost a member of their family. I remember people wailing when Diana died and thinking they surely must have no idea what it’s like to lose a loved one because how does it compare? How does that compare to me losing my beloved grandad? And now I’m seeing it all again with people sobbing about the queen and here is my husband who has actually lost his dad. 

I know this is really personal and I wish this place had filters like old LJ lol. I feel thankful that I have a dash full of people who feel the same way as I do about monarchy. I don’t know how I’d cope if I didn’t. The stuff you’ve been reblogging has really brought a smile to my face during this horrible time for us. 

#sorry for the length of this #chat about death and that

[aksannyi]

tw: death of a family member

ok so my mom texted me today, i'm in my 7th period block, students are working, i check my phone and the message is basically that my grandfather is dying. (my last living grandparent, not that it's super relevant but maybe it is? idk?) he's going into hospice, they're gonna make him comfortable. no idea how long.

my immediate thought is, shit, i gotta fly up there, can i afford it, etc. these are the thoughts i had at 1pm when my students were all doing their thing, i was also trying to keep them working and not show them anything was amiss bc it isn't their business unless i share it and also if any one of them gave me even a shred of sympathy i would have lost it and i don't want to do that, i will cry on my own tyvm lol

anyway. i look at flights, reasonable for flight + car. reasonable-ish. and i texted the ...w/e the hell he is bc someone would have to stay with the dog since he works 24h shifts

had an appointment today, did some errands. whatever. then i'm sitting here at home, listening to some music, just sitting there and thinking and thinking and thinking:

i don't want to go.

and it sounds selfish, and it feels selfish, and it feels shitty.

and anyway there's history here. so my first grandparent to go was my mom's mom in 1993. shittiest saturday morning ever. my 2nd grandmother died in 2017, right after hurricane irma, and my dad flew me up to say goodbye. i was at her deathbed with family members, it was hard, also my family was being racist (which is totally irrelevant but it still pisses me off how they got mad at me cussing but it's cool for them to just fucking say the n-word) (assholes)

then last summer, 2022, my dad texted me that my grandfather (his dad, obvs) was dying and he had like 24hrs. not enough time for me to have gotten up there to see him, so dad told me to call and then put me on speaker phone and i said my goodbyes to him that way. i'm crying thinking of it now, hardest fucking phone call i ever made.

and then i got fucking covid so i couldn't even go to the funeral, and my mom. this person. she makes a guilt-trip post on fb because both of my brothers could make it and i couldn't, and she's convinced she will never see all 3 of us together again (and she never ever lets us forget it) because two of us live at literal opposite ends of the country - PNW and florida, and the one who lives up there is in the northeastern part of the country so it's like almost as far away as you can possibly triangulate 3 people in the continental US. and it was like wow mom fuck you, like i wouldn't have come up if i didn't have LITERAL FUCKING COVID, no i was not going to drive 1200 miles or infect an entire fucking airport, i'm not an asshole. and also i just felt like pure crap, tbh. like physically.

anyway.

i'm struggling. i know that he wants to see me. he called me, when i sent the blanket (which some of you might remember, (this post: https://www.tumblr.com/aksannyi/722322909005299712/aksannyi-my-grandma-passed-in-1993-october-to?source=share) and he said how much he misses me and wants to see me because he knew then that his time was running short. it's very hard for me to get up there, and i generally just don't like it up there due to a number of factors (completely unrelated to him, but definitely related to other family members, like my mom and a psychotic aunt and several shitty uncles) and just the damn drama of everything that goes on up there that i moved away from for a damn reason.

and i'm like. i should go. i know objectively i should go. i should go because it's the least i could do for him, the one thing i can actually do that would make him happy. like fuck my mom, fuck my brothers, fuck my aunts/uncles and the entire goddamn stupid small town i'm from, just to see him. but the problem is that i wouldn't just be seeing him, and i don't want to Deal With Them. all of them. collectively.

(and also i don't wanna see him like that... when i went to see grandma, she had been on the decline for years. she wasn't fully coherent, didn't always recognize me. every time i went up there while she was still alive i assumed it'd be the last time i'd see her)

(my dad's dad, on the other hand, knew me right up to the end. he'd be absolutely thrilled to see me. every time. but he was also in his upper 90s and so i also had made peace with the fact that he wasn't gonna be around that much longer)

and like it isn't like i didn't know this was coming, like i'm not stupid, obviously. he's had a lot of health issues, mom would text us about his doctors diagnoses and shit so we knew it was coming. he's 86 now. it was inevitable. and that's like. ok. i have made peace with that. but i'm struggling now with this incredible guilt because i don't want to go.

i can afford it. it'll be tight but i can manage it. i can do a whirlwind weekend trip. i'll be tired as shit for work next week but whatever, wouldn't be the first time. but i just. i don't want to. and that's what's fucking me up, it's that i don't want to and i feel like shit about it. because i know i should. and do i suck all that shit up and just Deal With It dot com...??? i do, don't i. i need to. fuck me, this sucks ass.

well if you read all of this and you have any advice or anything i guess feel free, i just needed to kinda get this out and deal with it. i know either way i'll be fine, but like do i really wanna deal with my mother fucking guilt tripping me for the rest of her life (and probably mine bc she'll fucking haunt me when she goes istg) ugh. ugh ugh ugh ugh uGH. ugh.

ok fine whatever time to look at flights (it is too far to drive unless i take time off work and ngl i will need my sick days, for like actual sick days.)

#death tw #tw death #death #i hope this tagged enough for people to avoid triggers but if it didn't please send me a msg and i'll add whatever tags

[wormsin]

apparently you don't have to wear black to a funeral.

it's been maybe 16 years since I've been to one, and I wasn't wearing menswear back then. my grandpa died recently (it's fine, we didn't have a relationship) and the group chat of Cool Family Members was wondering what to wear to an august MN, 90+ degree afternoon memorial. (pasties? stillsuit?)

turns out that you can wear any neutrals—white, grey, brown, beige, navy. but shorts are very much out, even though it might be heat bulb temperatures. I haven't worn dresses in a few years now. this is the first time I'll see my uncles (and other family I don't really care about) since I came out to them as trans, before any medical transitioning, and I definitely feel like wearing a comfortable summer dress will set back my "nephew" agenda.

I do have a pair of black slacks that are light and very roomy, but almost all of my dress shirts are 1) gay ass patterns in silk or 2) not breathable. so I'll be searching for linen tomorrow at the thrift store. the group chat has been talking about scandalizing people with their sartorial tastes and talking shit about grandpa and his widow's obituary, so it's going to be a fun time.

my mom probably won't be able to make it though. she has COVID for the first time, and will be out of isolation and in the "avoid being around people who are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 and wear a mask" zone. high risk being: anyone over 65, anyone who was a smoker, me, etc. so a lot of the people she wants to see. and would definitely mask for, but...

she's very good about COVID stuff, and we both recognize that our desire for her to be there is skewing our judgement. it's easy to think "well maybe if" when there's almost certainly people attending the memorial who would pose higher risks, who won't test beforehand despite this summer surge, won't mask.

but it's the right thing to not go.

so I'll try to call her in to the (not memorial) hangout and help her feel involved. none of the kids really care about the memorial but are looking forward to being together again. I haven't seen my uncles in maybe 6 or 7 years. they have young children and maybe I could have been more proactive about traveling to visit pre-pandemic, and being in touch. but I guess a part of me wonders if they haven't been in touch with me because they don't know how to refer to me.

#personal #fashion #covid

[amethystina]

Who Holds the Devil was a significant part of my 2022. Surely less than yours, but still very important. Its now a year I have start reading it and it's the first time I follow a fic for this long. It's quite a cathartic experience. THAT SAID, happy 2023. May something bring you all the excitement that you offer me chapter by chapter.

Happy 2023 to you too!

It's honestly a little strange to think that my writing can become such an important part of someone else's life, but I'm also thrilled that I can give you all something to enjoy and look forward to. I know it sounds cheesy, but I truly love making other people happy. Even if this specific fanfic is... well, it's a slow and incredibly long one, isn't it? xD

I admit it felt like I hadn't written much this year since Who Holds the Devil still is nowhere near finished, but when I sat down to count it actually ended up being around 180 000 words in total (if you include Yo Han's POV). Which I think most people can agree is a lot. I guess it's easy to forget just how much I've accomplished when I only see how much is still ahead of me.

Anyway! Thank you so, so much for sticking with it for so long. I can't even imagine what it's like having to wait for each chapter the way you all do, especially with my uneven uploading schedule. You're all so patient and lovely and I'm truly blown away by the kindness and support you've all shown me. Who Holds the Devil is, without a doubt, the fic I've received the most encouragement and engagement on — this fandom truly is amazingly generous. And I'm incredibly humbled, especially considering that the fic isn't even finished yet and is, well, only getting longer and longer (though I know exactly where I'm going).

As I've mentioned before, my biggest fear with this fic is that people will tire of it before it's finished. I have a lot planned — Yo Han and Ga On finally getting together isn't even the end — and it's... daunting. And kind of scary. It's so long and so complex and while I love it with every fibre of my being, I have this irrational fear of it becoming dreadfully boring to everyone but me. I know that isn't likely to happen, but our brains rarely listen to reason.

Either way, I'm hoping to write more next year, though I in no way blame myself for having to cut down on the pace this year. More than one close family member has died, long covid is still going strong, I've had issues with my hands, and, this morning — as a final fuck you from 2022, I guess — I fell down the stairs x'D Only three to fours steps, thankfully, and I will without doubt recover, but I'm also bruised, in pain, and very much done with 2022 now.

Above all else, I want to make sure to be more deliberate with what I spend my time on this coming year. I've got so many projects and so many things I want to do and I can't wait to make them a reality! :D The question is really how I'm supposed to have time for them all, but I guess that's a problem for future me.

Okay, this response became a little longer than planned. I guess I'm a little chatty after spending so much time away from the internet or something x'D

SO. Thank you again and I wish you a wonderful 2023, too. Take care, darling <3

Happy New Year, everyone!

#Amethystina Replies #little-arcadia #I really didn't plan for Who Holds the Devil to become THIS long #And now we'll all just have to work our way through it together I guess #The amazing part is that I'm still not tired of it #Like #I don't write on it as actively as I would like #(which is the part I'm hoping to fix during 2023) #But I'm also nowhere near bored with it or have lost steam in any way #Let's see how long I can keep going I guess? #Hopefully until the very end #Whenever that comes