dear diary
Aug. 14th, 2020 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitSome things have happened lately:
1) I injured my shoulder at work yesterday. Really I would say I re-injured it, since it's been bothering me for, oh, a year and a half now. The initial injury was work-related too: I was vacuuming at work and something just went wrong in my shoulder (rotator cuff, probably) and it's never fully healed. I didn't report it because I was embarrassed by the triviality, and more importantly terrified of my then-manager, whom I tried to avoid as much as possible. Until now haven't brought my shoulder problems up with my doctor for various reasons, including but not limited to $$$ and whether surgery, if surgery were recommended, would actually do any good, and in any case wanting to save up my $$$ and time off for the surgery I actually want.
But yesterday it caught up with me. I currently am the curbside pickup department at work, the other person having quit a couple of months back. So I do everything from admin to loading groceries into people's cars. And yesterday, having loaded groceries into somebody's hatchback SUV, I reached up (and up and up) to close the hatch. I felt the strain, but reached up just a little more, and then oh noes, much sharp pain in left shoulder, followed by aching and weakness in my shoulder and down my upper arm. All of which has happened before, but this time I had a definite work-related trigger and a non-horrible manager, so I reported it and went to urgent care. Diagnosed with shoulder impingement (which seems to be Medical for rotator cuff injury), given an ice pack and a sling for support, referred to physical therapy, and placed on work restrictions that are not going to be easy to actually follow: no lifting above the waist and limiting my use of my left arm for most of the next month. The timing is very bad, because my only other help (1 person, 1 day a week) has just gone on vacation for the next two weeks, and since HR has been taking their sweet time about approving a hire, it was decided that I would just handle it all myself, limiting the number of pickups if necessary, until we managed to hire someone. Well, now I can't move boxes full of groceries, so either I get some help or we don't do curbside pickup. (And I don't know what I'll do for work--the plan had already been to move me more to the admin side, since I'm good at it and we need someone to coordinate, but we're not ready.)
Bad, bad timing.
2) After my visit to Urgent Care* yesterday, I had just gotten home and lain down with an ice pack on my shoulder when the UC clinic called me. I was informed that they'd just discovered that my account from my last visit (in late 2018, with bronchitis) was in collections for nonpayment and they recommended that I call the collections agency. Now, my insurance should have paid for this. I never had a clue that they hadn't paid for it. I never got any kind of bill or notice, and I am mightily wrathful. I need to call the collections agency and call my insurance company and I really, really don't wanna. I should do it today, but I am putting it off until next week on the grounds that I really, really don't wanna, and also I am tired and my shoulder hurts and I just. don't. wanna.
*I'm not sure if Urgent Care is a thing outside the US. It's developed here over the last 20 years or so? Basically, Urgent Care clinics handle cases where you need immediate treatment that can't wait for a regular doctor's appointment, but that aren't life-threatening emergencies. Got an earache or a shoulder injury? Go to Urgent Care. Having a heart attack? Go to the nearest Emergency Room (and hope they take your insurance). Urgent Care in itself is a pretty good system, really, but it's tied in to the increasing difficulty of seeing your own doctor if you're lucky enough to have one (despite what advocates of the US system like to claim, long wait times to see a doctor are normal here too) and the exorbitant cost of emergency treatment, which can run into tens of thousands of dollars for a single visit.
3) If the electricity goes off in my apartment complex, even for a second, all the main fire alarms start to sound. (Not the ones in people's apartments, but the ones outside.) It's been hot lately, with people running their AC and using a lot of electricity, so this has happened several times. Last night, it started at 3:30 in the morning and continued until almost 6:00. I'm very glad today is one of my days off.
4) Much less important than 1) and 2), but for some reason irritating me much more: after listening to the latest Rusty Quill Gaming, I commented on Patreon that I hoped Hamid and Oscar would get together. Because "Is that the biggest one you've ever seen, Oscar?" is definitely flirting, damn it. And I want Oscar to be happy for a little while before his inevitable awful death.
Naturally, I got a Reply Guy. I should have expected it, I suppose. Reply Guy (I don't 100% know they're a guy, but their username was male-sounding and they certainly behaved like a typical Reply Guy) informed me that Hamid is canonically straight, because Bryn has said so several times.
If Patron allowed replies to replies, my response might have gone like this:
1) Who asked you, asshole?
2) I said I hoped it would happen, not that I thought it would.
3) I have listened to every single episode of RQG and in fact I'm currently re-listening from the beginning. I am not ignorant of the canon.
4) Bryn has said Hamid is straight (though he hasn't said it lately, I don't think), but Hamid never has. And word-of-god is always questionable canon, to me.
5) Anyway, I don't care. I can reimagine a presumed-straight character as queer if I want to. No straights are harmed in the making of this headcanon.
6) Who asked you, asshole?
Perhaps it's just as well that Patreon doesn't allow replies to replies. Annoying, though. I wish I could delete Reply Guy, but I can't do that either.
I keep having unpleasant experiences with the Rusty Quill (both RQG and Magnus) fandom in the wild (by which I mean, anywhere outside of the folks I read on DreamWidth--you're all awesome!). I've seen lightly disguised homophobia on the Discord, where overt homophobia gets modded away but "I don't believe they're gay and you can't make me" seems to be allowed under the "all headcanons are valid" umbrella. And now on Patreon, which is a place I have liked to comment because it's quieter and I feel, perhaps wrongly, that my comments (only glee, I keep my complaints for here) are more likely to be noticed by the RQ folks. *sigh*
Also, despite my annoyance at Reply Guy, a part of me keeps wondering whether I made an ass of myself. Did I come across as one of those fans? My comments on Patreon have tended to be shippy lately, because there's so much of it in RQG all of a sudden and it's so much fun. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the awesomeness of how they are travelling in an airship over Siberia to save the world and possibly kill a dragon! But while airships and cold climates are dear to my heart, male/male romance/flings/sex are even dearer, and I do get excited about it. And then embarrassed to be so excited. And then furious about being embarrassed, because that feeling absolutely comes from internalized gatekeeping about being the right kind of fan, which is not unrelated to cishet normative male definitions and policing of what interests and reactions are acceptable. Don't value the emotional development more than the adventure. Don't be too interested in romance. Don't be too "girly."
I think I mostly put up a good fight against the internalized gatekeeping, but it doesn't help when someone comes along and reinforces it from the outside.
1) I injured my shoulder at work yesterday. Really I would say I re-injured it, since it's been bothering me for, oh, a year and a half now. The initial injury was work-related too: I was vacuuming at work and something just went wrong in my shoulder (rotator cuff, probably) and it's never fully healed. I didn't report it because I was embarrassed by the triviality, and more importantly terrified of my then-manager, whom I tried to avoid as much as possible. Until now haven't brought my shoulder problems up with my doctor for various reasons, including but not limited to $$$ and whether surgery, if surgery were recommended, would actually do any good, and in any case wanting to save up my $$$ and time off for the surgery I actually want.
But yesterday it caught up with me. I currently am the curbside pickup department at work, the other person having quit a couple of months back. So I do everything from admin to loading groceries into people's cars. And yesterday, having loaded groceries into somebody's hatchback SUV, I reached up (and up and up) to close the hatch. I felt the strain, but reached up just a little more, and then oh noes, much sharp pain in left shoulder, followed by aching and weakness in my shoulder and down my upper arm. All of which has happened before, but this time I had a definite work-related trigger and a non-horrible manager, so I reported it and went to urgent care. Diagnosed with shoulder impingement (which seems to be Medical for rotator cuff injury), given an ice pack and a sling for support, referred to physical therapy, and placed on work restrictions that are not going to be easy to actually follow: no lifting above the waist and limiting my use of my left arm for most of the next month. The timing is very bad, because my only other help (1 person, 1 day a week) has just gone on vacation for the next two weeks, and since HR has been taking their sweet time about approving a hire, it was decided that I would just handle it all myself, limiting the number of pickups if necessary, until we managed to hire someone. Well, now I can't move boxes full of groceries, so either I get some help or we don't do curbside pickup. (And I don't know what I'll do for work--the plan had already been to move me more to the admin side, since I'm good at it and we need someone to coordinate, but we're not ready.)
Bad, bad timing.
2) After my visit to Urgent Care* yesterday, I had just gotten home and lain down with an ice pack on my shoulder when the UC clinic called me. I was informed that they'd just discovered that my account from my last visit (in late 2018, with bronchitis) was in collections for nonpayment and they recommended that I call the collections agency. Now, my insurance should have paid for this. I never had a clue that they hadn't paid for it. I never got any kind of bill or notice, and I am mightily wrathful. I need to call the collections agency and call my insurance company and I really, really don't wanna. I should do it today, but I am putting it off until next week on the grounds that I really, really don't wanna, and also I am tired and my shoulder hurts and I just. don't. wanna.
*I'm not sure if Urgent Care is a thing outside the US. It's developed here over the last 20 years or so? Basically, Urgent Care clinics handle cases where you need immediate treatment that can't wait for a regular doctor's appointment, but that aren't life-threatening emergencies. Got an earache or a shoulder injury? Go to Urgent Care. Having a heart attack? Go to the nearest Emergency Room (and hope they take your insurance). Urgent Care in itself is a pretty good system, really, but it's tied in to the increasing difficulty of seeing your own doctor if you're lucky enough to have one (despite what advocates of the US system like to claim, long wait times to see a doctor are normal here too) and the exorbitant cost of emergency treatment, which can run into tens of thousands of dollars for a single visit.
3) If the electricity goes off in my apartment complex, even for a second, all the main fire alarms start to sound. (Not the ones in people's apartments, but the ones outside.) It's been hot lately, with people running their AC and using a lot of electricity, so this has happened several times. Last night, it started at 3:30 in the morning and continued until almost 6:00. I'm very glad today is one of my days off.
4) Much less important than 1) and 2), but for some reason irritating me much more: after listening to the latest Rusty Quill Gaming, I commented on Patreon that I hoped Hamid and Oscar would get together. Because "Is that the biggest one you've ever seen, Oscar?" is definitely flirting, damn it. And I want Oscar to be happy for a little while before his inevitable awful death.
Naturally, I got a Reply Guy. I should have expected it, I suppose. Reply Guy (I don't 100% know they're a guy, but their username was male-sounding and they certainly behaved like a typical Reply Guy) informed me that Hamid is canonically straight, because Bryn has said so several times.
If Patron allowed replies to replies, my response might have gone like this:
1) Who asked you, asshole?
2) I said I hoped it would happen, not that I thought it would.
3) I have listened to every single episode of RQG and in fact I'm currently re-listening from the beginning. I am not ignorant of the canon.
4) Bryn has said Hamid is straight (though he hasn't said it lately, I don't think), but Hamid never has. And word-of-god is always questionable canon, to me.
5) Anyway, I don't care. I can reimagine a presumed-straight character as queer if I want to. No straights are harmed in the making of this headcanon.
6) Who asked you, asshole?
Perhaps it's just as well that Patreon doesn't allow replies to replies. Annoying, though. I wish I could delete Reply Guy, but I can't do that either.
I keep having unpleasant experiences with the Rusty Quill (both RQG and Magnus) fandom in the wild (by which I mean, anywhere outside of the folks I read on DreamWidth--you're all awesome!). I've seen lightly disguised homophobia on the Discord, where overt homophobia gets modded away but "I don't believe they're gay and you can't make me" seems to be allowed under the "all headcanons are valid" umbrella. And now on Patreon, which is a place I have liked to comment because it's quieter and I feel, perhaps wrongly, that my comments (only glee, I keep my complaints for here) are more likely to be noticed by the RQ folks. *sigh*
Also, despite my annoyance at Reply Guy, a part of me keeps wondering whether I made an ass of myself. Did I come across as one of those fans? My comments on Patreon have tended to be shippy lately, because there's so much of it in RQG all of a sudden and it's so much fun. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the awesomeness of how they are travelling in an airship over Siberia to save the world and possibly kill a dragon! But while airships and cold climates are dear to my heart, male/male romance/flings/sex are even dearer, and I do get excited about it. And then embarrassed to be so excited. And then furious about being embarrassed, because that feeling absolutely comes from internalized gatekeeping about being the right kind of fan, which is not unrelated to cishet normative male definitions and policing of what interests and reactions are acceptable. Don't value the emotional development more than the adventure. Don't be too interested in romance. Don't be too "girly."
I think I mostly put up a good fight against the internalized gatekeeping, but it doesn't help when someone comes along and reinforces it from the outside.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-14 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-14 10:56 pm (UTC)Okay, this entire thing sounds delightful.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 12:26 am (UTC)Nice! Those are useful and also just pleasant things to have.