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Phoenix’s Meanderings

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PhoenixRising82

PhoenixRising82

“Ours is the Magic. Ours is the Power.”
Joined
Jun 1, 2019
Location
Hell with Love
@bobsyouruncle1 @ConcealedLegend @Death by orgasm @CasualVelociraptor @Cylian997 @TheCorsair @True Grave @thejohnnytype @Gwyn the Green (I think that’s everyone!)

Hi! Howdy! And Hello!

I know it's been a while….quite a while in fact and for that, my sincerest apologies. Also my sincerest appreciation for all of you and your unwavering patience. It is beyond appreciated.

As most of you know….work has just been…..chaotic stressful at best more often than not but that isn't all that's kept me away.

The loss of family and the loss of friends has played a hand in some of what's going on.

Also….some physical stuff has played it's part. Stuff that I've both tried to ignore and take care of myself without the help of others.

Things that have ultimately thrown me way…..way out of whack if we are being completely honest.

All things combined has really just set me off kilter. My days are spent wanting to write, I stare at your waiting replies, your long, getting dusty waiting replies…..wanting to play in a world where none of this shit has any bearing on anything…….and yet all of this shit is hindering me heavily from doing what I WANT to do.

My brain and body just ultimately start screaming at me to just do something mindless until I'm so tired I can't see straight. Playing mobile games. Watching movies/shows. Mindless shit that I don't have to concentrate on. Things that I can do until I get so tired I pass out and can sleep through the mental battering and physical pains.

I've been having personal physical issues that combined with physically growing older has made it so that my brain gets fuzzy and unwilling to work properly when the physical pain kicks in. Depression. Cramps. Pain. Stress. Frustration. It all collides and makes it hard to concentrate. Hard to sleep. Hard to get through the day to day. Hard to deal with things that wouldn't normally bother me. Hard to people. Hard to be. Disclaimer: At no point in any of this have I ever felt suicidal though, so please have no worries there.

I finally went to see the doctor today to get my physical issues worked out. I've been put on steroids and muscle relaxants to help with any monthly (as well as normal every day) pains and problems. And to further help, she wants to put me on birth control BUT in order for that to happen…..I have to stop smoking first because she's concerned about my age and my smoking throwing me into a heart attack or heart condition. So……she wants me to stop smoking before she actually puts me on the pill. I have also been prescribed Wellbutrin to help with that but Wellbutrin is also meant to help depression as well as weight loss…….which are two other issues I've been battling as well…..so…..killing three birds with one stone as it were.

I know….I know…..what does this have to do with anything…..right? Well….I just want you all to know where I am at and that being on these medications is something very new to me, someone that has either tried to self medicate or simply ignore shit and just deal with the pain and such…..for more years than I care to think about. It's going to take me a little bit longer to get settled into this routine and….essentially start getting right with myself. I need to get used to them and all that.

So….I am asking for a little more patience. If anyone wants to shelve a story that we have going, I would completely understand, considering it's been a while and I haven't exactly been talkative even outside of said stories as of late. Just let me know. Otherwise, again…..I absolutely appreciate your incredible patience and understanding.
 
Finally able to eat my full Qdoba bowl without my boss just….ya know…..”randomly” tossing it out because she was “cleaning the fridge” at work…..but failed to throw out something else that I had in there, along with anyone else’s stuff. 🙄

Mmmm it’s good too! Especially after days of eating pretty much nothing but soup broth because of the nausea. -__-
 
Did some twat honk at me no sooner than the light turned green? Why yes, yes they did.

Did I make the turn for the impatient asshat? Why yes, yes I did……at less than 5 miles an hour and continued at that pace until we reached a place where he could get into another lane and go around me.

Did they see me laughing as they passed? I sure hope so.

Am I sorry? Absolutely not.

Am I mad they didn't honk at me again so that I could go even slower? Maybe a little. 🤷🏼‍♀️
 
Hello again.

So I debated saying anything but….talking is good for the mind and soul, right?

Please keep in mind, I won't accept any pity or anything for what is about to be said. I will however accept good vibes, yeah? Good vibes! Those are the only comments allowed…..good vibes! 👍🏻

*takes a deep breath*

So….in my quest to fix myself and all of my issues that have been on the back burner until I got some decent insurance…..I had to get an ultrasound of the insides of my lady bits. There were a couple things of concern, mild concern. A cyst on an ovary (which is actually normal and not of much concern at all) and a thickening of the endometrial stripe. The stripe is supposed to be between 8mm and 11mm to be good. Mine is at 15mm. Still not overly bad. It's not at freak out level. However it was enough of a concern for my doctor to send me to see an OBGYN.

An appointment was made and a biopsy was done on the thickened stripe. We also discussed a partial hysterectomy to help the other issues I spoke about before. Doc wants to leave my ovaries but take the rest, so that I can still go through menopause somewhat naturally. I'm young as well, so a full hysterectomy would throw me into full blown medically induced menopause and that would make things even worse for me and make me even more miserable.

That brings me to today when I got a phone call from the OBGYN doctor herself. Never good news when the doctor calls themselves. 😬 The results of the biopsy were a little more intense than they'd really expected.

I have early stage uterine cancer. Early stage, so we caught it well enough in advance to surgically fix it. The hysterectomy is still very much happening, everything has just been moved up time wise. And it's still only going to be a partial one, unless…..the cancer has traveled outside of my uterus, which they will check while I'm under.

I am ok. I will be ok! This IS treatable and fixable. But I'm not gonna lie……hearing that you have cancer of any sort growing inside of ya…..is heart wrenching and terrifying.

On the plus side……the surgery is going to put me out of work for probably close to a month or so. I'm gonna be staying with my folks at least the first two weeks until or whenever the doctor says I can go back home. Means I'm gonna have plenty of time to write!

I just have to remind myself that if I do take any more stories on…..I don't over do it! Lol
 
The hardest part about this is……wanting to call up my best friend and talk to her about it…….but knowing I can not.

Don’t get me wrong, I have an absolutely solid and wonderful support system with everyone checking on me and letting me know that I can talk to them if I need to and all and I love everyone endlessly for that but yeah…..it’s hard not having your best friend on this earth anymore. 😭
 
Ok so. A few things have changed. My surgery is the 21st instead of the 22nd. And…..because I found out what my birth mother died of…..ovarian cancer……it's gone from a partial hysterectomy now to a full one. They will be taking my ovaries as well. Ovarian cancer is not like uterine or breast cancers…..you won't catch it in time. So it's kind of a death sentence at that point. So……we decided it was better to take my ovaries as well, so there won't be any worry about it later on down the line.
 
You have a plan and a healthy attitude. That's awesome! And, yes, you don't play around with cancer in any hormone-secreting organ. Keep to the plan. Keep in contact with your doc. And stay positive. You've got this.
 
YAY!! I’m home home! My kittie cats are so happy to see me and I them! They've barely left my side! Still can’t do some things but for the most part I’m back to normal. Now it’s just a waiting game on healing time. I’ve got several weeks still that I’m out of work.
 
Yeah, that waiting game kinda sucks. I was out of work for two months after my surgery without income. Paperwork was a nightmare, and it was delays therein that led to not having an income. Stay on top of the paperwork, whatever it is, and call to verify it has been received and acted on, get specifics from the bureaucracies on what they received (ask them what they see was received in your file instead of asking them to verify they received X or Y. The latter gives them a huge temptation to answer in the affirmative to get you off the phone and keep their individual call's answered stats high. They are very likely to be dogged to get their call's answered higher to make the company look more efficient on paper. I faced that when I was working for a mortgage servicer company. So, keep on top of the paperwork and have them tell you what they received.

The downtime will likely get old and you will likely get antsy to get back to work. Not that I know anything about your physical condition, but I do know it can be very easy to gain weight when you have limited activity and lots of time. If your teeth can take it, ice can be a great thing to snack on that has no calories. Celery is also very low cal. For me, I would need to avoid candy, chocolate, sweets, etc., because I would have a whole, family-size bag gone in a couple of hours, maybe less.

All that being said, try to enjoy it, try not to look for things to stress over (they're easy to find in the news and social media), and enjoy your cats, your time, the opportunity to rest, and as the muse strikes you, your writing.
 
@Gwyn the Green The stuff for short term disability has actually been in great contact with me. It’s my actual job that is holding up the process in getting that part moving along. Head of HR has been out due to having a baby and knowing how the office seems to run…..they don’t really know what they are doing when one of the cogs is missing. -__- but head of HR is back. Mutual of Omaha actually called me yesterday to let me know they’d reached out to them again.

Me, I’m already fat and I quite often eat things like celery and such anyways. I also eat the other shit that isn’t good for me also.

I am definitely going to enjoy my time. I know I’ll get restless at some point but for the most part I can do everything I did before. I just still can’t sweep, mop, vacuum or lift anything over 25 pounds. I plan on going to see The Batman while I’m down and out, my only concern there is my bladder……but that would be a worry even if I hadn’t had surgery because that’s a just shy of 3 hrs movie. Lol and of course I absolutely plan on writing! No worries about the news, I don’t hardly ever watch it. I do catch some stuff on social media but generally that’s a lot easier to just scroll past and carry on.
 
My Doctor's office was unable to get anything to The Hartford and by the time I figured that out and forced them to get it to me directly so I could forward it to them, it was too late for STD, but I was able to maintain the LOA and protect my job.

I am 6'1 and at my last measurement about 300 pounds. I don't own a scale, but I think I've been losing a little weight, maybe in the 290 or 280 range. Would like to be back to 240, but not enough to kill myself to get there. When I was active in the Navy, anytime I went below 230 I couldn't stay healthy. I am nowhere near as active now, but still, 240 would be fine. Except for the fortune in clothing I'd have to buy...

I don't really keep up on when movies are coming out, but I am interested in seeing the Batman movie. I wish they would have done something with Nightwing at the end of the Nolan-verse trilogy, sort of, but I really don't care for the actor they had in that potential role, and certainly not as a superhero. Then again, I still have a problem seeing Michael Keeton as Batman, though he was an awesome Vulture.
 
@Gwyn the Green Yeah, I don’t have a way to get it to Omaha, so I have to let them get it through my job. Also…..the main office…..seems just as difficult for us to get ahold of anyone there as MoO. I also know my job is safe, thankfully. And I’ll also be getting quite a bit of my PTO paid out to me, minus the little bit that’ll be used to pay my benefits and keep them kosher.

I am going to actively try to lose some weight. But yeah, not sure how well it’ll go over. We shall see.

This Batman is supposed to be a bit darker in nature. I’m also interested to see how well Pattinson does in the role. It will tide me over until Morbius hits theaters April 1st.
 
I loved Morbius in Marvel, I had the comics he first appeared in, but like everything else from my youth, they were left behind when my parents sold the house while I was in BootCamp. Do I still feel bitter about that? Yeah, but nothing to be done about it. I repaired my relationship with my dad before he died. My relationship with my mom is what it is. She is overbearing, though she does try not to be, to the point of being socially abusive, and I don't take that shit well. My parents lived halfway between where I live and where my grandparents, siblings, and wife's family lived, 300 miles to the folks, another 300 to the rest. So, I set up a trip where I stayed two days with my folks, four days with the rest, two more with my folks, and then back home. Mom told me, in her pointed way, to come back when I could stay longer. It was seven years before I saw them again, and that was them coming to where I lived to see the boys play Jr High football. I can be rather vindictive, I guess. But, I spoke with them a lot after that, mostly with Dad, and when he died, I was the first one to show up to support her and stayed for three days until others could make it, and I went home almost as soon as they got there.

One sister is married to a Reverend, the other is a druggie. While I am spiritual, I am not religious, and there is nothing to say one faith is more valid than another, except within the various faiths themselves, and the linear ones all claim to be the only true one, with the same self-garnered Divine Authority. They can't all be right, and I don't feel that I am wise enough to discern the truth among them, so I don't embrace any of them. Religiously, I follow Heinlein's advice:

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?"

Really weird segue there. So, "Uncharted" looks interesting. I think Walberg is an excellent actor. "Dr. Strange" should be interesting. Looking at getting Disney so I can watch the TV series Marvel has been doing related to that. Because "Top Gun" was a seminal movie for me, being a sailor, "Maverick" will be a must-see. "Thor: Love and Thunder" should be interesting. I wasn't following the comics when Jane Foster became Thor, but I did have the What-If comic in which that originally happened. (See above...) "Scream" is a maybe, because I liked the original. And, of course, "Batman." He is the character I have RP'd the second most in the last decade, behind the Riddler, with Nightwing and Iron Man following, and a decade ago, it was Marvel's version of Hercules and the original Nova, Rich Rider. Of those, only Iron Man would work with RDJ...
 
As you and most everyone knows……I wasn’t much of a comic reader personally. Lol Do I know a lot about them, no. But I do know a little about a lot of them, if that counts for anything and if I’m interested enough, I can look shit up. Which I usually don’t. Only one I’ve really looked into was Hawkeye because….I love the character and I love Renner and I love the way Renner played the character. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Lol I’m a sucker I know….🖤💜

At any rate….I mean you DO have a little right and reason to be a bit bitter about that. IMHO.

A little but I’m totally used to it. And I tend to go on about some weird stuff too. Weird is my tribe and that’s why we get along so well! ;)

Ok so…..I want to see all of those too….except Maverick because I was never a big fan of Top Gun but I was also never a big fan of Tom Cruise, in fact…..yeah, not my favorite person at all but I digress. Only watched MI: Ghost Protocol because of Renner and The Mummy because it seemed like one I could actually stomach him in…..turns out…..not exactly my favorite Mummy movie there either.

I’ve only watched WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and Hawkeye, in terms of the Disney+ shows and found all of them to be really good and I can’t wait for the ones that are going to have more seasons, to air them.
 
Comic books were a constant companion of mine from the age of 8 to 18 with a hiatus while I was in the Navy, and then again in the early 90s until Marvel did ever more large mutant crossovers and then rewrote the entire universe, driven by the whim of a child with god-like powers. DC lost me as well, mostly with their mishandling of the Legion of Super-Heroes (a superteam set a thousand years in the future) and their resetting of the entire universe every ten years or so starting in the 80s. The comic book industry had several issues, one of them being their kowtowing to short-term profits by focusing more on variant covers rather than stories to drive the wave of people collecting comics for fiscal profit. There have always been comics that became wildly valuable, but that was because it was a comic produced in small numbers because it was seen as a risk at the time, like the first issues introducing Spider-Man and the Hulk, which paralleled the baseball trading card phenomenon where the rookie cards of eventual stars became extremely valuable because of their rarity. Flooding the market with "collectibles" had the exact opposite effect. It had the effect of them producing many more of the comics that buyers were betting would be rare in the future, but the possibility of them becoming rare was greatly reduced by (1) overproduction and (2) a large body of people preserving them, therefore making then fairly common. When people realized they were being idiots by buying every variant cover in the hopes that they would be rare, they stopped, almost as a single body of people, and the industry found itself overproducing expensive variants on premium paper that were not being purchased, and that the stories had gone to shit because the supply and demand that drove better stories to sell more had been gutted by the above. Marvel filed for bankruptcy and DC wasn't much better. And, in the middle of this, seven of the best artists in the industry of the time left the two companies to form Image Comics, a creator-owned company that proved to be a significant challenge to them. The reason they formed was that the industry owned all characters, stories, and art made in the commission of their stories and books with the creators not able to exert control over or receive royalties from their work.

I have not kept up with them for most of the 21st century, but the cartoons, movies, and television series have greatly bolstered the companies. DC was purchased by Warner who is owned by AT&T and Marvel by Disney. The comics industry will never go back to what it was through the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern comic book ages, Golden starting with Superman and Batman in the 30s and is credited with creating the superhero. The silver age introduced modern versions of heroes like Flash and Green Lantern. The only comic characters to survive, published in their own titles, from the gold to the silver were Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. This was my introduction to comics, but it was not a period of great stories and, in my opinion, celebrated the character's costumes and powers more than it was concerned with characters or stories. My era was the Bronze Age and got far better stories and character depth, the latter in was cemented in the X-Men of Marvel and the Teen Titans of DC, the best stories of the day, both critically and fiscally. The age also saw the introduction of titles like Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lost in Space, Battlestar Gallactica, and Micronauts, opening the industry into new genres. Modern comics started in the mid-80s with Alan Moore's "The Watchmen" and Frank Miller's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", both of which brought very dark elements and grit to an industry that had once been four-color stories of the highest moral character that was strangled under the self-imposed "Comics Code of America", something the industry came up with in the 60s to avoid government censorship and ended one of my favorite genres, the horror comic. The Modern Age saw the Comics Code ignored and retired.

More than you ever wanted to know about an industry that shaped my life.

I agree that Cruise is not an easy pill to swallow, and his private life gives a very bitter taste to his professional one. My love of Top Gun has far more to do with my time in the Navy and what the movie meant at the time for the image of the Navy than the movie on its own. I also love the Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone", which I think could be applied very well to Iron Man.

Danger Zone

I haven't seen any of the things on Disney. I haven't really had cable television in this millennium. And, apart from cultural references that I could care less about, I haven't missed it.

Take care and get better.
 
Oi! I am kinda enjoying my time off but I’m also a little antsy at the same time. -___-

The Batman was a good movie! Loved it!

@Gwyn the Green I don’t pay much attention to Cruise’s personal life honestly, just not invested in even his professional career enough to pay attention to it, in depth anyways. Anywho…..most of the movies from that time came up with some good music for sure!

As for Disney+, should you have the inclination, I recommend the shows on the service. They are pretty good, IMHO.
 
Bought a sandwich maker last week. Got some Turkey, pepperjack slices and wheat bread from the dollar store. Made two sandwiches today and they were delish!
IMG_7023.jpg
 
Oh wow... had a sandwich maker like that when we were little... now I want one again. Made a ton of Pizza pockets in that thing!
 
razor_gage said:
Oh wow... had a sandwich maker like that when we were little... now I want one again. Made a ton of Pizza pockets in that thing!
Click to expand...
It’s freaking ingenious! I love it! I can make so much and with it just being me the only human in the house, it’s a wonderful little thing so that I don’t over make anything.

I just bought stuff to make like breakfast pockets in it too. I can make omelets. Pizza pockets. I’m even gonna make a dessert pocket, with some peanut butter and some chocolate in it for something sweet.

I got this one at Walmart for like $20. Best $20 I’ve ever spent.
 
razor_gage said:
Tell me more... I never made breakfast in one... but now I'm on Amazon, so I'm going to need an ingredients list.
Click to expand...
I have to look up how to actually make the omelets because it doesn’t have that recipe in the manual but for the breakfast pockets I bought the smallest sized tortillas, eggs, chopped up veggies, cheese and some sausage. Which can all be used for omelets as well. 🤗
 
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