Went to the San Francisco Body Art Expo with dissonant_etak (and met up briefly but happily with ol_crow!) on Sunday to shop for a new artist with whom to do some future work. I had also hoped to get some simple coverup work done, and I was successful. dissonant_etak got the itch bad, too, so she sat next to me and got a little ink of her own. Hurts so good... want more already.

it's been about exactly a year since our home burned down for the first time. and yeah, when i say "burned down", i mean, "significant house fire without structural damage." here's a brief recap of major events of the last 365 days. bear with me for a moment here:

early Aug 07: house fire #1
Aug: hip fracture
Sept: move back into house
Oct: transient osteoporosis diagnosis
early Jan 08: dad's scary heart troubles
Jan: start walking again
Jan: Pugsley the cat dies
early Feb: Buddha the cat dies
Feb 14: house fire #2
Feb 20: got married (YAY)
early March: grandpa dies
end of March: move back into house - again
April: several brief pain-free trips out of town
May 2: shoulder fractures, honeymoon postponed, off work on disability
May 12: shoulder reconstruction surgery
mid-July: foot fracture en route to vacation attempt #2
mid-July: start back at work
today: painful knee spasm or tweak, but at least i came home to a not-burned-down house!

my doctor told me i seem to be realistic about and spiritually at peace with what it means for me to live with OI. i guess i am, for the most part: i have to roll with it, what choice else do i have? i sometimes get mentally hung up on what it means to live in my body. i try not to talk too much about the feeling of being trapped, helpless, or defeated. but it's there, especially at times like now. it's there.

edit: as i composed this, some random/spambot on AIM IM'd me the Eternal Rest prayer in Latin. go figure.

i continue to hope that my life turns genuinely boring in the near future, for at least the next 365 days.

for all of you, i wish you good health and many happy events and occasions for the next 365, and for always.

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. Among other things, I gave him this awesome shirt:



Shoulder is recovering... slowly. I remain off work on disability. Not as fun as it sounds, for restless me...

More later, I promise. Just had to share the awesomeness of that shirt. :)

This custom-made bit of hardware is what my right shoulder earned for taking the impact when I fell a few weeks ago. It permanently became part of my right arm a week ago yesterday, and holds together a four-part fracture as well as having the rotator cuff sewn to it with cable to hold it back in place. This is my second fracture plate and fourth major reconstructive bone surgery in my life... my cyborgification continues!

you'd think that after a lifetime punctuated by serious bone breaks and major reconstructive surgery to fix them, the whole surgery deal would be old hat and no sweat by now. at least, that's what a lot of people seem to think.

it's not true, though. just like every time, i'm terrified and anxious. i don't fear any specific thing, like death, or pain; the whole experience is loathsome and frightening. i hate hospitals, i hate feeling helpless, i hate surgery, i hate everyone being worried about me, and i hate feeling like such a big fucking baby every fucking time this happens to me.

i know i will be fine. and praise bob, they let me have some valium to take before i go in. bye bye terror, helloooooo apathy! still, i wish i could just fast-forward a week.

i don't know if i'll ever not find this part terrifying. i'm sure this won't be the last time i'll be facing this.

i just want to get monday over with.

shoulder is a total wreck. need surgery next week to put a plate in to hold it all back together.

i feel like i am having a farcical stream of bad luck...it's all very surreal.

only have one hand to type with so keeping this short...

thank you to all of you for you kind and sympathetic comments! those always cheer me up :)

while at lunch on sat i tripped over a large block set into the ground. my right shoulder took the fall and i heard a crack. i was with my wonderful friend steven, who picked up my car from the garage and took me to the ER. xrays indicate that i've broken off a piece of the humeral head, at the top of my arm, in my shoulder. er doc thinks the bone is in a good place that shouldn't need surgery, but i see my orthopedic surgeon tomorrow am for the final call on that. if i didn't have OI, i'd've walked away from the fall just sore, i think.

no cast, because of the awkward location, so just an immobilizing cloth thing that binds my arm to my chest. it hurts a lot and i'm woozy a lot from pain meds. sleeping is a good escape, when i can get comfortable.

we're postponing our honeymoon in japan that we were set to take next week. when we go depends on what dr says tomorrow.

more news when i get it and can type better... cross fingers for me that i don't neeed surgery, ugh..

awesome, i have a broken arm. wtf.

We are in the process of moving back into our apartment. For various reasons we decided not to change residences yet, but we would like to in the not-too-distant future. So we're unpacking back into our re-carpeted and repainted little one bedroom in a quiet SF neighborhood on a hill.

It seems like everyone's moving right now. I know at least two of you out there are in the process of changing residences now as well. It's no small feat; good luck to you both!

D has been amazing, tearing through boxes and clearing out the living room. We had less stuff to go through this time because we purged so much the first time around but there's still a wall of boxes against the empty living room wall where the couch will go. This time we lost a lot of furniture, things that just couldn't be de-sooted or de-smoked.

We bought a new mattress and couch/loveseat set over the weekend. In the giant box of mail that had accumulated here in the 5 weeks we were away, I found the first check from Allstate to reimburse me for the value of the lost things. I was surprised at how little money it seemed and I realized I spent a lot more on the replacements - but back when I bought much of this stuff, money was tight. It isn't so much, now, and a good couch and an investment in a real quality mattress are both possible. I'm grateful, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't kind of fun to be able to go buy some new stuff!

I'm sitting at my new computer desk as I write this, and it's the only piece of the new furniture we have so far. Our mattress wasn't in stock, so we were brought a new in-stock mattress to use in the meantime - but it's the wrong size, so it's sitting on the box spring on the floor, and we are sort of camping out in our own bedroom, surrounded by moving boxes and craft bins that normally slide under the bed.

There's a lot of little things lost, too, some replaceable, some not. Many of my little collection of stuffed toys are toast. Some bedding had to be replaced. I'm being very judicious and just tossing out many things they didn't even try to clean - all our tupperware, for instance, because once there's plastic soot on that stuff it never truly gets clean, and you don't want to eat off that. Cat food bowls, too. Spending multiple evenings going through boxes of personal items including papers, jewelry, craft items, and more, all covered with soot, is a real drag. I wear rubber gloves and clean salvageable items one at a time with lysol wipes and paper towels. And all our food - even things in the fridge, untouched - got tossed. I'm not thrilled about the way everything was handled, but there's not much I can do at this point but replace my losses where possible, and move on. I still haven't found my kiln yet...

Cats are here and happy to be home. Frankie is meeting Rowan and Ecco for the first time and soon he will discover the cat door and the backyard and the possibilities out there... I'm trying not to be too nervous about how that will go for him. It's wonderful having an orange tabby around again, though.

It's a good thing I can finally walk and be useful this time around with the move-in. We're getting pretty good at this and we pare down the amount of stuff we have each time. Maybe two or three more times and we'll have this down to an under-a-week move-in science. Or maybe I shouldn't say stuff like that out loud.

AP News Alert

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Aide says science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

RIP, old visionary. :/