Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

She seems to be okay! Nothing major on a chest x-ray but they're gonna have a specialist look closer. Just a touch of bronchitis and she's got an antibiotics prescription for it.

I apologized profusely for hassling the staff and they were super nice and supportive about it. Still a tad fretful about the aftermath and financial effects but I think we're ok!

And I am so fuckin proud of myself for standing. n.n

@Leucrotta Heh. Must I? Even I can bring the boathook?

Oh, good. It looks like Ms. Dragon is getting some degree of actual card, including an x-ray. This means I will not have to channel Rezeya The World-Mangler, my ultimate summon, upon anyone at this clinic.

Which should free me to spend my remaining Mana Points on something more civilized, like casting Summon Cake for Ms. Dragon after we're done here.

Haha, meanwhile, I think I might be about to get my new Twitter account banned for insulting someone who was actively abusing people as part of a moralist crusade, and then mouthing off to Twitter support about my "feature limitation."

This is EXACTLY the way I wanted to go down. 😻

But for now, I'm gonna take the rest of my PTO today—which I guess leaves me winging it during Christmas "break"—and really really try to foreground "sly squeaky little smartjelly raccoon nerd" instead of "150 dB Martian shredbeast of the apocalypse," which frankly is a lot closer to the level I'd LIKE to be at right now

And since our Healthcare.gov applications are due in eleven days, I get to go through this nightmare ALL OVER AGAIN.

And oh my god, I don't ask for much, but if someone has a spare $50,000 laying around and wants to rescue me to a tropical island—or a legal weed state—for about a month, it might actually restore my sanity to something near baseline.

Now granted, to be fair to the clinic... the amount of effort Peg has put into straightening out or understanding her insurance situation in the last seven months since we moved here can be measured in picoseconds. And the process of trying to get her to stop procrastinating and see someone has been the most painful in my life except for all those other times.

But still. For fuck's sake.

Moral of this story: you do NOT turn a Mad Space Raccoon's favorite person in the world away when she's coughing up yellow shit. >_________<

And I am a little bit stronger than I thought.

And I was SO NICE after they started actually looking into it and moving things along for us. I apologized all over myself and thanked them for looking into it.

And I'm so afraid that Peg's gonna get jerked around AGAIN in there, or not taken seriously because of some superficial signifier—or the fact we were pushy—and I will have to wreck this clinic all Samson-like.

And I insist we're going back in. And I go up to the counter. And I demand to know WHY it's different this time than it was last time. And they can't tell me.

So they gather in back for five minutes and come back with "OK we CAN see her, but it'll be out of pocket." A substantial but hardly painful amount amount for us. FINE. SO FUCKING DO IT.

Theyre seeing her now. And I'm still trembling.

...And then they tell us that they can't take her insurance, but that they also can't let her just pay out of pocket because that would supposedly be illegal. Even though she came her, was seen, was treated, and was sure as fuck billed just a few months ago.

So we're leaving and she's understandably very upset, when something rises from deep within me: something inherited from my Italian mom.

Grrrr.

So Peg's been trying for THREE DAYS to get an appointment scheduled at basically the ONLY local LGBT-friendly clinic to get her ongoing throat issues looked at. She called AGAIN today and they didn't even know where their "patient navigator" was... and thus could do absolutely nothing but make her play phone tag again.

So we break down and go to the urgent care clinic.

(sadly con't)

=== KITTY ALERT KITTY ALERT ===

"Shadow, you don't live he..."

*big pleading eyes from @anthracite*

*sigh*

*sets up litterbox, water dish, and suitcase/bed in our room for an overnight stay*

(She was an absolute gentlewoman and a fine, courteous guest. And my sinuses are surprisingly unbothered.)

@hummingrain Also, almost all "weed" terminology... including "weed."

@hummingrain I REALLY understand that. I have a whole list of words that do the same to me. Mostly non-medical contexts and not abbreviations, but same sense of "god, that just feels like a weird mental intrusion to even say that."

"Hubby" comes to mind. "Smoke" as a verb. "Boner." "Lotion." "Whip cream." Oh, god: "Meal." When we had a bedbug threat and my ex-housemate kept using the phrase "blood meal." *whimpercringe*

@Austin_Dern this pretty much exactly captures why i got so excited by the postfurry concept back in the day... yes, PLEASE, take my weird idea even further and run with it!

@hystericempress Right? I've kinda always thought of imagination as a cheap-as-free kinda resource, you know?</coach_z>

And I mean, if you spot a "closed" species that has features you really like... how freakin' difficult is it, really, to come up with a new one that's got those features but is just different enough to be original?

It just makes my free-culture hackles raise, yanno? I'm not proud of much these days, but I ACTIVELY encouraged people to "rip off" Puzzlebox and I'm glad...

just once in my fucking life i wish a professional would promise to call someone on a given day and then actually call. that person. on that same fucking day.

oh look it's the "every moment i spent at transliminal song"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugUFu8XUjgA

I feel stupid, I feel useless, I feel insane
I feel toothless, man you're ruthless
I go to Loving Hut, I get my hair cut, I feel the same
I feel putrid, I'm getting used to it these days
You say "It's only in your head
They're probably thinking the same thing"
I'm bleeding, you're leaving, I feel strange
You been distant, you seem different than yesterday
We're gonna tell everyone it's okay

@dodec @anthracite I thought they were a damn sight better than the Ohio winters I grew up with, but she's from the tropics and now that we're in NOLA, I'm forced to admit... yeah, this is better. It's nice to be able to go out in December with short sleeves.