trains in the sky

 I moved to California in November, so that's a thing that happened! A big thing. My first time not living in the same house I've lived in for the last 35 years, with the parents that I've lived with for 40 years.

It's definitely taken some adjustment, but overall it's gone a lot easier than I expected it to. And it's interesting that I've hardly missed my parents at all. I suppose that's not exactly surprising if you know anything about my parents and my relationship with them lol, but I still kind of expected to, and was braced for it. 

Of course, your brain knows when you expect a certain kind of pain, so it doesn't give that one to you. Instead, it gets creative and finds a different way to torment you that you couldn't have even considered before. Mine has discovered it can really fuck me up by giving me lots and lots of nightmares where I'm forced to go back to Michigan, or I have to go back for something and end up getting stuck there. And I find that even after 9 months, this all still feels pretty unreal. No matter how settled in I am here, there's this constant nagging feeling that this is temporary, that I won't actually be allowed to have this forever. Like the only home I can ever be allowed to have is one where I am miserable and anxious and locked up inside myself. 

Other updates:

I've gotten very into Thai BL series recently. It started with Kinnporsche, but the second one we watched was Love in the Air and it completely devoured my brain. I've been obsessed since it aired, and I really adore the actors who played the four main characters: Boss, Noeul, Fort, and Peat. Especially Peat 🥰 Fort and Peat have a new series together that's currently airing called Love Sea and we are thoroughly enjoying it. Their chemistry (and Boss and Noeul's) is so incredible, and it's amazing to see how much it's grown and intensified after 2 years of constant work with each other. There are a lot of other series we've watched and really loved too, though. Not Me, I Told Sunset About You, Cooking Crush, Dead Friend Forever, Great Men Academy, Moonlight Chicken, Only Friends, The Eclipse. Also, from Japan, Utsukushii Kare. And GL is gaining popularity recently, we loved GAP and 23.5 and there are a lot more coming out soon (or currently airing that we haven't started yet lol). 

In related news, I started writing fanfic for the first time in my life. For Love in the Air, of course. I loved Sky so much that he actually got me to write. I've written 5 fics based around him so far, and even ventured into rpf to write a Fort/Peat fic I couldn't get out of my brain. There is sadly SO little rpf out there for lita. 

In also related news (are you noticing a theme here? this series has taken over my life lmao), we met Boss and Noeul when they came to LA and SF for fanmeets back in May. We could only afford to go to the LA one, but it was so amazing. They are so beautiful in person, it was ridiculous. We got to take pictures with them, a selfie with them, a short meet & greet, a hi-touch (where you walk past them in a line and they hold their hands up for you to place yours against theirs lol, or you can make hand-hearts or whatever). 

Oh, something non-fannish: I started my new fully remote job in December, a month after I moved, and so far I really like it. It's assisting a client services team, who work tickets placed through a help desk, troubleshooting issues with the software the company I work for offers. It's pretty good money, and pretty low stress for the most part.

Lastly, I got the absolutely incredible news that my student loans have been 100% forgiven and discharged recently. $80k, gone. All of the lawsuits against the Art Institutes finally made a difference, and I no longer have to pay for my completely useless degree from them. 🥹

I miss journaling. I created a new tumblr that I'd planned to use more personally than my original one turned out, but so far I haven't felt super comfortable doing so. If you'd like to follow and see all the stuff I'm obsessing over these days though, you can find it here!

http://youtu.be/0ngzOj2zATM

She's nominated for an EMA for Best Dutch Act :)

Still obsessing over this album, yes. I promise I'll post other music again... soonish.

http://youtu.be/9txg0XicoJ0

I overlooked this song the first 20 times, probably, that I listened to this album because it's not as catchy or obvious as most of the rest. But then one night, it was like the lyrics broke through the haze and I realized that this song is everything to me right now. It is so rare that I relate so intensely to a song that is actually uplifting ;) The video is also interesting - just now, for this post, is the first time I've ever seen it, but I've been dying to change up my hair again lately.

http://youtu.be/UvcdSFCwrao

Every Mother Counts

Some statistics from their website:

1. Approximately 358,000 women die each year due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth. That's one woman every 90 seconds.

2. For every woman who dies each year in childbirth, 20-30 more suffer from lifelong debilitating disabilities.

3. Pregnancy is the number one cause of death in women, ages 15-19, in the developing world. Nearly 70,000 young women die every year because their bodies are not ready for parenthood.

4. Over 200 million women who would like to choose when they get pregnant don’t have access to family planning.

5. The United States ranks 50th globally in maternal mortality, even though it spends more on health care per capita than any other nation in the world. African American women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than Caucasian women.

From their facebook:

Every Mother Counts is an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction globally.

Description
Every Mother Counts seeks to engage new audiences to better understand the challenges and the solutions while encouraging them to take action to improve the lives of girls and women worldwide.

Every Mother Counts was founded by Christy Turlington Burns after the completion of her documentary debut, "No Woman, No Cry" which tells the personal stories of pregnant women and their caregivers in four countries as they try to avoid adding to these troubling statistics.

General Information
Hundreds of thousands of girls and women around the world die every year from complications in pregnancy or childbirth, creating a rippling effect that devastates children, families, and communities. Almost all of these deaths are preventable.

The issue
How you can help

http://youtu.be/1qE6UZqEZ4g

Bif Naked!

I was going to go on and on about her, but watch that video up there ^ and she will say it for me ♥ You can hear bits of some of her music there, but a great example of her music is this song.

I, Bificus was one of my favorite albums when I was in high school, I love absolutely every song on it. One of the things I always liked about Bif Naked's music was that she has absolutely no problem singing obvious love songs about girls (and boys, pretty equally, hehe). She's also pretty bad ass, and I was really into anything involving strong women kicking ass back then XD And now, of course, but back then, I never thought much about why I enjoyed it so much, or how much what they were doing meant. Her music has given me a lot of strength at times when I needed it most.

I also find her to be a really inspiring person in other ways. She's overcome many issues with her health, including breast cancer, but her outlook on the world and everything in it is beautiful. She has an entire song about her guilt over killing a bee!

macfrosty is doing this, and it looks like a great incentive to post :) I thought about using her idea, which is "100 Things That Have Shaped Me", but today was a really nice day in many ways, and I'm feeling better about life than I have in a very, very long time. I don't know how long it will last, but I've decided to make my theme:

"100 Things That Make Me Feel Better About The World"

Starting with:



Gardening!

I have never gardened before, but today I bought some zucchini seeds and planted them with my mom :) This spring/summer, I'm going to help her around the yard and she's going to teach me how to properly garden. I'm excited about it! I'm going to buy more seeds and hopefully grow a lot of veggies to add to my diet this summer. It felt so great to spend time out in the sun, and I will really enjoy having things to care for <3

(Btw, my credit union charged me not one, but TWO fees for my issues while shopping on Sunday. I emailed them and they refunded me one charge, but wouldn't refund the other. Sucks, but today was so wonderful that I can't even bring myself to care.)

I'm home ;_; Byeeeeeee, L'Arc and my amazing weekend ;_;





There are more pictures, but I am already behind on working on my homework that was due yesterday because nothing inside of me seems to want to accept that it's all over, and further, everything inside of me is rebelling against the fact that I have to work at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Seriously feel like I am dealing with Post L'Arc Depression or something ;_;

For now, I will say that the concert was phenomenal, Hyde's dancing was the closest I have ever come to a religious experience, they performed Niji and I cried and was left completely wobbly for hours after, AND I FINALLY got my feather from when they blow them out into the audience at the end of that song. Two, even! Thanks to the wonderful and amazing tmsj's perseverance ;) I'm going to try to make them into earrings ♥

Speaking of wonderful and amazing people, this weekend was positively loaded with them, and you will hear more about that later when I have time to write up something better than this, but nepenthes59 would be at the top of that list. I don't think words exist that could describe how much this weekend meant to me, and I owe every single second of it to her :))) I thanked her like a million times this weekend, but I feel like it will never, ever be enough!

Last night's episode of Supernatural was the first episode since... I think Route 666 that I remember actually not liking. It was the same people behind it too, right? Usually I can ignore the way the show treats women or look past it, but that episode made it really hard not to (I found myself asking, more than once, "Are they... actually doing this?"), and I worry that it seems like it's going to carry over a bit.

I got one of my tax returns! \o/ Also, I had a bit of leftover money from my financial aid. That has NEVER happened to me! I get so jealous whenever Natalie and Kyle talk about the money they get, because usually I end up having to pay some out of pocket. It wasn't tons or anything, but every penny counts. I also applied a few more places *running out of fingers to cross*

As my reward for, I dunno, not being broke anymore, I got myself the twin app finally :) I couldn't have my name, so I went with Cupcake Bandit instead, hehe. I know it's dumb, but I'm sort of amused by the coincidence of Bill ~revealing~ his newly silver/grey hair a few days after I find my first XD

This article is really great. I am sick to death of the attitude I see so much, that if you can't just deal with things, get over things, find humor in things, not be offended by things, take the high ground, etc. etc. etc., there is something wrong with you. I am surrounded by people in RL who have pretty rigid expectations for me of how I should react to any given issue and how I should live. Everyone reacts to everything in different ways, and what one person thinks is no big deal might be a VERY big deal to someone else, and no one has the right to take that away from them. Most especially if that someone else experiences it in some more direct way, but likewise, I'm also sick of people who have been through similar experiences and come out better for it acting like everyone should be able to.

I'm super irritated with this right now because I've seen it so much in the past few days especially, for various reasons. The one time I look at ONTD of my own volition, I see an article about how RuPaul thinks it's totally okay to use the word 'tranny' howeveryouplease, even as an insult, with millions of comments about how oversensitive everyone is anymore and how everyone should just develop a thick skin. I'm sorry (not really though), but fuck that. This world is shit for the most part, but there are so many things that would be even worse if people hadn't gotten hurt, gotten offended, and gotten angry. Ignorant is uneducated, and that can be fixed.

Sometimes I just get really frustrated with how passive and docile we're all expected to be. It's great for some people if they can laugh about things and remain unaffected, I envy that so much, but not everyone can feel that way, and many don't have the choice.

( Here they are! )

Next year will include many more books, for sure. Happy New Year, everyone!! <333