#very fun very dramatic subsequent few hours afterwards

[dummerjan]

10 QL people I want carnally that make me feel gay

I was tagged by @lady-guts - thank you <333 No carnal desire here, maybe possible on the asexual spectrum?, and also not into men so I went with characters that made me go "Ohhh... definitely into women." Just without (what I understand to be) carnally wanting them. But I will do plenty of swooning and not get enough of looking at them and dreamily sigh every now and then or think of that "Excuse me? Sorry. Mommy? Sorry. Mommy? Sorry." meme. It's been close to a week but I just can't make a full list. I went through my MDL watchlist looking for hot women but I am watching the wrong shows for that and probably not remembering several characters with minor roles. Luna from Sleep With Me

Very dreamy sigh. Plus she speaks Tagalog/Filipino, makes her even more attractive.

Choi Yu Na from Semantic Error

She is omnipresent on these lists and rightfully so. She is really hot. Jean from Warp Effect

Tiffy from Lovely Writer

I never finished the show, she was the best part of it though. Very swoon-worthy. Waree (the mean teacher) from The Eclipse I can't find a gif of her but I know they are out there. I saw them on someone else's list. Akemi Haruko from Pornographer: Playback

No gifs of her either, there aren't that many for the series anyway.

And you know what? Jeff Satur has to be on this list. Jeff is sometimes very confusingly almost attractive in a way women are to me. As Kim or any other character? Not my type. But there is the warehouse outfit that could qualify (if I ignore that it's Kim). Of which I can't find a gif! But surely it is irrevocably burned into our minds.

tagging @scarefox @omegaphobe @hummingbooks @bellepark @bisexualbard @mvickym I don't know who hasn't done this yet. No pressure but if you want to, have fun. :)

[quarterfromcanon]

#afewofmyfavoritethings

Heather & Valencia - Femslash February - Day 17 - Cold [2,838 words]

“Um... guys? You might wanna come take a look at this.” 

The cushion of the sofa dipped beside Heather when Valencia joined her at the window. Paula and Rebecca leaned over the armrests and pulled back the lace curtains. The group gazed through the frosted pane at the rolling hills that had transformed into a wintry world overnight. 

Rebecca squealed. “It’s even better than I expected! I know the weather called for snow but look at all that!” Her nose bumped the glass as she craned to take everything in, and she pulled away from the frigid contact. “Oh, it’s so much prettier when there aren’t cabs driving through it and city grime isn’t turning the drifts all gray and gross. The view from my mom’s house was okay, but nothing like this.” She sighed. “Well, ladies, I think you know what this means.”

“Photo sesh?” Valencia shifted to access the phone in the pocket of her space onesie.

“Snowman contest?” Paula rubbed her hands together. She grinned in the dangerous way that told them all they were toast before construction even began.

“Sledding?” Heather suggested. She dropped to a seated position and leaned against Valencia’s biceps.

“Okay, yes to all of that,” Rebecca pointed at each of them in acknowledgement. “But for the grand finale...,” she paused for dramatic effect and shimmied, “... snowball fight!”

“Oh boy,” Heather murmured. She watched the competitive gleam ignite behind the eyes of the other three women. “This is gonna be a bloodbath.” 

They broke off in separate directions. Paula wandered down the hall to wake Scott and Tommy; Rebecca went to the loft for the end of Nathaniel’s morning exercise routine, and Heather and Valencia headed back to their room to change clothes.

Scott cooked them all breakfast beforehand -- a task which, to be fair, was no small undertaking given conflicting dietary preferences. Paula sat perched on a stool nearby, ready to intervene in the event of a crisis. However, Scott made it through the endeavor with minimal profanity and only one fleeting incident involving his apron and an open flame. The end result was an admirable improvement over the quality of his culinary skills several years ago. Strategic seasoning masked any mildly crispy edges.

“He’s getting better,” Paula noted quietly to the girls. She crossed the floor and give him a peck on the cheek. “Good job, babe.”

Scott beamed.

Once everybody was fed, fully dressed in adequate layers, and equipped with tissues for runny noses, they trooped out of the rented cabin and into the frozen landscape. The photo session came first while the neatness of everyone’s ensemble remained intact. It was agreed that Nathaniel, Scott, and Tommy could be spared on-camera participation in exchange for behind-the-scenes help getting the perfect shots. This entailed holding back tree branches that cast unwanted shadows, standing side-by-side to block glaring sunlight, and tossing gloves full of flakes into the sky so the Gurl Group would appear to be caught in the middle of heavy snowfall. The edited results were approved by all parties featured, and Paula goaded their assistants into a single commemorative picture with their mitten thumbs raised and semi-forced cheerful faces.

Snow angels met with more unanimous enthusiasm. Rebecca and Heather stood beside one another, shared a glance and a nod, then dropped backward as if they were letting themselves fall into a pool. Scott and Tommy gave each other teasing kicks with their boots every time they slid their legs in a broad chevron. Paula observed the father-son bonding from a short distance away while she made her own outline of a spiritual being. Nathaniel’s and Valencia’s approach to the activity was significantly more tentative and involved a great deal more grimacing. Once they got settled, however, they began to embrace the fun. Nathaniel’s long limbs produced very impressive wings and a flowing skirt. Valencia’s angel gave the impression of a certain grace despite the fact that her main goal seemed to be brushing Heather’s gloves with her own on each upward stroke of her arms. 

They divided into teams for the snowman contest. An hour was the chosen allotment for their creations to take shape. Additional materials were both allowed and encouraged, which caused the subsequent flurry of activity to be particularly chaotic. Their shouts echoed over the treetops. Friends narrowly escaped collisions while running and stumbling over the soft ground. 

Rebecca and Nathaniel constructed a suitably scrawny Harry Potter. He was equipped with green M&M eyes, a red licorice lightning bolt scar, a broom from the kitchen pantry, and Rebecca’s scarlet and gold scarf. Surprising absolutely no one, building the beloved protagonist led to a steady stream of magic-related innuendo spoken in undertones, the extremity of which ultimately prompted Rebecca to cover the boy wizard’s nonexistent ears. “Oh my god, contain yourself. There’s a child present.”

Heather and Valencia rendered extra roly-poly versions of their cats, Shadow and Esperanza, with stick whiskers and playfully curled tails. Esperanza had her signature queenly bearing and expression, while Shadow’s gravel eyes were upturned in pure adoration. Heather tracked down a couple of decorative glue yarn balls and wedged them beneath their pets’ paws. 

Team Proctor reached football-game-at-a-bar levels of raucousness as they worked on their entry. The Peeps for Peace t-shirt Paula slept in the night before got tugged onto their snowman’s body. They balanced a few thin logs of firewood on its shoulder and secured a hammer from Scott’s toolbox in its hand. Tommy drew a lackadaisical smirk on the snowman’s face and styled straw for the hair. When their efforts were complete, a Snow Brendan stood before them, built to scale and adorned with a heroic blanket cape.

“I wanna cry foul for emotional manipulation,” Rebecca confided to Valencia afterward, “but it’s just, like, so cute I can’t even get mad.” Valencia begrudgingly inclined her head in agreement.

To her credit, Paula managed to blink back her tears and genuinely smile for the photo they saved to send real-life Brendan later, informing him of his role in the family’s success.

The prospect of voting on hills for sledding was too daunting, so the group settled for the first drop-off they found. The guys were extended the offer to go first, due to the limited number of sleds in their possession, and they gladly accepted the chance. Nathaniel shifted from one foot to the other and brought his palms together in a muffled clap. 

“This is a race, right? There’ll be a winner?” 

Heather thumped her hand against his jacket with an indulgent shrug. “Sure, bud.” 

Nathaniel pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!” 

Scott and Tommy exchanged looks. Paula, Rebecca, Valencia, and Heather all clung to each other for support and made their way down the slope to help verify who reached the bottom first. 

“Good luck, honey!” Paula called. 

“Channel that Slytherin energy!” Rebecca paced like a coach. 

Heather nudged Valencia’s arm and angled her head. Valencia’s brow furrowed but then, following the line of sight, she got the hint.

“C’mon, Tommy!” she whooped. 

“Yeah, Tommy, you’ve got this!” Heather chimed in with her fist held high. Tommy’s chest puffed out and he readjusted his grip on the plastic toboggan.

Paula grabbed a fallen branch and dragged it through the snow to delineate the end of the path. The four judges shouted the starting cue in unison -- almost. “On your mark, get set, go!”

Scott’s style of descent was traditional but effective. Tommy barreled down the hillside on his stomach. Nathaniel’s technique reminded Heather of the luge participants from the Winter Olympics, unwavering serious features and all. Tommy and Nathaniel were neck and neck for at least three-fourths of the race but, in the home stretch, Tommy’s lean frame made him just enough faster to cross the finish line mere seconds before Nathaniel did so. 

Nathaniel was clearly frustrated by the loss but, the minute he saw Tommy’s broad grin, the irritability visible in his brow and jaw smoothed into nonexistence. He lifted his chin and approached his competitor for a congratulatory shake. “Well done, Proctor. Excellent form.”

Tommy’s eyebrows quirked at the odd formality. He clasped Nathaniel’s hand and brought him in for a couple of genial slaps on the arm. “Thanks, man.”

The girls reluctantly ascended to the crest of the rise for their turns -- an arduous journey with an entire chorus of grumbling and winded breathing. The uppermost layer of snow caved beneath Valencia’s boot and she yelped, but Heather caught her elbow and prevented the fall. 

“My hero.” Valencia secured her forearm over Heather’s to prevent a second slip.

“Full disclosure, I would’ve laughed my ass off if you slid back down the entire hill when we were this close to the top, but I also knew you’d be really pissed, so...” 

“You’re not wrong.”

Heather chuckled and hip-checked Valencia, but not hard enough to throw off their matching stride.

They arrived at their destination with a collective relieved exhale. Paula and Heather set up their respective sleds. Rebecca clambered behind Paula and held onto her shoulder blades. “Take us home, Mama!” 

Heather fronted the second toboggan while Valencia surrounded her in a tangle of limbs. “We’ve got this in the bag,” Valencia declared with confidence. 

“I mean, totally, but what makes you so sure?” Heather asked.

“Because, if you get us there first, I’ll --” Valencia noticed Paula’s and Rebecca’s attention on her. She cupped Heather’s ear and whispered the rest of her incentive for so long that Paula pretended to check an invisible watch. 

Heather’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her beanie. “Well, shit.”

“Ah, damn it,” Paula lamented.

“She promised her NC-17 stuff,” Rebecca seconded with a pout. “Now we’re really gonna have to pull out all the stops to beat them.”

Though it was not for lack of trying -- including an unsportsmanlike sideswipe midway down the incline (“Craterface ’em, Paula! It’s our only hope!”) -- they reached the bottom of the hill a heartbeat after Heather’s triumphant first place achievement. Valencia covered the side of Heather’s face in a barrage of kisses.

“Yeah, all right.” Paula fished out her camera. “Get over here so we can take a picture of our three winners, ya horny monsters.”

Valencia and Heather posed on either side of Tommy for the photo. Heather affectionately ruffled the boy’s hair and the pink in Tommy’s cheeks deepened to a bright red.

The only event that remained was the snowball fight, and its onset sparked an immediate change in atmosphere. Much like Heather predicted, no one showed any signs of restraint over their hunger for victory. They crafted forts in near silence, already coiled for the siege. Direct hits qualified as ‘out’ while a graze with a snowball meant a one minute pause behind the player’s designated barrier. Teams were the same as the divide during the building contest.

Tension rose while everyone hunkered down and waited for the first throw. 

“We probably should’ve figured this part out before --” Heather remarked, but her words were drowned out by Rebecca’s battle cry.

“UNLEASH HELL!”

Heather crouched low. “Here we go...”

The cloudless sky was blurred by a torrent of tightly packed spheres. 

“Trebuchet!” Tommy boomed.

Heather’s and Valencia’s fortress stood firm but the sound of multiple piffs of impact reached their ears even over all the yelling.

Things went eerily quiet after that. Heather peered over the wall. “The Proctors are entering No Man’s Land.”

Valencia peeked around the side. “Rebecca’s walking out to meet them. Nathaniel’s spotting her.”

What followed was a rather comedic standoff in which Rebecca lost her nerve after meeting Paula’s determined gaze and took off screaming. She zigzagged as per Nathaniel’s frantic advice and barely evaded being struck at least half a dozen times. Nathaniel’s tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth and he wiped out Tommy with a snowball square in the middle of his back. Tommy swore colorfully but accepted his fate. 

Seeing an opportunity as the chase neared their station, Heather aimed a round of icy ammo at Scott’s chest and made a hit. 

Rebecca’s panic became a single, loud “AAAAAAAAAH” before she lobbed a ball over her shoulder without warning and somehow pelted her best friend in the face. 

Paula’s vocabulary surpassed even Tommy’s creativity - like mother, like son. Rebecca apologized profusely and supplied her scarf for a towel. When Paula wiped the snow away, she cast a glance around and realized which players remained. “Ohoho, it almost makes it worth it just to watch this,” she cackled darkly.

“Bring it on, Plimpton.” Valencia tensed with a murderous scowl. Nathaniel rose to his feet.

Their other opponent veered toward the encampment, and Heather planted herself between Rebecca and Valencia.

“You and me, Davis,” Rebecca challenged. “Moi et toi. I’m unstoppable now!” 

Heather darted forward without hesitation. Rebecca had to swerve to avoid the attack. Valencia hurled a snowball with all her might and then ran full-tilt in search of a better location to strategize. 

Rebecca and Heather wound up traversing uneven soil and tripped simultaneously. From that point on, they were both too busy giggling to pursue each other in earnest. They faked left and right and jogged in circles. When they found themselves face-to-face again, they reached the unspoken decision that enough was enough. Heather separated her snowball into two, one for each hand, and Rebecca held her arm at the ready. Rebecca’s fingers whacked against Heather’s side while Heather sandwiched Rebecca’s face between both palms. They erupted in uncontrollable laughter and hugged.

“Oh, come on!” Paula groused from her seat on the cabin steps. “Where’s the carnage?”

Scott tapped her knee and pointed to the far side of the clearing. “I think that might be coming up.”

Valencia wove through a copse of trees. She held her coat in a cup formation stuffed with snowballs that were perilously close to leaving the makeshift pouch. Her arm windmilled every so often with remarkable force, leaving her tracker to dodge the sudden breeze past his ears. Nathaniel paced himself with an armload of ready-made orbs condensed for swift delivery. Those he let loose tumbled to the earth or broke against bark on the trunks. Nothing found its mark.

“Make a stand and take your shot, V!” Heather projected the command to carry across the distance between them. 

“Yeah, avenge your lady!” Tommy added from the porch railing.

The adversaries returned to the middle of the playing space and paused to catch their breath. 

“Yoga and spinning are non-confrontational,” Valencia panted. “This is seriously not my area of expertise.”

“Follow your gut,” Paula recommended, although her tone and premature wince indicated that she was not optimistic about the outcome.

Nathaniel wound back his arm. Valencia did as her friend told her and took action on instinct. She launched herself at an angle, shoes-first, to glide past Nathaniel’s feet. He adjusted the throw and caught her on the clavicle. Her snowball flew back at a curve and nailed the small of his spine.

The assembled companions reacted as one with exclamations and applause. Nathaniel held out a hand for Valencia. She stood without assistance and shook the outstretched palm. 

“Good game?” Nathaniel said cautiously.

Valencia bared her teeth in a terrifying smile. “Prepárate, gigante. Próxima vez, peleamos en mis términos.”

Nathaniel gave a respectful nod. “Comprendo.”

They returned to the warmth of the cabin, exhausted but happy. Rebecca helped Nathaniel remove his silver and green scarf and they commandeered the coziest couch in front of the fireplace. Paula went in search of extra towels and blankets while her husband and son retreated to the bathroom to drape their wet winter gear over the tub. Heather and Valencia walked to their bedroom and the waiting comfy clothes in their luggage.

“Oh my God, my thighs are like a fire engine,” Valencia announced as she sat on the bed. Heather knelt and rubbed the numb skin until the friction started to drive the discoloration away. She received thanks in the form of a grateful nuzzle before Valencia crossed the room to find the fluffiest pajamas available.

While Heather tugged on a sweater and sweatpants, Valencia rolled up an already used pair of leggings and crammed them against the crack below the door.

“What are you up to over there?” Heather inquired without facing her.

“Soundproofing.” Valencia twisted the lock with a click.

Heather climbed into bed and turned down the other side to make space for Valencia. “That’s thoughtful of you.”

“Mm, I figured the others might appreciate it.”

“I’m sure they do.”

Valencia wriggled under the comforter and pulled Heather toward her. “We’ve got at least an hour before dinner’s ready.”

Heather inched Valencia’s shirt collar aside gradually and trailed kisses all the way to her shoulder. “Are you sure that’ll be enough time?” 

“Maybe.” Valencia maneuvered by degrees until Heather was horizontal against the mattress. She tugged Heather’s earlobe with her teeth and wrapped one leg around her waist. “If we start right now.”

[misssarahlouise]

My Girl by Louise Harris

This is my second attempt at writing an entry for Sarah’s blog, at her request. The first time took a couple of hours of deep reflection and thought, only to be erased in a nanosecond by the delete button, in error!  So here is round two.

It is now five months since Sarah had the Neuropace implant and ten months since the laser ablation. She has only had two incidences of seizures, not counting the one on the operating table in July and one more shortly afterwards, in the hospital.  We are all elated by the results, but the person who counts the most, is feeling the best of us all. We have seen Sarah regain confidence, motivation to get up and do things, and a significant reduction in her anxiety.

I know that Sarah has covered this in her blog, but there have been some less than favorable side effects of the surgeries.  Firstly, in October/November 2018, when she had the intracranial monitoring, it took a while before Sarah had the desired seizures they needed to see for the brain mapping. They had to lower her anti-seizure meds dramatically before she started to have seizures and then she had so many that it was difficult for her to wake up and when she did, to speak correctly. I was terribly alarmed but did not get the sense that the doctors were. They just kept saying she had had a lot of seizures and it would take time for her to get all of her functions back. Because of the ever present threat of infection in a hospital, the docs did not want to keep the probes in her head any longer than needed and tried for three days to get reliable results for some neuropsych testing they wanted done before the laser ablation process a couple of months later. Brain mapping is just what it sounds like. By noting a patient’s responses to questions, and with the deep brain probes implanted, they can tell where certain functions are in one’s brain. Because of the brain scrambling from the multiple seizures, Sarah could not answer correctly and consistently simple questions or complete sentences such as “The grass is green, the sky is ___.” After trying repeatedly, the team decided to use the testing she had done ten years prior, as apparently the brain functions do not really move around over the years. 

After we left the hospital that time, I cannot remember how long it took for her speaking to return to normal, but it did. Sarah continued to have seizures after that surgery, and at least one emergency room visit when we could not stop the seizures with her home emergency meds. To back up a bit, we had been observing 20+ seizures per month, and Sarah’s memory was worsening dramatically. When the doctors did the memory testing at office visits, it would be a good day if she remembered one of the three items she was told to remember from the beginning to the end of the visit. At home, Sarah had stopped using Uber to go to the store or to do some of the fun things she had been doing and her worries about her memory were increasing. After a particularly bad bout of seizures and hospital stays, we decided to take a shot at asking her trusted and knowledgeable (as in top of the field) neurosurgeon if there were any new methods of surgical interventions and he asked her to come up for a visit. And so the new round of surgeries began.

We have spent much time at Yale-New Haven Hospital over the past two decades, for Sarah’s care and that of her father, who passed away there in 2010, from leukemia. We know the floor plan, many of the staff, and truly love many of her caregivers there, so we have a funny sort of feeling of “homecoming” when we are there. We also have a family connection as both my father and his brothers went to undergraduate and medical school there and my niece went as an undergrad. We have developed strong friendships with many of the people there whom we see and talk to on a regular basis, aside from medical necessity. I am telling you this so that you understand our level of comfort at Yale. We trust their individual and collective intelligence and experience. Their passion for the science of the field and their compassion for the patients are palpable.

So when Sarah’s doctors recommend a treatment option, we know that it has been heavily weighed against risks of not doing something, or alternatives.

Having said that, however, we went into laser ablation thinking the worst that would happen was that Sarah might lose some of her depth perception. Of course, there was a possibility of stroke or death, but we chalked that up to being something they have to say to patients on their permission forms.

It turned out that the laser ablation surgery was over 12 hours long. We later learned that the computer had trouble recognizing Sarah’s face and shape when she was on the operating table so they had to do more measuring and redoing of MRI’s in between positioning the laser. They learned from that surgery with Sarah that they should put in markers (screws, basically) for all ablation patients that the computer can recognize during the surgery.

By all accounts, the surgery was a success in that there was no bleeding in the cranial cavity and her body was stable. After she woke up though, we noticed that she could not say most people’s names including that of her long-term boyfriend. After she began eating, I noticed that she was dropping things that she picked up with her left hand (she is a lefty). The team did further evaluations and determined that there was a heretofore unknown connection between the spots that were lasered and her area(s) of speech. (Note: Sarah has cortical dysplasia so her brain does not follow the usual patterns of speech, art, math etc. that you hear so often.) 

This is the part where, as her mom, I started thinking, “What the hell have we done?”  Sarah trusts me, her doctors, and in the past, her surgeon grandfather and great uncle to guide her in this process. We had all agreed that this was the best option if she wanted fewer seizures or the possibility of a seizure-free life. Now she had trouble talking, walking, and holding things. If there was ever a time to use the phrase “I was beside myself”, this was it.  On the recommendation of a good friend, we bought a deck of cards that had the letters of the alphabet with pictures on it. The first time we tried to go through the deck, Sarah could get two of the 52 correct. It took about ten days to get her into a speech, physical and occupational therapy program. When I was talking to one of the rehabilitation hospitals after trying to reach someone for days, I burst into tears. I kept thinking that if we didn’t begin intervention immediately, we were losing irretrievable ground.

As predicted by her doctors who have seen more of this than I have, obviously, Sarah did regain ground, quickly. Her stability and strength improved enough to stop physical and occupational therapy after a couple of months, but the speech therapy continued into the early fall and we are about to start it back up because Sarah has plateaued and wants to get past this point. When she is tired, or late in any day, word retrieval is more difficult and she wants it to be better.

In May, Sarah had her first cluster of seizures after the laser ablation. The seizures were identical to her pre-ablation seizures which made the medical team suggest that she should get the RNS, aka Neuropace, implanted sooner than later which is why that surgery took place in July.  The Neuropace has two permanent leads in her brain with a little computer on the end that sits flush with her skull. You cannot see it from the outside. During the surgery, Sarah had seizure activity while on the operating table and one more that we didn’t even see while she was in ICU.  At a follow-up visit in September, the neurologist showed us how quiet Sarah’s brain had been ever since that time. I had never seen her brain waves so even and quiet. It was shocking. The neurologist said that we cannot turn on the Neuropace yet, because there are no seizures for the computer to learn from and subsequently, be programmed to stop. Since that time, Sarah has had a couple of things that looked like they may have been seizures but were not, per the RNS. Yesterday, however, Sarah had two seizures because she was distracted and forgot to take her morning meds. I am happy to report that today we think she is back to her quieter brain state.

The good news, of course, is that overall  the seizures are few and far between. The toll that seizures take on her brain is even more evident by the absence of them. Sarah has begun to cook again, and she is always looking for another recipe or way to make something for Chris, who has severe allergies, and for herself. She has lost approximately 30 lbs as she is up and around much more than before, and is going to the gym with me once or twice a week. Last month, I looked into Sarah’s eyes and saw more iris than pupil. I cannot tell you how long it has been since I have really seen the blue in her eyes. This alone was enough to make me weep.

Sarah still contends with migraines and vertigo, but we are working with her medical team closer to home to fix that. The most important part of this story is what Sarah told the neuropsychologist, and that is that she would do it all over again. THIS is better than having 20+ seizures a month.

And that makes me happy, and maybe even relaxed.

Thank you to Sarah’s sister, Julia, for being there throughout this entire process. She could tell by the sound of my voice when I needed her to hop on a train and come up to New Haven. Thank you to all of my other family members, new and old, who supported us in a wide variety of ways. Thank you to our very dear friends for your daily encouragement, treats, and visits (you know who you are!). I truly could not have made it through a couple of very hard days without you.  We feel as though we are on the brink of a new life for all of us, as when Sarah is well, we are all better. My final thank you are to our medical team, for without you, this would not be.