Reading

Current Mood: content

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✨ glimmers and good things ✨

I've been wanting to get better at noticing the small, good things in my days, especially the quiet ones that are easy to miss when I'm overwhelmed, in pain, or just having a rough brain day. I keep going back to

3_good_things_a_day but figured I'd share them here too.

So this is me, starting a little series called glimmers and good things: three things each day (or as close to daily as I can manage) that made me smile, feel seen, feel safe, or feel a tiny spark of joy.
They won’t always be profound. Sometimes they’ll be “I had a nice sandwich” or “Carlos Alcaraz didn’t destroy my soul today.” But they’ll be real, and I want to keep track of them.

three tiny joys, glimmers, or moments of soft comfort from today
🧡 Someone sent me a gorgeous pic of ( Darren & Simone ) they found online because they knew I’d love it and wanted to make sure I’d seen it. It made me feel so known.

📚 Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant Tumblr reblogged my review of Rolling in the Deep (!!) and I am still ~~quietly~~ screaming about it.

🍕 Friday night comforts: pizza, mango Pepsi Max, Nutella ice cream, and Carlos Alcaraz winning his 3rd round match against Struff. We feast. 🎾💛

That’s me for today. If you feel like sharing your glimmers, I’d love to read them 💛
Be gentle with yourself, especially if the good things were hard to find.

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sunshine_revival Challenge #1 - Lights On! (part deux)

So the creative prompt for

sunshine_revialchallenge 1 is: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Mpreg is kinda popular on tennisblr right now - both Carlos/Jannik and Jack Draper/Jannik - and the other night before I went to bed,

deliriouslyshipping had posted responses to a couple of asks she'd had. One of which involved

I could see Simone or Darren putting her on their knee while they sit, guiding Jannik from wherever they are, trading off as needed. But they'll also set her down and let her explore more, try to teach her how to toss the tennis ball.

, I fell asleep with visions of Darren and Simone with a baby and... well.. y'all know I ship those coaches. So this happened (and apparently in mpreg it doesn't matter if you're 59 - you can still give birth)

( “I’m a grown man,” Simone says with confidence and absolutely no foresight. “I can bathe my own child.” )

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Draper v Cilic

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sunshine_revival Challenge #1 - Lights On!

Challenge #1 Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

June was a bit of a blur, honestly. I read a lot — but only finished four books. I posted 8 fics and wrote a lot more in my head. I got very distracted by Roland Garros (because how could you not?!), and now Wimbledon’s here to steal what’s left of my focus. That’s okay.

So I’m going into July with gentleness. Here’s what I’m hoping for, aiming toward — not in a pressure-y way, but in a “this would feel good if it happened” kind of way.

📚 Reading Goals
I want to read 6 books this month, or at least finish 6. There are currently 12 books in progress. Oops.
Also:

Prioritise a few summer TBR titles
Tackle my mountain of library loans (13 books out, most nearing their final renewals 😬)
Catch up on posting reviews
Keep going with “20 mins a day” as my baseline
Read for joy, not pressure

✍️ Writing Goals
There’s a lot on this list, but I’m not expecting to do all of it — I just want to keep the creative momentum going, especially when the ideas are flowing.

Finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack
Update:
- You Wouldn’t Take My Word for It If You Knew Who Was Talking
- I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You
- The Courage of My Convictions
- Wolf-Tethered
Maybe write or post a one-shot, just because·
Keep sharing, even if it’s scary — people want to read these stories

🌿 Life Goals
Soft intentions. Low stakes. Good food. Hopefully fewer appointments. But also:

Make a doctor’s appointment to talk about the arthritis diagnosis
Day trip to the RAMM in Exeter + sushi 🍣
Visit Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm 🦙
Reclaim one chaotic space at home (possibly the laundry chair)
Come back to Dreamwidth, and stay
Cook something that feels like summer
One proper lie-in, no guilt
One evening offline with candles, music, or silence

If I do all of this, amazing.
If I do half, still pretty great.
If I just read something I love and write one scene that lights me up, that’s enough too.

Let’s see what July brings 💛

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neil gaiman allegations

Not a GREAT week when it comes to ending sexual violence.

The whole Diddy thing. It doesn't matter how much proof there is.

Brad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.

On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.

Some thoughts from smarter people:

Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.

Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.

Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.

“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.”

“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”

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reclaiming my space (again)

I’ve blogged for basically my entire adult life.

LiveJournal, Tumblr, WordPress, here. There’s something about having a corner of the internet that’s mine - a space that isn’t a feed, isn’t an algorithm, isn’t speeding past at a thousand miles an hour. I miss that.

Lately, I’ve mostly been posting on Tumblr about tennis. And I love talking about tennis, but it’s started to feel like that’s all I do.

I go to work, I watch matches, I read. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I stare at the same three WIPs and hope they move. I’ve been telling myself that doesn’t leave me with much to say. But maybe that’s not true. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.

So: I’m coming back to Dreamwidth. I want this to be a quieter space. A bit rambly. A bit nostalgic. More fandom and life and writing and less “keeping up.”

I’m really hoping the new sunshine_revival community will help with that too - it feels exciting, like something gentle and welcoming is starting to grow again. I’m looking forward to seeing what the prompts will be.

I also need to figure out commenting again. I overthink it. I draft something and delete it and worry it sounds weird or too much or not enough. But I want to try. I miss the part where we actually talked to each other.

What you’ll probably find here:

snippets from whatever fic I’m poking at (shifter AU, packfic, omegaverse feelings, etc)
trope talk and character rambling
soft lifestyle things: what’s comforting me lately, little rituals, sensory joys
maybe playlists or screenshot dumps or prompt games
and the occasional “three things that got me through this week” kind of post

I’m aiming for 2–3 posts a week for now. Nothing fancy, just enough to make this feel like a living space again. If you’re here: hi. I’m glad you are.

Here’s to slow internet, quiet posting, and the kind of connection that doesn’t need to be loud to be real.

Current Mood: excited

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(no subject)

We are coming up to the point in the year where I usually post a warning that we are coming into the two weeks of the year where I get very excited about the sportsball...

...except, I don't know if you've noticed at all over the last year...

... but I haven't exactly *stopped* being very excited about the sportsball. At All.

I keep most of my squee and ramblings to my tennisblr but you can absolutely feel free to come friend me over there, should you wish to experience the full impact.

So. Um. FORZA JANNIK! 🧡🎾🦊😁

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fandom: music

Music Thursday

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Coldplay - In My Place

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A Hip & Knee Update

You know how you always hear that healthcare in this country is a postcode lottery? Yeah you don't realise how true that is until you move postcodes

So as y'all know I've been having joint issues since I was a teenager, had surgery for a tracking issue on my right knee, and knew that I had 'asymmetry between the ilia and the orientation of the acetabulum' and that my left leg was shorter than the other. I understood that my pelvis was wonky, basically.

But Devon, despite being the ones who completely fucking missed it all when I was a kid, are making up for it now, and I have a full report with a few different things going on. Some of it I expected, and some of it was new to me.

🦴 The Summary (In Doctor Speak):

Mild degenerative changes in both hips (early osteoarthritis)

Subchondral sclerosis (thickening of bone under worn cartilage)

Narrowing of joint spaces

Bony lipping and overcoverage of the femoral heads (impingement)

Asymmetry between the two sides of my pelvis and hip sockets

A projection (a kind of bony overgrowth) from the top of both hip sockets

Mild degenerative changes in the right knee, with some tendon-related inflammation

🧠 What That Actually Means:

In plain English: my hips are wearing down a bit - not dramatically, but enough to show changes on imaging. There’s less cushioning cartilage, and the bone underneath is reacting by thickening. There are also bony overgrowths, and my hip sockets are shaped in a way that is putting extra stress on the joint.

That asymmetry between the two sides of my pelvis and the “extended projection” from my hips sockets means I’ve had an unusual joint structure for a long time and has grown extra bone to balance it out...

The right knee is joining the party too, with some inflammation where tendons anchor into bone. Delightful.

🧭 So What Now?

I have an invitation to a 'long-term condition care planning' appointment where I find out what happens next. I've been in chronic pain for like 30 years and I didn't even know 'long-term condition care' was a thing until now.

The doctor's report says the arthritis is 'mild' in terms of x-ray severity but as anyone with chronic pain knows, “mild” on paper doesn’t always match what your body feels.

Next steps will probably include:

Physio, to keep everything moving and reduce pain
Maybe pain meds or topical treatments
Watching how things evolve and deciding whether more imaging is needed (like MRI) to get a clearer picture, especially around the hip structure

💬 How I’m Feeling:
Honestly, it's a lot. I'm tired. I'm frustrated and angry. But there's a lot of relief. There's a name for it. There is actually something wrong. It's not been in my head since I was a teenager. Knowing there's a structural reason for what I'm feeling, for the pain I've been in for so long, for how I struggle to move, for my day-to-day experiences for decades.

And I have a Li who can advocate for me when I can't do it myself. I've spent so many years not being listened to, to being brushed aside - but Li is helping me ask for the support I need, speaking up for me, for being incredibly clear to medical professionals that this is not something we're happy for me to have to just live with any more without further investigation. She's the one who insisted on the x-rays when we saw the doctor last month for the pain and stiffness and got the bursitis diagnosis.

So now we have the start of some answers an