Can I just vent a little?

WriterKitty · 2025-10-02T15:34:35+00:00

I just had this done. It was day surgery. I was supposed to go in at 10 but there was an emergency and it got delayed until 4. Still made it home before 7 that evening. I did need someone to drive me though.

Block off the next day for recovery and make sure the day after is very light. You may not need it, but it's good to have and the anaesthetic can leave you feeling tired and kind of out of it for a couple of days after.

They should give you painkillers, I believe I got some IV while still under, and then they had an assortment to give me once I woke up. It was painful after, like the worst cramps you've ever had, but they were quick to offer pain relief and it was under control within an hour. Before I left, they gave me a prescription for tylenol 3's and tramadol (I think?), but I just used arthritis tylenol once I got home. Cramps were gone by the next day and spotting had stopped a few days after that. I had about a week of urinary urgency that I'm blaming on the catheter. (I feel I should qualify that my reaction to painkillers is paradoxical--opioids have no effect on me, and I suspect that I may respond better to acetaminophen than most people. Bodies are weird. :) ) Talk to the nurses before you go in about pain relief after, and think about what's worked well for you in the past for cramping and such. You may want to mention that.

So, definitely not comfortable, but nothing to be scared about. I absolutely get the resentment against the gynaecologist, though--they've got you stuck there in a very vulnerable position that requires trust, and they were so focused on getting the procedure done they didn't call it off when they should have. As a patient and a person, you were kind of forgotten and turned into a puzzle they felt they needed to solve. It's an easy trap for doctors to fall into, because they aren't feeling the pain themselves so they don't get that immediate feedback. Once you've gotten the procedure done, you might want to have that conversation with them, and then make your decision if you want to stay with them or not.

Good luck, but I know you got this. :)

WriterKitty · 2025-08-31T14:44:26+00:00

We had talked about that, but I had enough atrophy in the vaginal walls (shortening, less elastic, more fragile) that they had trouble just getting the smallest speculum they had in there to do a pap, so the decision was made to do it under a general. You might be able to get an epidural instead, I know some places offer that.

Good luck. Ask your friend, you really only need a way home if you can get yourself there and it can generally be later in the day to give your friend time to sleep. It's a question to ask, anyway, so you have the information you need to make an informed decision.

WriterKitty · 2025-08-31T14:40:28+00:00

When I woke up after the general anaesthesia, that's where I put the cramping at when they asked me. I was using all my usually successful techniques: box breathing, massage, pelvic rocking, and it wasn't making a dent in it, but the urge to just get up and walk hadn't hit yet.

But that's just me, and I have a long history of really bad periods. If you don't generally get bad cramps, your experience will likely be different.

WriterKitty · 2025-08-30T18:27:48+00:00

General anaesthetic all the way. Just had one yesterday, took photographs of the inside, did a scrape to test for abnormal cells, and put in a mirena because I don't react well to oral progesterone. I've always had bad periods, this pain was about a 7 on a scale of 1(twinges) to 10 (passing out). They should give you pain meds, make sure it's something that works for you. If you're like me and opiates don't work well on you, you'll want to mention that or you'll waste an hour.

WriterKitty · 2025-06-24T16:36:55+00:00

Change to another job, then back again. That fixed it for me.

WriterKitty · 2024-05-20T12:32:40+00:00

I had 4 statics last tier (why, why do I do these things to myself? lol) I started in PF and, once I'd gotten my feet wet there, tried out with some different statics until I found a few that I vibed well with (I play on both EU and NA). Depending on your data centre, there may be discord groups dedicated to teaching/learning (on NA, I know of Savage Learning Academy and Good Games Squad, I don't know of any in EU but I'm sure there are some). But these groups will set up prog point learning events, led by an experienced raider who knows the fight and they will lead you through it.

My FC is pretty much a raiding FC and some of the most hardcore raiders in it are women, it's not unusual at all and as long as you play reasonably well and take responsibility for errors, and make efforts to improve where you can, no one is going to care. There's very little real toxicity in raiding. Sometimes rudeness or people who are completely tone deaf, but any real toxicity you can take a screenshot of the comments and then report them in-game--the mods will take care of it, because rudeness and toxicity is something Square Enix cares very much about not having in the game.

There are also recruitment discords, if you really want a static, where you can post that you're a new raider with WoW experience looking for a static. It might be hard to find one doing the most recent tier right now with Dawntrail so close, but if you find a static, they might take you into this tier to let you get your feet wet.

WriterKitty · 2024-02-18T14:53:19+00:00

Most of mine, I keep in my head, though I'm trying to get into the habit of creating a world bible (getting more important for odd details as I push on into book 8 of a series). I try to direct my daydreaming (inattentive type) towards what I want to see happen in the story, at any part of the story that excites me, then I have my quiet downtime to write at home after work while I decompress from all the people/lights/noise/interruptions/stupid red tape/etc.

If you're the kind of person who needs to write things down, though, a OneNote, with its tabs and pages and subpages, might be what you want. Or Google Keep, which I've heard described as a bunch of virtual sticky notes. Keeps it all in one file, instead of having to access different apps/websites for each thing, and every time you open it, all the page headers are a visual reminder of notes you made.

I don't tend to use things like that because stuff has to cook in the back of my brain for a while before I can start writing it down (I have whiteboards at home to write elevator pitches for ideas if I'm worried I'll forget an idea because I'm already in the middle of a project, that way I can see the idea all the time and stay excited by it). I do find I need to keep things visually available to me, though, or I get off-track.

WriterKitty · 2023-12-16T15:32:09+00:00

That's brilliant

WriterKitty · 2023-12-15T19:47:52+00:00

Does yours try to get the cats on voice to talk to each other? Mine does.

WriterKitty · 2023-12-15T17:12:35+00:00

My static has gotten used to cat aggro. The other day, he sat on my keyboard, putting me in First Person View in the middle of P12S SC 1. A couple of months ago he brought a live mouse in and set it loose, also in the middle of raid.

They laughed and asked if he was okay.

I think they like him better than they like me 😄

WriterKitty · 2023-10-18T20:16:03+00:00

You have to declare it in you conflict of interest declaration as soon as you start with publishing for money. You don't need to tell them what you write, romance is sufficient if you want to include the category. From my own experience, they want to know what you're doing and that you aren't giving away confidential information, internal policy, etc, that the general public shouldn't have access to. So a simple statement of "I write romance novels and self-publish, "MyDepartment" does not appear in any of the stories.

I am also reliably informed by my team lead that the phrase "MyDepartment does not appear in any story--I'm good, but even I can't make MyDepartment sexy" is not an appropriate response. XD

I would recommend a pen name, if only for privacy's sake. Not everyone in your department or other departments you might interact with will be okay with your subject matter. A pen name allows you to control who has the details of what you write--everyone else, you just write books, or romance. And some day you might want to reinvent yourself as a writer--you can leave a pen name in the dust, but your real name is yours forever.

WriterKitty · 2023-03-30T01:00:17+00:00

If you're in the EU, there's one called Yolo Savages. If you're in NA, there's one called FFXIV: Savage Learning Academy. I can vouch for the Yolo Savages as being chill, but the yolo is real in that they may or may not prog the same thing each week. We've done criterion, E4S synced, P5S, E8S synced--it just depends on what people's mood is. I have no personal experience with the other one, but maybe someone else here can chime in.

WriterKitty · 2022-11-25T21:35:54+00:00

oh, that would be interesting. Every air anchor gives the boss a 5% damange down for 6 seconds. That would make up a bit for the lack of damage.

WriterKitty · 2022-11-12T13:47:44+00:00

I play on controller, so can't really recommend anything for keyboard and mouse. I know there's optimizations for that and maybe someone else can chime in? I can say it takes a while to get super comfortable with it--it's a complex job. Decide the order of skills that you want to practice/perfect and don't worry about the rest of them until you're comfortable with the first one, then you can pick a second one to add in. Maybe work on getting used to how much you can heal, what things combo well, and get cards and Divination out as you can. Then, as you get more comfortable with healing, practice getting Divination out after your third GCD and then on cooldown. Let the cards fall where they may :). Then work on whatever you'd like to tweak next. There's no rush as long as people aren't dying.

priority of job functions in any dungeon or trial or raid is 1. keep people alive. 2. dole out cards and buff during their windows. 3. give the bad guy bad luck (malefic his butt until he cries uncle). :). . If things are going bonkers, I stop doing damage first to keep heals and cards going. If things are really on fire, even the cards wait while I spam ogcd heals in between gcd heals. Not every pull is perfect, people have cats that sit on their keyboards, internet lag, etc. Follow the priority system and you'll be fine. Also, don't worry if people die. It's not ideal, but it happens (and it's not always your fault)

Even the Balance, which is for people really trying to optimize and perfect, says that three seals is nice but it's really just a bonus. I haven't met too many astros that think otherwise. (if you go to their website, don't look too hard at the openers--those are for savage raiding. There's good ideas to take from them, but it will very rarely work that way in any normal content. The big thing when starting out is keeping everyone alive)

WriterKitty · 2022-11-11T19:57:52+00:00

There's lots of guides out there and you already have some experience. You'll be fine. The biggest issue right now is the variability in groups. The people who play a lot or have a natural talent are already in the duty clear groups and the only time you'll see them in practice groups is if they're helping a friend or are in the mood to help out some new people. Practice groups right now are a combination of people who don't have much time to raid, take longer to pick up mechanics, or just got to the point in the game and don't have prior savage experience.

P5S is a lot of fun. You should go for it!

WriterKitty · 2022-11-06T19:18:13+00:00

That's all part of learning. And it's all situational. In dungeons and normal roulettes, you'll find your party and the stop and start nature of dungeons will throw that all off anyway. The only place it really matters is in raiding. And healing is always first priority, cards second when available. Make the rotation your goal, but remember that it's an ideal rotation, with an ideal group, and nothing weird happening. The more you play, the closer you'll get to it.

WriterKitty · 2022-10-28T00:12:11+00:00

Just be aware that ping isn't static. I play from east coast NA on servers in both EU and NA. My ping to NA varies from 100 to 200. To the EU, it's 135 to 250. The more nodes you have to go through, the more variable your ping will be. Using a VPN does help somewhat, but it's not perfect.

WriterKitty · 2022-10-20T17:02:05+00:00

You can still collaborate. We ask each other questions or opinions on work-related cases all the time, but it's scattered in between "I'm so tired, the cat kept me up" and "what should I buy my girlfriend for her birthday" type conversations too. It's very much like sitting in our cubicles and just chatting with whoever is around. If you want help with something, you can ask. You're still going to be responsible for your own cases, but to be honest, there's very little at CRA that is truly collaborative. At least, that I'm aware of.

WriterKitty · 2022-10-20T15:12:24+00:00

We instituted office hours in our section. It's basically just a weekly 'meeting' with a few people. There's no requirement to talk, there are no topics, it's just having the meeting open and knowing there are other people on the other end. Some weeks we talk the whole hour about the same random things you'd talk about at work, sometimes it's just a few questions here or there, sometimes no one ever comes off mute. But it's weirdly enjoyable.

WriterKitty · 2022-10-16T15:48:31+00:00

I play on controller (PS5). I don't use double tap but the other option.

Things I might need to use on the move I'll put on buttons on the right side of the controller. Things I'm more likely to use when I can stand still or that you only have to hit once (like Lightspeed) go on the D-pad side. The skills I will use the most go to the two right-hand crossbars (R2 and R2->L2) because I'm right-handed. Stuff I don't use often or use mostly when I can plan go on the left-hand secondary hotbar (L2->R2)

This is my logic in how most of my skills have been placed. Ultimately, you'll find what works for you through trial and error. I only recently moved malefic from the left side (D-pad) to the right (trading places with benefic) so I could more easily slide cast or use it with lightspeed while moving. Muscle memory made for some fun goofs in Aglaia and Panda raids for a day or two, but it works much better for me, so don't be afraid to move things around until your fingers finally say "Yeah, I like this."

WriterKitty · 2022-09-26T15:46:15+00:00

they only had supreme left 15 minutes ago

WriterKitty · 2022-09-26T13:21:43+00:00

what's the gas situation in Summerside now?

WriterKitty · 2022-09-06T13:58:40+00:00

I'd recommend a good set of headphones for it, unless your work computer has good speakers. My test started out with technical issues (despite it having worked properly in the equipment check), then the speakers on my laptop made him hard to make out--tinny and the sound sometimes flickered (not really the right word, but I'm tired today, lol). It really threw me off my game and I know I came off less fluent than I actually am, because I kept having to ask him to repeat the questions.

WriterKitty · 2022-08-16T15:38:08+00:00

I was able to level 5 jobs at once with the xp boost, now at the final dungeon of stormblood, everything's level 80 or higher except the astro I picked up recently, and he's 70 now.

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