Rabbit, rabbit! Gotta start the month out right!

According to the dentist, my teeth are mostly fine but another old filling has started to crack so he wants to take it out and put a crown on it. Since I have money in my FSA because I didn't order new glasses, I said let's do it! So as long as he gets the approval from my insurance, I should be having that done on 10/22. I'll probably still have to pay about $500 out of pocket, but that's better than the whole $1500. As always, he marveled about the Maryland bridge I have, which has been in place since 1994; even when I got it, my dentist at the time said it would probably only last 5 years, so it's quite impressive. "Those dentists back then knew what they were doing!" he told me today, and I wanted to be like, "1994 wasn't that long ago," but it was 31 years ago apparently. That just seems wrong.

Anyway, I could barely stay awake on my way home, so I crawled into bed and ended up sleeping for THREE HOURS, which I was not expecting. I will take it though.

I made pancakes for dinner, but as I was mixing up my wet ingredients, I put what I thought was vanilla in the mixing cup, but as soon as I smelled it, I knew it was the wrong bottle. It turned out to be fior di Sicilia, which is lovely and smells like an Italian bakery, but is not what I wanted in my pancakes. Whoops. The vanilla bottle is the same size, so I have now rearranged that shelf so the vanilla remains in front and the fior di Sicilia is back behind a bunch of stuff. I also redid my wet ingredients - it was only an egg and some milk, so not a huge loss to start over.

Now I'm going to watch the new episode of Slow Horses and then later, the season premiere of Abbott Elementary.

*

SO: "'We sell topsoil.' I never see anyone saying they sell bottomsoil."

Me: "I want my soil to be vers."

SO: "Hm?"

Me: "Soil that switches between top and bottom. I believe it's short for versatile, but I never inquired."

SO: "Maybe it's short for Versailles."

Pet-sitting over the weekend was ok, not great. Bleu was a good boy and a sweetheart. Brie was fine when we were inside, but once she got out, it took a couple of hours - repeatedly - to coax her back into the house, because even though she was happy to climb into my lap on the couch, she flinched away whenever I stood in the doorway and called her to come in. Even just sitting in a chair and propping the door open and putting down treats to lead her in took a while. So that was not great. Additionally, because of the cat, I had to take a ridiculous amount of allergy medication just to breathe and my throat and chest were itchy the whole time.

On the plus side, the pizza I ordered was delicious!

I took yesterday off and scheduled a grocery delivery, which never arrived. Apparently none of the drivers would take it? I don't know what that even means, but I took that personally. I cancelled the order, and then today, put in an Aldi order which arrived on time and only cost half as much. *hands*

I'm off again tomorrow for a dental appointment. We are battening down the hatches for a govt shutdown at work, but should be okay if it doesn't last too long. Otherwise, there could be furloughs.

If you, like me, want to escape into fanfic, here's this month's recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for September 2025 with 10 recs:

✭ 9 Batfamily and 1 Batfam/Spiderman crossover

***

Hotties Haunting the Narrative: a festive femslash ficathon

Come join our spooky sapphic ficathon featuring ghosts! Open now for prompts and fills, closing November 1st.

Mirror Kukalaka (Star Trek) is a searchable tag on AO3.

As of this writing, Mirror Spot (Star Trek) is not.

I am so glad that people are examining the question, "But what if the teddy bear was evil?"

Spot, too, deserves a rampage, being the best kitty.

I used part of my stuck-in-bed-with-owies day to catch up on my story index of 2025, at the end of which I discovered I never finished updating the one from 2024. 2024 will have to wait, because at the moment I am just floored by how many fucking limericks I have written this year.

If you subscribe to me on AO3 and you don't like my poetry, I am so, so sorry (insincere). This will continue unabated, as I just came to the (un)fortunate realization that I can do limericks for Kinktober.

For anyone whose ears perked up at the mention of Kinktober, here's a possible kink list for you.

For fans of body horror and/or excellent boss design, please enjoy the Gaping Dragon:



Look, I just love its whole vagina dentata/Venus fly trap/ribcage/entire-body-as-maw/spine-snapping-backbends thing, okay? And it’s a fun fight, despite its absurd number of hitpoints and ability to kill you if it bumps you with a leg while it’s charging.

For anyone curious about how the process of figuring out a Dark Souls boss fight can go, some samples:

https://youtu.be/nnZP6WkKRpg?si=M3abOUFachMgs6cP&t=1143
https://youtu.be/u2U5mlfI6zM?si=Scx5xCM_Z7lB4bbX&t=5560 (after getting Capra on the second try, Mapocolops enters the Montage Of Despair zone)

Important context for some of what’s happening: Dark Souls has no animation cancelling, so if you press the “light attack” button twice, your character will swing twice, and if you press the “heal” button they will start the (slow) flask-drinking animation, even if you’ve subsequently realized this was a terrible idea and are now frantically pressing the buttons to dodge and screaming at your character to move. This is part of what requires you to be more deliberate and tactical; you can’t button-mash your way through even if you can mash buttons quickly.

(Also, both Reggie and Mapo started off summoning an NPC for assistance, but the trouble with it in this fight is that the NPC AI is not very bright and tends to stand in front of the dragon and get eaten early, leaving the player dealing with a boss that still has the extra HP to make up for the summons.)

Conversely, after having an un-fun time with Capra, Symbalily reads the fight near-perfectly on her first try: https://youtu.be/ByTGX1NRFs0?si=VBbn5DLh0hK-Gqp5&t=3183

(Team Halberd for the win; that two-handed R2 is so good.)

Slow Horses: Bad Dates: We are so back, baby! ( spoilers ) Very interested in seeing where this is going.

I am less on the bandwagon and more cautious and disbelieving about the Mets' playoff chances. They control their own destiny for now, but having to play the Marlins to cement their wild card spot is giving me very unhappy flashbacks to past collapses. Also, if Tyrone Taylor is not in CF the rest of the way now that he's back from the IL, then I don't even know what we're doing here.

Lastly, I will be pet-sitting overnight at my brother's tomorrow, so hopefully the new-ish dogs are okay with that. We'll see how it goes!

*

Less exciting by a long shot than yesterday's Huntington treatment news, but I was feeling extremely icky today and then Genghis Khan by Miike Snow came on in the café where I stopped for lunch, and it made me chair dance.

I didn't link the official video. I linked a shot-for-shot remake from Phineas and Ferb, a tv show about which I know approximately nothing not found in the vid. And I ship it anyway.

Link: latetreatbonanza | AO3 Collection

Description: Do you have a late gift that you started a long time ago and need a little push to finish up? Post it for Late Treat Bonanza! Late Treat Bonanza is an event designed to motivate people to finish up old gifts for a deadline. You can add your late gifts to our collection, which will keep it hidden until everything gets revealed all at once on December 25th! We also provide a 1-week anonymous period to make it a Secret Santa-like gifting occasion. If you've been having trouble finishing up a late treat, maybe this event will provide you the motivation you need!

Even if you aren't planning on making anything, if you've signed up for exchanges and other gift-giving events in the past, you may want to sign up to indicate your interest in receiving late gifts. People already working on treats or looking for some old requests for inspiration might be motivated to create something for you!

* Note that Late Treat Bonanza is now running once a year during this Christmas time period, so get your late treats in now while you can!

Schedule:
Sign-ups end/works due: 24 December 23:59 PST (UTC-8)
Creator reveals/collection closed: 31 December 23:59 PST (UTC-8)

BBC article.

Bring tissues if you, like me, are susceptible to Really Good News.