I Was Recently Denied Life-saving Gallbladder Removal Surgery By My GI Specialist Due To Being "too Fat"

Get More Library! California edition

Is one of your New Year's Resolutions to read more books? Me too. Are you in a situation where buying books is hard, carrying books is hard, storing books is hard, and/or your local library doesn't have enough of the kind of books you want to read? Tired of waiting for your library's ZipBooks queue?

If you live in California, under the cut is a big list of public libraries who offer free library cards to California residents 18 and older through some form of online registration. Includes links to catalogs and links to online registration forms. Some libraries listed here offer permanent/physical cards if you go into a branch, offer permanent cards online, offer cards to minors/out-of-state residents, etc. I've made notes on each library, but there's also a link to the library website if you need more info.

Nearly all of these libraries require a photo ID and proof of address for a full, permanent library card for a person 18 or older. Persons under 18 can typically get a permanent card with parent permission/signature. Some libraries allow teens to get a permanent library card if they have photo ID and proof of address, even if a parent is not present. I didn't make note of these nuances in this list, because this list focuses on digital access to materials. If you're traveling, you might find it worth half an hour to pop into a library branch and get that card.

These digital cards generally give you access to Libby, and some to Hoopla, but I haven't checked all of them. I've noted which ones are on Libby.

While the California libraries ask for your physical address, California public libraries are required by state law to protect the privacy of their patrons, and they are not allowed to disclose or sell the address you provided to any third parties.

If you don't live in California but you do live in the US, I highly recommend looking through the directory of libraries in your state (you'll need to expand the search options and enter the name of your state).

If you know of a California library that offers free cards online to all CA residents, even if those digital cards expire, please drop me a line and I'll look it up and add it.

If you want to make a list for a different state and drop me a line, I will add a link to that post in this post.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried most of these and the information contained here is what was present and available as of the writing of the post. It's possible I misread, misinterpreted, or flat out missed some information. If you find an error in this info, please let me know!

Queer Liberation Library: You only need an email address to obtain one. You have to attest that you live in the US, but they don't ask for your address or your age. This is my one exception to the "California" filter on this list, because it's incredibly useful and awesome. Gives you access to their Libby catalog.

Alameda County Library: Get an eCard online (valid for 30 days), or a permanent card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & a lot more. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Alameda Free Library: Get an eCard online (valid for 2 months), or a permanent card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & other services. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Altadena Library District: Get an eCard online (doesn't seem to expire), or a permanent card in person. CloudLibrary, Hoopla, & other services. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Arcadia Public Library: Get an eCard online (valid for 90 days, takes up to 48 hours), or a permanent card in person. Libby & Hoopla, possibly others (I couldn't find a list). (Catalog | Apply Online)

Burbank Public Library: Get an eCard online (valid for 1 year), or a permanent card in person or by phone (info on their website). Libby, Hoopla, & other services. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Burlingame Public Library: Get an eCard online (doesn't seem to expire), or a permanent card in person. Libby & Hoopla. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Commerce Public Library: Get an eCard online (valid for 1 month), or a permanent card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & other services. (Catalog | Apply Online)

El Dorado County Library: Get an eCard online (temporary, but I couldn't find any information on when it expires), or a permanent card in person. Libby & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

El Segundo Public Library: Get an eCard online (temporary, don't know how long it lasts), permanent card in person. Libby, Kanopy, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Escondido Public Library: Get an eCard online, physical in person. Libby, Hoopla, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Fullerton Public Library: Get an eCard online, physical in person. Libby & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Humboldt County Library: Get an eCard online, physical in person. County residents can get a permanent card; non-residents get an express card. Both get you access to Libby. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Mendocino County Library: Get an eCard online (valid for a year), permanent card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Monterey County Free Libraries: Apply online for a card by mail (CA residents only), or get a card immediately in person at a branch (CA & out of state residents). (Catalog | Apply Online)

Oakland Public Library: Get a temporary card online (valid for 30 days), permanent card in person. Small chance you can get your card verified (and therefore permanent) by calling, but I haven't tried it yet. Check out their FAQ. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Riverside County Library: Get a card online (unclear how long it's valid for), permanent card in person. Out-of-state residents can get a card for $10/yr. Cloud Library, Comics Plus, Kanopy & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Riverside Public Library: Get an eCard online (doesn't expire), physical card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

San Bernardino County Library: Get an eCard online, physical card in person. Libby, Comics Plus, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

San Diego Public Library: Get an eCard online (temporary, but doesn't say how long it lasts), permanent card in person. Cloud Library, Comics Plus, Kanopy, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

San Jose Public Library: Get a temporary eCard online (valid for 1 year), physical card in person. Libby, Hoopla, & much more. (Catalog | Apply Online)

South San Francisco Public Library: Get a temporary card online (valid for 30 days), permanent card in person. Cards (both kinds) expire after 3 years. Libby, Hoopla, & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

Stanislaus County Library: Get a temporary card online (valid for 30 days, takes 48-72 hours to process), permanent card in person. Libby & others. (Catalog | Apply Online)

For those saying "you CAN heal!!" or stuff like that- no, we can't.

Like, yeah, we can go to therapy and live meaningful lives, but people with C-PTSD's brains develop differently. That's something we have to live with forever.

It's not a 'woe is me' thing or 'guess I'll never try to heal'. I'm happy. I live a great life.

But it's a lot to process and come to grips with, no matter how much work we do on ourselves. We deserve to be able to grapple with the enormity of that without positivity shoved down our throats.

insane to me that because of how my parents acted towards me as a child my brain was irrevocably changed and now i just have to suffer the rest of my life because of it

18+ 616 Steve/Tony Discord Book Club: Avengers Assemble (2012) #1-8

It's Avengers Book Club! We are reading Avengers Assemble (2012) #1-8, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. This is the arc "Zodiac." This is a good comic where nothing bad happens to the good guys. I promise.

This run is partying like it's the 2012 MCU Avengers, because that's the team lineup, and it is additionally partying like it's the 2010 616 v4 Avengers, because Tony's wearing Bleeding Edge, everyone knows where their Infinity Gems are, and nobody has mindwiped anybody! Refreshing!

Come join us on You Gave Me A Home, an 18+ comics Steve/Tony Discord server! We are located at discord.gg/stevetony! And we've got plenty of stuff going on that isn't Book Club, if you need a place to chill with your fellow Steve/Tony fans today. It has sure been a day.

Midnight Mass studies

timelapse

Girlies and gays playing bg3

if u want a safe space to play bg3 consider joining my server for the girls and gays on discord💕

Channels include and not limited to

-memes~ ofc

-one shot~ game sessions will be in the future hosted by my friend

-rants and opinions ~so u can share ur hot takes :)

-18 plus~ incase u wanna share something so minors r safe and u can be comfortable

-multiple voice channels~ to play bg3 or just chill

Don’t be shy to DM me for more info🏳️‍🌈👯‍♀️

Server invite:

Discord

Join the Tadpole Chaos Discord Server!

Check out the Tadpole Chaos community on Discord - hang out with 74 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

I've been disabled for almost 29 years. Here's what I've learned.

Tablets sink and capsules float. Separate out your tablets and capsules when you go to take them. Tip your head down when taking capsules and up when taking tablets. Liquigels don't matter, they kinda stay in the middle of whatever liquid is in your mouth.

If your pill tastes bad, coat it with a bit of butter or margarine. I learned this from my mom, who learned it from a pharmacist.

Being in pain every day isn't normal. Average people experience pain during exceptional moments, like when they stub their toe or jam their finger in a door, not when they sit cross-legged.

Make a medical binder. Make multiple medical binders. I have a small one that comes with me to appointments and two big ones that stay at home, one with old stuff and one with more recent stuff.

Find your icons. Some of mine include Daya Betty (drag queen with diabetes), Stef Sanjati (influencer with Waardenburg syndrome and ADHD), and Hank Green (guy with ulcerative colitis who... does a bunch of stuff). They don't have to be disabled in the same way as you. They don't even have to be real people. Put their pictures up somewhere if you want; I've been meaning to decorate my medical binders with pictures of my icons.

Take a bin, box, bag, basket, whatever and fill it with items to cope with. This can be stuff for mentally coping like colouring books or play clay or stuff for physically coping like pain medicine or physio tape.

Decorate your shit! My cane for at home has a plushie backpack clip hanging from the end of the handle and my cane for going places is covered in stickers. All of my medical binders have fun scrapbooking paper on the outside. Sometimes, I put stickers and washi tape on my inhalers and pill bottles. I used my Cricut to decorate my coping bin with quotes from my icons, like "I've seen enough of Ba Sing Se" and "I need you to be angrier with that bell".

If a flare-up is making you unable to eat or keep food down, consider going to the ER. A pharmacist once told me that since my eye flares can make me so nauseous that I cannot eat, then I need to go to the hospital when that happens.

Cola works wonders for nausea. I have mini cans of Diet Pepsi in my coping bin.

Shortbread is one of the only things I can eat when nauseous. Giant Tiger sells individually-wrapped servings of shortbread around Christmas or the British import store sells them year-round. I also keep these in my coping bin.

Unless it violates a pain contract or something, don't be afraid to go behind your doctor's back to get something they are refusing you. I got my cardiologist referral by getting in with a different NP at my primary care clinic than who I usually saw. I switched from Seroquel to Abilify by visiting a walk-in.

If you have a condition affecting your abdomen in some way (GI issues, reproductive problems, y'know) then invest in track pants that are too big. I bought some for my laparoscopy over a year ago and they've been handy for pelvic pain days, too. I've also heard loose pants are good for after colonoscopies.

Do whatever works, even if it's weird. I've sat on the floor of the Eaton Centre to take my pills. I've shoved heating pads down my front waistband to reach my uterus.

High-top Converse are good for weak ankles. I almost exclusively wear them.

You can reuse your pill bottles for stuff. I use my jumbo ones to store makeup sponges and my long skinny ones to hold a travel-size amount of Q-Tips.

Just because your diagnostics come back with nothing, it doesn't mean nothing is wrong. Maybe you were checking the wrong thing, or the diagnostic tool wasn't sensitive enough. I have bradycardia episodes even though multiple cardiac tests caught nothing. I probably have endometriosis even though my gynecologist didn't see anything.

You can bring your comfort item to appointments, and it's generally a green flag when someone talks to you about it. I brought a Squishmallow turkey (named Ulana) to my laparoscopy and they had her wearing my mask when I woke up. I brought a Build-A-Bear cat (named Blinx) to another procedure and a nurse told me that everyone in the hall on the way to the procedure room saw him and were talking about how cute he was. Both of those ended up being positive experiences and every person who talked to me about my plushies was nice to me. If you don't feel comfortable having it visible to your provider during the appointment, you can hide it in your bag and just know it's there, or if you're in a video appointment, you can hold it below frame in your lap.

Get a small bucket, fill it with stuff, and stick it in your bed (if you have room for it). I filled a bucket with Ensure, juice boxes, oatmeal bars, lotion, my rescue inhaler, etc. in October 2023 in anticipation of my laparoscopy and I still have it in my bed as of January 2025.

If your disability impacts your impulse control (e.g. ADHD, bipolar disorder), you should consider setting limits around your spending -- no more than X dollars at a time, nothing online unless it's absolutely necessary, and so on. Or, run these purchases by someone you trust before committing to them; I use my BFF groupchat to help talk sense into myself when I buy stuff.

Feel free to add on what you've learned about disability!

DRAGON AGE info spreadsheet

i've made THIS SPREADSHEET that has different information about Dragon Age media, such as:

· the canon ages of DA important characters · known info about the DATV companions · where you can find the DATV devs on social media · a tab with relevant links to archived lost media, interesting dragon age posts, official content, and other useful things like this sheet

everything with sources :)

(these images are previews. i strongly advice you to check the sheet itself and not these images for updated info in case there were mistakes, i added new stuff, for links and for better quality.)

some of the things i'll be adding to the sheet next are (probably):

· a sheet with all dragon age media in chronological order (+ relevant links) · visual references (official clear images of the companions mostly, + other things) · more characters in the "character ages" sheet (if there's an interest, let me know if that's the case) · and characters' nationalities (in-game and irl approximations)

keep in mind that there are spoilers all over it, for all games (even datv, who hasn't yet come out at the time of posting this) and for other dragon age media (books, comics, etc.) i did my best to add warnings though!

reach out to me (mostly here or twitter) if there are any mistakes, or if you have any sort of feedback regarding the contents, formatting or accessibility! i'd appreciate it a lot! and talk to me to if you'd be willing to collaborate with me for the upcoming information! i could use the help.

and if the link is broken:

if got it from a reblog, look at the original post and check if it works there (in case i changed it for whatever reason)

if not, just reach out to me (op)

there's more information on the sheet itself. make sure to scroll all the way down and to the right to see all of the sheet :]

i hope this is useful for someone. i did this because most people don't take the time to source their information, and i also find it more comfortable to have most stuff in one place. it took (and continues to take) a loooong time to do this lol it was exhausting. thanks for your attention!

It’s October! You know what that means... 🎃 (via kxvo)

My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.