sroni

Title: As Water Unto Wine (the “All Thy Passions” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13, I think. No worse than the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” by aadler

Notes: Apologies for how short this section has been and how long it has taken for me to post. I've been knocked literally flat on my back due to back pain, and that is really not a position that is conducive to writing. Today has been my first day sitting up in a while.

Part One: Can be found here.
Part Two: Can be found here.

( As Water Unto Wine (the ‘All Thy Passions’ Remix) )

Round 7 of Circle of Friends is still here! You can find the stories at cof_remix.

Title: As Water Unto Wine (the “All Thy Passions” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13, I think. No worse than the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” by aadler

Explanation: I am posting this story in parts because this month has been a crazy, crazy month and I’ve dislocated my shoulder twice in nine days, with the second one being yesterday. I will do this story quickly, but it just wasn’t ready in time to post completely today. I talked to aadler, and didn’t make the decision on my own. I could have posted what I’ve written so far and had a complete story that I’d be (mostly) satisfied with, but it’s not the story I wanted to tell yet. But it will be. Oh how it will be.
Part One: Can be found here.

( As Water Unto Wine (the ‘All Thy Passions’ Remix) )

I saw that aadler already posted a thing about it, so here’s a bit more detail on everything that’s happened regarding my husband.

• Irish had a deadline at work on Wednesday, and he never eats right or gets enough sleep beforehand. Everyone in the office loses weight in the time leading up to a deadline.
• He and his coworkers went out celebrating after the deadline. Normally he doesn’t get home until two thirty at the earliest on these nights, but he came home by eleven thirty and went directly to sleep.
• He woke up an hour later and started vomiting. I assumed it was a hangover.
• He was still sick the next day, didn’t eat anything, but did walk to and from the store.
• Friday he got weird. I woke up to him having plugged the bathroom sink up, knocked everything in, and was flooding it with the water going full blast, muttering about “45 degrees 45 45 45 45”. I managed to get him back to bed. He talks in his sleep, so I assumed it was just an extension of that.
• He started making less and less sense, but whenever I said I thought he needed to go to the doctor, he’d say that he was fine, he didn’t need a doctor. It was one of the few times he was actually coherent.
• He did something that, on the surface, isn’t that worrying but that I have literally never seen him do without a reason for it, and that worried me more than the bathroom flooding. I tried to get him to eat something, thinking that he probably had low blood sugar since he hadn’t eaten since Wednesday night and it was at that point 3 on Friday afternoon. He wouldn’t eat, and I called his parents to help me get him to the doctor.
• His parents texted me when they thought they were fifteen minutes away. He was able to help me get pyjama pants on him and his slippers on him, but not his shirt.
• By the time his parents got there five minutes later (because traffic was actually good for them), he’d gone mostly non responsive. He’d look at us when we talked, and he’d grunt, but he wouldn’t say any actual words beyond “yeah” and “nuh”.
• We called an ambulance and waited.
• In the ten minutes or so that we waited for the ambulance, his breathing changed and we called back. The dispatcher was nice and kept us calm and told us that they were also sending the fire brigade so that someone would get there as fast as possible. He had Irish’s dad put his hand on Irish’s chest and just say “now” every time Irish breathed. He stayed on the phone with us until the firemen got there.
• By the time they got there, he’d stopped responding completely, other than flicking the eyes at us sometimes when we talked to him. He’d been able to squeeze my hand when I asked him to before, and he wasn’t able to by then.
• Irish’s blood sugar was 24 when normal levels are 6.
• We got to ride in the ambulance with the sirens going. Not as much fun as it sounds, and I never thought it sounded particularly fun.
• By the time we got to the hospital, his blood sugar had climbed to 35.
• He responded to insulin treatments and the doctors thought it was Diabetes Type One, because he wasn’t showing any signs of abdominal pain, which pancreatitis would have. They flat out told us it was Diabetes Type One.
• He was awake and talking a little bit when I got to visit with him; he said “I love you, too” and squeezed my hand. I sang our wedding songs to him quietly and he touched my face.
• They moved him up to ICU before we left for the night.
• He was responding slower to the insulin drip than he should be if it were diabetes, so they tested him for pancreatitis on Saturday morning. Turns out that’s what it is, even though he didn’t get the abdominal pain until Saturday afternoon.
• He was awake and talking Saturday and they said he was doing much better, but still needing to level out his blood. He had the lowest number of something in his blood when he came in than they had ever seen in the ICU on someone still alive. (I thought they said the acid in his blood, but it might not have been; I’ve honestly been taking in a lot of information the last couple of days and so I’m getting some details wrong.)
• He took a turn downhill Sunday morning. At 5:30, he started saying things that didn’t make sense again, and his breathing got shallower. They decided to intubate him and have him on the ventilator, and also do dialysis.
• They told me that he was fine and that I didn’t need to come in before visiting hours.
• We went in to visit him this afternoon. He’s really swollen from the fluids but he’s doing much better. They have him in a medically induced coma for now, just to give his body a chance to heal. His blood levels are actually equalizing better than they have been, so the dialysis is doing its job. They have him on a broad spectrum antibiotic for the pancreatitis.

And that’s where we’re at right now.

I’ve been staying with his parents, but I’ll be going home tomorrow evening.

Round 6 of Circle of Friends is still here! You can find the stories at cof_remix.

Title: Sharp Knife of a Short Life (the ‘If I Die Young’ Remix)
Author: Sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Mild cursing, at any rate.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and the WB and UPN.
Original story: “Vigil” by eilandesq
Notes: aadler is still working on his remix, so this is by no means to replace that; I checked with him to find out if he'd like me to do a pinch hit for until he finishes is, and he agreed. And then my mom arrived in Ireland and I proceeded to get sick as a dog, so I haven't had a chance to work on it until today. So, Eiland, I hope you like your pinch hit, and I can't wait to read Aadler's real story for you!

( Sharp Knife of a Short Life (the ‘If I Die Young’ Remix )

It's been forever, I know. Like, forever. I'm mostly okay. We're in a new flat, which is definitely nice, trying to do some writing, mostly failing at that but gonna keep trying.

Dealing with some health issues. I'll be doing really well and then I tank hard, and can barely function, and then I'll get back to doing well. The last couple weeks have been hardest; all of a sudden, I'll be walking and lose feeling in my legs. The first time it happened, I just kept walking despite not being able to feel, and managed to stay upright and keep up with Spouse-Type-Creature and his dad. The second time, not so much, and I hit the ground.

I don't really know how to describe the feeling. It's like when you were a kid and you'd kink the water hose, and the water would stop flowing, and then you'd unbend it and the water would start going again, usually in a huge gush because it had built up behind the kink. If we imagine that my spine is the water hose, I get this "pinchy" feeling in the lower part of my back, near my hips, and feeling in my legs slows to a trickle of water. And then my spine unkinks and a gush of water happens and I'm good again, until it kinks back up and we start over again.

That's not a perfect description of the feeling, but I think it communicates it well enough.

That happened last Monday (the 16th). The falling, I mean. Today, I had to walk to the same place I went on Monday, which is about two miles away. It took me 45 minutes to get there and another 45 minutes to get back, because I stopped whenever I started to get that "pinchy" feeling, because I wasn't on a time crunch and I figured it would be better to stop and stretch rather than push and possibly fall again.

I also sang the entire way and never got out of breath, which means that me being slow is due entirely to my hips and back and not do cardio issues. A month ago, I wsa going at Google Maps speed for walking, and now I was 12 minutes over that for two miles. Which is sad, but hopefully I'll get there again.

Anyway, at one point, I was thinking about my dad's remix from a couple years ago, with Vi and Pike. Man in Motion (The Free Falling Remix). And thinking about it made me realize that those two songs would actually mesh together really well.

So I did it.

It can be found here.

I am proud of it.

Round 5 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.

Title: Give Me Three Steps (The “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Nothing stronger than would have been on the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “Empathy” by eilandesq
Notes: This is actually a pinch-hit, simply to meet the deadline. The real remix should be along sometime later on the 6th, possibly as late as the 7th, though hopefully not. So, yay, Eiland gets two stories!

( “Give Me Three Steps (the Better Part of Valour Remix)” )

I've miscarried at around the three month mark for the second time in less than a year.

The doctor doesn't think it's anything that I'm doing that I shouldn't be, or should be doing that I'm not; neither does she think that this is likely to be a recurring problem for me. It's a thing that happens sometimes, and I've just had the bad luck to have a late miscarriage twice. That being said, she does have me on various vitamins and such, including folic acid, and our goal is to get me healthy before we try again (not that we were trying either time, it just happened, and we weren't not trying).

I'll be okay,things are justa little tough right now.

Title: World at Her Fingertips
Fandom: BTVS
Characters: Willow, Jenny Calendar
Rating: G/FRC
Word count: 1,365
Recipient/Prompt: aaronlisa, Magic vs. Technology: Technology
Three elements you’d like included: Season One or Two Setting, chat rooms, Willow figuring out what’s going on before the others
Two things you don’t want: Dawn, major character death
Range of ratings you’d like to read: any
Setting: Season 2, before “Surprise”.
Summary: Things can be a slippery slope, especially if you convince yourself you’re doing it for the greater good.

( World at Her Fingertips )

I've had two stories nominated at the No Rest for the Wicked Awards, and I'm humbled, grateful, and proud of the stories, all at the same time. One of the stories nominated is "I Kissed a Girl (The Scientific Method Remix)", which I have to admit is one of my favourite remixes, especially since I wrote it in a matter of hours as a pinch hit for Aadler when his story was taking longer to write than expected. I had a lot of fun writing it and it seems to be fairly well received, which is always gratifying. I believe it was nominated (and I think came in second?) for Running With Scissors around a year ago.

The second story that was nominated was actually from the same remix, "Made to be Broken (The 'Scars of Your Love' Remix)". It was well received, as well, and I got good feedback from it, but I was never as satisfied with it as I was with "I Kissed a Girl". I can't even put my finger on why. I just felt like I should have done more and should have done better. So for it to be nominated, as well... Well. It makes me a happy Roni.

Whoever nominated my stories, thank you very much. I appreciate it tremendously. I write for the joy of writing, it's true, but I also love feedback (even if sometimes I'm crap at responding to it and I promise I'm trying to get better at it), and it seems to be much easier to produce stories when I feel like people are interested and care.

So thank you. Truly.