User Profile

I am a former elementary school teacher (5th grade) on disability. I have Interstitial Cystitis (IC), a very painful bladder disease that has taken away from me a career I loved dearly. I have undergraduate degrees in anthropology and linguistics and a Master's degree in Bilingual Multicultural Education. My passion is reading and languages. My classroom was a haven for reading, my personal classroom library (meaning I shelled out the $$) had over 1,000 books. Those books and my many other classroom supplies are now in a storage locker. I hope the next time I open it is to go back to the classroom, not to sell off the contents. Unfortunately it is likely I'll never teach again.

At home I have well over 5,000 books, well my husband and I do. My favorite genres are fantasy and science fiction. Don't get me started about how people and stores seem to think it is one genre! I ran Lord of the Rings reading groups before the movies came out. Yes, 5th graders can read LOTR!

I'm also a lampworker. No I don't make lamps, I work on a torch to create glass beads and small sculptures. Unfortunately this is another thing IC has interfered with. Because I have to go to the bathroom so frequently and because almost any activity ramps up my pain level, I don't get on my torch anywhere near as often as I'd like. I also make jewelry (You gotta so something with all those beads!) and work with seed beads, wire, polymer clay, precious metal clay etc. If it can be made into jewelry I want to do it!

Now for the left turn. Last year my husband convinced me to watch a show on Encore Wham! called Vandread. Then he showed me Witch Hunter Robin and Inuyasha. I was hooked. Almost overnight my Netflix queue went from an eclectic mix of movies, old scifi tv shows, documentaries and foreign films to almost exclusively anime. Then one day at Borders I asked some teen-aged girls in the manga section to recommend some titles. I walked out with the first 2 volumes each of Fushigi Yuugi and Tuxedo Gin. Hooked a second time! I don't recall how I got into Yaoi, but I now spend hours surfing the net for downloads since the paltry amount available in hard copy is not enough. I'm now teaching myself Japanese so I can read even more manga, both regular and yaoi and watch more anime. I have over 500 volumes of manga and many more computer files.

I have my best days when I sit very still for many hours and keep any activity light. (By "best day" I mean I'm still in pain, just not the scream out loud and suck on a fentanyl "lollipop" pain) Anime, manga and yaoi have helped beyond measure. I now have new interests and new Internet friends. My husband is thrilled to see me doing things again. I came to this community because I was searching for yaoi downloads. I'm glad to have another place to indulge my new interests.

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