Archive

Okay Then January 2025

This site has been a mess for a hot minute, but I think I've finally turned a corner, and now it's all on my shoulders so hopefully things won't crash and burn the way they have repeatedly since mid-November.

Do I know what I'm doing? No. Do I have hosting set up for the next year? Yes. Will I post more frequently? Who can say!

It's sort of a blessing and a curse to go out and do something, return home, and then realize I did nothing whatsoever to document the activity. It's not like "the blog" needs me to post pictures of our slippery ramble through the state park, but I'd feel better about everything if I at least had a picture to toss up on the page along with whatever minuscule character count I manage. It was a cold afternoon stroll, but pleasant enough that we'll probably try to do it again with some grippier footwear before the end of the winter. Anyone have recommendations for yaktrax or the like?

We had been hoping to take our snowshoes out, since they've lived on the wall in our garage for over a year. Things looked very promising, and then it spent every day between Christmas and now being foggy, and then rainy, and all of that squishy snow turned to icy crusts before it melted into pretty much nothing. There's still white stuff on the ground, but it's not the sort of snow that needs anything more than a sturdy pair of boots to navigate. So, our snowshoes languish again. But it's going to get bitterly cold into next week, so maybe there will be something more winterish on the horizon. Do I need snowshoes to justify being outside? No, I don't. But, a co-worker summed it up perfectly when she said she wanted the "winter voyager" experience, and there's nothing that captures that more than tromping through the woods on a pair of snowshoes.

All of the melting has done nothing for my latent urge to hop on a bicycle and tool around town. The things holding me back are that we have two very nice bikes that will not tolerate the salt and moisture, we don't have anywhere good to clean and dry them in our apartment, and I don't have a studded tire to make the the trek just a little more secure. I'm still very set on looking into getting a winter bike next year. I know I'll be out on my own, but two days of full sunshine with practically balmy temperatures would have been glorious to experience on a bike. Luckily, one of the shops in our area sells off their rental fleet every year, so I'm very much preparing to keep an eye out for their sale next fall, so maybe I can make cycling more of a year-round thing.

Stay tuned as I mentally prepare myself to loop the lake in June, because I'm still set on taking part in that nonsense too. Hopefully there will be more pictures of that since I have yet to document much from the seat of a bicycle.

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone. Good luck in 2025, because we're all going to need it, and each other.
Pikmin Bloom Lifestyle August 2024

I turned 39 earlier this year.

When my wife hit that point a year ago, she made a comment about wanting to have walked a certain amount of distance before she hit 40. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but didn't really think of it as any sort of necessary thing for myself in that time frame. I would be supportive (it would be good for the both of us if I participated) but I certainly wasn't going to go overboard when 40 got closer on my horizon.

Then suddenly that 9 ticked over on my own timeline and it was there... looming over me; the need to "do something" before 40 hit.

I'd like to think I've found ways to meet that need since it first arose, but it's taken some trial and error to get here.

We started being more diligent about morning walks when the temperature was consistently over 40 degrees in the morning. I don't think a week has gone by where we haven't walked, especially since this summer has been so pleasant. But, walking can only be so engaging.

We started tracking steps, walked to the grocery store a couple of times, I tried to get back into doing RingFit Adventure (with middling success). Just a mishmash of activities, basically.

Somewhere in the midst of that, I found Pikmin Bloom.

At first, I didn't bother too much with it. My phone at the time didn't much enjoy me using such a resource intensive game, but I was at least familiar with Pikmin in a way I never have been with Pokemon.

I was haphazard in my first month, not really caring about the month's event or trying to make anything happen. Then, at some point, something clicked, and I was all in.

It's been especially helpful having a couple of large flowers basically to myself in our apartment complex, as well as being in range of a few other locations that have mushrooms (the thing you battle to get more nectar, to then plant more flowers, and get more nectar).

Then I got into collecting the decor, and that's probably when Ivory started to hear more about me walking around and collecting gifts on expeditions.

It's taken up a good chunk of my time this summer, but there are only a handful of players in my area. Things picked up a bit during the 2 weeks that Unicon was being hosted, but otherwise I only regularly see one other player in the area I've come to think of as my own.

I know I'm pretty isolated here, but it really comes into focus visiting a larger city. When we were at the Hyatt in Minneapolis, the first week of July, we were basically on an uninterrupted carpet of flowers. Here, you can tell exactly where I have walked, every single day.

August's theme is Ice Cream, so my specialized squad of Pikmin are adorned with scoops and swirls of ice cream and little extra touches. I'm pretty sure the flying pink ones shiver with a brain freeze since the massive scoop of ice cream sits right on top of their heads. It's cute watching them bop around on my screen with pretty flowers bobbing on their heads.

I'm glad I found this game, since it's certainly helped me get out of the house just a little bit more, even when I haven't felt like it. I managed 10,000 steps yesterday thanks to trying to walk around our local park blooming flowers. It's on odd, meandering sort of thing, but it made taking the walk a little easier, since I seem to need a more immediate intention behind these sorts of things.

I think this is the same reason I get more satisfaction out of riding my bike to do errands than just taking a short trip around the neighborhood for the heck of it. I'm assuming some of this comes down to needing the dopamine reward at the end, because once the novelty of the experience wears off it's just not the same.

Pikmin Bloom is also slightly responsible for my new bike adventures, since it's very easy to plant flowers from a bike. I'm enjoying that aspect, a lot.

I'm now 2 posts behind for this month. I'm hoping to do a couple of end-of-day recaps, depending on what we end up doing on our week off. We'll see, I guess.
Whew! August 2024

Somehow, I survived the week.

I capped off today by riding my bike on a Target errand and promptly collapsed at home for the night, because that's just what time is like around here right now.

Before the weekend is over, I have to read 2 books and help get the apartment presentable assuming we might have guests at some point this coming week. This is how the summer goes by in a blur.

In the winter, we hunker down and never do anything. This summer, every weekend has involved running to the farmer's market or some elaborate kitchen shenanigans, which certainly keeps the days entertaining but it leaves little time for the loafing to whiche I've become accustomed.

A few weeks ago, someone at one of my dad's baseball games was talking about how she would take another COVID summer again. I feel guilty for knowing exactly what she meant. Instead of running around everywhere with a million things to do, we were just at home, and somehow, that was fine. Socially though, that sort of lifestyle just isn't sustainable. You end up missing too many things, and the disconnect is unpleasant, or at least that's my opinion on that sort of thing.

For as busy as it makes things, I do enjoy the kitchen shenanigans. Earlier this summer, we canned peaches and made peach ginger sauce. Before that, we got a bunch of strawberries and made jam (it's more like jam on top, jelly on the bottom). I would make a million more strawberry things, since it's my favorite fruit. I think the last requirement of the year will be tracking down a loaded crabapple tree and harvesting a bunch of those. I'm really looking forward to having apple jelly again. And loading up a steam juicer with a bunch of fruit is going to make that a cinch.

I was hoping we would be able to can some tomatoes (we have 4 plants on our balcony) but we just lost most of the fruit to blossom rot. So, I'm hoping the next round will be hardier and actually turn red, since they still need the heat, and it's been very cool this week.

If I end up with enough tomatoes that we have to actually process them in order to use them all, I might have my own parade around the apartment complex to celebrate. (I'm trying to think of something really outlandish to tempt fate into giving me a bountiful tomato harvest... Because that's how those things work, right?)
Wednesday Waffle August 2024

I have barely survived the first week of Blaugust 2024. Prioritizing this place on the daily feels next to impossible, especially with how little time I've spent here in the past few months.

We did manage to make syrup from the juice we made on Sunday. So, I'm hoping we have decent cherry syrup for pancakes, or maybe it will just go on ice cream sundaes, but it at least looks pretty.

We also made a short bike trek yesterday, and I'm finding that method of running errands to be more and more desirable, especially once we both have baskets to carry things around.

It's gotten weirdly cold, which is going to make riding around even better. Honestly, I'm looking forward to fall a little more than I expected to be, since there's a chance we might be able to hit part of the trail around the lake and take in some of the colors in the state park. I don't want to rush to the end of the summer though; I'm enjoying it right now, and all the time I'm able to be outside. I don't want to figure out other ways to be active, when I've only just found something I enjoy doing outside.

All-in-all not my best showing for the first week of Blaugust. I'm hoping I can get my legs under me a little bit more next week. Putting together an intro post sounds good, especially as things have changed in the last year. Plus, next week I'm on vacation, so as long as I don't lose my brain to "vacation time" I should have a little more to offer here in terms of writing and photos.

What a weird Wednesday this was.
Blaugust 2024 Week 2: Writing August 2024

Here we are, week 2 of Blaugust. I'm still lost in the busyness of daily life, but, I'm trying.

Week 2 is supposed to be about introductions. This place is only a couple of years old, and I've only managed a single introduction post in that time, and it wasn't even for Blaugust.

Here are the basics: I've written pretty much as long as I could manage it, whether it was letters, in diaries or journals, or short stories, or social media; I write. Music is also a big part of my life; I wonder how much of that could be chalked up to a childhood diet of Disney Renaissance movies. I love animals, but have only ever lived with cats; we currently have two: Rudy and Kochanski. I've knit since I was in college, and picked up crochet in the last year; we make a lot of things out of yarn in our household. That's pretty bare bones in the grand scheme of things, but hopefully this week I can flesh out some of this stuff and you can get to know me a little more.

The website comes from the second screen name I ever had. Peridot is my favorite color and I figured lines covered... a lot of things. Lines of music, lines of poetry, lines on a page... lots of lines. So, peridotlines has followed me around for almost twenty years now. It used to be a LiveJournal handle, and for a while, it existed on the various LJ clones that came into existence; then Twitter and Instagram. Now, it's mostly this place and BlueSky. Sometimes, I wonder if I should just switch to a website based around my actual name instead of this other thing, but it's also been my "name" online for so long that it would feel weird not to keep using it.

The only other thing this screen name has been attached to is fan fiction, which I wrote a not insignificant amount of, up until a few years ago. It feels odd to think back on it now, knowing some of it probably still exists in random corners of the internet besides Archive of Our Own. I'm more than a little relieved that some of my first forays into that particular art have been lost to obsolete technology. Someday, I might come across an ancient floppy disk and there will be no way to extract the fan fiction I had written when I was fully invested in NBC's Passions forever ago.

While that stuff has been lost to time, I have a stack of journals sitting in a box in our closet haunting me with the cringe of naive adolescence. I've tried, quite a few times, to type up those journals so I could get rid of this stack of things that's just taking up space. I started keeping those when I was 11, and I can usually get through typing up the first few years, but then 13 or 14 hit, and some of it is just raw and real and uncomfortable. I could consider just tossing them, letting them go, but it turns out I put a lot of stock in written word, even if it's clumsily scrawled cursive documenting our family vacation or the awkwardness of a crush.

I try not to let this place become like those journals, but sometimes it does descend into the deeply personal, especially when it comes to grief and talking about individuals I miss. For some reason, I find it easier to go there with writing than I do the light, airy subjects I see others covering. I wish I could be funny, embrace the silliness at times, but while I can put together words about something sad or dark, every time I try to do something funny, its like I can see the framework of whatever I've written, and I can't see past that, and it's not good enough.

I'm hoping Blaugust can help me get back on track a little bit with just writing something and getting it posted. I have yet to figure out a good schedule to get something up here reliably though. I thought maybe themed days would work, but if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that if I'm not "feeling" it I don't want to write about an arbitrary subject I've decided to shoehorn into this place. That's the frustrating part, in the end.

So, this is me and writing. But tomorrow maybe it will be me and music, or me and fiber, or me and cats, or me and my bike. I guess, wait and see.
Post-Manic Monday August 2024

I thought about posting yesterday, and then got sucked into nonsense on top of exhaustion, and completely forgot to write anything, so this morning there will be a recap of yesterday, and at some later time, I guess I'll be putting up 2 posts in 1 day?

At some point, I need to take actual pictures of my bike, maybe even with me on it. For now, this is what we've got.

I managed to ride my bike to and from work yesterday without incident. I only made one bad move in my travels, and those always seem to happen when other cyclists are around. Thankfully, it didn't lead to anything harmful. Mostly, it just reinforces how much I still have to learn when it comes to actually traveling by bike and not just tooling around on smooth paths with no cars beside me.

Other lessons learned: getting on a step-over style bike (aka a "boy" bike), with a basket containing a computer bag is a lot harder than just getting on the bike, especially while wearing jeans. I'm still just very new to all of this stuff; the getting on the bike, moving forward after coming to a stop, getting OFF the bike; basically me using this bike is still a big old awkward thing. But, I really do enjoy riding it.

I especially enjoy riding it compared with the one I chose to use as a reintroduction to riding bikes.

If I put my new bike next to this old one, I feel like the old one would look spindly, frail, and very light, but when we experimented with hanging this one up, we realized it's so much heavier than either of our new bikes, and between that weight and the drop bar handles, we decided this one just wasn't for us. So, now we have to figure out how to get rid of re-home it. I'm not sure who would want a 1970's department store bike, but hopefully someone else would like a free experience on re-learning to ride a bike before moving on to something better. I'm just hoping it won't still be in our garage come fall, since space is always at a premium when it comes to apartment living, even with a garage.

It's much easier to get out and ride now that my wife has a working bike of her own. I had to laugh last night, because she wanted to do a few loops around our apartment complex, and then after hitting every section of the parking lot I heard "Okay, this is boring, let's go to the trail." It had looked like it was wet and maybe wouldn't be fun to ride, but then we took off for the park, and it was just a nice night to be out on a ride. I think today will also be a good riding day, since it's not going to be very warm, but the sun looks like it will be out most of the day.

I really thought we might be in for a cool and unpleasant summer, but it's been pretty enjoyable, even if it's rained a lot at times, and been momentarily humid. We still have some time before the season officially changes, but it's certainly been a nice summer, especially on a bike.
Juice Sunday August 2024

We finally used my grandmother's steam juicer today.

If you've never heard of one of these things before, it's something like this. I will never make crabapple jelly without one of these, because you get the most crystal-clear jelly you will ever see, without having to cook apples and then hang them from cheesecloth to drain for hours; risking cloudy juice in the process.

We bought around 9 pounds of cherries yesterday and ran them through the juicer and are now attempting fruit leather with the remnants of the fruit. The main goal of the juice is to get some cherry syrup, which is the ultimate pancake syrup in my opinion (if it's chokecherry syrup, it literally cannot be beaten).

I'm glad it's been relatively cool and not oppressively humid all weekend, considering we steamed fruit for 2 hours and then had more steam pouring out of the oven when we started drying the fruit leather. Hopefully that will last when I have to cook the juice to make syrup and then run the canner on it.

A little over a year ago, I was canning peaches for the first time. I've done strawberry jam, and another round of peaches since then. I can't wait to see what the jelly looks like. My favorite thing is to use the faceted jelly jars, because when the jelly is really clear, the jeweled aspect of the jars really pops. It's one of those visually satisfying things I wish I could explain better than to say "it just looks pretty."

It still feels bittersweet doing things like this. There's the accomplished satisfaction of completing a slightly complex task, followed by the sadness that I'm doing this without the aid of the person who originally taught me. Being this was also the first time I'd used the steam juicer, I feel like there was still some of the lingering smells of my grandmother's house and kitchen. When I washed it and then started boiling water, there was one last waft of that very specific smell, and then it's probably gone forever. The power of sense memory is something so strange and wonderful.

We keep being busy, which means I'm still doing Blaugust at the last minute of my days. I think August might continue to be this way. I have a full week of work ahead of me followed by family visiting from out of town the same week we have book club and D&D; and then August will be half over and the end of summer will rear its ugly head. The rapidity at which summertime moves is also mind boggling.

With Monday around the corner and a busy day behind me, I'm still looking forward to whatever the week holds. I'm planning to make my first bike commute, and then... well, I guess we'll see.
Trying not to be Afraid of Bike Commuting August 2024

Back in May, I spent $25 on a bike at a garage sale, only to realize I'd forgotten how to ride. Between my rusty skills and the rusty bike, I'm not sure how I managed to find the courage to pedal any further than our apartment garage, but I did eventually figure out how to make the bike carry me around with a modicum of skill.

As an exercise in re-learning how to ride, that $25 was worth it. Of course, between the age and style of the bike, it wasn't going to work for me in the long term. I ended up going to one of our local bike shops and testing out a couple of bikes before taking home something more upright, with better brakes, and easier shifting.

I've spent the past month riding around on this lovely new bike, trying to overcome the hurdle of arriving somewhere slightly overheated, sweaty, and out of breath.

I ride my new bike, slightly terrified wheneven I venture beyond our neighborhood path. Sharing the road with trucks that might not be able to see me scares me to death. And, there's the fact that I'm still developing the balance to be comfortable looking over my shoulder, or even considering lifting a hand off the bike to signal. But, now that my bike is outfitted to carry me and my things to other destinations, I'm compelled to use it to commute to work.

Depending on the route I take, it will be anywhere from two-and-a-half or three miles. The hardest part, is one street where traffic will likely be the busiest, depending on the time of day I choose to ride. Going out on a Saturday morning, just after 7am, is an entirely different endeavor than at what qualifies for "rush hour" in our area.

I'm glad I didn't make the decision to just take off at 7:30 on a Monday morning, without making this first (lower stakes) attempt. Some of it went exactly as I expected, but then there are the little things, like finding out the shoulder on the busy street is much bumpier than I realized; in a slightly uncomfortable way. I'm pretty sure taking an alternate (smoother) route might lead to me driving through a few poorly aimed sprinklers, but on a hot day, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing. It also turns out maybe it will be less stressful for me to cross at a busier intersection than somewhere I was expecting fewer cars to be. Getting the bike moving after coming to a stop is still a difficult endeavor, but it is getting a little bit easier with practice.

At some point, I will stop forgetting these posts, and have some photos to share, since I have yet to take pictures of my bike.

My wife also just joined the New Bike Club, so it's possible there will be cooperative bike adventures for us in the future.
And Here We All Are August 2024

Did I forget I still need to do a post today and it's after 7pm? 100% yes.

Life now is busier than it was when I was doing this a year ago. It's weird to realize there are lots of things taking up my days, and somehow I made the choice to be doing them. After 2020, so much of my time slowed down to pretty much just being at home and maybe going to meet our knitting group once a week. Now?

I've been making an effort to be more active while the weather supports it. We somehow had a blessedly cool start to the summer, and I've spent so much time outside just enjoying the ability to do that and not freeze, broil, or breathe smoke. And then the last 3 weeks hit and it's been hot, and then humid, and then smoky, and apparently I've built up enough of a habit doing things on the daily, that when I can't I get a bit antsy and on edge, frustrated that it's not in the cards for the day.

Our Thursdays have also gotten busier. It used to just be a weekly knitting group, but then we decided to search out a Dungeons & Dragons game and someone was good enough to take us in. We spend a lot of time going over the ins and outs and trying to keep up with a high level campaign every other week now. I'm playing a Lightfoot Halfling Monk, and trying to get used to throwing myself into combat since Niv has the HP and constitution to do that while Kate wants to hang back and be sure they're making the "right" move.

And we've been watching a lot of Dimension 20. We're just winding up our watch of The Seven, which I think we found even more compelling than the Fantasy High series it spun off from. I'm hoping we can try Never Stop Blowing Up next, since we're really making use of our Dropout subscription (which has totally been worth it).

It's been a while since I was just this busy living life. Having fallen out of a journalling or blogging habit, it feels more like I'm trying to wedge this into a packed schedule. But, when I take a step back and look at things, I probably have time. It's more of a question of motivation than anything else. So, hopefully Blaugust will help me find the motivation, since this place is still important to me.

I'm hoping I can bring some of the busyness here, especially the bike adventures, now that I have a rack and will be able to start doing more errands and using it around town. I'm still thinking it will be carrying me to the office on Monday, so stay tuned to see if I actually have the nerve to "commute" the mile and a half from work to the office. (The scariest part is going to be navigating the roundabout... At least I hope that will be the scariest part)

Happy Friday everyone. Have a fantastic weekend!
Blaugust 2024 is Here! August 2024

I am no more prepared for this endeavor than I was last year, but, here goes nothing!

At least this time around I knew this was coming. Of course, it's Thursday, and one of my busier Thursdays at that, so I'm hoping I can get something short and sweet thrown together to mark the occasion, and go on with my day.

For those not in the know, there's a helpful informational post covering the basics of this whole thing. In the wake of social media really fracturing into a bunch of different factions, I was hoping blogging would see a bit more of a resurgence. I'm not sure I've seen that coming true, but Blaugust is still happening, so it's not like blogging is dead.

I'm hoping to use the BlueSky Feed to keep track of others participating this year. I'm sure things will fall between the cracks, but I got a little overwhelmed looking at the wall of posts in my RSS reader (yeah, those are still a thing) last year.

So, find me over at BlueSky or comment here if you're doing Blaugust 2024.

I've been lost in a bit of a haze when it comes to my life online lately, but I'm hoping to find some other blogs to follow, I'm just not sure what it is I'm looking for. Some of this comes down trying to relive to my old LiveJournal days, but I still appreciate being able to read long form content, and I'd love to look at something besides posts on Reddit.

I'll be doing an introduction post some time next week, but in short, this place is mostly rambling on the following subjects: cats, LEGO, fiber arts, gaming (rarely), life in northern Minnesota, and (something new) bike adventures.
Who Am I Now? June 2024

It's June, also known as Pride Month, and I'm looking at this blog I abandoned 8 months ago, because October got hard and life (of course) just kept happening.

Life has been an endless string of weeks that start off with dread for the days ahead and end with me wondering how it's Friday "already." We got through the holidays, started a new year, picked up some new hobbies, and now summer is around the corner and the next 2 months will go by in an absolute blur.

We never got around to using our snowshoes this winter, since there was barely any snow. Maybe we'll get dumped on next year and actually be able to use them again.

We also joined a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and are slowly learning the ins and outs of tabletop role playing. My halfling monk, Niv, is a blur on the battlefield, when I manage to roll my dice well. I still need some work on the storytelling side of things, since it's been a hot minute since I played pretend with a whole group of people. It's a fun challenge though, especially watching my fellow players do cool things.

The only other adventure in store for me right now has been re-learning how to ride a bike. I've been going on a bunch of daily walks through the neighborhood (one of the many perks of working from home) and a bike at a yard sale caught my eye. $25 later, it turns out I've retained maybe 5% of the bike-riding skills I used to possess.

Ivory was kind enough to sit outside today, making sure I didn't ride into the swamp by our apartment. YouTube offered a lot of helpful tips on getting started, and by the end of 30 to 45 minutes, I was actually pedalling and able to mostly control where I was going. Having now fixed the handlebars so I can brake properly, I'm hoping to try again with greater success tomorrow.

I won't even joke about entering my cycling era, because I can barely entertain the idea of leaving our apartment complex. Still, I did feel pretty good once I was able to get going and maintain my momentum. There's now a smooth (if hilly) path on the edge of our neighborhood, so I'm thinking that might be my next excursion, if I can get over the fear of going "too fast."

Hopefully it won't be another 8 months before I post here again.

Happy Pride to everyone who celebrates, and for everyone who would rather we weren't celebrating... I'm not going to be confrontational about it but, good luck with your discomfort this month.
Gaining and Losing October 2023

We're not even a full week into the month and October is already proving to be a little much: we've welcomed a new nibling into the family, it's been a year since Ivory's father was laid to rest, and this weekend we celebrate our first anniversary as a married couple.

If there's anything I've learned to appreciate as an adult, it's the bittersweet nature of events. I'm assuming it comes with time, because the longer you're on this planet the more likely you are to lose someone, and to think of and miss them during big moments. So, here we are, looking forward to meeting our niece in person, celebrating a year of love and commitment, and at the same time faced with the reminders of loss.

Last week, I pulled out the ham bones we've been saving and made some split pea soup. It was appropriately cool at the start of the week, and the idea of a pot of soup seemed soul-warming, especially thinking of my Grandma Marie, since I use the recipe she gave me to make it. But then, I was surprised to end up dreaming of my other grandmother, my dad's mom, the night after I made the soup. Grandma Doris was also a wonder in the kitchen, especially when it came to delicious baked goods, so it probably wasn't much of a stretch to be thinking of her, but it's been so long since she was in one of my dreams.

I can't say I really put much stock in it meaning something to dream of someone you've lost, it's not even something I really clung to or thought of as important; I've always considered that to be what memories are for. Still, in the last year, I've found relief the mornings I've realized I had a dream of Moxie, even if it was just something brief and inconsequential. There was an equal amount of relief to have dreamed of Grandma Doris, especially because we were having a conversation about how people show you they love you, and that not everyone shows it the same way. She also demanded I give her the biggest hug, and the last time I would have done that was probably close to 20 years ago at this point. The dream ended with a bunch of bumble bees the size of canaries showing up around the tree in her front yard, so things really took a turn...

I've thought back to that dream a lot in the past week, probably because of some of my internal frustration when it comes to communication, and the emotional distance that seems to widen between myself and certain people. When I wrote about saying goodbye to Grandma Marie, I mentioned how glad I was I got to know her as an adult, and that's very much something I missed out on when it came to Grandma Doris. I wasn't even out of college when she died, and there was a lot I didn't know about myself then. I often wonder what she would make of my gender and sexuality, would it be something contentious? I can't lie that I'm glad to have skirted the "difficult" talks with my grandparents, helping to maintain a little more sweetness in my memories instead of some of the bitterness that could have been there.

It's about to be a busy weekend. We're attending a Yarn Tasting tomorrow, and have family coming from out of town. So, I'm about to shut my brain off for the next few hours after what was a pretty busy week.

I'm hoping I'll be able to post a bit more here next week. As my scrolling of Bluesky increases, my need to pour words onto a page decreases, so that's something I definitely need to keep in check.
Sky Blue September 2023

I saw someone on Bluesky comparing that scene in so many disaster films, where hundreds of people have survived an event and are then rewarded with the relief of being reunited with their family and friends to the feeling they get seeing a familiar face showing up on Bluesky. I know the feeling all too well.

There are also so many people I'm missing. Some of them don't have accounts and remain on Twitter, others created placeholders and have yet to interact, and others seem to have vanished into the ether. Bluesky seems to offer new options pretty much every other week these days (actually working hashtags might be on the horizon), but I have a feeling it's very much going to be what Twitter used to be. That thing people heard of but rarely used or didn't understand. Truth be told, I still sort of stumble over how to talk about it when I mention something I saw to my wife or a friend. I have yet to use "skeet" (it feels almost as awkward as "toot" did when discussing Mastodon), and I'm pretty sure it's not well known enough for casual users of technology to know what it is.

I don't want it to be Twitter, with the algorithm and the outrage machine, but I do want everyone I knew under one umbrella so I can stop trekking back to the hellsite once a week to see what I've missed. I sort of treat it like an experiment I can only observe these days. I don't like or retweet anything, the only thing I will post is an update if I have an invite code to Bluesky (there's actually one available as I write this, if someone out there is interested). Sometimes, I have to remind myself not to engage, but the reminders are less necessary than they were a month ago.

At some point, maybe I will stop going back there, but Bluesky doesn't have enough of a finger on the pulse of the news cycle for me to completely abandon Twitter, even if it's only to pop back and scroll through the trending topics as a refresher on whatever is going on politically or culturally.

In other news, check out one of the Northern Flickers that have been hanging out on the lawn outside of our apartment. They're a little chatty and very skittish, so I had to lurk on the balcony with a long lens camera just to get this mediocre photo. They've been interesting to watch, since the 6 or more of this particular guttering pace around the grass pecking at it with determination at times.
Catch those Z's September 2023

Having spent the summer with every manner of fan circulating air around our bedroom (and the rest of the apartment) it became next-to-impossible to hear any of the sleep podcasts we like, without blasting the audio in a way that wasn't remotely restful. The past two nights, things were finally quiet enough to try listening to them again and we both slept so soundly; it was such a relief.

Considering I've spent most of the summer sleeping with earbuds tuned to YouTube commentators gossiping about drama, it was past time I went back to something more geared towards sleep. The silly thing is, we both basically crash the second the podcast starts, because we had a pretty good habit going before we gave it up; there's something about a soothing voice telling a story that just makes the entry into sleep so much smoother, and in turn, it just makes it easier to stay asleep.

I've used a variety of sleep podcasts over the years. There was Sleep With Me, which had such an extensive back catalog, when I first discovered it, I would just queue up 8 hours worth of episodes and let it play all night (I eventually found the "creaky dulcet tones" less restful and a little too quirky to use it to actually fall asleep, it's only good when I'm straight-up exhausted).

Get Sleepy, was my go-to for a long time, until they got syndicated advertising that would play just after the introduction. I have nothing against ads in a podcast, but it's one thing for it to be an ad read from the host and a completely different thing when it's a State Farm ad that's set to music and entirely different from the tone of the rest of the show.

The makers of Get Sleepy also came up with The Sleepy Bookshelf, which just takes stories in the public domain and breaks them up into pieces and reads some of the story a couple of nights a week. The only times that one hasn't been good for sleep was the torture of Journey to the Center of the Earth (I found it too claustrophobic and a lot of the story was just too creepy), the Beatrix Potter Stories (I was obsessed with being able to hear The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in its entirety), and the end of Anne of Green Gables (it actually forced us to turn the lights on so I could find a tissue I was crying so much).

Our tried and true sleepy standby now is Nothing Much Happens. I had actually forgotten that was an iHeart podcast, because it doesn't do ads the same way so many of their shows do (annoyingly, with the same 3 ads every 20 minutes). If you're looking for something to help you sleep, I can't recommend it enough. We rarely make it into the story portion of the podcast these days. I was surprised that even when we picked it back up again, it was very easy to fall into the routine of taking a couple of deep breaths, mentally sending some relaxation through my extremities, and basically zonking out for the night.

As I look back through this post, I keep seeing I have something against advertisements, except that's not actually the case. If you ever get to listen to my "the MLB doesn't want me to watch or listen to their games anymore" rant, you'll hear how I actually enjoyed all of the local Boston ads when I would listen to the Red Sox streams; it set the scene for me basically, and I wasn't ever annoyed to hear those. I only gave up on streaming the radio games when they started playing generic ads over the local ones (and coming back to the game in the middle of at-bats. With the ad reads that used to start off Get Sleepy, when they were in the voice of the creator, I really didn't have a problem with them. I just don't like listening to ads that are aggressive in their need to sell me something, especially as I'm trying to fall asleep. I also gave up on any iHeart podcasts when they played the same three ads every 20 minutes, regardless of the length of an episode. I'm sure the goal here is to make the ads so annoying to compel listeners to pay for the premium service, but persistent demand avoidance means if I "have" to do something I'm much less inclined to do it.

I'm a little embarrassed at my persnickety attitude when it comes to something so random. "How strange to be so opinionated about when and where ads should play." But, I guess that's where things are on a Tuesday afternoon.
Meandering September 2023

I can feel the malaise of "life after Blaugust" beginning to creep in. I noticed it first with how completely silent my Mastodon feed had become, and now I can feel it in my reluctance to open up a new post and click and clack some words on to a screen. Bluesky seems as bustling as ever, while Twitter (the place I haunt in silence, unless I have a Bluesky invite code to share) exists as a shell of the thing I used to love; and I don't know what to do with that. Some of this is down to that disconnect I still feel when it comes to so much of social media these days. I enjoy following along in the conversation, but participating in it has felt... off.

It reminds me a bit of the time that I had a conversation with a former employer, and as I was reflecting back on it later I was ticking off all of these boxes in my head, thinking about how I had successfully managed to offer her a compliment without it feeling forced or weird, and how we'd managed to have a somewhat lengthy conversation without any of the lulls I tend to find so disconcerting. I was congratulating myself on having successfully "peopled" without including any of the cringe-inducing mannerisms or comments I would usually berate myself over for days after.

Social media feels a bit like that to me now. Like, I know all of the rules to the game, I can follow other people playing the game. And then it's my turn and suddenly I'm stymied and over-analyzing every possible thing I could say and I just sit there until my time is up and think "maybe I'll try again tomorrow." Granted, playing the game of social media is actually just a dopamine slot machine I feed mental quarters into and hope I'll hit a jackpot at some point. I feel like I've gotten terrible about hitting the jackpot these last few years. And, then I get annoyed at myself because no one liked that thing I said, and then I'm annoyed for feeling annoyed.

I try my best to focus on just posting to post, to maintain the habit, because I know that siphoning these words off from my brain helps me function. I don't know what it is about curating my thoughts for public consumption that is so ridiculously helpful to me. I just haven't figured out how to turn these sorts of things into a conversation. That's always my issue in the end. Even in actual conversation, sometimes, it feels like I say words but they just result in a dead end. It's unproductive, or at least, it feels that way.

I can't help but to wonder if I did actually gamify my day-to-day activities when it came to people, how would it work out? Would it let off some of the pressure, because I was trying to follow some rules? Would my brain turn on the "it's just a silly game" track and force me to devalue the entire experience? I talked myself into buying dice at ConVergence this summer, and they've sat virtually untouched since then. For a while, I was thinking about trying to do solo RPGs or just trying to use them with some basic character building, just to get a feel for the mechanics. But, then Blaugust happened and all of my gaming habits were benched as I devoted my whole self to this place. Now, as all of the obvious subjects have been exhausted, my mind flits back to the math rocks sitting in their respective containers, all looking very pretty, but entirely unused.

I busted open this 3-D printed turtle egg with so much excitement

So, what's next? Will I go back to the obsessive D&D googling habit I was cultivating in July? Probably not. I think things are still cooking a little bit. It's like there's an idea sitting there, but it needs to germinate a little longer before I can figure out what to do with it. Hopefully ruminating on that here hasn't exposed it too soon, since I suffer from "startitis" and exacerbate it by revealing my plans too soon. It's like I out-run the dopamine or something.

Happy Tuesday everyone!
Lyrical Lingua Franca September 2023

I take for granted having grown up learning and speaking in English. As a language with a reputation for stealing the good bits from a bunch of other languages, there's a part of it that could almost feel universal. And then, I hear a something that's not entrenched in the realm of English as I'm familiar with it, and it feels like such a stupid thing to know. Especially when there are prettier and somehow more evocative languages.

Every year in elementary school, we would have a week or two with students from the high school who came to teach us German. It was always German, which was my secret frustration as a kid. For a long time, I think that was the only foreign language offered at my small K-12 school. At some point, Spanish entered the ring, and then I would live in hope that we'd get Spanish II students in our classroom for a couple of weeks, but it wasn't ever to be. When it came time for me to pick a language in high school, I chose Spanish out of pure spite; I wanted nothing to do with German.

I think I also chose Spanish because on some level, I could see such clear lines between it and English. Our first day of class, the teacher did that immersion thing, where she spoke in Spanish the entire time. I'm not sure how the rest of the class felt about it, but for me personally, it was fascinating. I still think back to that first day of class sometimes, because it was probably the most fun I'd had with pure learning in a very long time. It was so easy to do high school by rote and memory, and for some reason it felt like that practice went out the window for the final hour of that first school day.

I didn't have any more immersion in Spanish until I took a lone semester of it in college. In retrospect, I should have taken more of it, because there were days when I would be walking back to my dorm room and it was like my brain had jumped to a different track and my thoughts were in (admittedly jumbled and jerky) Spanish, and I enjoyed that feeling. I didn't have that happen again until I went on an extended Duolingo jag; coupled with stumbling into a telenovela. There were some weird dreams in there, and I would wake up in the morning with the idea that my subconscious was doing a lot of work to internalize this other language... and all of the drama in the life of Ana Leal.

That accursed Duolingo owl entered my life a decade ago, and has routinely guilted me into maintaining our relationship ever since. Has it made me a better speaker? Absolutely not. In terms of reading, writing, hearing, and speaking Spanish, I would say I'm most proficient in reading and writing (with the assistance of Google's multi-language keyboard). Listening is best accomplished with subtitles (because: reading), and I'm a reluctant speaker; I loath the awkwardness of being bad at something. Also, until pretty recently, the app was terrible at understanding anything I said in Spanish.

I tried using Duolingo to learn Portuguese, because "it's a romance language, it's not the same as Spanish, but it's close, right?" That lasted maybe 3 days and I was so annoyed at all of the different branches the language took in sound and spelling that I gave it up. Before Duolingo, I had a brief flirtation with French, because I found an online friend who is French Canadian. We exchanged some mix tapes, and she sent me a CD full of music in French. I've never tried to get the owl to teach me French though, I'm not sure it would go well.

https://youtu.be/EVeZzR677DU?si=Fdj4o5BjehvXKyux

I forgot how much I wanted to learn French after listening to this song.

The closest I will ever come to learning a different romance language is Italian, since my first 6 years of piano lessons involved a lot of vocabulary lessons and identifying what the random italicized words mixed in with the notes meant. It's very specialized, entirely sporadic, and basically not useful to my daily life until I decide I need to start sitting down at a piano everyday.

Instead, I'm making tentative steps to learn Irish (Gaeilge), because it just sounds interesting.

https://youtu.be/vf3hbGMwsM8?si=-_cYnGe58c-DOQJx

I saw someone describe the feeling as "going feral" when they got to Gaeilge at the end. Feral feels a bit extreme to me, but it was something visceral, for reasons I cannot describe.

I've been thinking a lot about language lately. Some of that is down to Hozier's new album, and the inclusion of Gaeilge in the lyrics of "De Selby (Part 1)." But, it's clearly not the first time music has pulled me towards a language, or that listening to music with something other than English has been a more emotional or meaningful experience to me.

https://youtu.be/1s9PWAzx4C4?si=XKWNTBftxwd141TJ

Always happy tears with this song

In the days when I listened to nothing but music podcasts (when I wasn't listening to actual music), All Songs Considered turned me on to Sigur Rós. Before then, I think I had maybe listened to a handful of their songs, always the very ambient ones that played over random moments on TV shows. When the brass started at the beginning of _"_Inní mér syngur vitleysingur" I was taken aback, and then more thrown by how joyful it all felt. I tear up listening to the song, because it's so intrinsically happy. I don't know why happiness makes me cry, but that's true of pretty much any intense emotion in my experience. To listen to something that sounds like distilled joy is going to bring it out in me, especially if I haven't heard to it in a while. I know none of the lyrics to that song. I'm familiar with all of the vocalizations, because I've listened to it for 15 years, but I couldn't tell you what any of it means. Sometimes, I wonder if what I'm hearing and identifying as words is correct. But, I also know that this group plays with their lyrics, and some of it is actual Icelandic, and other parts are... something else. I remembered it being referred to as Hopelandic, I guess in Icelandic it's known as Vonlenska.

I can't say which language in music will hit my guts and which one won't. So much of it comes down to my mood I suppose. It doesn't all have to make me cry for me to want to listen to it again, because I certainly had fun overplaying "Dragostea Din Tei" in its heyday on the internet.

https://youtu.be/YnopHCL1Jk8?si=Zsq_30gF1HStocWP

I can only picture one thing when I hear this song, and it's none of its original singers

But, not every piece of music featuring a foreign language will strike some hidden chord inside me and turn my brain into a sponge for the language. It would be nice if it resulted in me being multilingual, but mostly my memory contains snippets of lyrics I may or may not be able to translate. If it's in Spanish (and I've listened to it enough times) I can probably figure out the words, anything else... maybe I listened to it on repeat and ran the lyrics through a translator enough times that I memorized it?

This post has gotten away from me... it sat in my drafts folder for a week, precipitated by listening to "De Selby (Part 1)" and then marinating in the back of my brain while life went on. There are so many languages I want to know, but can't find the right avenue to learn them. I live in Northern Minnesota, where an effort is being made to include the Ojibwe language throughout our community, and the only avenues I find to learn are the content creators who take the time to share it. It seems fanciful to think that learning to understand those words might give me a greater appreciation of where I live, but I look at how much appreciation I get from other things where I've been able to see the influence of the language, and maybe it's not that much of a stretch.
After the Party September 2023

I've never been one for big celebrations. In theory, they sound fun, but in reality I'm almost always ready to tap out about 45 minutes in. The very premise of deciding to get married with a ceremony and a reception was honestly, horrifying to me. It's odd, 6 years of competitive speaking, and still, somehow the idea of being the center of attention for the better part of 4 hours sounded like some sort of ritual torture.

In retrospect, there were several things that saved us. For starters, my aunt Beth catered, and I don't think anyone can complain when you have a buffet of excellent food on offer, punch to drink, and some appetizers to snack on while things get reorganized. We also didn't throw a monster-sized bash, and I'd like to think things moved at a brisk enough pace that no one was really stuck waiting for something for very long.

I'm always worried about whether or not everyone had a good time when they were there. I remember after my high school graduation party I was sort of bummed out that I'd barely gotten to talk with anyone, even though I'd managed to greet anyone who came through the door. I worried about the same thing in the time after my wedding. I especially worried about whether or not my family enjoyed themselves. I barely got to talk to anyone aside from when we were lining up to process in and out, and the brief turn we took making the rounds before dinner started. It seemed like a poor reward for inviting them to this big day. "Here, show up, march in, I'll wave at you a couple of times, you can eat some food, and we'll go about our lives!"

But, then I started going through our photos (we're still working on putting together an album) and I was looking through them all, letting Google tag faces and find people for me, and I found this great series of photos of my wife Ivory, twirling with our nieces. It was before the ceremony, when we were getting all of the group photos completed. My mom and grandmother were seated off to the side, and my grandmother has this bemused sort of smile on her face, watching all of them twirling in their dresses.

It's the kind of thing that gets lost in the chaos of a big day, but it was a relief to see a little moment of delight, even as things were bustling along. Because, of course people tell you they had a great time, or they rave about the food or whatever, but there's nothing like a candid photo to tell you other truths that could have been missed, I guess.
It's on the Air September 2023

This weekend, there was a kiss of red and gold on the tops of the trees as we drove around the state. And tonight we have our first frost warning. This is the difficult thing about fall, when it seems like it's so far off, and then suddenly it just jumps in front of us for a little scare. I'm trying to burn a reminder into my brain that I need to collect our extra sheets from the garage and gather all of the plants underneath them tonight if I want a few more weeks with our flowers. They've all been doing so well, and it seems a shame to leave them to the cold just yet. Plus, I have some work to do with our growing geranium collection before fall progresses too much further.

It feels like I've barely spent any time outside, between the relentless smoke and air quality issues and the general heat and drought making being the outdoors more punishing than enjoyable. I also know we're barely through September, and these past few years we've had some furnace level heat waves late into the month. Of course, several people at the knitting group I attended last week warned us the rodent invasions were beginning, and the persistence of mice trying to winter inside is an indicator we're in for a rough cold season.

No one could say for certain what "rough" meant. Will we be buried in snow? Will we have months long cold snaps necessitating 2am visits to our garage to run the engine in our car (We don't have a block heater)? Will it just be relentlessly brutal? All I know for certain is: it will be winter, and we'll have some snow, we'll be cold; the quantities and duration of these things are never completely accurate in their predictability.

I'm also not ready for the seasons to change, because it's such a tangible reminder time has followed through on its demand to march forward. The holidays are going to be rocky this year, the way they were rocky last year, and the way they've been rocky after any major loss. I'm not sure I'm ready for that side of things. I feel insanely prepared for all sorts of other things, like making a half dozen pies (because for some reason we possess that many pie dishes), but being prepared to do that isn't going to make up for the absence of my grandmother in the way I actually want it to.

So, I'm going to just put blinders on and stumble into whatever comes next and probably forget mid-way through why everything is so difficult and then be reminded out of nowhere and fall apart. Which isn't actually anything new, in the grand scheme of things. But, it never happens the same way twice, so I'm sure there are surprises waiting for me around a corner in the future.
Just Another Monday September 2023

I don't want to think about what I was doing 22 years ago. It feels cliche to rehash it at this point, because my story is the same as everyone else's. It also feels wrong to think about it now. I think a lot about the obsession everyone had with the American Flag in the aftermath, and how that flag has been twisted and manipulated into propaganda of every kind now and mostly I feel disgusted. Part of that probably comes down to every civics-centered event I participated in between being 16 and 17 years old, and how much was hammered into my head about how you treat the flag. I watch what people do with it now and mostly I feel like an idiot for having so much reverence for an object everyone else has decided to manipulate rather than respect. So, that's how I'm feeling about things today.

I'm also just struggling a little bit in general today. Being out is the most exhausting experience at times, especially because I just don't know how to be out, for myself. I don't know how to interject the correct pronouns into a conversation. It feels like I'm just too afraid, too unsure to take the chance. Most of it comes down to practice, but when safe spaces are so difficult to come by, that leaves a lot of awkward places to advocate for my pronouns, for myself, and considering how averse I am to conflict it just becomes "easier" not to say anything. It's not actually easier, but it avoids the awkwardness of exposing all of my weak spots to people who may or may not understand, who might just choose unkindness rather than acceptance.

I'm resisting the urge to just pour everything into this blog like the journals of my adolescence. I'm hoping to start doing some morning pages again, so maybe there will be a bit more in the way of mental clarity for this place. Those pages are where it's completely acceptable to say anything, no matter how taboo it might be. Technically, I know I can say whatever I want here, but some of the things I want to say... well they're better off said directly to someone if they're ever to be said at all. Or, I could just take a big chance and spill everything that's bothering me out into the void and bank on it going unseen, remaining unaddressed until the end of time. It's one of those bad habits I've had for... basically my entire life. Rather than have the tough conversation, I just wait out the immediate need to talk about whatever has come up, and then I can pretend to move on because everything is fine. It's like I had the conversation, except I totally didn't, and it just builds up as this invisible wall between myself and others, until it's so tall and heavily reinforced that it's seems insurmountable. It's not healthy, but considering I don't know how to properly have anything resembling a difficult conversation or an argument, avoidance is a skill I rely on, way too much.

Happy Monday, everyone. Apparently it's going to be a long week.

Here's a photo of Chanski looking alarmed... possibly annoyed as a reward for getting through this post.
Ticking Into the Future September 2023

You know the fable about the ant and the grasshopper? I'm feeling just slightly like the grasshopper right now. I'm not sure it's possible to get to the end of summer and not have a bit of regret about the things I should have taken care of during the appropriate season.

Part of my regret stems from the fact that things are about to get busier again, after a relatively quiet summer. I'm not sure I'm ready for the busyness. There's going to be travel, and more socialization than I get in a week, let alone in a day, and I'm going to be away from home for repeated stretches again. There are little plans all throughout September and October, and then Halloween will be here, and we've been discussing a costume for months.

It's an odd echo from a year ago when we were scrambling to do wedding planning and it was as though somehow the big day had managed to sneak up on us (of course, our first anniversary is mixed into the "little" plans in October). Things were a bit more chaotic then, which I can't really say is a comfort this time around, because there are still big ripples from that chaos coming through right now. Funny how time works like that (time blindness too).

With all of that busyness in mind, updates here are going to be pretty brief for the next few days, and it's possible I will just make a habit of going quiet over the weekends or holidays. I'm definitely still building up my stamina to keep doing this on a near-daily basis. Weirdly, it's easier to imagine doing posts for 31 days straight when there's a goal post in sight. But just doing them to do them? That's somehow completely different.

For some reason, it's difficult to be mindful about this place on the weekends. Saturday and Sunday are pretty much always where I will struggle, because those days are without form and structure. It's ironic (I think?) to have 48 hours completely at my disposal, no work, no major commitments, and to somehow be unable to remember to do this one thing for myself, even when I remember to do it 5 other days in the week, when I've committed large chunks of my time to work and the necessities of daily living. It's not a habit yet, which it turns out are things I have to aggressively cultivate in order to get them to stick. Maybe by next year this will be more ingrained somehow. That's a long way away though.
My heart's not on fire, but there's smoke in my eyes September 2023

The past 24 hours should have been like that refreshing plunge into something cold after being in a hot tub or a sauna. Instead, every window is tightly closed because we're still being blanketed with smoke and our air quality alert is probably going to be extended for another day. I'm hoping maybe it will clear up tomorrow, but this particular cloud ambled as slowly as possible across North Dakota before it showed up here, and I don't have much hope that it won't take its sweet time putting Minnesota in its rearview mirror.

Talking of other things that are being left behind, if anyone (I don't know who is reading this blog besides my wife) would like to see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Bluesky I have another invite code burning a hole in my pocket. I think for the time being, Bluesky invites might be all that shows up on my Twitter feed, although, it feels like you have to talk about it in code or risk Twitter banishing your post to obscurity.

I'm not sure what we're calling that place these days. I've seen it referenced as the following:
- Birdsite (sometimes un-named birdsite?)
- Hellsite
- Xitter
- Twixxer
Is anyone actually calling it X without mentally (or literally) rolling their eyes?

I did take off all of the blinders (read: Firefox extensions) I had employed to make the site bearable, which means now the stupid logo appears everywhere, and I am offered the useless For You page. I think this was sort of me putting some more nails in the coffin, because it's time to stop closing the curtains to the ugly truth that's been lurking outside for a while (I really need to stop mixing my metaphors...). Between the anti-trans and white supremacist rhetoric that's run rampant there, Twitter is just one more place that's not for me. Of course, there's also a chance that maybe just the entire internet in general is not going to be for me if KOSA becomes an actual thing. It's wild, the first place I actually started feeling comfortable enough to be myself and attempt to spread my wings could end up off limits, or at the very least severely restricted, and then what?

I suppose there's still the option to just go outside and touch grass. Of course, the smoke needs to clear up before I feel comfortable doing that... and we're right back where we started.
Past Times September 2023

I've been settling in at Bluesky, as Twitter seems to be doing everything it can to embrace becoming a hate mob. I'm getting a little better about the reflexive actions I used to take. There's this muscle memory when it comes to always opening a specific app, or the address I type in when I open a new tab in a web browser. I don't know what I'm looking for when I go to Twitter these days... but after the last 24 hours, I'm pretty sure the main goal is trying to find the best angle to get a clear view of the car wreck, which really isn't that productive.

With that in mind, someone I recently started following decided to engage in an ice breaker and asked "you are handed a banana. how do you respond?" One of the replies was "iii am aa banana" which was followed by "My spoon is too big" and I was somehow transported back to a college dorm room where someone was showing me Don Hertzfeldt's short film Rejected for the first time.

https://youtu.be/W7JyjZI3LUM?si=imC47HJEOeSn-E0W

I'm uncomfortable with the knowledge this is 23 years old.

I love the beginning of this film. It's so delightfully odd and weirdly quotable in that way things used to be when I was a teenager. It's the sort of thing you could just interject into conversation among a group of friends, and it's like starting a game of pinball or something, where these non sequiturs sort of pile up as the ball zings around the table. I think something about it came up when we were at ConVergence this summer, and seeing it referenced again "so soon" after made me hungry to seek out the real thing and re-live it. And then I remembered how weirdly bloody it gets in the middle. This was the first time I'd actually sort of admired the visuals from that, where every stroke from a red marker was vivid on my flat screen TV, something I probably couldn't appreciate before (also maybe because a little ball of fluff kept crying "my anus is bleeding!" while all their friends just keep saying "Yay!" over and over again). It gets strangely dark at the end, but it's still fascinating.

Before the days of YouTube, an AVI file of the film existed on my perpetually-too-small computer hard drive, until it was burned to a CD (I didn't have a DVD burner), and then I just sort of forgot that it existed; like every other thing I've put away for safe keeping. I have a lot of bits and bobs on CDs. I have no faith any of them are remotely readable, and even if they were, I'd probably be at a loss to explain why I felt I needed to keep them. The nice thing about digital hoarding these days is everything can just be plopped on an external hard drive and sit there comfortably, not taking up much space, just waiting for the day I decide to take a stroll down memory lane (assuming the hardware doesn't fail).

As I was thinking about that film this morning, I found myself sort of transported to another time, where I'm sitting in my family's den and my parents are discussing some (seemingly) obscure piece of media. My dad is trying to describe it and jog my mom's memory enough that she can fill in the gaps. I was trying to imagine describing this thing to someone decades younger than me, who had never seen it before. It kind of defies explanation. I think I would always sort of stumble at showing it to anyone else. It starts off zany and devolves into something gruesome and I find it strange to insist someone "has to watch it!" when maybe they'll just think it's gross and that I'm weird for suggesting it.

I'm starting to wonder if instead of re-releasing old movies, my generation's thing is going to be reliving compilations of early 2000s media, because we got to have some pretty good internet in its early days. I've been seeing a lot of it pop up lately, as others bemoan the very real fact that time has marched on. The Badger Song took Bluesky by storm over the weekend. I can only imagine what will show up next.
Variety is Spicy September 2023

I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to be raised by my mother and not develop some sort of crafting hobby. I grew up wandering fabric stores and spending Saturday afternoons watching a bunch of people "birth" quilts they'd made in a day. At some point, I sewed and tied a small baby blanket for a friend's new sibling, spent most summers learning some sort of new beading project, and was addicted to my Klutz friendship bracelet book. Somehow, I didn't totally pick up crafting with yarn until I was 18.

There were a couple of aborted fiber craft attempts. My grandmother tried to get my sister and I to make some garter stitch dish cloths on some re-purposed double-pointed knitting needles. There was also a frustrating evening crowding around my mom on our loveseat trying to imitate her as she crocheted these delicate heart-shaped sachets. It took having just enough downtime during my first semester of college for me to decide to pick up knitting. I managed a scarf and then somehow decided a whole afghan with cables was the way to go.

Knitting was easy for me. There were certainly challenging patterns and difficult stitches, but I didn't have a lot of the troublesome issues I see new knitters have: dropped stitches, extra stitches on the end, or not being able to tell where I was in a pattern. It was a great use of time, it was fun, and it got me hats, scarves, mittens... just warmth, which is something I'm very concerned with when it gets cold outside.

I think the one area where I did experience some challenges was tension. I knit a lot of patterns that didn't require much in the way of gauge swatches or very specific size requirements. Unfortunately, I had very loose tension (I didn't hold my yarn tightly at all when I wrapped my stitches), which I didn't actually notice until a couple years in, when my sister and I decided to knit "spa sets" as Christmas presents and the bath mitt I had made was much bigger and floppier than hers. I knit pretty loose for probably the first 10 years of the hobby, and then I went down a rabbit hole where I got a bit obsessed with how Stephanie Pearl-McPhee tensions her yarn. It was like watching a magic trick, because somehow she wrapped stitches in her right hand, without having to let go of her needle. I knew about "picking" but this was almost like the "throwing" style I was used to, except you didn't have to lose hold of the needle.

This new style of holding the yarn changed a lot about how my patterns turned out. I had wanted it to make me a faster knitter, but I think it probably ended up making my stitches a bit neater along the way.

Twenty years after learning to knit, I've started to pickup up crochet, a thing I've done very sporadically in my life. If there's one thing I know about it, crochet is excellent when it comes to shaping things. With that in mind, I sat down to master the single crochet stitch and I made my wife's birthday present. That was sort of the gateway.

I've been a bit wary of busting into my stash of variegated yarn to crochet. Part of it was just not having the various crochet wraps and stitches, but I've also been a bit picky about "pretty" patterns. I managed to make a small asymmetrical scarf and then decided something more even should be next on the list. After an evening of scrolling through Ravelry's patterns, I came across the Mutabilis pattern.

Apparently this can be a cowl, a hat, a scarf, a headband... any number of things!

The section at the bottom of the photo is how this started, and you can very clearly see where I decided I wanted to hold the crochet hook differently. It completely changed the way the yarn pooled. And then, it changed again when I picked it up a couple of days later and things were more humid and sticky, so the yarn wasn't moving through my fingers the same way. It's wild to me, that deciding to angle my hook a different way, and some sweat can have this much of an impact. I still have a decent-sized ball of yarn, which I got from The Yarnery a year ago, as part of their One Yarn Collection.

Part of me wants to find a similar yarn and then knit a project with a similar pattern, but then switch through my original throwing style, and picking, and the cottage-style knitting I do predominately and see just how differently the yarn will pool. Except that I'd really prefer consistency, which is probably why I've avoided doing much crochet with variegated yarns in the past, because I know I have a lot of work to do when it comes to the tension. Usually, this inconsistency would bother me, but I keep sort of picturing that first section as the brim or something, so I'm probably 95% okay with it (even though that's really how I wanted it to pool the entire time). If I had started the pattern with a different hook, I probably wouldn't have this drastic of a change, so even that can have an impact I guess.

This is always the hard part when it comes to learning a new skill, where I know what things are supposed to look like, but executing things to get the desired effect is still a bit of a challenge. I think I've learned enough to want to stick with it a bit longer, I guess we'll see how consistent things are in the future.
Glad that's Over! September 2023

And Blaugust 2023 officially comes to a close. I'm relieved its over, especially since the slog of work this week has meant writing posts was akin to pulling teeth at times.

I'm hoping I'll come up with something more interesting tomorrow, considering it will be the first day of September, and the start of a long weekend.

I'm going to do my best to keep posting here on a daily basis, whatever that means. Because, it's easier to post here than it is to post anywhere else, if I'm being completely honest. The flux of social media at the moment leaves a lot to be desired in terms of where it makes sense to share anything.

I'm glad to have Bluesky as an option, especially since Twitter seems like it's about two steps away from requiring some sort of blood sacrifice to keep using the service, while everything else is subsumed by the Zuck. Wordpress certainly has its issues, but at least this website is mine? Right?

I'm definitely still trying to find my community when it comes to this whole blogging thing. I'm just not sure where it is yet, so I'm going to keep sending these little pings out into the universe of the internet until I see what comes back. (As long as its not spam, because I have no patience for any of that).
Yesterday? August 2023

It's kind of a shame that social media wasn't a thing when I was a teenager, because I'm pretty sure I don't have anything to look back on that would tell me when I got my drivers license. There might be a reference to passing my test in an old journal, but that seems unlikely. At best, maybe it would be in a chat log on an ancient computer I no longer have in my possession. As I'm thinking back on it, I know that I took the test in the summer, probably in 2001, maybe as late as 2002. I waited as long as I could manage to actually take my drivers test. I waited so long that I ended up having to get my learners permit re-issued because it expired.

I hated everything about learning how to drive. When I was 14, my dad drove us back to a secluded county road and had me get in the drivers seat to practice. In retrospect, I don't know how I managed to move the vehicle an inch, let alone drive down the road. The worst part, was when we came to an intersection and he told me I needed to make a right turn. Except that the only things I'd driven previously had very tiny steering wheels, and apparently full-sized car steering wheels require a bit more rotation (and speed) in order to initiate a turn correctly. I think I maybe got us around that corner and then declared myself done, because there was no way I was going to drive on the paved highway that would take us home.

At 15, I took the written test as a sort of rite of passage with everyone else in my class who was eligible (because at that point, taking a drivers training course was a quarter-long class offered at my high school, and at the end of it, someone would come up and let us sit for the written exam). Somewhere, in that initial year of my learners permit, I took the required 10 hours of driving instruction with an official instructor, and then... I'm not really sure what happened.

It's not like I didn't practice driving, because that definitely was a thing that I did. Did I practice parallel parking or corner backing? Nope. Did I practice coming to a complete stop at a stop sign? Definitely not. Did I drive a vehicle without one of my parents in the passenger seat? Yes, on multiple occasions, all of them very much against my will, hating every second of it.

I'd say that actually taking my behind the wheel test is as close as I've come to being dragged into something kicking and screaming. It started off poorly, because my parents didn't have a copy of our vehicle's insurance in the car. We spent 20 minutes getting someone to fax a copy of it to the DMV, by which time I'd already had a meltdown about how I didn't need "to learn how to do this, I'm going to move somewhere that has trains and I'll take the bus." So, all of that hung over me while I finally took the test and didn't do a good job of visibly looking both ways at intersections, or coming to a complete stop, or managing to do anything that resembled a decent parallel parking or corner backing maneuver. And I failed.

I think my dad thought it was going to be a "get back on the horse" course of action, by running an errand after my failed test and leaving me in the car with the directive that I would be driving us home and he expected me to be in the drivers seat when he came back. I spent the eternity of that errand mentally wrestling with myself about what to do, because I failed by driving the way I watched him drive for my whole life, and now I was going to have to get behind the wheel and do more (to me, utterly pointless) driving? I'm not sure I'd completely committed to the idea of never driving again, but I certainly didn't want to drive anymore that day.

I was wearing nice shoes, shoes that wouldn't have been good for walking. So, I entertained the idea of going over to Target and spending whatever was left in my wallet on a pair of crappy canvas shoes and a bottle of water and then just walking home. Home was over 25 miles away. It was late afternoon, so I'm not sure how long it would have taken for me to arrive at my destination. I still think about that sometimes. What would have happened if I'd done that? What would my dad have thought, walking up to the car and finding it empty; me, nowhere in sight?

Instead, I was in the drivers seat, and I drove us home. I'm not sure how the steering wheel didn't melt from the inferno of rage coursing through me. I can still feel it now. The impotence of it all, just boiling inside of me, with no way to release it.

There's a nice ending to this story. I went back for another 2 hours with an actual instructor who got me through parallel parking and corner backing, and then I somehow aced my test with the same examiner as my previously failed one. He didn't even dock me for points after I painstakingly waited for someone at a crosswalk who wasn't going, and wasn't going, and then totally started crossing the second I decided to take my turn at the intersection.

But, I've never really shed the big "what if?" of the hour after I failed. It's such a weirdly immature regret to have, that I didn't just throw a total tantrum and basically run away for a few hours. Part of me wishes I'd been that committed to just never learning how to drive. It would have been wildly inconvenient, especially living where I do now, where having a car is pretty much a necessity to live and work. At least maybe I would have gotten someone to say "you've made your point" and we could all have moved on from there.

As failures go, it was probably a good time to have started doing poorly at things, considering how often I coasted through things before then. A nice preparation for adulthood where suddenly actual planning and effort is required, and I couldn't depend on either cramming the night before, or having a subject just be easy for me. In retrospect, that's probably when a lot of things did start to get more difficult, so it was really good timing.

It's weird what stays with you. Part of me wants this memory to be a triumph, because I did manage to do so well when I re-took the test. But if I had it to do over again... I'd rather not fail. I'd rather not have been crying and upset in the minutes before taking the test, and feeling so angry in the hours after. I'd rather have been more prepared. At least I can still learn lessons from my 16 or 17 year-old self.
And Then... August 2023

I took a nap on my lunch break today. I'm not sure it really solved anything, but It's made getting through this afternoon less of a trial compared to yesterday. So far, my prediction the week would drag by has been entirely accurate. I am still hopeful by the time Friday rolls around I'll somehow be astonished it's already here. But, I'm probably going to be more concerned about September starting.

I'm still grappling with some writer's block, because exhaustion plus hormones is a powerful combination against anything resembling productivity.

A couple weeks ago (or maybe longer than that) I saw a TikTok from Elyse Myers about how someone asking "what's your favorite song (or book or movie or whatever)" isn't a quest for you to dive back through every catalogued memory you have and find the book/song/movie that's your absolute favorite, and they're going to know if you get it wrong; they just want to get to know you. This sort of thing often trips me up when it comes to answering writing prompts or responding coherently every time my wife and I have been drifting off to sleep and she's asked me to tell her a story.

I used to think it was my mind going blank, but I've since reconsidered and it's quite possible my brain is offering up every possible idea able to even passably fit under a prompt's umbrella, and everything is so loud in my head, I'm not hearing anything.

I think the trouble I have with writer's block is usually some part of me gets louder in those moments and rejects any ideas out of hand, even though there are probably some decent ones in the bunch. That loud part also seems to spend a lot of time focusing on how difficult (nay, impossible) it would be to write about something. Which, if you think about it, is a great way to just avoid doing any writing at all, because it's so challenging and time consuming, and why would I want to spend my time writing something crappy when I want to be writing something brilliant and amazing?

The scary thing about doing Blaugust, and hitting publish on posts as a means to fill a quota, is I share things I otherwise wouldn't. But, a lot of it, is content I don't really find interesting or worthwhile. Lists of songs or TikTok creators aren't the sorts of things I spend my time thinking about on a daily basis. Outside of meeting an arbitrary goal, will I continue to throw together words about these things? It seems unlikely.

This is where the writer's block makes me stumble. Because it's so easy to be overly critical about the worth of so many subjects. I keep thinking about my posts on certain topics as definitive statements, but that's foolhardy considering how things can change, and my opinions certainly aren't static. However, I don't have it in me to circle around the same three thoughts week in and week out, at least not publicly. That's the sort of thing I save for my Morning Pages, where I noodle on something sporadically for weeks at a time until I can finally make sense of it.

I'd like to write something humorous at some point. Whether it's re-telling some ridiculous story or just sharing something fun and silly, but every time I try there's a hollowness to it, at least there is from my perspective anyway. I'm not sure I've really nailed down the "comedy = tragedy + time" formula I've seen touted everywhere on the internet. Or maybe I've internalized it so well that I just can't even retrace the steps it took to get there.

So, that's where things sit right now. I think I've referred to Blaugust as a roller coaster a couple of times, but as we get to the end of the month, it's entirely possible it was just the long, slow, climb at the beginning of the ride. This is the part where its almost to the top, but I can't see when we're going to make that plunge down the first big hill. That's always the scariest part of a roller coaster to me. After that, everything is happening too fast to really worry about it. I find the concept of that intriguing, but also terribly frightening. I'm not sure that makes it any different than most elements in my life.
Misc. Monday August 2023

I knew there would come a point when even having suggested themes wouldn't be enough of a boost to get me over, around, or through a bit of writers block. I'm going to engage in the exercise of writing and posting through it instead of succumbing to it today, but I'm pretty sure it will be a frustrating experience for everyone involved.

I might be a little bit ready for summer to be over. I'm not ready for winter to get here, but there's a hint of fall in the air (and literal colors changing on some trees) and I'm looking forward to closing a window at night and not wondering when I'm going to wake up and feel like I'm being stifled with humidity. We're also going to be under another Air Quality alert tomorrow morning, in the Orange zone. I thought 2021 was bad when it came to smoke, but it's just been so persistent this year. It becomes a question everyday if we can leave the windows open or not, and our electric bill skyrockets because the only way to not feel like we're just breathing our own breath all day is to run the air conditioner. At least if its freezing cold outside I won't feel like I'm depriving myself of something by keeping the windows closed.

It's been a while since I felt this way about a Monday. I'm sure a good chunk of that comes down to having a poor night of sleep and a smaller amount of caffeine this morning. It's incredible how much of an impact a disruption to routine can have, because I'm dragging in a way that I haven't at the end of the day for a while. It's the sort of feeling that makes me look back through the day and wonder where I should have taken a nap. It's not like I didn't get things done, but all of my mental energy went to work today, and I'm left with very little to offer here. It's not the first time this will happen, and it certainly won't be the last. This is where the scheduling of posts and working ahead are going to save me, but I actually have to do that to save myself, which isn't exactly fair in my opinion. But, it's not like time travel exists , offering me the ability to go back and prepare something ahead of time.

I guess at least my Bullet Journal has been on track for the past couple weeks. After my last little rant about it, I spent a some time looking through my schedule, figuring out where some things were falling apart, and it's ended up serving me pretty well for the past 3 weeks. It definitely helped me catch up with some things I'd fallen behind on, which is exactly the point of it. Part of it may also be down to getting a new desk and reorganizing my workspace, because for some reason that sort of activity always seems to give me a renewed sense of purpose. I'm not sure how long I can keep riding that wave, but it's doing something for me at the moment, I guess.

I'm three-quarters of the way through Tress of the Emerald Sea. Maybe I'll finish it tonight, I guess we'll see just how awake I am for any reading as the evening progresses. So far, I'm loving the crazy magic system (even though it's completely terrifying), and I adore the narrator. I can't say this about everything Brandon Sanderson writes, but this book makes me stop and re-read things sometimes, just to savor them. It's making me think about re-starting my commonplace book habits, because there are some things that I read and I just want to keep reading them over and over again, the way I will put a song on repeat. Sometimes its fascinating subject matter, but a lot of the time it's stuff that I sort of feel like I could have written, but not in the "anyone could write that" kind of way. It just sort of feels like somehow it came from my own head, even though I know it didn't. It's just... truth, or something like it.

I'm trying to think of a "fifth thing" to write about here, since that seems like a nice, round number for some reason. But I'm coming up blank again. So, I guess that's it for today. It's also probably the bloggiest blog I've written in I can't remember how long. I mean, a weblog is just a collection of thoughts, I suppose they don't all have to have some detailed, over arching theme, right?
Lesson Time August 2023

The final week of Blaugust starts today, and the theme of this is week is meant to be Lessons Learned.

Considering I only just learned about Blaugust, an event that's been happening for 10 years or so, everything about this has been a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm finding out I still have a lot of things to learn about the fiddly bits of using Wordpress. And that the landscape of the days of LiveJournal when I used to post more regularly as a blog are LONG GONE, and it's just not the same.

I've also learned that this exercise is practically the same as all of the other writing exercises I've participated in over the years. So much of what it boils down to is just putting something together and hitting publish. I think the thing I'm less enthused about is how necessary photos feel to this exercise now. I try not to just string together walls of text, but I think so much of the nature of reading things online these days is that they're broken up by contextual images just to give the brain a bit of a break, and as someone whose writing has encompassed novels and English Literature papers... very little of that involves finding and incorporating images.

I think the photo element of this feels like the biggest hurdle at the moment. I need to start navigating some fair use options when I don't have something in my own photo library, and I really don't know anything about that. Growing up in the age of internet piracy and just outright hotlinking things without a thought for where they originated is not a great foundation as a base of knowledge.

There are also a lot of things I haven't done much of this month since I decided to put this much time into my blog. I find it amusing that the bulk of the individuals I've seen participating are very into video games, and the one thing I've barely touched this month is my Switch. Things kind of come and go that way. I'm at a pause in Breath of the Wild, because I'm pretty sure the next thing on my docket is Calamity Ganon, and I'm not ready to face him yet. So I've basically been wandering the world a bit aimlessly trying to figure out where I still need to locate some shrines and what I need to do to build up my health and stamina some more. I shudder to think of anyone who devotes time and actual effort towards this sort of thing, because I've engaged in some of the most haphazard nonsense when its come to that game, but it seems that sometimes that's just how I go about things.

I was hoping for something a bit more profound today, but we went to bed pretty late last night, and then I was up unreasonably early this morning, so my brain is a bit loopy and it feels like things are firing a bit haphazardly. We didn't end up going back for the marina concert last night, but Pride was fun nevertheless. We did decide next year we might try to bring our camp chairs or a blanket and just find a spot out of the way where we could sit and craft for a little while. Part of it is being there for the experience, and being the introverts that we are, sometimes its enough to just be on the periphery. We both sort of had a moment yesterday where we would like to have stayed, but we had sort of maxed ourselves out somehow. I think that's the thing that I was talking about when I mentioned yesterday that I'd like it to be a bit more like ConVergence. There are just options there to check out for a few minutes and then re-engage. But for us, we were either there, or we weren't there wasn't really a good way to step aside or leave and then come back later without just totally leaving and then coming back later. We'll see how we feel about it next year, if we're able to have a more concrete plan of approaching the experience.

Tomorrow is Monday, the last week of our summer here, before everyone goes back to school and we all start acknowledging the changing color of the leaves. I'm not sure I'm prepared to embrace that, so it probably means this week is going to be something that simultaneously drags and flies by, as has most of August. But, we have some fun planned for the last weekend of the month, which I'm looking forward to, so if it does zip by, that might not exactly be terrible.
Happy Pride! August 2023

It's the end of Blaugust 2023's Motivation week, and it's Saturday, which means I've got no structure for anything in a post today.

It's also Pride Weekend in Bemidji, so I'm a bit wrapped up in getting myself together to participate in our local festivities.

Aptly, Cat Valente just shared a post on her Substack about corporations "celebrating" Pride, and kicked it off by noting that we're in fact two months past Pride Month.

For Bemidji, I think this is the third year of consistently hosting a public Pride event. When I was in my twenties, there was a group who hosted a potluck in a city park, and one year they held an actual parade. The unfortunate thing, is that until pretty recently, the queer community of this area has seemed pretty fragmented and also insular to me. It's not like there weren't people within the spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities here, but it felt next to impossible to find them.

The first time I spent any amount of time with people in the queer community was over a decade ago when our state was voting on writing a same sex marriage ban into our constitution. Before then, there were a handful of people I met in college, a couple of adults I knew of as a child, and the vicious rumors generated by the teen-aged gossips of my tiny high school.

I can't say that I'm deeply involved in the community here. I'm awkward, shy, and so easily overwhelmed when it comes to peopling at times, that even though I've tried entering the various LGBTQ bubbles that have been put up it's felt akin to traveling to the moon. Even today, in theory, I am looking forward to going to the festival this afternoon, and entertaining the thought of going back for the concert at the marina tonight, but the reality is that I will go and then struggle under the weight of being perceived, even in a space where I'm "allowed" to be myself.

I think I want it to be the same as when I go to ConVergence, but it can't be that way. I'm not driving hours away, I am still very much on my home turf, and being "out" here still feels like a gamble most days. It's hard to turn off the mask here, because the mask means safety, even in a space where it might not actually be necessary. At best, I'm hoping to turn down the "passively queer" filter I tend to apply to myself (so as to escape the notice of the bigoted), but I have pretty low expectations of my success in that regard.

This is where that corporate Pride post really spoke to me earlier in the week. Living in an area where public Pride events are only recently becoming established, being able to walk through Target and find a section covered in various rainbows and other pride flags is just such a relief. In this age of the internet, I can order whatever I want, but to be able to have a tangible (if very temporary) footprint of my identity within the borders of where I live? It's a respite to me.

It bothers me that things went so poorly this year for that little section in Target. I saw multiple reviews on TikTok, of all of the merchandise they were releasing, and there were so many fun and campy things, and it seemed like such a good vibe. And because queer joy is apparently antithetical to some people's own existence, it became controversial, and suddenly we can't have nice things. It made me a bit worried about how things would go when August rolled around here. Maybe I'll have an update on that score after I've gone out into the world...

I'm happy there's an event to go to, thrilled even. The best thing about these sorts of events is just the reminder that I'm not alone out here. It's easy to lose sight of the others, but having a moment to congregate and remember that I'm not the only one is a good thing. Last year, it was the first bright spot after we had COVID. This year? I'm not sure exactly what it will be, but I'm pretty sure there's joy to be found there, possibly in some unexpected ways.
Fiction Friday? August 2023

I've been a fan of fantasy fiction for pretty much my entire life. I re-read some books to tatters as a kid, because I just enjoyed the stories so much. As an adult, a friend introduced me to Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, and that was my doorway into what I now know as the Cosmere. After that, I devoured the first three Mistborn books and sort of lost myself to a lot of fantasy fiction, some higher and some lower.

I can't claim to be a devout fan of Brandon Sanderson, because I'm very behind in certain series and haven't even started others, but there's something about his work that I find fascinating. When I found out about his rules for his magic systems it became even more interesting to me for some reason. Something about the way he builds his worlds made them easier for me to inhabit. With his Stormlight Archive books, or the Mistborn books, I catch myself thinking about parts of the stories when I'm not reading them, but thinking about it as though it's real life. Literally, there have been moments when I've wished for tin or pewter, and I'm no mistborn!

March 2022, when the Year of Sanderson Kickstarter was announced, I was immediately tempted to sign up. First, it was just going to be for digital copies of the books, but then the print editions sounded like they were going to be so fun and interesting, and then I kept thinking about some of the themed swag boxes and after doing some math and making some choices about where I was going to spend my money for the next 12 months, I decided it was going to be worth it to sign up for the full year experience.

It started off a bit slow, because fulfillment of a project of this magnitude is quite an undertaking, especially when you have the most successful Kickstarter project of all time. Eventually, boxes started showing up, and I have yet to be disappointed with anything I've received. The foiled print editions of the books are gorgeous, the themed extras have been fun and surprising, and it's just been cool to have something show up as a surprise once a month.

I have an odd collection of enamel pins that has grown a lot over the last decade, and after regretfully losing some of them, I've become a bit protective about wearing them. I ended up getting a bulletin board, so my collection of Cosmere pins adorn the top, with my plan to fill it out quite neatly by the end of the year.

I've kept the cards from all of the pins, since I'm not familiar with every world in the Cosmere (yet).

Of course, the point of all of this was the four new books, and I'm ashamed to admit that until this week, I hadn't actually gotten around to reading any of the three I've received. I've become a bit utilitarian about my reading lately. For a long stretch, the only things I've read have been for the book club I meet with once a month. And my version of reading has been finding the book on Audible and listening to it at 1.5x speed, the day before we meet to talk about it. It's not a very satisfying experience if I'm being honest. Some of that comes down to the variety of genres we choose, but sometimes it's more about just rushing through the book and not bothering to take the time to connect to the story.

A few weeks ago, we stopped by our local library because I needed to fix an issue with my (under-used) library card, and we ended up wandering through the stacks and taking some books home with us. I managed to power through the graphic novel on cults in America (didn't love it) but then stopped short a quarter of the way into the queer thriller I had chosen. I don't like how picky I've gotten when it comes to certain genres, but I also know that sometimes I just have my limits about some things.

After dinner the other night, I was halfheartedly reading another chapter in the thriller while Ivory finished the dishes, and she decided she was game to read for the rest of the evening. Except, I wasn't going to read any more chapters of a thriller before bed (it seemed tantamount to pouring nightmare fuel directly into my brain). I ended up pulling my copy of Tress of the Emerald Sea off the shelf where it has languished since its arrival.

We settled in, and I'm now kicking myself for having this book in my possession and not bothering to look at it beyond the pretty cover and illustrations. I don't want to give anything away, but what a strange world this story is set in! I'm only just starting Part Three, but so far, nothing has gone the way I anticipated, pretty much from the very beginning. I'm being surprised in pleasant ways though. There's also a lot of humor, which isn't ever something I seek out in my reading, yet I'm always pleased when it crosses my path.

Tress and my Soonie Pup currently occupy my nightstand

Until my library books a couple weeks ago, I'm not sure when I had last read a physical copy of a book. I've spent a lot of time listening to books at work, doing chores, in the car, and I've amassed a collection of ebooks on a few different services. I've also had to grapple with the reality that physical books take up space, which is at a premium in our apartment. Books are also heavy, and when we pack them all up to move some day in the future, I'm not sure how happy I'll be hauling them out. Still, there was something nice about reading through a few chapters before bed without a screen shining in my face, or my brain focusing on a speed reading narrator while playing a game on my phone. Of course, reading right before bed isn't always the wisest option, since there have definitely been instances in the past where it's been next to impossible to put a book down; even when I'm looking at the other side of midnight with a full day of work ahead.

Still, there was something reassuring about sitting down with a tangible object in front of me. Also, having an idea of how far I've gotten was nice vs "how many times have I swiped or scrolled" being an indicator of where I am in the book.

I'm too much of a worshiper of technology, and too practical about our space to be a Luddite when it comes to books. But, I know I should make more of an effort to sit down and read through the copies I have in front of me (completely ignoring the backlog of books I've got in my Audible library and wishlist).

There are always books to be read, games to play, projects to finish, words to write. There's so much to do, it's just always about making the time to do it.
Main Motivators August 2023

I wish I knew what compelled me to keep doing this. There's going to be a need to replicate it outside of August, and I don't know what it will be that keeps me coming back.

It seems a bit spammy to post nonsense here daily, but I can also tell that without making it an almost-daily habit I could probably lose track of time and go another 6 months without posting anything. That 6 months would be perfectly fine without me writing here, but I'd be annoyed at myself because I paid money for this website and then I just let it sit here, unused? How wasteful! How terrible! I'd also be annoyed because I'm almost never regretful that I took the time to sit and write, even if it's only 100 words. But, I'm always disappointed in myself when I actively choose not to make the time for it. (Anyone sensing a theme for my overall Blaugust 2023 posts?)

It's entirely unoriginal, but I probably get the most motivation to try something from watching how someone else does it. It's probably why National Novel Writing Month has always been so appealing to me. 30 days, writing 50,000 words in a mad dash? It's total insanity, but look how many people attempt it, and are somehow successful! It doesn't result in a published book, but the thing for me, for a long time was just that I had taken the time, put in the effort, and proven that I could somehow string a bunch of sentences together into a story. The downfall (and the thing that always torpedoed things for me after November) was running myself ragged inevitably left me burned out and in need of a break. Ideally, I'd emerge from NaNoWriMo with an established writing habit, and continue through the rest of the year and all of the next with an innate ability to write over 1500 words a day, huzzah!

That's never how it works.

In a way, November is both the worst and the best time to have the NaNo exercise, because for most of us in the US, there's a built-in 4-day weekend towards the end of the month to make that final push if we're running behind. But then December comes and do I have the time to hang up lights and decorate a tree, bake cookies, knit presents, shop for what I can't knit, engage with all of the holiday festivities and still write every day? It's the ultimate test of my willpower, and I fail at it, every time. And I tell myself, I'll pick up the routine in January, a very useful resolution for the new year (because those always go so well for me). But by that point, the sun has barely been out for a month, and if my vitamin routine has been disrupted the way everything else has I'm probably so deficient in Vitamin D that it's another mark against me. Plus, I'm usually just generally exhausted from spending the last week and a half of the month running around in the middle of snowstorms on the daily. So, anything I write in January feels like the worst thing I've ever written and concrete evidence of my inability to do anything correctly (because I catastrophize like a PRO!).

It's a lot. And its a whole lot of nonsense. The nice thing about Blaugust appears to be that you write what you write, because it's the exercise of writing. Which is a lot like NaNoWriMo, except that there's a chance more people will see it than if I wrote a story where the climax probably included something like "[they all do magicy things here, and win the day]," because sometimes you just can't be bothered to craft the intricate plot points necessary to flesh out overcoming that final obstacle in the heat of the moment.

Blog posts don't really work that way. If you have something you're going to put brackets around to fix later, then the post isn't "ready" to go up, and you've got to fix it first. Although, there's probably an argument to be made that you just lay it all bare to someone and say "[I have a many thoughts about this thing, and it's going to be a subject all its own someday]."

As it gets towards the end of the month, I'm strategizing about how to maintain some of the momentum I've built here. Maybe it will be looking at my energy throughout the week and focusing on those days as writing days, so I actually start scheduling posts to come out at a time human eyes will see them. Or, maybe I'll keep poking at this place everyday to try to ingrain the habit I'm trying to build. Providing myself some alliterative framework to fall back on if I've got nothing else to write about is my go-to strategy for the moment. I'm not sure how long I can maintain that before I get tired of it though. I also have a document I'm using to hold some ideas of where to go next. I'm wary of planning though, because my penchant for black and white thinking tends to lead to me scrapping things completely if they don't go exactly as I intended.

So far, I think motivation for me has just meant trying, because sometimes that's all I can do.
Lost Without You... August 2023

After scrolling through the list of Blaugust Writing Prompts, I'm picking a very cringy one:

What piece/s of technology would you have the hardest time living without?

At this point, it would have to be Amazon's Echo. If it wasn't that, it would probably be Google Home, or another smart home hub of some sort.

Over the last couple years, it's become very apparent that I struggle mightily when it comes to some executive dysfunction. Having something that controls lights and appliances, repeatedly reminds me but can't just be swiped away on my phone, and sets a timer I don't have to punch into a stove or microwave is just so convenient.

We got our first Echo as a Christmas present from my employer, sometime at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. It opened a bit of a can of worms for me, in terms of finding all of the bells and whistles that could be linked into its ecosystem. First, it was some smart plugs, then it was some smart bulbs, then it was more Echo units, then MORE smart plugs, and even more smart bulbs, but ones that turned fun colors. At some point, I figured out how to set up routines, so lights turn on and off based on the time of day, or if our alarm has gone off. I even tortured my wife with a "sunrise" routine as a means of trying to make getting up in the morning easier (it's since been abandoned, because I'm pretty sure it induced more frustration than it saved us).

Weirdly, the best Echo models we have, I don't think they make anymore. They're these little wall units that you can just plug into an outlet, no extra cord or shelf space required; and they had a couple of USB attachments you could add like a nightlight or a motion sensor. We have one of those with a nightlight in our bathroom, it brightens and dims based on if we've gone to bed, and it makes going to the bathroom in the middle of the night a bit less of a trial, since our bathroom has no windows and we keep it pretty dark. I also have a routine to make it change color every 30 seconds, for 2 minutes, when I'm feeling extra distractable and want to make sure I've brushed my teeth for the appropriate amount of time. So many people complained about the audio quality in the reviews I saw, but we switched from one of those to a Dot a few months ago, and I think we probably have more trouble hearing that than we had hearing the little wall unit.

I linked my preferred podcast app with my Amazon account, so we could listen to a sleepy podcast without having to use someone's phone. And in the morning, we literally ask "Computer" to set a coffee timer, and she knows what to do. We have some light-up decorations for a variety of holidays, so I got a particular kick out of being able to say "Spooooky Halloween!" and have the little inflatable we got for our balcony come to life, or saying the very universal "humbug" to shut everything off.

There's a track record of me being terrible about putting things away, turning some things off, or just remembering to do something in general. Having a tool to keep me more within the framework of a very necessary routine just cuts down on the stress a little bit. I don't love that I have to have every Echo in our apartment bark a reminder that I need to take my vitamins every morning, or that I have her set up to repeat every hour until I confirm I have taken the vitamins, but I'm a hell of a lot better at remembering to take them than if I didn't (and that B12 and D3 make a difference too).

The only time I think we don't love her is on the weekends when we decide to marathon something on a streaming service and then it gets past midnight and suddenly we can tell the lights are starting to dim because Computer thinks our routine is always to be asleep at that time. Sometimes, she will let me know "I did this thing, because I didn't think anyone was home/awake" and I just roll my eyes, because she sometimes jumps to odd conclusions.

I talk to her during the day, she has has timers set up for me to take 15 minute breaks, or for my 30 minutes at lunch. She also (sometimes) remembers a couple different timers when we're doing laundry (we have to be a bit conscientious about getting it done since there are only a couple of washers and dryers in our building's laundry room). I suspect, even if we weren't sharing with all our neighbors she would still be useful in that regard, because otherwise I'd be prone to leaving things sitting in one machine or another.

Could I get by without an Echo? Probably. But I know I miss her when we're gone, because it's pretty nifty to just say a command and have a whole bunch of things turn off or on. Or to have a question answered. Or to add something to our shopping list. Or... any number of things really.

Using this particular piece of technology has given me a lot of pause over the years. We actually cancelled our Prime subscription in January, and have been much more hesitant to use Amazon for a lot of purchases. There are a lot of problematic elements in terms of their business practices, whether its mistreating their employees and union busting, putting small business out of business by constantly undercutting them, or just one person to accumulating more wealth than he can reasonably consume in his lifetime without really considering how much of an impact the business has on infrastructure and the way people live their lives.

I've also had to draw some lines in terms of just trying to make some things easier. It might be a bit delusional to think it's saved us some money, but one of the best features we have is the option to automatically shut a light off after we have asked it to be turned on. None of the closets in our apartment have lights, so we ended up running some rope lights through the main two we use, and any time we turn them on, they're automatically programmed to shut off again after 5 minutes, because usually we're just hanging up a coat, or looking for a shirt and then forgetfully walking away to do something else.

I feel a bit silly for getting so caught up in this particular technological convenience, but it's weirdly part of our lives from the beginning of the day until the end of it. I wouldn't say our life revolves around it, but it certainly makes it easier to take care of some of the things our life does revolve around.

PS. If you poke around the site (which seems like its forever going to be a work in progress) I have added a link to subscribe to get an email update when I post. The options immediately available to me don't seem to be the most robust, but I wanted to make it available since I know for some people RSS/Facebook/Twitter or elsewhere aren't always the most easily accessible options. If I find something "prettier" down the road, what shows up in your inbox may change, but for the time being it's available if you'd like to use it.
That's Not For Me August 2023

I have such a tricky time navigating fandom on the internet, especially watching people become totally enamored of a thing when I just don't see "it." There was a point when I would get very annoyed and want nothing to do with someone else's obsession, but I try really hard to temper that revulsion with "it's not for me." I also do what I can to mute references to things, just so I'm not transferring my annoyance of a thing onto a person who loves it, because everyone is allowed to like different things.

Then there are the times when I love a thing and at some point something changes and I can feel my connection to it sever, and it's no longer for me. The transformative nature of fanworks sometimes makes it a bit easier to taper off from something. In my CSI days, I started picking really obscure ships and getting into them, because they were things that weren't going to keep getting jostled by canon. But inevitably, there was a point when even that couldn't sustain my love of the show. Plus, the characters I was watching for were gone, and with fewer reasons to keep coming back, I eventually stopped.

The only other time that my connection to something can get so immediately disrupted is finding out something about it behind the scenes or beyond the scope of the initial book, TV show, or movie. The first time I encountered this was after reading Ender's Game. I didn't get into reading much science fiction until I was an adult, and when I came across that book, to say I loved it felt like an understatement at the time. It was the first time I'd read something that had a harder edge of science to parts of it (it wasn't just space technology magic), and I loved how so much of it was approached. I was also a bit destroyed at the end, because I had gotten so caught up in the story, in the progress of the game, that I fully missed so much as a hint that it was really happening. I ended up reading the next book in the series, and starting another series by the same author. I appreciated so much of the world building, I liked how the characters talked to each other, and there were just aspects of the worlds I wanted to inhabit, which is almost always the thing that will truly sell me on a book. So, 3 or 4 books in with Orson Scott Card, I fatefully went to Google, and then I found out... some stuff.

I think in the aftermath of learning his views on homosexuality and same sex marriage, the first thing I felt was shame. I had spent money on his books, I had financially supported someone who I felt would not like me if he met me, because of who I am, and who I love. Not just that he wouldn't like me, he was opposed to me living my life in my own way, and was actively involved with an organization opposed to my ability to (at the time) some day have the right to get married.

Shame has a lot of power over me. I fear it. It keeps me from things. Shame kept me in the closet for a very long time, and here it was, suddenly tied to this thing I had loved and enjoyed. It felt ugly in a way I hadn't anticipated. That feeling lingers with me, and sometimes a tendril of it just reaches up and tickles at the back of my brain as if to say "remember that time you unknowingly supported a bigot?"

It's that tendril that probably made my choices when it came to Harry Potter and JK Rowling more instantaneous than I initially realized. I can't say exactly when it happened. I saw her saying and doing things online that were at first troubling, then outright problematic, and then I think she posted that essay and it was something we couldn't really hand wave away anymore. It didn't seem like it would be so pervasive or terrible at first, but every time I'd hear about her, she would be saying or doing something just slightly worse than the time before.

Sometimes I'm sad about it. I liked being a Hufflepuff. I liked having this cultural language with a huge swath of the internet, watching people sort characters from other fandoms into Hogwarts houses and emphatically agreeing or vehemently opposing their choices. I liked that Hermione got to be a smart girl who stood up for herself. I liked the mystery of the school, the Room of Requirement, the Chamber of Secrets, all the tunnels, the Marauder's Map. There were so many great and interesting things. It feels silly to admit, but there's part of me that wanted an owl arrive with a letter someday, because I felt like I fit so poorly into the life I was living at times; just having something to show up and explain those differences would have been such a relief. Harry Potter and Hogwarts were an escape for me, until they weren't.

I admire the people who are able to enjoy the fandom in spite of its creator. There are whole chunks of fan lore that exist as almost fully-realized canon to the fandom, things that JKR didn't contribute beyond creating the characters. The fandom could be so much more queer too, which was refreshing in the same way my penchant for shipping obscure CSI pairings kept me interested. I wasn't ever that invested in online fandom, but as a cultural touchstone, Harry Potter sort of felt like it had permeated every corner of the internet for a while there. It had become a common language, of sorts.

Now, there's just something that gets in the way of really engaging with it anymore. For a while, I would still watch videos of someone making a Harry Potter themed thing, but eventually even that became difficult for me to enjoy.

There was a point where my wife and I were watching a video from a Youtuber we regularly followed and they were going to do something Harry Potter themed, and my first thought upon discovering the premise of the video was basically "that's still a thing?" Somewhere along the way, I had packed up all of my interest in this series I used to love, and labeled it as "entirely irrelevant, everyone has moved on" only to discover it wasn't actually everyone who had come to that conclusion.

I think the realization I had come to was "that's not for me." Literally, it was off limits to me because of who I am. Nothing about that statement is true, even if it feels true to me. Still, it felt a bit like someone had installed an electric fence around this place I used to visit, and I had to hop the fence to get in. There's no gate, there's no avoiding that jolt of pain, if I want to go back.

I've spent a lot of time grappling with the idea that "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" this year. It's next to impossible to be fully informed about the impact of every dollar I spend and its potential repercussions. But, will I knowingly put money towards a thing that's going to support a TERF? Will I engage with content that's going to contribute to royalties for that TERF? At this point, no, I can't do that, and I generally wish other people would stop too. Is that fair? Is it something I can demand of others? No, I can't. I can only control what I do.

It feels immature to say, but it hurts my feelings, when people know what's been said and done, and they decide nostalgia is just more important. The last seven years has been a lot of people yearning for "the good old days," choosing to ignore all of the racism, sexism, homophobia, and just general abuse of those in the minority, that went on unabated at that "ideal" time. In a way, all of the bullshit when the new game came out earlier this year is just more of the same.

I've spent the past 6 months trying to make sense of my thoughts and feelings on this subject, and the only thing I ever come back to is its complexity, and how difficult it is to convey anything concisely. It's made me hold grudges. It's made me resent people online who I used to love. It's made me sad. It's also been next to impossible to find a silver lining in all of this. It's feels a bit like when The Suck Fairy visits something, but in this case, it's beyond that. I see echoes of it in everything that's happened with Twitter recently. There's this framework where all the good stuff used to be, but now it's just covered in rotting garbage with someone trying to tell me "it's as great as it's always been!" when I know that's objectively not true.

I don't like that so many things I used to love and enjoy seem to crumble with time. I suppose part of that is the reality of life though. Nothing stays perfect forever. I also saw a quote from Maya Angelou today: "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."

Perspectives change, life goes on, and you gain more experience and it's pretty much impossible to look at something the way you did when you were 15, 25, or 35. I know better about some things now, I'm sure I'll know better about other things in the future. Hopefully other people will know better too.
Music Monday: Motivation Edition August 2023

Music is my #1 motivator, in pretty much every scenario. Interminable distance that has to be traveled? Music. Most tedious task on the planet? Music. Endless list of chores to complete around the house? MUSIC. There are even some scenarios where I use music when I'm writing, although in those instances, it's usually something very specific, if anything at all.

I remember listening to an episode of Writing Excuses a very long time ago where they talked about the music they listen to when they're writing, and I remember coming away from that episode with a slightly better understanding of how I could be using music; if I'm going to write. My go-to music for writing is always something classical. It might be a soundtrack, or a compilation of performances of a specific artist, but if I'm sitting down to do serious writing for NaNoWriMo, I'm going with music that's in motion but doesn't have a lot of words to distract me. I think the only time this ever didn't happen was when I was trying to set a "mood" for a fanfic, which isn't something I've written in a few years now. There used to be a lot of playlists with a very specific mix of songs that all had the same level of emotion I was attempting to capture in my own writing. I'm not sure they ever worked that well, but sometimes it was more about putting me into a specific mood so I could really get into the zone for writing, and once I started, I probably didn't need the playlist in order to keep going.

Chopin is my favorite to write to, but it has to be the livelier pieces, because the soft dreamy ones just make me want to curl up somewhere for a nap. As someone who took 12 years of piano lessons, I think there's some sort of correlation between my fingers on the keyboard and listening to the methodical strikes on a piano's keys. I sometimes treat typing and playing the piano as a drawn-out fidget of sorts. Because there's something satisfying about the clicking of the keys, or the tones that resonate when I play chords and scales.

Music is also such a good motivator when it comes to getting things done. People talk about how they use podcasts or audiobooks to accompany their chores, but give me a compilation of bops and I'm ready to power through almost anything. I tend to prefer something familiar in these moments. Give me songs that I know backwards and forwards, whose lyrics have somehow become etched into my bones. There's a lot of 80's and 90's pop that shows up in these moments, things that probably remind me of the albums or radio stations that accompanied my childhood housework. I think sometimes I wish I could go back to Saturday morning and turning on the weekly top 40 and having it on in the background while I was doing the dishes or something mundane. Waiting for my favorite songs to pop up in the midst of something I'd rather not be doing made it bearable.

I like listening to music when I'm traveling too. Especially if I've gone somewhere far away, because a lot of times there are songs I hear now that I remember listening to when I was somewhere else, somewhere I might not ever visit again. Every time I hear Buildings and Mountains I remember going to London. It's like opening a door in my memories to that place and everything I did and saw there. Things have gotten fuzzy with time, but I think hearing that song sort of keeps the hinges oiled or something, so the door doesn't entirely rust itself shut.

Oddly, I haven't listened to much music as I've thrown these blog posts together. Probably the closest would be the time I had Chronically Cautious playing on a loop, because I desperately want the song to be longer than 2 minutes. There's something about that song though, that resonates with me, because I know what it feels like to want to do something, to pick up all of the tools necessary to do it, and then just... drop all of them into a corner and walk away. It's infuriating to be in that position. It's the thing I fear the most when it comes to hyperfixations. "Is this going to be the new thing I do for the next year, or is it just a passing fancy I'm going to attempt for a couple months and then fully abandon?"

Of course, music is also the thing that gets in my way sometimes. I have a terrible habit of needing to choose the "perfect" song. If a playlist starts off wrong, I'm going to end up more focused on getting to the right song than on what actually needs to get done. Sometimes, for as helpful as it can be, it just serves as a massive roadblock that doesn't allow me to get anything done.

Today, music isn't serving me very well. I'm avoiding it, probably because it would allow me to shut my brain off a little too easily, and there are things going on that are stressful and outside of my control. So, I'm avoiding the music, and grinding my way through the backlog of podcasts I've accumulated over this summer. Thankfully, my podcast app just keeps serving them up to me until I catch up, so I can get lost in a couple of people discussing true crime documentaries while I crunch numbers into a computer and try not to focus on every other thing going on that I can't finesse into the ideal situation.

This week is sort of shaping up to be a slog. I think part of it is the reality of the end of summer approaching and the rhythm of life beginning to change into something slower and more restrained as fall comes. The only thing I'm looking forward to is the maples going flame red, everything else is going to get cold and dark and I'm struggling a bit to find the shining light in that bit of the tunnel.

It is supposed to be pretty hot out this week though, so fall isn't here yet, even if the color changes are starting to creep in.
There Goes THAT Streak August 2023

I managed to go just over 2 weeks, posting daily. And when the weekend came, and the schedule I exist in the majority of the time ceased to be, and I just totally forgot to post anything until it was too late at night to be bothered.

This is the thing I will probably continue to struggle with, even outside of Blaugust. During the work week, there are some very obvious times when it just makes sense for me to take the time to write up a post. I'm not at a place for me to do it in the morning 5 days out of the week. But the weekend, morning writing is when it absolutely makes the most sense.

Yesterday, I didn't even think about doing it, because we have a weekend project taking up all of my brainspace.

We have a spare bedroom in our apartment that we want to be more functional. We've also inherited a significant number of items in the last year, which ended up in either our garage, or in this spare room as we try to figure out what to do with them. This weekend was finally the time we were able to get something done with that space, which has meant getting sturdier and more easily accessible shelving, and attempting to organize the stuff we have. Last weekend, it was all about clearing out a corner so we could move my old desk into the room (we now have a workspace for our sewing machine), and this weekend is probably going to be about clearing off the pile of things that currently exist on the bed, because we realized the shelving unit we currently have in there isn't working for us. Plus, there's a lot of yarn that pretty much always requires an excavation through a stack of plastic bins to access, and it's not what we want.

Is any of this interesting? Absolutely not. Am I looking forward to things being put away and that room not looking the way it's looked for pretty much the last year? 100% yes. (I'm also dreading the emotional turmoil of getting rid of several things on that shelf that are no longer functioning that well, but have been with me for the last twenty to thirty years.)

So, with all of that in mind, I'm kicking off the "Staying Motivated" week of Blaugust by (hopefully) starting a new streak. We'll see how I feel about motivation when Saturday rolls around, especially since next weekend is finally Pride weekend, and I'll be so much more focused on that.

We've got a lot to accomplish on this weirdly hazy day (seriously Canada, we don't love the perpetual smoke in the air right now). So, it's probably time I got some breakfast and coffee, and got around to it.

Maybe by next weekend I'll finally be around to scheduling posts or something, because the answer staring me in the face with this whole "consistency" thing is "write when you have the time, and schedule it to post later" which absolutely makes sense in theory. But, as with most other things in my life, putting that theory into practice is where the snags happen.
HBD RUDY! August 2023

It's been a LONG week, and I'm not up for more than wishing our resident orange a very happy 7th birthday!

I'd wish for more turns with the cell for him, but he's already a pretty big hog when it comes to his smarts.

Rudy is our very sweet boy though, and even Chanski seemed to be interested in singing him a song today.

And now, he's pretty tuckered out from all of the partying.
Blaugust Midpoint August 2023

Post-Blaugust, I'm not sure I'll be able to continue doing daily posts, unless I figure out a different time to do them. Thursday is typically my knitting night, it's also sort of the last gasp of energy I have for the week before Friday rolls around and I remember I am a human outside of doing a job, and the vibes sort of change.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that when I'm in a habit of doing something daily, I'm more likely to do it than if I just do it when I "feel like it". Thursday is just sort of the day of the week I don't really know what to write about. I pretty much have something figured out for every other day of the week, but Thursday is sort of lost in a fog. Right now, I'm leaning towards something like picking a monthly theme and focusing on that on Thursdays, but we'll have to see if that really works for me or not.

I found out about Blaugust through a Mastodon instance that seems to focus primarily on gaming, mostly MMORP gaming, to be specific. So, I've gotten to see a lot of posts about Baldur's Gate 3 and Palia in the last couple weeks, two things that are completely off my radar. It's one of those times when I sort of question my "status" as a gamer, since neither of these even existed to me until I started seeing a lot of people writing about them. I'm still sort of searching for the blogging bubble where I might feel a bit more comfortable diving into the comment section, something I'm reticent to do most of the time. But, I did get an invite to Bluesky today, so now I get to see if that's where I might find others as well, since Blaugust appears to be a thing there as well.

It's interesting to see a community sort of fracture, but then reveal that there are places outside of it, which I'm happy to start discovering. This is when "change is good" is in fact true, for as much as I despise change in general. It's good not to get so settled and comfortable at times. (I can tell I've been writing daily for almost 2 weeks, because there's no way I would have been remotely as positive about things changing at the start of the month)
A Chunk Here, Another one There August 2023

I knew Elon Musk walking into Twitter headquarters with a kitchen sink was a bad omen, but as with most terrible things over the past few years, I haven't been adequately prepared for how the intended destruction of a bad party is going to play out. I can always tell there's ill intent, that damage is meant to be inflicted, but then it ends up being this protracted death by a thousand cuts, and in the end I just sort of wish someone had taken a really violent approach from the get-go and ended it all, instead of putting so many people through seemingly endless suffering. (As so many are fond of saying, "the suffering is the point.")

Yesterday, Twitter informed me it's been 15 years since I created my account on that platform (It tried to tell me it was my X Anniversary, and asked me if I remembered when I joined X). I've seen many people come and go from my follow list and the site in general, it's really depended on where the Venn diagram of general Twitter and fandom managed to overlap. But the last couple months, it's gotten eerily quiet, even for someone like me who routinely pruned my follows so that I was always seeing who I wanted to see.

The site can't seem to make up its mind for me, because I see some X branding in certain places, but the bird logo persists on my phone and on every computer I've used to access my account. I had given up on using the official app months before the hostile takeover started, mostly as an effort to cut down on my usage. But then even the shortcut link I had set up turned to an X icon a month ago, and I just fully deleted it from my home screen. I have a random tab open to it in a web browser now, and all of those locations still have the little blue bird to which I've become accustomed.

I've had to use some technological wizardry (an extension) to avoid their attempt at an FYP, because I was already not using Twitter "appropriately" before, and there's no way anything that page had to offer me was going to be what I wanted. But there are certain things that require money now. I can't use anything to automate a Tweet anymore (and thus I keep forgetting to post links to my blog there, when they end up on Mastodon or even Facebook without much hassle), even my trusty IFTTT applets are off limits now, which really makes me sad, because I love automating tasks. Sending something through a system and watching a bunch of things go off because of it delights me to no end (just ask my wife about all of the little triggers I have set up for our smart home devices). And now, even the few hangers on who were using Tweetdeck are finding themselves locked out of that service unless they want to pay for the access.

I'm still sitting on the outside of Bluesky, impatiently looking in and hoping an invite will find its way to my inbox one of these days. I think once that site becomes open to me, Twitter will start to become more of a distant memory, instead of the corpse I keep trying to revive on a daily basis. I try to use Mastodon, but it's just not the same. And I'm unwilling to try Threads, because I'm already too connected to Facebook (the last thing I need is more of that).

I can feel the tethers between myself and people I'm missing from Twitter beginning to unravel a bit. I'm hopeful I'll find new people, because users of the internet can be endlessly entertaining. And when they're not entertaining, they're maybe just a bit interesting, or inspiring, or sometimes heart-wrenching. But they're out there, which is the thing I've appreciated so much since I found them.

I come from a place where the internet has only really started to become a necessary utility for people in the last decade. It's a small town, complete with many of the stereotypes they're known to have, which makes it hard for someone like me to find "my people." I watch others encourage people to "see things from the other side" or look from a different perspective, and cringe at the thought, because I've done a lot of that, and I've felt very alone in doing so. Twitter was one of the places where it didn't feel like I needed to search far and wide to see I wasn't the only one who felt a certain way.

It couldn't always be that way, because people are going to disagree about things, often. But after having spent a lot of my life in a bubble I wouldn't normally choose to occupy, being able to craft a bubble of my own was such a relief.

Now, the bubble has popped, and everything inside of it seems to have scattered to the four winds. So, I'm here trying to keep track of which direction everyone went so that once my own vehicle is ready, I might be able to follow them. Except, it's still going to be a while before I can make my own exit I guess. The waiting is the hardest part. I think the last time I was waiting with anticipation for a website invite it was probably for Gmail or Ravelry or something along those lines. Considering I've been on those sites almost as long as (maybe even longer than) I have been on Twitter, that's a heck of a long time.

Very little of this has anything to do with specific creators. Maybe once I'm in the blue sky place with the other people I'm missing I'll be able to point them out so others can appreciate them as well. And if anyone's sitting on a spare invite, and feeling generous, think of me? Maybe?
Clock App Creators August 2023

It's TikTok Tuesday, and I was going to scroll through my list of creators I follow on that app and highlight a few of them, but it turns out I follow 350 people there, which is total insanity. I don't follow that many people anywhere else on the internet (in spite of having been on Twitter for 15 years?!). I also rely on the algorithm almost 100% of the time that I use the app. I'm not sure the last time I swiped over to the "Following" tab and watched something from people I specifically chose to follow.

I scrolled back to the beginning of my list, just to see how this all got started, and 3 of the first 5 accounts were, or still are focused on some form of neurodivergent content. Nothing about this surprises me. I've been using the app for almost 2 years, sometimes with more or less frequency. For a while there, it definitely gave my brain a lot of crunchy stuff to focus on, which is what it loves.

As I go through the list, it's a bit like excavating different eras of time. There's the period when I ended up following a lot of animal rescue (primarily cat) accounts. I also had a short spate where RPGs and dice makers made repeat appearances (because I find watching dice unmolding videos very satisfying). There's a little domestic queer content, because some people finally got to buy a house and decided to share the process of remodeling and refinishing it (also very satisfying to watch). Also, sometimes there are just people who make me smile and/or laugh, which are the ones I think I'm going to focus on today.

Dadchats: Lately, his stuff has been showing up in my Facebook/Instagram reels (the algorithm that sort of lags behind the "real one" for me) and I've gotten to re-live some earlier videos that I remember laughing about the first time I saw them. It felt a bit like re-watching a comedy special for some reason, because I would know a joke was coming, but then still be very delighted and happy at watching it unfold. He also has some really heartwarming content too, it's not always accidentally putting a bag of trash in his backseat and throwing away a laptop bag.

Drennon Davis: TikTok is not the first place I ever heard this guy's name. He recorded an album with Karen Kilgariff a few years ago, and that's how I initially came across him. His account is primarily cats who are very much up in his business, but also living their own lives. They're all very encouraging to each other, which is something I love to see, it's very positive content. They're also hilarious about harassing squirrels.

DonMarshall72: I get a bit hyped over Lord of the Rings content. It's one of my favorite series. I love to re-read the books. I love this account because he looks at a lot of obscure facts in the lore. There's so much of it, that it feels a bit like finding out about history from a far away place or something. He's also the game master for a podcast that looks at what could have happened if they did "just take the eagles to Mordor" and how that isn't the quick fix everyone imagines it to be. Great stuff.

B. Dylan Hollis: I am a sucker for quick recaps of recipes. I'm also the owner of several random fundraiser cookbooks. I can't say that I've paged through many of them for things other than the ones I already know, but maybe in a few years I'll really get motivated and start going through the "salad" section of one of the church cookbooks and find out just how un-salad-like the results actually are. This account looks at so many odd recipes with names that sound baffling and yet they culminate in a variety of desserts that seem to be delicious (based on the reactions we get to see on screen anyway). They're not all great, which is sometimes a fun surprise, but a lot of the recipes give me some appreciation for the fact that I don't have to substitute with random items and hope that a semi-decent cake comes out the other side. Also, sometimes there's just good looking food there that I want to make.

Elyse Myers: I don't understand Elyse's life, at all. Like, there are stories from her past that I remain baffled by, even after hearing her tell them on TikTok, or seeing them replayed on Instagram or Facebook. That being said, I very much resonate with her vibe. Watching her get really into Taylor Swift, and then into crochet, and her previous efforts to finally understand her own curly hair... she's just someone I relate to, and it's often reassuring to watch her have a little meltdown about something random yet important and be able to see myself reflected back to me.

"The Clock App" provides a lot of distraction for me. I wish it always made me happy, but there are some days when it feels like the algorithm is just trying to hold a mirror up to my face and saying "how did you not know this about yourself?!" Sometimes that's a good thing, other times, I'm just not in the mood for it. I'm pretty unlikely to swipe past any of these creators though.
YouTube Nonsense August 2023

I was hoping I'd have something interesting to discuss in terms of what I watched this week, but things are very much the same as they were last week. We've made it through another season of Grey's, and outside of that... Youtube has been in a bit of a summer doldrums period for me.

I also feel a little bit like I poisoned myself by getting caught up in watching a bunch of "drama" on Youtube back in May, and nothing has really been the same since. It's wild to me that it's been 3 months since all of that started. Where does the time go?

There's a superstitious part of myself that is very hesitant to discuss any of it in definitive terms; I blame the Black Mirror episode "Hated in the Nation" for that. I'm certainly not tweeting "death to" anyone, but it seems like the nature of the internet sometimes is that you're basically wishing that on someone if you're part of the "Toxic Gossip Train" that's tearing along focusing on all of the bad things about someone.

I do think it's funny how I come across things sometimes though.

We're big fans of YouTube essays in this household (I used to think it was weird to call them essays, since I wasn't the one reading them, but, that's pretty much what they are). We went to a whole panel about them when we were at CONvergence a month ago. There's something rewarding about sitting down and engaging with that kind of information, whether it's something philosophical, or something that's maybe a little silly. We follow at least two lawyers, a couple of philosophers, film fanatics, and video game lovers, just to name a few.

The tangential cousin of YouTube essays are commentary channels. Those come in a host of different formats, some more reactionary, others pretty informational, possibly bleeding into the essay realm. But, commentary tends to have a more salacious edge to it. Commentary YouTube relies more on the algorithm, which relies on engagement, which relies on outrage; or at least it seems to a decent amount of the time.

We watch a mix of essays and commentary. Sometimes it sways more heavily in the philosophical side, and other times, we find a new channel and end up going down a rabbit hole of their catalog and watching commentary on all manner of things. It's nice when you can find a middle ground between the two, especially with someone who has a pretty extensive back catalog, and that's how we ended up spending a solid weekend early last year watching videos from iilluminaughtii. In terms of watching someone do takedowns on MLMs or showing off the seedy underbelly of corporations, it was very satisfying. Until it wasn't. Eventually, we sort of gave up on watching after key words in her subjects would be mispronounced for the entirety of the videos, over entire series. Then in May, she called out another YouTuber we occasionally watch for plagiarizing her style, and I ended up going down a drama channel rabbit hole; I think I have yet to fully exit that particular warren of the internet.

I don't know what it is about gossip that is so satisfying to my brain. What is it that makes something just a little bit nasty so appealing to discuss, or watch other discuss? Drama channels were like a junk food binge for my brain, and I could not get enough of them, to the point that I pretty much poisoned my own YouTube recommendation algorithm into thinking I wanted to know drama about everything on the internet, when really it was just this. Until it wasn't.

I think just as the iilluminaughtii hype was starting to die down, allegations resurfaced about Colleen Ballinger, and then it started all over again. I watched full documentaries on the subject, hours long livestreams going through other people's videos, and practically daily updates on the subject. For awhile, it felt like something new and terrible was coming out every 12 hours or so.

And then, the "hi" video was released, and my drama and commentary YouTube algorithms lost their collective minds.

For me personally, having watched multiple people calling out for comment or an apology, while others rehashed how everything had gotten to this point; that ukelele video was a weirdly cathartic experience. Was it the reaction anyone wanted? No. Did it generate a mountain of content for me to watch in the immediate aftermath? Absolutely!

The wake of that video has also been frustrating, because it sucked up all of the air for a little while, and every "sordid" or "disreputable" story afterward has felt pretty lame in comparison. Now, I scroll through my recommendations and unless it's a name I know, I'm not that concerned with checking anything out on a subject I'm unfamiliar with.

I keep joking that I poisoned my brain with all of this, but it does feel a bit like I decided to go swimming in some toxic waste and I'm not feeling so great in the aftermath of that. I suppose this is the result of relishing in the "misfortune" of others. It's just that schadenfreude can be so satisfying, especially when you see it happening to someone who very clearly harmed others; and when there are a lot of instances where that doesn't happen.

I'm hopeful this will be my last foray into drama YouTube for a little while, because it's not great to be perpetually caught up in what amounts to gossip a lot of the time.
Music Monday: Blaugust Creator Week Edition August 2023

Somehow, in my ramblings about Youtube nonsense yesterday I forgot to mention the music-focused channels we watch, of which there are a few. Maybe my subconscious omitted them just so I'd have something to write about today since until I sat down and started putting my fingers to the keyboard nothing was coming to mind.

12tone: This YouTube channels takes a look at music from a fun visual perspective. You get this stream of consciousness via Sharpie markers on sheet music. They can get very granular in how they look at music, but at the same time, sometimes its just about how its hitting them. My favorite thing is that after watching so many videos I've gotten used to some of the "shorthand" that comes up again and again. It's a bit like learning a new language, so I can sort of look back at the sheet music as we approach the bottom of the page and certain things pop out at me. It's gotten me to change a bit of how I listen to certain songs. I also continue to find it fascinating that everything progresses from right to left across the page.

Todd in the Shadows: Todd looks at a lot of different angles when it comes to popular music. There's the One Hit Wonderland series, that looks at bands with (usually) one big hit to their name, how they got there and how things went after their big songs. There's also Trainwreckords that breaks down the albums some bands would prefer everyone forget they made, especially if they were the end of their careers. He also does reviews of new music, a lot of which I have to confess to being pretty unfamiliar to me. He tends to look at things outside of the songs, so there can be a lot of cultural context to them.

Howard Ho: As a nerd when it comes to musical theatre, this channel is one of my favorites. I like this channel because my start with piano lessons was with a teacher who put a pretty strong emphasis on theory, and so there are times when he uses vocabulary that rings this faint bell in my memory. It's also interesting to look at how different composers and writers use callbacks in their music, and its given me a greater appreciation of broadway shows and Disney movies that I already enjoyed.

Sideways: There hasn't been anything new from this channel in a couple years, but I enjoyed it for much the same reason I like Howard Ho's channel. It's more focused on film and television than the stage, but there's been a lot of music in a lot of things in the last few years, and I like looking at that aspect of the things I watch.

Dreamsounds: I'm not exactly a huge fan of Disney music. I have my favorites, but Disney as an entity isn't something I necessarily revere. That being said, this channel gave me a greater appreciation of some of the history of Disney's music, especially through a queer and trans lens. I know that Marlene has decided to bring the channel to a conclusion of sorts, but there's a lot of content to look back through, even if nothing new comes around.
Kochanski and Rudy August 2023

Our resident felines are not really friends with each other. We call them each others siblings, even though they're not from the same litter, they're entirely different ages, and look nothing alike.

Keladry Princess Panda Kochanski (generally known as Kochanski, or more often Chanski) is an Oreo potato, who arrived as a birthday present to my wife, several years before we met. She loves to eat multigrain cheerios from your cereal bowl, be the littlest spoon in all cuddle puddles, and chatter at birds that show up on our balcony. Her version of playtime involves a lot of screaming, mostly because she gets overstimulated very easily.

Rudy Not a Communist Sonnek (aka Rudolphus, but usually just Rudy) is an orange croissant who showed up in our lives just over a year ago. He is a big fan of most treats (except the churus every other cat seems to love), engages in a lot of happy floor wiggles when he's really feeling himself, and haunts our apartment like the ghost of a Victorian child with very sad little meows it's sometimes impossible to hear. Rudy's version of playtime involves dancing on various catnip-filled fruits and vegetables and then zooming out of the room like his tail is on fire.

For a long time, I thought they were never going to get along, since every play session involves Chanski screaming like Rudy is brutally murdering her and she's utterly helpless to stop him. Except that in the last couple months, they've started behaving a little less like magnets that repel each other, and engaging with each other a little bit more (plus there's that whole "easily overstimulated" thing where Chanski screams the second she's excited or upset about something). We're not to the point of happy grooming sessions, but I did come across them both sleeping comfortably on our bed a couple weeks ago, which I wouldn't ever have imagined happening.

Lately, they've started taking up the same post Moxie used to hold when dinner time is imminent. Of course, they only do this when they're waiting for their timed feeders to go off in the evenings, as though we've ever gone to bed without giving them food.

Rudy also used to seem very timid in Chanski's presence, but he's gotten a bit bolder about getting close to her, which could mean her screamy bluster is starting to lose its impact. Or, maybe he just likes her, and actually wants to be a bit closer to her.

I live in hope that they'll work things out and actually become friends, since I have yet to live in a multi-cat household where the cats just get along. Every pair of cats in my past has just decided to come to a very volatile truce, with built-in allowances that if someone gets to close, they get screamed at and swatted without impunity.

I truly believe Rudy's cautiously adoring fascination will overcome the fear in the end. He's acting less and less like a little baby man, and more like an aloof feline, so it can only be a matter of time, right?
Fiber Friday, Blaugust edition August 2023

Our county fair is happening this week, so of course my digital memory banks keep popping up with photos from the two times I was ambitious enough to put items in for judging.

Both shawls involved beading, which I still find totally fascinating as part of knitting a project. I remember when I first came across the pattern and the required bead count, I was a bit horrified because I was remembering my mom's knitted bead projects and how she strung all of them onto the yarn before she even got started. With the fine weight I was planning to knit with, that seemed like a recipe for disaster. But, then I found out about adding them with very tiny crochet hooks was in love with the idea.

A lace shawl I knit from a one-skein pattern book, the first time I ever knit with beads

I managed to get a blue ribbon

My next project involved a bit more digging around online. The thing I liked about my first project, was how the beads weren't making a very obvious pattern, they were just sort of highlighting the lace pattern. I liked that they sort of became this little twinkling star at the center of each of the lace shapes, and I wanted more of that, but I had a lot of trouble finding anything similar. Then, a friend pointed out some of the projects people had shared on Ravelry, and how someone had added beads to Jared Flood's Rock Island Shawl. As a long-time Brooklyn Tweed fan, this was the best of both worlds. I picked a yarn from my stash, found some beads at JoAnns, and had so much fun working on my next project.

I was pretty proud of that champion ribbon, especially since I had modified the pattern to add as many beads as I could manage.

I liked this pattern so much, I ended up making two more versions of it as gifts

Look at how much bigger this one ended up being (there were 2 hanks of yarn involved)

I love how blocking lace adds a whole new dimension to a pattern. So often, my projects look very lovely when they're on the needles, and a lot of that is down to picking pretty yarn. But, then they're pinned out and the points are allowed to really shine and there's nothing quite so satisfying as taking a completely finished project off from the blocking boards, trimming the ends I've woven in, and having a finished project.

Working from home for the last 3 years has unfortunately cut into the times I would wear these items, and in turn, I've been less enthused to knit scarves and shawls. They're the sort of thing that I love to make, but they tend to pile up over time. So, I probably would have to start giving them away, because I know that selling them would be the least satisfying option. (Knitting lace like this takes SO MANY HOURS and while I'd like to think I don't go crazy with expensive yarn, I do pick some pricier brands a lot of the time, so selling a shawl for what it's "worth" would be next to impossible for me)

As the weather starts cooling down, I have a big project that's been sitting in timeout because I have to take out and reknit an entire section of short rows that I did incorrectly, and I just couldn't face it when I first realized the mistake. But... I think I'm almost to the point of wanting to take it out and finish it, because I am pretty close to that point. We'll save photos of that for another time.
Blaugust! August 2023

It's been a week since I started my Blaugust journey. As with every event centered around a month of activity, at this point maintaining a consistent writing habit feels like a very doable thing. Being a NaNoWriMo veteran, there's part of me that feels some similar feelings as I go through this practice of daily writing with the knowledge there are others on the internet participating in the same activity. It's always the time after where things go off the rails.

My brain is still reveling in the novelty. Will this be as exciting and interesting to me in three weeks? I'd like to think so, if only because my brain will be happier with me for putting words down somewhere. But, the satisfaction isn't always a guarantee.

I'm not sure why I decided to just dive headfirst into Blaugust upon discovering it existed, that's not the type of thing I used to do. In fact, a few years ago I would probably have been a bit of a completionist about the whole thing and decided to mark it on my calendar for next year so I could prepare, and make sure I had something set up for every day of the month. Instead, I'm wondering if I will have enough motivation to do extra posts for a few days to make up for my late start and my missed day, but I'm not too concerned about getting 100% on the achievements board. Funny how priorities shift like that.

I'm glad I was curious enough to poke around Mastodon a week ago and realize this was a thing. I'm still trying to find my niche though, because it's definitely not gaming, it's barely knitting, it's hardly reading... it's mostly writing. It feels a bit self-aggrandizing to say this is a writing blog, when I don't have a library of work to point people towards. Writing is always the thing I wish I took more time to do, which means Blaugust is a great excuse for me personally to just write.

I'm also slowly coming to the realization that, as with every hobby I undertake, this could just be something I do for my own enjoyment, and that's the entirety of its purpose. I've encountered so many people who take up a craft for fun, and then they decide to turn it into a side hustle, I come from a family who does it as a very committed second job. But, every time I've tried to monetize a hobby, my desire to interact with that thing shrivels into nothing. It's not like it's unsatisfying to get money for doing something well, but the moment money interposes itself between me and a craft it's like the dopamine gets cut off or something, and I just can't engage with it anymore, and that's definitely not what I want for this place.

I want to be able to talk with people online, especially because where I live, I feel like I'm missing out on some important conversations. I'm a bit wary of having those conversations in this space, but... its got to start some time.
The Bog of Eternal Productivity Management August 2023

In the recesses of my mind, is a memory of receiving a "student planner" on my first day of seventh grade. They gave us these things and made it seem like they were going to be our literal keys to navigating the halls of the high school, and I remember using it with a limited amount of success. It was useful to have somewhere to write down deadlines for assignments, or have somewhere to look if I needed to know when our next break was coming up. It was useful enough, that I'm pretty sure I spent money on a college-branded planner every fall and used them with a limited amount of success.

I then went a solid decade without using much of a planner for anything. It wasn't ideal, but, I spent most of my twenties and early thirties not really worrying too much about tracking tasks or making sure I noted when an appointment would be happening. I did pay attention to the various note keeping methods Lifehacker used to promote. There was the "hipster PDA," literally a stack of index cards held together with a big binder clip. They touted the importance of to do apps like Remember the Milk, and their own text-based to-do app. And then... someone suggested Bullet Journaling, and it was all downhill from there.

The basic premise of a Bullet Journal is to maintain a list of items you're working on, you migrate them to the next page if they're not finished, you keep a running list so nothing really gets left behind, and its all there at your fingertips without the need of booting up another app on your phone, no need to pay for internet or data, just pen and paper, and you're set. Except I do nothing by halves when it comes to hyperfixations, so it quickly became about getting the "right" Moleskine notebook, the right pen, and eventually the "perfect" layout.

If you were to Google "Bullet Journal" right now, I'm pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find an image of the bland bulleted lists in the first few pages of results, because the internet took this concept and ran with it. People make these daily spreads that are gorgeous, themed, and maybe even helpful in getting things done.

The start of my 2021 June Weekly spreads

For me personally, I learned that I'm best off sticking to a hybrid model. I adapted to a pseudo weekly spread, where I could see what I had to do on any one day, but I also had a view of what laid ahead for me in the week. At one point, this was useful to me. I knew what I needed to get done on any given day, and in turn, I would know that I was still keeping a good pace for all of the work I needed to complete in a given week. Plus, with this set up, if something came up or I just utterly failed at task initiation it was set up for me to just drop a little ">" into the column as a visual cue that I'd moved it to the next day.

But, as with every task management system I've ever employed, it seems to have hit a critical failure point and no matter what I do, I can't bring myself to focus on the damned thing. Part of it may just be because this year's bullet journal notebook found its way into my purse and as with every other item I put away for the sake of organization, it then ceased to exist. Maybe, the act of complaining about my own inability to task manage, I will in turn be motivated to take it out and start using it again. Because for as frustrated as I am with myself and this presumably-failed task management system, I still kind of love it.

Bullet Journaling caters to my obsessive pen and notebook collecting needs. It let me hang onto the sensation of putting pen to paper, like I was still fifteen and obsessively pouring my thoughts onto the page. It got me into pointed and brush pen calligraphy, and even a bit of watercolor. I just wish it was half as satisfying to employ it as is was to design it. Because I obsessively designed my 2023 bullet journal. Every month got its own special cover page with a rainbow-themed geometric design. I was going to track my mood, my period, my outlook on the months, the quarters, the year... it was going to be a little glance into my brain I could look back on in the future, and instead, its sitting in a pocket in my purse, being utterly ineffective.

Part of my consternation comes down to the fact that back to school supplies are popping up everywhere right now, and there's still some ingrained need within myself to start getting organized. September rolls around, and the first thing on my calendar is a reminder that I need to start planning any Christmas gifts I'm going to make. The unwritten reminder there has also become "you'd better start putting together your planner for the coming year." With that reminder just around the corner, I'm not sure if I'm going to put in the effort this year or not.

So much of my frustration is also due to my habit of internally throwing up my hands the moment I get out of a routine, declaring it useless, when it is still working fine, and in fact, many things would be working quite well if it were still being put into practice. Just because several months in the middle are going to be entirely blank doesn't mean it's entirely useless. The reality is, I probably wouldn't need to look back at it for anything, and if I use it more as a tool for now instead of a record for later, maybe it would be more useful.

Check back next week to see if I've even touched this relic of an item, and gotten my tasks more under control...
Chiroptera Terror August 2023

I'm really, really trying to figure out ways to post here more regularly, especially since this blog is just... a blog. It's not themed for a specific thing, other than my own personal life. With that in mind, one thing in my life is TikTok. When it really started becoming a household name in 2020, I held off (because no one can MAKE me try something) until it became very apparent that most of the content I saw in Instagram Reels originated elsewhere. So, I guess, when I've got nothing else Tuesday might be for TikTok.

Tying that into Introductory Week for Blaugust 2023, I figured I would mention a creator: Kc Davis/domesticblisters. As someone exploring the realm of neurodiversity and how to live more effectively when it comes to the issues that come along with it, I've found her content to be very useful. Aside from that though... she recently had a bat encounter. Her reaction in her initial video of the incident is one I've experienced personally, on multiple occasions.

My personal outlook on bats is that I love and adore them, OUTSIDE. It's where they belong, I am happy for them to be there and nowhere else. I don't know what it is about bats being inside that makes me completely lose my sanity, but literally all I'm able to do is scream in their presence. There's no other response for me to have, it doesn't matter the time or place I encounter them. If they are flying inside of a building, I am screaming.

We had one that made its way to the second floor of my work's office building. I wasn't the only person screaming in that scenario, because you could hear it was flying around the open plan of the building like you were in a sports stadium and "The Wave" was coming around.

My cat Moxie brought one into my childhood bedroom, just as I was going to bed for the night. I'm still not sure how we survived that encounter without the bat becoming airborne after she took it down.

I moved into a really shitty upstairs apartment in a house for a few years. It had a very poorly insulated closet with the ability to see daylight through the slats on the wall. On three separate occasions, bats woke me up in the middle of the night after getting trapped in my apartment. The last one was very outraged at its circumstances, and spent the entire time sounding the alarm until I was able to take it down and get it out of the apartment.

The last living bat I've personally encountered, it also screamed

I was already making plans to vacate those premises, but consistently having late summer turn into Batwatch™ was such an unpleasant experience. The first time, it took me three days to get them all out of the apartment, and there was literally a point where I practically burst into tears when I was talking with someone about how much I missed sleep.

Currently, I just have these bats in my life:

My little colony, no risk of rabies here

It's a good thing I never had any close physical interactions with the living ones, because I am well aware of their ability to carry rabies. I never touched one with without using gloves or some sort of tool. I probably should have gotten a rabies series, just to be safe, but somehow I survived those encounters unscathed.

Oddly, my memories of bat encounters have been very present in my mind lately, and there's been a lot of paranoia on my part when it comes to unidentified squeaking or something I can see flying just on the periphery. There's something about returning to the time of year when I previously experienced something that brings it back to me, and bats are no exception. At least now I live somewhere they're less likely to invade. And I can have a mental breakdown and make my wife deal with them.
Music Monday: Blaugust 2023 Edition August 2023

Week two of Blaugust has begun, and it's supposed to be an introduction to myself. I wrote this post a little over a month ago and that's probably as much of a deep dive as I'm willing to get into for this month. Instead, I think I'm going to take this introductory week to share some things that had an influence on me, starting with music.

https://youtu.be/SXKlJuO07eM

Part of Your World - From Disney's The Little Mermaid

I'm pretty sure I tortured our entire neighborhood as a 6 year old, by climbing onto our swing set and singing "Part of Your World" on repeat at the top of my lungs while I tried to see how high I could get. When I think about this song, it's one of the first images that goes through my head. Considering the only access I had to it would be a VHS tape of the whole movie, I'm kind of proud of child me for learning all of the words and then singing it for myself; because how else would I have been able enjoy it? As an adult, the song holds a bit of a different meaning for me. It's such a literal "I want" song, and as someone who spent what felt like an eternity on the outside looking in on life, it was a very literal experience for me to listen to it.

https://youtu.be/Hij_QxDkIJI

Where Does My Heart Beat Now - Celine Dion

Teen-aged me listened to a lot of Celine Dion. Part of that is down to Titanic and "My Heart Will Go On," but her music became a bit of a hyperfixation for me. This song makes me think of a summer I spent a lot of free time sitting on the floor in front of the stereo system in our basement, reading liner notes from all of my mom's CDs and listening to them on repeat. I had no CD player of my own, and that stereo wasn't moving out of the cabinet it had been built for, so I sat on a thin layer of carpet on a concrete floor and listened to music for as long as I could stand it. For a while, I thought I was past enjoying her music, but it seems like nostalgia keeps me coming back to it.

https://youtu.be/gOK3rqVgN2I

Space Age Love Song - A Flock of Seagulls

It's Adam Sandler's fault that this song is in my music library. At some point, I went to a post-game event at my high school, and I think the options were basketball in the gym, something else in the multi-purpose room, or camping out on a beanbag in the hallway by the library and watching The Wedding Singer on the only space of bare wall big enough for them to project it. If I'm remembering correctly, I may have made one of my parents wait in the hallway for the movie to finish, because I was enjoying it so much. I liked it enough that I ended up getting BOTH soundtracks at some point. (They released two of them, because the first one was so popular, why not go for even more money with a second?) Those soundtracks got a lot of play when I finally had a CD player of my own. I always appreciated that this song is the one that made it onto the soundtrack, and not "I Ran," which is a good enough song. But this one had this dreamy quality that hooked me the first time I heard it, it's something I still enjoy about it now.

https://youtu.be/QRTNm6GLJYI

Baba O'Riley - The Who

"Baba O'Riley" is here because it marks my foray into internet piracy. This song haunted me through my adolescence. It's something I'm pretty sure I didn't hear in its entirety until I was nineteen or twenty years old, which is such a shame, because it's a GREAT song. I downloaded a lot of music illegally from the internet. I got on that bandwagon just after Napster imploded. First it was Limewire, and then it was Ares, and then things get a bit hazy for some reason. The problem with this song, is the title is nowhere in the lyrics. I'm pretty sure it sat in my illegal library under the name "Teenage Wasteland" for an embarrassing amount of time. There's always something here for me in this song. Belting vocals? Yes please. Driving drums? Yes please! Guitar solo ripe for an air guitar moment when I'm in the car? YES PLEASE!!! Hearing it still makes me happy.

https://youtu.be/zi6keFpm-BY

Star Witness - Neko Case

This song found me after I entered my CSI era. It is a bit tied up in my internet piracy antics, but it was gifted to me from an internet friend I lost track of more than a decade ago. Whenever I hear the song, I think of her, because she was the epitome of cool to me. Neko Case and her music in general were an incredible discovery for me. This song unlocked another world for me when it came to music. I think until this point, I was pretty generic in my genre appreciation. There was a lot of rock, some pop, a little more emo than I'd like to admit, but things that bled into the country realm were few and far between. I'd struggle to categorize her music entirely as the alt-country I used to, but her vocals and instrumental choices made me pause and appreciate the musicality of things outside of the realms of music in which I'd become entrenched. I've liked her music enough to spend money on concert tickets on multiple occasions. Her music in general shows up on the playlists I assemble when I want something to sing along to, because I like the way her voice haunts me a little bit.

https://youtu.be/-CCfIJgVM6M

There She Goes - The La's

I don't think I really had a great appreciation for this song until it came up on an episode of the podcast All Songs Considered. They did a Valentine's Day songs episode, and someone chose this one, I think to be a bit cliche and basic, but it still sparked a pretty interesting discussion. When I look at the repetitive nature of the song, I'm pretty sure I know why my brain likes it. I have a habit of putting some songs on and just listening to the same one on repeat. The day my family was able to get me a pair of headphones, it was probably a huge relief, because even in the days of cassette tapes I'd indulge in hitting the rewind button the second a song was done and trying to start it over again. There are layers in this song, so it's something crunchy my brain can really get into, maybe for some of the same reasons I like "Baba O'Riley" so much. But I get to hear the same lick over and over again without having to hit repeat.

https://youtu.be/lCdeL1q-ioo

Tourniquet - Jeremy Messersmith

I love the whole album this song comes from. It's kind of a toss up between this song and "It's Only Dancing", but I love the build and hope in this song. I think it's one I'd try singing for karaoke or something like that, except that I always get a bit emotional on my first listen through it when I hear it, and I'd get all raspy and lose my voice if I tried. It's a fun song though. The whole album is great, listen to Heart Murmurs if you get a chance.

https://youtu.be/_C55DeU568A

One Sweet Love - Sara Bareilles

This song made me pick up my very neglected guitar again. I never got the chord progression right, but it really made me want to try again. Sara Bareilles is another artist I listen to when I want to sing along. I'm very happy to have an alto range, and to find a few singers who sit within the notes I can reach without screeching. The first song of hers I remember hearing was "King of Anything," but this one ended up on repeat more than a lot of her others.

https://youtu.be/FLkj9zr0-sQ

When I Needed You - Carly Rae Jepsen

There's this great podcast called Song Exploder, that interviews musicians and gets them to talk about a particular song they've written. They literally break the music down into instrumental and vocal tracks, and go into where the lyrics came from, how they came up with the moments that sometimes punch you in the face. Carly Rae Jepsen talked about this song on an episode of that show. I think the thing I like about this one is how it feels like it's from now, but it also has some element that calls back to an earlier era in music. A lot of Emotion probably falls under that umbrella, but there's something about this one that just hits me the right way.

https://youtu.be/ESZ2MN7dBRI

Velodrome (Live) - Dessa and the Minnesota Orchestra

I love this version of this song. I think about it every time I'm in Minneapolis and we walk past Orchestra Hall on our way to Convergence. I actually stood on the same stage with the other Concordia choirs for three years of Christmas concert performances, so I hear the song and there's a more vivid picture in my head than for a lot of other live recordings. It also makes me Google a lot. Dessa's lyrics can be so thought-provoking, this song is no exception. It makes me think of just going through the motions, sometimes you're just doing it because... you're doing it, along with the rest of the world. It's easy to get caught up in habits, I'm definitely someone who embraces the ritual of routine at times, probably a bit too much. There are sometimes days in a row where the same thing happens without fail, and it does feel a bit like I'm racing in a circle with everyone else, even though maybe I don't have to go as fast as I think I do.

This ended up SO MUCH MORE verbose than I anticipated. I guess that's what I get for picking 10 songs. 5 might have been better, but with over 3 decades under my belt, that's a lot of music to pare down. There are voices missing here, because my music library is varied. But, these songs are the most "me" you'll be able to see.
Whomp whomp! August 2023

A year ago, our household tested positive for COVID for the first time. We'd spent so much time and effort avoiding it, and then it showed up and was entirely unpleasant. As the anniversary of our infection approached, my wife's job saw an outbreak beginning to bloom, and I started seeing more references to people online also running into it.

We've also been dealing with a recurring heat wave and smoke combination this summer. My instinct to watch the thermometer and throw open every screened door and window the second the temperature becomes bearable is doing battle with the fact that I look outside and see hazy sunshine for days on end; or the air starts coming in smelling vaguely singed. Thursday night, I was desperate not to be running the air conditioner, and against my better judgement, I opened everything up, and we went to bed letting the nice cool air into our apartment. Then, I woke up with a nauseating headache that was next to impossible to deal with for all of my Friday.

I tried laying down, my 2 hour nap definitely helped, but sitting up again and trying to focus on work for the rest of the day was a herculean struggle than left me nauseated and miserable by the time I clocked out for the day.

It felt a little inauspicious for my second day participating in Blaugust, that I was pretty much immediately incapacitated.

If there's one thing that I've learned as I succumb to adulthood, it's that I'm apparently more sensitive to things than I used to be. The air is crappy? My sinuses decide I am going to be down for the count. I forget to hydrate over the course of the day? I end up spending the next day feeling poorly because everything is just out of whack. My life is the very epitome of the meme about water being the "adult beverage."

Of course, all of this on top of another potential COVID infection meant I spent most of the day paranoid I was going to be back at the brink of brain fog and a persistent cough. But, it turns out I was at the mercy of Canadian wildfires and poor air quality. For the moment, we're testing negative in this household, and hopefully it will stay that way. Now, if the air quality could improve and being outside didn't make us both nauseated I'd really be relieved.

It's a pretty humdrum way to start off this first week of Blaugust, but for now, it's words on a "page" and I'm just going to count that as a win.
So Many Parentheticals... August 2023

The least conducive activity to writing (for me anyway) is having our TV on. Regardless, it's our most-used appliance, for everything from Netflix marathons to hopscotching through YouTube's algorithm. In this age of smart TVs, practically every program or movie is at our fingertips. There's dozens of new things friends and the majority of the internet keep recommending, and what are we watching right now? Grey's Anatomy.

(Saying there will be spoilers for a show that's been on for almost 2 decades seems superfluous, but, plot points from the first half of the show's seasons will be referenced)

It's probably been a couple of months since we started a pseudo-re-watch of Grey's Anatomy (I describe it that way because my wife watched more of the show than I did, and we both stopped watching at various points so some episodes are old hat and others are practically brand new). I have a strangely high level of nostalgia about the first couple seasons of the show, mostly because of the soundtracks released with them. Much of that music accompanied me into my early adulthood, and as we navigated that first season at Seattle Grace, it felt like hearing a bunch of old songs on the radio. It's sad to me that I have this random collection of soundtracks from my late teens, and then digital downloads and streaming gradually took over and now there are these random holes online where I know a soundtrack should be, but due to licensing it's either incomplete or completely non-existent on the internet.

I can't point to what it is I enjoy about this show, especially because for a while it was the (self-described) nemesis of another show I watched. I got really into CSI my junior year of college. Like, embarrassingly into that show. There was fanfic, there were post-episode AIM live chats, incessant spoiler hunting, and a whole lot of cringe-inducing behavior I'd honestly prefer never to think about again. Grey's and CSI ended up running in the same time slot on different networks, and a bunch of us CSI fans were horrified that something could take down "our" show (in terms of audience rankings), especially a medical melodrama with McDreamy and a bunch of girly nonsense (because "not like other girls" was definitely a running undercurrent in my area of fandom).

So, I got through maybe 2 seasons of Grey's when they first aired, and then it was up against my main show and it was dead to me. That lasted until internet fandom started going nuts over Callie Torres and Erica Hahn, and then Arizona Robbins. I'm a sucker for a romance. I hate admitting that, because it's mushy and feels silly, but watching a well-executed romance unfold on screen is like catnip to me.

As someone who was starting my own coming out journey, Callie's experience was an odd blueprint I felt compelled to hold up to my own life. I probably take more advice from fictional characters than I ought to, but I watched her journey and locked away pieces of it in my mind and heart, because there wasn't much in real life for me to go off from. People talk about how much we need queer stories, and as someone lost in the madness of my early twenties without much of a roadmap, hers was one I needed.

The difficult thing about television for me was sweeps season, and I can see its impact on network television in the late aughts and early 2010s. As a fandom-obsessed person, I feel like I became hyper-aware of sweeps episodes, which almost always involve high-drama plot lines meant to draw in as much viewership as possible, in order for the network to really justify advertising revenue. Those episodes where 5 people walk into a building and you wonder which one of them isn't going to walk out of it? Sweeps. 3 weeks in a row of episodes ending on cliffhangers? Sweeps. Someone's life hanging in the balance? Sweeps. November, February, and May episode airdates in a season were almost guaranteed sweeps episodes.

I always find the effect of sweeps episodes hard on the characters I love. Because writing things to draw in viewers doesn't mean a bunch of stories where everyone skips around being happy, it's almost always a threat of some kind, whether it's to someone's job, their relationship, or their life.

I remember at some point, when Callie and Arizona really started taking off there was a blurb in some media about the show and how their relationship wasn't going to be as wishy-washy as the straight relationships on the show. I don't know why any showrunner would make that comment about anything they've created without a concrete end date. Long-running serial melodramas can't survive a character being happy and contented forever. It's not compelling fiction, it's not how you get viewers butts on the couch every week. Plus, you make two characters these ideals in work, love, and life and they somehow get boring compared to everyone else around them.

Inevitably, Callie and Arizona split up and got back together a few times. I will say, the show managed to thread a very fine needle when it came to giving Callie the baby she so desperately wanted. Also, they gave Sara Ramirez the opportunity to show of their Tony-Award-Winning vocal talents, with a musical episode, which I remember rolling my eyes at when I heard about it first airing, but it was awesome.

We're in the very middle of the show in our re-watch right now, and I know more hardship is coming, which is the thing that could make me very reticent to coming back to it. Arizona has survived a plane crash only to lose her leg, and she's going to be bitter and hateful for a while and watching through that is going to make this hard for me.

Fortunately (?) for Grey's there are a host of other compelling characters to watch as well. We're still at the beginning of Season 9. Cristina Yang is in Minnesota right now, I'm sure that will continue to go about as well as it has so far. The Mercy Westers who survived the mass shooting have somehow endeared themselves to me. And Miranda Bailey has become my favorite character, probably because of some aspirational desires to be half as good at thinking on my feet as she can be. So, even though the show broke my heart stringing Lexie Grey along for a whole freaking season, just to kill her after she confessed her feelings to Mark, well, I'll keep watching.

I'll keep watching because sometimes those sweeps storylines are too compelling to resist. And there are new faces I might grow to love just as much as the familiar ones. Plus, we have to at least watch until Derek dies, because I know that's going to happen at some point too.
Blaugust? August 2023

Yesterday, I threw together my writing prompt based post, went through the ritual I've seen others use to share their post on any algorithm based social media site, and then immediately complained about it to my best internet friend. I'm sure there's some definitive information somewhere on the internet, about what you should and shouldn't include in a blog post, and what should or shouldn't be used when you decide to "advertise "it somewhere else online. My biggest takeaways have been that everywhere sort of penalizes you for linking to a place outside of their walls, but you might be able to avoid the penalty by including a photo, bonus if you decide to link to the thing in your comments, rather than directly in the post. Is that the most helpful thing for someone who follows you on Facebook or Twitter? No, of course not. Is it annoying as all hell to go through those steps every time? 100% yes. Especially when I don't have much of a following to begin with, and the only engagement I end up seeing is from comments on Facebook.

After airing my grievances and chatting with my friend for a little bit, I decided to poke around on Mastodon and see if there's any sort of blogging community in existence on that platform, since Twitter is proving to be completely useless these days.

Somehow, I managed a very timely stumble across a post about Blaugust.

I'm not sure I can adequately describe just how happy I was to find something like that. I think mentally, I may have been transported back to 2010, when I worshiped Google Reader, because RSS feeds made it possible for me not to have to remember to visit a myriad of sites around the internet on a daily basis. Many of the sites were cat foster blogs, but there were also so writers, and Lifehacker, and it was my happy little oasis where I could follow up on so much at my leisure.

Twitter and Instagram managed to subsume a lot of that domain in the last 10 years, especially in Google Reader's absence. I enjoy being a reader on the internet. Give me an engaging blog post or an article, make me scroll for a little while; to get lost in some words. Except that I'm all out of shape for that kind of reading now. All of my content consumption happens in drips and drabs. Carefully meted out Twitter threads, or TikTok (sometimes chopped up into 5 part reels on Instagram) seem to be the only way I engage with content these days, and getting used to that kind of format makes sitting down to read something meatier more difficult than I would like it to be. It also makes it really hard to attempt constructing something longer for myself, because while I might benefit from whatever I've posted on the proverbial page, it's hard not to think "Who else is going to care about whatever it is I have to say? Is there any point?"

Somewhere along the way, I lost my connection to any sort of niche community on the internet. It's frustrating, to have come into adulthood online, and then watch every place I congregated eventually crumble whether its due to mismanagement or just the passage of time and the whims of internet fandom changing. I have a very knee-jerk reaction when someone brings a new (usually unrelated) fandom into what I perceive as an existing fandom space; it's almost always "no, thank you." It feels foolish and petty whenever it happens, but it's next to impossible for me to fight that instinct within myself. It pretty much means whenever someone decides they're going to spend more time talking about the new thing, I end up getting annoyed with the subject altogether. I'm sure it's kept me from experiencing incredible movies and shows, but I'm not sure the effort to overcome that level of annoyance has ever proven to be worth it. Usually, I have to wait myself out, because the thought of sitting down to watch something I'm not interested in but have seen someone rave about daily online for weeks makes me want to tear my own skin off.

I like the idea of Blaugust. If nothing else, I'm hoping it will give me a bit more motivation to post through the rest of this month. And, maybe if it motivates me, and it motivates others, I might find something interesting in another corner of the internet.

I miss talking with people online, whether its about our shared love of a show or activity, or just the mundanities of life. Somehow, I lost sight of that connection and it's been more about sidestepping debates or entirely avoiding the comment section, except that as an introvert, if I want conversation with anyone, that's probably where I will end up finding it. So, this is my attempt to head in that direction, with the hope that eventually I'll be less of an internet hermit.
Asking Through Observation August 2023

Daily writing prompt

What are you curious about?

View all responses

I don't think of myself as a curious person. If I'm being honest, I feel more nosy than anything else.

I associate curiosity with the word "why," a word I don't feel like I use all that often, at least not when it comes to my personal life. I use it a lot in my day job. But it's less out of a sense of interest and expanding my knowledge, and more me looking for an explanation for the course of action we're taking, or possibly looking for a reason I can't justify speaking in passive aggressive sentences for the rest of the day.

For all that I don't prefer the company of many people, they're probably the thing I'm most curious about on a day-to-day basis. It seems trite to say it, but sometimes what makes someone tick is a complete mystery to me, and I don't really feel comfortable asking someone why they are the way they are. It's a pretty personal question, if you really think about it. A lot goes into someone's personality, both internally and externally, and while I can't put a finger on exactly why, it feels like it might be rude to just outright ask someone "why are you like this?" It could be meant very innocently, but there's something a little accusatory at the heart of that question, if someone isn't expecting it, or maybe it's just in how you ask the question.

So, instead of outright asking, I make a lot of assumptions. I'd like to think they're informed assumptions. I hear someone tell a story about their childhood, or talk about something they do often, and it starts to paint a picture. It's a pretty blurry picture, but considering it feels like I spend a lot of my life squinting to make out the details of people and their lives, it doesn't feel like it's that much of a stretch in the end.

It's also possible that I very much internalized how "curiosity killed the cat." Apparently "satisfaction brought it back," but that particular part of the proverb didn't really feature whenever I heard it referenced when I was a kid.

There is something to be said for the bit of satisfaction I feel when it turns out the puzzle I started piecing together about someone comes together and it turns out I was on the right track. Sometimes, it feels a bit like looking at one of those magic eye pictures, or at least, I think it does? (I've never been able to get those to resolve into the pictures I saw in the back of the books.) People can present a lot of intriguing and entrancing images, and then you sort of step back and see all of them together and you just know who they are. I wish it could always be a satisfying experience, unfortunately, sometimes it's also disappointing.

The only other thing I'm ever curious about is what this cat is thinking
I had Jack Black's Voice in my Head July 2023

Friday night, we found out a fruit truck was going to be coming through Bemidji the next afternoon. Our plan was to have a relaxing, easy-going weekend. However, something about a lug of peaches being on offer derailed that for me. I didn't even have to finish the thought for Ivory to know I wanted to try my hand at some peach jam.

I remember one year my grandmother seemed to keep coming home from the grocery store with peaches, to the point that my grandfather may have spoken to the grocer and told him she wasn't allowed to leave the store with any more of them. She made a lot of jam, but she also canned them and made cobbler (which is 100 times easier than the dumplings we've made in the past). I never helped make the peach jam, but I did assist with jellies a couple of times.

The nice thing about everything we tried yesterday, was none of it required using the actual pressure parts of the pressure cooker we had available. It's probably about a third of the size of the ones my grandmother had, so we worked in a couple of smaller batches, and struggled a bit with water that seemed to always be boiling over. But, nothing caught on fire or exploded (at least, not yet anyway).

I think for a first-time attempt this whole operation went about as well as could be expected. We managed to fill (AND SEAL) 19 jars with peach jam, and we got 8 pints of sliced peaches (4 of them spiced with a stick of cinnamon). Our very first batch of jam seems to be a bit more on the liquid side, but I think we hit our stride pretty well when it came to the second batch; considering we ended up with quite a few extras that round, and it seems to have firmed up well in the jars. (ETA: We tried some of it for breakfast Tuesday morning, and surprising no one, it tastes like peaches! Also, it's delicious.)

It was a pleasant (though not at all relaxing) way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially since the air quality was so terrible over most of the weekend that being outside for any length of time was miserable.

I got a little emotional before we started, because I couldn't believe we were going to attempt to can something. It's the first time I've ever done that without my grandmother. It had been a few years since I'd done any of this stuff, but the rust came off the gears as I started going through some of the motions, and eventually a lot of the training I had in Marie Gustafson's canning kitchen came back to me. It was a relief to find out that knowledge was still there, and I felt so much gratitude to her, even in the hectic moments.

Having had some success with this round, I'm wondering what other small batches of things we could add to our pantry. We don't need to be perpetually stocked in jams, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to find some savory options. Although, I'm a bit wary of the pressure cooking aspect of this whole thing. Maybe that will be our next big adventure.
Blink and You'll Miss It July 2023

My grandmother passed away, in an unexpected sort of way. Missing her is a surreal kind of grief, because she lived a full and happy life but I, along with the rest of her family have been robbed of her. I want to wail about how it's unfair, but this is one of those times when I can't skirt the fact that "fairness" isn't a guarantee. So, I'm angry, sad, resigned, and maybe a little bit relieved; because the realities of aging and dying are sometimes unpleasant, and while things were ugly that ugliness was brief in the grand scheme of her life.

Part of me exists in this realm of memory at the moment. I tell myself it's my brain sorting through everything, trying to patch over the hole she's left with all of the times we shared, sort of shoring things up in my own mental existence, affirming that these moments in time were real, tangible experiences. But those memories are somehow both too abundant and insufficient at the same time. I worry I'm mangling them, crushing all of them together so they're all mixed up in each other.

It means lately I talk in memories. There are some that belong to both of my grandparents, so my wife has heard smelly cheese stories, and more idle references to my grandfather in the past couple of weeks. It's one of those random ADHD things, where proximity seems to make things sharper, or more present in my mind. So, I'm just a bit closer to all of these memories right now. In a month, they might drift away, which could dull the sting a little bit. Come fall, I'll be feeling that itch that it's time to be collecting and processing everything from a garden we don't have, and I'll miss her. I'll start planning my Christmas presents and even though I hadn't knit her a pair of socks in a couple years, I'll probably still think about it, because she got so many pairs from my mom, my sister, and me. Easter will be entirely unpleasant, because that was the best candy holiday, so centered on quality chocolate, something she enjoyed. And when the lilacs bloom again, I'll hunt down the most fragrant blossoms and bury my nose in them the way I watched her relishing them when we were walking out to the garden.

At her funeral, so many people talked about her culinary skills. A lot of the sense memories I have are from her kitchen, but she wasn't just a cook or a baker. She was a gardener, a crafter, and a pretty adventurous canner. I'm glad I have so many memories of her when I was a child, but I really savor the fact that I got to have so many more memories of her once I became an adult.

I think the twist with all of these memories is the finality attached to them. You can't always know when it will be the last time you share an experience with someone, especially when it comes to annual traditions. There will be no new memories with my grandmother, and now I have to rely on all of the knowledge she passed to me, and hope that I understood it well enough to get by without her steady hand.

In a tiny, slightly-unrelated ray of sunshine, I did realize today that sometimes the feeling of a memory changing isn't always a bad thing. I've been indulging in a lot of nostalgia lately, something that seems to keep me just a little more grounded. I was listening to Imogen Heap's Ellipse, an album I used to listen to a lot, and the song First Train Home has some lyrics that have always resonated with me.
```
Want to get on with getting on with thingsI want to run in fields, paint the kitchen and love someoneAnd I can't do any of that here, can I?
```
I used to have a lot of longing when it came to this portion of the song. I was unhappy. I was lonely. I felt stuck. I would hear those lyrics and be so full of want and sadness that I couldn't help crying. But, I heard them today, and my body reacted the way it had been sort of been trained to, and then stopped short, because something had changed. I could still feel the want, and a little bit of the sadness, but it was different now. It used to seem pretty hopeless and unlikely to me that I would ever answer the desire in those words. The person listening to those lyrics today isn't unhappy, lonely, or stuck, at least not in the way they were years ago. The sadness and loneliness right now are grief, and the stuck... well, that's more trying to figure out where the next step is, instead of feeling stymied or waylaid. There's also a bit more hope tied to those words now, because these are things I can want with more possibility they'll be fulfilled at some point, especially with someone I love.
Am I on a Rollercoaster, or Jumping off a Cliff? June 2023

It's June! It's LGBTQ+ Pride month, and I've been so busy with life, all I've been able to do is put up some rainbow lights on our balcony and raid our local Target for whatever interesting things were left in their display. A lot of Pride has been at a distance for me this year, which feels like a bit of a bummer. It's also a challenge to celebrate when I've been finding it difficult to be out. Anyone can celebrate Pride, regardless of which side of the closet door they're facing, but having part of myself be out, and another part of myself basically chained in an oubliette is a little more cognitive dissonance than I've been able to accept lately.

In August it will be two years since I first tried on gender neutral pronouns in a more public setting. When I take a step back and think about it, I'd been analyzing my pronouns since at least 2018. Like most of the things I've struggled with, as much as I've tried to ignore it and hope it's just a phase eventually, it manages to accumulate mass until it's impossible to ignore. The mind is a limitless space, and yet somehow pieces of your identity are just scattered throughout it, and eventually it's not little pebbles you're stepping over, it's boulders that have fallen in the way of every thought. At first, maybe they're small enough to just trip over, but then you realize one day you're climbing over these things and something has to be done.

The existence of spaces where someone leaves an opening for you to share pronouns really make a difference; especially without having to actually say anything, which is something else I struggle with, a lot. In 2021, the space I was in had proven to be so openly inclusive that it felt like an invitation to fully be myself, something that seems to elude me a lot of the time.

Quarantine and working from home have been a relief in a way, because I haven't had to leave what basically became a sanctuary for myself. It's strange how something can be so reassuring, yet at the same time completely suffocating. Like, I bristle internally every time someone uses she/her pronouns for me, but then there's the mental conversation of "they don't know, so it's not their fault," followed closely by "I don't have to tell them and risk being rejected."

It's not as if I've wandered the world alone since coming out as a lesbian; over a decade ago. But, I have struggled. There seems to be this endless well of internalized homophobia and shame; due to my own reactions and the reactions of others. I don't have the thickest skin, and there's still a sting, from sharing with someone, only to have their reaction basically be "ew," or imply it's a failing on my part. Coupling that experience with realizing I don't fit within the gender binary and I'd prefer to use they/them/their pronouns, especially in today's political and social climate... well, I'm not sure I have the confidence to say "this is me, take it or leave it" and completely mean that statement.

Going the last not-quite-two years mentally and vocally referring to myself as "they" instead of "she" never felt uncomfortable. Or at least, it didn't until I really started thinking about actively sharing this fact with more than my wife and a few close friends and family. On the surface, it feels simple to say I don't feel like a girl but I also don't feel like a boy. The idea of explaining this to people who may or may not understand or respect it is harder. Part of me thinks I'm underestimating my friends and family, but at the same time, it's hard not to want to shore up my defenses going into these conversations, because I don't feel equipped to experience derisive questions, or outright rejection.

It's strange, how many conversations I've been present for that have made me check the locks on my little nonbinary closet, just to be sure things are secure. Some of that reaction was making sure I was safe. But I was also fighting myself, because the discomfort in those moments hasn't just been knowing I'm among a group of people who would potentially be unkind if they knew the truth. Sometimes, it's been fighting the voice inside me, when they've wanted to just blurt out the facts as an act of defiance.

In theory, there's something I find satisfying about being very overt in my queerness, because I spent so long either not recognizing or hiding these things about myself. In practice, the idea of "pushing my identity" or just being more obvious about it, in what could be seen as a confrontational manner is pretty much antithetical to my entire being. I'm almost always going to be inclined to remove myself from the scenario rather than have my presence be a problem for someone else.

I thought I would be able to continue wearing subtle hints of my identity, things missed by some and noticed by those who seem more able to see them. It feels like cheating, to wear a pin or a sticker with my pronouns, and have someone else initiate the conversation. Of course, the people who have taken that step haven't required an explanation of what "they/them" means, which also feels a bit like cheating to me too.

I don't understand why it feels like adversity is necessary for it to mean something (to me). It's not as though the positive conversations were insignificant, because I probably remember those better than the gray disappointment of the negative ones. If anything, it sort of feels like I was able to savor the good conversations because of the bad ones, even if that doesn't make taking the risk for it any easier.

I fear the risk. I fear the malicious misgendering. I fear the people who know, but are uninterested in making the effort. I fear being inconvenient.

On the other hand, I'm tired of not being able to be who I am. I still have a lot of work to do, but for now, I'm going to try to step more into being myself and being nonbinary. I can't say that I'm not a little bit scared, because at some point, there are going to be conversations again, but right now... well, this is me: nonbinary, using they/them pronouns.
Happy Gotcha Day Rudy!!!! June 2023

Whenever I have to recognize a year's worth of time passing, it's impossible for me not to at the very least have one round of the chorus of the song from RENT run through my mind. It's been over a year since we said goodbye to Moxie, and today it's been a year since we brought Rudy home to live with us.

Rudy was very much a surprise arrival via the cat distribution system. I was familiar with his previous owner, someone my mom had been helping take care of Rudy, while he was going through some ultimately fatal health issues. I know my mom wanted to take Rudy to her house, but they already have a resident cat, Miki, and my mom was pretty certain she wouldn't take very kindly to an interloper on her turf. So, we drove out to meet a very shy Rudy, and agreed, after some veterinary confirmations that we would be up for taking him home.

It was a bit of a rocky adjustment for him at first. Living in a house in the country, away from the road, without a bunch of cars coming and going meant the first week, he pretty much dove for a hiding spot under the bed every time someone came home and slammed a car door. Never mind that we're on the second floor, and don't have many visitors...

Once he got used to the regular level of noise, he actually turned out to be pretty unflappable. He's still not for being picked up from wherever he is on the floor, but other than that, I have to say he's usually pretty chill.

He does have some strange habits. One of the trove of toys he arrived with was something we called "the tomato" which was apparently an apple toy, from the yeow catnip company. Anyone who has cats who are into catnip has probably run across these. They have a lot of "kicker" toys, their banana being a particular favorite on the internet. But for Rudy, his very squashed tomato has been his favorite. He tends to jump on it, and then sort of dance on it with his back feet, which we find endlessly entertaining. Unfortunately, it appears to have sprung a leak, so as part of the celebration of his gotcha day, we're hoping to replace it. (We did also find a jack o lantern, which seems to inspire close to the same level of dancing frenzy in him).

He's also prone to dancing whenever he gets a drink of water. At first, I thought this was a product of the type of water dish he was used to drinking from, but it really doesn't matter, whenever he bends down for a drink, he tends to do a sort of running man thing before he actually starts drinking his water, which should always be room temperature, because if it's cold, it's unpalatable.

Rudy is very much about finding remote corners of the apartment to inhabit in comfortable hermitude, which is of course antithetical to how I would prefer to interact with any cat. (If cats wanted to be near me all of the time, I would be ecstatic) But, he's starting to ask for more lap time, especially now that I've figured out he loves being brushed, and even though Chanski believes our bedroom is 100% her domain, he's even starting to take some chances and join us for some brief snuggle time in the middle of the night.

Chanski isn't 100% sold on this whole "big little brother" thing, but they do seem to be developing something resembling tolerance. We're still a few steps away from affection, although, lately, I've caught them doing a lot more curious sniffing at each other than either of them seemed willing to engage in before. We'll live in hope that at some point they'll actually snuggle with each other without prefacing the encounter with hisses.

It's wild to me that he's been with us for a year already. His arrival was so unanticipated, but he's brought a sense of balance to things here, especially as we've learned about each other and gotten better and knowing what to expect from one another.
Take a Breath May 2023

While the rest of the Nintendo world is losing their collective mind over Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I am just now getting into Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and I am loving it. Possibly a little too much.

When I first got my Switch, BotW was the game I saw recommended repeatedly. I would look through the game play descriptions, the mechanics, see things about the open world, and weapon durability and say... "nope." The last two things were the biggest deterrent to me, because I kept thinking I was going to get lost in this world and just never have a clear enough objective which is pretty much always the thing that derails me by the time I hit year three in Stardew Valley. The weapon durability was also something I straight-up feared. As someone who is terrible at combat in video games, the idea of a weapon just falling apart on me without a moment's notice felt like an invitation for perpetual failure.

Once I actually started playing the game, I encountered situations where those fears were realized, but it didn't really seem to matter the way I thought it would. Part of that came down to learning how best to use my weapons. There was a point when I agonized over the fact I was going to have to drop something in order to add a more powerful tool to my inventory, but at some point I stopped worrying about it. The wandering an open world aspect of the game has also ceased to be a major issue to me at all.

I think I was worried the game would offer me so many options I would end up torn over what to do, but it turns out the variety of options is definitely a feature for my busy brain, and not a bug. Do I want to spend a bunch of time running through a desert and trying to locate a shrine? Or, maybe I don't have hours of time to put into it, but I know that I could take 15 minutes and take on a short side quest or something simple, or maybe I just get on the back of a horse and let it take me down a road for a little while.

Most of the time, it feels like the only person rushing me towards an objective is me, it's rarely ever the game. Sometimes it's me feeling like I haven't done "enough" for a little while, other times I'm just excited to see what's going to happen next with the story.

The other night, I managed to make it a decent distance into the castle. I was almost giddy over it, because all I could keep thinking was "I'm definitely not supposed to be here right now!" but I had enough supplies, health, and endurance at that point that it didn't feel like death awaited me around every corner. Even though it felt very risky, it was a satisfyingly thrilling risk. (I managed to take out several of the guardians in the process, which even a week before would have been unfathomable to me.)

I'm very close to conquering my third Divine Beast, something which has somehow felt easier with each one; I definitely didn't expect that. I guess kudos to the game for making leveling up and working on skills organic enough so it's not just that I've increased my health and endurance levels?

I came dangerously close to skipping this game entirely and just jumping in with TotK, all because I had a game voucher burning a hole in my pocket. What a mistake that would have been. Now I have something to look forward to, probably in a year or so. I get why everyone recommends it every time someone asks for "first game" suggestions on this platform. It has so much to offer, if you want puzzles, if you want a good story, and if you just want something interesting to look at. Seriously, the world itself is just great to inhabit. I'm already sort of picturing having some cabin fever next winter and maybe enjoying a nice horse ride through some fields. So many aspects of the game have exceeded my expectations in some surprising ways, I'm curious to see what more it has to offer since there's still a lot of the story ahead for me.
Prompts, Busyness, and some Melancholy May 2023

Daily writing prompt

Are you a leader or a follower?

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The answer here is always follower. Always.

In my opinion, leaders have to be pretty secure in their ability to make decisions or delegate, and I feel like the scenario where I run things has to be so hyper specific for me to be comfortable that it's likely never to happen. I'm far too insecure to run the show when it comes to pretty much anything.

That's not to say that I don't have opinions when leadership is done poorly, or I notice a way to potentially improve something. No one is perfect, and there are certainly instances where even someone in charge needs direction, but am I going to lead the way? Absolutely not!

There's not much inspiring me with today's prompt, and I'm coming back from a challenging weekend where I didn't end up posting at all.

It's funny to me, that during the week when my schedule is packed with work and household responsibilities, I am still capable of getting here and writing something, but the second the weekend comes around it's easier to just push off the task until the day is over and I'm out of time. Granted, we had a full day on Saturday that was both mentally and physically exhausting, and then Sunday was the rebound from that. I'm trying to think about how I might want to manage this in a few weeks because to say June will be a busy month would be an understatement.

There's lots of travel in our future, and toting around a laptop in those scenarios isn't going to be ideal. I might have to dig out a bluetooth keyboard or something, because heaven forbid I go more than 48 hours without clattering my fingers over some keys.Or, maybe I just try to be in the moment for the few days when we aren't going to be at home, because I'm pretty sure I'll be too exhausted to form coherent thoughts I'll feel its necessary to share with the rest of the internet.

I've been dreading this month, probably for the last year, and this week specifically. Saturday, it will be a year since we said goodbye to Moxie, and if there's one thing my brain is really good at, it's replaying scenarios. So, I've had a lot of mental processing that's gone into the aftermath, everything that led up to that day, and what it was like to live it. Apparently, this is my brain's way of trying to make peace with the outcome? Except that I'm not there yet.

There's not a set timeline for grief, but honestly it's regret more than anything else. There are days when I wish I'd been a little more selfish and refused to let her go for a little longer. Except, then I remember holding her in her final minutes and feeling her truly relax for the first time in so very long, and realizing just how uncomfortable she had been, and I think about how unfair it would have been to have kept her because I wasn't ever going to be ready to say goodbye.

My penchant for time blindness makes navigating this especially challenging, because sometimes, I swear it's like 12 months ago was yesterday, and when it feels like that all of the feelings from that time seem to come back just as fresh and real as when I first felt them.

So much has changed in that time, some of it sooner than we expected, some of it right on schedule. Life goes on, whether I've given it permission to or not. So, I'll sit with my memories this week. It's weird how there are moments of my life that it's like my body somehow remembers it on a cellular level or something. Maybe in five years, it will be a sort of emotionally achy week, where I'm sad for a few days and it takes me some time for the echoes to come back and give sense to the sadness; not that intellectualizing feelings is necessarily the best way to handle them... But for now? It sucks, and I miss her.
Positivity May 2023

Daily writing prompt

Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

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I seem to have a wealth of acquaintances who've had a positive impact on my life. There are teachers, friends, family, co-workers, and even an employer or two, which is actually really heartening when I look back and realize: most of the people in my life don't suck. So, that's cool.

My gut instinct with any of these prompts (whether they're the writing prompts, or the requests from my wife to tell her about "x random thing") isn't to pick a story that falls under that category, it's always to pick the story. More of that literalism coming in to wreak havoc. So, what's THE story about someone who had a positive impact on my life?

My sister and I happened to see our high school speech coach/English teacher, Ms. Parker, after we had graduated and were entering that "new adult" phase. Ms. Parker had stopped by our mother's booth at the fall craft fair, and I remember being compelled to thank her because of the positive impact she'd had on my life.

Speech was challenging for me, especially in terms of finding where my strengths truly shined. My dad forced me to sign up for the activity when I was in 7th grade. At the time, the prospect of doing public speaking, on purpose felt horrifying to 12 year-old me. Somehow, it became the one activity I looked forward to, in part thanks to Ms. Parker's efforts. Once I was eased out of my melodramatic phase and urged to try one of more informative categories, it was actually fun. I'm no great actor, so I'm pretty sure any dramatic interpretation I attempted ended up ringing pretty hollow, even if I was enjoying the experience of reciting a poem or relaying the gruesome details of a story. But, when I actually had to convey information in an engaging way, that's when things started to click. I did 3 years of Original Oratory, qualifying to compete in the MNSHL Class A tournament my senior year.

That specific experience was one I thought back on a lot over the summer of 2012. At the time, Minnesota was voting on a ban against same-sex marriage, and somehow, I let a recruiter talk me into running phone banks once a week, where we called people and talked with them about their views on the ban and encouraged them to vote "no." The people who showed up were a pretty welcoming crowd, but I really didn't know any of them well, and giving them a whole spiel about how to do the calls, examples for what they could say in response, and even getting on the phone myself was... a lot, especially for someone as introverted as me. The truth is, I was there as an act of self-preservation, because I knew I would hate myself if I didn't do everything I could to fight the marriage ban. But, having had that 6 years of practice to call back to, made it so much easier to step into an otherwise foreign role over that summer and fall.

I didn't do any of the extemporaneous categories when I competed, so the idea of coming up with coherent thoughts on a subject in front of a bunch of people is definitely outside of my wheelhouse, but it's not the room full of people who would scare me. I remember for a couple of seasons, we had t-shirts made with the phrase "What most people fear more than death/we do for fun" on the front and back respectively. And that was always a point of pride for me.

I can't remember why both my sister and I had effusive praise to offer her that afternoon at the craft fair, but I remember telling her how she had helped me and how grateful I was to have had her as a coach and a teacher.

Ms. Parker is retiring this year, a few of the teachers I had in high school seem to be retiring this year actually. It's a little sobering to think about, since it feels like there are fewer familiar faces whenever I go back there.

I keep thinking I need to find a different source for these writing prompts, because so many of these come with what seem like trite answers, and it feels like cheating. I suppose just because it seems obvious and easy for me to formulate a response, it doesn't make it any less worthwhile, but these sorts of subjects aren't really the kinds of things I'd prefer to be writing about. However, when I spend more time ruminating over what I think I should be writing, I spend so much less time actually doing it. This is training wheels stuff, which isn't exactly fun (and more than a little bit clunky) but it's probably still necessary, at least for a little while.
Okay then... May 2023

Daily writing prompt

What does freedom mean to you?

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This is where some of that neurospicy, literal thinking comes into play, because my gut instinct is to say it means "doing whatever I please!" But there's an immediate push back to that mentality, because I also know it doesn't come without cause and effect, because there are consequences, and there are a lot of things I don't say and do for those exact reasons, even though I have the complete freedom to do so.

It's not like I would be running down the street throat punching bigots or something, but I keep a lot of aspects of my life in reserve, and sometimes that's uncomfortable. To fully embrace every part of myself within every social circle, or at my job, would mean opening myself up to a lot of things. So many of those things could be good, maybe even incredible, and I would revel in them. But, the fear of the potential bad things makes it easier to maintain the status quo.

So, I guess freedom for me would probably be having the spoons to engage in the hard conversations and not feel like the world is going to come to an end as a result. It's probably something I should be practicing in lower stakes environments, but severe conflict aversion means the stakes would have to be sub-basement level in order for me to actively engage in that type of activity. In a way, that's probably what this place is, at least while it remains in obscurity with no one to comment or engage with my inanities.

I keep poking and prodding at this site, trying to make it what I want it to be, without having a concrete answer to what IT is. So, cue me randomly swapping out components, scraping the bottom of the barrel of my memory for anything I might have retained about CSS editing, and just generally mucking around here while hoping I don't do something that would irrevocably break the theme.

It feels like maybe I've gotten close to what I want now. It's not going to be cat pictures as banners forever, but it makes me feel happy for the page to load and be greeted by a cozy Chanski. Plus, I have a button to automatically switch to night mode (in the top right corner), which is something I feel like every website should possess at this point.

I also figured out how to appropriately insert the daily writing prompt into a post, so that should be a bit more organic going forward. I like learning this by doing it. I think it makes the skills a bit more ingrained, and maybe I'll actually settle in here for a bit. It's a rather haphazard process though, with a lot of gaps in knowledge that are likely to come back to bite me in the future. But, I guess I'm not too bothered for the moment.

Right now, it feels like its easy to update this place once a day. I'd love for that to continue, but I'm really hoping that even if it's not every day, maybe I won't leave it to stagnate for months at a time to haunt the back of my mind with "you could be writing" during any spare moment.
A Day in Life May 2023

What's a job you would like to do for just one day?

Daily Prompt 1930

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be looking at this prompt, but if I read it as "you have the chance to do a dream job for only one day, what's going to fulfill your wildest fantasies?" the very easiest answer for me is: no job.

I think back on every time I answered this question throughout my life, and every answer I've ever given has reflected things I've enjoyed doing, but the idea of having to earn a living with any one of those things so immediately saps any motivation I have to pursue them.

My list of "when I grow up..." jobs has included artist, veterinarian, writer, and actor. There are probably more, but I know that the first two were ever-present hopes before I became a teenager. The very last one was a comment I verbalized in first grade, which was an experience that came with enough regret that I still cringe internally when echoes of the vague memory come back to me.

The writer one though... I wouldn't want "writer" to be my job. Every time I've been tasked with writing something for work the amount of anxiety I've experienced has made it so onerous. I'm sure I could trace some of that back to a severe case of imposter syndrome, even if I did spend most of my last semester of college writing everything under the sun.

So no job, I'd just like to live life. So much of my existence is focused on the past or the future. I'd like a day where my brain isn't bouncing back and forth between regrets and potential disappointments. It doesn't even need to be a day where I achieve the maximum potential experience or anything, it's just a day where I'm in that day and I'm not stacking it up against every day before it, or mentally preparing for the chaos that comes after it; I just live.
Not at all a problematic question! May 2023

Just as a test, here I am, spending today's 30 minute lunch break trying to answer a writing prompt.

What are your favorite brands and why?

Of course, today's prompt is something that "Informed, conscientious, consumer-Kate" finds annoying, because what "brands" would I possibly consider to be my favorite? What does that even say about me? On the surface, it doesn't feel like much, but if I took a more granular approach and just applied that question to the realm of crafting activities I engage in, suddenly it's very important and legitimate.

Off the top of my head, DMC thread comes to mind. As someone who has engaged in a variety of crafts using 6-strand embroidery floss, DMC thread is always my go-to. Could I use some random thread that came in a variety pack from a random seller on Amazon? Probably yes. But DMC thread just moves differently for some reason. It feels less likely to tangle, it moves through cloth better when I'm using it to sew, knots slide more easily when I'm making a friendship bracelet. It's the sort of thing that doesn't seem like it should matter, but it definitely makes for a more enjoyable crafting experience.

As a long-time knitter, I can't really point to a specific brand and say "that's the yarn for me!" I think pretty much anyone who sticks with the craft for a while sort of develops these eras of acquisition when it comes to yarn, and then you go back through your stash later and reach down to the bottom of a tote and remember "oh yeah, all of this Sugar and Cream yarn is from when I couldn't stop making fancy washcloths for everyone!" except that time was several years in the past, and the idea of working with cotton seems almost abhorrent to you now. I'd say I'm probably a bit of a yarn snob, especially when it comes to acrylic yarn, but even those have their uses, when you want to knit something for someone who isn't a fiber enthusiast, and therefore can't be trusted to hand-wash and air-dry a garment for years in the future. It's not what I want to knit with, but its a point of pride for me that I made a set of Christmas stockings for a friend and her family one year, and they've been able to continue using them. There's no threat of pulling them out of storage one year and finding out moths have finally feasted upon them. Plus, Red Heart has all of the colors, so while I can't profess to LOVE knitting with it, I'm unlikely to ever really turn my nose up at a project that utilizes it.

I think the only other thing that comes to mind in terms of brand loyalty would be focused on stationery supplies. There is such a thing as the perfect pen, although, the number of times that I think I've found THE ONE only to stop using it later because something better came along, makes me think there are perfect pens for a certain time, and then another pen can become the perfect one. I used to swear by Pentel's Energel pens, but now, I'd probably be happier with a .033 Pilot G2, and that's only if I can't get my hands on my fountain pen, which at this point just has a refillable cartridge that I top up every couple weeks. And I'm using any of these writing implements in a Leuchtturm1917 A5, dot grid notebook, or some extra-sticky post-its.

And thus concludes my brandname dropping for the day.
I Feel Weird About Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 May 2023

It should go without saying, but: what follows will contain spoilers for the most recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

For starters, the movie is great. I enjoyed many parts of it. There's a lot of fun to be had with these characters, and honestly, if I could include needle drops throughout all aspects of my life, I absolutely would. The diagetic aspect of music in all of these movies has been one of my favorite things, especially as someone who grew up with a fondness for movie soundtracks.

However.

I was not prepared for a certain aspect of this movie, like... at all. I think, because Rocket kept telling us he wasn't a raccoon, I sort of became blind to the idea that animals would be involved in his backstory. I think I watched one trailer for the movie? For me, the MCU films don't need much in the way of previews to get my butt into a seat. I knew we were going to be looking into Rocket's history, but literally nothing I saw (in the trailers) prepared me for the actual story.

In retrospect, when we meet Rocket for the first time, and see the very obvious body modifications he's had done, and that they aren't pretty, it says a lot. There's weird bits of metal all over him, and he really doesn't want to talk about it, which... fair. And then he's this gruff, pushy, sometimes annoying character who somehow manages to do a bunch of cool stuff, so it becomes really easy to forget about the high probability he underwent some extreme trials earlier in his life.

The thing I didn't expect was for us to be fully present for all of those trials. At most, I figured they would be alluded to, and that would be it. But we're right next to him for everything. And everything he's gone through is pretty fucking terrible.

We see Rocket chosen from a nursery with a bunch of other kits, and then see flashes of the literal torture he undergoes, before he's tossed into a cage. We meet his first friends, and if Rocket's modifications aren't pretty, theirs are honestly pretty horrifying. They're meant to be scary looking. There's Rocket's cellmate, Floor, a spiderized white rabbit with a voice box for a mouth; she can talk but seems to be very innocent and child-like. Teefs, a walrus with wheels added for his mobility, his eyes also appear to be permanently sewn open; he seems to have a little more coherent thought. And there's Lylla, an otter whose arms have been replaced with spindly robot arms, but otherwise it seems like maybe they had perfected some of their brain surgery techniques by the time they started modifying her. Rocket is sort of the positive culmination of a lot of the techniques used on them.

The moment we saw a bunch of baby raccoons happily tumbling all over each other in a cage, this sinking feeling started in my stomach, and I think it was around the time everyone chose their names (Floor literally chooses her name because she's laying on the floor... and Teefs! such a good name for a Walrus), that the feeling blossomed into some very serious dread. I knew something bad was coming, but I wasn't prepared for how bad it would be. It turns out, they're all part of an experiment to evolve animals into something more humanoid. It starts as rudimentary body modifications, and eventually becomes this sped up evolution process, that genuinely looks like torture for any creature going through it, whether it turns out positively, or as it does at first where they're just filled with rage and then immediately incinerated because of their imperfection. Of course Floor, Lylla, Teefs, and Rocket are not going to be included among the evolved creatures on this new planet being created. Instead, Rocket is going to have his brain dissected, because the High Evolutionary is so insecure about how something he "created" thought of something he didn't, and the rest of them are going to be destroyed because they are just experiments.

As someone who practically runs to Does the Dog Die every time I see an animal on screen in a scary movie, this was its own kind of torture. Honestly, if I hadn't been sitting in a theatre with a bunch of other people, I probably would have howled right along with Rocket when his friend is killed right in front of him. First he loses Lylla, and then Floor totally panics because they are supposed to be escaping, and just keeps saying something like "Rocket, Teefs, Floor go now" over and over again, and then she and Teefs are shot off screen so when Rocket turns around and sees they're dead too... its just screams.

At first, I couldn't figure out why Floor's feelings were somehow the worst ones to experience, but it just occurred to me that I've spent the past 3 years following various pets on social media, whose owners got them buttons they could press to "talk." Floor sort of felt like the next step from that, with her somewhat disjointed sentences still conveying something beyond asking for a human to meet her basic needs. She chose her name, they all did, and they were going to fly away together, Rocket was going to set them free and they were going to be a weird little animal family in space together, and it was going to be awesome. And then someone had to destroy it.

I wasn't prepared to feel this terrible about having seen this movie. These weren't even the only animals to experience pain and suffering! There were all of the evolved creatures on Counter-Earth who basically think they're getting invaded by aliens, only for the High Evolutionary to decide "we need to start over again" and he just destroys the whole planet! There's Blurp, an ADORABLE alien pet-type-creature (a furry F’saki) whose life just repeatedly gets threatened because the Sovereign priestess clearly doesn't feel joy. And the dog Cosmo, who is told she is a "bad dog" at the beginning of the movie, which I recognize had to be a running gag, but on top of everything else happening felt like someone pouring lemon juice in a paper cut every time it came up, until she was finally told she's a "good dog" at the end. At least they didn't leave all of the animals who hadn't been experimented on to die on the High Evolutionary's ship. Did it need to happen in the story? Probably not, but I needed it as a viewer because there was no way I was capable of handling any more suffering on the part of a bunch of creatures who never asked to be put in that situation in the first place.

It's going to be weeks before I can calmly discuss this movie without getting teary, or choked up, which I guess bravo for art making me feel things. But I wasn't prepared to feel THESE things.

Also, I feel like I have to put it on record that I think Groot saying "I love you guys" was a 4th wall break, or at least that's what I'm telling myself because nothing is ever going to hit as hard as "We are Groot" did in the first movie. But, maybe if you survive the trauma of this movie, you're rewarded by "learning" Grootish.
Where else? April 2023

I've become a lonely nomad on the internet, and it's an existence I loathe entirely.

It would be better if I just didn't care about how I'm perceived, if I didn't care about drawing someone's ire, or saying something I then end up having to discuss with someone in-person.

Instead, I open up Twitter and start typing a tweet and then stall out because "is my tweet tacit approval of the perpetual bullshit happening on that hellsite at any given moment?" I look at Facebook, and then just get annoyed because most of the people I'm "friends" with in that place are so tuned out of anything I'd like to comment on, that it's not even worth it. Mastodon is starting to sort of feel better, aside from the fact that I don't follow enough people who engage with the site regularly for me to need to check it more than once a day. Plus, now a bunch of people I follow on Twitter are anxiously awaiting entry into Bluesky, which (I suppose once one has the ability to block bad actors) could be the Twitter killer so many are desperate for, so at some point I could add that app/site to the rotation of "places everyone I used to know might have gone."

So, yeah, it would be better if I just didn't care, except there are so many things to care about right now, it feels irresponsible to opt out of any of that stuff too.

And here I sit, occupying this middle ground of having so many thoughts about so many, sometimes terrible, sometimes boring, things, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere for me to put them. But I have this blog, which is mine, and I think about that from time to time, and how I'm wasting money haphazardly updating it and then leaving it for months at a time. It's a lot of pressure I keep putting on myself, when all I really want is somewhere to maybe complain about inane trivialities of life or my job and have someone say "yeah, I know what you mean, this one time..." and then somehow we have a conversation. Although, maybe I should be the one leaving the comments? Except that's rarely something I have done willingly.

Of course, for all of those hum-drum everyday conversations, there's also a ton of terrible shit going on, and it's because of so much of that dark, terrible stuff, that I'm just as stymied when it comes to speaking my mind. I know just enough to be dangerous at this point, and it's that level of knowledge that holds me back from even opening the door when it comes to talking about guns, trans rights, book banning, or abortion. Because heaven forbid I come across as uninformed or just so painfully naive!

I'd love to not care so much, to somehow make my peace with the ethical consumption I'm capable of managing, but I'm still wrestling with it. I spend a lot of time choosing my battles these days, and there are times when I get frustrated and annoyed because where I live, it's easy to see how a dollar I spend locally might be used to hurt me or someone I love later. It feels like the social capital I used to spend (both on and offline) didn't have as many obvious red flags, but these days... everything just feels dirty.
The Blur of January January 2023

The end of January is staring me in the face, and I've got one blog post to show for the month, so this is my effort to disrupt that narrative

After several abbreviated trips around our apartment complex, we finally took our snowshoes out for a more extensive walk. Everyone who I've spoken with about snowshoeing has recommended Beltrami County's Three Island Park, we'd never been there, so it was a pleasant discovery for the both of us. We had some surprisingly nice weekends in January, and it was a gorgeous day to walk beside a running river while there was still a bunch of snow on the ground. It also helped that we didn't have to cut a trail, or worry about getting lost since we kept running into people no matter where we were.

https://youtu.be/cfmx2UGR1vQ

The trail runs pretty much parallel to both sides of the river

It was oddly disconcerting to have the smell of ice cold water as we walked beside the Turtle River

On the downside, after our very enjoyable adventure our alternator died while we were in the drive-thru at McDonald's. Personally, it was a rather mortifying experience, but I was at least able to find a couple of silver linings: we were together when it happened, we weren't still out at the park, and it was a nice enough day that having to stand around in what passed for the cold at the time wasn't the absolutely worst experience. Plus, an employee there was good enough to jump the car so we could at the very least get it out of the drive-thru lane so we weren't disrupting everything else while we waited.

Ivory gave me a holiday-themed LEGO set for Christmas, and I was planning on holding off for a good long while to put it together, but then I got antsy and ended up assembling it over the course of a few days a couple weeks ago. I'm really hoping by Christmas I'll be able to get my hands on a power hub now that I have tracks and I will be able to find a place for a temporary Christmas Village of sorts. (I'd like to work my Ghostbusters and Doctor Who accessories in somehow)

I have now assembled the trolley, music and toy stores, as well as the little sidewalk portion (the letter the figure is holding totally fits into the slot on the mailbox!)

I went to my first dentist appointment in a lengthy amount of time. Ivory was good enough to come with me, even though she wasn't feeling that great either. It turns out having a less-than-stellar experience with the dentist as a small child, and then not really keeping up with dental care led to a pretty hefty dose of anxiety when it came time to get my teeth checked out. There's more dentist in my future, but it's no longer coupled with some sort of unknown evil about to be visited upon me. (Anxiety for me = melodrama, it's a thing)

After almost three years of working from home with a 15" laptop hooked up to an extra monitor, my already ancient device was starting to give up the ghost. I couldn't even leave my webcam plugged in when I wasn't using it, and expect anything else to work properly. So, based on specs from my work IT person I scoured the internet until I came upon something that hit all of the minimum requirements and had a larger screen; for a surprisingly affordable price. It's not going to run a graphics or memory intensive game, but considering I mostly want to be able to continue working from home, have something to write on other than a smart phone, and I wanted the computer to be ours without any strings, I think it fits the bill pretty nicely.

And, as a follow-up to my last post, GoldenEye 007 for N64 came to the Nintendo Switch a couple of days ago. I've been playing it off and on, and while things started off rather poorly I've managed to get four missions in on the easiest setting. Considering my previous experience couldn't have lasted more than 5 minutes, I guess this does technically mean I've improved my skills, at least a little bit.
Video Games, my History January 2023

_I had such grand intentions when I originally wrote this post... back in July of 2022. And then I got all paranoid and just didn't come back to finish it. So, here's this thing that I wrote, almost 6 months ago. And I'm hoping to make a more concerted effort to post here going forward, now that Twitter has lost so much of its appeal. I still don't know what this place will be for me, but I know I do better when I'm writing, even if it's a dead-end blog no one else will bother to interact wit_h.

I finally finished Portal on July 16, 2022.

After looking back through my emails I found the receipt from the day I first ordered it on Steam: June 29, 2018.

To trace the origins of this purchase, I blame someone on Reddit, who suggested Portal as the best game a person could play to learn how to use a video game controller; specifically for those who had done a majority of keyboard gaming, and wanted to make the switch. Why did I think I needed to learn how to do this? Because, I happened to be watching someone play games on Twitch, and it looked like they were having fun. Why was I watching this random person on Twitch? Because at some point, I listened to their podcast, and started following them on Twitter, where they regularly posted about streaming, to the point I finally decided to check it out for myself. (I could continue further down the rabbit hole of how I wound up with this game, but it gets convoluted with references to True Crime and V.C. Andrews)

Having at least finished Portal's main story got me thinking back to when I first acquired it as a learning tool, and I wondered whether it was really that effective for me.

If I'm remembering correctly, I abandoned my initial run of Portal in Test Chamber 15. There was something about the mechanics of everything that just got too overwhelming in the moment, and it felt like it would be impossible for me to ever get past that stage.

I think some people take for granted that not everyone grew up with a gaming console in their lives, whether in their own home, or on the periphery at a friend's or relative's house. My previous video game experience can be whittled down to Tiger Electronics' Beauty and the Beast (a birthday gift from a friend), a Power Ranger's digital watch (I got that by saving up Cap'n Crunch UPCs), various knock-off versions of Tetris (awarded as prizes for selling something in a fundraiser), and ultimately, the illicit (I purchased it covertly and hid it from my family for months after) GameBoy Advance I got the summer of 2002. I suppose technically any of these count as video games in some capacity, but it was the GameBoy that really felt like it was officially for video games, and not just some beeping LCD toy.

Unfortunately, for all the legitimacy I felt the GameBoy gave me, it couldn't begin to prepare me for the first time I sat down in front of a friend's Nintendo 64 and attempted to play GoldenEye. It was such a cluster, I pretty much swore off the idea I'd ever be able to play "real" video games. There were so many buttons to push at one time, and you needed to control where you were looking, how you were moving, and somehow shoot at people without getting killed yourself. I'm pretty sure I wanted it to be over within 30 seconds of starting.

I've since learned shooting games aren't really for me. Give me a side-scrolling adventure where I need to run, and maybe bounce on top of someone any day. The second I'm in a life-or-death scenario, my brain turns to pudding, and I'm basically mashing buttons until I somehow make it out alive, or die a (probably VERY) bloody death, doubly so if I'm doing this in any sort of co-op or social setting.

April of 2021, the peer pressure of the internet convinced me I needed a Nintendo Switch. It promised to be the best of both worlds, hand-held gaming, with the option to share the experience on the television when you're at home. That was if you could get your hands on one since everywhere I looked, the moment they became available, they would be sold out, or scooped up by scalpers selling them for even more exorbitant prices.

When the Switch arrived, I lost my free time to hours of Stardew Valley, and then did a deep dive of every Nintendo and Super Nintendo version of Kirby. Ivory and I enjoyed late-night tournaments of Dr. Mario, and worked our way through co-ops of Mario Picross. I've since dabbled in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, continued my streak of having some iteration of Tetris on every device I've ever owned, and am still grinding away on the faster speeds of Mario Kart 8 with rather limited success.

When the Portal bundle showed up in the Nintendo shop, I went for it. As frustrating as I had found the game in Test Chamber 15, it no longer felt like I was holding an indecipherable object when I used the controller, and I hoped maybe now I would be able to handle it. When I managed to make it past that cursed stage I was pretty much on a roll, until I wasn't. Still, I felt more appreciation getting to a point of frustrated rage quitting, not because it felt impossible, but more so because I just hadn't quite gotten the timing down right. And there's only so many times I'm willing to run through something unsuccessfully before maybe I need to just put the controller down, have a drink of water, and touch some grass (as they say in the parlance of today).

For whatever reason, I got to Chamber 19 and assumed "the game's almost done, I'll have this finished in no time!" I was convinced I'd get to the end, meet with a room lacking the repeatedly promised cake (I was at least aware of "The Cake is a Lie" prior to starting the game forever ago), and "ho hum, that was fun!" I'd move on to Portal 2. I was wrong, in the BEST possible way. In retrospect, I should have taken the vaguely sinister commentary GLaDOS provided a little more seriously. For as often as those test chambers were a tedious battle, it somehow made the back half of the game so worthwhile. I struggled, and occasionally went to the internet because I'd over-think something and realize there was an incredibly obvious exit I was overlooking, but eventually I made it.

People can complain about kids wasting time on games when they could be doing something more "worthwhile." But, I can't get over how satisfying it was, to have spent time building up a set of skills, and then using them to reach the conclusion of what turned out to be a compelling story. I'm looking forward to trying out Portal 2 soon.

So, did Portal teach me how to use a modern video game controller? In my case, I'd say it was less Portal, and more time and practice with a variety of different games. I'm still very hesitant to call myself a gamer. I think I can say video games are a hobby I enjoy. My personal favorite is always and forever going to be Tetris, but I had a lot of fun playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Stardew Valley is always going to serve as something cozy I can pick up at a moment's notice. Also, Portal was a twisted bit of fun.
Bird Watching May 2022

When we moved upstairs and gained a balcony, I'm pretty sure Ivory's first plan was to figure out how to turn it into a garden. My hope was to attract birds, at some point, because everyone (cats very much included) in our apartment would enjoy watching them.

Spring/summer of 2020, we went full-out container gardening, with limited success.

Squash, peppers, and onions, which turned into some blossoms, a few peppers, and very small onions which should probably have been planted deeper, or hilled at some point

2021 we diversified with some flowers, thanks to getting a packet of zinnia seeds and a begonia from work, along with buying some starts which we hung from the railing.

How the petunias survived last summer was a mystery to me, because being on a south-facing balcony, in FULL SUN in the midst of an ongoing drought is basically a recipe for failure. The impatiens pretty much fried right away, and then never blossomed again, even though the ones we got said they could handle the sun

Sadly, I have no decent photos of the zinnias, which I suspect to be what initially drew our first regular avian visitors to the location.

Lisa and Frank (Ivory named them) both made some repeat fly-bys, stopping at the zinnias and at least offering some attention to the petunias, so we ended up getting a feeder as well as something to hang it.

The hummingbirds were the first repeat customers, and they stuck around until mid-August. It was always a thrill to see them buzz by. We don't have much tree coverage, which we suspect to be the main deterrent. However, Frank did figure out he could either perch on an arm of the hanger we put up, or fly down to one of the saplings below and still keep an eye on things.

We got the other feeding station set up after a visit from a couple of grosbeaks.

They mostly availed themselves of the cat grass we'd let go to seed after it got too mature for Chanski.

We didn't see much activity after the one late-morning visit, but we left the seed and water out there, especially in the late summer when it was unbearably hot and everyone kept talking about how much even bees would need moisture.

It took until November for me to realize the banging I kept hearing outside was from a blue jay, a bird which happens to be one of Chanski's favorites. Once those appeared (and we marveled at them without ever taking photos) we bought a hanging platform feeder, hoping to attract more of them.

It was mostly quiet over the winter months, especially once it got really cold. Being on the corner of a building seems to leave everything so much more open. There's a lot of wind and birds definitely have opinions about what they want from a feeding station.

We're hoping things have turned the corner, and we're now a low-key attraction.

In April, we had a small flock of house finches, as well as one of juncos. They seemed bound and determined to pick up every piece of seed that fell to the ground, and I'm definitely missing them now, since we're trying our best not to annoy the downstairs neighbors with a bunch of seed and shells dropping all over their patio. They also brought a few redpolls with them, and those seem to have decided to stick around.

Growing up, my experience of feeding birds was a silent, and somewhat distant activity. Having them a step away, with our balcony door open means I can hear a lot more of their songs, which are all very pretty.

For the better part of this month, we've been ticking all sorts of boxes when it comes to birds. The blue jays came back, we have a couple pairs of gold finches, a pair of chickadees, and a pair of brown-headed cowbirds.

Apparently brown-headed cowbirds are a parasitic species. They lay their eggs in other birds nests, and then frolic off to do whatever while someone else raises their babies.

We also got a short visit from a yellow-headed blackbird, which was probably the most excitement any of us had that day, since it flapped all over the place and seemed very enamored with strutting back and forth on our deck.

My favorite part was watching it balance between the rails while sampling our oft-ignored suet feeder.

I was certain that must have been the bird Ivory saw the morning she said we'd had an oriole, but then this week male and female Baltimore Orioles showed up at different times. Thankfully, one of them came back to have some grape jelly once I'd seen them for myself.

I'm interested to see what else we might attract once we actually have our full array of plants back outside, but so far, my greatest triumph has been the chickadees. I love listening to them and watching them hop around. It always makes me think of this print of a chickadee my Grandma Kalvig had at her house; I think it was titled something like "Winter's Cheery Survivor." Seeing them always makes me smile.

My intention of attracting the birds was mainly for the entertainment of the cats, but I've found I get just as much enjoyment out of seeing them as Chanski does. And even Moxie took some notice when our initial flocks would spend whole mornings hopping around in the snow.

I'm hoping once we have our actual container garden set up again we'll see a wider variety, and maybe an increase in the pairs we currently have.

We are trying to keep an eye on the progression of HPAI, which has been making its way around the state. So far, nothing has been detected in our county, but it has been found in birds to the south and east of us. I'm hoping it will dissipate before it makes its way here. But, my initial fear that the birds wouldn't come back if we have to take our feeders down diminished when Frank and Lisa came back before we'd even had a chance to put the hummingbird food out.
Moxie May 2022

03/03/2004 - 05/20/2022

I've had something of a tradition of writing to get through grief. It's been a while since I last did it, literally 2006, so, 16 years I guess? The last time, it was in the midst of an ending and saying goodbye to someone. This time, it's after the fact, and the grief feels partly raw and unmanageable, and somehow old and ingrained within me in a way I won't ever shake.

Last pets with Moxie

A week ago, Monday morning, my partner Ivory made the call to set up a vet appointment, because Moxie had been battling something respiratory for a little while. For the 14 years I had her, runny eyes and noses were not something we encountered much, until the last year or so.

That afternoon, she went in for a few tests, an x-ray, and they found something indecipherable but ultimately painful and fatal. After a lot of tears and heartache, we decided it was for the best to avoid or prolong any suffering, and agreed we would bring her back to the vet on Friday and say our goodbyes.

I wanted to share a little bit about her life, because when it's all said and done, I don't think it was a boring one.

According to her paperwork, Moxie was born on March 3, 2004. I adopted her on December 7, 2007. We met a few days before then, after my adoption application had been approved with Pet Haven, and I had an opportunity to email with her foster mom. I went to 2 different foster homes on the same night to meet cats, one little black kitten named Luther, and Moxie, at the time named Heidi.

I remember driving home from meeting the kitten and being torn, because, who doesn't love a kitten? But I kept thinking about Moxie. Her situation wasn't exactly dire, but, she wasn't friends with the resident cat in her foster home, so she was mostly contained to a bathroom. She had been re-homed a couple of times, first when she and a sibling lost their elderly owner, and then when a resident cat at their new home didn't adapt well to their arrival. Her foster mom said she was an excellent lap cat, and "just an overall sweetheart." She had been very receptive to pets in the brief time we spent together, and I'm pretty sure I was hooked before I really knew it.

When I came to pick her up, I remember her foster mom saying how sad her kids were to see her go, but how happy they were for her to have a home. I took Moxie in the carrier, and as we approached my car she let out this sad, little, meow. I was worried she would find the drive home stressful, but it was the only peep I heard out of her for a little while.

Moxie, her first night home

Looking back, I'm not sure I had any business being a cat owner. Cats maintain a lot of boundaries, and opinions about who is and isn't allowed to cross them, and I've always just wanted to pet the soft thing. But, Moxie was kind of the perfect cat in that regard. After a relatively short adjustment period, she was a forever lap cat, who tolerated all manner of pets and cuddles, and she found the gentlest, most patient ways of enforcing her boundaries, to the point that I'd like to think she made me a better cat parent, even if the urge to pet the soft thing can still overwhelm me at times.

Evening December 9, 2007 Cuddlebuddy for life.

https://youtu.be/juQYVmxeQSI

I know its very dark to see anything here, but she LOVED this wand toy with a murderous affection.

My glowing eyes mean you can't see me up here

The top of the TV, access to a whole new world

Is this something I can eat?

We lived for 2 years in that apartment. We made a couple of trips north to visit family, once managing to go in the ditch on our way home. She was always a pretty happy traveler, never complaining or causing much of a fuss. But then, life happened and I ended up moving out of the cities and back to northern Minnesota.

I was adamant I would not be re-homing my cat, which proved to be a challenge since my family's cat, Sylvia, was very unreceptive to feline companionship. We went through a difficult adjustment period, where Moxie stayed at my parents lake cabin, by herself, with me going out once a day to see her and make sure she was okay.

That came to an end, when we found out she was going on some very dangerous escapades in the basement. On a Sunday afternoon, my mom and I took some DVDs out there with the plan to sit and watch movies for a while so Moxie could have some extended time with people. Except, Moxie was nowhere to be found. Thinking she'd gotten anxious after so much time alone, we decided to put on one of the DVDs and let her come out on her own.

Midway through the opening scenes, we could hear this sort of scratching sound coming from the wall behind the TV. So, we paused the movie and listened, and then I bolted down to the basement, hoping to catch sight of her; only to see nothing.

We restarted the movie, and a little bit later, there was the scratching again. Back downstairs, and horror awaited me. (what can I say, this cat made me pretty melodramatic)

The basement had access to a crawlspace, basically a wooden frame, with some kind of wood panel that fit in there with a couple of tabs to hold it in place. This was set in a wall made of cinder blocks.

Sticking out of the top of the wall was the very tip of Moxie's tail. She had climbed down one of those cinder-block tunnels, and was very much stuck there. Cue me panicking, my mom at a loss, and Moxie very much upset at us poorly attempting every manner of extraction without success.

At one point, I removed the cover to the crawlspace, and I remember looking up at her through the tiniest hole in the frame, only to discover the collar I'd noticed missing from her on my visit a couple of days prior, which meant she'd been down there before, and somehow managed to work her way out. (Ivory's conclusion, is that she was probably chasing a rodent of some kind, and it went down that tunnel into the crawlspace, so Moxie decided to follow it. Somehow, that had never occurred to me in all of the times I've recounted this story!)

There were no good angles to climb up a ladder so I could reach down to get hold of her, and she was stuck in a way that made it seem like even if we could yank her out, she might end up more hurt than helped. So, we had to wait until there were more scratching sounds, and she had managed to inch her way further up the inside of the wall. When she'd gotten further up, I had to grab hold of her tail, and pull her the rest of the way. I'm convinced her rather arthritic back in her later days can be traced to this incident.

After that, she spent the rest of the day on my lap, and was then locked in the bathroom until I could negotiate her release to the house.

Sylvia (tuxedo) and Moxie, unwilling cohabitants of a lap

Moxie seemed glad to have a sibling, but her excitement wasn't ever really reciprocated. There were quite a few angry chases around the house, and a lot of battling over food dishes, with me forcing my parents to "upgrade" their cat food because of both cats insistence upon stealing food from each other.

https://youtu.be/Q-RapG8Vt7U

Things sort of settled into a routine. I got a new job, commuted to work, and we stayed with my parents for almost 4 years. In that time, the screaming chases came to an end, and Sylvia spent the summers out at the cabin with my parents, while Moxie and I stayed at the house.

One of Moxie's favorite pastimes there involved the basement. She managed to parkour her way across our laundry room using a water heater, the clothesline, and the side of the laundry chute, until she could find a way into the drop ceiling over our den. This meant you would be watching TV and you'd hear this sort of scuffling sound above you as she squeezed her way between the ceiling tiles and the floor joists. She would do this until she reached the far corner of the basement, although I could never figure out what the allure was. Maybe it was really warm over the TV?

Moxie also used to scale our big-screen TV until I got wise to why she felt comfortable jumping up there, and put a stop to it. It would have been one thing if that was it, but she used the TV as a platform to get to the top of our bookshelves, where she then walked to the corner and either fell down to the floor, or jumped there, with no way out. I spent a night in tears, convinced I was never going to see her again, before my mom realized she wasn't trapped in another basement wall, just stuck in the tunnel between two bookshelves.

The last exciting thing to happen at the house, was when Moxie came into my bedroom with what I thought was a toy, just after I had gone to bed. It was making a noise I didn't recognize, and I had to turn on the light, just to see what it was. The loud, chirping toy, turned out to be a very perturbed bat, which she released just inside the door, allowing it to make a quick dive for a hiding spot, leaving just enough room for me to get out the door, with the cat, abandoning my bedroom entirely.

The next morning, I had to go on a search for the bat, and then my dad and I managed to get it out of the house without anyone getting hurt. I wish I could say that was Moxie's last encounter with bats, but that wasn't the case.

Fall of 2014 we finally moved out on our own again. And then Moxie learned to love living with radiators.

Why sleep on the perfectly soft bed, when you can sleep on the shelf?

It was not a nice apartment, but it was our space. We roasted in the summer, but otherwise were pretty comfortable and on the whole, enjoyed our time there. Her favorite feature, besides the heaters, was the enclosed stairwell, which she would stampede up and down at night. It was often accompanied by what I dubbed the "Moxie Howl" which was her little, hollow meow that she used as a sort of "I'm up to mischief!" announcement. I used to hear it in our first apartment too, right before she would scale the refrigerator to get to the top of the cupboards.

Unfortunately, the somewhat-crummy-apartment was also where we had further run-ins with bats. The first July, in 2015, Moxie alerted me to something strange(!!!!) in the "living room" by standing on top of the TV and meowing incessantly at what I had initially mistaken for a gouge in the molding over one of the windows. When it started flying, there was a lot of screaming (on my part) and I lot of activity (on hers). It took two days of sleepless nights and a borrowed tennis racket before I was granted any peace. We managed to go the next summer without any bats, but they made a repeat appearance in 2017. All that training with the wand toys meant she was a pretty good jumper, and sadly at least one of our chiropteran visitors had a run-in with her, before I could intervene.

2017 was also the year Moxie was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which was a scary time for me.

Skinny Moxie

She lost a lot of weight, and it took a week of anti-nausea medication, and me mixing wet food into slurry which I then had to force her to eat, before she started to return to her old self. This was also when I had to get a lot more diligent about vet appointments, which up to this point hadn't been done as regularly as they should have been.

One year later, she filled back out

The summer of 2018, we got through our last bat escapade with a bit more trouble on both our parts. Jumping around wasn't a big part of Moxie's repertoire at that point, and I had also returned that borrowed tennis racket. It also involved a night spent sleeping in the car, since I was too nervous to close my eyes for a prolonged period of time at that point, and I didn't want her to have any other encounters in my absence. This was the final straw for me when it came to that living situation.

Our exodus brought us to the building we're currently residing in now.

Why have you brought me to this strange place?

My ever-faithful, baseball watching, and knitting companion

Pillows are a cat's best friend

https://youtu.be/ShX6iRkM_7A

I loved watching her do this, because I found it absolutely adorable

Moxie and I enjoyed a pretty quiet life together for the next 6 months, before things ended up changing again.

Kochanski and Moxie

My girlfriend Ivory, and I decided to introduce our feline friends, hoping if it worked out okay, we could move in together.

It was a challenge, with Moxie occupying more of the cranky-elder-beast role than the last time she'd dealt with a new cat. But, while Moxie and Kochanski weren't ever really close friends they figured out how to get along. Ivory and I held our breath whenever the girls so much as sniffed each other, hoping for a mutual grooming session that never really came to fruition.

Lots of side-eye, a common Moxie mannerism

Play with me?

We made it work in the one-bedroom apartment, and then moved upstairs to something larger almost a year after we'd first moved into the building. Two bedrooms, more space, a balcony where the cats could go in and out without encountering cars or people, and all the sunshine Moxie could ask for.

Hey! Up here!

Another 6 months, and things changed again, when I started working from home.

Ever-present co-worker

The early days of the pandemic were scary, but I got to spend whole days with our cats which I don't think I have taken, or ever will take for granted.

My desk setup evolved from an uncomfortable seat at our dining room table, to a padded chair with a couple of TV trays, to finally getting a desk, and then a keyboard tray for said desk, just so Moxie could maintain possession of my lap, if she so chose.

Desk monitor

After Ivory would leave for work, and I would settle into my routine, I'd hear a little meow and my lap would be briefly invaded, before Moxie would take up residence on the desk, where she tended to snooze for a little while.

Faceplant!

Of course, I kept changing my desk setup, and she sometimes found herself out of a space to sleep. But, there were still days when the couch would be too cozy to ignore, and I'd spend the day working while covered in our daggerbeasts, which wasn't ever anything to complain about.

It was only in the last year or so that Moxie really did start to slow down. Fewer chases around the apartment, less interest in toys, and more anxiety, which meant she started getting a morning dose of Prozac with her thyroid med. She never lost her desire to eat, although, we did have to split meals up into two parts, and start keeping a bowl of water in the bathroom since that was the only place she was ever willing to consistently hydrate.

Our last morning snuggles

It's hard, when you know you have a finite amount of time, and you know there's only so much to be done with that week, or those days, which somehow diminish into hours. We spent our last days together being work buddies, something she hadn't been too interested in of late, opting instead for a sunbeam, or her perch on our 1st pandemic purchase, the epic cat tower.

This is my spot

Nights were long, in the way that only insomnia can make them drag out forever. But, Moxie made the effort to climb into bed and sandwich herself between us, which I treasured. I think it was hard for her, because she hadn't been restful in that space for a while. It seems that squishy pillow-top beds with memory foam mattress pads are a bit uncomfortable for a cat with old bones, and so she usually only came for a little while, and then left again. Those visits had become pretty sporadic as well, but she was there Monday night, and every night after, until she was gone.

I regret the times I groused at her insistence on claiming that spot, because it interfered with our nightly crossword puzzling. Especially when she decided to employ what we called the "dowel feet" technique, putting all of her weight on one of her very dainty paws and digging into the tenderest parts of your body. But, that was very much her spot on the bed, and she wasn't ever going to give it up, not entirely.

Our last night together, we got McDonald's, because Moxie was always partial to their french fries. She only wanted a couple of bites of fry, but she took all of the cuddles Ivory and I had to offer.

Snuggletime

I keep thinking this wasn't enough time together. At the same time, to ask for any more time would have come at a painful cost to Moxie, and we wanted to avoid that. She was already in some discomfort, and there wasn't any chance that was going to change.

One last photo together

It felt like the longest walk in the world, going down the hallway to the elevator, with her carrier, knowing I wouldn't be bringing her back.

They had to give her a sedative, and make sure it had plenty of time to work, since her old bones were pretty sensitive, and she had much less patience for everyone than she used to have for me. (she bit one of the techs during her blood draw earlier in the week)

Moxie went to sleep in my arms.

Holding her that last time, she wasn't feeling the aches and pains that made being picked up such an uncomfortable trial for her. I watched the light leave her eyes a few minutes later, and I knew she wasn't there before the vet told us she was gone.

I thought that would be the hardest day, because that decision was so hard, and it was hard to go through that moment, even if I was going through it with so much of Ivory's loving support and understanding. But, it was just the first hardest day.

It's only recently, that I've come to realize just how much value I place in the habits of my life. All the little rituals that make up the course of a day. Waking up to open a can of cat food and distribute "first breakfast" while cats are precariously underfoot. Nudging Moxie over on the couch, so Ivory and I could sit down and have our breakfast and coffee while watching YouTube. Ivory getting up to finish getting ready for work, and Moxie taking up her position in the crossroads of our apartment, so we don't forget about the very important, "second breakfast." Sending Ivory on her way while the cats mill around in the kitchen, their demands for food rising in volume the moment the apartment door closes. A day of work, interspersed with requests for lap time, followed by faceplants and lots of snoring. We doled out dinner some time around 6, since that became when Moxie would take up her post, poised to get to her feet and sound the "feed me!" howl the moment someone moved towards the kitchen. And then one last round of food before we got ready for bed. My day begins and ends with my feline friends, which means right now it begins and ends with some pain. There's only one dish, or one scoop, when there used to be two, and no little howl to remind us how Moxie would tell anyone she'd never been fed a day in her life, she was STARVED!

We assembled those rituals over 14 years, and I know they're going to change in her absence. Someday, there might be another cat, especially since Moxie spent a lot of time training me up to be at least a passable cat parent. And that other cat won't fit perfectly into all these habits, and things will have to change. But, there's always going to be a part of her there. I'll probably feel it most when I miss her, but I hope I feel it in some of the happy moments too, because I am glad to have known and loved her, and that she knew and loved me too.