PseudoWinter Tidings

Cassian Andor: I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad.

Jyn Erso: Welcome home.

-Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One was an excellent movie. I loved it. I loved it so much. I loved that there was no explicit romance in it. I loved that a woman was the commander of an impossible mission and everyone respected her exactly for the leader she was. I loved the martial arts. I loved the scenery: like seriously, A+ rocks. But the above quote was one of the things I loved most about it. In 13 words it encapsulates something I have been struggling with for 11 years.  

Recently I was out to dinner with a friend who asked if I go home for the holidays. I responded by looking at her with an absolutely blank expression. I completely forgot that was a thing that someone would choose to do. Friends of mine are starting to interact with the mortality of their parents, the loss (usually to due to downsizing) of family homes, the general dissolution of stability that happens as people age and become more of a burden than a provider. I am grateful when I can be supportive as they process these things, yet some of my friends’ fresh wounds reflect such old and healed-over wounds of mine that it perplexes me. The Rogue One quote condenses an explanation of the “presence” or “absence” of having a home in the past decade. I can strive towards being present for my friends and family who need me to be their home as it happens, that’s all I can do.

 Aaaaaaaaanywayyyyyy…

After last week’s insanitypants conference I took SUPER easy for quite a few days.

An exciting thing that happened was that Dr. Genderqueer met my Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed!! It just so happens that coffee shops in this part of Oroenpaz city are the exact intersection of cool and awesome to make this happen. My Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed and I are planning a Punk Rock Shabbat and I am already 1000% on board to record a fantastic version of  “Lecha Dodi” to the tune of “London Calling” by the Clash. Coming soon to a YouTube channel near you, hopefully.

Saturday was unremarkable day because we literally did nothing. It was so glorious. PartnerPenguin correctly intuited that I needed to get some exercise before the day was out so we went to the market. Mum calls markets like these “Dunno Stores” because she has had the experience of asking an employee “what’s this?” they respond “Dunno!” So we went to a DunnoStore and explored 750 varieties of soy sauce, 60 types of kimchi, and an isle of noodles.  I tried partially dehydrated and frozen persimmons. Delish.

One thing I did this weekend was melt down my crystalized honey and put it in a smaller jar. I just needed to share that because it is so beautiful when the sun shines through it:

It’s been really really cold in the Key Route City these past couple weeks. I had hoped that being from somewhere that has Winters I would be ok with the cold every now and then. Nope. Nope. Nopity nope. Can’t deal. Reason 1: I don’t own anything Winter Worthy. All of my clothes are (generously) fashionably targeted for a mild chill on the cold end and a balmy sundress at the other end. Reason 2: My circulation sucks and my extremities have been known to suck the homeostatis-life-force out of those I love by wiggling my toes under their bottom. PartnerPenguin hypothesizes that my heart must be on fire because my nose is so cold. Reason 3: Structures here are not built for cold. They do not have insulation. They do not have double-paned windows. There are not end-caps at Home Depot of that special saran wrap for windows and families do not have a designated hair dryer for shrinking it.

I’m over Pseudowinter and I’m glad that the Solstice has passed. Winter Solstice is one of my happiest days of the year because it means that the sun is going to start winning again and we can get back to business being happy. I had a really good Solstice this year and appreciated being surrounded by folks who are friendly and care. I made applesauce, which is labor intensive but simple to make. It helps me eat apples because I don’t really like apples. 0_o. I guess I don’t like the middle of the road apples or Red Delicious. Or any apples that are mealy. It’s really hit or miss. But applesauce. That’s where it’s at.

Probably the biggest thing that happened this week was I actually found job I’m properly qualified for and I applied the hell out of that job. The pros: It’s a job! Yay! Pays moneys, good benefits, and decent (from what I can tell) co-workers. It would be a good path to getting a PG license; which is a stick I’d be happier to wield at this point than a PhD. The con: 80% fieldwork with 50% overnight travel. I see the con as an opportunity to invest in some great new gear (it’s a job so it will pay moneys!) and get to explore more of the wonderful land of this country. We’ll deal with how to get through the PTSD about large North American mammals when we get there.

I also talked for a long time with some publishing companies at the tail end of the conference last week. At least one of the dudes thinks my skillset is super transferable and would have been interested in hiring me if I lived closer or was willing to relocate. That gives me hope.

I finally went through my LinkedIn account and made it more accurately reflect myself professionally. There is a category to include GPA and I poked back to find my GPA from Big American University was 3.60. I started listing the awards I won, the funding I secured. I started listing my volunteer activities that have been prolific and varied in the past…since the start of high school. Trying to sell myself more accurately. Trying to make myself more available, more present and more whole as a person. This process has been so slow that it has been painful to literally everyone around me so the more I deal with it, the less agony all around.

Breakthrough work

Sparkles and I had another session and we built a beautiful shared analogy. She asked me what I thought of when she said the word “Closed.” After a bit of exploring, I came to the mental image of a restaurant. A little mom and pop joint (probably Italian) like the places my family would sometimes go to on Fridays and I would eat ravioli for comparison. I imagined this place closed, with the chairs on the tables, the floors mopped, the tablecloths fresh, kitchen quiet. It felt safe. It felt so nice that there were no messes. She asked me how I could know whether the place was prospering or barely scraping by. Would it open the next day?

She asked me then to put the chairs down on the floor. What else did the tables need? Flowers, I said. The plastic kind. And compostable, yet disposable tablecloths so messes could be cleaned up. She asked me could I delegate any of the work for keeping messes under control to someone, like a busser. I said yes, of course.

We talked about what hours my restaurant would be open. 5-10pm. Would I have a day off? Saturday. Even though that’s bad business but this is a metaphor restaurant so I took the day per week I’d like off. Could I commit to having “Open” hours and know that they would be constrained? Could I hire people and we come to a mutual agreement about what  I expected them to do, yet let them actually do the thing? I said that I wanted everyone in the restaurant to be allowed to offer a dish for the “special” of the evening. This way everyone felt included.

Sparkles talked me through opening my metaphorical restaurant. She asked me how I felt, I said “disbelief.” I didn’t think anyone would be there but there were already customers. How long would it be until I believed that this would be ok? Two months. Two months would be long enough to establish regular regulars and occasional regulars. That, combined with seasonal, I would probably be ok.

I was so surprised in doing this exercise at how sad I felt. I just cried for a while, even though things were positive. I cried because the safety of being closed and clean isn’t how I can move forward any more. I cried because I know how to delegate tasks but I don’t know how to delegate parts of my day so that I can be the best me there is. I cried because there were bits of college where I thought I’d figured it out and really I was just killing myself bit by bit to graduate with honors: only to never credit myself for the work. I cried because of how scared I am to change and how little faith I have that if I change, others will stay with me.

To lighten the mood, I will close out with two songs that are upbeat in different ways. The first is called “Seagulls” which is a Bad Lip Reading of Empire Strikes Back. Yoda’s little dancing has been making my life this week. 

The other was introduced to me by Raptor. It’s an a capella mash up of Carol of the Bells and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Can’t say I didn’t spread some holiday cheer! 

Role Call: Cast List

This past week has been one of crunchy discoveries for me. I decided as a combined birthday/holiday present to myself to invest in a personal coach. Her name is Sparkles and she is a shiny person. She is deeply authentic and the work I’ve done with her up at this point has left me in a state of blissful neutrality. I think this is one of the most profound emotions I have ever experienced: feeling able to handle whatever presents itself next.

One of the crunchy things I would like to work on in writing is my relationship with privacy. A lot of readers who have been receiving this newsletter/blog for over a year are familiar with a lot of my idiosyncratic and neologic naming patterns. A lot of people who are on my weekly list or are my FB friend have possibly noticed that one can “follow” everything I post online and still not actually know what’s going on with me. I plan to critically examine this. I struggle to maintain relationships at a distance, I know people in places all of over the country and world.

I decided to explore some of those relationships here today, and to give a kind of “cast list” to a few people who are in my life right now. This is by no means complete or exhaustive. Just giving spatial relationships to some people I have written about in the past and might want to write about again.

The Big Scrapple (where I grew up)

Mum: The woman who gave birth to me and raised me. First language: French. Good at business and customer service and cooking. Likes to take care of me and Brother, but in our absence has adopted a cat named Muffin. He is a Siamese cat and he talks a lot. She knows me better than I know myself but sometimes it gets lost in translation when we try to communicate about it.

Bubba: She gets her real name here as she died in 2006. Bubba was my third parent growing up and lived with us for much of my childhood. She was Mum’s mom and they spoke French so I couldn’t understand when they were talking about grown up things. Her favorite word was “Merde!” I am truly her granddaughter.

GranolaMom: She was my mother when I ran away from home when I was 17. She and her husband let me live in their basement and deal with my shit as I needed to. We are still really close and talk on the phone when we remember to do so. She introduced me to and enabled my obsession with Margaret Atwood.

PappaHen: I fell in love with his youngest son when I was 16 (it wasn’t requited) but instead of telling me to calm down he kinda rolled with it and let me hang. PappaHen has always been there for me as I moved across country (several times) and has a place for me to stay when I visit. He is the only person in the world who I willingly will do a crossword puzzle with.

Migeulito: One of my best friends. Wears skirts sometimes and wants to be a nurse. We both love travel and we almost spontaneously went to Guadalajara last year, but didn’t. Good at perspective giving and hugs. Once he visited us in Key Route City and we wound up seeing Bike Porn. It was exactly as weird as it sounds and it was great.

Bashful Sexologist: We’ve known each other since before my brother was born (we were convinced he was actually a watermelon). I have always been envious of the depth her parents respect of body autonomy, their parenting style was so different from my own experience. She is currently getting the first of two masters degrees and plans to develop curricula and conversation around how to better teach sex-ed to students with disabilities. Rad.

Emerald City (I haven’t actually lived here, but I’ve visited a couple times.)

Good Panda: Sister by way of adoption. When we first met people kept mistaking us for twins so we just kinda rolled with it. She is super well versed in music and art, making us a complimentary pair. We share a borderline unhealthy obsession with the show Merlin because nothing is better for the soul than bad writing and sexy men and women completely destroying everything about the Arthurian myths. One time she mailed me blue gummy sharks (my favorite guilty pleasure to eat while doing laundry) and they got lost in the mail for 4 months. I still ate them. They were terrible.

Dr. Bow: A friend from TLoTH, Dr. Bow recently graduated with her PhD in near earth mageneto physics. I went out to the PhD defense and it was truly a unique experience. She has guest starred on this blog before and her blog focuses on how one may pivot out of research academia into the world of start-ups. Brilliant and compassionate, I also appreciate how we can allow each other space in our relationships to be strong leaders.

The Lab on The Hill, TLoTH (also known as the place my self-esteem went to die for a year)

Jr. Ranger: Was sort of my roommate for a bit. We have travelled together to National Parks and Monuments earning Junior Ranger badges together. However she is the Jr. Ranger because she is really good at the little packets and also really good at science in general. We’re both geo nerds. She gave a TEDx talk about puns and how scientists should take themselves less seriously. We get along very well and she reminds me that when I’m exhausted I can’t be a horrible person.

Raptor: German. Engineer. Likes Disney and honesty. Good people.

The Outdoorsy Sage: Peer aged mentor and friend. Taught me how to <ski> and her eyebrows are always on point. Really grateful I gained her perspective while I was at TLoTH because she loves the outdoors but doesn’t hold machismo in high regard so going doing outdoorsy things with her was never terrifying. She is originally from Oroenpaz City so we hung out last time she was in town. I missed the last train because we were in line for a cookie shaped like a dick, then we got drunk off of stolen champagne and I stayed the night. We also share an insatiable lust for dim sum.

Oroenpaz City (nearby)

Dr. Genderqueer: I met Dr. Genderqueer about three years ago yet they have been there for me in such a fierce way I feel like we’ve known each other forever. They have shown me how powerful being true to yourself every single day can look like. Additionally, they have an impressive network of impressive people who intimidate the fuck out of me whenever I meet someone new. They were the ones to introduce me to Sparkles! They live in a loft called the Ecstatic Attic and it makes me happy that I’m not the only one who names the places I live. Dr. Genderqueer is a hub and a lot of the people I know in Oroenpaz city are centered around them in some way.

Shul: Not exactly a person but my synagogue has its own personality and certainly a myriad of actual people it has brought to my life. There are folks like Saba (grandfather, adopted), my Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed and the Sniper Ballerina. Moreover there is a dedicated and tight nit community of queer Jews who come together to celebrate, mourn and just be. I have the honor of accepting a position on a committee with the Shul so I will hopefully have more of leadership role within this community.

Key Route City (Where I live now)

PartnerPenguin: My partner. Good people. Likes to travel and is ok with eating bread and cheese with only a spoon for a utensil. Listens to the same song on repeat and thinks Air is good driving music. Adventurous and curious and likes to take things apart. Exhibit A:

Knows me too well, keeps me in line and ponders the wonders of the universe and corporate America with me. We have been together for nearly 9 years and have lived in 3 cities together. We are family.

The Bears: MommaBear, DaddaBear and Little Bear. Introduced to us by a mutual friend about 5 years ago, right when PartnerPenguin and I desparately needed storage space during a move and they had a garage to offer. I became their nanny for 10ish months and the Little Bear calls us “Auntie” and PartnerPenguin “Uncle.” More specifically, Little Bear has made sure we know that we’re part of her “team,” as she calls her extended family. MommaBear is one of the wisest people I know and I admire how her wisdom drives her humor. She has taught me so much about how to frame situations in a way that is both accurate but assigns responsibility appropriately. It’s ok to mess up, but own it. DaddaBear is a fancy editor and I don’t have as close of a connection with him but he is supportive of PartnerPenguin and I when he can be.

The GrootGamemaster: Kind of like a real life Steven Universe, TGG is one of the most compassionate and empathetic men I have met. He is also one of the best hosts I have ever seen. He hosts a weekly game night and is the hub for a whole set of other friends. I learn a lot about catalyzing and situation reading from him. He's strong in the real way.

KT: We met on an airplane and have (mostly) maintained a true friendship. He is unusually good at communicating boundaries and expectations. Our friend groups recently converged and there was a fancy party that involved guests dressing in fancy gowns and literal tuxedoes. There were multiple cheeses on a cheese plate. I brought Oreos. It’s difficult to tell whether new(ish) crowds are being ironic when they say “fancy.” KT brews really really good beer so I had some of his porter and felt a lot less self-conscious. Being self-conscious all the time is exhausting. I’m grateful I don’t have to feel that way around my friends.

KinkyKabuki: Formerly SamG on my blog, KinkyKabuki finally left a toxic (to him) PhD program and is doing much better in his life. He is applying for community college professorships so hopefully he will soon be Professor KinkyKabuki! He and I have one of the most emotionally honest relationships I have ever had in my life. I am happy to have our mutually supportive relationship. Sometimes the people who you are closest with are a complete surprise to everyone involved. KinkyKabuki and I met on a couch on a balcony at a Math party and talked about dildoes. Pretty much sums up our current relationship too.

Thanks for joining me on this little expose. It’s made me feel a lot more solid on relationships. Still working out privacy feelings but I feel like this post helped.

Here is a cat being a cat.

Music today “I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers

And “Taro” by Alt J

Also, I went through and compiled all of the music I have posted on this blog since 2015 so if you are interested in checking it out, it can be found here.