Living Three Lives Simultaneously Pt. 1

As my wise friend Good Panda commented on my life: it appears that I am living three lives simultaneously. In case I’ve never mentioned, I straight up do not understand the concept of being bored. I can’t remember many times in my life when I was bored, and when that happened I probably went and did something else. #HighFunctioningAnxiety

I did block out this post in advance but I have a feeling that this is going to take a moment anyway. More tends to happen in three weeks of my life than does for many people in months. My plan is to visit each “life” I lead and then do some meta-analysis and State of The Brain (spoiler: it’s filled with poo and lies) at the end. If there is a part you feel would be relevant or interesting, you can jump to that part. I am not fancy enough to know how to do those hyperlink jump-tos so you’ll have to scroll and look for the bolded sections for now. Or teach me? That could work. Or I very well might just write separate posts since my days are absurdly long and I can only manage so much writing in a night. (Edit: this is what I'm doing, more posts to follow)

Life One: Sara the Geologist

Let me just start off by saying that actually working in the position I have now (woohoo, got employed!) is like…a million times easier and better than pretty much every other job I’ve had in my life. It’s like working, but on easy mode. Even though I’m out in the field this week, I’m only doing what I would consider “actual work” about 3 hours out of the 11. The rest is oversight and safety management.

So that’s one thing: the hours are long. They usually involve doing skilled labor that either involves thinking a lot or management/logistics/planning skills. One of the weirdest things I’ve had to do so far was research pee and poop for a day. Turns out sewers are dangerous on top of being gross? Who knew.

While taking lunch is required (yay, legalities) we have to make up our time and bill 8 hours each day. This means that my days are typically 9 hours long in the office. So far the field days have been “short” in that they’re only 11 or so hours. It’s only Tuesday and I’ve put in 23 hours, including transit to my site. PartnerPenguin has commented that it’s exactly what I wanted, several hours more per week than I wanted it.

One type of mindset shift that has been hard is the concept of  “staying billable.” In academia there is a disproportionate burden placed on the shoulders of the professors to bring in grants enough to support the lab running. In environmental consulting people are a lot more…open about talking about money. It feels like the veil around actually living in a capitalist society has finally been pulled back. Instead of this mysterious thing shrouded in shame and misery, it’s a shared burden. There is this concept called utilization-everyone needs to try to make as many of their 40 hours a week billed to a cost code. It is impersonal in some ways, but it also spreads the responsibility of staying in business on everyone, not just one professor. Obviously I am a mere peon and my manager shields us well from pressure Up Above so I have little idea what that’s like. But the firm I joined is quite large so the supply chain is long and the contracts are large. I’m working on several DoD contracts and they’re pretty cushy.

Definitely one thing I can get behind is that I’m finally not the only woman in the whole office who cusses. My manager (loosely, she just makes sure I have work to do, she doesn’t actually supervise me) dropped the f bomb at our “get to know you” lunch. I have never felt such automatic comradery.

Yeah, that’s another thing I’m not used to. I’m not managed. Like, at all. I’m not micromanaged. My “manager” has even commented that it’s OK if I contact her less. Holy shit working in academia/government was a horrendous nightmare compared to how work gets done in industry. I’m assumed to be competent. I’m allowed to ask questions. No one gets judgey or annoyed when I ask too many questions. And then I’m encouraged to ask more questions to clarify. A supervisor on one project called me on Thursday last week because I hadn’t checked in all week on a thing due on Friday. It wasn’t a long conversation, just said what I’d accomplished and what I predicted I could accomplish by the deadline. She said I did the hard part and thanked me. And then we hung up after 15 minutes. Like…that’s it.

Related to that project: Did you know that there is a poisonous newt in Idaho? Along with rattlesnakes, bears and wolves they are the deadliest animals in the state. If I ever go there I might have to make up a newt based nickname.

Another friend who pivoted from academia to industry put it this way:
“I thought I would miss the rush of doing original research, of seeing things that nobody had ever seen before and figuring out puzzles that nobody had ever figured out yet.  Part of me does, but I found that part offset very quickly when I realized that my employer thought that what I was doing was inherently and obviously valuable, and paid me without me ever having to justify my work by writing grant proposals.  I hope that you find the experience equally rewarding.”

The hardest shift for me has definitely been the shift from Poverty Mindset to Safety Consultant Mindset. I feel like this might be difficult to describe but I will try:

The site I’m working at right now is investigating an emerging contaminant that is currently ubiquitous. It’s the thing that makes Teflon nonstick. It’s in sunscreen. It’s in GoreTex. It’s in anything that’s possibly waterproof. Because of its ubiquity combined with low testing limits, there are bananas absurd preparation methods for this field season. Someone in the field made the uncomfortable observation that we have more of this stuff in our bloodstream than we’re testing for so to some extent we can’t actually be blank slates for sample prep.

What has this meant for your regular, average, everyday Sara? Well, the requirement on clothing is that everything is natural fibers, eg. cotton, wool, linen (ha! Noooope). Ha! 100% cotton does not exist for women with curves, so Target would have me believe. I have since learned that field folk prefer Duluth or Carthartt but fuck spending that much money on clothes before I got my first paycheck. I only had one-ish pair of acceptable pants at the beginning of this whole thing so I bought 3 more pairs of pants, 4 new bras (they are terrible, I hate cheap bras with a burning passion), several new pairs of panties and a set of wool long undergarments. The kicker: I had to wash them 6 times before I went into the field. The worse kicker: my Laundromat is 5 blocks from my house. And I have had pitifully little time to go do this sort of chore so we’ve paid for fluff’n’fold.

Now how does this affect poverty brain?

New clothes are a dreadful necessity that must be avoided at all costs. Buy clothes at thrift stores, discount stores, Walmart, Target, or just wash your current clothes cunningly to disguise the lack of diversity in wardrobe.

Counterpoint:

I absolutely refuse to risk exposure so I need to commit to making sure the breakthrough time on my clothing is as long as possible. This means new clothing. And I need my boobs to have some sort of support too, so I need more than 2 bras total.

This battle in my brain keeps coming up because I have been trained that only the cheapest option in any situation is ever acceptable, no matter the time cost. My “manager” actually told me in an email that my time is more valuable than trying to get a truck on Sunday so I didn’t have to pay for Saturday. I almost cried. I have very very rarely been told by an employer or manager that my time or skills are valuable.

Somewhat to satisfy my poverty brain, but also to satisfy making sure all of my food needs were met adequately: I have become the Hobo Queen of the Quality Inn this week. I brought a rice cooker, a slow cooker and the room has a microwave. This was my dinner tonight:

and this was how I rigged all the dishes I’ve been doing:

I have been preparing all three meals a day in my room. Though…I did discover that the hotel has biscuits and gravy at breakfast.  Yum. I think I’m still going to make myself oatmeal. PartnerPenguin has been perfecting the art of slow cooker oatmeal. Here’s his/our recipe:

3/4c (or 1/2c) steel cut oats

3/4c (or 1/2c) milk

3/4c (or 1/2c) water

Raisins

Strawberries

Cinnamon

Poppy or flax seeds

Put all ingredients in a Pyrex bowl thing. Place in a slow cooker with water enough to meet the sides of the Pyrex but not overflow it. Cook on high for 6-8 hrs. It creates enough of a double-boiler to cook the oatmeal well but keeps the great texture of the steel cut so eating isn’t too tedious.

So yeah. That for breakfast, sliced meats and cheese with pickles, veg and fruit for lunch and meat of some sort for dinner. I think I’m going to expand my meatsies prep and go full 50’s housewife and get into microwave cooking. We’ll see.

Anyway. All this prep has been an absurd amount of time commitment.

The final thing that’s difficult about my new job is how normal everyone is. People have functional families. They certainly encounter challenges but from what I’ve heard they are all very tame. I actually thought such a thing was fiction but multiple people have talked about events transpiring that I imagine can only happen with functional families. They certainly encounter challenges but from what I’ve heard they are all very tame. I caught myself mid-story today because I realized I was so poor when I lived in a house with a gas leak for a month I kept my head down and was just thankful for having a roof over my head instead of being concerned about dying from the accumulated natural gas in my bedroom. They just don’t seem to have stories like that. And I don’t know yet how to temper my life to seem more normal than it has been. More on this topic later.

To some extent it is nice that a lot of people are much more normal than me-in regard to anxiety at least-because they set the standard for what kinds of actions and levels of chill should be approached in a given situation. But it’s pretty mind-boggling. Though in some cases I am grateful to listening to my AnxietyBrain: it has prevented me from being phone-less for a week.

Overall I am loving the job and loving the work. I get to do weird research. I get to read policy documentation. I get to do Quality Checks and tell people where they fucked up, but like…they asked me to point it out and also I’m nice about it? I get to be outside and I got a <safety mullet> for my hat. Thanks to this job I have rad long underwear that I’ve avoided buying for my whole life.

Ok. I think I need to shower and make my food for tomorrow, despite that I definitely have more to say. I think I’ll make this LiveJournal-esque and say that I’ll come back tomorrow and talk about my other “lives.”

P.S. Here are some photos from the field:

Me, in field gear. Minus Safety Mullet (just bought it today, this was taken yesterday)

No babies in buckets. Needs to be stated, I guess.

Tren fren. It's a special freight line that branches off the national line...for some reason?

Volunteer melons! Because watermelons like composted sewage? Anyway they're fuzzy. I'll let you know if we try to eat them how they taste.

Yeah, this is just insanity pants cheap. Oatmeal costs at least $1.00/lb by us.

And because I’m feeling silly and un-original tonight, y’all are getting one of the best videos on the Internet. 

It’s Not Makeup, It’s War Paint

First, I’d like to credit Iliza Schlesigner for the quote I’m using for the title. It feels accurate this week. 

Content warning: brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Anxious Allergies

I have hella food allergies. A lot of people reading this already knew that. I have always had them and spent a lot of time being miserable because they weren’t diagnosed and I didn’t pay attention to them. For example: I am deathly allergic to eggs. When I eat an egg, I pass out within an hour. It’s a weird proportion things and I explain it that I can eat a cookie but not a quiche. When I was younger, growing up in a predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish community, this was a major problem. During Passover in particular I had a really tough time with starving. Passover was the one time during the year where my family was strictly Kosher and because of this we ate a lot more parve (neither dairy nor meat) foods. This included eggs. This made me feel very tired a lot and made it so I didn’t want to eat. By the end of eight days not eating anything but chocolate and matzah I was always happy for it to be over.

I cut eggs out of my diet when I was 21. It was amazing. I started getting more energy in my activities and felt a lot better. I was still experiencing some pretty intense physical issues at the time but cutting eggs did help.

Recently, I have found another food allergy: nightshades. Back in May I did an elimination diet as I suspected that I had an unidentified food allergy. When I reached the point of the diet where I was to reintroduce nightshades, the book warned that each group should be introduced separately as nightshade allergies can be quite severe. Not heeding this warning, PartnerPenguin and I made Ratatouille. I had two servings of this dish over rice and that will probably be the last time I ever eat it. In the next three days I experienced for the first time with incredible precision the effects of a nightshade allergy. Every nerve ending, inside and outside of my body felt like it was slightly on fire.

Perhaps the most important discovery with this allergy was noticing the linkage between my background levels of anxiety and the anxiety provoked by this nervous system inflammation. Specifically: I retroactively observed that several occasions when I experienced suicidal ideation were directly linked to my consumption of nightshades. Well, that’s some bull shit and completely avoidable so I have cut nightshades out of my diet entirely.

It has been a rough journey since May, on cutting these foods out. I can’t eat Mexican, Indian or really anything spicy at all anymore. I’ve recently been trying to eat more vegetarian lately because I noticed that since I can eat meat, I wind up eating a lot of it.

Pizza has been the food I have missed the most, besides Chicken Masala. Being able to just chip in for a giant pie is always so easy to do. This past Sunday we had a lovely evening planned with friends where we got together and watched The Dish. We decided to go in for pizza, but we approached the subject with great caution. We read through all of the ingredients and chose a white pizza with pesto sauce, chicken, garlic and a couple other things that were safe to eat. I ate the pizza with great gusto because I haven’t even tried to eat pizza in 5 months (again it was a white pizza).

Unfortunately by the end of the night I realized something horrible. The chicken (which had been listed as plain chicken) was actually soaked in a tomato sauce. I had eaten three slices. :< I started to feel a little queasy and asked the friends driving us home if we could leave. Everyone was really mad at the pizza company for not listing that the chicken had tomato on it. TTfDU called the store the next day and they said that they get their chicken from a third party and they don’t know what’s in it. At this point, I don’t know which disturbs me more: the fact that the ingredients weren’t accurately portrayed or that a company uses ingredients without checking what’s in them.

All told I ate about 3 tablespoons of tomato paste but that was sufficient to incite a terrible anxious reaction. Monday I canceled my plans (that I’d made weeks ago) because I couldn’t face the transit required to attend them. Mega props to the friend I was going to journey to see for offering to hang out on Skype. Now I have Skype and am starting to understand how much fun Skype dinner dates are.  

Political Thing-a-Week

As I mentioned two weeks ago, I am not interested in sitting idly by while the current President disembowels our democracy. This has been difficult to enact and I have had to remind my friends and myself that there are more than three ways to be an activist.

First, I have started to wear war paint. In my adult life I have never included makeup on a regular basis as part of my wardrobe. Since the inauguration, I found the perfect color and I have been wearing it every day. It is my war paint. It is aggressively femme and aggressively loud. It is my “smash the patriarchy” color and I’m super happy about it.

One way I have practiced activism is being there for friends. Showing up to my friends’ houses and actively listening as they decide whether or not to stay in the country. Calling and texting friends whose absence I have noticed from regular events to make sure they are ok. Adding supportive commentary on Facebook threads to make sure my friends know they are not alone in their views.

Another way I’ve been active is straight up protesting. I’d like to give a window into why that it’s not so simple. Sunday morning, the day after the Cheeto in Chief’s executive order on banning travel I felt too restless to stay inside. I made this sign:

I waited for PartnerPenguin to wake and let him know I planned on protesting. When he did wake me up, he held me closely and expressed his conflicted feelings. On one hand he did not feel like he could or should suggest I not protest. On the other hand, he was very worried about my safety. I have never been arrested. I have never been physically assaulted. We both know I’m rubbish at running. PartnerPenguin had looked into ways to get out of the airport without public transit or cars and there are basically no pedestrian exits.

I appreciated deeply feeling so cared for and knowing I have a home to return to. But on Sunday I just couldn’t stay home. I know too many people with their Green cards. I know quite a few people who have attended school through AB540 funding. I grew up with several Bosnian, Ukrainian and other USSR refugees. Members of my family are naturalized citizens. I just couldn’t sit still.

The protest itself was a lot less White than Women’s March. It was on private property but the airport as a company seemed to be in support of the protesters. They made signs to make sure protesters knew where to go. I held my sign (with its spelling error…that no one noticed) up above my head and sang “Move Trump, get out the way” with a woman whose voice makes mine look like a weak child’s.  It felt very 1920’s suffragette in nature.

 By contrast to the Women’s March, there were riot police at this protest. When they arrived I quietly took my leave and again avoided getting arrested. I felt a bit ashamed that I was there for such a short time and left when I was afraid of things getting messy but at the same time I was prioritizing being ready for the next thing and taking care of myself.

Another way I have acted is cashing in social capital I build at TLoTH. From this work it looks like the National Science Foundation is indeed part of the Executive branch and therefore cannot technically advocate or lobby on behalf of themselves when faced with the threat of defunding. But the person I contacted seemed to really appreciate my reaching out.

Children Are Monsters

Most of my experience with children for the past five years has been The Little Bear and her friends. The Little Bear has good home training, is intellectually curious but also is very cautious and shy in public. Oh Glob am I glad that going forward she may be the main kid I interact with for the next while.

The Shit Job of This Month happened this past week and good Glob was it shitty. As I mentioned last week, this company has been in touch since October and then finally offered 10 hours total. Turns out I really dodged a bullet.

The first day I showed up to a school with no instructions on how to sign in as a visitor or where the class I was to help with would take place. Eventually I showed myself to the office and signed in while I waited for the other teacher. She was about 15 minutes late, but ok. As we’re unloading her car she realizes she forgot some of the supplies. Oh well, these things happen and we could improvise. The classroom was stocked with chairs for pre-schoolers (we were seeing kids K-2) and the tables were too low to sit under. There were no paper towels and the teacher didn’t bring any cleaning supplies, but I figured that wouldn’t be relevant.

It was relevant. The activity we eventually did was measuring out water and rice. There was insufficient physical activity early in the class. By the time we got to the measurements exercise the girls were screeching and delighted to mix, splash and generally wreak havoc on the rice, water and measuring materials. The teacher also brought thumbtacks and pennies to measure? Not really sure what the original thought was there, but I’m glad the girls mostly stayed away from the thumbtacks. One girl grabbed a meter stick and began wielding it like a sword. I tried to ask for the stick back but…let’s say she did not go down without a fight. Other children were pretending to swim on the floor and by the end of class there was a lot of shrieking.

After the children left, I found a small rag that one of the children had started to clean the mess with. I used it to corral as many rice grains as I could find and had to wring it out every minute.

The other classes were not as bad as the first one, thankfully. I wore my hair in Princess Anna braids for several of the classes and I smacked down with children touching my hair without permission. In one case I said “We don’t touch people’s hair without their permission.” She said “May I have permission to touch your hair?” I said “No,” and then walked away. This is not a frequent occurrence for me, though it’s not the first time. I felt like it was a good opportunity to discuss consent and bodily autonomy.

The nice thing was that they have already paid me for my time and now I can move on. I hope your weekend is lovely. Today we’ll close out a song popped up when ParterPenguin typed in “inoffensive music for sick wives”, and YouTube returned the following. 

Thanks, Obama

I am sad. I am almost done, but not quite done, with mourning. Today I am writing this piece as my own small act of protest. Tomorrow I will act bigger. But this is my act today.

I am new, by comparison, at being an adult. I have lived and voted under one administration. When Obama got elected, I was living in a housing complex where the lease passed from person to person, you never called management, even if someone OD’d and you had to call the cops. My neighbors lent me a bright green mixing bowl to mix scone batter because I couldn't afford luxuries like mixing bowls. But I'd be damned if I didn't make celebratory scones in honor of my first act of democracy, voting in the general election for the first Black president.

Obama has been my president as I struggled through my own health crises and understood better why my parents health crises contributed to their bankruptcy. Obama has been my president while I scoured, interviewed, petitioned in some cases begged to have access to housing after my initial family home was lost to foreclosure. Obama's stimulus package hit about the second year I had a “real” job out of high school and I used the funds to pay for textbooks.

In the past couple years, it has been my friends turns to experience the costs of having to choose between health and housing, financial stability or going to the ER. When their mom (or primary care provider, or spiritual leader) tells them “Oh it's fine sweetie, it's just in your head,” they listen. And it's easier to listen to what they know to be abusive language because it's cheaper in the short term to listen to this advice, keep one's head down and drink some more tea.

Obama’s healthcare reforms have led, in some ways, to this getting better. I am sad and scared and worried that there is a real chance my friends will die without it. Someone related a story to me recently about being in a room with a speaker trying to get the participants to calm down. “Stop ‘freaking out’” the speaker said. “We got through the Reagan administration just fine, we'll get through this.” The person relating the story said, “Not everyone did.” The person relating the story works for the AIDS foundation, who still hold a moment of silence before meetings to remember who they are working for, who is not among them to work.

I didn't live through Reagan. But the ease with which the general populace has forgotten how many gay men died of AIDS due to Reagan’s ignorance touches my life. It touches my faith community.

More than that, one of my grandparents was nearly executed in WWII. Plenty of my community members had grandparents who were sole survivors of the camps in Europe. I visited the mass graves of all the dead from the Budapest ghetto while I was in Europe. 6 weeks, the ghetto lasted. 4000 dead. How how how how HOW are these events so far from the present that we don't collectively remember them? How are there people who don't believe it happened?

We easily and comfortably forget marginalized people’s casualties to the point of allowing them to potentially happen again. But even if registries don't happen, even if camps don't happen, that doesn't mean “we’ve” won. People won't die immediately due to lack of healthcare. People won't die immediately as climate change gets worse. It will mostly happen to the invisibly huddled masses.

The first victims will be the homeless. But who cares, homeless people die every year due to exposure. They the main demographic who does. Yet the homeless demographic is more intricate of a population than “yelling crazies” who were dumped by cuts of the healthcare system. A very large portion of today’s homeless population belong to the LGBT community. The current administration just deleted https://www.whitehouse.gov/lgbt , rendering that community nationally invisible. The current administration advocates for "conversion therapy" creating toxic environments for LGBT youth to even come out. Setting the stage for a new wave of LGBT homeless youth, going into increasingly harsh political and physical climates.

The next set of victims will be Native people in the Northern hemisphere or poorer folks living in rural areas in the Southern hemisphere. America doesn’t really have the best of relationships with the mainland Native tribes, I can’t imagine there will be much in terms of emergency relief acts as more and more Inuit tribal folks are displace. This is just the beginning.

Obama has been my president while my friends and I got married, including my friends with same gender partners. It was only three years ago I celebrated with thousands of people in Oroenpaz City at the repeal of DOMA.

Obama has been my president when I worked at The Lab on The Hill, funding basic science so that American citizens could benefit from things like clean water and air. The engineering team at TLoTH work actively with NASA for space missions and inventing things for space. There, employees were committed to being good stewards of the nuclear stockpile, making sure that no one sent off a nuke just because they were extra grumpy with China that day. All of these people’s jobs now could be in jeopardy.

As Trump gets sworn in today, I acutely feel a chapter of my adult life coming to a close. That chapter where I can be quiet, complicit, or invisible is over. I can’t allow my straight-passing relationship obscure that I’m bisexual. I can’t allow my white skin to suppress the voices of those with brown or black skin. I commit to supporting art made by my friends. I commit to supporting art made by women, transfolx, Native and African-American people.

And, as my grandfather described me in a memo to the college Math department where he teaches: I commit to being a Women in STEM activist.

I commit to saying what needs to be said.

Even if this terrifies me.

Where People Love You the Most

Is there such a thing as a trauma treadmill? I’ve been reading about and experiencing the hedonic treadmill. If you’re not familiar: it’s when you acclimate to certain levels of comfort and that becomes your baseline, leaving you wanting more. Being a very poor college student for a very long time, my medium-well paying job has put me in a new level of treadmill. I feel a bit revolted but also a bit proud of myself that I bought a backpacking backpack. But I also feel like I’ve acclimated to certain levels of trauma, even within the past year, that I do not know how to unwind/recover from. I don’t think that these things are related. Just that maybe there is a similar mechanism.

I have been grappling with a lot since landing in the Sunny State. But for the first time in months, I have also been able to help others. Helping other friends, feeling like I am a worthwhile human being and feeling like my ideas matter have been making me feel like me again. It’s so painful. But it’s also so joyful.

On Friday I spent most of the day in the Oroenpaz City. There was a large conference that I couldn’t pay to attend but I hung out in the lobby anyway. No one seemed to give a fuck. I caught up with a bunch of people and felt grounded in that.

Among the people I hung out with was a friend named Dr. Bow. I call her this because she always wears a bow in her hair. She reads my blog (shoutout!) and so we delved immediately to the hearts of my issues with TLoTH. Dr. Bow then joined me as I met with my work colleagues to go to lunch. She observed something very astute:

“It’s really nice to let you be the ringleader. I mean, I love having my friends around me but it’s nice to turn that off and go on autopilot.” Dr. Bow and I have similar leadership personalities but instead of competing, we are able to just turn off the Ringleader role and be content when hanging out with the other woman’s “crew.” This possibility is actually extremely wonderful to savor because I know there are other women leaders who I can feel close with but not competitive.

Dr. Bow parted ways and I spent some time with my co-workers. This proved to be very problematic for me. Firstly the two peer-age co-workers hated the city. They pointed out things to hate about it that I would never have thought about let alone consider for any length of time. It felt like personal attacks because this city is one of my cities. My personality is developed from it and other cities like it. There seemed to be some acknowledgement but a dissonance about this linkage with me because the co-workers said things like “I see why you like it” or “It makes me think of you.” I don’t think they intended to, but they were saying more clearly than ever that I am different and they don’t like me because of my difference.

Second, one of my peers informed me that TLoTH offered her a permanent position. We are both in the same intern-ish-but-paid position but now they’ve offered her to stay. She said it in a skirting way, like she’d been hiding it from me for months but she knew I’d have to find out eventually. I felt a lot of envy that this permanent position was offered but also a lot of anger that she was so blatantly favored. She has been there longer and doesn’t ask too many questions like me. I appreciate, to some extent that she’d hid it and wasn’t bragging. But it made me feel worse that I don’t have a Long-Term Plan.

The third issue didn’t really actively happen while I was with the co-workers but rather after. It wasn’t very specific to a moment, but I had this persistent, gut-wrenching terror for the whole afternoon that what happened at TLoTH would happen again in Orodepaz City. I was panic-stricken and horrified that all my friends and loved ones would secretly turn out to hate me. And then sit me down and tell me.

I was afraid of this when I arrived at shul, probably one of the places I feel the most safe in the world. Fortunately, the clergy are sensitive to people who feel out of whack. They must teach “Identify Out-of-Whack Congregants” in clergy school. There is a new Rabbi who gave me some excellent advice about compassion. Then the Cantor arrived (I sang in the choir that night) and I admitted to her my fears. She seemed hurt, almost physically, to hear my pain. She gave me a hug and we sang songs and I eventually felt better.

I went to a late dinner with my Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed. We decided this was our relationship because neither of us understands what any of that means but both of us adopted the same person as our Saba (grandfather). He (the “cousin”) is a cool guy with silly hair that makes him look more emo than he is. Good times.

Saturday morning PartnerPenguin went with me to the Greyhound and sent me on my way to Porn Town. PartnerPenguin had planned to see his brother, Human, but those plans fell through. He took me to the bus all the same.

There are some interesting challenges about getting across the Sunny State. You can travel and maximize for cost, time or reliability. Pick two. I usually go for cost and time but this trip I went for cost and reliability. In reality, this means I spent 20 hours of the past 96 in transit. If I count 25 hours of sleep, that’s only 51 hours of awake time for a trip that cost $140. Grump grump grump.

It was actually a completely fabulous-tastic trip. My friend Sleaze in Porn Town hosted a kick-ass metal-ukelele show. This woman is a role model and I am so proud to call her my friend. She is pretty committed to the whole “practice what you preach” deal and lives very authentically within the bounds she has established for herself. I admire that she brought out several artists she liked to the show and then went shopping at their booths afterwards (in addition to LOUDLY telling everyone else to also partake of their wares). She bought out most of one artist’s prints and pins. When the artist expressed that the money from the sales would allow her to eat that week, Sleaze just kept buying and was like “ok, how much is this?” I also bought a pin from this artist (will post a link here if I find one to her other work):

Sleaze and I had some good talks and she was so excited and happy when I explained that I’m married. She also pointed out that my ring looks like a vulva. Now I can’t unsee it.

One thing I love about staying with Sleaze is how many books she has! Last time I read Cunt and that was pretty foundational and fundamental. This time I picked up Come as You Are and now my whole perception of my own sexuality is changing. The part I like the best is finding out that I’m normal. There is nothing wrong with me. And there are words to help me figure out some of my relationship things. The relief of this discovery makes me want to cry happy tears. Additionally, the freedom to just sit quietly and read is a beautiful thing.

Sleaze let me borrow the book and dropped me off at the train. I sure as hell hope my luck with transit continues because I’ve barely made all of the planes trains and automobuses I’ve had to catch.

My next destination was a Quaint Little Gated Suburbia (QLGS) to visit my friend StarStorm. Star was my field partner in class. For those who are not geologists, your field partner is the person you map with and share responsibility of your grade with. We work well together, Star and I. Recently, she had been making a life for herself in China and got what she thought was a minor sprain. It was actually a bunch of icky stuff that needed surgery so now she can’t walk and is staying with her parents in QLGS. Just the thought of any of these things makes me shudder.

I was actually able to find a lot of peace and fulfillment from the trip. I scared/intimidated her parents but they were mature enough to try to get to know me and allowed me to be vulnerable and honest. I felt such gratitude from Star herself. She and I were able to set out some actionable items to abate the crushing isolation that comes with a sudden lack of autonomy. I introduced her to The Fresh Prince, which somehow she missed. We laughed (a lot), we cried and we just simply were. She organized a lovely get together with friends and I (unsurprisingly) stripped and jumped in the ocean. I get cold super easily but for some reason never when I strip and go in the ocean. Maybe it’s feeling safe. Or whale jizz.

I also saw my friend, the Bicoastal Bisexual. We went to the strip mall that approximates as QLGS’s town center. We rolled down a grassy hill (Mabel voice “Yaaaay! Grass!”) and talked about our lives. It’s interesting seeing someone in such a different environment from where you met her. You find out where they made out when they were 15 and the movie theatre they snuck ice cream into. There’s a sense of nostalgia overlain upon otherwise replicate-able suburban box stores. The part I didn’t like was the PetSmart. Too many living things in cages. I did like Pier 1. They have smelly candles now that are fully inauthentic. They are neither smells nor actual candles. They are LEDs with oils named things like “Paradise”. It was silly. The Bicoastal Bisexual is one of the people I talk to frequently on Facebook and she also reads my blog (shoutout!) so it felt like we hadn’t seen each other in a month or so, when in reality it’s been over a year. I do appreciate when social technology can successfully do that.

Anyway, I’m super tired from travelling so I’ll leave you with a song that Sleaze covered because I can’t find the recording of her doing it. Yay, this song!