May has been busy what with the sun being out and the houses being moved and the seedlings that *still* need to go into the ground… We have deer all over the place in our back acres, and I can’t stand the thought of planting the babes without some kind of deer protection.
Cable internet should show up next week, in which case I’ll have more of an opportunity to update - dial up, ah how I did not miss you.
last night i had a long and complicated dream, which isn’t so surprising… the surprising part is that i then remembered this dream when i woke up. this isn’t so much the “look at what a wacky dream i had” narrative as it is a “what does this mean about waking life?”
because in this dream i was having an argument with someone who was in to me, liked me a lot, wanted to be my friend, but flatly refused to accept that i was part of the trans community.
… and this is something that i’ve been worrying about a lot lately, as i explore what it means to be largely femme-identified in a female body. in my burlesque class i’ve been trying to choose between two pieces - one that’s pretty much just high femme, and one that’s obviously a genderqueer commentary. my analysis of these two pieces is that the genderqueer one would be easier and probably more interesting, and that the femme one would be more challenging, but also potentially boring.
i’m in burlesque 101 to challenge myself (i’m in this world to challenge myself?), but also to increase my strength as a performer. i was thinking seriously about starting hormones a few months ago, when i realized that the only thing holding me back was fear of societal repercussion (the alternate word that i was going to put there was “asshattery”)… i think that somehow i’ve come to believe that if i’m not challenged, if i’m comfortable, things aren’t worth my time.
this is everywhere in my life - work, relationships, gender - and it has such an amazing contradiction with my agoraphobia, i can’t even begin to fathom. i wonder if it comes from judging myself harshly for letting the agoraphobia win and not facing the challenges? and i wonder how the hell i might try to beat it.
this isn’t at all where i thought this entry was going to go. it was initially just going to be a reassertion of my place in the trans/gender/queer community, my role as a “militant genderqueer” … but then i wonder, if i feel the need to constantly remind everybody that i belong… am i feeling like i belong? obviously not. i have no way of knowing what everybody else is feeling, but i keep distancing myself from transmasculine spaces in particular because of my femme presentation - but other than being the most femme gay guy you might ever meet, i’m also pretty darn gay and man.
i don’t know, sweethearts. i have no idea.
tomorrow i’m going to a “first time homebuyers class.” i’m going to bring my padfolio (yes, i just said padfolio) and pretend to be a grown up. i really like this house, but it’d be a super-long commute to oly. still, it’d be amazing tto live on way to tipperary street. who thought that putting the word “way” in a street name was a good idea? i also love this one, but i think it’s a little to old for me to be able to keep it happy, it needs someone a little better at taking care of the puppy once they’ve brought the puppy home.
also tomorrow is nettlefest! where choir is singing. and my friend andrew is moving away, so he’s holding a party for us to kick him and tell him not to move away. at least i’m pretty sure what the party is for.
sunday i might go to look at the way to tipperary house! also it is blintzapalooza, which - oh my goodness exciting.
on monday i have my first burlesque 101 class! i’m excited and petrified. a few weeks ago i did a basic class and tassle twirling, but this six-week course ends with a performance which is… golly. it’s funny, though - at the tassle twirling class i had to ask about a “how to twirl your tassles” article i pulled out of the stranger when i was sixteen, it was illustrated by ellen forney… i knew even back then that i wanted to be a drag queen, and indeed the article was about miss indigo blue’s going-ons. it became suddenly obvious, afterward, that ellen had done the illustration of indigo that’s the academy logo.
……..i tend to get fixated on things. sometimes i check my email in the early morning, when i should be going back to sleep, and one day i got an email from sophie asking if ghosts are good company (the song, also the name of this blog probably maybe obviously also i am the fourth result for that phrase on google) was by bishop allen as it… is… or by the moldy peaches as it is often labeled. and instead of just going “no, it’s really bishop allen” i spent a good hour of my sleeping time on the internet being grumpy. and then listening to the song again and going “well, i can see how it sounds like the moldy peaches to some people, but it’s totally not kimya.” and then thinking about how much i love bishop allen and how much i love the moldy peaches kids and is the latter why i got so into the former? are more of their songs similar-sounding and i just didn’t know it? speaking of which, that comcast ad campaign? grr.
my extracurriculars have been making life pretty tasty lately. there’s been knitting, which is always fun but extra-fun since it’s full of good queers! and then, mostly, there’s been choir which has been great. i joked when i decided to stay in olympia that it was for sophie and the choir(, which at that point was pending), and now that sophie’s up and moved to portland, i have to say that choir’s almost worth it on its own (not to say that i don’t miss sophie. i just got an amtrak free companion ticket and i’m going to make nat come with me to visit her and erica at some point). i’ve found it’s the same with a few of us - that even if we don’t want to go be social, we go to choir and leave feeling awesome.
nat’s feeling awesome RIGHT NOW because his top surgery funding has just come through - he can pay for it!, he just needs to make an appointment. (he says, not actually in a monotone, “i feel like jumping up and down for joy.”) i’m excited for that too, and also because i’m typing this on my new tiny computer. it’s named after our “darling, dearest, dead” friend otka, and has only fallen on the floor once - when i got butter too excited about the toy he was chasing around, causing him and otka to go flying. i’ve hidden that toy, but he’s since found another one.
……and now he’s been sitting in the dryer for the last twenty minutes.
national mentoring month celebrations went well, and i had a good time and learned a lot at the guiding lights weekend, as well. it’s really strange to go from the hectic-ness of january to a february that has almost nothing on my to-do list.
but, i’m sure i’ll figure something out. knit-n-nature is one thing i really want to do. fort flagler is one of my favorite places, and combining that with knitting? yes please.
… which reminds me that i should get back to the argyle sweatervest that i’m knitting for butter.
oh oh oh oh.
it’s been a hectic month, while at the same time being dead slow. work was crazy-busy, preparing for national mentoring month, until suddenly i was snowed in. for a week. it’s just now becoming safe to drive, and has been dreadful and wonderful at the same time - but the festivities for national mentoring month are definitely going to be lessened due to the loss of so much prep time. angst.
a major force in my world lately has been the olympia free choir. we’re performing our first show on january sixteenth:
Grand reopeningThe Olympia Timberland Regional Library will celebrate its reopening from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Jan. 16. Local musicians and performers, including Kimya Dawson, will be on hand. The library is at 313 Eighth Ave. S.E.
this is the most snow i’ve experienced in my life, and i’m excited for it to go away so that things can get back to normal. it would be one thing if we were equipped to handle this at all, but… we’re not. nat and i walked over to see bolt (!! adorable) at the mall last thursday (the thursday before christmas), and the mall closed at six. i think it’s great that the mall was allowing their employees to, you know, get home safely - but i also think it’s a crazy illustration of how the snow broke down much of olympia’s capitalist system for a while.
butter has certainly been happy with the snow, though, because it means that i get to spend more time at home cuddling with him. at the point of this writing, he’s curled up in my lap with his nose buried in the crook of my elbow, asleep. he was drooling earlier.
i was going to plan a new-years-adventure for nat and i, but instead he is house sitting for his faculty, so it will be a new-years-stay-away-from-home thing (which will cost fantastically less money!) instead. we’re still trying to figure out what to do, if we want to go out or not, but i’m sure we’ll figure out something fun. free radio is having a new year’s eve disco.
i can’t wait until transit is back to normal again!
hey look, november happened.
that’s about all i have to say about that. nat’s still in spokane for that harvest festival they celebrate out those parts - he’ll be back tomorrow, about which i’m excited.
i don’t really have any money, but i keep dreaming about a tiny vacation, maybe even just a night or two at one of the state campgrounds… i started my americorps vista position, about which i will write something sometime probably, which has been really great but also superbusy.
i’ve started singing with olympia’s new free choir, which has been beautiful - an open community of people just singing their butts off - and hope to get involved with some more stuff like that as the next few months roll in (After January, is when i will hopefully have some downtime, but i would like some extracurriculars before that, i think).
oh dear. the exhaustion.
i am so proud of myself!
the night of great-grandma’s funeral, we drove from oly to des moines for a celebration at my grandmother’s house. on the way, nat and i got distracted by my father’s house (it’s right on the way, i couldn’t not stop by) and were gifted an abundance of fruit - canned peaches, dried apples, jam jam jam, amazing grapes (how sweet) and a big bag of apples. i spent a day soon after paring them, and when i was done i noticed… that some neighbors had a bunch of apples sitting in buckets with a sign that said, of course, “free apples.”
so i pared some more. and now there is so much applesauce.
i’ve been piecing together my canning knowledge with information from The Internets, and in one minute (yes, i will be taking a break from typing this), there will be a third jar of applesauce successfully canned!
and we’re at three. there are probably ten or so more to go, as there’s a giant bowl still of applesauce, and then the apple butter. for a total of six dollar’s worth of financial investment, and hecka more time - something that i have a fair amout of, for now. i got the jars from great-grandma, and the only thing that we purchased was the lids. whenever i hear them sucking in, actually sealing, i feel like jumping up and down.
( giant weekend field trip part three - monday )
part three includes going to the remains of never never land with nat’s friend ann. there are a few pictures here. it was a sad trip lacking the touchstones of its sweet memories, so it was an appropriate that it was in the middle of the forest that my mother called and learned about my great-grandmother’s passing.
it’s, unsurprisingly, still hard. i visited her in the hospital a week before she died - she’d had a stroke - and she was looking not-so-awesome, but having trouble breathing. i felt guilty going on the field trip, rather than staying in town to keep visiting her, but i think it’s best that i had adventures rather than watching her deteriorate - she was always more of the adventure type. you can see a picture of her from the fifties (when she was 47) here, and her obituary is online here. it was amazing to have the entire family in town, many folks whom i haven’t seen since her 90th birthday.
butter is currently cleaning his paw while it rests on my wrist. nat is sleeping.
i’m hoping to, sometime in the next few weeks, stop by the schilter family farm in order to do some pumpkin-buying and hayriding. i’ve been wanting to do the like ever since october crisped in, and upon some research decided on schilter - which turns out to be a good choice, as it seems like they were family friends… some of them were at the funeral and, in looking at the history of the farm, they share a swiss and dairy-related heritage.
since the adventures and stresses chronicled above, i’ve mostly been working and sleeping and working and sleeping. it’s so chilly here! i’m currently wearing polarfleece socks and still have freezy feet.
i know, i know - part three is still pending. i’m trying to get the apartment packed up, which is really hard to do when i’m… not packing at all. that needs to start now - better, a few days ago. as a filler, here’s a picture of butter banana and i.
the truth is, the purpose of our trip wasn’t so much a happy one. we were headed to the funeral of a friend of nat’s. after a few hours on the road we made it to pasco, to a lovely service. we headed home still sad, and were excited about the opportunity to distract ourselves by visiting the teapot dome. …but we couldn’t find it. we did, however, see this.
so, we turned around and headed a few miles back toward granger - yes, granger: where the dinosaurs roam. nat and i had a great time taking the dinosaur drive, and taking pictures with all of the dinosaurs - you can see the full set here.
oh! i can’t believe it, i almost forgot. after we went to the darigold dairy fair (soooo underwhelming), a few hours down the road we stopped by snoqualmie falls, which was so. so. beautiful.
and we headed home. sunday was lacking in adventures, since i had orientation at work. but info on monday’s adventures is pending.
(part three here!)
