ghosts are good company

i’m almost afraid to tell you about how things are going well and seeming to come together, because it seems like whenever i tell you that things fall apart again. but. i’m pending on a job, have a pretty-sure-thing place to live, and am going to probably buy a car sometime next week. yes, after a summer of not growing up, this is where we get to. more plans, but pretty secure plans.

i’m still feeling pretty young, so recently graduated and recently smitten. every time i tell myself i’m not going to get seriously involved with somebody… i do. i mean, i was single for a year this time, which is… better for me than the, what, month or two between my last big relationships? but i’m surprised that i’m letting myself fall this hard. i’m trying my best to trust, but also to be prepared for implosion at any point. i think we both are.

so yeah. staying in olympia for a while. this boy also dreams of running off to amsterdam, so maybe (when our powers combine!) we can make that happen at some point.

i need to head to sophie’s house to water her plant. i like when she’s gone and i can sleep at her house, but i like even more when she’s in town and i can spend time with her! i have this evil plan that by being her only friend left in town, i can be her newbestfriend. don’t tell her, though. i’m keeping it on the down-low. only telling the internet, nobody else.

i have been very anxious and avoidant lately, which makes the world pretty awesome. it’s that time of the quarter – the new!shiny! aspect of it all has worn off, and very few of the classes are as great as i was hoping. still, i have a new momentary excitement, which is that i have a topic for my Big Paper for one of my classes. i’m going to look at gender variance and tricksters, since… those are, you know, things that this trannypuck is interested in. i’m a little worried about the trickster as a racialized entity, but since it shows up in so many cultures… that would be an interesting thing to research on its own. it’s kind of exciting to have a paper idea that actually feels like it could easily fill its required length.

so that’s exciting, and graduating in a few weeks is exciting, but oh my goodness the stress has been killing me. i’ve had two migraines since getting here (it’s a good thing i’ve still got my medication-toting habit, since it’s been at least three years since i’ve had one), and my body has been wracked with acid. fortunately, i’ve only had one actual panic attack, and even that was… under special circumstances.

work is over after friday, a ‘good while it lasted but oh golly glad it’s gone’ type thing. i still haven’t heard from either of my summer programs to know if i should, you know, buy a plane ticket… if things don’t pan out there, i’m thinking of staying in washington and maybe doing americorps or something, but i really wish that i had any sort of idea at all when i would hear from the programs!!

yep. here’s me frustrated. i’ve been knitting a lot (a lot) to try to keep calm – it’s not a horrible thing, really. it’s kind of fun to follow patterns, that is my new knitting thing.

i want to remember to share with you: some pictures, stuff from the kimya show, and… what the tinies i live with did for my birthday. these are all Important Things that i should get to once the world shifts back into… whatever the second-highest gear is.

hi blog!

things are fine, the world has been proceeding normally without you. i’m heading up to evergreen on fool’s day – although it sounds all like a hoax, since i don’t actually have a place to live, i’m hoping to find some sort of stability once i’m there. i’m registered for eighteen credits at the moment, waiting to get through a wait list to bump it back down to sixteen – i’m taking enough credits to graduate just in case amsterdam doesn’t work out, as it has a tendency… not to, and considering the state of the dollar.

the trans leadership summit was a fantastic experience, and i’m lucky to have been able to go. i made the acquaintance of some great people, and got back in touch with folks i’d lost touch with. i was able to find genderqueers again (it’s lonely down here in san diego) and learned a lot, much of which was a reminder of the binaries and biases within the trans community. i had to walk out of a workshop which began with discussion of how badly the hrc had done with enda – and ended with the conclusion that perhaps the trans community would do better if we had the “normal” trans folks step up in the media, and let the “militant genderqueers” be out of the spotlight. so that “the mainstream” doesn’t think that the whole trans community is made up of “freaks” [like me*]?

i was enraged, and wrote an impassioned piece about it while i was on the plane, and then my computer deleted it. that’s what i get for writing in a program that doesn’t auto save.

i’m going to be updating wordpress sometime in the next few days, so if things get bumpy over in greendinoville, that’s why.

tonight i’m making buttons for the rubber rose (they made my button-helpers volunteers of the month for february, and that makes me happy) and tomorrow i’m going to the getty with my family! yay for things!

the birds are twittering outside. happy spring. i’m looking for the perfect daffodil header for my blog – which i recall doing last year as well…

* don’t you wish your partner was a. i was lucky that this rage was mostly productive, it’s the kind where i got pissed off and motivated, rather than pissed off and depressed.

tho bout was crazy. mad. wonderful. i got to work the door, organizing lines and making people sign waivers… it’s an overwhelming job. i spent the afternoon running up and down lines and bellowing news – we were sold out, we might be able to let a few more people it, we were really truly officially sold out. it was very strange to have interacted with nearly everyone by the time i sat down.

this week is calmer. no more flower job, less social plans. i’m waiting for my outdoor wheels to show up so that i can skate without paying the rink. i asked my grandmother if she wanted to come to skate lessons tonight, but… she didn’t.

my scarf is something like four feet long now, so that’s amazing to look at – knitting is really a place where you can keep an eye on your progress, where there is instant validation, if you will.

i’ve been planning my next few months, year or so, and i’m hopeful. i’m great at plans, and every so often i can make them pan out. this feels like one of those times – trans leadership summit is coming up, then evergreen, then summer. amsterdam. something. i’ve been eying a bunac visa for after amsterdam, i want to take a look at british housing/employment stuff and see if i could actually make it happen.

this is the part where i wiggle with potential.

the grand canyum

Originally uploaded by capnpuck

seriously, it is a world of cute.

i walked out of work this morning and there were bunnies. bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies! the last time i saw bunnies was at the grand canyon. they were pretty much the only thing i could tell people about the grand canyon (other than wondering about how many times people punned the word “grand” there, and what’s with the pun theme lately?), largely because the canyon was so… large. we went on thanksgiving, did you know that the Native retailers around the canyon take thanksgiving off? this fascinates me.

so bunnies, eating grass, being adorable, hopping and fluffy.

you know, originally this post was going to have nothing to do with the grand canyon. it was going to talk about School Plans (evergreen in the spring! can i stay on your couch for two nights in a row, anyone?), and Summer Plans (amsterdam! it might work this time!) and Things Coming Soon:

usd vs. portland

people’s society for knitting and libations

usd vs gonzaga

from fucking to feminism (someone go to this with me? i’ll be drop dead tired from working 6:30 am to 3pm)

and then, and then SAN DIEGO DERBY DOLLS’ FIRST BOUT OF THE SEASON. i am so excited. it is hard corps vs. diego rollers, i think for the only time this season until the championships, and then the derby dolls all stars vs. the blood and thunder training camp team. i’m pretty sure this will be the dolls’ first time playing under wftda rules, which means that it’ll be…. an interesting bout strategically, if nothing else. but come on, how likely is “nothing else?” it’s derby. it’s awesome. it’s at skateworld, for goodness sake.

crap! i wanted to bring this up also, although it does not fit the theme of Awesome Things.

i just want to bring up, evergreen: just like all hippies are not wonderful, not all cops are evil.

oh! and i would like to welcome erica to the greendino family. rawr.

oh, hi blog!

lately i’ve had Too Much Staring At A Computer Syndrome, which i don’t think will go away anytime soon, what with the 35 hours of computer-staring i’m scheduled for next week. ah, well, at least they’re giving me money for it.

they’re also allowing me to knit in between jobs, which is great. i made a baby hat for a baby who is due to arrive a few months from now – the hat looks like this except more baby-sized – and am currently working on a scarf for my unclestephen.

stephen approached me at christmas about making him a checkered scarf and i said “sure, that’ll be easy!” before realizing that frankly, no. that would be confusing. i tried everything i could think of – stranded colorwork in the round, stranded colorwork to be folded over, just making three striped scarfs and then crocheting them together – before heading back to what i had been avoiding all along: double knitting.

i was avoiding it because it seemed harrrrd, and confusing, and (shh) sometimes i forget how to purl. the knittinghelp video on doubleknitting didn’t help much either because “um, i thing i messed up” in the middle doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it?

eventually i found the stitchdiva tutorials and, while i was still confused, decided to give it a go. and now i’m this far! …and excessively proud of myself.

other things going: Plans for school might work out, apparently i could have walked at graduation last year, and i’m excited and nervous about heading up to the bay area next month for the trans leadership summit.

and those are things.

i have a job! it is seasonal and low-paying and ultimately would be unexciting except that 1) it is a job and 2) they offered it to me less than two hours after my interview. which made me feel shiny.

i also have maybe a plan! i’m hoping to do evergreen in the spring (see boat class, below), hopefully walk at graduation, and then do a different, cheaper, nice, amsterdam sexuality program in the summer. i like having plans.

in long-term plans, a friend of mine mentioned dreaming of moving to vermont, and i glomped onto it. spring? next year? i’ll have graduated, need a place to go to. vermont? two amazing people to live with? uh, sounds great thanks.

derby starts again soon, with a double header exhibition bout on the 23rd. … and my work schedule means no skating class for me. damn, must figure that out.

anyhow, job excitement is the moral of this post!

i have a challenge between making this blog [my] “family friendly” and making it… about much of my life. but i guess since folks wouldn’t know me very well at all without knowing this, i spend the vast majority of my social time engaged it trans community activism and/or at the “local queerlady-owned sexuality boutique” – “a sex store even your mother would love.”

partially i bring this up because they (the rubber rose, the store mentioned above), just hosted the annual traveling roadshow that is the sex worker’s art show. i’ve been four out of the last five years now, and this year i had the most fun (even though nomy lamm wasn’t on the tour), largely because carly and lea (see above queerladies) made it such an awesome environment.

i attribute the environment mostly to lea and carly, even though the show was at a different venue, because it had the same spirit of delight, enthusiasm, and wonder that makes all of the rubber rose’s events awesome. still, it was missing as much of a feeling of power (youtube, sound) as some of their past events. the show was at a different venue becauuuuse the rubber rose has permit Issues. due to their being an “adult business” apparently there is a whole laundry list of things that are not allowed in their performance space. which drives me crazy.

ah, well. if you haven’t missed it yet, go see the art show. and if you’re in the area, go give the rubber rose some money. because i can’t. because i still don’t have a job. awesome!! oh: and official no-go on amsterdam today. double-awesome.

i am first on the waitlist still, but nowwww the program leaves in less than a month! so chances that i’m going look very. slim.

which leads me to: do i want to graduate in six years but with this awesome gender and sexuality program last on my transcript? or do i just want to freaking graduate already, by taking whatever at evergreen this spring?

the latter is quite appealing (except that the only program that really excites me is this one? but.)… i could still go to amsterdam, it would cost the same (evergreen would want tuition to put it on my transcript anyway), and i could have a college degree. wouldn’t that be nice.

p.s. jaci, there was no way for me to refrain from stealing your boat (garage) for this post. i love you.

actually, when i came to add a post to the blog, it was to say none of those geeky things. it was instead to share with you the fact that

I HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT I WANT TO BE FOR HALLOWEEN.

if only i had realized before 5am on halloween that I WANT TO BE A GNOME for halloween.

because, i mean, they are round and cozy and perhaps the best ever. all i need is… a hat. which i could knit if i had time. and a belt. which i could knit if i had time. and a beard. which i could fashion if i had time.

we’ll see how it goes. for now, look how much cuter this child looks as a gnome than i ever will (i just looked at that link as if it were a parenthetical, and said to myself “for now, look how much cuter than i ever will” doesn’t make sense as a sentence!!”).

for now i am studying up on my gnome puns just in case i dress up and go out somewhere.

anyway, whatever happens, may this day be full of at least a little magic and peace for you all. gnome what i mean?

other things:

+ you have probably realized by now that i am safe from the fires. a lot of people aren’t, and if there’s a way for you to donate/help out that you feel comfortable with, please try.

- amsterdam application is still pending based on three items which are all out of my control. in fact, these are the same things that it was pending on two weeks ago. and the program is full. apparently if those things show up at the study abroad office soon, i should be able to get on the waitlist. yes, i *have* actually been in touch with people about these things.

+ i should be able to get back on my skates soon. i need to remember to start shuffling around the house on them, so that i don’t panic the second i get on skates at the rink.