i have a home to myself and am stretching out, wanting to dig my roots deep even if that’s not the most wise plan possible. i want to stretch my limbs and cross-pollinate, growing my community and my family.

i’m baffled by how much work that can take, hyperaware of how the ten miles i live from town can seem like a day’s journey. but i’m trying to strengthen and grow.

this next quarter i’m just taking one class, using the rest of that time to store up my resources. i’ve made it through the winter into a time of rebirth, but i need to actually pay attention if anything sustainable is going to happen.

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.

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 reopening

The 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!

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.

(parts one and two.)

my favorite quote of the day, from nat about butter:

i covet this poster like crazy, but it’s $30.

my great-grandmother passed away on sunday, after a week’s worth of post-stroke sleeping.  she lived such a long and wonderful life; she was my favorite lady.  i was her namesake for eighteen years, and will always remember her.  i’m mostly still numb, i think.

i save comics that i like a lot, so that i can devour in batches when i am sad about things like how my great-grandmother just had a stroke.

my small orange friend is back in town, which is fantastic.  he is getting along well in our new household.  i bought a car.  that’s how he got up here, me driving for thirteen hours from san francisco to olympia.  it was a good idea in my head.

it seems like my new apartment comes with built-in trans friends, and also crafty friends?  so that is pretty neat of it.  i’ve been stepping up my knitting game due to peer pressure, yarn donations and halloween (all combine, actually, to equal – remember what i said last year?).  knitting is good.

this is like i’ve taken all of my boring entries and combined them into one meta-boring-entry.  i mean, i got bored in the middle of it.  i’m going to go back to cleaning the house, and you know that means something.