ghosts are good company

i didn’t get the job. i mean, i might get the job in the future. but they’re not going to hire me as immediately as they had suggested. so i’m frustrated, and not sure where to go from here with some of my plans.

nat came home today and excitedly announced that he was surprising me with dinner guests (or an invitation to be dinner guests? i wasn’t paying too much attention, because). the response he got was perhaps not as he expected, as it involved me groaning (and whining!) in a fetal position. after consultation with said potential dinner companion as to where a low income health clinic could be found (yay after-hours and the lack of health insurance) and a visit to the doctor (i hate doctor visits), it was determined that i had a bladder infection. go go team awesome. i’m feeling a little better now, still not-so-great but stunned by nat’s rockstardom around a medical ‘emergency’ and the related anxiety/incompetence that builds in me around medical situations.

it was my mom’s birthday yesterday! it sounds like she had a great day, which is what she deserves. part of the frustration with changing plans is that i was hoping to see her this weekend, and now i’m not sure if i should head down there or not.

those are the things on my mind, this 3:35am. i’m heading back to sleep, and hope that your rest is better than mine.

although it’s been raining wonderfully for the past seven hours, and that’s perfect.

in my morning ritual of peering at the damp earth that the seeds are planted in, i discovered… that glass is more insulating than rice milk boxes are. and also that perhaps i should turn on the space heater that my housemate lent me. because it actually snowed. in april. when it snowed in october a few years ago, that was understandable because it was the very end of october. this… i just can’t comprehend.

i’m really glad that i’m not living in a tent right now.

this planting project i officially declare to be a failure.

it’s strange, to have so many blogs in so many places. i’m also trying to get more involved with some online community that i love (i imagine that you all know who you are, but i would love to know who’s reading so i can make sure that i’m reciprocating!), because… they’re really nice kids.

that community loves to play picture your day, so i took my shot at it yesterday. you can see the album (with captions) heeeere. ♥

…now i have to start rushing for the bus again.

and so it goes. it’s olympia, it’s raining. i can hear the rain on my balcony. i’ve moved into a house just above the fourth avenue bridge, with: two cats, three kids, four dogs and, come may, five adults. my room is pretty big - maybe twelve by eighteen, or a little bigger (larger than two pucks plus three pucks), plus closets. it’s got nicely green walls, two redorange doors, and a yellow ceiling, which matches the trim on the windows and th balcony doors. it might be hailing, actually; the rain is bouncing a bit more than usual.

at first i thought there was no wireless here, but there is and that is helpful - for one of my classes our weekly assignments are primarily blog-based, which makes sense. for another i have to have a livejournal, which makes less sense.

all of my classes seem pretty awesome, which is delightful. five courses means scads of reading, but it should be good. i’m trying to not get too distracted by student activities and such this quarter, but i have a plan simmering for a giant final project for myself/STAR (my trans group grew up without me!). if i want to make it happen i have to start NOW (after i get my homework for this week in order), so i need to decide if i want to commit as much time as it needs. i’m currently trying to have my entire College Experience As a Single Person in one quarter, so that’s exhausting in itself.

there is a corgi demanding my attention. i must go.

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.

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.

cubbie and i are in florida visiting his family for christmas.  it is a little too warm for me here, so i’m currently sitting under a fan and listening to the wind blow through the trees outside of the open window.  i’m sick, i have a cold which has been around for far too long.

the funny thing about this cold is that it started at about the same day my mother went in for surgery, and so i’m hoping that when she gets to leave the hospital, i’ll not have a cold any more.  at least, i hope that’s the way it works - if the cold lasts until she is fully recovered from surgery?  i’ll be very frustrated at the end of those few months.

we head that way on christmas.  i was afraid to fly on christmas, at first, but it sounds like it’ll be fairly quiet on the plane, so that will be good.  hopefully mum will feel well enough to celebrate!  if not, we can all stand around the bed in a made-for-tv-movie type fashion and send her air hugs, so that we don’t injure her with lovin’s.

at 8:55 tonight it started raining. it was sudden, it started raining a lot. we keep the windows open about two inches - so there’s air, but so the kitties can’t get out (at least, not without pushing the windows up with their heads, which they can do… there are big windowsills, so they’re pretty safe out there, but its still scary). the rain fell hard, loud, beautiful, hard enough to start scooting in under the windows. they’re open about half an inch now. i picked butter up and stared at the rain for a while.

rain is a huge marker of my life. there are all those jokes about the rain in seattle, and while there’s less than folks say there is, it was still a huge part of my childhood and continues to be really important, almost holy, to me. which isn’t to say that i like being out in the rain, at least not when i have to get to work or class or anywhere where i need to not look like a soggy thing… it’s the safety of the sound, the coziness of the rain on the roof, that is important to me.

we’re on the fifth floor of seven in our apartment building, but we’ve still got the rain on the walls, and the windows, pounding insistently and with love.

i love the trappings of rain, the rainclothes, which is silly because i’ve never really found any that worked for me. rain coats always get too warm, so do rain boots… i’ve been in love with the rainboots they’ve been selling with cowboy boot stylings, but they’d have the same problem. the last time i was out in the rain, though, i just wore my normal cowboy boots, which are super-cheap silver-colored things. i was on the phone with my grandfather and i stepped in a giant puddle (it was a square of cementlessness supposed to hold a tree, but there was no tree, it was just dirty water), but my feet stayed dry!

i keep meaning to get an umbrella, but it’s only rained three times here since the rain started. each time it’s torrential, but then it goes away. the weather’s been in the sixties, and it’s been fall-ish lately, which is nice. even if it’s supposed to be winter by now.

(hmm. now there’s hush. has the rain stopped?)