hobbitem

Today started with a goodly long walk.

Well no, it started with floppiness and a slow wake-up and close cuddling of my beloved, and then helping finish the last few pieces of a puzzle and breakfast and things like that. But the walk was the first thing of note!

We saw a frog -very exciting, it was green headed and brown bodied in a somewhat surprising way- and a number of wee little waterfalls and at least one house hidden in the woods looking abandoned and a grand number of interesting flowers. I ate some sorrel and probably didn't wind up in any poison ivy. And I got to hold hands with Tuesday, and pull ker close against me and snuggle as we walked and that was all extremely good.

Then there was lunch and a bit of trivia, and hugs goodbye, and Cameron and I got in the car and performed the long drive back home to Maryland. It was a bit over five hours total driving, but actually a quite jolly adventure. There was much exchanging of music! I heard some very good Mariana and the Diamonds and Enya in exchange for Kate Nyx and Vienna Teng. We mutually grooved to Chappell Roan, the place our venns diagramed. Later, as we drove through some quite hard rain and a splashy sort of thunderstorm, we exclaimed over the rainbow chasing alongside us, occasionally joining in the spray of the water on the road to look like it was landing just in front of our car.

And very good conversation, including swapping stories of how we wound up entangled with our sweeties. It's really damn nice to have a partner's family I can groove with, is what I'm saying.

Mom and Barb picked me up in Baltimore, and there were hugs all around which was lovely to happen. And more driving and a stint in the grocery store and bringing in some heavy bags of salt from the car (why carry the 40# bags yourself if you've got a childe to do it for you?) and my bags. Before I did all the carrying, I stopped on the lawn to watch the grove of fireflies flickering across the driveway. That was a magical moment --maybe I should go out again and check if they're still there? It might be too late now, being as it's well past eleven. Still, nothing ventured etc. BRB.

Okay there were still a few, mostly up in the treetops instead of at knee height, but as I was standing there looking, I heard a bit of a noise and I was like "huh, that sounds like rain but it's....it's getting louder and closer. OH SHIT" and run run run back up the drive. I did beat most of it --but only most. It was very jolly, especially since there was at least one pale flash of lightning as I moved. It's been a very good day for storms!

At mom's house, I curled up on the internet with Tailsteak for our regular Taskmaster date, which we haven't had in _ages_ and won't be able to have again for _more ages_. But it was good to get a couple episodes in! Gradually catch up, as it were.

Now mom's doing some scanning and I'm writing my words, and it's a good close to the day. I hope your days are also nice!

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

I continue to be having a LAKE VACATION and today I even went into the lake a bit!

Lake was a late-afternoon plan, and I only made it in to about the tops of my thighs, just because it was...comfortable enough outside, and also the water was quite cold. I had a nice conversation hanging with Cameron and discussing our respective indifference to swimming and other nice things. It was good to be able to cool my body by sticking my feet into the water, and I quite preferred it to being inside with the AC, which tends to be too cold for my poor lizard body.

(I am extremely cold-blooded --I get cold quite easily, and am most comfortable at an indoor temperature of probably 78ish, which no one is ever willing to set their houses at. It means this heat wave is hitting me less badly than many people, and I am very grateful for that. It also means I'm about to go put on my flannel, because bare arms are simply much too chilly for the indoors.)

Oo, or I could write my words outside! That is a good plan too!

(I got distracted having a nice chat with grandpa John, about teaching and acceleration and other things. Being pro-vocational schools! The usual. I am so proud of my school district for all the good it's doing, even though I'm exhausted by many of the things they are failing at.)

The other big thing we did today was going to the Candy Store, which was a very nice sort of adventure! We're on touristy sort of lake, so visiting some touristy sorts of shops is lovely, and gave me a chance to get my mother some vintage-style candy she would be excited about. It was also fun to spend time with just the cousins-batch! It's neat to be part of an inter-generational sort of adventure (currently Grandma Judy and Karen(Tues and Cameron's mom) are working on the crossword with other people's help, and the eight of us who are awake are curled around the table snarking each other and helping occasionally. ) but it's especially fun to just hang out with the other "kids".

It should maybe be weirder that I, at age nearly 36, am sitting so comfortably at the kids' table, but let's be real, I absolutely do not feel as though I am a Grown-Up and never have, despite the fact that I am a firm believer in Growing Up Is Good.

I don't really have much else to write about --peaceful lake vacations are good for the soul healing a bit, and curing burn-out but not exactly full of adventures. We went on a walk and saw a bat? We're going to eat strawberry shortcake? We finished a quite neat puzzle and then rearranged it and finished it again? Things are all pretty lovely.

Please stay cool, in both the "physical" and the "don't become a fascist" sorts of way.

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

I am at Keuka!

This is one of the fingerlakes in upstate New York. Tuesday's extended family has been going out to hang out in a rental cabin on the lake for a week or two every summer for basically forever. This year I got dragged along, which is quite exciting!

We arrived yesterday after about twelve total hours of varying kinds of travel, which was...a lot. It would've been better if Tuesday and I could've managed to sit together on the trains but it turns out both the Northeast Corridor and the Vermonter are _super_ crowded always, and if you don't get on them at the terminii you're fucked. But we made it! We settled in a bit and got a brief tour and I had a very good part of my evening where I just wandered outside and lay on the dock and stared at the stars for a tick. Very very good!

Today was officially day 1/3 of my ~lake vacation~ a thing I've basically never done in my life. I have read books! (parts of three different, so yes, there will be a medialog post again soon). I have worked on a puzzle! I have mostly stayed out of the way while people made dinner! I have eaten dinner!!!

And there are two more days of this? I think I can probably manage that. Just...lots of chatting with Tuesday's family, and occasionally reading books or entertaining myself. Marvelous? There ought to be swimming at some point, but most of this afternoon was spent going to the grocery store in a very disorganized little hoard. It was jolly though, and there was a bit in the middle where I was just in a marvelous mood. Feral almost --wild creature released in the grocery store with no particular agenda (because Tuesday and I got to the grock before Karen and Cameron, due to shop shenanigans). Very nice adventure!

Other plans might include going a bit kayaking, or doing some doodling, or maybe actually working on the ESCape lessons I'm teaching in, uh, a week. On Thursday, Cameron and I are going to drive down to Bal'more, since that's where they live and where mom can easily pick me up. I'll be in Maryland for an _extremely_ blitz visit until mom and Robin and I drive back up to Boston and then to...ESCAPE! I'm excited for it!

In other particularly good news, my union ratified its contract today! YAYYY!!! Best damn district in the state woot woot!

I hope you are finding whatever it is you need this week. And not too much heat.

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

Today was my third pride! I am realizing I never got around to posting all the bits from my second pride, last weekend, so let's do that first:

( here are the notes from Boston pride a week ago, written in a series of texts )

***

Today was Providence Pride! It was a very different experience from Boston Pride, but still really wonderful and valuable! The biggest differences were a) the weather was the _polar opposite_ and I had to worry about heatstroke instead of my fingers going numb and b) I was attending with people instead of alone.

The latter made it much less of a quasi-spiritual experience. I only cried once, and only a very little bit, not proper sobbing --it was when I found the Mama Dragons group, who had a big sign at their booth that read "Fight like a MOTHER for trans rights". They are such a good group! Fuck yeah!

I think the real thing is that when I am with other people I am a somewhat different person than when I'm alone. I'm compelled to be more stable, which is mostly a good thing, but also just...I dunno. I have to be around only people I feel very safe around in order to be my proper weirdest, or I have to be around total strangers who I will never meet again.

But the people I were with were so good! Tuesday and I went to pride together, and it was very fun to go to A Queer Event as a unit. SamSam was passing through on their own adventures, so we found them soon after we arrived and the three of us spent about fifteen minutes sitting in some cozy shade behind a bush, which was almost pleasant weather-wise. After they went off on their next bit of biking, Tuesday and I met up with a friend of kers called Chris who ke knows through Tech House and Puzzling.

Tuesday and Chris and I spent most of the afternoon together --probably from like 3 until they had to catch a train at nearly 8. We toured some booths, ate from some food trucks, sat in the shade, and toured more booths. I think by the end of it we had probably seen all the booths at the little pride fair, although it was laid out a little roundabout in a way that might've caused us to miss a few. I got some nice bits of swag, including a very explicitly queer patch from GSSNE (Girl Scouts Southeastern New England) and an even better rainbow fan than the one I got last week (this one has PoC and trans stripes, the other just has the core six).

Chris turned out to be very fun to talk to, and we definitely had a few moments of "oof, are you me?!" as we chatted about various forms of sluttery and other fun. It was also neat to get to *chinhands* as they shared various forms of college drama with Tuesday, and I could learn some secret scandals from my partner's life before me. I am a simple man with simple pleasures!

Attending the fair was lovely, but as mentioned it was _brutal_ hot and bright out. I realized eventually that part of the problem was that my Very Cute Sunglasses are just slightly off prescription-wise from my regular sunglasses --not enough to be an immediate problem, but if I am wearing them for five hours straight, it starts to make my body unhappy. I went in the mist tent for a bit to cool down, and then we sat somewhere shaded enough that I could swap out for my regular glasses and take an ibuprofen, all of which helped. On the plus side, neither Tuesday nor I appear to have any sunburn! We brought our own sunscreen, but I did heartily approve of the multiple (mostly mom-like) people at the event who had bottles of their own that they were offering to everyone.

Chris had to catch a train, so they couldn't join me and Tuesday for the parade, which happens after the fair in PVD. We missed the very beginning, but caught most of it, and did lots of cheering and whooping and the like. I had happy screams for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence again (although apparently I have a much less strong reaction to them when they are in short cute sun-dresses as opposed to their full nun robes). We ogled some pole dancers doing good work, and very much enjoyed a local horror group who were strutting around kinkily while wearing very little clothing.

I also howled real good for the puppy players, and when they stopped for a little bit just in front of us, I wound up giving one of them a bunch of scritches and making sure he'd been drinking water and telling him he was a good boy. I have known for a long time that I really enjoy interacting with pups, and I wish I had more excuses to hang with them. Maybe I should try and go back to Frolicon some year?

The city was chockablock full of hot queers, and it was delightful. That's my favourite part of any pride, just heaps of little positive interactions with My Community. Smiles and compliments and blown kisses and lusty stares and all having a very wonderful time!

Happy Pride, y'all!

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

Today was the day off to fuck around! Like, the single day I have to recover from burnout of the past school year and be ready for the upcoming several weeks of _stuff_. I'm sure that's fine, I'm sure that's how brains work.

Anyways, I spent the first ninety minutes of the day or so wandering around the various Alewife parks/reserves. There's a lot of good nature over there! I saw multiple turtles and a well posed squirrel and a pretty moth and some ducks! Also lots of green, which smelled overpoweringly of flowers and nature and that's weirdly good despite being a sensory nightmare.

Then I went home and played a _lot_ of days of Stardew Valley, ( the next two paragraphs are boring unless you're also into Stardew! )

In the real world, I wrapped up the evening by hanging with Ruthie and The Toddler for a bit. It was a good evening! A dinosaur drove a truck, which is entirely a correct thing for toddler toys to be doing. And the bedtime story was Magic School Bus and the Hurricane, which was great fun.

Tomorrow has many plans. Here are some of them:

*Call Tuesday, work out final plans/timing for the next few days

*Possibly create A Snack for the pride party

*Go to the grocery store

*Write an entire pre-Pinewoods todo list

*Clean the bathrooms

*Photograph free stuff so I can put it on Facebook and maybe even get it out of the house before I go

*Laundry is a Friday plan. So is packing for mine and Tuesday's adventures and maybe if I'm really good packing one (1) bag for Pinewoods.

Huzzah or whatever!

(And maybe after my dance party I can play a few more days of Stardew).

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

I did it! I finished cleaning up my room! I was able to play School's Out For Summer at about 6:50pm or so, which is plenty good as these things go. *THUMP* goes the brain. I would like to do absolutely nothing! But things are coming up!

Here's some good things coming up in the near future:

*I'm going to go to Keuka (in the finger lakes in NY) with Tuesday's family! This appears to be the kind of vacation where you just chill out and read books and go for walks and things. I'm excited! I don't really know how to have that kind of vacation, so it'll be a good chance to try things out.

*I'm doing a road trip from Keuka to MD with Cameron (Tuesday's sibling) which sounds like it will be quite a nice time, honestly. I've road-tripped with Tuesday a fair amount, and ker mom a few times, so I'm excited to do it with another member of the family.

*Almost immediately after, I'm road-tripping back up from MD to Boston (and then ESCape) with mom and Wicked Auntie Robin. Mom and I are definitely compatible road trip buddies! I think Robin will be a good third!

(I recently got a kickstarter which is "gay games to play in the car with your girlfriend while she drives you to go camping" so I'm excited to have some road trips to play the gay games!)

*ESCape is going to be amazing, obviously. I'm the official scottish teacher! I get to MC in the evenings and teach two classes! AAAAH! Good aah, but also stressed aah.

*Once I'm back from ESCape I get to actually breathe for a week or so, which is going to be my play video games time. I am _extremely_ looking forward to it.

And then there's some other stuff in the back half of the summer. That's good too!

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

I have two days left of school, which is probably good, and then I slam into summer with several weeks of Very Exciting. I'm going to drive to MD and back in the span of about four days. Somewhere in here I need to finish preparing for my ESCape classes. I have to pack?!?! Maybe all my stints on crew mean I'll be able to pack a lot lighter than usual for ESC/Scots (lolno).

Tomorrow I should figure out everything that needs to be done in the school building before I depart for the year. Packing up. Printing things. Recycling many many pieces of paper. Submitting grades and paperwork and the like. (The printing things is sneakily a "prepare for ESCape" thing to do --I want to have some properly formatted dances or What Have You. I seem to recall I did quite a lot of this as a work-in-company with Veronica last summer, I probably won't have the MD time to do that again, but it's worth noting that MD does have printers. And so does MA. It's not the end of the world if I fail to print things, is what I'm saying.)

I've been playing lots of Stardew Valley, which I'm quite into, even if I'm getting a little stuck on some of the plot bits. Not looking anything up is a bit of a drag, but also feels very very good when I do figure things out myself. I am glad to have realized I can go back through the library and reread the books I've found --I was worried those were one shot readings, and I'd forgotten the early ones. Anyways, no spoilers, I'm a bit into my second summer.

Went to service ringing today, for probably my last bells for a month. So that's...a lot. Luckily it did not emotionally overwhelm me, maybe partly because I've had a low-key headache for a few days now. I arrived at Advent in time to help ring down, and then we did a mostly nice extent of Cambridge at Old North. (It was only mostly nice because everybody spontaneously exploded when we got to the plain course, and we limped through and barely made it. Sigh.)

Yesterday was pride and I wrote up a bunch of thoughts and should probably post them somewhere, instead of just manually sending them to various partners who like hearing about my life. I suppose there are others of you who like hearing about my life as well or whatever.

I finally picked back up the Endless Photo Organization Project the other day, and sorted a handful of photos. I forgot to note the number at the beginning, so I have no idea how many things got tagged. It's nice to get back into the swing of the project, and extremely nice to have set the whole thing up on the external harddrive, so switching it from old computer to new was essentially trivial. I wish I could figure out a few more keyoard shortcuts to speed things up a tick, but I'm feeling pretty okay with the mousing that has to be done.

Having finished words, I should do at least one of the dishes and going to sleep. Goodnight!

~Sor

MOOP!