Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I don’t know if it’s that the time change is still throwing me off, if it’s general seasonal stuff, or if it’s just getting to be that point in the semester, but I have been so tired the past couple of weeks. Getting out of bed (and then staying out of bed) is taking Herculean levels of willpower. Work and school both feel overwhelming and like I’ve possibly bitten off more than I can chew. I’m just exhausted, and I’m not really sure what to do about it.
There have been some bright spots, though. For one thing, I’m taking tomorrow off as my quarterly “wellness day,” which my department intends as a day, planned in advance, dedicated to doing something to care for your mental health. I intend to spend mine sleeping and reading something for fun, although I’m also not holding onto any plans too tightly at this point.
Also, yesterday some dear chosen family members asked me if I’d officiate their wedding next summer! So, after a little Googling and a quick chat with a fellow non-religious seminarian who’s also done this, I went and got myself ordained by the Universal Life Church. I’ll need to get registered with the county once that paperwork comes in the mail, but I’m pleased and amused by how straightforward that was. I’m excited to get to help our dear ones craft a simple wedding ceremony that fits them and honors the life they’re building together.
Anyway, that’s about it for this week. Nova’s also been sleepy:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I had a lovely time in Chicago; somehow, miraculously, I didn’t end up with covid. I got to spend some really wonderful time with some of my queer gaming community while I was there, who I miss dearly. While the work part of the trip was pretty exhausting (it was productive and good, but just required a lot more being “on” socially than I’m used to), the social part was life-giving.
I got home Sunday afternoon, and made the mistake of not giving myself a recovery day, so this week at work has been rough. I ended up calling in sick today after waking up with a massive headache; today I’m going to try to focus on resting a bit and also catching up on the last of the homework that’s due before class tonight. We adjusted the dose of one of my meds this week, and one of the side effects has been random waves of nausea, which has not helped anything on this week when I’m already feeling pretty low on mental cutlery.
Tomorrow I have some fun plans as well as a meeting with the person who’s in charge of practicum stuff at my seminary to talk through when I can start that officially. I’m hoping this weekend can be restful and that I can start next week with a bit more energy than I had this week.
Nova was very excited to have me home, and also very upset on Monday when the end of Daylight Savings Time meant that I was working an hour later than she thought I should be. She’s adjusted pretty well the past couple of days, but on Monday she had Opinions. Please enjoy the Nova photos for this week:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written – the past two weeks I was in Boston helping to care for a chosen family member who had surgery. That trip and the surgery went well, and they’re healing nicely. They have three cats, including a 5 month old kitten who was a great model when he wasn’t being absolute chaos:
While I was in Boston, we got an update from Mouse’s new mom! She’s been renamed Nezumi (Japanese for Mouse), and while it took a solid couple of months of adjusting, it sounds like she’s much calmer now and is thriving in her new home. Apparently she’s going to start doing some agility training at home! I’m so thrilled for her, and grateful that we got pictures of her in the sweater I knit for her (which apparently was a little tight across the back…although I’m not terribly surprised, as she was pretty wiggly when I was trying to measure):
This week has largely been me playing catch-up at work and with school, as I fell a little behind on schoolwork while I was gone. Yesterday felt particularly eventful. I worked a half day, then headed to a dermatology appointment (everything’s fine), then a therapy appointment, and then ended the evening with a talent show at school. It was very fun to get to perform, to experience the talents of classmates and professors, and to meet classmates and professors in person that I hadn’t had the chance to meet yet.
And the whirlwind will continue after this week. Next Wednesday I’m flying to Chicago for work, and then staying through the weekend to catch up with some friends. I think once I get home from that trip I’m going to stay put for as long as possible!
On that note, I’m going to get back to work. There might not be a blog next week since I’ll be traveling, but I’ll be back! In the meantime, have some Nova:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! We are back from Colorado, and while re-entry into work and everyday life has been a little rough, I’d rather focus on the lovely time we had at Song School this. year.
We dropped Nova off at the boarding facility early in the morning the Friday before Song School, so that she wouldn’t need to be around for the packing and pre-trip chaos. It was really weird coming back to the house without her, but it did make it easier to get everything pulled together. Saturday we did the entire drive to Colorado in one day! It took almost exactly 16 hours, including breaks. It was a relatively uneventful trip, except that at some point in Iowa, the car started making some knocking sounds. None of the dashboard lights were coming on, and nothing felt off as we were driving, so we kept going until partway through Nebraska, when it was clearly getting progressively worse. My husband finally ended up looking up a video on YouTube that confirmed my suspicion that we might be low on oil. We pulled off at a gas station in Nebraska, added a couple of quarts, and hit the road again – adding the oil immediately silenced the knocking sounds and it was smooth sailing after that. Shortly after arriving in Colorado we hit a brief but intense cloudburst – all I could do was follow the taillights in front of us. I ended up doing most of the driving, by my own choice – there was something meditative and freeing about the drive that allowed me to let go of everything at home, everything work and school related that I was stressed about, and just be present. It meant that when we finally got to Song School, I was able to feel like I really landed there.
We stayed in a hotel Saturday night, and then Sunday afternoon we got to check into the tiny house where we stayed for the duration of Song School!
It was slightly smaller than the tiny house we stayed in last year, but still sufficiently roomy for us and our guitars for the week. We ran into other Song Schoolers at check-in, which was fun. Later that afternoon we were able to check in to Song School itself. We scoped out the campgrounds there to see how many friends we could find before turning in early in an effort to set ourselves up for success for the rest of the week.
Song School itself was really lovely! I really tried to listen to my body, and I took a few class periods off throughout the week to just sit by the river and write. I ended up getting the first draft of a new song written. On Tuesday night I got to perform at the open stage; I brought my husband and a couple of dear friends up on stage with me for harmony and we got the audience singing along by the end:
The week was, for the most part, exactly what I needed it to be.
We ended up breaking the drive back into two days – We did the first 13-ish hours to Ames, IA on Friday, and the final 3 hours or so home on Saturday. I’m glad we picked the safer choice rather than trying to push through.
I feel like I learned a lot, as always, but this year the lessons were more subtle, and more about rest than about action. I’m still figuring out how to integrate that sense of presence and being in the moment into my everyday life. I’m so grateful to my Song School friends and family for a beautiful and much needed week away.
And before I go, here are some Nova photos from her adventures at doggo camp and the last few days back at home:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s a bit of an off week here – I’m on PTO all week in order to be able to wrap up my summer class before also being on PTO all of next week for Song School. But before I get into any of that, some happy news:
Mouse got adopted on Saturday! We were down to the wire for finding her a new home, but Friday afternoon the adoption coordinator called to let us know she’d gotten an application from someone who was very excited to meet Mouse. We went in on Saturday and it was really a perfect fit – Mouse’s new mom lives out in the suburbs in a house with a good-sized yard and a 15 year old beagle. She’s been sending us occasional updates and Mouse looks so much more relaxed already. So while it’s a little sad and weird to not have her here anymore, overall it’s a good thing and the fact that she landed in such a perfect spot has made this a lot easier emotionally than we expected.
This week has been busy, but good. Monday we got to connect with our kid, a young trans chosen family member who calls us their trans dads – they were up on the north shore of Minnesota with their parter and their partner’s family. We had a lovely time hanging out and catching up – I hadn’t gotten to see them in person in four years, so it was extra wonderful to be able to hug them and hear how they were doing face-to-face.
Tuesday was mostly a rest and recovery day. Yesterday I wrote all seven pages of the first draft of my final paper for my summer class before running all over town doing pre-trip errands. This morning I had therapy, we had virtual breakfast with a dear friend, and now Nova and I are hanging out at home while my husband heads over to their parents’ house to help their family out today. I’m hoping to finish my paper today.
Tomorrow we’re taking Nova to the boarding facility early in the morning before coming home to pack – we figured we’d wait to start the packing until she was out of the house, since this week has been stressful enough for her already. And then we leave on Saturday and Song School starts on Sunday! I can’t wait to be back in that place with those people.
There will be no blog next week because I’ll be at Song School trying to stay off-grid as much as possible. In the meantime, please enjoy these Nova photos!
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a long week already. Work continues to be bananas and we’re short several people this week, which feels particularly rough. I’ve also been fighting some sniffles and a headache all week.
In the midst of all of this, I’m trying to look for the bright spots. Here are some of the things that have brought me joy this week:
A potential new D&D game! After realizing a couple of weeks ago how much I miss having a local queer gaming community, I saw a Facebook post in a local queer D&D group that’s not usually very active. Someone was willing to DM a game but didn’t want to do the logistical side of coordinating schedules/food/etc. I realized I don’t have the bandwidth to run a game, but I can manage scheduling just fine, so I stepped in, and now we’re chatting on a Discord server and hopefully will start playing in a couple of weeks! I’m very excited about this.
I had a great therapy session this morning where my therapist and I talked about ways I could show my body more care, and I came up with a plan around food that I can make more of. This felt like a big deal, because I’ve been in a weird place lately where the foods that had been “safe foods” for a while suddenly lost their appeal, and I’ve been having a really hard time figuring out what to replace them with that will feel good. I was able to work with my therapist to think of things more in terms of texture, and that really helped. Learning how to navigate around my increasing awareness of my own neurodivergence is an adventure.
Tonight The New Standards are playing at the park across the street from our apartment (there’s a Thursday night concert series all summer), and we’re going to try to make it over there for that. I’m looking forward to it!
I think I’m going to wrap things up there for this week, but I’ll leave you as always with some doggos:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I am all sorts of confused about what day of the week it is – the long weekend was lovely, but it really threw me for a loop.
Speaking of the long weekend…I had an absolutely lovely time in Chicago! I flew out Friday night and flew back Monday morning, so it was a whirlwind of a weekend. However, I was really intentional about not over-scheduling myself on this trip, and so it ended up being really relaxing, for the most part. Saturday started with breakfast at Smack Dab, my favorite spot in Rogers Park, which was incredible as always. Then I went back to the hotel and napped a bit, because I didn’t sleep all that well the first night I was there. In the afternoon I wandered around Andersonville a bit and visited a new, queer-owned stationery shop as well as a gluten-free bakery that never disappoints. After that, I needed to go back to the hotel to dry off – it was quite hot and humid. I didn’t have any concrete plans with friends made for Saturday, in part because I knew several of the people I wanted to see were going to be pretty busy over the weekend. However, I decided to let folks in my queer games group know where I was planning to grab dinner that night, just in case anyone was available. (I am perfectly content to go out to eat by myself, but pizza with friends is even better than pizza alone.) This turned out to be the correct decision, as two dear friends (who I’d absolutely thought would be too busy) were able to join me for pizza on Saturday night. It was wonderful getting to catch up at eat good food together.
Sunday arrived and was quite rainy (seriously, Chicago got something like 7-8″ of rain on Sunday). I ended up ordering more Smack Dab treats for delivery to the hotel, because I didn’t have an umbrella and didn’t feel like walking over in the rain. When the food arrived, I got an extra treat in the form of a note on the bag:
Turned out the owner of Smack Dab (who we got to be friends with in the time that we were living in Rogers Park) was working that morning, saw my order come in, and decided to share a little extra love. It made my day!
After I checked out of my hotel, I dropped stuff off at the friend’s apartment where I was planning to crash Sunday night, and got to hang out with her for a bit before heading out to meet a couple of other friends for lunch. Thankfully, she convinced me to take her umbrella with me as I was leaving. I had a great time at lunch, and then realized I hadn’t decided what I was going to do until I met up with friends for dinner that evening. I reached back out to the friend I was staying with and decided to go back to her place for a while. I ended up waiting in the pouring rain for about 25 minutes for the bus – had I not had that umbrella, I would’ve been absolutely drenched and miserable.
When I got back to my friend’s place, another friend was also there with their kiddo while they waited for a gas leak to get fixed at their new house (everything ended up getting resolved there, thankfully). We spent a lovely couple of hours each doing our own thing in our own separate corners of the same room, in comfortable silence. I texted my husband part of the way through, saying how much I love having queer, neurodivergent friends. We were able to just be together, which was exactly what I needed. That evening, we went over to our friends’ new house for dinner and watched Dungeons & Drag Queens on Dimension 20. It was delightful!
It was a truly lovely, restorative weekend. I felt so cared for, and so grateful for the community I have in Chicago. I love living in St. Paul, and I have great friends here…and I don’t have the same sort of community group here that I have in Chicago, and it felt really good to be in a space like that again. The time with those friends was exactly what my heart needed.
I am also eternally grateful to my husband, who managed both dogs while I was gone (which involved a lot of cleaning up after Mouse, who sometimes tends toward submissive/outside-avoidant peeing) and did a great job of that. They even managed to get a few scattered moments of peaceful coexistence. Both dogs (and my husband) were very happy to have me back.
I will leave you, as always, with some doggo content!
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I spent a fair bit of yesterday thinking it was already Thursday, so I’m a little discombobulated today. Still, the weekend is almost upon us, and it’s a long weekend, which is delightful.
Tomorrow night I’m flying out to Chicago for a quick weekend trip, and I’m very excited (and very grateful to my husband, who will be managing both dogs while I am gone). I have very few concrete plans at this point, but a handful of people I want to see and places I want to eat. I think it’s going to be good.
We’re still waiting to hear if the latest applicant for Mouse is going to schedule a meet & greet (last we heard the rescue was waiting on them to submit documentation confirming their building allowed dogs). She continues to be terrified of everything outside. She did let the folks in the office in our building pet her and give her treats this week, though, so maybe that’s progress.
Volunteering with my seminary’s booth at Pride last Saturday was delightful. I hadn’t been to Pride in over a decade, and being surrounded by so much beautiful queer joy and love was really affirming. On my way out I spotted a sad little anti-Pride protest of about 10 people, which was frustrating, but also…they were so much the minority that I almost missed them entirely. We are truly everywhere, which is a beautiful thing.
I think I’m going to leave this one here for the week. As always, I shall leave you with some doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of a week.
Saturday the first adoption application for Mouse came in. My immediate reaction was excitement for her…and then I pretty quickly dissolved into a teary mess. I know we’re doing the right thing by finding a different forever home for her, but I also love her a lot and it’s hard to think about saying goodbye. A day or two ago we heard back from the rescue that the family who applied has decided to put their plans to adopt a dog on hold for now, so we’re back to square one.
I’m also dealing with some pretty significant back pain this week, which has made focusing on work and school and the rest of life a little extra challenging.
All of that said, I’m also feeling very grateful this week. On Sunday night I got go see one of our Song School instructors, Ellis Delaney, in concert with Katie Dahl (who I don’t know personally but we have approximately a zillion folk music friends in common). A dear college friend agreed to join me for the show, and it was just a lovely time, even if it meant I didn’t get quite enough sleep Sunday night. In a fun twist, I ended up also getting to meet one of my seminary classmates at the show in person for the first time, after being in class together via zoom for the past two semesters! I was also able to get my big work project done and turned in a whole day early, which felt really good.
I think I’ll leave it there for this week; as always, here’s the doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I’m having one of those weeks where I keep thinking it’s Friday, and it’s…not, yet. I’m also having a very tired week. Not sure if it’s because it’s been pretty hot and humid, or because the air quality has been less-than-stellar (though it’s not nearly as bad here as it is in NY right now), or if it’s just that there’s a lot going on and I haven’t had a lot of time to recharge. Probably a combination of all of the above.
Mouse is currently snoring in her bed on the floor next to my desk. The deep snores that come out of this little dog never fail to amuse me. If you know anyone in Minnesota who’s looking for a sweet, silly dog, her adoption page is here. She’s a very good dog.
I don’t have a whole lot else to talk about this week, but before I get to the all-important doggo pictures, here are a few things I’m grateful for right now:
I had a really lovely birthday over the weekend. It was low-key and involved getting to spend time with loved ones, which was just what I wanted.
I picked up a new “cozy fantasy” book as a birthday present to myself. I think I mentioned Legends & Lattes on here back when I read that; Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is a very similar vibe. Queer and cozy and fluffy but still very engaging. I read about half of it over the weekend before I had to turn my attention back to homework, but I’m looking forward to finishing it!
I’ve got some tentative social plans this weekend that I’m really looking forward to.
Accidental Fudge 