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! 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! I spent most of yesterday half-convinced it was already Thursday, so I’m glad it’s finally here.
We’re winding down our last week with Miss Mouse, and I’m having lots of feelings about it. I’m also trying to wrap up a bunch of stuff at work before I take two weeks of PTO. Next week I’m going to mostly be working on wrapping up my summer class and getting my final paper done for that, and the following week is Song School! So there’s a lot to look forward to amidst the big feelings about saying goodbye to our little Mouse.
I’m very ready to wrap up school for the summer. I’m really enjoying my Buddhist Scriptures class…and I’m really starting to feel the fact that I didn’t get any time off between spring and summer term. Thankfully, after this class wraps up I’ll have about a month before fall classes start.
Last weekend I did a fun project – I built a mechanical keyboard with a case made out of (generic) Lego! I bought the kit online after seeing several social media ads for it. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and I’m really enjoying typing with it! Here are some photos of the process:
Other than that, I’m just trying to keep my head above water at work for the next couple of days. I really need this PTO. Thankfully I didn’t feel like I really needed it until this week, but if I wasn’t taking this time off, I’d be on the fast track to burnout right now.
I will leave you, as always, with some doggo content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I hope you’re all hanging in there. It’s felt like a rather long week here – I’ve been fighting the beginnings of a cold that seems both unwilling to vacate the premises and also not bad enough to make me seriously sick, so I’m just vaguely congested and fatigued and annoyed about it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about neurodivergence this week. The past couple of years have been an adventure of discovery around the various ways in which we are a neurodivergent household, and learning how to let down the neurotypical masks we’ve built up over the years. One of the interesting things that has happened for me with this gradual unmasking is that I’m increasingly aware of my own sensory sensitivities, and finding it harder to pretend they’re not an issue. Temperature regulation is part of it – I have always been someone who runs warm and overheats pretty easily, but my tolerance for being hot seems to be decreasing with time.
The big one for me, though, is sound. I’ve never liked loud noises (with the exception, as a teen and young adult, of sometimes enjoying loud concerts), but lately I’ve been noticing just how much noise can overload my system. Hearing trucks in the alley while I’m working (on the opposite end of our apartment from where I work, through a door) can be anywhere from mildly distracting to terribly grating. When listening to music, I find I’m often putting my headphones or speakers at the lowest possible setting (and if I’m wearing my over-ear headphones, I often have earplugs in under them). When the dogs start crying, I’m much quicker to get overwhelmed and find I need to remove myself from the room more often.
I have had a sort of parallel experience with queerness and transness that is helping me to make sense of this, somewhat. When I was first beginning to understand my own queerness, I still spent a lot of time mostly closeted. But the more I came to understand and appreciate that this was part of who I was, and the more I connected with other people who had similar experiences, the less energy I seemed to have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I want to be able to celebrate my queerness, not hide it, and my tolerance for pretending to be someone other than who I am has decreased dramatically over the years. This journey with neurodivergence feels similar – the more I come to understand how much of my energy has been devoted to maintaining a relatively neurotypical mask, and the more I let that mask drop (and sometimes even find I have energy to devote to other things), the less interested I am in trying to maintain the appearance of being neurotypical.
I’m grateful that I have a lot of tools to keep myself regulated when sensory stuff gets to be too much. I’m grateful for a whole bunch of loved ones who are also neurodivergent and the support we give each other. And I’m grateful for an increasing societal awareness of neurodivergence and the people who are pushing to destigmatize and depathologize our awareness of it.
Anyway, I don’t know if I have a point I’m trying to get to with this post, but this is what’s been on my mind this week. I think I’m going to end it here, but I’ll leave you, as always, with some quality doggo content:
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! I’ve been all discombobulated about what day it is this week – we had Monday off for Juneteenth, and I think not a single day so far this week has felt like what it actually is.
Despite it being a four day work week, it’s been a long one so far. Work has been fairly hectic, and I had to do a presentation for my class on Tuesday night (which went well, despite Mouse insisting on making an appearance in the middle of it). It’s also going to be a somewhat busier-than-usual weekend – Twin Cities Pride is this weekend, and I’m going to be volunteering at my seminary’s booth for a couple hours on Saturday (after I take Nova to the groomer for a much-needed brushing out).
Mouse got another adoption application yesterday; they sound like a good potential fit, so we’re waiting to hear back from the rescue about scheduling a meet and greet. The person showed interest in a few different dogs, so definitely no guarantees, but fingers crossed. As much as I don’t want to say goodbye to Mouse, it’s breaking my heart to see how panicked she gets every time we go outside, no matter what we do. Once she does find her forever home, we’ve decided we’re going to pause on looking for a second dog at least until I’m done with school. This has been a wonderful experience in a lot of ways, but it’s also been a lot of added stress, and I think I need to be more realistic about my capacity right now.
I think that’s where I’ll end it this week. As always, I’ll 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 