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! 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! 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! We have almost made it to the weekend.
Last week there was no blog, because I was in Lyons, CO at Song School! It was an absolutely incredible week. Some of the folks we usually end up hanging out with couldn’t make it this year, but we were able to reconnect with a bunch of old friends we hadn’t seen since 2019, and we made a bunch of new friends as well. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by a community of like-minded, creative humans.
This year, rather than camping, we stayed at a tiny house resort across the street from camp (because I didn’t want to have to figure out a battery for my APAP machine or worry about that battery exploding in the heat of the tent). It was adorable:
Planet Bluegrass (the host of Song School) continues to be one of the most beautiful places on earth:
I started off the week deciding I was going to do things that scared me, so I took performance classes with Amy Speace (who is absolutely brilliant and if you’re unfamiliar with her music, please go listen to her album Tucson right now). I volunteered to play my song in the first class and have my performance critiqued (although “critiqued” sounds harsher than it was; it was more a gentle nudging toward greater authenticity), and I learned a TON – and then I found out I’d gotten one of the last performance slots for the open stage on the last night of Song School, so I had all week to integrate what I learned. On the last day of class, we each stood up and sang a few lines of Amazing Grace (or Happy Birthday, for those who didn’t know the words), and then our classmates assigned us three attributes based on their immediate impressions of our performances – two that had positive connotations and one “shadow” word, which we then worked to turn into something we could use to ground ourselves when stepping on stage. The words the group came up with for me were kind, sincere, and reserved, which were turned into the persona of Kind, Sincere Bear. I cried. It’s nice to be seen.
Some of you have seen this on Facebook already, but the classes with Amy were honestly life-changing. Historically, when I performed, even if it was going pretty well (maybe especially if it was going pretty well), I tended to dissociate. I’d step on stage and mostly leave my body.
This performance wasn’t perfect, but I’ve never been so present in my body while playing in front of people. I’ve never had so much fun on stage; I’ve never been prouder of a performance. I will be forever grateful to Amy for the tools she gave me this week, and to all the other friends who made this week so incredible.
Lyrics:
Pen and ink and paper combine Alchemical fire as you write the big bang Worlds spring into existence Ready or not, connect the dots
Stop, take a breath Feel the magic in your chest When you know who you are You are born of stars
At the top, it feels like flying Giddy with altitude, one with the sky In this earthbound apparatus There’s no risk, just innocence
Stop, take a breath Feel the magic in your chest When you know who you are You are born of stars
Some love starts with warm beverages Held in nervous hands as voices spill secrets And you slowly learn to ask If you can dare, for what they might share
Stop, take a breath Feel the magic in your chest When you know who you are You are born of stars
And because I know you’re all wondering – Nova did great at the boarders. We drove all the way home on Friday (which was my husband’s birthday), leaving Lyons at around 6:30am and arriving at the boarding facility just before midnight. The report card from the facility says that Nova was “so sweet” and “the life of the party” at group playtime. (We have a popular kid, apparently…she didn’t get that from either of her parents.) I will leave you, as always, with a few pictures of our girl, who will have been with us for a WHOLE YEAR as of Sunday!
Hello, dear readers! Welcome to Thursday. It has been A Week. In fact, it’s been Two Weeks.
Life has been utter madness the past couple of weeks. We had multiple family members end up in some sort of crisis that we had the means to assist with to some degree – I won’t go into detail, because they aren’t my stories to tell, but this is the basic outline:
The week before I left for my work trip to NYC, we made some last-minute plans for my husband to travel to Boston to help someone out for a week. The plan was for them to leave here on Wednesday while I was still in NY; we arranged for Nova to stay with my husband’s godmother for a few days until I got back.
The day I left for NY, a situation closer to home blew up, and we ended up needing to host some folks and their stuff in our apartment. My husband managed to get an extra key to our apartment from the building manager.
Wednesday, my husband called me in a panic because Nova had gotten into a box of dried goods while they were at an appointment. Thankfully, she had pretty much just destroyed packaging and left the actual food alone, so they didn’t need to go to the emergency vet before my husband went to Boston. That night was our giant company party (which was fun, but a lot). While at the party, I learned there were tornado warnings happening back at home. (Thankfully, everyone was okay.)
Friday, I planned to get to the airport early and work from there until my 3pm flight. I am not usually superstitious about Friday the 13th, but it was a doozy:
I had to go through the body scanner twice and then get patted down because my (lack of) junk was flagged as suspicious.
My laptop refused to connect to the airport wifi, and I was running low on phone data.
I had forgotten to charge my laptop before I left the hotel, and there was a paucity of outlets in the terminal I was waiting in at Newark.
Just as I was figuring out a work situation, I got news that someone I’d been face-to-face with the day before had tested positive for covid.
Thankfully, a coworker was able to take over most of what I’d been planning on doing from the airport as I scrambled to find alternative housing for the folks who were still at our apartment.
I got home, managed to get folks to their next temporary space, did a quick sweep of the apartment to make sure things were Nova-proofed, picked up Nova from my husband’s godmother’s house, got home, and crashed.
It’s been a weird week since then, being solo with Nova, but she’s been a trooper and is mostly behaving herself. I’ve been testing for covid daily, because of course, every day more of my coworkers are testing positive. I’m staying masked anytime I leave the apartment (which I was mostly still doing anyway, but I’m being a lot stricter about it now). Last night was a kickoff Zoom for the asynchronous class I’m taking over the summer, and I’m a bit nervous about the class – there’s a lot of reading, and I’m adding an intense, four-week class in June that meets twice a week on top of it. But I’ll figure it out.
In positive news, the PAP machine is doing its job – I was getting up early and going to bed late all week in NY and didn’t really crash until Saturday night. This week I’ve been continuing to get up earlier; I haven’t stayed up as late, but that’s mostly out of overwhelm at the overstuffed state of my apartment. I’m grateful that I started PAP therapy when I did and that it’s going well, because I don’t know how I would have managed otherwise.
I’m also extremely grateful for a solid support network, for therapy, and for all the hard work I’ve put into therapy over the past few years. I’m staying pretty regulated and doing a decent job of using my resources rather than melting down or spiralling into a panic, which would not have been the case if this had happened even just a year or two ago.
All that to say, I am feeling pretty depleted right now, but I’m okay. I’m going to be joining an in-person D&D game here in the Twin Cities that starts next week, and while that’s yet another thing on the schedule, it’s D&D, which is such a great outlet. Play is important and I want to do more of it. I’m hoping to spend a little time this weekend messing around with some new music equipment. My husband comes home tonight and Nova is going to be SO HAPPY (and so will I).
I shall leave you with some photos of Nova that I’ve taken since coming home:
Hello, dear readers! We’ve made it to Thursday. I have felt uncertain of the day of the week pretty much every day since Monday, so that’s been interesting, but the weekend is almost here, which is lovely (and also a little stressful, but more on that below.)
Monday morning I called the home medical equipment clinic back about the leaking mask for my PAP machine, and managed to snag an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. I was able to get a new mask, and while I still had a few minor issues with the fit Tuesday night, last night I was able to shift from my side to my back and back again several times, and had basically the least amount of leaking I’ve had in the entire two and a half weeks I’ve been using the machine, so that was exciting. I only had to get up a couple of times last night and I feel tentatively optimistic that I’ve turned a corner and things will be easier/more comfortable from here on out. I’ve had a bit more energy the past couple of days, and while I’m not 100% sure if that’s from the PAP machine or just the fact that the sun came out and it finally feels more like spring, it seems like a good sign.
Tonight I’m getting coffee with a friend I’ve known since middle school, and I’m very excited about that (and also feeling a little old when I think about just how old our friendship is haha). This weekend we’re going to my in-laws’ place for Mother’s Day, and I will also be spending most of the weekend packing and preparing for next week, because…
I’m going to New York for work! Our big company party was postponed from February to next week, and while I’m excited on the one hand (I haven’t been to NYC since I was in high school, and I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of my colleagues from around the world), I’m also extremely overwhelmed (it’s going to be a lot of peopling, and mask mandates are dropping, so while I’ll be masked a fair percentage of the time, a lot of people won’t be, and it’s just…a lot). I need to make my packing list and figure out a few minor logistical things. I’m sure it’ll be a good trip, but the packing and preparing is not going to make for the most relaxing weekend.
All of that to say, there might not be a blog next week, since my schedule will be all sorts of weird. We’ll see what happens.
I will leave you, as always, with a few Nova photos from the week, including a gif of her chasing her tail (some context for that image – we haven’t gotten rid of our old mattress since our new one came a week ago, and Nova has been having a ball with it on the living room floor):
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! And apologies for the late blog today – I am on vacation this week and taking advantage of the opportunity to sleep in and take my mornings more slowly than usual.
It’s been a great week off so far! I ended up taking a quick, last-minute trip to Chicago to see some friends, which was absolutely delightful, even if the travel part was a little overwhelming. It felt great to be able to hug my Chicago friends and catch up with them a bit. I was only in town for approximately 40 hours, but I’m glad I did it. I’m trying to keep plans for the rest of the week pretty minimal.
I started recording a song yesterday with our home recording setup. I’ve handed it off to my husband to play around with in the music production class they’ve been taking. I’d love to get at least one song out into the world this year.
I also got a call yesterday about finally getting set up with a CPAP machine! So that is happening Monday morning. I’m a little nervous about adjusting to sleeping with it, but I’m determined to make it work.
I’ll leave you with the video my husband took of Nova greeting me when I got home from Chicago on Tuesday. Even though I was only gone a couple of days, she was apparently pretty sad – I hadn’t been gone more than a few hours at a stretch before. It’s not letting me embed the video here for some reason, so here’s the link.
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! There was no blog last Thursday because I was on vacation and attempting to unplug as much as possible. I was pretty successful, and it was an absolutely wonderful time away.
Nova did great on her first road trip, and we all had a really lovely time!
We ended up going up to Duluth a day earlier than originally planned, which made the whole trip much more relaxing than I think it would have been had we tried to cram everything into a day and a half. Nova was a bit anxious the first night, but by day two she was fine – she had a lot of fun making friends with the other dogs on the boardwalk. Taking three days off from work was just what I needed, and I came back feeling much more settled and rested than I’d felt in a while.
I’m going to leave this as a short blog this week – I have an exciting thing in the works right now but I’m not quite ready to share it with the world at large yet. Hopefully in the next week or two I’ll be posting about that here!
We’re on our way back to Chicago today, but we’ve been in Minnesota since Sunday celebrating Christmas with our families. It’s been a good week. Here are some highlights:
We learned that the coffee shop where we had our first date is closing at the end of the year. We tried to go to say goodbye, but they were closed until Friday, so we went for a selfie outside.
Outside the Dunn Bros. where we had our first date just over nine years ago
We made the questionable decision to go shopping on Christmas Eve. Found this giant moose made of lights at the mall.
Merry Christmoose!
We celebrated with my partner’s extended family, and his aunt made me a stocking like she’s made for everyone else in the family. His family has always been welcoming, but this was an extra sweet reminder that I belong.
A beautifully cross stitched stocking from my partner’s aunt
We celebrated with my family, and my nephew was very excited to see us. We got many hugs, which were the best presents (which is saying something, because the other presents were also lovely)!
My nephew helped us open the present he gave us.
We had a smaller celebration on Christmas Day with my partner’s immediate family. I made the Yorkshire puddings this year from a recipe by Nancy Birtwhistle of Great British Bake-off fame, and they turned out so great!
Gluten-free Yorkshire puds!
It’s been a lovely week. I’m writing this Christmas night and feeling very loved and content. I do NOT want to go back to work on Friday, but that is what it is.
I hope you’re all having your own lovely winter holiday season, whatever that looks like for you. If you’re not, I hope you can take comfort in the fact that we’re slowly returning to the light now that we’re past the Solstice.
Accidental Fudge 