Grateful for Community

July 6, 2023 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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!

Rest and Reset

July 7, 2022 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I’m a little late writing and posting this today; it’s my first day back to work after an extended long weekend, and I have been working on getting my bearings again.

My four-week intensive class wrapped up last Thursday night, and in honor of that, I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work (in addition to Monday’s holiday). The time off has been a bit of a mixed bag. Mostly, I’m so used to having so much to do and such a regimented schedule that I felt a little aimless and drifting without things on the calendar. Still, I managed to rest and have some fun, so that was good. Here are some of the highlights of the week:

On Sunday, we had a four hour Zoom hangout with my best friend who lives out in WA. It had been way too long since we’d talked like that, and it was absolutely delightful.
Monday we went to my in-laws to have ribs for dinner; it was delicious (and it was great to see them)!
Tuesday was a busy day:
- That morning I met with my academic advisor and got a better sense of what’s going on with my degree program (when I entered, the partner school that was offering the concentration courses had just announced they were discontinuing that program; thankfully, my school is going to pick them up and the program will there), which was a relief and gave me a little more of a sense of direction.
- I got my hair cut, which always makes me feel like a new person.
- Nova and I went for a lovely walk with my parents, including a stop at a little riverside bar to rest on the shaded patio before heading home.
- That evening, I got to play D&D!
Yesterday, I was struggling a bit – I had nothing on the calendar, but because of the intensity of the last month, I kept thinking there was something I must have been forgetting, so I had a bit of a hard time relaxing. But I did end up having some fun – I recorded some guitar tracks for a couple of songs, and finished listening to the audiobook of Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad, which I’d started on my trip to New York back in May.

I will leave you, as always, with a few Nova photos from this week:

Vacation

April 14, 2022 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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.

Vacation!

March 3, 2022 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers. It is Thursday, and this blog post is late, because I am on vacation, and what is time? I hope you’re all hanging in there with everything that’s going on in the world right now.

I have mostly unplugged this week. The friend who was going to be coming into town ended up not being able to make it, so it’s been lots of quiet family time at home, which, frankly, was really what I needed. I’ve played some video games, I started knitting a new sweater, I’ve been doing a decent job of not thinking too much about work or school. Tonight, I’m doing a home sleep study, so that’ll be interesting but will hopefully lead to some helpful insights to help improve my relationship to sleep.

I don’t have much else to write about this week, but I will leave you with these photos of Nova being very confused about why the yarn ball wasn’t for her:

Vacation Imminent

February 24, 2022 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers! We have made it to another Thursday. I kept thinking yesterday was Thursday, even though nothing about the day indicated that it was anything other than Wednesday, and today I woke up thinking it was Friday, so we’re not off to the best possible start. Still, it’s almost Friday, and that has to count for something.

Last weekend I wrote my first real paper for seminary. It was just a few pages long, but it was more academic than any writing I’ve done in over a decade, and the citation style was different than what I used in my undergrad life. It didn’t actually take me that long once I sat down to do the writing, but gathering the materials and trying to make everything coherent was a struggle.

But now, it’s almost a vacation week for me! Next week is symposium week at school, meaning no classes and no homework due. I decided to also take the week off from work (because my brain really needs a break). One of our best friends from Chicago is coming up to hang out for a few days, and it’s going to be great. I am very excited to have almost zero calendar commitments for a whole week.

I am pretty fried and don’t have a whole lot else to talk about this week, so I’ll leave you with these photos of Nova:

Up North

October 14, 2021 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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!

Missing My People

August 6, 2020 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s Thursday, and I almost did not blog this week. I’m taking the week off from work, because this was supposed to be the week of Song School, and I figured I’d keep the time I’d requested back when the summer looked more optimistic.

It’s been really great to have the time off, to rest and reset. But it’s also been sad – I miss Song School so much. We’ve been doing our best to recreate parts of the experience at home.

We set up the canopy that’s usually outside of our tent at Song School in our living room – because we have no overhead light fixture, it just barely fits. We initially did it to be funny, but how it’s transformed the space has been pretty magical.

We’ve also been hosting some Zoom hangouts with people from Song School. Every morning this week we’ve set up some quiet time to hang out and write for an hour, and it’s felt so good. Just seeing the faces of some of our Song School friends has helped to ground me in time and space in a way I feel like I haven’t been since the pandemic started. It’s nothing like the real Song School, but it’s been a better substitute than I thought it was going to be. We’ve had more people show up than we expected, too, which has been fun.

We also hosted a little Zoom song circle on Tuesday night (and we’re planning to again tonight), which was fun – it’s great to hear what people have been working on.

It’s hard to not be able to hug these people we love so much, to be in a place where we can’t listen to the river or see the stars. But seeing some of their faces, even just over a computer screen, has brought me so much joy even in the middle of grieving the loss of this incredibly important week in our year.

Tomorrow morning we’re hosting an extra writing session (Song School would be wrapping up tonight, if it was happening), and then we’ll fall into our familiar weekend rhythm before I start working again on Monday. I’m glad I took this time off (it’s also the most extended break I’ve had since Christmas, and I’m only just realizing how much my brain needed that), and I’m hoping it leaves me in a better place for diving back into “normal” life…as close to normal as we get these days, anyway.

Home for Christmas

December 26, 2019December 26, 2019 / Alyxander James / 1 Comment

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.

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!

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.

‘Tis the Season

December 19, 2019 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Greetings, readers, from the shiny new Accidental Fudge site! Here’s hoping the links to these posts that populate to Facebook actually work now.

The holidays are upon us. This is, on the one hand, a lovely time of year – it’s festive and there are happy twinkling lights all over my neighborhood and we’re going to take some time off work to go visit family. On the other hand, this is a really challenging time of year – it’s dark around 4pm, my partner’s work is bonkers and leaving him exhausted, and there’s so much pressure to participate in the unfettered commercialism of the season. I feel like I’m never going to have money again.

It’s also the season where we’re all sniffling and pretending we’re not sick, which is a different kind of no fun.

Tonight, I am volunteering at the Old Town School. Tomorrow night, we’re wrapping presents and packing for our trip. Saturday morning, I’ll pick up the rental car, and then when my partner’s done with work, I’ll pick him up and we’ll start driving. I’m a little overwhelmed. It’ll be fun, and whatever we get done, we get done. But it does feel like there’s a lot to do between now and Saturday night.

Next week’s blog may be a little late, as we’ll be on the road on Thursday.

Whatever holiday celebrations you are or are not participating in, I hope your season is filled with love and twinkling lights.

Move and Vacation

August 8, 2019 / Alyxander James / Leave a comment

We are inching ever closer to our move date, and the number of packed boxes in our apartment has increased since last week. We’ve been coordinating some maintenance needs with the new landlord so that we don’t need to have them come and fix things when we’re actually there.

We’re down to the wire for packing now, though.

My partner has been in Minnesota for the past few days, hanging out with his parents before borrowing his dad’s car to drive to Song School. He gets back into town this afternoon. We leave for Song School tomorrow.

I am so excited for Song School, for seeing dear friends and digging into the practice of songwriting. I am also worried that I’ll struggle to be present, knowing that we move two days after we get back. I’m hoping I’ll be able to set that aside and fully engage while we’re on this trip.

On that note: there will be no blog next week, as I will be in Colorado and off my phone as much as possible. The next time I write a blog will be from our new apartment!