baital

5 Things I Saw:
A mockingbird at eye level
A pile of twill tape scraps
A handful of incredibly tall masc-presenting college students
Neighbor Melody paused with her dog to talk to Eddie on the corner
An inexplicable traffic jam at 5 & 57

4 Things I Touched/Felt:
Hot glue that was still hot
A fossil about 250 million years old
A fuzzy sweater
My physical therapist's hands

3 Things I Heard:
Meemo rumbles
The bidet air dryer
Gentle snores

2 Things I Smelled:
Spicy faux pho broth
The weird tang of skin that's touched iron

1 Thing I Tasted:
20:1 tincture

Related/Unrelated to previous posts, but I re-wrote my brain the other day and it was a goddamn trip.

T was trying to tickle my feet. Mind you, since I was a child I have been tickling almost nowhere else. I'm not talking about the random tickle of a stray hair on your neck, but actively "it is hard to be touched in this place because I am so ticklish."

So sometimes it is fun and funny to try and tickle someone, and so he grabbed my feet and started tickling them and I was trying to be funny about it but I was like "Fine I'm not ticklish on my feet anymore." And he kept tickling and I kept saying to myself "Nope that doesn't tickle. I can feel it but what I am feeling is Not Ticklish."

And after a few minutes of this, I wasn't ticklish on my feet anymore. I even had Thom try the other foot, but nope. It felt sensitive and really intense, but I didn't feel the reflexive need to pull my foot away.

Fucking weird.

I lost my domestic partner in a tragic Capitalism accident.

We've both been in Denial or Avoidance mode about it for months now. I'd suspected, and made some noise about it, but Denial and Avoidance is powerful stuff.

And calling it an 'accident' is unfair. The whole thing was very plotted and planned for. Mostly Capitalism is the accident, the Destroyer. If you don't have Capitalism Points, you can't have anything else. And we shouldn't have to destroy ourselves for those Capitalism Points. Labor sucks, and at the very least we should be earning the CP doing something that we don't absolutely loathe.

I encouraged the accident because I could see how miserable my Domestic Partner was, how much something needed to change, because the things I love about them were being worn down to nothingness.

"Won't you miss me?"
"I'll adapt. I always do."

Beloved Readers, I lied to myself.

I lie like we always do when we want to keep from hurting others, when we want things to be true.

So I lost my Domestic Partner. Last August.

I still have a lover, an emotional intimate, a friend.

But I can't stress enough how much having a Domestic Partner meant to me. How much I love being Home with and for someone. How much warmth and safety and love love love I feel knowing someone is or will be Home. And I had it and it was beautiful. And now it is gone.

And now I am full of Grief. I quick-cycle through anger, bargaining, depression, and denial. I have been doing so for almost 9 months. Grief is exhausting.

When does Acceptance start? How do I move on?

I recently snagged my old SCA LJ and ported it over to here. It's at baronexv if you want to check that out.

Of course any revisit of LJ or DW means reading through a host of old entries. It's a bit sad for me to realize how much my journaling habits coincide with PMDD flares or bad anxiety episodes. It's such a wholly one-sided view of my life, and it's really not the best side. But it makes sense that I'd need to do the most on-paper processing when I'm struggling.

Gabapentin is doing more heavy lifting for both my GAD and PMDD than any SSRI combo I've tried. The side effect of being a bit dopey in the morning is a small price to pay, I think. My last PMDD flare only lasted 48 hours, compared to the 5-7 days I've experienced for I Don't Even Know How Long. It still sucked a lot, but I was also able to keep a level of objectivity through *most* of it that I normally cannot touch.

I read in one of my old entries that my goal for 2020 was "to feel my feelings instead of thinking them" and I am still working on that. It's ongoing work, y'know? Like going to the gym. I hate going to the gym. But I did manage to feel my way through a pretty bad anxiety attack yesterday by speaking my physical reactions out loud, and pausing myself with compassion when I started creating narratives for my feelings.

I'm no longer looking to be perfect at this stuff, just to do my best.

Currently planning to move back to WA for a bit. Maybe a long bit? IDK.
In short, my mom was planning to move out here to MA, but a few weeks ago I was complaining about the weather & she said "Are you sure you don't want to move out here?"
And friends, I was not so sure. I have always low-key missed the weather in Washington, but I've made such good friends in New England that the idea of leaving seemed flawed. But when you haven't seen your friends in a year it starts to feel less important that you be within driving distance.
We're planning on keeping the house in Springfield, at least for a bit. Our housemate is still interested in living here and finding other people to help pay rent. We'll worry about selling if it starts to feel like a more permanent move, but knowing we can come back is what feels right for now.
Planning to live with my mom in Sequim for a year and see how that goes. Might get our own place after that?
I'm excited about getting a chance to have an adult relationship with her. I have no idea what that might look like, and that's okay.

Maybe we'll find the perfect chunk of land and/or community out there and I can have my goat-raising, berry-picking dreams realized.

My garden is one of the only things bringing me peace right now, so I'm going to try to post every day about some of the plants I'm hoping to grow, or thoughts I think, or whatever.

So much of my garden right now is a lesson in patience. Plants don't grow fast. Well, most of them. Trying to turn my yarden* over into a native/naturalized/food-generating place is a slow process.

My yarden also has a frustrating amount of shade. All the houses around are 3 stories, and relatively close together. Plus there's lots of tall trees. Our street-side is also the north side, so the front yard only gets sunlight for a few hours of the day early and late.

One of my favorite native shade plants is Black Cohosh (https://vnps.org/wildflowers-of-the-year/wildflower-of-the-year-2017-actaea-racemosa-black-cohosh/) and I really would love to just have it everywhere. Early in 2019 I ordered something like 24 black cohosh rhizomes and put them all over. Back fence, side fence, front of house...everywhere. I suspect maybe half of them put up a wan little leaf or two that summer.

The past few days I've been weeding and locating desirables, and I'm happy to see that at least ~8 of the plants seem to be putting up leaves. I hope that they thrive. I love the look of the bright green foliage, and the wispy twist of the "fairy candle" flowers when they get really big and tall.

So much of gardening right now is about forming this image in my head of what things *might* look like in any given spot. Future visualization is a tool of fantasy I've used for most of my life, and right now it's one of the few things that's giving me things to look forward to.


* Is it a yard? Is it a garden? Am I only working in the garden when I'm tending the vegetables? Are the parts that are neglected just a yard?

The first of probably a million. This was a photo I'd had rattling around my iPhone for a few weeks and just didn't know what to do with. The sad little peg-eared donkey apparently just needed a little filtering courtesy of the new app I downloaded this morning.

A bunch of my LJ peeps are recently back from CC27, and all their pictures and stories have me kind of itching to maybe try and make the next one.

But if I did (and that's a big "IF"), what would I want to make?

* My first instinct is to finish the Mughal ensemble (center figure) that I've planned/been working on for the past five years. The silk tunic has been hanging, half-made for a while, and it would be nice to at least have it finished. I've got the fabric for the choga (the short coat thing) but would need to find something to use for the salwar. I've made a permutation with a narrowly striped pink and orange cotton, but would love to find something more similar to the image.

* I have a sketch, somewhere, here of a costume that is for a sort of half-Japanese/half-Victorian "girl gang" called The Crane Wives (based on a Japanese story and, yes, a song by the Decemberists.) I think this one would be really fun, and not too hard to make, but it would also be something that would be more entertaining as a Group costume, especially if everyone did slight variations on the theme, but kept the "logo" on the back of the jacket and a general black/white/red color scheme. I think it would look awesome to do the jacket in a sheer white silk and ombre dye the bottoms of the sleeves black (like, y'know, a crane's wing).

* At least one Steampunk outfit (not costume, dammit) that doesn't suck. I'm so very weary of seeing the style done poorly.

* And of course, part of me wants to do something fabulous and Princessy and 18th c., but I know sweet f.a. about that style, and wouldn't even be sure where to start. Suggestions? ETA: Okay, I admit I am particularly entranced with the later 18th c. stuff, like whateverinheck is being worn by Duchess Georgiana in this 1783 image. I like the surplice bodice a lot, which I think would look more awesome on me than the gathered gaulle/chemise à la reine. It's certainly not as Princessy as the earlier stuff, but I think I'm ok with that. Admittedly a big part of me wants to throw the whole "light colors" idea to the wind and make one in burgundy with chocolate brown trimming, because damn, that would just look hot.

ETA: Oh damn, another one * There's a burgundy velvet (?) gown that Juliette Binoche wears in Les Enfants du Siècle that makes me nearly cry with the hotness. You can kind of see the top of it here. Hmm, I may have to re-acquire the DVD and get some screencaps.

I just had to share this.
Because there's no sneaky way David could have purchased my Seasonal Winter Gift without killing my existing phone service, he made this awesome little papercraft version, complete with Hat Of Shame-wearing Cat.

:D

A few months ago, I made a wager with fishheadned. I bet that there were few ways that he could possibly propose that I would not have thought of already. He bet that he could. If I won the bet (i.e. he proposed in a way I genuinely anticipated) he would have to get me a kitten. If he won, well, no kitten.

Apparently blindsiding me during brunch is the way to get out of having more cats in the house.