MOOP!

Author's Note: I wrote this entry a couple weeks ago, because I was in the mood to then, so a couple of the timeline verbiages might be weird. I'll try and fix anything necessary along the way as relevant.

Just about a year ago¹, I wrote this:

*Also found a thing in the garage and did a thing in my room and am feeling quite a lot of feelings about it, so we're not gonna talk about that one more until I actually decide what to do with them. Practice being bad at things, probably. Engage with the act of doing things for the sake of the act rather than the sake of the things.

And shortly after, when it became obvious to me that I was not going to stop talking about it, at least quietly to myself, I made a google doc called "[redacted]" and started collecting all the scraps as I mentioned them, bits of cryptic and behind the walls. Mostly it was because I kept not-quite being willing to talk about it to SamSam specifically, and I knew I'd want to eventually, so I wanted to make it easier for myself.

This meant that in December when they visited and they immediately clocked The Thing, I was able to just hand them my phone with the file open and hold their hand on the red line as they read through it all. They weren't the first person I told, because secrets are weird sometimes, but that little space --October 22nd to December 12th-- was the limbo space where I wasn't telling anyone. Once I told Sam, it wasn't [redacted] anymore, enough people had seen, enough people knew.

I still didn't post about it until my end of year retrospective, in part because I was trying to make a thing for Veronica as part of it all. "I think knitting is good for me" I say, with all the confidence of someone who sure can make rectangles.

........I wasn't wrong.

It's funny as hell to go back and read [redacted] because so much of my initial consternation was around the ways I continue to fail at traditional femininity. It's a lot of emotions that I've just....entirely gotten over and don't think about anymore. I fucking adore that one of the first things I ever said to myself on the subject was "death before detransition doesn't just mean physically", and I'm _thrilled_ that I've gotten my brain swept out there.

it's funny too, because the other thing I worried about was very much that people would think I am Much More Into the hobby than I actually am.

But I don't want to disappoint anyone when they're all like "OH MY GOD YOU LIKE KNITTING NOW LET'S BE KNIT BUDDIES AND IT'S GONNA BE THE BEST EVER WHAT'S YOUR RAVELRY NAME LET ME GET YOU ALL THE PATTERNS DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE YARN STORE YET WANNA COMPARE STASHES?" and I'm like "hi I'm adhd and want something to do with my hands sometimes"

.....ohno.

I mean, my ravelry is hellaciously out of date, because posting about knitting is harder and less interesting than making things (although I was watching SamSam use it as their repository for information about the things they make, and that might indeed be more charming than dumping things haphazard into a bunch of threads in a channel in my private discord). Comparing stashes is meh, because collecting yarn and using yarn are two different hobbies, and I don't actually go hard for the first one --I mean, obviously I have a lot, but it's weird scraps and odds and ends and mostly earmarked for projects, it's nothing like Veronica's truly impressive collection of hand-dyed skeins.

But I've gotten patterns from two different people now, and enjoyed both of them, and I absolutely have a favourite yarn store², and this past weekend at YDW someone came up to me and said "is there any chance you have a spare set of needles and yarn, I need something to keep me from picking at my cuticles" because they correctly clocked me as someone who might. I am ADHD, and I want something to do with my hands sometimes! Like when I'm riding trains or walking my commute or singing³ in groups or standing around at demo team waiting for the dancing to start or at bells or when the students are taking a test or during literally every meeting ever or...

And there's a post I've been meaning to make for most of this year now, about my chaos scarf, the weird little project that started it all, that I retrieved from the garage⁴ just to try and do something with my hands. Because _man_ is it a disaster of an item, just absolutely riddled with dropped or scrambled stitches, with the ways the different yarns badly don't go, with places where the tension was way too loose or sometimes too tight, the way it's about ten feet long so there's no graceful way to wear it, just multiple loops around my neck and taking up too much space and being messy and fucking glorious.

I get complimented on it _so_ frequently when I'm out and about. And people are right to do so! It looks so damn cool! It is not an item made with perfection, so fucking what! It is an item that was made with _love_. A seventeen year old made this scarf for me, most of it. She put love and energy and weirdness and an incontrovertible sense of self into every damn stitch, 42 across (give or take) over and over again until you've got something long enough to make the fourth doctor proud.

That seventeen year old had ADHD, and didn't necessarily know how to finish things. I'm a thirty-seven year old who has ADHD and still doesn't necessarily know how to finish things, but I was able to help her out and make something that I can wear with pride. And I've made some other things too! A scarf for Veronica, my first present (somewhere there is a photo from just before I sent it to her, me recognizing that this would be the last time everything I'd ever knit was in the same spot). A cover for my ereader, cozy and bright orange. A tiny red mouse who frequently sits in my pocket with me. Lots and lots of rectangles, practice projects, trying different ideas and different things. My pride scarves, my June project that I pushed like hell to complete⁵.

And unfinished things aplenty --my original goal was to not have more than three things on needles at once, and yeah, obviously I've fucked that one, because why wouldn't I've? But it's not too bad. The project sitting next to me is the eighth (of twenty!) square for the baby blanket for my metanibling⁶, due in December. Alys's christmas present needs a couple more skeins and then she'll have her own chaos scarf to match mine. Mom's gloves aren't on needles yet, but I had a good concept today that I think will be a good compromise between "I'm scared of learning cables" and "I don't want them to be dull". I was working on a sock for a while, and I've always known I was gonna knit at least three socks to get a pair, and I've been paused a long time as I try do decide if I can get away with knitting two and a half. And there's the pumpkin, which technically isn't on needles at the moment because it keeps falling off them.

Anyways, that's not too bad, right? Five active projects?

I think knitting is good for me. Certainly, I am enjoying the hell out of it. And yeah, sure, let's be friends on ravelry. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This is of course very funny, because I am a Hero of Time, so I can tell you: It was October 22nd. I've known that date for ages now.

2: It's Make&Mend, although the fact that Gather Here gives an educator discount on yarn means I'm absolutely beholden to them for Projects

3: Okay so I've been to two YTS's, and at the first one I had my sketchbook which was pretty great, but at the second I had multiple projects on multiple sets of needles and that was _primo_. Pub singing and knitting go SO fucking well together, it is _delicious_ and it's also really cozy because at YTS I super wasn't alone in this opinion, and it felt fun as hell to look around and see dozens of other people knitting or crocheting or doing embroidery or needle felting or using a drop spindle or...

4: That I retrieved from 2006, and 7, and 8. No idea how long or late I worked on it, but it'd probably been 15 years in storage, carefully brought with me from one place to the next.

5: They're a matched pair of shawls, and the first one did get completed entirely within the month of June! I just missed being able to wear it to my pride party, but I had it for Pinewoods and got _so_ many compliments on it, which is correct, because it's incredible!

6: I dunno man, is there a word for "partner + metamour's kid"

Today I went to the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race!

This was something Austin and I discovered last summer, and which I rather enjoyed last year. I almost missed it, and feel very grateful that Thrantar pinged me the other week to be like "you planning to go?" and very sad that he couldn't actually get the time off work to join me. But I dragged Tuesday and Alexander with me onto the train¹ and then we found a Lucretia and Evan and Daniel (F.) and slightly later an Anna.

Because of my train timing mishap, I very virtuously (sigh) sat at the table for our spare hour at home² and did a bunch of the necessary grading for this weekend, which I honestly do not actually expect myself to get done because I have a _Tuesday_ in town and I love her dearly and want to spend all my free time snuggling kem instead of doing boring work things.

This was an extremely annoying hour, because it actually worked, I finished grading all the MiniQuizzen and Lesson Synthesis assignments, so 2/4 things that needed grading. Then on the train I graded the front page of all the homeworks. I had more time but I did not have more grading brain, and this is an important lesson for me to note, that there is a finite amount of mass grading I can handle before I just get _sad_ about the state of everything. If the children are doing poorly, it is my fault and depressing! I do not like that!

ANYways, after I did some grading and a little knitting, we were in Lowell! Timing was tight enough that we didn't bother heading to the opening ceremonies, and instead the three of us sauntered directly to the mudpit, along the race route. We'd gotten about halfway there when we started to be passed by sculptures and began our initial discussion of what seemed most good. I was extremely fond of the theming of Laika and Godzilla, and pleased to see the return of Moose, who I recall enjoying last year.

We made the mudpit in plenty of time, and sat down across-ish from the announcer and ASL interpreter --not close enough to watch him well all the time (and photographers and stuff would pass in front of him sometimes) but a good thing to try and look at occasionally and see if I can Learn Stuff as I do. Last year I had not as carefully tracked the competitors, so this year I made a point of getting photos of every sculpture team as they squelched their way through. I haven't had a chance to really look through and see which photos turned out best, but we all fell very in love with Treadward the Mud Skipper, who managed to get through by sheer force of will, with about seven seconds remaining on the clock.

There were fifteen teams headed through the mud, and it was delightful to see them charge through and/or fall apart. We sauntered off the stands and met up with the Pinewoods gremlins, and collectively sauntered off to the water to see the next significant part of the race. I'm glad we didn't try to take the shuttles --the lines were VERY long and it was probably supremely crowded-- but I did very much miss having bikes like my crew did last year. It is simply the superior way to see the show, even if it's much more of a pain in the ass to bring on the commuter rail.

The weather was extremely splendid, and we spent a lot of time dawdling as we walked along the extremely pretty merrimack river and contemplated going rock-hopping. Somehow, none of the gremlin votes won, and we stayed safe and dry at street level. But we made it to the end of the river a bit before the first sculptures did, and had a jolly time sitting in the grass and sharing out ice cream and other snacks.

I didn't shout myself hoarse, but I did demand that Jandro help me tie my MD flag mask around my arm as a patch when I saw a sculpture that had missed the mud, and was themed after the B'more skyline. What a delight it was, to get that taste of childhood home! (there were lots of these, honestly, Baltimore also has a kinetic sculpture race and I want very badly to go down some year and see. Probably not this one, though, I'm told it's typically first Saturday in May, and this year that means May Day.)

After, we sauntered back to the finish line, well after most of the competitors. But that was good, it meant we could do a slow dawdle up and down the line of sculptures and examine them closely. I wound up mostly with Lucretia for this, other people were watching the band, which was nice and all, but scullllptures!

We did make it back in time for some jolly good funky dancing though! And after, when the crowd had made it into the little cool bookshop, a guy specifically signaled me out to be like "you were bustin' a groove out there you looked great!" which felt very nice. I do so like dancing!

Sticking around for the award ceremony turned out to be...fine I guess? It was late and everyone was wilty, and maybe next year it is just correct to get the earlier train. Useful data! But we found a Tasty Dumpling restaurant, which both lived up to its name and was _swamped_. We felt so bad for the poor woman who seemed to be running things and really was RUNNING them --she didn't seem to get off her feet at any point, and seemed to be actively upset when she told us we'd have to wait a half hour for our food. It was okay though, it was nice to sit together and tell bad jokes and talk about school and other lovely things.

And once we had dumplings, we walked back to the train station and ate them in a little copse of trees just outside. The food from Tasty Dumpling absolutely lived up to its name, and also the dumplings are HUGE. I was very satisfied! And we finished eating in just the right amount of time to go get our train (read: I was Extremely Stressed trying to powerwalk to the station and Tuesday was walking at a completely normal pace and struggled not at all with getting there on time). Home again home again meant more knitting and goofy conversation, and now I am writing words while Tuesday snoozes against my arm a little. It's very nice!

Tomorrow will be a MUCH quieter day, whatever winds up happening. Probably I will do more grading while Tues does some Mystery Hunt work, but also we will snuggle and watch and/or play things and maybe even ~kiss~ a little. I might make it to demo team, but I also might not, we'll see³. Hopefully I will continue to live happily ever after or whatever. I hope you do too!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: er, the slightly later train than originally planned, since some dumbass doesn't actually remember that the mbta has different schedules for weekdays and Saturdays, so if you're looking up an event that's happening on the latter, you can't do it on the former.

2: Seriously, I did not bother to double check the train timing until like, a few minutes before we were due to leave, at which point I learned we had to get a train a full hour later than expected, deeply embarrassing

3: I am not actually performing in the next demo team event, for Stupid Reasons About Sticking To My Principles, which is. Annoying, given that I was excited to actually decide to do it this season and then find out I can't. But it does mean I'm rather less serious about getting to every practice.

Okay! Let's write about yesterday, because it was really nice!

I have turned thirty-seven years old officially (unlike the weird rounding I tend to do that means I've been saying "almost thirty-seven" for a couple months now) and it's the start of the new year for me.

Work is...gonna be work. There are a great many things that are Annoying about it, and I'm at the local minimum in which I've had my two days at the start of the year where there are lots of meetings and interactions with admin and listening politely as the superintendent tells us what a great year it will be and acknowledges our support networks (genuinely sweet) and "thanks to the person who packed your lunch for you" which...stings slightly, as someone living pretty thoroughly outside the heternormative space where that's a thing that happens. Since yeah, Ezri often makes food and I generally eat the leftovers for lunch, but I'm definitely the one packing them and it's a weird assumption that every person here has a support network making them a lunch, especially (if we are being honest) in a profession that tends to be more women than men.

ANYways, local minimum which will continue until I get to interact with the _students_ which starts on Monday. I haven't sorted everything quite out, I've printed things but not actually fully prepared slides or intro games or whatnot. That will be a Sunday night problem, I imagine.

But! After work was over, I was able to pack up and go home (eventually) and then off to Davis Square where like...thirty people stopped by to have ice cream with me throughout the evening, some of whom I didn't manage to hang out with very much at all, oops. I saw bunches of old and newer friends, including the requisite small handful of people I'd not met.

I got to introduce my two current most same-brain friends to each other, and watch them try and figure out how much same-brain is transitive. I got to flit through the crowd watching the conversation comparing polycules to molecules echo back and forth. I got to be Very Satisfied when I realized all the teachers (from different schools!) had clumped themselves together to mutually commiserate about the start of the year. I got to steal sips of frozen lemonade and cookies and cream milkshake from people I love. I got to drape myself on Tessa's shoulder and sigh "isn't our metamour cool?" at them as they nodded fierce agreement and both of us looked star-eyed as Phoebe showed off the pants they had sewn (which were _gorgeous_ and so good!). I got to debate whether I'd seen more squirrels or rabbits in my life. I planned with at least half the people there that we should go see Hundreds of Beavers at the Somerville theatre next Saturday (enough of whom I'm dating that if we all show up, we will have to be mindful of that one xkcd).

Also I ate ice cream twice and was gifted two different books filled with handwritten annotations by the person who had gifted them to me. I'm very _very_ happy for that!

I have good community and I am lucky to be so loved. Maybe the school year can keep that energy strong.

~Sor
MOOP!

Iiiiiit was the first day back to school wooooo.

I really tried to set up a paradigm where I could _actually read my damn comics_ (which also means Dreamwidth) this morning, but I missed it. Trying to get back into the habit because I desperately miss y'all. There's a lot of habit-work I'm trying to do RIGHT NOW because it's the New Year New Me or whatever.

Tomorrow I turn 37. Maybe once I'm back into the prime of life I can make things go better for myself? We'll see.

I am disheartened and pretty low-energy going into the school year, but I do really (_really_) appreciate my work-bestie, who I still get to work with. He's only half-Geometry this year, and returning to the CalcHonors classes he loved having a few years ago, and I'm a little sad that I am not getting to go back to the class I want most ("Quantitative Reasoning" or as I like to call it "the last math class these non-math oriented seniors will ever take in their entire life so let's make it count") I would be a lot less salty about the situation if the coworker who had Quant wanted it, but he is indifferent at best.

Our schedule situation this year is such a shitshow and I don't know if there's anything we can do about it.

I'm also feeling disheartened because I have gotten straight up spoiled ere these last several years. It's the first year since the 2018/19 school year where I have to move between multiple classrooms! At least it's about as painless a move as possible --two rooms right next to each other, and my schedule is such that it's two classes in the one, a prep, and then three in the other. Plus the one I'm in for three classes is the one shared with a teacher who is an early-mornings person and likely to fuck off from the building every day by like three, which works very well with my tendency to stay until stupid o'clock.

See paragraph two though. I am proud of myself for, once I detangled from PLCs and chatting with WorkBestie and stuff, setting a short todo list with a last item of "leave the building by 5pm". Which I then even mostly managed. I've left a _lot_ of things undone, because holy shit, there is always SO MUCH to get done, and I really wasn't expecting to lose all of my start-of-year prep time to having to completely reconceptualize and move around my shit and re-share and set things up and ughghhhhhh.

At least both my shared-teachers are awesome and communicative and this is all going to go very very well. I am so lucky to have such a deeply kickass department.

And one of the new teachers I met at orientation on Tuesday (when I was there as union rep answering questions and helping them fill out paperwork) approached me today to be all "hey, you know how y'all have an open spot for organizing leadership? I want in!" and that is _thrilling_. She seems SUPER cool and I am excited to get to work with someone who has big organizing energy! I have some ideas for how to make union stuff better at my school in particular, since our district is fantastic, but the high school I'm at is sometimes a little arbitrary (mostly because of horrible siloing and lack of ability to interact between departments).

It feels like a good point to mention that yes, my opsec is terrible, however I try not to explicitly name the district I work for on public internet, please also do that for me.

Anyways, finis--okay, reached 5pm at work, and set a Forest Tree to start growing while I biked, which is a fun strategy I learned ages ago and never use. But it means that I am already stuck in PowerHour mode when I walk into my house, and then I can't just like...immediately get home and collapse onto my phone. So today I did a load of laundry and worked on cleaning my room some. After five years, I am attempting to acquire some new furniture and kinda rejigger things in my bedroom a little. It would be splendid if it worked? I'd like to figure out how much of the _stuff_ I have in here can get actually dealt with and Put Away versus how much I just need to pare down.

We had fambly dinner tonight which was really nice --thank you Ezri for actually pushing for that a little! And now Austin is here and he and I are going to watch some Leverage. Tomorrow I will try and get to the school a little early so I can try and write some more questions for the Algebra diagnostic test we want to give the Geometry kids (framed as "I'm tired of reteaching y'all these particular skills you're supposed to have from last year and will especially need when you take Alg2 next year") so that when the Geo team meets in the afternoon we can look at it together.

I love you.

~Sor
MOOP!

Oh hey, I went to go see when I had last updated y'all, and it was my first day of Pinewoods. I'm currently on my, uh. 19th day of Pinewoods, I think? To be fair, I did transition to crew somewhere in the middle there.

Let me explain. No no, there is no time, let me sum up.

I did ESCape! It was my last year of teaching the basics class, and it went SO WELL, I did SUCH A GOOD JOB! My best ever teach of Strathspey Poussette! Lovely sized perfect classes every day! Joy and good and wonderful!

I danced every Scottish dance in the evenings, maintaining my rule of not dancing SCD with Scottish dancers at ESCape. I don't know if that rule will continue to hold next year, but by the last night, we had a dedicated "hey, if you're unexpert and want a partner (or expert and want to be supportive), meet over here" going, and that seemed pretty great!

Scottish 1 had its usual mental/emotional crash, sigh. Next year we're going to have to be REALLY MINDFUL of everything to try and minimize that. Being as I'm teaching at Scottish Pinewoods and all.

(there is a two thousand word formerly private post seven entries back, if you are so inclined to read more on that particular thread. I shant rehash it here. It is, as it turns out, a big deal.)

But anyways, Scots1 was...emotionally hard but mostly fine? Once I was done crashing, it was lovely :P. And then we got into Scots2, and that was much easier for me to handle. A lot more normal!

Scottish 2 had me being my usual saucy self at the auction, and generally doing good with things. I MC'd and *that* was awesome --I think I took thirteen minutes longer this year than two years ago, but I think I'm comfortable with that (and certainly at least half that overage was from a different, longer band situation --having to re-set the stage halfway through!) And then it wrapped and as mentioned, now I am crew!

I have worked a weird changeover day into Family Week, and now I have been largely entirely ignoring Family Week itself in favour of like. Spending time with SamSam, the last few days we had overlapping, and then playing video games and just trying to reset my brain a little bit. Mostly not doing any homework or anything productive, except of course my literal working. I have learned how to feed the composting toilet and today I got to climb a tree to help attack the bittersweet that was growing all up ins! It's very satisfying work!

(I did also get to spend a good chunk of the day with my favourite three-year-old while her mom was off swimming across the pond! That was delightful!)

The next two days I have visitors, which will be fun --I quite like the idea of having people come hang out with me at camp! And then there's all of English Week, and one more changeover day, and home again home again that evening. Sunday Aug 2nd I'm getting brunch with some MD friends, and showing them Old North, and then sending them onto their train and going home and _unpacking_ probably (although I'd rather be doing absolutely nothing).

Maybe I will write more reports later? But more likely I will not! We shall all suffer with the incomplete notes!

~Sor
MOOP!

Have I been updating here? No I have not! It's been a shockingly busy week for "ah yes, a lovely lazy week with a partner before going to camp for most of a month". Let's try and fill in some details:

Sunday was going to BIDA! My memory says we also did something before BIDA, but it might be incorrect? BIDA was in the afternoon, so maybe Sam and I just hung around the house having a nice restful time of things, and then went off to the contra dance! I saw SO many people there I liked, and also got to really enjoy that it was a not-too-crowded hall. (I did count at one point, and a not too crowded BIDA was, I believe, six hands four in each of three lines, so like. 72 dancers on the floor while I was sitting out to count them. My kingdom, etc etc.)

Monday we went to Gather Here, and I bought yarn for a Big Project that I am very excited (and a small anxious) about. Shhhh it's a secret (it's not a secret). Then grocery store on the way home, and straight off to the graveyard for a bit!

Pre-dance wandering at Mount Auburn Cemetary is something Alexander and I have been trying to institute as a new Cambridge Class tradition, at least while the weather is not totally rubbish. The very rough details are "we meet approximately at the gate at approximately 7, wander around looking at graves and bunnies, and then leave around 7:30 to walk to dance and only be a little late". When it's just me and Alexander, we hop the fence closest to the CanAm, when we've had other friends (hi Thrantar! hi Eel! hi SamSam!) we've bothered to go the proper way out the main gate, which does not close until 8.

The Cambridge Class party was quite lovely, although I am feeling a little guilty about failing the intergenerational game by accidentally only dancing with people younger than myself. I will have to watch out for that, and try and diversify my partners more in future weeks! We did have a lovely chunk in the middle where several of us were hanging out outside instead, which was Real Good.

After, Willow and Alexander gave me and Sam a lift home, and the four of us wound up hanging out at my place until a bit after midnight which was very charming. (I figured (correctly!) that these were all friends who would get along, and we had a tentative plan to play escape room games on Friday, so it was nice to get to meet each other properly beforehand.)

Tuesday, we hung out for the morning, and then trekked out in the godsawful heat down to the far end of the red line, to go get dinner with Thom (Sam's older brother) and Liz (my longtime amazing fiddler friend, also happens to be married to Thom). The heat + not enough proper meals + car ride from red line to Canton kinda hit me _real hard_ and I spent the first half hour or so at Thom and Liz's house being miserable and sipping water and trying to eat crackers. OH. GATORADE. THAT'S THE THING I SHOULD'VE PURCHASED WHILE OOT AND ABOOT TODAY AND GETTING READY FOR PINEWOODS STUFF DAMNIT.

Anyways, the _rest_ of the visit was very very good! They made delicious food, and we went for an excellent little ramble in the park close to their house (we saw the Amtrak go by over an extraordinarily picturesque little rail bridge!). Before we left, I got to hold Ruairidh, who I am very very in love with, and who is a much larger beautiful orange corn snake than he was in 2023, the last time I visited Liz and was able to hold him.

Wednesday was Sam and mine's dedicated day _just us no errands no distractions damnit_ and it was lovely to be shmoopy and silly and have a nice time. We read some to each other, and they showed me Company, which I had never seen. It was an excellent staging --the 2006(?9?) cast where orchestration was provided by the actors. For a musical where absolutely nothing happens, I _really_ liked it --I want to find some brain time sometime soon to poke at it more as someone a bit past 35 and contemplating marriage, and see what stirs.

Thursday was a trying to get things done day. I finalized my packing list, and did some good serious work to get my briefs ready for MCing at Scottish Pinewoods. Then Sam went off to hang out with Amanda, and I had Austin over for the evening. He and I watched a bit of Leverage, and went on a...well I was going to say long walk, but mostly it was just a long "sit on the park bench like five minutes from my house and have a good relationship chat" which was super valuable and affirming. Took him home and squished him thorough and that was a lovely end to the night.

Friday, I sent Austin off with a "good luck on the peal!" (shocking no one, they didn't get it because someone got overwhelmed by the heat partway through. Austin says the ferry ride down to the Hingham tower was lovely, and swimming in the bay excellent, so it sounds like it was a very good time!) and continued to try to gogogo getting things done!

In the afternoon, we paused our accomplishments and once again set out into the horrible heat, this time with the very noble intention of Obtaining An Ice Cream Sundae For Free. This was because Gracies was doing some sort of complicated partnership with the MLB to advertise the existence of baseball oslt. Alexander met us there --well, okay, Alexander met us at Make'n'Mend where I was _mostly_ good but did get some more knitting needles in new sizes I hadn't had before-- and we got delicious sundaes and ate them and then were cursed by the bus gods and walked the whole way home from Union, which would've been fine had it not been eighteen billion degrees.

Luckily, I own a shower and Many Towels, and so we rotated in and out of the bathroom and then hung out to play board games until it felt like dinnertime. SamSam made scallion pancakes, and Alexander made a tofu-veggie stirfry and Willow showed up in the middle of dinner and we all had a jolly rest of the evening. The escape room game turned out to be a bust (not sure what we were doing wrong exactly) but it was fun company, and we were able to play some other games together that were quite good.

Saturday was "get serious about packing" day, sped along by the state-by-state updates from mom as they drove up from Maryland. They arrived around five, I finished gathering items to pack around...midnight-thirty, I think? Packing this year is _hard_ but I have broken down and begged some friends to take things home for me after Scottish sessions, so hopefully I will (somehow) manage to bring everything home on the train after the crew days.

(My friends and community are so good and wonderful and I love them so much. I am a very lucky person to be loved as I am.)

And then today! Today I shoved everything into bags (_@), finishing just about in time for mom's "hey let's have plenty of time to go to the pharmacy before it closes" alarm to go off. Mom and Sam and I walked off to Davis Square, which was...okay, it's not hot anymore, but I would like the air to not be soup? Anyways, we got meds and crepes and fancy lemon soda from HMart (it's not discontinued! just moved! Sam found the new spot for me! Yay!!!!!!) and then went home and I spent three hours working on the Jobs Coordination for Scottish sessions. I had estimated 4-6 hours of work, I'm at about five total and I _might_ make it?

Anyways, that brings us pretty much to now, modulo dinner and a brain break and stuff. I spent a nice bit of the evening looking through the Pinewoods NGI letters page, which was a charming part of the scholarship for a while. It was real neat to see different people's "how I spent my summer vacation" letters!

Tomorrow we pack the car and then get in the car and then DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE to Pinewooooodssss! I am very excited! I will get to see Tuesday! I will get to dance! I will teach things! Aaaah! It's gonna be g-o-o-d good!

<3
~Sor
MOOP!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the last weekend¹ at Ashanty! It was a jolly time, and I'm feeling quite content with the world because of it.

Ashanty is the family house owned by my friend Thom's family. This is an intentionally silly way to put it, because while yes Thom and I are still friends (and it was great to see him and his wife Liz there), my actual invite came by way of my partner SamSam, who is Thom's younger sibling. It is neat to have partners who drag me into their family sometimes²!

And the weekend has been extremely relaxing and re-energizing, which is what these things often are. I had sorta understood conceptually that you can hear camp from across long pond, but with FAC in full swing, this was my first time actually experiencing that --the dining hall bell and music at the evening dances and all! We did not have much dancing (well, Sam and I danced a little in between folding laundry when the song was right, and Ruth and Laurel did a bunch of clogging) but there was music, and very good food. There was rambling through the woods and sharing stories and playing card games and it was a just delightful time.

I liked especially having a version of camp that was essentially just the relaxing parts --no classes to get to, or other responsibilities, not really. One of these visits, I will be family enough that I'll be expected to help with a meal (which is fine, and I'm definitely not flat panicked at the thought), but this time around the sum total of my responsibilities was agreeing with Meg when she suggested that joining the walk would feel good. I helped clean up my dishes, but it felt glorious to get to choose when I sat around on the porch and knit vs when I went down to stick my feet in the water vs when Sam and I went off to the hammock so they could read to me.

(I've not been reading regularly, but I do need to restart my bookposts because we finished Anne of Green Gables, which we started just under a year ago. It was really lovely! I found it such a delightful little story!)

And I liked also having a much smaller subset of people to distract myself with. It was nice to meet some of Sam's village, friends of their parents who they've known their whole life, and it was wonderful to hang out with the other "kids" --Thom and Liz and Ruth and Laurel. If you read the 2020 post I linked above, Meg continues to do a superb job of making me feel included. It felt good to be so close to camp but not have quite so much of the rush and desperation of "oh no, I know everyone here how can I spend time with all my friends at once".

Now Sam has followed me home, and we've got a week to futz around in Boston --which will probably be at least half spent on packing-- before we collect my mom and go back to the other side of Long Pond, for ESCape. And then I'm at camp for all the month, and I'm quite excited for *that* as well. ESCape, Scots, Scots, Crew, Crew! Not totally sure how I will handle packing, but that's why I have this week.

I hope you are also happy with the people you get to see.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: For values of weekend defined by "Thursday just before dinner to Saturday just after"

2: And now that I'm in my mid-thirties, I actually have some of those. I kinda spent the vast majority of my adult life dating people who weren't necessarily out to their parents, and so I never really was publicly their partner like that, and it's not a bad thing, it's actually a really workable thing in a lot of ways, but it means that when I started dating Tuesday I suddenly had to start learning how to Attend Family Events.

So, like a month and a half ago, the mid-Atlantic crowd of Scottish Country Dancers determined that we desperately needed to drive to Walpole and get Rita's water ice.

To be clear, this was over an hour each way, for, I dunno, maybe 45 minutes of hanging out in a corporate park parking lot (and, to be fair, having very good conversation). BUT WE GOT TO EAT RITA'S, which was plenty good on an objective level, and even better on a "get excited and make things" let's-have-an-adventure level!

I got to drive the first (less exciting) half, and listen to music and cheerfully jump in with a bit of banter here and there. Willow drove us home from the place, which was very kind of them, especially because we were close enough to ~stadium traffic~ to get kinda entangled for a while. (much like my stupid fucking knitting, which I lost yarn chicken to quite badly, siiiiigh.)

It was pretty much everything I ever dreamed of, and I highly recommend the rest of you go out on some very stupid short adventure sometime. Bonus points if it involves ice cream or other frozen summer treats (because then you're just getting a leg up on my birthday!)

I love you!

~Sor
MOOP!

It is a well known fact at Pinewoods that there is exactly one shower in all of camp, so here I am, sitting and writing some of my words while waiting for it to become available unto me.

(This is extra funny, because waiting for it necessitates being directly across from the open empty room with another shower. In a building that has at least two more showers beyond that, none of which are currently occupied. But no, the outdoor shower is the single and only shower and I will not be hearing any arguments to the contrary.)

Anyways, I am having a _wonderful_ time at Lavender spring camp. Here are some things from today!

*Ben Sachs-Hamilton hosted a callers confab, which was a completely unplanned/unstructured session devoted to "hey, uh.........let's chat about stuff!" and it was a really interesting glimpse into the How Contra Callers Do Things situation. I was able to say some hopefully useful things and learn a lot of hopefully useful things, and it was a nice situation!

*Lindsay Dono, who I deeply adore, stopped me very briefly to be all "hey, I'd love to pick your brain sometime about how I can work on getting the Seattle SCD scene ganderfree" which OH GODS YES PLEASE ME TOO! So we didn't actually have that conversation yet, but I'm so very excited to do it later.

*At the very end of the evening, after last waltz and people are packing up and the like, a couple of the young spry gremlin-like creatures at camp suddenly went full goofy beast mode, scrobbling around on the floor in a squat and bounding forward on their hands. There were two of them, and some wry lad shouted "do a reel" to which they replied "we can't with only two". Which meant inevitably there were suddenly six of us. Four of us, me included, did manage a really quite fantastically weird reel, kinda leapfrogging around our partners, and then we had to do Quite A Lot Of Balance And Petronella as well, which was _extremely_ satisfying because we got a good rhythm and quite literally, "everyone clapped" to keep time for us. Really fun and stupid and goofy.

I am so _so_ thrilled for a body that I somehow do manage to take enough care of that I can do absolute nonsense bullshit like that sometimes, on very little notice.

*Everyone is unbelievably attractive, and that's great in and of itself, but it's also extremely charming to have moments where I am hanging out with one attractive person, and we are both very wistfully commisserating as we look from the porch to the suddenly-at-eye-level extremely short white tennis skirt being worn by another attractive person.

*The music is making me gay? Like, by which I mean, I have an emotion in my chest that I've long since identified as "I am attracted to this person in a gay way" and I have received that feeling multiple times in response to the music. Which is _fucking fantastic_ honestly, I would be very very happy to continue to be queer for music for a long long time.

*SAW A LUNA MOTH! Best part was one person pointing it out and a whole bunch of us scrambling over to also see it! It was _so_ large and _so_ beautiful! I don't think I've ever seen one at camp before? Maybe just once, but years ago and high up in the rafters of Hands Across and not going anywhere, this one was fluttering marvelously around Ampleforth.

*Also saw a dragonfly this afternoon that landed on my shorts in a very photogenic way, and as I was photographing it, I noticed it had something sightly weird going on, which I eventually determined was the damselfly it was in the process of eating! That was VERY COOL TO WATCH and I got a lot of photos of it with various amounts of blue darner sticking out of its mouth.

*I have been talking so much about Scottish Dancing, and it has been with SO MUCH MORE LOVE than I norally feel like I get to talk about SCD with non SCDers, and I'm sososososoososos happy about that! I've also been putting some conversational thought into "what is the difference between SCD and contra/ECD, and that's been _really_ fun to puzzle through and work out the many differences that actually mean anything!

*I am going to run an SCD class tomorrow and I really hope it goes well to Do Hard Things Badly, and also I hope I have chosen some good hard things, but also I was looking through my collection of dances and had SO MANY OPTIONS! Some of them are much more accessible than others, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can get away with!

I looked unbeleivably good for the costume dance tonight, wearing clothing that I have all gotten in the relatively recent past. I own so much Good Clothing and I really enjoy getting to peacock it up!

*The mustard tempe tonight for dinner was so fucking good, damn

*I have gotten to meet a new friend! He doesn't necessarily realize we're friends yet, and to be fair, we do not have to be friends, but I hope we will. He is FOUR MONTHS OLD and his parents love him so much and also love each other so much and watching all this community be all starry-eyed at each other is really fucking wonderful!

*Now the shower is open so I'm gonna do that! Then maybe I walk to the camphouse party past the wifi shed to see if I need to write any more, or can just post these. I really fucking love LCFD, which I have been informed stands for "Lets Contra Fucking Dance"!

*Finished showering and now my hair is clllllleeeeeean which I am extremely excited about (I love the Pinewoods shampoo/conditioner/water situation very much --in 2023 I washed my hair at camp for the first time (normally I wash it just before camp) and realized How Good It Was For My Hair and now it's my *favourite*!)

*Speaking of good hair, a friend of mine is going through a really tough time, and I was hearing about some of it while braiding my hair this morning. So then I offered to braid their hair, as a social friendliness thing, and they were all "actually, it really needs buzzing on the sides" and immediately I was like "I ALSO DO THAT FOR PEOPLE I DO IT REAL GOOD" and I got to have the amazingly queer experience of being at queer camp and touching up a beloved friend's badly grown-out undercut to look fresh and fuzzy and new just like, out on the camphouse back porch and that felt Very Gay And Good. Great times!

Now I'm at the wifi shed. Let's check word count...

Yep, 1149. Let's party!

~Sor
MOOP!

Hey. Don't give up. The world is slowly getting better.

It's taking me several days of background processing, but it all hit me this morning, this particular moment from Monday night at the RSCDS Boston AGM. Because in the process of thanking me for my service to the branch/exec, especially vis-a-vis gender stuff, Linda McJ accidentally let a "she" slip out.

And like a dozen? so many more than just me, resigned, half under my breath! people chanted "they" at her in response and she apologized and kept going and holy wow, there were enough voices, distributed enough through the crowd that there's no way this was just a few of my weird queer friends. This was a lot of you.

This group of largely non-queer dancers made sure to keep my pronouns correct. And yeah sure fine, some of them collectively don't always get what that means, like, I know for some people it's "Kat's a girl with a weird preference" and not actually any understanding of genderqueerness. But they're respecting that weird preference. They're taking the first step forward, the one that opens you up to being able to understand more later, and they're taking actions that respect me.

It's been a, uh, _wild_ week as we close out the school year and I haven't had space to process this proper --I don't even really have that space or time now, but it struck like a bolt as I was getting ready, and so I'm taking these five minutes to write this and cry a little.

Because maybe the hobby I love so much can actually love me back.

~Sor
MOOP!