sorcyress | Recent Entries

But the critical thing is that _I like SCD again._

This has been happening ever since I started my class, but this was maybe the first time since 2020 that I was _looking forward_ to attending Cambridge Class.

I still think there are large swaths of my hobby that don't love me back, but gee golly, the more my cohort grows, the more likely I'll be facing a partner who I can make eyes at across the set when the MC says "we're going to be using the role terms 'tartans' and 'rainbows'" and then eight bars in tells us to dance a ladies' chain. Callahan was right, shared pain *is* halved, and more importantly, pain *can* be transumuted into joy, if you have the right batch of people to share the schadenfreude with.

(Is it still schadenfreude if it's your own pain? I guess?)

It's also really nice that the dances that have been coming to class recently have had excellent flow and been beautiful to dance. It's making me think a lot about my own teaching, and what and how to emphasize things to get that as well. How do I make people shut up and focus on the flow, which would cut the number of unnecessary questions down _significantly_.

I'm excited for upcoming Mondays, and I'm excited to put together a program for my class party and keep running that, and I'm excited for Pinewoods (both work weekend in a couple weeks and ESCape, but I'm also _excited for Scottish Sessions_! I have been quietly tolerant of Scots for a couple years now (ever since the ill-fated applause year), but I am so excited to be _excited_ for camp!

I've had a zine series idea for a while: queers are stealing your hobby. Do an issue on bellringing, on ham radio, on morris, on pub sings. And absolutely this. On Scottish Country Dance. Because we are and it's great! And I think it's entirely plausible that some of the less conservative old guard will start to realize that the tradeoff for them dancing with us weirdos who are on the "wrong" side of the set all the time is getting to dance with people who are pretty practiced at being quick-thinking from anywhere in the set and able to keep the dance flowing a lot better.

It turns out that when you don't have to actually worry about adhering to an extremely strict enforced binary, there's a lot more space to just do interesting things! (this is not a metaphor.) ((this is _definitely_ a metaphor))

~Sor
MOOP!

It feels quite beautiful to me that I have a notes file labeled "burn book" which is for jotting down things I want to remember about people to remind myself why they might rub me the wrong way (to remind myself that I have reasons sometimes and not just vibes¹

1: As a contextual note, it might be worth remembering that I lost the entire last three months of my diary of dating my abusive ex, and have had to piece together some of the "was it really that bad?" since then from trauma-touched memories and chatlogs. It was, I know it was, I remember it was, I wish I had more contemporary sources to draw from sometimes. Anyways.

The beautiful part is seeing the sorts of notes I've written most recently. My work bestie's favourite candy. The name of the girl my online friend's been gushing about. One of my DnD friend's favourite animals. The kinds of cliff bar my new friend with the allergies can actually eat.

I like that my burn book, my place to collect small little notes of things I get told or observe and want to remember, is mostly just so kind.

~Sor

I had reason to dig up and link to this post while chatting with new-friend Alexander. They then said nice things about me doing things full and colourful even when my brain is being shit and I said NO STOP RUDE because I am good at making friends. Luckily they also speak internet, so they made me this meme in return:

And the thing it's making me think of most, irritatingly, is therapy a couple weeks ago and talking about the ways things aren't working and how I worry my brain was better n years ago, it feels like when I reread all these old posts I was doing so much better mentally.

Except of course in my love life, because like, I was way more struggling with jealousy and security and my role in 2019 and I really haven't had emo about that like that....well, since 2020, probably. Maybe 2021? It's not like my relationships are emo-free, just that like.

And like, okay, I'm worse at my job this year than I have been some years, but I'm also much more experienced and steady in my job just in general. And I've gotten a lot better at the union work side of it, and being loud there. And somewhat better at the comrade-not-cop side of working with the students (gods I love being better able to make relationships with the students, it feels so good.)

And man, one of the things I was rereading recently was all the wordsfile from when I ran Scottish Pinewoods in 2020, which was not *quite* the height of me feeling disconnected from the RSCDS but it was maybe the really sharp start of it, the part where it was really beginning to hit me how much my hobby didn't love me. And wow, all the work I have put into making my own dance class that I can have fun with and drag other people into and hopefully be a good time...that's really good work I've done, that's consistently good work, I'm super proud of that work.

Also like now I am learning how to knit and somehow that's a thing where I can force myself to just say the vulnerable words about it and not just lock up all the imposter-syndrome and rejection-sensitive-dysphoria deep in my heart where no one can see it, and so I've had some really lovely and thoughtful conversations with people who are *much* better at this thing where they just straight up explain the things kindly and happily and don't at all make me feel dumb for it.

And then there's the thing that happened recently, where I was chatting with someone about how I'm not relationship 101 material, that the whole polyamorous-kinky-genderqueer-HSV1+-ADHDnightmarechild thing should really not be your first serious relationship. Those are the parts I put in, the reasons. Long time readers might observe that there's something missing that you might expect from the list of why it's complicated to date me, and it's not that I'm _over_ being sexually abused as a seventeen year old by a man the same age I am now, you never get like, _over_ that, but I have put in enough work to make it a *lot* less relevant to my day-to-day.

...huh.

Okay. Fine.

Maybe I am allowed to accept a compliment on my personal growth once in a while. Don't you dare get all uppity and expect it'll work every time! I can still be crazy as sin, don't you worry!

But it's nice to be able to find evidence that I am growing. It's all I ever wanted. I hope you're growing too. The opposite is stagnation, you deserve better than that. So do I.

~Sor
MOOP!

I spent Sunday scrobbling in the dirt, because my friend Apollo had a backyard work party! Another friend there described it as "well, we're really being Tom Sawyered right now" and that was a both charming and accurate way to sum it up. Apollo said "wouldn't it be fun if y'all came over and helped me move rocks and dig up weeds and shovel mulch" and you know what? It super was!

Also there was a fire going pretty much the whole time, and when we pulled especially obnoxious bittersweet or tree-of-heaven out we could go and put it on the fire in triumph and that was very satisfying! After we worked, we ate snacks and sang sad folk songs --it wasn't intentionally, sad, just wound up that way-- and it was a really lovely afternoon all around!

But the thing that's really standing out, was somewhere in the middle of dealing with the tree-of-heaven, after we'd gotten some of the bigger root clusters out but still had plenty to go, I wound up spending like...ten or fifteen minutes just digging increasingly deep and pulling out the rocks from the old rock wall the roots appear to have grown through, and trying to get one of the remaining big pieces out. And I just couldn't do it. I made lots of progress, but the roots were still in there.

So I wandered to Apollo, ready to switch tasks, and said "I give up." "I'm proud of you!" they replied, and when I tried to tease about it, they continued "both for trying and for giving up". That felt. Honestly real good. It feels nice in the way I hope it feels nice when I thank people for saying no to me. It felt nice in a recognition that setting boundaries and taking care of yourself is good. It felt like a kindness, being told that not only was it okay to give up on a frustrating task that wasn't working out, but a point of pride.

I like having the friends I have.

~Sor
MOOP!

One of the many charming moments about the like, 90 minutes I stood around post-dance in a little cluster of seven of us, sharing stories and chatting, was when Alexander and Willow, both here from Philly, said something lamenting the lack of Rita's in Massachusetts. "At some point we're going to go on an Adventure to visit the one currently open in like, Walpole" one of them said, and immediately I am grabbing Thrantar with one hand and Alexander with the other and near-shrieking "take us with you!"

The four of us then had to explain what on earth a Ritas is and why it matters so to the three New England natives. We almost managed? Maybe we'll let them join on our Adventure and then they can see what it's like.

~Sor
MOOP!

Iiit's still NEFFA!

Gosh I am suddenly weirdly tired! I can't imagine why this might be! What could've possibly caused this?

Actually, the thing I want most right now is like. Playing video games or something silently by myself. It's been a great day but also a _very_ social day. I have had so many wonderful discussions! Short and long, in snippets across a set or hours wandering and hanging out. Real damn good!

(Highlights include a very rewarding bit of convo about the ways SCD is a little too insular sometimes with Jenny Beer, an extremely illuminating fun fact of learning that the concept of clothing that doesn't fit the people wearing it is even more recent than I thought (it's a post WWII factory conversion thing!), and a glorious two hours hanging with Alexander and Willow, including an amazing reading of the most nonsensical academic paper abstract that has ever been written.)

In terms of actual official things I did:

*I started the day by wandering down to Observe the Morris dancers! Muddy River has a zillion people I know on it! WhistlePig has fewer people I know but as I mentioned offhand to one of the other people watching, it has an extremely high proportion of people I have Big Idle Crush Feels For, which makes a lot of sense for the dedicated queer team. I had good morning chats with bunches of people and also got to see an *extremely* new babby, just two weeks out of his mother and small and neato!

*I managed to miss all of the pre-noon things that were otherwise on my "maybe I'll do that" list, but I hung with Lucretia some and had a lovely-but-sad chat with Val about the state of public school education (grr). I did manage to wander back up the hill in time for Susan dG's "Jane Austen's Squares" session, which surprised me slightly by being not Regency (the period in which Austen's books are set) but in fact late baroque (the period Jane would've been dancing as a 15-20 year old!) It's been a hot minute since the last time I've been in one of Susan's classes, and I found it very pleasant to realize just how much my teaching style is cribbed from hers. (I don't know that anyone else would see the parallels, but yeah, there's some stuff there about how to make hard dancing accessible).

*From there was lunch (more siopao!) with Justin dC and Charis, then Justin and I realized we were both interested in Scott Higgs and Jenny Beer's panel on "Better Dancing is More Fun!". Which like. If that wasn't already inherently enough to catch you, they also had Joanna Reiner give a 3-5 minute spiel about some of the good stuff she intentionally does for her floors. MORE AMAZING TEACHERS OKAY?! It was really good vibes!

*Had a half hour of chatting time with friends, where I confirmed a band for my GenderFree SCD class party in June (yay! This was starting to get slightly urgent! I also confirmed a band for the 2027 party, which I hope will be a Bigger Shindig¹!). I also exchanged Important Baby Gossip with Beth, which was extremely fun to do!

*Off we all went to the beginner SCD session, which was quite well taught (nice job Charles!) and also extremely beginner-filled, in a way that feels heartening and also makes me more annoyed at myself that I forgot to bring my flyers. Sigh! But it was fun! And then I didn't bother to change my shoes, just swapped sides of the hotel for the regular-type SCD, except I forgot that the two events were on opposite of the "sometimes events start on the hour and sometimes they start on the half-hour" thing that NEFFA does, which means I danced three _very_ good waltzen first! Okay fine, technically what Bret and I did was some variety of tango, but Monya and I did an _incredible_ Waltz with lots of lead switching and intensity and good non-verbal communication and it felt soooo goodoooo! And Teah was excited to let me lead, which felt good --leading waltzes was like the single dance skill I really felt like I _lost_ during 2020/2021, and I'm extremely pleased to feel like it has come back some.

*SCD was fine! Howard made some _wild_ choices dance-wise, but he fit the pieces together pretty well. And then I found myself outside chatting with Alexander and Willow, and I guess checking the timestamps on the schedule, that's then what I did from about 6:30 until 10. Huh. Nice job!

Ben stopped by at one point which was Very Good, and Tuesday joined for a bunch of it, and it was really lovely. And we did eat dinner-type things, and I did not successfully buy them gelato this time around, but that will be a future adventure maybe.

*Anyways, I had a hard cutoff of 10 because that was Michael Karcher's "Stream of Contraness" 41-dance hash. To Torrent, natch! Apparently they all signed up together and everything, which is very sweet. I happened to encounter a wild Anna Rain, at exactly the right time to ask her to dance and she said yes and I said "but I prefer not too wildly flourishy" and she said "oh yes that's perfect" and it was SO GOOD!

And then I never made it back to the hotel half of the festival like I intended. I chatted merrily with Keira and Charis and Annie and then with Hannah and Ian and then saw Sammy-the-new-musician-we-like-so-much-at-Scottish who was bubbly and enthusiastic and excited to ask me to do the last contra. How could I say no to that? We did an extremely chaotic and energetic dance and it was grand! (oh to dance with nineteen year olds!²)

I wrapped with a lovely conversation and walk with Apollo, and then it was time to drive back to the AirBnB! The fomo is real, but counterpoint, it's incredibly valuable to not accidentally stay up singing until three AM when I've got rehearsal at 9 tomorrow. Speaking of which...off I go to bed, goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This year is "Flights of Fancy" (Emily and Dirk Tiede, Beth Murray) and next year will be Torrent (Sarah and Ross Parker, Nadia Gaya). Hellll yes for all these musicians!

2: I am, first of all, too young to be any sort of "gosh did I have that much energy when I was that age" and also yes _yes I did_. And let's be real, yes I _do_, because there was a very good climbing tree at the NAFest a couple weeks ago, and weirdly no one else was in it at any point.

Iiiiit's NEFFA!

I've spent most of the week fucking around in Providence and doing nothing, which has been quite lovely and probably necessary (it's always many bad sign when I don't do anything for a week off) but now I am pleased and excited to be at NEFFA! I am here on my usual performer badge, but that's not really relevant until Sunday morning, so tonight was just lots of wandering around and stopping every fifty feet to say enthusiastic hellos to another person I know and adore.

In terms of official scheduled things that weren't just hanging out and chatting with people or working on my knitting¹ or eating extremely delicious SioPao² here is what I managed tonight:

*Charis and I did the contra medley together! The sound balance was a little off, which is mostly a shame because the band was _phenom_. Whirlwind is Alex Cumming and Jeff Kaufman and my beloved SCD brother Stephen Thomforde. Fuck yes contra dancing to bagpipes! The last dance in the medley was Michael Karcher calling a dance called The Carousel --a rare instance of me liking something enough to actually ask what it was! I should do this more often with contra dances, really³. The progression was a left hand allemande for the Robins that changed the focus between hands-four _really_ marvelously!

*I loitered outside long enough to hear the tent pub-sing going through Rattlin Bog, and decided it was just chilly enough that I would prefer the indoors, so instead I went up the hill and attended...

*Flat Footing Percussive Waltz! What a great concept for a workshop! I like waltzing and I like percussion! I was sadly disappointed by the ratio of saying things to doing things, which is especially frustrating because I did enjoy and appreciate the things that were being said! But it was much less physical lessony than I would've liked and we only got through like 2.5 fairly simple variations.

We did end with time for one freestyle "practice what we've shown you" and I made enough eyes at Susan dG to get to dance with her, which is always fairly delightful. She's got a cross-step workshop on Sunday that I am hoping to go to, it's been ages since I've done either one of her basics classes or cross-step.

I think that was it! I rounded out the evening adjacent to the hotel-bar-pub-sing and talking with new-friend Manya and newer-friend Leee! I mostly didn't sing, but it was very nice to listen to!

I am looking forward to the many things I have circled for tomorrow (including what sounds to be an excellent late-night contra sesh called by Michael and played by Torrent! And lots of Scottish Country Dancing! And getting to observe the Morris Dancers! And other good things!)

I hope you are well, whether you are dancing, or singing, or just resting at home this weekend. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Several weeks ago, at demo team, I was working on something in between dances. I happened to have hit a frustrating point just as Cathy brightly asked "oh, what are you making?"

"Mistakes."

Anyways, I think about that response a lot. I'm very proud of it, even though it's not necessarily a good conversation continuer.

(this footnote is relevant because among other problems, I found that my scarf had slid mostly off one needle earlier today so I had to get it back on and then I did a row and then I realized I had knit when I should've purled so I had to tink it and recount the stitches about thirty times and augghhhhh. But I prevailed! It is good! And soon I will run out of this _awful_ particular yarn and be able to do something soothing and nice like the ten inches I did of lovely blue seed stitch.

2: I asked the Filipino food booth "do you still have your, uh, steamed buns" and they said yes and a very enthusiastic Big Mom Energy woman explained how it was pronounced and confided that her daughters (helping work for the first time apparently) had been calling it a _dumpling_) and I thanked her for the correction and also it was _so good_ damn.

3: On the one hand, I really don't have the time to become a contra caller as well. On the other hand, the barrier to entry is _much_ lower (you just need a kitchen and some suckers) and I would probably be good at it, and it would be _unbelievably funny_ to get good enough that I could eventually get hired at ESCape as their contra caller. I mean, hell, if I'm gonna invest in The Bit I should do this with ECD as well.

This entire paragraph is a joke, but it would be nice to collect the names of good contras and ECDs I like to go with my collection of SCDs.

Dang, today was really good!

And like......I've been saying for a while now that my hypersimplified political stance is "community is good". And while it wasn't the first thing I did today, it was pretty early in the sequence that I looked at the young woman with the small child standing in Park Street station and looking _extremely_ confused about the lack of a map, and so went over with my phone and helped her identify the station she wanted to be at and which train to get on. Then I sat on a bench and did some knitting until my own train arrived. This wasn't the entirety of the day, but it did set the tone really really nicely!

Before that, I had a lovely long phone chat with my mom as she was driving to her sister's to do more work with their dad's stuff --we organized when and how I'll be going to MD to visit this summer, and then chatted about many lovely inconsequential things. And I visited the post office to mail off a book for a friend (I was point person for a kickstarter a bunch of folks on my discord were excited about). And then it was off to bells, where I arrived halfway through but had a jolly time ringing everything after. Not going to bells very frequently means that we suddenly have an all new crop of skilled ringers and that's quite neat to observe!

Bells lunch was lovely, and taking the T home with Laura lovlier still --I got to hear some of her exciting upcoming plans for adventure! And then I was home long enough to change my clothes and take a quick rest and then off to my work-bestie's old house to help him move a bunch of boxen out of his attic. Originally the plan was three of us and I think he was expecting it to take 2-3 hours. The two of us were handily done in well under an hour and I near melted in delight as he said "you being the stupendous badass you are"¹.

(His attic ladder broke right before moving out, so he'd rigged a quite nice pulley setup with a little handmade cargo net. But I don't think he realized how strong I am, and subsequently how quickly I could get things out of the netting and stacked up in the room downstairs. It was a very jolly time!)

Afterwards, I got to see his new house, which is absolutely gorgeous in every way except that it's diagonally opposite our principal's house (which like, isn't an inherent flaw but is very very funny). And he treated me to dinner, which we did at a nice sushi place on Mass Ave that has set out their outdoor seating --it was just warm enough to be happy, and I think we spent the entire time joyfully discussing Taskmaster. I'm real lucky!

Home again home again, and I managed to kick my brain into enough order to get started the newest bit of knitting project (or rather, the first in a series of swatches for thus) before getting into the car(?!) and driving to the airport. It's Magus and Keira's car, on loan while they were overseas, so we can do grocery runs in exchange for giving them rides to and from the airport.

It was my first time hanging out in the cell phone lot, and that was actually quite jolly as well. "Take your time", texts I, "I have music and knitting" and I did and they were both quite good, which was especially good because their airplane did not have access to any stairs for quite a long time and so what could've been a 45 minute errand had everything worked optimally was actually about two hours. But again, I had music and knitting and that was _lovely_. I only had to work on two of the projects (and listen to my CD twice through) and then suddenly we were back at my house and I was handing them the keys.

Dishes properly done *before* coming upstairs to fuck around, and that's where I am now. I have a few hours before bed, I expect, and while I can never guilt-free do things (there is grading and my desk is a disaster) today really was enough that I feel like I can really relax into whatever else I decide to do with my evening.

Community is good! I am so happy I am a part of mine.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Call me pretty and I will smile, call me useful and I will melt. I know what I'm about. (5'2" and carrying classic oldest daughter trauma)

I'm trying to be better at _stuff_. The warm weather is coming back, so that's helping. I despair a little, wondering if it will ever be possible to put structures into place that actually support me year round.

(I have also been despairing a little, lo these last six months or so, as I stumble over wordsing from 2020 and realize that I was probably mentally healthier then, which is wild considering how much worse certain things were. The end of the world has been fuckin' _hard_, y'all! I'm glad for the ways in which there is good community to ride it through with.)

Next week is April vacation, and I will fuck around town for the weekend, then go down as efficiently as I can to Providence to hang with Tuesday for the week --it only just struck me today that I would most likely be leaving on Monday, meaning I'll be trying to travel on public transit on Marathon Day. I'm sure this will be fine.

(It will not be fine, but I am willing to be very very patient.)

The real tricky part will be packing --I need to figure out if I'm going straight to NEFFA from Tues's, which will be an extra layer of packing. I would also like to not bring an infinity of grading with me, so maybe I can get the tests graded over the weekend? This does not feel likely.

But I am looking forward to being floppy and low-maintenance in someone else's space. Make some food, play some video games, do some knitting, perhaps. Maybe I can bring useful projects that I want to work on down with me, and try and do some of that while Tues is at work. We'll see.

Work proper has been rough as hell, in ways I don't care for. It's non-renewing week, where everyone who didn't get hired back learns this fact, often with very little warning. I am Not Happy about the structures in place that are causing that. It would be nice if there were better ways to cope with supervisors who routinely eat rocks for breakfast and refuse to actually engage with their employees in a way that's remotely helpful.

Also we're t-minus one wakeup until April Vacation and the children are READY for it. Which is tentatively fine, but gosh, it sure would be nice if they were also READY for Geometry along the way.

At least I get to walk home with my work-bestie. That part is lovely! And I had a student trust me with the very early stages of their transition, and ask me today if I would tell some other staff on their behalf (because they felt nervous to do it themself). It felt very honoring!

There is hope for the future, or maybe there is just community and joy right now.

~Sor
MOOP!

Hey did you know what happens when two highly ADHD nerds get engaged?

They forget to tell people for ages and then drop it into casual conversation and are confused that people are shocked. So uh. Yeah. Tuesday and I are gonna get married sometime!

I am not particularly good at dramatic romantic gestures, and I'm definitely not good at like. Sharing romantic things in my life with the rest of the world. There's a lot of things that make me nervous and weird about it. Tuesday doesn't make me nervous¹ though! They make me happy, over and over and again, and have been doing so for many years now. And are gonna do so for many years to come, is at least the plan! I'm very happy about it!!!

The most likely time for the wedding is "Iunno, maybe 2028?", for both obvious and non-obvious reasons. We're currently in an opposite-of-race with our respective younger siblings about who can get married last, which is very funny. Tuesday has rejected my offer of "okay but hear me out, let's do like twenty weddings" but then countered with "what about one wedding per person we want to invite?" because the two of us are in love with each other but also very much in love with the bit. You'll get accurate details about how many we actually plan to have closer to when we actually decide to have it. (them >.>)

We do intend to get photos at some point, but in the meantime just keep taking cute selfies of us at places --I'll drop a nice one that she took at Pinewoods last summer in the bottom of this post. I want to get them a pretty ring, but we're doing it slow to figure out something they actually want and would wear regularly. In the meantime we've got a lovely pair of matching fidget rings we got at the Rennfaire last October. I really like wearing mine!

I don't know what else to say here. It's 2026 and America is miserable. We're both queer and every day we don't get forcibly removed from the country is a success. We are joyful and happy together and we have families that like each others company --we've started overlapping our holidays in a way that feels real successful! We still don't live in the same place, but that's a longterm plan that we want to make happen, and I like thinking about the ways my life will be like when that happens. Sometimes I'm terrified to even believe I'm allowed to have a future. I'm terrified to try and think about what might happen because all of it is just overwhelming and scary and depressing.

....But at least we'll be fighting the scary stuff together. That's pretty cool.

~Sor (and Tuesday <3)
MOOP!

1: ke does make me weird, but that's definitely on the "pro" column :3

I'm back on my Seeming bullshit, or more accurately, I haven't stopped being on my Seeming bullshit basically this entire calendar year so far.

One of their songs is called "Remember to Breathe". I like it, I've been listening to it on repeat a lot. "'cause you're in this for the long haul" it says. I always do like me a song about immortality.

And that's been enough until I started doing a little on repeat and finally clicked into listening, into _hearing_ the bridge.

Like a tall tree
I am pining
To be taken out by the lightning
-Strike me!
I dare you
I dare you
Heaven hear me.

And maybe I shouldn't be cycling that over and over on repeat, if only because at least this morning it's making me cry.
And maybe I should be cycling that over and over on repeat, if only because at least this morning it's letting me cry.

I have to go to work now.

~Sor
MOOP!

(I love you.)

Oh hey, it's April 4th! That means my babymost sister --the one who loved Lord of the Rings way more than any of us other kids-- is finally coming of age, hobbitwise! I'm so pleased for her! Happy birthday Alys!!!!!

And I remembered to check in earlier today, and I know exactly what I'm getting her for her birthday, and it's something you could get her too if you want: the preorder link for The Stolen Women is finally active and the book has a drop date of October 27th! There's gonna be an audiobook (!) version and an ereader (!!) version!

It's "a retelling of the Sabine Women myth 'for those who love Gladiator but hate the patriarchy'"! It's real good sister feels! It's got queer characters! It has a character who I largely want to punch in the face because he's so annoying and also one hundred percent my favourite! I last read it in the back half of 2023, so it's going to be three years of better edits and more refined since then! I am SO EXCITED FOR ALYS!!!!!!!!

I will be purchasing several copies. I might not be joking when I say "oh yeah, I'm going to order a copy from every local bookstore I love". I already started with PSB, I'm sure I'll be able to from Harvard Square bookstore, and probably Sidequest, and then where else. Does Rodneys let you order new? If you want a copy, please hmu and I'll get you one, if you can't get yourself one. Pretty sure I'll see if NESFA lets me donate one to them.

Happy Birthday, Alys! You're so fucking cool! <3

~Sor
MOOP!

This morning started with kissing Austin on the forehead, grabbing my bags, and catching the bus for breakfast at Thrantar's house. He and I and Lucretia and Gwen ate some eggs and potats, then threw everything into the car (including ourselves) and began to drive drive drive down to Philly for the North American Festival of SCD!

The three of them are all "competing" --quotation marks because Boston is the only branch sending an "improvers" team (dancers who've been doing so for less than two years, no one is looking too closely at the fact that Lucretia has been, uh, closer to five I think?)-- in the festival, I'm just going along to cheer and dance and the like. It should also be a nice chance tomorrow evening/Sunday morning to hang a bit with Galia, who I adore and haven't seen in fuckin' ages.

The drive was really splendid! The company was good, I got to be in charge of the music (Thran has borrowed my CD cases for other road trips, enough to get a sense of my weird mix tapes from my early teenaged years and yet somehow tolerate them, although after I played enough things and let him actually make requests, he voted for Alex Sturbaum/sing-along folky stuff.) and there was shockingly little traffic for what is kindof a three day weekend? It's been a long time since I did an Easter weekend roadtrip, and luckily this time does not involve cramming 5 adults into a sedan, nor going all the way as far as Atlanta.

It did involve going as far as Maryland, since that's where Thrantar and I grew up (and Lucretia, it turns out, although we left her and Gwen behind when we drove through Philly, where the fest actually will be). Park the car amongst the usual Friday Night Crowd, and open the unlocked front door and shout "burglars!" as is my wont. Round the corner into the kitchen and stride up to mom for a hug, as they happily declare "that WAS the voice I thought it was!"

I like having a family situation where I can show up on the doorstop and be all "hey, can I stay the night here?" on zero notice. It pleases me! A little surprise now and again is good fun!

So Thrantar and I ate some pizza, and then he went off to spend the night with his buddy Ryan and I hung out with the Friday night crowd, learning about lockpicking and watching celebrity bake-off. The crowd petered out in time for mom and I to play a charming new game she'd just bought called Inkwell. It's a nice enough little strategy game, with truly stunning components, and we had a pretty close game through most of it. I'd be interested to find out how different it feels with five rather than two.

It's nice to be in my family house, which does feel rather nicely like home (I continue to hope dad meant it when he said this was the last house they'd buy, that they're planning to grow old and retire in this one). It's a hideous house in the suburbs, but it's what I am raised to, and I am fond of it! And it's full of good people and I like _that_ a lot.

Tomorrow I will awaken very early, so that Thran and I can make it to Philly in time for his 10am team call. I'm planning to dance a bit and do some grading and knit and hang out in general. It's a nice weekend, I think! I hope yours is going well too.

~Sor
MOOP!

We will go to space today!

I'm rewatching the last T-3minutes of the NSF stream, mostly because I really want to hear the guy shout "LET'S GO TO THE MOON!!" again, because that was so charming! Of all of this, that was the part that made me most gleeful, hearing his glee!

I smiled so hard my face nearly started hurting, starting maybe at T-30seconds? Crying too, obviously, I have been crying on and off this entire afternoon as I watch different parts of the stream.

I'm sad Grandpa Perks didn't get to see us go back. I'm distraught ShadowKev didn't live long enough to get to appreciate a manned moon launch. He, at least, lived through one in the past. It's my first.

I'm thirty-six and a half years old, and it's the first time I've ever gotten to watch us launch our way to and towards and around the moon. We're not even landing on it yet (sounds like Artemis IV is aiming for 2028) but it's far and away the closest we've come in fifty-four years.

My favourite-least-favourite-favourite xkcd comic is 65 Years. It is fantastic to think that it's going to be wrong.

We will go to space today. And tomorrow. And next year and the year after. And again and again, over and over again. Somebody will, someday.

~Sor
MOOP!

Today has been a mixed accomplishing things day. I was out sick from work yesterday (for brain bullshit reasons) so I had to do a little bit of catchup with myself. Which I.....mostly didn't do! But I did enough and it was entirely okay.

Part of why I didn't do more is because I got distracted playing phone games after school. Which is not great. But then Clayton saved me by stopping by my room at just the exact time I would have to leave in order to get home before therapy. I could've continued fucking around and done therapy from work, but then I wouldn't have had a nice conversation with my friend nor would I've been home in any kind of timely manner.

Therapy was fine. Not super organized, but Jenn did encourage me to not just do bullshit after the thing. I managed to start some knitting during the end of it, and that was good! that carried me into actually constructive not-video game time.

I did some good knitting! I started a new yarn in Alys's scarf, then immediately frogged it and tried again simultaneous with a second yarn. This was the correct solution because I did a good job of choosing contrasting colours and now this godawful weird yarn has made the most incredible moss-like pattern. I loooove it! I am very sad that I don't have more of the yarn to figure out something for realsies to make out of it. (yes yes, I should find a picture for this)

Knitting meant I was listening to music, and that meant I, uh, recorded the song I wrote a couple years ago and rewrote a bit for YTS. And I don't want to put my work on YouTube because fuck google. So it's on Bandcamp now. (This is not a professional or good track, but also it does not cost money, so cool).

ANYWAYS.

Then it was time to make dinner and I actually spent a fairly pleasant ninety minutes in the kitchen getting things done and listening to more music. Clean the stove, make some pasta, cook some broccoli, catch up on a *lot* of dishes. It was good and I'm glad to have done it! But man, I'm glad to be done with it.

Played a wee bit of Slay the Spire (which felt _good_, just doing a bit of one round) and now I'm busy watching Taskmaster with my favoured. It's going very well!

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Ruthie a bit (possibly with her toddler possibly without) and, uh. Ideally do some unpacking from last weekend and repacking for the next. And then also maybe some grading?

And that's me!

~Sor
MOOP!

Austin is over for his usual Monday datenight, made harder by both of us being very _very_ worn out.

(the weather is not helping. the fascism definitely not)

We had a little bit of a "blaaaah what do" and then Austin asked "what do you want to do" and I paused a long while and admitted that what I wanted to do was play video games and not think. And so he pointed out that Slay the Spire 2 has just come out in early release and maybe we could try it? I hemmed a little (I don't like the idea of playing games in early release) and we read some of the literature, and I decided "sure, let's give it a shot".

(I still have steambux from my da, and certainly Slay the Spire original is one of those games that I have put a staggering number of hours into¹ so I do not at all begrudge giving the makers another round of dollarbux in thanks)

And so we went ahead and hit play and cooperated and chatted and balanced our different playstyles and charged on through. And won! We won very satisfyingly, by mostly creating a good deck vibe (all combos around casting vulnerable) and then immediately blowing that up when given a super powerful artifact at the end of act II.

It was a really lovely balance between "this is extremely familiar" and "this is new and exciting". It's very funny playing my obsessive games with other people, because like, I don't think of myself as being an expert in this game or anything, but I suppose yes, I do immediately know what the cards do or which cards are new. There's definitely some intriguing new options popping up and I look forward to doing some replay.

The timeline is going to be absolutely lovely to find out more about --I like me a little bit of explicit lore sometimes! I mean, I do enjoy the scraps and fragments of the story that you get in the first game, but it's _so_ barebones sometimes that there's nothing really to hang onto.

And it's nice that being cozy and silly and collaborative was able to really turn my mood around at least, and hopefully Austin's as well. Now I can go to sleep feeling a little bit better about my universe (in which my last two workdays were 9.5(today) and 12.5(Fri) hours of active work, and the rest of the week is not looking milder.)

The world is bad but sometimes escapism can be quite nice! Especially when done in good company! I hope you are finding some of that too.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: According to a quick skim of my steam library:

1st place: Crypt of the Necrodancer, 631.5 hours
2nd place: Slay the Spire, 416.8 hours
3rd place: Stardew Valley, 388.9 hours²
4th place: Heroes of Might and Magic III, 324.8 hours³
5th place: Rogue Legacy - 293 hours

In summation, I am not a _broad_ video game player, I am a _deep_ video game player. This is why I am still running through the steambux from my da from two years ago, I just don't buy games very much.

2: Please do not observe that the first time I played this game was like, end of May 2025. The rest of these times are on much longer timeframes (like, multiple years apiece).

3: Heroes should be much higher, there's been lots of times where I've owned this through GoG and emulators not through steam, and I should get that set up again because I miss having phoenixes (and the Steam version doesn't have the expansions, sigh.) It's basically been incomplete playing since I switched away from my mac, so like, since 2019 since I've played it "proper".

I slept like garbage and it has given all of today a weird vibe.

Okay, actually today was reasonable decent in the actual day of it all. My classes seemed to go well! Students were doing mostly working at their own paces, but also they were actually doing that! I spent my prep knitting, which is not like 100% most effective work choice, but felt good to be doing and is scads better than playing phone games.

And then we had our geometry team meeting with our department head to review our midterm data and talk about things for the future and I got as close as I ever have to crying in front of my boss. Frustration, mostly. It was normal levels of annoying work bullshit until we got to the point where it was like "maybe next year we have a hard deadline of end of q2 [instead of doing the midterm in q3 like we have the last couple years]". And so I ask "would my [SpEd] inclusion classes be expected to take the exact same midterm?" and boss is all "obvs yes" at which point like.......

...I literally cannot teach the Inclusion classes the exact same curriculum at the exact same pace as the mainstream Geometry classes. We are "only" about a week behind right now, but that's because me and my co-teacher have been extremely thoughtful about what we can cut out of each unit and then doing so. The classes just pace slower in general, compounded by needing to spend more time reviewing algebra skills, compounded by needing to spend more time on classroom management and norm-setting and behavior stuff.

So like. Either I give them a midterm where they do piss because they haven't learned some of the stuff being covered, or I give them a midterm where they all do piss because I've rushed everything so fast they can't actually learn it. "oh but you should have high standards of rigor for your students" _yes that's the problem_. If I didn't give a shit if my kids actually learned the material I could get through this stuff snaps easy.

It's just another step on a whole fuck of bullshit we've been having all year(s). Somehow I will make it work, I'm sure. (but first I must...¹).

So the end of my work day had me all verklempt and off-kilter, and unfortunately equity team did not really fix the problem (some weeks it is the best meeting I attend, some weeks it's more focused on the depressing business of dragging the rest of the school kicking and screaming into being anti-racist. The work is always good, but sometimes it's more draining than others.)

Played a bunch of phone games. Did not adequetely prep for tomorrow, by which I mean, did fuck_all_ at the school. Gave up at 6 and came home and did manage to bully myself into a PowerHour which helped. I reread the Adventures of Blue Avenger and did a wee bit more knitting and then ate dinner. Played some Stardew after. Now I'm writing these so I can go off to bed in a maybe-timely manner.

I hope you are well and that tomorrow is better for us all (I always hope this second part). I love you.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: It occurs to me that this essay might actually be worth opening up in the tab next to Good Girls Aren't Here and just having both of them permanent features of my computer. I certainly reference it often enough.

wriiiiite the words

I am very tired and don't wanna write the words.

Work today was pretty good but also hella unsatisfying because there was Serious Bullshit with classroom assignments and needing to last-minute move the classroom. I had like......fifteen minutes of warning in order to pack up my everything I would need for class five and move down to a computer lab. It was awfullllll and I'm not happy about it. Blah.

But focusing on the good stuff...uh....the kids seem to grok the Pythagorean Theorem? That's nice. Tomorrow we're moving into our special rights triangles and it's not totally rubbish as a lesson --we did good work last year! I had a good long talk with my mentee last week about his future (and need to send some networking emails on their behalf). Even though the kids are being forced into super dysregulating situations, they were mostly fine?

And yesterday I got a bunch of things done and also had a nice evening with a friend/comet. I didn't sleep enough, but that's Unfortunately Normal, and at least all my sleep hours were in a bed with the lights off, which is Unfortunately Abnormal right now. I'm working on it?

Went to demo team on Sunday, which was fine, and then dance tonight which was...like...it was pretty decent, both Keira and Beth pick good dances and stuff. But for one of them I was dancing on the larks side with my buddy DJ on the Robin's side. And one of the other dancers made some comment about how we had "switched sides just to confuse her". Which like. Fuck off. Fuck off fuck off fuck offfffff.

I understand that I need to be gracious and kind and help people slowly understand in a non-threatening way but also fuck offff. I know I don't pass. I know I will never pass. I know you don't see me as anything as a woman. But you're wrong and you will never know how absolutely hurtful it is to be told that there is an obvious gender box you think I should be in and therefore if I'm on the lark's side it's "wrong".

It was intermission after, so I didn't have to dissociate for that long, and I could go and sit with my knitting and talk to all the various people who came and sat by me and then Sharon asked me to dance. But it still feels bad. I appreciate that the teachers here are trying to normalize larks and robins¹. But the class does not actually get it, and as long as the dancers as a whole are just treating this as "weird names for men and women" nothing is actually going to change.

There's no wrong side to dance on. There is especially no wrong side for me, a nonbinary person to dance on. There is especially no wrong side for anyone to dance on when the role terms are Lark and Robin and have nothing the fuck to do with anyone's gender.

Oh hey, I figured out why I am so tired and draggy and don't wanna write the words. :/

Anyways, I will continue to quietly dance when and where I can with people who are willing to ignore conventions based on what genitals a doctor thought you had when you were born and instead take into consideration, like, who's taller if the dance has an allemande in it. And even that is negotiable.

I'm gonna snuggle Austin and go to bed.

~Sor (they/them)
MOOP!

1: (I am _genuinely thrilled_ that Beth is restating the terms every evening, and also that she is doing a much-better-than-average job of not using gendered pronouns with ungendered role names. Unfortunately, better-than-average means "occasionally says "their partner" instead of "her partner"" but baby steps!)

We're bad at everything. Let's write down the things we've done today:

Brushed hair

Braided hair

Ate Breakfast, also caught up on comics and even read a bit of Dreamwidth finally (I miss y'all, it's another symptom of the same Problem that is my brain right now.)

Unloaded dishwasher, reloaded dishwasher

Brought the load of laundry that's been in the dryer for three days upstairs finally (thanks Rey for basketing it, sorry to have left it)

Brought a bunch of laundry downstairs, started it (load two is just in the washer now, and load one in the dryer)

Switched my stuffies from their hamper into a steralite bin, eventually this will turn into like...one of those ottomans that opens up and you can store blankets (or stuffed animals) in but then it has a surface instead of being an amorphous blob sticking out of the top of a hamper, bonus, was able to use the hamper for my spare quilts/heavy blankets, double bonus, went through the stuffies a little and have some I can maybe give away.

Folded most of the laundry from that old load, while putting it away, successfully went through underwear drawer and pulled out the "good enough to keep but I'm not going to wear it regularly" stuff to put in the "save for Pinewoods" box

(At Pinewoods I would like to have approximately three pairs of underwear a day. If I do something absolutely batshit crazy this year, that will change, but I want to have the option to be able to wear clean underwear always.)

Also socks, pulled out a handful of pairs I don't like so I stop wearing them by accident and being all :/ about it, also pulled out all the pairs that I know have big holes (they're currently due for the trash, but I may put some into my scraps bag instead)

Got stuck in a serious yak shaving rabbit hole but I think I have finally managed to put the additional music I wanted onto my phone, and also I have taken off last year's photos, which is important because now my phone should run smoother? Anyways, that took forever but now I can listen to music while I do additional chores? Seems fake. I'm into it!

I also reset the "accessories" boxen, which technically go with socks --long stockings, tights, kilt hose and accessories, suspenders and belts, scarves/pashminas. It's been a while, so that was good.

I'm now sitting down to eat lunch. Laundry load two is on my bed upstairs to put away, load three is in the dryer, four in the washer. (I'm aiming for like...six? It wouldn't be so high, but a) I have been slipping on the "own more than one set of sheets so that you don't get trapped with an unmade bed by having all your sheets dirty at once" and so I need to catch up there *and* there's been some sort of funky smell in my t-shirts boxen for a couple months and I'm not sure what's up with that, but I think step one is probably just wash _all_ my t-shirts.

On the plus side, that latter problem doesn't seem to be anywhere in my dresser except my shirts, so that's a good sign? I guess? I mean, mostly it just means there's probably not, like, a dead mouse behind my dresser or something (a thing I would not be able to rationally deal with)).

***

I wrote all of the above earlier. I've since finished all the laundry --it appears that the shirts no longer smell, so success-- and gone to demo team and hung out with Maia some, so all of that is quite good.

I couldn't maintain GOGOGO the entire day, but also like, I shouldn't have to? I shouldn't in general? It is important to do mindless fuckoff stuff as well as Srs Useful Stuff? Yeah.

I hope you are well. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

I have started occasionally experiencing selective mutism.

And on the one hand, I don't actually think this is all that new an experience to me. I think I've always found it hard to talk sometimes, I've just not had a good language to refer to those times in any useful way. Selective Mutism is good language, and enough people are starting to know it that it kinda even is a useful thing to indicate to others on the rare occasion it matters.

But like everything about me, I don't _really_ have it and should probably not appropriate from other people's struggles just to sound cool. Especially because I don't actually have it. If I need to talk, and am experiencing a no-talk moment, I just step out of the no-talk and do what I need to do until I can return to it.

The phrase "slightly upsetting and marginally poetic" comes to mind, for no reason at all.

~Sor
MOOP!

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Katarina Whimsy

May 2026

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MOOP!

The Rantings of a Terminal Optimist

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To quote the Morris Dancers...

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Our new world is so close

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Little about my day, more about being sad about dance and gender

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Twelve and a half years and four computers now

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