MOOP!

I finished all my packing for Pinewoods _surprisingly_ early --I was done a bit before 2:30pm, which was surprisingly charming. It meant that mom and Robin and I could go out to Boda Borg for the afternoon! We did a lovely four hour run, in which we got three stamps (Quiz Show: Quotes, Star Trails, and the weather one) and morally got a fourth (the last room of Area 51 is _much_ harder with three than with five, and even when we temporarily joined with another group, we still couldn't quite get it, but we know the _idea_). It was jolly!

I'm somewhat unsettled by being fully packed, and reassuring myself with the fact that I still have a bunch of MC/teacher prep work I can/should do, and a fair chunk of printing that needs to happen (after the prep work). I did find my _critically_ important Rowan¹ notebook, which has my ESCape teaching notes for every year starting when I got my full certificate in 2019. It was extremely lost, and I probably spent a total of 20-30 minutes trying to find it, sigh.

I am excited and pleased to leave for ESCape tomorrow. I'll be in the camp in the woods until the 12th or 13th of July or so, so probably not a lot of posting, and definitely continuing my horrid streak of not reading very well. I really ought to figure out a way to work reading dreamwidth into my day-to-day life at times other than part of Standard Morning Routine, because all this traveling and adventure nonsense means my standard routine hasn't been.

I've definitely mentioned somewhere here that I'm teaching at ESCape, right? I am _psyched_ for that. Really strongly looking forward to it, and kinda wicked excited that I will then be going to Scottish sessions and having very few responsibilities so I can just kinda kick back and actually relax for a tickyboo. Maybe I will even wind up working at camp a skootch, who knows!

Anyways, today has been pretty good, even if I've been Very Tired (it is possible I was up _stupid_ late last night in order to do most of my packing, but it's okay, I've had a lot of days in a row of getting eight or nine hours of sleep. I've got backup sleep! Which is very very good to go into Pinewoods with.)

I hope you are well and happy and having good adventures. I hope that we can have a better world than the one that is actually happening. I wish I had anything more useful to say than that.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Rowan is the mascot of the RSCDS youth branch. They are a sheep and they use they pronouns and they are extremely important to me. I have cosplayed them! Carefully, since specifically they are a Scottish Blackface Sheep.

I continue to be having a LAKE VACATION and today I even went into the lake a bit!

Lake was a late-afternoon plan, and I only made it in to about the tops of my thighs, just because it was...comfortable enough outside, and also the water was quite cold. I had a nice conversation hanging with Cameron and discussing our respective indifference to swimming and other nice things. It was good to be able to cool my body by sticking my feet into the water, and I quite preferred it to being inside with the AC, which tends to be too cold for my poor lizard body.

(I am extremely cold-blooded --I get cold quite easily, and am most comfortable at an indoor temperature of probably 78ish, which no one is ever willing to set their houses at. It means this heat wave is hitting me less badly than many people, and I am very grateful for that. It also means I'm about to go put on my flannel, because bare arms are simply much too chilly for the indoors.)

Oo, or I could write my words outside! That is a good plan too!

(I got distracted having a nice chat with grandpa John, about teaching and acceleration and other things. Being pro-vocational schools! The usual. I am so proud of my school district for all the good it's doing, even though I'm exhausted by many of the things they are failing at.)

The other big thing we did today was going to the Candy Store, which was a very nice sort of adventure! We're on touristy sort of lake, so visiting some touristy sorts of shops is lovely, and gave me a chance to get my mother some vintage-style candy she would be excited about. It was also fun to spend time with just the cousins-batch! It's neat to be part of an inter-generational sort of adventure (currently Grandma Judy and Karen(Tues and Cameron's mom) are working on the crossword with other people's help, and the eight of us who are awake are curled around the table snarking each other and helping occasionally. ) but it's especially fun to just hang out with the other "kids".

It should maybe be weirder that I, at age nearly 36, am sitting so comfortably at the kids' table, but let's be real, I absolutely do not feel as though I am a Grown-Up and never have, despite the fact that I am a firm believer in Growing Up Is Good.

I don't really have much else to write about --peaceful lake vacations are good for the soul healing a bit, and curing burn-out but not exactly full of adventures. We went on a walk and saw a bat? We're going to eat strawberry shortcake? We finished a quite neat puzzle and then rearranged it and finished it again? Things are all pretty lovely.

Please stay cool, in both the "physical" and the "don't become a fascist" sorts of way.

~Sor

MOOP!

Today was my third pride! I am realizing I never got around to posting all the bits from my second pride, last weekend, so let's do that first:

( here are the notes from Boston pride a week ago, written in a series of texts )

***

Today was Providence Pride! It was a very different experience from Boston Pride, but still really wonderful and valuable! The biggest differences were a) the weather was the _polar opposite_ and I had to worry about heatstroke instead of my fingers going numb and b) I was attending with people instead of alone.

The latter made it much less of a quasi-spiritual experience. I only cried once, and only a very little bit, not proper sobbing --it was when I found the Mama Dragons group, who had a big sign at their booth that read "Fight like a MOTHER for trans rights". They are such a good group! Fuck yeah!

I think the real thing is that when I am with other people I am a somewhat different person than when I'm alone. I'm compelled to be more stable, which is mostly a good thing, but also just...I dunno. I have to be around only people I feel very safe around in order to be my proper weirdest, or I have to be around total strangers who I will never meet again.

But the people I were with were so good! Tuesday and I went to pride together, and it was very fun to go to A Queer Event as a unit. SamSam was passing through on their own adventures, so we found them soon after we arrived and the three of us spent about fifteen minutes sitting in some cozy shade behind a bush, which was almost pleasant weather-wise. After they went off on their next bit of biking, Tuesday and I met up with a friend of kers called Chris who ke knows through Tech House and Puzzling.

Tuesday and Chris and I spent most of the afternoon together --probably from like 3 until they had to catch a train at nearly 8. We toured some booths, ate from some food trucks, sat in the shade, and toured more booths. I think by the end of it we had probably seen all the booths at the little pride fair, although it was laid out a little roundabout in a way that might've caused us to miss a few. I got some nice bits of swag, including a very explicitly queer patch from GSSNE (Girl Scouts Southeastern New England) and an even better rainbow fan than the one I got last week (this one has PoC and trans stripes, the other just has the core six).

Chris turned out to be very fun to talk to, and we definitely had a few moments of "oof, are you me?!" as we chatted about various forms of sluttery and other fun. It was also neat to get to *chinhands* as they shared various forms of college drama with Tuesday, and I could learn some secret scandals from my partner's life before me. I am a simple man with simple pleasures!

Attending the fair was lovely, but as mentioned it was _brutal_ hot and bright out. I realized eventually that part of the problem was that my Very Cute Sunglasses are just slightly off prescription-wise from my regular sunglasses --not enough to be an immediate problem, but if I am wearing them for five hours straight, it starts to make my body unhappy. I went in the mist tent for a bit to cool down, and then we sat somewhere shaded enough that I could swap out for my regular glasses and take an ibuprofen, all of which helped. On the plus side, neither Tuesday nor I appear to have any sunburn! We brought our own sunscreen, but I did heartily approve of the multiple (mostly mom-like) people at the event who had bottles of their own that they were offering to everyone.

Chris had to catch a train, so they couldn't join me and Tuesday for the parade, which happens after the fair in PVD. We missed the very beginning, but caught most of it, and did lots of cheering and whooping and the like. I had happy screams for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence again (although apparently I have a much less strong reaction to them when they are in short cute sun-dresses as opposed to their full nun robes). We ogled some pole dancers doing good work, and very much enjoyed a local horror group who were strutting around kinkily while wearing very little clothing.

I also howled real good for the puppy players, and when they stopped for a little bit just in front of us, I wound up giving one of them a bunch of scritches and making sure he'd been drinking water and telling him he was a good boy. I have known for a long time that I really enjoy interacting with pups, and I wish I had more excuses to hang with them. Maybe I should try and go back to Frolicon some year?

The city was chockablock full of hot queers, and it was delightful. That's my favourite part of any pride, just heaps of little positive interactions with My Community. Smiles and compliments and blown kisses and lusty stares and all having a very wonderful time!

Happy Pride, y'all!

~Sor

MOOP!

I did it! I finished cleaning up my room! I was able to play School's Out For Summer at about 6:50pm or so, which is plenty good as these things go. *THUMP* goes the brain. I would like to do absolutely nothing! But things are coming up!

Here's some good things coming up in the near future:

*I'm going to go to Keuka (in the finger lakes in NY) with Tuesday's family! This appears to be the kind of vacation where you just chill out and read books and go for walks and things. I'm excited! I don't really know how to have that kind of vacation, so it'll be a good chance to try things out.

*I'm doing a road trip from Keuka to MD with Cameron (Tuesday's sibling) which sounds like it will be quite a nice time, honestly. I've road-tripped with Tuesday a fair amount, and ker mom a few times, so I'm excited to do it with another member of the family.

*Almost immediately after, I'm road-tripping back up from MD to Boston (and then ESCape) with mom and Wicked Auntie Robin. Mom and I are definitely compatible road trip buddies! I think Robin will be a good third!

(I recently got a kickstarter which is "gay games to play in the car with your girlfriend while she drives you to go camping" so I'm excited to have some road trips to play the gay games!)

*ESCape is going to be amazing, obviously. I'm the official scottish teacher! I get to MC in the evenings and teach two classes! AAAAH! Good aah, but also stressed aah.

*Once I'm back from ESCape I get to actually breathe for a week or so, which is going to be my play video games time. I am _extremely_ looking forward to it.

And then there's some other stuff in the back half of the summer. That's good too!

~Sor

MOOP!

I am at Pinewoods!

I mean, I arrived yesterday around five thirty (over 2.5 hours drive from Somerville, _oof_), but it is Saturday night of my first actual session as a camper this year. Of, I guess, four (not counting the work weekend or the crewunion).

I'm very pleased about it!

It's LCFD's spring camp, which has been running in general since 1989 or so, but at Pinewoods since 2023. Pinewoods is starting off the year Gay As Hell, since last weekend was their first camper session --the Boston Queer Tango-- and now is us, the Lavender Country and Folk Dancers.

It is _so good_ to be at an explicitly queer dance camp, full of explicitly queer people. Yes, absolutely, some of those people are the kind of weird where they have never felt misaligned about their assigned gender or are only interested in people with different genders from themself, but even the cishets are the kinds who are excited to be at a big gay camp full of lovely queer people and it makes the space _amazing_. Just...loving, open, gentle, good-hearted, and fucking funny and sexy as well.

(As I remarked to several people tonight, as I looked around the wide range of finery that is the "dress up in fancy dress or costume" Saturday evening dance, "oh no, everyone is hot and I am gay".)

I saw ballgowns, leather hot pants, loud print Hawai'in shirts, mesh tops with harnesses, at least two people with tails, and the usual evening dance array of swoopy twirly swishy fun. I myself was fairly understated, which is to say, my black-and-rainbow kilt, a formal black collared shirt and grey vest, and a loud-as-fuck rainbow bowtie. Oh, and my makeup is essentially "Furiosa, but make it gay".

Beyond the incredible highlights that are just "queer community" and "gay dancing", I am having such a lovely time with the regular programming. This morning I went to a "contra refresher" class explicitly named as a "show up and tell us what you want to work on" sort of basics class. It was being taught by Chris Ricciotti, who is an _incredible_ teacher --I quite literally sat down after it was over and frantically scribbled notes about his flawless ability to mix the dancers around and the fascinating parallels between a robin's chain and a hay.

After lunch, Chris was running a "queer dance history" panel, which was half him sharing and half open to the class. It was amazing --something like 40 people were crammed into the camphouse to hear and share their stories. I cried repeatedly --tearing up at the tales of the first time someone ever tried a skirt on (including one gentleman, at 89, doing so to show support of his trans granddaughter, and then discovering that he _loves_ skirts and immediately sought out more) and of a couple celebrating their twentieth year together, and tenth year married (and especially counting back in my head to remember that means they very well might've married the first year it was legal country-wide. Remember that the DoMA is not even ten years old.).

Mostly I cried with joy at the earnest, soppy lovefest happening back and forth at the panel between the elders, who were expressing their joy that other people are taking up the torch and keeping the community going, and the youth, who were expressing their joy that they didn't have to start from zero, that the groundwork had been laid. Everyone joyous at how far we have come, and excited to find out how far we can go.

The straights don't know what they're missing, when they box themselves up miserably into binary assignments and strict policing of their own and each other's presentation.

The only mar has been how incredibly _tired_ I am in general. But even that is coming with comfort: this afternoon I took a ninety minute nap, and I settled in to sleep while listening to the soft sound of a light rain in the nearby trees. I woke up to the delicious pounding of pouring rain on the roof of my beloved little cabin, and mama nature did me the courtesy of even ceasing shortly after so that I could walk to the dining hall without getting entirely soaked to the skin.

(Yes, the subtext is that I am once again in Kitty Alone, the best cabin in all of Pinewoods. I truly try not to be a diva about it, and I truly am grateful that I keep winding up in this perfect little paradise, where I'm so familiar with the space that unpacking is a breeze.)

So because of that, I'm off to bed now. No more rain, but the trees are gently dripping, and the moon is shining through the clouds. This is my home.

~Sor
MOOP!

It's not Wednesday, which means it's a day of the week eligible for Wednesday Books. (I don't know why I'm so contrary about this, and I know occasionally I've messed up anyways). It's been a while, let's catch up!

Finished Reading Recently

We left off with me just barely having started Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters. I got through it, but am continuing to feel Pretty Weird about the fact that I don't love the Witches stories nearly as much as I love the Guard stories. I did like all the Scottish-play references, because I am a theatre nerd (even if I'm not that kind of theatre nerd).

I then did a very necessary and very burnt-out reread of all seven Murderbot (by Martha Wells) books in rapid succession. They continue to be Real Fucking Good, and I continue to enjoy having verdantry to samebrain at and send random screencaps or whatever when I need. Three is still my absolute favourite golden retriever puppy of a character, but I had an unexpectedly positive reaction to 2.0 this time around. The seventh book is still the hardest to read, due to [redacted] but I still love the ending so goddamn much and all the hope for the future it seems to provide. Man these books are good for me.

After I finished Murderbot, I returned to the Disc with the next guards book: Jingo! This uh. This is a book about colonialism and racism and war and UH. Like. UHHHH.

Look, all of Pratchett's stuff has this horrible timeless quality to it --I say horrible, because it's less like "applicable to humans everywhere" and more like "goddamnit, we _still_ have to protest this shit?". And reading a book which is very blatantly drawing some parallels between us, the upstanding white British folk with our stiff upper lips and sensible demeanor, and them, the brown-skinned desert-living barbarians with their foreign ways and horrible traditions......yeeeeah, we still have to protest this shit?

It is nice as hell to watch Vimes annoyedly realize he's being racist and have to figure out how to be Less So. It's _amazing_ to watch him wield his privilege like a weapon, as extensively as humanly possible. The only reason to have power is to help those who don't have it, and Vimes gets that.

I was unexpectedly okay with the haha-very-funny joke of Nobby-the-horrible-gremlin being put into a dress and getting in touch with his feminine side. Like. I mean, there were some parts of it that were transphobe-adjacent, but most of the humour was very solidly on "Nobby Nobbs is a horrible gremlin" and not "men wearing dresses is inherently funny". And honestly, even with the first part, it felt pretty okay to watch him be like "no, it was genuinely good for me to explore my gender by doing some of this"

I've done at least one babysitting of The Local Toddler, so we read a small handful of books --not nearly as many as last time, because we spent most of the day outside at the playgrounds instead. But we got through a few:

Hooray, a pinata! by Elisa Kleven felt _ridiculously_ familiar to me as the kind of neurospice who builds connections with toys and plushies and fictional objects. Very sweet little story!

Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall I have maybe read before? Not sure. It's a trans allegory and it doesn't try to be subtle about it. Reading parts of it really hurts because dannnnngg yeah, it is hard when other people see you in a way that just isn't true.

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins was entirely forgettable. There's counting. There's a nice cast of multi-racial inoffensive children. There are cookies. Great literature, it is not, but it won't hurt anyone.

Bootsie Barker Bites by Barbara Bottner I read after the toddler was in bed, just finding it on the floor and giving it a shot. And it was _delightful_! It includes a child being belived by their parents about something they find uncomfortable! It includes the triumph of brains over brawn! It includes girl children who are horrible little gremlin bullies! (I mean, obviously we don't like bullies, but dang, it's weirdly refreshing to see visions of bullying that look familiar to my childhood and ALSO let girls be rough and physical and scary sometimes!). It was a fun read and I didn't predict the twist and was pleased when I got to it!

Last thing I've finished reading recently was the entire archive of the webcomic Subnormality. If you've been around the internet for a while, it's the one with too many words and the immortal human-eating Sphinx as a regular character. I'd read batches of it before, but not in ages and ages, and it was nice to see how all the threads warp and weft. It's absolutely pretentious as shit, but still made me cry at least a couple times, and wrapped me up in a general hope for humanity --even when it's being cynical as fuck, it never seems to stop hoping. (The lead singer of the Generals is my favourite character, by far).

Oh, and I don't think I ever properly mentioned it, but I had been reading The Pushcart War aloud to Austin, and did finally finish it. And then quite soon after, observed one of my favourite students holding her own very beloved copy and we had a mutual squee.....and then I learned that apparently subsequent editions have changed the dates of the book to place it "in the future" which makes absolutely zero goddamn sense given that _nothing else is changed_. So her copy, published in like 2014 or so, sets the pushcart war as beginning in 2026 but does not otherwise _remotely_ reimagine a world that is different from the one in my much older copy, which sets the tale in the 1980s.

Currently Reading

I have been a mess with library check-outs and holds and stuff. I have two physical books I really need to return to the library, like, months ago because I'm probably not going to read them at this point, and I have two digital books that I need to re-hold because I didn't manage to get to them when they were checked out to me. Arg!

What I am actually currently reading though is A Drop of Corruption, which is Robert Jackson Bennett's sequel to his excellent The Tainted Cup which I read last year. I'm through the first part and definitely having as much joy about the worldbuilding and any moment Ana is on screen. Din is...going through it, and I hope he works himself out okay. I like that I've observed at least one of the Clues that was later confirmed, although I wasn't nearly smart enough to answer the first mystery that was presented. Anyways, I have like five days before that ebook evaporates, but I think I'm on track. Finding excuses to walk places and read as I do seems to be really helpful for how my brain handles books.

A couple weeks ago, I needed something to read as I walked to (actual in-person!) therapy, so I broke out my Gutenberg ebook of Dracula, and read up to the current day. I think my hope is to actually go ahead and read the whole thing _not_ as a daily, since I haven't managed that either of the previous two years I've been subscribed. But I haven't read anything since, so I'm behind either way. I did get far enough to get to the part where Jonathan is looking out the window and being all "that sure is my host climbing around on the outside of the castle like a big lizard". Delightful!

What I'm Reading Next

More Discworld, probably. I'm currently at a slight loss for specific cravings, although Tho read Scholomance on my recommendation, so maybe I grab that again. I could for reals try Fire Logic (third time's the charm?) or try to get and finish How To Be Perfec.

I should have some free time in mid-to-late August and I'd love to spend some of that doing like...a thorough read-through of the stuff on my bookshelves I've never gotten to. I also had something push the "Transmet?" button in the back of my brain and like ugh, we all know Warren Ellis is a creep and the books have some serious problems, but also I think I was rereading the entire series more often than once a year during the first Tr*mp administation and I'm probably due for more of that.

Yaybooks!

~Sor
MOOP!

Sunday of work weekend was fine (and complicated and stressful because Mice) but mostly uneventful and my brain went a little sideways for some parts of it, which was not the best. I think maybe the most satisfying part of Sunday --and a little bit of today-- was developing new skills and practicing at them some, and getting reasonably good at them.

The new skill from yesterday was sewing, and specifically doing a very fine whip stitch with almost hidden stitches to get the edge on for a quilt (basting? Is that what it was?) I was taught by Kimberly-(Lucretia's-Mom) who is entirely lovely and was calm, good at teaching, and a lovely conversationalist. I will probably never love sewing, but it's good to remember that it and I can be friends, and it's very good to have chances to learn skills with it sometimes.

The new skill from today was Ditch Digging! Elliot was in charge of doing some path-shaping to get water to travel the correct directions (off the path) and a little bit of berm shaping and the like. My first ditch was, uh, a little too extreme, but I took his good feedback and by the end of it, I think I had a pretty good sense of how to make the path go the ways I wanted it to.

In the afternoon, I did a little bit of other helpful things, and then suddenly was gifted with the truly wonderful present of a working Hobart. Well okay then, I *will* wash the last few dozen loads of dishes, since I don't have to then drag them through the sanitizer as well! Critically, this meant all the flatware, which was going to be _miserable_ to have to drop in the sanitizer and then retrieve. I also now know exactly how many trays are at camp (both the Good Kind and the shitty kind.) The margin is...a _lot_ closer than I would've expected, honestly.

It was _so pleasant_ to spend the last three hours of my work weekend in the kitchen, by myself, just me and the music cranked and the hobart humming along and round after round of dishes. Isaac even brought me some soap so that I wouldn't have to run to Dingle every time I needed to wash my hands between dirty side and clean side. It is good to learn new skills and get better at them! It is also real fucking good to just do skills that I am already competent at and feel like I have good agency for.

It was also really nice to feel like I could make Actually Useful And Sensible Decisions about how to run things through. My only concession to Amanda being the Head Of Kitchen was to send a text being all "I'm doing the rest of them and you can't stop me", I didn't need to ask her for advice because I could think through all the things that needed to happen and just...do them!

Like, there's this thing I do where I be Extremely Confident which dovetails in interesting ways with that thing I do where I be Extremely Nosy About How Everything Everywhere Works. I worry that people might not be standing up to me enough about their own expertise sometimes --like, it is cute for Seramay to defer to me on cabin opening things, he has _way_ more experience doing so than I do! But also, I do have a fair chunk of experience and I tend to be competent in general, so yeah, it's not unreasonable to be all "okay Kat, go get the clotheslines up in the Bamps and the hill, have fun".

Anyways, it felt nice to be helpful (Amanda sent me a very nice text at the end when I was finished) and it was very nice that I got to do a _lot_ of dishwashing which is my absolute favourite job at camp 5ever. I don't mind opening cabins, and digging/carrying/general grounds nonsense is fine. But this particular work weekend I got to send...gods...Okay so like, there were 16 flats of just trays to go through the Hobart and that wasn't even half of what I did today. I probably pushed well over 200 flats through on Saturday? 300 maybe? I wish I had counted, because it was _wonderful_.

*and* I got to fill four fire bins, which is close to half the ones at camp, and is my other favourite job. I loved _so much_ two years ago when I got to do the camp safety audit and I briefly knew where literally every fire extinguisher was at camp. I also love running through and checking the AEDs, although I noted that they weren't up yet for this year.

So yeah, this was a very satisfying work weekend where I did a lot of things I liked, and made some good connections because of it. (I was working with this summer's dishwasher on Saturday and gave her plenty of random advice; this year's potwasher is totally new to camp and I think I left a good impression. And the head cook for the weekend is charming and I think I have successfully charmed them in return).

I really don't want to go back to the real world. LCFD in a couple weeks, which is good, but man, there is a _lot_ of grading between here and there.

~Sor
MOOP!

Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had

I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:

First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.

Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.

And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.

But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.

Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...

However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.

...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY¹" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth²". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old³.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.

2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P

3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!

I have a cold or allergies or something and it is making me cranky.

(I don't normally have allergies, but because I did so much cleaning on Saturday, I did stir up a fair chunk of dust. So like...maybe that's some of the problem? I did take a covid test Sunmorn, I should probably take another one in a day or two. Wastewater data is pretty low right now, so I'd be surprised if it was covid (I am still masking everywhere as per usual))

But yeah, my nose is either congested or runny, which is very annoying. Probably one of the solutions is to drink more water, sigh. My current main water bottle is full of flowers from the brunch last weekend. Which is very nice, but probably I should've gotten a vase in the first place.

Sidebar: I have seen the writing on the wall and begun writing on the new/current version of 750words, as the old version becomes increasingly deprecated and buggy. I hate it, so much, because interacting with things that are different is Wrong And Bad and also I am unthrilled with how excited Buster is about the concept of using AI as a cool assistant who will give you lovely reports about your writing. Honestly gross, if I want to go through my writing and see how things are different, I am perfectly happy to just literally do that. I do not need robots to tell me how to feel about the changes that have happened or to find the patterns that are occurring. Anyways, there's a nonzero chance I might abandon the site entirely and just start tracking my writing in .txt files on my laptop, which would be annoying in different ways.

Anyways, all this most recent complaint is because apparently the new site does not respond to ctrl-z. What, I say as heartily as I possibly can, the fuck. Like I know some of my crankiness is just your classic neurospice "things are different [and that's bad]" but I'm going to legitimately flag this as a Poor UX Choice.

At least he did make it so that you could type in plaintext instead of horrible automatic markdown bullshit that thinks it knows what you mean when you type *emphasis* _like this_ and quite probably thinks those two things are the _same fucking thing_ which I assure you they are *not*. Also, both of them are different from italicising or bolding, those are additional *different* forms of emphasis. The fastest way to make me stop using a website is to assume you know how I wanted to say the things I said.

(It's a fun game to take a chunk of text that has auto-formatted, like in Discord, and to attempt to put back in the proper emphatic markers. The best part is that I am frequently --I'd say between two-thirds and seventy-five percent-- correct if I later go through and edit in a way that shows me the original. No one else can probably tell the way my voice is supposed to be, but I usually can, and I like that fact about myself.)

Everything in the world is cranky because it is the end of the school year and I am burnt out, and I'm not actually a fan of this way of being. So how about this: There are these flowers that grow in big weird purple balls and they're extremely keen. Aliums, I think? Anyways, I've been seeing those pretty frequently out and about in the world and I like them quite a bit.

(it is a well established fact that I like things that are round, known also as "the strongest I've ever been fuckored". I also like flowers and bright colours! So these are very good. I will try and take a picture sometime soon.)

Okay, I am in the library for extra math help (and I have a kiddo! even if it's not my kiddos who I was expecting but some strange lovely kiddo from another class, that's still quite good!) and while I'm not actively helping kids, I am either going to play Balatro or try and work on the Endless Email Project. Wish me luck, it's been a while!

~Sor
MOOP!

Numbers are all meaningless. I'm a mathematician so you can trust me when I say there's nothing more significant or special about one-thousand over nine-hundred-ninety-nine. Or one-thousand-one. In the grand scheme of things, they're all "approximately that much". (in the grand scheme of things, every number you can name is in the same bucket. That's just peanuts to numbers, etc.)

So yeah. 1000. It is just a number and there is nothing special about it.

I'm a mathematician, so you can trust me when I say that there is something special and significant and glorious about every number. One thousand is the first of the four digit numbers! It's 8 in binary! It's 10^3! It's very nicely round appearing, with all the zeros, and it's pretty fun to say. "thousand" is a great number to throw in if you're exaggerating something or engaging in pleasant hyperbole.

It is the number of days, inclusive, since August 22nd, 2022. Meaning, if we call that particular date, arbitrarily chosen, "day 1" then today, May 17th, 2025, is day 1000.

***

I have been thinking a lot lately about secrets and privacy and the ways in which I talk around things when they're too big or complicated or different or weird for me to state outright.

This has been extremely relevant lately because several months ago the choir director at my school sent around an email to all-staff saying "hey, the students are going to do Vivaldi's Gloria as a masterwork, and I'd love to have some adults join in" which means I performed in my very first concert _ever_ on Thursday. As of 48 hours before the concert, I had told exactly the following people I was doing this: my mother. At therapy, I mentioned it fast-casual-offhand and it did become the entire focus of that session. Called mom and talked to her about it for over an hour more. Did manage to tell Austin about it that evening, which was hard, told Maia the next day, have started to vaguely mention it in general through the actual day of the concert. Why didn't I tell anyone in February when I started rehearsals? Because things that my brain decides as secrets are big and complicated and different and weird and I struggle to say things aloud about them sometimes.

Anyways, the concert went well! It was nice! There's no reason anyone can figure out why I didn't talk about it earlier (there are actually several, if anyone cares ping me and I'll make it a separate post). It's not like the other thing I haven't been talking a ton about, there's a _reason_ I'm not talking about that one, and it's fear of This Country. Remind me in late August if you want to know.

But yeah. This is apparently a thing in my heart and brain, that sometimes I decide to keep things secret, and then I am just fucking weird about them for no good reason.

***

The last day I missed writing 750words was August 21st, 2022. 1000 days ago.

It's just a number and it doesn't mean anything at all. It's just a number and it means everything.

~Sor
MOOP!