MOOP!

Today was a very good day spent with my girlfriend!

Okay yeah, fine, I also went to work and stuff. That part was boring, whatever. But then I left work right as soon as I was allowed to (this almost never happens, usually I am hanging out and kinda working for hours after last-bell) and read my book on the bus home, and came home to my Tuesday-love!

(sidebar: it has taken quite a lot of time and the weather actually getting somewhat better, but I have finally figured out that while biking is _faster_, the advantages of walking/taking the bus *far* outweigh it, specifically that I can ~do things~ while on my transit instead of just suffering on The Worst Road In The Entire City (which is basically my entire commute))

I have been reading my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and I have _finally_ made it to a Harriet Vane one --Strong Poison, not Gaudy Nights, no spoilers please, also this one is _so good_. I kept reading bits of the descriptions of artists aloud to Ezri and Tuesday and generally reveling in the prose *so much*. It is delicious! Some of these mysteries I've felt rather indifferent to, like I never need to bother reading again, but others are *quite* of the variety of "yes please, do re-consume" and unless Sayers flubs the landing, this will be _solidly_ in the second category.

Anyways, I did quite a bunch of further reading once I was home, only instead of a bus with dubious students scattered about, this was on a comfy couch pulled up alongside my ladylove while she played the new Zelda game. Heaven! Parallel play at its absolute finest, reading a book but also snuggling? So good!!!

Eventually, Ezri and Rey got very busy with An Elaborate Dinner Plan, which sucked Tuesday in to help. I know better than to try and hang out in the busy kitchen (I will get massive-stressed and then I will snap at people like an ass) so I stayed out of the way¹. Dinner was...pad thai!!! Homemade and _utterly_ delicious, thank you Ezri! And there was mango lassi for dessert (thank you Tuesday!). We all ate until we were round and merry, and that was delightful.

Near the end of it all, somehow Tuesday and I got to talking about the game Blink, which she'd also played at some point in the past. I pulled out my deck and solidly trounced her five rounds in a row² (sorry babe). As we were putting it away, she glanced at the game shelf and asked "what's One Deck Galaxy?".

I managed to entirely not answer her question by instead whipping out my unopened copy of One Deck Dungeon, pausing long enough to show her my name in the playtest credits, and then we sat down and played a really satisfying game of ODD! Sure it was just the dragon, but we beat it together, despite me rolling almost entirely shit the entire game! It was really fun to get to do this little cooperative dungeon crawl together.

Now it is approaching bedtime. I get to come in late tomorrow (I arranged it with my boss since first block is the rotating x-block but it's on the rotation I don't have a class, and then second block is just...not a class I ever have) so I'm quite looking forward to having a slightly later-than-usual wakeup time and the opportunity for bonus cuddles with my girl.

I hope you are well and happy and have people in your life who make you happy!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: In an effort to make myself sound slightly less assholish, I did all the dishes afterwards. It is to everyone's benefit for me to not cook though, it's not fun for me, and it's frequently even less fun when someone else is in charge.

2: I'm good at speed games, and explicitly, I'm good at the _speed_ part of speed games. There are definitely people who can match-or-beat me at Blink (Veronica first among them), but I must be solidly 90th or 95th percentile on it.

Having joined Habitica again, I'm not using it very well. Something about it being the ~weekend~ and therefore not having to do things as much or something. Hopefully I will get my ass together and do better again tomorrow?

(I feel like maybe I am starting to slide out of a mild hell zone? This is interesting, but not unsurprising, that I seem to be able to recognize the Hell Zone more accurately when I am leaving it rather than entering. But maybe a good sign always is whether or not I've got the self discipline to sleep in a real bed, vs falling asleep on the couch for a while before going to bed.)

((There is definitely a somewhat different feel to the household on weekends, if only because suddenly Ezri's not working. It changes the overall house culture, yanno? Like, if I'm not doing work but they are, there's some degree of...guilt or accountability or something like that. (sidebar to Ezri: This is in no way meant to be judgemental or guilt-inducing, please enjoy your weekends!)))

***

Yesterday I fainted for the first time in my adult life. Extremely likely that it was lack of food/very low blood pressure/the usual low iron but worse. I actually hit the ground though (which meant I got to have a very charming conversation with Ezri where I went into the living room and was all "um...did you...hear a thump a moment ago?" and Ez saying that they had indeed, and had called "are you okay" and gotten no answer, but then heard me stirring so did not go investigate.)

Obviously I did some self-care immediately afterwards, mostly of the "drink a lot of water, eat anything, eat salt, eat fatty dairy full of protein" in that order. I did not faint again, or even grey out yesterday.

I have been greying out more than usual during these trying pandemic times. Just...stand up, get a rush and a little bit of weird in the head. This is what caused me to actually collapse to the ground --I have been enjoying the incredibly weird and unique moment of my brain sliding sideways into nothing and my head feeling pressured that comes with greying out. Normally if I just stand still, it passes. This time it did not and I got to experience the incredible confusion of waking up on my bedroom floor and having to piece together what on earth I was doing there.

(Yes, I recognize that grey-outs are a bad sign, probably of super low blood pressure, and when I've been experiencing them, I've been taking them as the alert they are and trying to minimize them. I have not been encouraging this, but I have been enjoying it when it happens, because bodies are weird and fascinating).

In case it's not very clear, I think this was an incredibly neat experience. I mean, no, it was not good that I hit my head on the floor (I spent the rest of the day watching for concussion, and everything was fine until I was lying in bed 14 hours later at which point my brain helpfully suggested that you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion, probably because you will die. I did not die.) But the rest of it! The rest of it was a keen thing my body has never done before!

At any rate, now I know what that feels like, and maybe I will be smart enough, the next time the world starts greying, to at least sit down immediately instead of trying to ride it out. Or better yet, drinking a lot more water to head the whole thing off at the pass.

...but probably I am not going to be able to answer in the affirmative to the MGH plea of "we desperately need blood donations" for at least another week or two.

***

Tomorrow I need to do more of the Endless Paper Sorting And Filing project. It is getting better, gradually. I went to four boxen on the floor to two, and now I've gone from three chock-full filing cabinet drawers to two-and-a-half. There are at least two specific projects that I am too shamed to mention explicitly, but need to get done as part of All This. Also at some point I'm gonna wind up doing a very hard culling of a LOT of old art. Or I won't, fuck it, who cares.

I also need to finish up the grading for seniors --last day was on Friday. Everything feels unreal, of course, but there will be some small celebrations in the coming days. I don't have a car, so I can't even go sit secluded during their "one student at a time in very proscribed times" graduation ceremony to happen in a few weeks. I am a little sad about that, and will miss them all dreadfully.

This is all quite hard, and you are quite wonderful for surviving it so far. I love you, and hope that continues.

~Sor
MOOP!

Spent close to an hour getting my AnimalCrossing house _really_ in order, and now it is way past my bedtime, but I do feel oddly like that was a productive work which made me happy. Also my house is _fucking baller_ honestly! I have all six rooms done up to some extent or another and there are books scattered everywhere and insecty things, and I made an actual kitchen, and my bedroom has a double-long bathtub because why the fuck not, and there's a playroom and the *fantastic* rave room downstairs (which looks so great with the lights and I desperately need to get every other colour of them!)

Also jesus, my classroom upstairs just makes me so overwhelmingly happy every time I look at it. I don't know how I'm possibly gonna cram more bookshelves in there once I need to put up more insect models!

And I've now put my chemistry set into what once was the insect room, and that room is just dirt and fire and chemistry and a small handful of bugs and I *really* like it!

Also, now nearly every room has good time walling and flooring going on! I'm gonna keep buying more of them (slightly addictive) but I am so pleased with *that* aspect of it all as well!

Yeah, I'm happy. It was a good day today!

***

Other things that were good:

*Finished all my lessons for the week, even though I didn't wanna. Must do a lot of grading this week to catch up, Ought to reach out to damn near all my students as well, just to try and check in before said grading.

*Had *seven* separate meetings today, jesus shit. Calculus (one student), Algebra (one student), NEST (the English-learner teacher team), Self-Care Meeting (with NEST), therapy (one therapist, one very rambly patient), Office Hours (one student), Secret SCDthing Planning Meeting. I was on zoom/gmeet for six fucking hours today, and that is too many. At least Tuesday is usually my worstday for this, and next week should be oh yeah...differently bad, since I've got queermeeting next Tuesday for like two hours between NEST and office hours. Sigh.

*Ezri fed me good foods and also I washed some dishes at some point, which is A Good.

*At therapy, Jenn and I worked out a potential strategy thing to help me with the instinct to play dumb phone games all the time. We will see if it works!

*Secret SCDthing Planning meeting went _much_ better than it could've and I am really excited and also I feel really good about having had an idea and having had time to work on the idea with other people and make the idea much better. Dear self: Other people are useful and helpful and you do not have to do everything alone. The "dumbass" at the end of that sentence is heavily implied.

Okay, I love you, bye bye!

~Sor
MOOP!