MOOP!

So yesterday I went to go see Furiosa [no spoilers in this entry], after mentioning in passing to work-bestie Clayton that I wanted to see it in theatres, and him going “oh yeah, me and Angela(wife) want to see it too, wanna go together on Friday?” I am powerless in the face of other people actually making plans for me for things I want to do, so I added jere7my to the order, and the four of us met up and had a jolly time.

Of course I dressed up. I wasn’t going to dress up all the way, I was planning to do just something funny to my hair, but then...the rest of it happened.



[image description: A selfie of a white person wearing glasses posing with their hand below their chin. They are wearing black lipstick and extremely messy and overdone black eyeshadow smearing across their face. Their hair is braided with several metal rings, and they are wearing a thicker metal ring as a necklace. Their top appears to be a combination of black binder, orange net scarf, and black bike tubes, while they are wearing several copper and green bracelets.]



[image description: A white person wearing glasses and posing in a doorway. They are wearing mad max inspired clothing in shades of brown and orange, with many belt pouches and extra scarves. They have black makeup smeared over their eyes, and a large metal ring as a necklace. Their hair is braided with many more rings and partly pinned up over their head. They have a leather jacket with many (currently unreadable) activist patches on it.]

And so I arrived slightly before jere7my and Clayton and Angela express delight over my outfit and I preen and say something like “yeah, I dressed up for Barbie too”¹. And honestly it’s...it’s kindof an interesting and fun thing about my life right now that I’ve seen two movies in theatres in the last year, and dressed up for both of them. Maybe I always dress up for movies now? Maybe if a movie is worth seeing, it’s worth seeing as absurdly and dramatically as possible?

It’s funny because my regular-type friends probably all know by now that I have a discerning eye for fashion and actually do think a lot about How Best To Look Cute, including doing things with my hair and my makeup and my earrings and what have you. I don’t dress up for bells _every_ week, but I definitely dress up some of the weeks, and if I’m going to other things that aren’t bells, I’m gonna think about what I want to wear.

But Clayton, despite being yes a regular-type-friend is also a work-friend and so the context he sees me in most often...isn’t that. He sees me in my work drag, binder and collared shirt and slacks with very little variance. It’s not that I don’t _like_ my work clothes –I have several hawaiin shirts I wear that I’m fond of, and sometimes I do vest and/or tie—it’s just that they’re not...me. They are not particularly fancy or wild or interesting.

And that’s sortof sad and sortof unfortunate and sortof weird and sortof nice? I mean, it’s certainly nice to have less thought required for getting dressed on work days, even if I don’t think of the clothing as “me”. But it’s interesting to have figured out that I do actually care quite a bit about style and looking good –I remain so proud of my Beantown Stomp outfit where I got compliments on literally every article I was wearing visibly- and then to spend so much of my life not actually in that space.

Which is why I just have to dress up extra hard the rest of the time. Because my body isn’t a temple, it’s a canvas and I am here to play.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Clayton gets points for immediately bouncing back with “like that?!” because yes very good, very funny.

Content Warnings: Bugs, snakes, animals killing each other

So last summer Pinewoods dance camp had to hire a new camp director. They landed on Chris, who had experience in the nonprofit world from working as director of a nearby nature center. During each session I was at camp, she gave a different little naturewalk among the camp itself --the kind of thing where you walk about 200 yards in an hour but have learned more than you ever thought possible about the different kinds of sedges and ferns and wildflowers and bushes and trees and bugs and moss along the way!

She offered up in the auction the chance for a small group to have a ~private nature walk~...during a time of year that wasn't actually camp! Get to see nature in a different season, also eat snacks in the beautiful woods. I confirmed that jere7my and Kendra would also find it interesting, and we _jumped_ on it! And now, eight months after camp, we have gone!

I brought Austin, and the two of them brought Kendra's work colleagues, and Elliot had arrived at camp for the season as Grounds-crew Chief, so Chris plus the seven of us went traipsing around a bit and looking mostly for bugs. Chris's favourite place to find bugs is by sludging up the floor of the ponds with nets and dumping the finds into a bowl of clear water, plus there was some more general poking around.

It was a very exciting bug adventure, with two *exceptional* highlights (and I'll try to upload photos of both later).

The first was when Chris was talking dragonfly and damselfly life cycles, and mentioning how as the transitioned to adult, they left behind exuviae, often clinging to sticks near the water (hard to see) or the edges of the dock just above the water line (much easier to see). Now, exuviae is near and dear to mine and Chris's hearts, since it's one of the ways we bonded last year --after camp was over I sent her some of the cicada exuviae I had collected from the Brood X emergence in May, and she return-posted some dragonfly and damselfly ones from Pinewoods! So it would've been pretty cool to find more.

And then I spotted one! It looked a little weird, but I chalked that up to being intimately familiar with cicadas and not nearly as much with other bugs. Until I reached to detach it and it shuddered and twitched its legs and I realized the exuviae was another inch higher and the thing I had found was the dragonfly currently emerging from it

Oh did we make merry. I now have photos of a new species emerging! In the ~20 minutes we were at that pond, it went from still-tail-in the shell to all the way out and wings wrinkled against its back. I was able to return when it was snacktime, a few hours later, and it was still there, wings stretched out and drying...and held perpendicular to the surface, like a damselfly would, instead of parallel like a dragonfly! Apparently it's the one time in their lifecycle they do that, waiting for the wings to fully dry so it can depart.

Between those photo ops, we were up on the path wandering towards the venal pool. Chris was explaining something exciting, but I had let my eye wander a wee bit...to catch the movement of something thrashing a bit. "I think that's a snake!" I said, as excited as I can possibly be (because let's be real, insects are only my favourite because they're easier to find). I never successfully spot snakes, always someone else sees them first and then I can go look too (and half those times I'm not fast enough to catch more than a disappearing tail), so this was a THRILLING moment.

This snake wasn't going anywhere. Because this wee lovely garter snake, head diameter about 1 inch, was currently latched onto some kind of local frog, stomach diameter about three inches. Brutal? Oh sure, but that's nature and that's life and it was SO COOL! I now have a pile of photos of the snake working on the frog --Austin and I wound up staying and watching for longer than everyone else, and we theorized that the snake would sorta...tenderize the body as it thrashed it around, until it would all fit into those famous unhinged jaws. Chris later confirmed that to be the case, adding that probably there would be some digestive acid to help break it down.

It was _so cool_. Alas not there later (although I did feel like a proper forensic detective, spotting one lonely little leaf among the litter with a bright red splash of frog blood on it) but I am incredibly satisfied to have gotten to see not just a snake, but one doing something really interesting!

And then there were snacks, and the drive home (always so much longer than _to_ camp) and Austin and I collapsing into naptime and shower and tick check. Now I've been sleeping and will sleep again. Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

Content Warning: bugs, snakes, animals killing each other

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Work:
*The usual!
*Honestly pretty triumphant for a Monday, without totally endless prepping or anything like that. Classes went well, flow of information good, yadda yadda.
*Green Club meeting was...small, but happened!

Body:
*Did a little bit of self-care and came home after school and rested real serious-like.
*Woke up for reals on second-alarm, which is pretty close
*Danced three dances, including a strathspey where I was really focusing on my footwork, which is always fun.
*Kept my wrist wrapped for much of the day, which helped(?) it? Wrapping in the ace bandage definitely didn't hurt anything!
*Obtained more meds from the pharmacy! Yayyyyy!

Social:
*Got to hang with jere7my and talk art and generally be silly together on the ride in to dance.
*At dance, spent some nice time sitting and chatting with Clara while she did some PT on her feet. Later we danced together, yay!
*Also got to dance with Neil McBadmotherfucker (as he is still designated in my phone), which is just..splendid! He hasn't shown up in a Right Age, and it's really lovely to see him around again.
*Lovely new guy from last week did not show up, but I did get to dance with a nice new guy this week who has reels down very very well and claims to have no other dance experience. His name is Ye, and I did not catch how he came to Scottish (mysTEERious)

Personal:
*Pushed through and did the emails
*Pushed through and am finishing words
*Came to an Important Conclusion regarding my future, and can now start moving forward with the rest of my life.

Wheee! Hope your Monday was nice and you are well rested for the week ahead!

~Sor
MOOP!

In a twist of "but I don't deserve this" and then getting glared at and being told that I am not allowed to victim blame and otherwise just being ridiculous and wonderful, jere7my has decided that he is organizing a fundraiser to see if people can get me a new bike.

In case you're too lazy to click on that link, here's his plan:

Insofar that having a bike that fits Kat and is in good shape is important, since it is her primary mode of transportation, and given that coming together to help victims of crime is one thing a community of friends is good for, with Kat's permission I would like to use her post to propose an "It's a Wonderful Bike" fundraiser.

Replacing Elanor would cost about $450; Kat says she could afford about $150 of that. I'd like to invite y'all to pledge to donate $10-$20, in hopes of raising the remaining $300. Rules like Kickstarter (Katstarter?):

1) If we don't get close, nobody pays anything. (If we get to within $50 or so, I will up my pledge, and make this my birthday present to her.)
2) If we exceed $300, everybody's pledge gets reduced proportionally. (I.e., every pledge will be multiplied by $300/$total. If we raise $400, everyone will pay their pledge x 300/400 = 75% of their pledge.)
3) Everyone who pledges gets an authentic drawing from Kat, possibly of Kat on a bike, or a dinosaur, or a dinosaur on a bike.
4) Comment here with your pledge, or email me (jere7my at gmail). I will post the total on Wednesday night. (If you want to be anonymous for any reason, let me know.)

I have no idea if this will work or not, but getting a bike stolen really sucks, especially when you can't afford to replace it. If you're so inclined, feel free to pass this on to other friends of Kat's. Thanks!

I think Wednesday night is possibly too soon, because eep, but um, there you have it.

This is...not a thing I know how to be gracious about, because I have this huge independence streak where asking people for money or gifts is tantamount to Failing Forever Ohnoes. But I've been trying to get better about accepting gifts in general, and I really do think it's sweet of jere7my to organize for me. So I will go eep, and say thank you, and if you want to do this for me, that would be lovely and awesome.

And absolutely I will draw pictures for people. Probably in crayon. Plausibly of _whatever you want me to draw_, but really, I am best at dinosaurs and vegetables. I'm pretty rubbish at drawing bicycles, but maybe this is my chance to learn or something.

Soyeah. Yay for Katstarters. And if you wanted an excuse, I *do* have a birthday coming up at the end of this month.

~Sor
MOOP!

This will be moved to Top-post in the near future, and remain there until the end of May. It was last updated on 2011-04-19 1028

WEEKLY
Monday: Internship from 0730-1430, SCD from 1930-2300
Tuesday: Internship from 0730-1430, Class from 1430-1800, possibly Diesel, Squares from 1930-2300
Wednesday: Internship from 0730-1430, Class from 1600-1830
Thursday: Internship from 0730-1430, Class from 1600-1830
Friday: Ind.Study from 1245-1400, Class from 1430-1600
Saturday: Off unless specified below
Sunday: Off unless specified below

"Private" is used to denote something that I have been invited to, but do not know if it is open-invitation, so you probably can't come with me.

"Mine, things" means that you can ask for further detail as to what exactly I'm up to that night, but I don't at all have to tell you.

JANUARY
27-28: Mine, things

FEBRUARY
03: Dinner at JoshZed's
06: Private party -- Empanadas, 2000-2300
07: Tentative date
10: Date!
18-20: No Such Convention¹ at Vassar
25: Mine, things
26: Private party -- Hot Foods

MARCH
4-6: Complicated spring break things possibly to include Veronica in Boston
7-10: Complicated spring break things possibly to include being in Maryland or Chicago
11-13: Complicated spring break things possibly to include Shan in Boston
17: Mine, things
18: Mine, things
18-20: Vericon
25: Spark in the Dark contra at the Masonic Temple across from Porter Square
26: Lesley stuffnthings
27: Goin' to the museum with jere7my

APRIL
1: Mine, things, bikes!
2: Private Party -- Dog's birthday!
8-10: Hanging with Matt, then Mine, things of varying sorts
13: Cupcake Camp: Excuse for cupcake makers to hang out in a building. Free to the public. Probably delicious!
15-17: NEFFA dance festival
20: Mine, things
21-26: Mine, things, Atlanta
29: Gotta give me that, oo, shlock treatment... (Shlock Therapy night at j7y's.)

MAY
7: Free Comic Book Day (wanna wander the city with me?), Highland Ball
8: Mine, things until mid-day, then might try to get to Steampunk City
13: Mine, things in the evening
14: MTEL --all day standardized test for teachers
16-20: Senior week during the day, Mine, things during the night. Also, packing.
21: Commencement? *crosses fingers and hopes*
27-30: Balticon

All is subject to change and update, I'm probably forgetting many important things, please feel free to remind me of them.

I'm gonna get a job, because I want a place to live, which is going to destroy the hell out of this schedule. But that's okay, we can live with that.

And did you know that "Veronica" and "Vericon" are _practically_ anagrams? Also, if I'm going to go to Vericon, I really must work on the appropriate cosplay. Sunshine, ho!

1: Dude, NonCon is _such_ a terrible name for it. But I've been wanting to go since, oh, 2005.

So this is technically fifteen minutes late. Sue me, it's not tomorrow until the sun rises or I sleep.

A week ago, I made a post being all "Half-Naked Thursday, whee!". It was meant to be a look at more metaphorical nakedness, stripping down the walls to show you what I've really got going on in my world.

At any rate, then I mentioned that I originally had two photos and was only showing one of them. This makes this weeks HNT really really easy for me to manage --next week, I will have to actually look around to find a bit of myself to reveal, if indeed, I continue on with this trend.

But yes. Have a picture of me being naked. Odd, in that it's also not a picture of me at all.

Happy Thursday.



This second is a little more new, a little more raw. It's the ceiling of my room, directly above my desk.

A week or two ago, I was having a rough night. In talking with Rackle, she brought up the term "Index card days", where you're just so socially frustrated and out of cope that you have to communicate through tiny 3" by 5" cards.

I have a pile in my desk drawer. Out they came that day, and it seemed the most logical thing in the world to write some song lyrics across them. Lyrics from strength-songs, where the lyrics don't necessarily matter in the slightest, but the message of being strong is crucial to my well being. "Go Away Godboy" is the song I use the most for this --I've never really had problems with people trying to convert me or mine, but howling along with the words can stabilize my mood like nothing else.

Because the words are meant to say "fuck you, I'm stronger than that", and on days when I am weak and helpless, I really need that.

And I forced myself out of the sobbing¹ to write more of them, because if I am actively writing, I am forcing distraction, and that little edge of distraction is all I need sometimes to stabilize. All of them have wound up there, tucked into the framework of the drop ceiling. I've got ten of them now, apparently. I'm sure that, as I enter this mood, and need the music and lyrics, I'll think of more.

So that's my current vulnerability. Come visit, I'll let you read them if you'd like.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Which itself was after that pervasive emptiness, and broken by my reaching out. I don't like playing shitty girl games, and I hate being cryptic, but that doesn't mean I manage to make all my words to people transparent. There are people who can read between the letters and the lines, through the /me and the carefully arranged punctuation and capitalization, and figure out what I'm actually trying to say over IM, that I just can't, because the words just won't come.

...and because there isn't an elegant way to put what I'd be doing in reality into words. It's that vulnerable look when I arrive on your doorstep, and ask for a hug, and pull myself into you, a double fistful of your shirt as I hide inside your arms, and pour myself out onto your shoulder. It's past want, straight into need, and I don't have a lot of people I've done it to, or *could* do it to (two? maybe three?) and I'm about to lose one of them, but I don't care, because sometimes there's safety there, and that's what I need more than anything else, that memory of safety. ((ETA: Holy run-on sentences, Batman! But this is kinda what my brain starts doing when I am in a vulnerable state))

It's an index card with eight words on it. It's an IM with eleven. It's being held, and being *held* and being held. It's the stairwells at Springstep, and just out the door at NEFFA. It's the long process of reducing the scarred and improving the weird. It's crying in June with the door shut, it's crying in July curled in the arms of someone I can't have, it's crying in August to a boy I barely know, it's crying-sobbing-breaking in January as I watch Next to Normal and try to separate their pain from mine, and try to find the strength I need to say the words I can't, I couldn't, I did.

It's the response I need, when I need it. It's breaking the emptiness with a *kiss*, and breaking the sobs with an *embrace*. It's *comfort*, from everyone who's ever given it.

And it's s00j and Dar and Vienna and Amanda and Alice.

If you can figure out a quicker way to tell people I need "that" than all the above, I'd love to hear it.

Today is Wednesday.

Tonight is Wednesday night. My nefarious plans for tonight involve visiting jere7my and getting one last round of bad movies in before I go home for the summer.

Tomorrow is Thursday. I will spend the day doing things, at least one of which I hope to be studying for my Italian final. I will spend the night doing contra over at the Concord Scout House --come say goodbye!

The day after that is Friday. I have a final from ten to noon, and then will hopefully spend much of the rest of the day packing.

Saturday, no finals, more packing. Saturday afternoon and evening I am going over to the Belmhouse to babysit and hang out. Eventually I will detangle from there, go back on campus, and collect all members of the Lesley University Chaos Club who want to go see Rocky Horror.

Get home at late o clock, go sleep somewhere. Sunday morning, collect people to go get "breakfast" (ideally at noon or one) at Mr. Crepes. Steal Ria and/or Maddie on secret missions that I may or may not have alluded to last post.

After secret mission, study for maths. Pack more.

Monday, take maths final. Pack. Pack a lot. Pack like an *absolutely* crazy person, and as stressedly as I can possibly manage. Hopefully finish packing before it's time for dance.

Monday night, go dancing at Springstep for the last time for four months. Try not to think about it too hard, as it might make me cry. Dance with dance-Andrea, since I promised her a dance, dance with...other people. Get in a Last Waltz¹ with Magus that'll have to last me most of a summer. Hopefully stop being such a gloomcookie all the time.

Tuesday morning, go to my Teacherfinal, which consists of "showing up". (Or, you know, have flu like symptoms and stay home in order to better achieve the rest of the day.) Say goodbye to Evan, and school-Andrea and Erin and whoever else is around. Go back to Dock 18, say goodbye to the roomies. Cry, because, well, it's *me*.

Give mom a hug and toss things into Catbus². Stop by Belmhouse, thank them roughly a million times for letting me leave things there over the summer. Drive to Maryland.

Arrive in Maryland. Give Shan a noogie and Alys a hug. Curl up in my own bed, in my own room, with a door that closes. Try very very hard not to think about how long four months is, really.

Wednesday.

Visit Veronica. See if I still have a job. Be back in Maryland.

Sigh.

((And I mean there's good in there -Balticon, Tho, Origins, Day Camp, visiting mek, Otakon, Oella --not to mention all the Maryland people I love and adore. But seriously. Sigh.))

~Sor
MOOP!

1: There's symbolism to the Last Waltz, youknow? No, not always or anything, but your traditional Last Waltz, you do it with your sweetie (well, one of them. We're ignoring the polydrama for the purposes of this). Out of all of dancing, that's the one that really matters --a good partner, and the world becomes Just Right.

I wonder who my final waltz was with at NEFFA last year. I know for this year, and while I had a last waltz at Dance Flurry, the role of the Last Waltz was filled by the Penultimate Waltz.

Andumyeah. Stuff. LOOK A DISTRACTION, BYE!

2: Mom's van. Galileo was the old one, and we haven't changed plates, but the minivan I do most of my driving in is called Catbus.

So, a proper report of the last few weeks!

On the fourteenth, I got my drivers license, because I am rad.

On the fifteenth, I flew Home and went to ( Arisia )

Nineteenth was Monday of Arisia. While packing, I think to check the internet, find out what time I can move into my dorm. I mean, last year I could doso just post Arisia, it seemed sensible to expect the same out of this year.

...heh.

"Hey mom? It says I can move in at noon. On the twenty-fifth."

Luckily, I had a handy dandy Magus who I could beg into giving me crash space for a week, so I did that.

Twentieth through the twenty fourth, I hung out with Magus, caught almost all the way up on Doctor Who (just need to watch the Christmas Special!), had a grand old time of things, and did a few other things, like harassing j7y more (it is a hobby! Also, we watched Mighty Boosh!!) and babysitting. And maybe I had a teeny tiny breakdown somewhere in the middle of All That, and had to spend a little bit of time righting my brain.

Twenty third was Friday of ( Vericon )

The twenty-fifth I skipped Vericon completely, moved in eventually, hugged my roommates, and got dragged to a lesbians house to watch a movie called "Wristcutters: A love story". I kinda want to write fanfic about that setting, though I think I'm not emo enough. Good movie though, very light and fun and reasonably fluffy. And romantic, of course.

The twenty sixth was today, and I'll report on all my classes once I've had the other two. Can I just say EEEE, CALCULUS! though?

And now food and dance. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!


1: Conner? Connor? *shrugs*

So, dear internet:

I have a cold. A really phenomonally bad one. This makes me a Sad Kat, especially because it's totally kicking my ass. Fucking cold.

On the plus side, free MST3K w/jere7my tomorrow at Harvard. So that's cool.

ATANYRATE, I am letting Emily use my computer so I can't so I therefore actually get some work done on this packing thing. Go me, and go her. Should I randomly turn Adium on so that you lot can talk to her?

~Sor
MOOP!

Things from today:
Itty-bitty scene kids
Totoro's!
The world is full of suck
I gave blood!!!
Bethity Beth is awesome
Across the Universe -- "we got bored of the plot, so we're now going to smoke a lot of pot and script the next half hour --whatever we write, we keep!"

Things to do tomorrow:
Shower
Eat something
SHOW
Go to Jere7my's still-unnamed house
???
Profit!

Other things on my mind
The song 'S****!¹ said Dance'
How much rape sucks
I really hate hormone cycles. I also hate learning how they work
NTS: Kill WookieNick for dragging me on stage during bows.
I need to start using Hiveminder better. Also, iCal.
Is anyone interested in me posting my grand list of all the status messages I've put up on Adium in the last five weeks?

~Sor
MOOP!


1: (Everyone got your dice ready?) S****! is my spelling of Satan. Because if you only imply it, it doesn't count. Also, it took me ten rolls.²

2: Dude, I don't even know how to explain it. It's a gamer thing that peaked with Origins '04. You were either there and annoyed with me for bringing it up, or you weren't and are confused.