Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I did not expect that being lucky enough to have stable housing in my 40s would mean that I would spend it helping other fortysomething neurospicy queers get out of marriages gone bad.

We have me the failed foster (successful adoption! angelofthenorth always insisted on correcting me when I call myself this, heh), then P, now her.

It's ridiculously heartwarming seeing them both flourish and become more comfortable and themselves. (I imagine I must have too, but I can't see that and I have the complication of transition too old photos of me now look weird for the same reason old photos of my dad do: no beard!).)

My counselor always starts with asking me how my week has been, since we last talked.

On every level, it has been A Lot.

But it was actually really good to talk about it all: on the macro level of course Minneapolis, my friends there and seeing fascism happen in places familiar to me, and then on the micro level angelofthenorth moving out, and just seeing her thriving after six months in our goofy lovely home.

I can't fix everything but I'm so glad to have the personal security needed to donate to mutual aid, to drag someone else out of a situation so similar to the one I needed saving from five years ago.

So I'm 4000 miles away, working for a British organization full of British people.

It was really nice that at my team meeting this morning when me and someone else were first to arrive he brought up very gently how I must be feeling devastated and horrified. I thanked him, said I was trying to be supportive to my Minneapolis friends. As the team joined the meeting, everyone joined in with fierce kindness. There is support and kindness and black humor and solidarity, in so many places.

It made me feel really good.

I feel so powerless of course but I'm doing what I can, here's a couple links whwre people can donate to help communities affected by and resisting ICE:

Pay rent and buy groceries for the families of preschoolers whose relatives have been kidnapped or cannot leave the house to work or buy groceries.

ICE observers in the Twin Cities are in need of dash cams to prevent further intimidation and frivolous claims.

Also... While the GoFundMe to support Renée Good's family raised $1.5 million, a GoFundMe for the family of Keith Porter, Jr., a Black man shot by an ICE agent a week earlier, didn't meet its $35,000 goal until yesterday. A still-modest goal has been set; it's really important to support Black men as well as we do white women.

This afternoon, while I was hiding from work and feeling sorry for myself because of a worsening headache, angelofthenorth asked me "So how was The Moonwalkers?"

I then talked for like fifteen minutes without stopping.

Oops.

I figured she'd have read D's entry about this from last night -- she's good like that -- so ( I started with the accessibility stuff: )

But this wasn't a huge problem, I was busy being excited about space.

"For 45 minutes I forgot about the world's problems," D said. I love that!

I...did not.

One of the Artemis II astronauts who was interviewed for this movie said something about Apollo being "ahead of its time" and immediately I was grumpily thinking no it's not! we're behind ours! JFK referencing the Wright Brothers made me ponder that it was about sixty years from them to the moonwalks, and it's been another sixty years since! What do we have to show for ourselves? (Lots of other things, I know, but no one's even left Earth orbit! Yes the ISS is cool but it's reaching the end of its lifetime, and it's still Soyuz ferrying people to and from! The splashdowns look beautiful and poetic at the end of a movie like this but where are our goddam spaceplanes?!)

Basically, everything I have to say about that I said in 2011 when the only thing more modern than Soyuz ceased operation and in 2012 when Neil Armstrong died.

But since I couldn't just link angelofthenorth to things in a real-life conversation, I had to attempt to re-create those thoughts and everything that links into them: my waning interest in "space" as the 2010s went on and SpaceX got increasingly dull (to me, I am not a rocket man) and -- even before it became so tainted by its association with Elon Musk -- depressing as a symbol of yet another thing being left to private whims which I believe is a public good. The only thing about these old entries that I wince to read tonight is my optimism and naïveté, but while I'm sad for my younger self I'm not ashamed of having those things.

Anyway. Like I said I probably talked for fifteen entire minutes without a break. I wasn't even self-conscious about it, until the end.

Luckily (?) angelofthenorth said it was cute, and endearing.

When we were in John Lewis the other day, angelofthenorth bought a bag fancy vanilla coffee... that she turns out to not enjoy, which is sad!

I do like it and I'm the only other coffee drinker in the house. So for the last week or so -- including today which is my first day back at work since the eighteenth of goddam December -- there has been a cafetiere of delicious hot coffee waiting for me.

Aww.

She's moving in to her own place this weekend, which is so exciting, but I'm gonna miss her!

It's been a rough day.

( Just rough when geopolitical and systemic stuff is bad but also I'm exhausted and my tummy hurts. )

It wasn't all bad; here's three good things:

1. angelofthenorth asked me how I feel about road trips and I love road trips and I'm excited to help her collect her stuff for her new flat next weekend.

2. D got his laptop working again, better than it was before! And we used it to do an online grocery order, it's nice to have that done.

3. Teddy got to visit our house! As we set off on our walk we went past our house, and he came right up to the door -- just like he did yesterday but unlike yesterday there were no children the size of him in our house so we could let him in. It was very fun watching him investigate -- he briefly tried to nibble a candle but V dissuaded him from eating the beeswax. He seemed to like our house and its people.

Today I got to visit a dear friend I hadn't really spoken to in six months. A lot has happened, to both of us. It was great to catch up, but also exhausting, to try to take all that in and explain what's been kind of a slog of a time at work particularly.

I left just in time to walk Teddy...or so I thought. D kindly came to pick me up because I'd lost track of time a bit and it was getting a little late. But when we got to his house, it was quiet and there was no answer. Turns out it was a misunderstanding and they were there, but maybe it wasn't so bad that I didn't have to spend half an hour being dragged around by a labradoodle.

I made dinner, just pasta and sauce but I was glad to use up some of the vegetables that need using. Weird to do it myself, without D, but I'm glad I could give him a break on a rough day.

Then, because a transgym person is coming around tomorrow to pick up the weight bench I inherited from another Misfit and don't use any more -- it was incredibly useful while I was still actively recovering from my broken ankle, but now I can walk to the gym and that gives me a lot more and better options. I'm so excited to have some space back in the room where I work (even if it's also taken up with protest paraphernalia for now, the trestle table, tea urn and related supplies we take with us).

The minute, the very minute, I flipped down on the couch after I finished wrestling with wrenches, contemplating a beer, I got an email from my mom saying they were ready to talk. I hadn't been expecting to hear from them today and still don't know if I forgot her saying they'd call on New Year's Day or if she forgot to tell me, but it worked out. I had a surprisingly pleasant and coherent conversation with them.

And then I had a beer.

And now it's bed time.

I had a fun afternoon going in to town with angelofthenorth, who wanted to visit an art gallery and a catering supply store. It's so wonderful to watch her get excited about having her own place. At a contemplative time of year anyway, and around the five-year mark of my unfortunately-timed ending my own marriage, our lives continue to parallel each other in so many ways. She is her own person of course but I can't help but think of my own story at times like this, and it makes me very grateful for what has improved for me in the last five years, even as the wider world has left so much to be desired.

Akso I bought a much-needed can opener for our house too, and if I can join her on her sojourn to John Lewis to look at kitchen knives, I might well end up getting us a set too.

Tomorrow the plan is either to go to Buxton and have fun or to go to the Trafford Centre (big mall, probably the most USian-feeling place I've encountered here) for John Lewis (which is a department store).

I've had a week and a day off and I have slept so much!!

Despite last night itself not being great for sleep, I am starting to wonder if I have actually caught up on sleep.

Because a strange feeling has overcome me this evening and I think it's...boredom? I am used to keeping myself busy after dinner doing chores, reading, or just trying not to go to sleep until bedtime.

But now I've done enough stuff for the day -- went to the gym with angelofthenorth, had a shower, fetched the now-empty recycling bin and put it back where it belongs, walked Teddy, put groceries away when they arrived -- and I'm not that tired.

Is...is this when people do hobbies??

My alarm went off this morning (only at ten, but I needed it) to make sure I was up in time to walk Teddy before his humans were away for their Christmas lunch.

I thought I was the first person to make it downatairs this morning but while I was just getting to the bottom of the stairs I was already greeted by angelofthenorth already in her usual comfy chair saying "Merry Christmas! Do you want some bucks fizz?" (Which is basically a pre-made mimosa. Luckily I'd been reminded of this recently by being offered it after the ceremony at the wedding we were at a few weeks ago; I'd been able to ask D then to remind me what it is.)

It's a lovely Christmas morning: chilly but not cold, usually pretty sunny, and dry.

It had been a week or so since Teddy and I had seen each other so we were both very excited to do so again.

On our walk, we saw a young probably-dad-type person heading to the recycling bin in front of his house with an armful of cardboard, the boxes already broken down. We grinned a greeting at each other.

A few houses down, a woman in pajamas and a big scarf was just trying to nip out to her car in front of the house, but since Teddy wants to say hello to everyone (human or dog) and assumes every human wants to pet him, so I couldn't drag him past her before she gave in and ruffled his ears and said "Merry Christmas" to me.

As we were leaving the park, I noticed we'd just been joined by two kids with the kind of lightsabers that make the noise when you hit them against each other, and a little scotty dog that I know is called Biscuit because they were getting told off/called over when they were ignoring the humans to say hello to Teddy.

I got home, opening the door to the lovely smells of angelofthenorth already well into the process of cooking our amazing Christmas dinner.