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

About a month ago I went to Bournemouth with D for a trip related to his work. The day and a half (after a weekend of touristing and seeing his convalescing mum) went well for him and I had fun working remotely from a different place.

D's work event has a second part coming up next week, this time lasting all of the work week. He was hoping he wouldn't have to be there in-person this time, but we found out yesterday I think that he'll be there for two and a half work days this time.

MB is having enough of a flare or symptom exacerbation or whatever that I didn't think I could go with him this time; it would be too much to leave her with Gary in the state she's in. I'm a little sad, I could sure do with a change of scenery, but I was okay about it.

This afternoon, MB suggested that she go along. So I'm pretty sure that's what's happening now! They'll leave on Monday already. It'll be a little adventure for me and Gary.

I'm so glad it's not just me getting the time away lately. The two of them went to York in February and now this.

Plus D will get go confuse his co-workers by bringing a different partner than last time. He has explicitly told them repeatedly about both of us, but they've maybe heard more anecdotes that involve me (chronic energy-limiting conditions and pain conditions means a person gets to turn up in so many fewer anecdotes, seriously it's so fucking boring by all accounts) and of course a couple of them met me a month ago. That's enough for monogamous people to forget you aren't monogamous. Same thing has happened at my work: when I told my manager that D and I were going to Brussels, the first thing he said was "Who's going to look after Gary?"

I offered to pick up a Mother's Day card for diffrentcolours to send to his mum, and really wanted to buy one that was mostly blank on the front, with a colorful border that includes "our amazing family" at the top. Inside were two pages of stickers with different hairstyles, clothes, eyes and mouths. You were supposed to choose the ones to represent the family and stuck them on the front, paper-doll style.

It was clearly meant to be from small children (like another I saw that had little blanks to fill for stuff like "things my mum tells me," "reasons I love my mum" and space to draw a picture of her; what fun keepsakes those could be), I know. But I just thought it'd be extra good because our particular amazing family is three people. (And Gary. We'd have to draw him in too.)

So many of the cards said "from both of us" which is polyamory erasure! (I teased D that if I got one of those, would just sign it from him and Gary anyway.) Some were even specific about who "the both of us" is: there was "from your daughter and son-in-law" and "from your son and daughter-in-law." But no "from your son and his boyfriend" or "from your son and his non-binary partner". Much less "from the polycule and their dog."

It's just interesting to see who and what is represented in a culture like greeting cards. And who and what isn't.

The dishwasher repair person turned up this afternoon (in the two-hour window we expected him and everything!) mother_bones explained the problem to him and then went upstairs. diffrentcolours and I kept the sad, whiny Gary contained behind the closed living room door.

So when the guy was done, I was the person who went to get the debrief. But the first thing he said, he had to repeat about three times before I understood it.

It was "where's your mum?"

I couldn't understand his accent at first. The next time I still couldn't figure out what he was asking. I don't have a mum, I have a mom! (This is important to me.) She's 4000 miles away! I don't see how she comes into this! She doesn't even know the dishwasher is broken.

It took me ages to realize he was talking about mother_bones. He had to say "You weren't the lady I was talking to before!" before I figured it out. And this despite it not being the first time I (or D) have been mistaken for mother_bones's children: one of the cleaners also referred to her as my mum, and this story is one I always treasure. (I never did find out what that lady's name is! She hasn't been back this season.)

People don't know what to do with a household of three adults, things like this happen on a relatively regular basis. But since we don't encounter strangers that much, because pandemic, I forget how weird we can seem.

I'm so tired. What's today's question?

6. If you have a partner, have you ever had to sleep in separate beds?

Ha! Well I wouldn't say I "have" to but I certainly don't expect to every night when diffrentcolours's other partner also lives here. We have a sort of rota. Tonight I'll be sleeping on my own! Usually I get the weekends but I won't this time, he'll be away.

I'm not very good at sleeping on my own; I'm really not used to it. Andrew used to hate me being away overnight or even just wanting to sleep in the spare room when my mental or physical health was particularly bad. I chafed at that a lot but I guess I got used to always having a warm body there. If my mental health is bad now, I struggle to fall asleep more if I'm on my own. I think I need that ADHD body-doubling thing for sleep, heh. I just need to be around someone who's doing it and then I can do it easier.

I saw some kind of reference, yesterday or the day before, that seems to go back to this tweet:

we’re like 2 weeks out from academics writing “queering the quarantine: towards radical forms of queer isolation”

But it didn't take that long. This morning I told Mastodon that if someone hadn't yet written the "self-isolation when you're polyamorous" one yet, I was going to do it my damn self.

I ended up making a little thread instead. I said I'm used to missing someone I love even when I'm with someone I love. But all this talk of staying "home" when my home isn't just this place, because it doesn't have all the right people in it... It's one reason my mental health is suffering so, so much right now. Sometimes home's not as simple as "where the mail addressed to you arrives."

And "family." Self-isolation advice limits your activities to things you are sharing with your family. I know that while family-of-choice means a lot, a lot, to me there are limits to it. My family-of-origin don't even know I have another kind of family, for one thing. And I guess this is one of the limits: people who live in different houses now are supposed to be different families.

I cannot tell you how relieved I was last night to read liv say she intends to keep seeing her partners who live a short walk away and have intermingled lives, thus likely similar infection status. This is exactly my own thinking...but I'm taking self-isolation so seriously, and my anxiety is so deeply rooted now, that I feel like I'm confessing a murder if I say I intend to see my boyfriend in the next three months. Seeing someone else say so was a big deal. I felt transgressive, and that gave me permission to.

And I've learned to expect that anything transgressive is probably queer somehow. I felt like a kid, someone in the closet, someone just starting a new relationship where things like touching hands is such a big deal.

So fuck yes I'll queer the quarantine.

I've learned that being an edge case you can't find advice for is queer. I've learned that negotiating safety and boundaries doesn't need to be but often is pretty queer. I've learned taht crowd-sourcing mental health when the mainstream providers have nothing for you can be queer.

Because everyone in both households is self-isolating, as long as all of us are healthy, I'm gonna wash my hands and leave the house and not touch anything and get there and wash my hands again and then I'm gonna hold hands with my boyfriend and it's gonna be so fucking queer.

I still braced myself for awfulness, but the replies were very kind. I think my friends were gently trying to tell me that I was maybe oerreacting, but my anxiety has kicked me into territory like "if you see anyone and anything bad happens ever it is your own personal fault, end of." And it's very difficult to separate what I recognize as feeling like anxiety-overreaction from the we-need-to-mitigate-genuine-risks situation we find ourselves in right now, because both sound so drastic! Those two things have been so hard for me to balance.

Anyway, as I was working on this thread diffrentcolours asked me if I wanted to come over when he was done with work and watch Picard and you know what? I really did want that.

So I did, and it was fucking great. A pretty normal evening all things considered? Because we actually do this kind of thing a fair bit: I helped make dinner, we watched TV, we even had a beer each, the ones we bought in York on our long-ago weekend -- his was rhubarb custard milkshake flavored, if you can believe that, but mine was really nice! a chocolate stout -- and I got to rest my head on his shoulder and smell his skin and I came home feeling so much better.

Tonight's bi social was its usual mix of very silly things -- must waffles be sweet or can they be savory? why does everyone use the specific word "terrifying" to describe that drawing of a lion? -- and actual serious conversation about the kind of stuff that brings us together. Specifically today I ended up talking to someone about coming out, as poly. It's a new thing for him and he's a little taken aback by how and whether to stop saying he's just seeing "a friend" when colleagues ask how his weekend was or whatever. He's very used to being out as bi and trans, and just seemed a bit weary of another thing. I can kind of commiserate; it's how I'm feeling about gender? I've already got two Things -- "things other people don't have to think about," he called them -- I don't need a third!

I think it's one reason I never talk about the gender thing. Not much to say though: I don't really have anything to "out" myself with, gender-wise; I haven't changed my pronouns or my name, I'm not transitioning to anything. Still, a friend asked the other day if I wanted to volunteer for something that was looking for a blind "female identifying" person and I had to say I'm not female identifying and then I just felt shitty about that for a while.

Tonight I went to a polyamory workshop. We broke into two groups to answer questions like "what are good things about being poly?" and "how did you start being poly?"

My group made two lists: both pros and cons of polyamory. For a while we were worried that the cons list was longer and someone teasingly said that we'd all have to give it up and go monogamous if we thought of more negatives. But eventually we had more positives so our relationships are safe, yay.

One person in our group, who's good at pithy lines, said something we liked so much I wrote it at the bottom of the "pros" list even though it wasn't actually a pro, just a thing we liked: "When you're poly, the relationship escalator is drawn by Escher."

I've been wanting to visit miss_s_b for quite a while now. Sometimes people have problems that cannot be solved by you giving them a hug and getting drunk with them, but you still really want to do those things. I have been wanting to for a long time, especially since I was at my parents', so I'm glad it finally worked out that I could (even if today is Andrew's birthday, he graciously agreed that he'd probably be working and doesn't like a big deal being made of his birthdays anyway so didn't mind me being out all day).

here's a picture I love. We had a fun day.

We ended up talking to friendly strangers in the busy Saturday-afternoon and -evening pubs we were in. I don't think that any of them noticed that when Jennie and I said "my partner," we were talking about five different people between the two of us.

My thoughts on seeing Stuart say on Facebook "Googling Polyamorous Valentines Cards results in valentines cards for dogs."

1: valentines cards for dogs! <3 It's no surprise they're associated with polyamory: ever since I heard miss_s_b's theory about dogs all being naturally polyamorous, I keep finding more evidence that this appears to be true...

distant second: shit, if he's looking at polyamorous valentine cards, I should buy him a card!

I think this adequately illustrates both how much I love dogs and how unused I am to partners who do valentines day. I do love that he loves it, though.

I'm still waiting for the part of polyamory that's all orgies and stuff like people seem to think it is.

Right now, for me, it means two partners need help with disability benefits at the same time.

It is to laugh.

Got a big chunk of the first application done today. Fucking knackered now though, and worried I've got a migraine, which probably isn't surprising I guess. Worth it, anyway.