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

D came along to lift club this morning! It's so much more fun when he's there.

This afternoon we had a snuggly nap.

When I woke up this evening, angelofthenorth was making amazing delicious food. It smelled so good. What a treat.

This evening, D and I had a couple beers and watched the Twins actually win a game! And explained things to angelofthenorth as they came up.

The way my voice now resonates in my body feels better to me than I ever thought it could.

I was thinking of this this morning because I talked with a fellow trans dude about singing over the weekend; him dealing with changes to his range made me ponder how I've been kinda avoiding trying to find what my singing might be like?

I know voice training and documenting changes, in speaking and singing, is a Thing for a lot of trans people but the notion gave me big anxiety so I've stayed away from it.

Today I am carefully singing along with the radio (in the sense that I am doing it with care, rather than just finding myself doing so while I am working or whatever) and I don't really care how I sound but I love how it feels.

I said this on fedi and was charmed to have one of my dadliest friends (who we call Other Erik because he's another Erik) say

I hope you never lose that joy! For my part, I still love the feeling and I’ve had a mature low “adult” voice for over 30 years. I find myself humming low-range tunes to myself rather frequently just for the feeling of it in my chest.

It's nice to know it can stay fun for that long!

Sir Ian McKellen to open historic all-trans and nonbinary production of Twelfth Night

What's this, a trans reading of my favorite Shakespeare play, fundraising for my favorite trans charity (the one that brings me that "trans gym" thing I'm always talking about)?

And there's a livestream so I can stay covid-safe? And you can watch from anywhere (for two weeks after the live performance)?

I've already got my ticket!

It's almost midnight and I'm too tired to say much about today but every part of it was brilliant, from the treats I bought my household at the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar to the new friends we accidentally made there to the old friend we ran in to -- who luckily recognized us from the internet, because we never would have recognized him! -- to meeting up with B and being introduced to a polycule, to having dinner with D's sister and her awesome family, to good and much-needed conversations on the trip home.

I've gotten a lot of time with D this weekend and it's all been so great, I feel so lucky. Friday will be our sixth anniversary and it still never ceases to amaze me that I get to have my favorite person as my boyfriend.

The weather is lovely again; sunny (at least part of the time) and near 60°F.

I had some minor breakthroughs today at work. I think I know how to make the pivot tables do what I need, even if I still don't really understand how they're put together.

And I got to spend most of the day writing and listening to Radio 1 anthems which is my very favorite kind of day at work.

D and I went to yoga tonight, which is still getting markedly easier for me since my weird body time was at its peak. My balance is still worse than its (worst in the class) baseline, but it's still getting better every fortnight so that's encouraging.

And a lovely new person we met last weekend also came along to yoga, we gave her a lift to and from, and it was really lovely to see her again. She seemed to enjoy it so hopefully we'll get to hang out more.

There was takeout food, which feels like a rare treat these days, waiting for us when we got home. My burger was delicious.

Tonight I finished reading An Immense World by Ed Yong, someone I'd adored following on twitter. I still like how his brain seems to work. It was fun hearing him read the book himself.

I'm sad that there's no lift club tomorrow, but that does mean I can turn off my alarm, which is otherwise for 7:30. I've slept by myself for a whole week now, with D having been away, so it'll be nice to get to snuggle and stay in bed tomorrow morning.

I was charmed to hear this morning that one of my teammates, in editing a very important document, apparently had my voice in her head telling her things I've previously said about how to make the paragraph structure better.

(The specific advice was nothing special -- I didn't even remember saying it until she told us what it was.)

You never know what about you might stick in people's heads and help them when you're not even around.

Glorious sunshine under a perfect blue sky today. We basked in the sun, dangled our feet in the (still pretty chilly) swimming pool, bought souvenirs and little gifts from one of the strangest touristy shops I've ever seen, played some hilarious mini golf, and I ate so much for dinner that the only thing I could do afterwards was take a shower and lie down to snuggle up to D while he had a snooze.

I'm being gently serenaded by the sounds of really poor drunken karaoke coming in our bedroom window along with the cool night air.

This is a diffrentcolours appreciation post. For someone who doesn't really like dogs, he welcomed Gary in to his house and his heart right along with me when we needed somewhere to go. He quickly became Gary's favorite human, which unfortunately meant that when Gary's dementia was at a point where it could only process the strength of a feeling and not the direction of it, D became the most frequent target of his aggression. To the point of having to basically ask permission to come downstairs in his own home, because that threshold had become such a trigger for Gary that we had to make sure he wasn't able to get to D to bite him and still lots of bruises ensued (Gary might have had almost no teeth but the immense jaw strength of a terrier was still there!). I can testify to how intense and upsetting my emotional responses were to being a secondary target of Gary's fear-driven aggression -- he was not able to recognize us in these moments, and responding appropriately to strangers in his home, which was understandable but also heartbreaking. And for someone who's wary of dogs at best to put up with that as long as D had to, for him to be able to weigh the good against the bad -- there was such a lot of good too; Gary would snuggle up on the sofa with D and he'd pine for D whenever D wasn't in the same room -- takes immense strength of character and I really admire him being able to do that.

Just lately Gary had been having accidents in the house more regularly, and D has intense panic reactions to those but he put up with so much to the absolute best of his ability and I'm so proud of him for that too.

This is a V appreciation post. Their previous cats, rats, but especially children and other dogs gave them a wealth of experience and skills to draw on when it came to dealing with Gary, and they were always the first to research new things as his needs or behaviors changed. They were most attuned to the presence and then changes in his pain and illnesses, everything from his arthritic hip to the infection that would eventually claim his left eye, which was both a marvel and a relief to me who's just never going to see well enough to notice that kind of thing in a pet.

As D and I work (to keep Gary in kibble, I always told him), V not only has looked after household things like wiping the kitchen countertop 42935 times a day and buying more bin bags before we run out, they have also taken on the majority of the Gary-wrangling: his meals, toys, bathroom breaks, and human company has been mostly their responsibility and they took it on gladly. He's been a high-needs dog all the time he and I have lived here, but those needs recently expanded to the point where they didn't like to leave him on his own -- the other day they returned from the bathroom to find him stuck under a table to such an extent they had a real struggle to not have it and its contents collapse on them.

This kind of care work can become so intense -- emotionally, mentally, physically, everything -- and intimate. It's access intimacy again. And I'm so glad V could do that and chose to do that. Their own spoon levels weren't always up to it but they knew what they were doing and don't regret it and I'm so glad Gary had such good care and such close attention paid to his quality of life.

barakta started calling us WonderHouse after Gary the Wonder Dog, and we will always be shaped as a family by Gary. He's shown me some of the most admirable characteristics of the people I love who took us both in when we needed a new home. He's cemented us together in a way that no amount of paperwork or ceremony could. As surely as his hair is forever embedded in our soft furnishings, he is embedded in our lives and our shared life as a household, as a family.

This afternoon I caught up with a colleague who in the course of the conversation said, unprompted, that my style of chairing meetings is good and that the briefings I write are really helpful.

On a day when I'm struggling so hard to write a briefing and I've been convinced that I'm shit at it, this is especially nice to hear.

Today we went to the garden center for lunch and then of course walked around among all the plants outside.

I love how tactile V is with plants, brushing hands along them like you might a dog's or cat's tail as you're petting it.

I love how colorful everything is. Who knew there can be such purples and reds and greens and yellows and blues and black grass.

I love how many plants they recognize by name, but also how they'll be the first to tell you there are so many whose names they don't know. "Rabbits ears!" they said once in the delight of seeing an old friend after a long time. "I don't know what its proper name is, that's what I used to call it."

I loved being handed two pots, ecinacha (fiery oranges and yellows) and rudbeckia (lovely gold color) and curling an arm around each to carry them at a height I could just peek over, as D took two others (a purple salvia and something I don't remember now!) in his two hands.

I loved being able to pay for them, to contribute to the household in this way.