Words are inadequate

A couple of weeks ago I had an assignment that needed to get done, that I knew needed to get done, and that I'd been planning for a couple of days on getting done. So of course I procrastinated on it until sometime after lunch. Thing is, I could tell it was a normal (for me) procrastination, and I could also tell that once I got started on it I wasn't going to need to stop every ten minutes or whatever, I'd be able to just keep going. Which was in fact the case. It's so nice to have my brain back to not-working in ways I'm used to and expect. Yay drugs, basically.

This also feels like further evidence for the idea that something happened to exacerbate my lack-of-focus between two and, mm, five, years ago. I'm inclined to blame my case of covid in April '22 but who knows.

Anyway. It has been A Few Weeks, i tel yu whut.

( erin, steph, misc )

And so after just over twenty-one years, I got to go to another concert with Steph.

I'd managed to forget, or not really process, that the concert wasn't just "Dessa" but "Dessa with the Minnesota Orchestra." So: full orchestra, Dessa, a rotating cast of five or six additional backing vocalists, and another rapper who I assume is also from Doomtree, the hip-hop collective she's a part of. I have no idea how long the show was, must have been at least two hours. Orchestral arrangements ranging from "decent" to "mindblowingly good." And Dessa of course gives a fantastic show.

She didn't play the songs I'd most hoped to hear (for future reference: "Matches to Paper Dolls," "Dutch" which I will likely never hear live because it treads the same lyrical/thematic ground as the objectively superior "5 Out of 6,", and "Life on Land" which has been stuck in my head off and on for coming on a month now). But she did her big hits, ending the first half with "5 Out of 6" and at the close of the night playing "Fire Drills" as the encore. And on "The Chaconne" the concertmaster played the Bach Chaconne, which is arguably how the song should have been conceived to start with.

(The "song without verbs" was Talking Business. I'd noted it as being extremely impressionistic, kind of like a movie in still photographs. I hadn't realised that that was a result of "no verbs," though that makes sense.)

Big energy, fun patter, a crowd that's happy to be there. I had a really good time. I've not really had a night Out in awhile. I didn't really get dressed up any fancier than usual but it still felt good. Would concert again. (Good thing, since I've already got a ticket for the Seattle show at the beginning of October.)

And after that I blipped up north for a quick low-key date with Erin, and that was good as well. We talked a decent bit, which we're starting to get back in the habit of doing, and it feels ... a bit safer than it has in the past? Like we're actually connecting? Like I'm able to actually connect instead of being desperately terrified, I guess.

August has been an alright month so far. It's nice.

It's raining, yay, it'll cool down some in here. Either the building interior traps heat in an impressive fashion, or the heaters in the hallways are always running. Regardless the building tends towards being warmer than I like.

It's raining, boo, cloudygrey skies make it harder for me to get moving.

Meterological summer is not my favourite season. At least I have the cooling robot for when it gets bad.

---

I have returned from Beach Week, which continued to be alright, via a brief detour through a hotel near Dulles with djinn, which was better than alright. I have definitely missed the beach itself, which surprises me. I went down to look at the ocean most days, and it felt ...calming? Right? Familiar. Waves running away over my feet, digging post-holes in the sand. Tiny sandcrabs seen only by the bubbles they leave behind, sandpipers and seagulls and pelicans and even a couple of dolphins. Warm air and cold water that quickly becomes just "water" of no particular temperature. (Though the one time I did go in for a bit the chill certainly affected my lungs.) And watching the waves roll in and back, hearing the crash, constant and same but somehow not boring or repetitive.

When I lived in DC I used to go to the beach twice a year: Beach Week just before summer hit, and then camping at Assateague in mid-September. I guess it was good for me after all.

And it was good to just spend some time being in the same space as djinn, who I haven't seen since the plague. I need time to myself but there's also a peace that comes with sitting close to someone, reading or organising or talking, casually (ha) touching.

Thanks to plague (etc) I've been more isolated here than I ever was in Fort (bar a couple of weeks when Erin was unavailable). Gonna have to do something about that.

---

Corvaric is still slowly coming together. My nice wood bedframe snapped the weekend before I left for the beach, so I replaced it with a simple steel frame with no headboard. Meanwhile the frame is taking up some of my limited space in the bedroom. Need to figure out what I'm doing with that. And also get a nicer bed for myself. I dislike not having a headboard for mostly aesthetic reasons, but also because I enjoy propping myself up to read a bit before sleep and that just feels awkward without a headboard.

In general the place feels cramped. I first noticed it the morning I got back and was rummaging in the kitchen for breakfast, and now I'm feeling it even in the living room. Bah. There are, probably, some things I can do to make it more palatable but I do not think it's a permanent solution. Which I was pretty sure of going in but it's one thing to think that and quite another to live it.

---

The crampedness has, I think, been having a negative effect on my mental state. I think it's exacerbating the 'tired' that comes from lengthy travel (Sunday I was technically traveling from 8:30AM to 4:30AM thanks to timezones and stupid flights) and slightly-too-warm. I'm feeling better today, like I might be able to accomplish something.

But I am definitely well behind on the original plan. Perhaps I will be settled in by July. I guess we'll see.

Ten years ago today I got married, in a ceremony I still recall fondly. (I announced this on Facebook with "Brb gettin hitched" as we were leaving for the venue, a couple of hours before the ceremony. Jmax, a friend and invitee who lives in Annapolis an hour or so away, saw that, said "oh crap that's today," and managed to make it to the wedding.)

I have no cake to eat this year, but that's my own fault. I seriously considered making myself one earlier this week; just didn't get around to it. One more Tradition that's fallen by the wayside over the last few years.

SUSAN ANN SULLEY: I think that song just holds a lot of memories for a lot of people, "I remember on Christmas Eve 1981 I kissed me girlfriend for the first time to the tunes of Don't You Want Me," and people have got that sort of thing about it, which is nice.
PHILIP OAKEY: They're all divorced now.
SUSAN: *laugh* Yes, but it still holds dear memories for them.
PHILIP: Holds expensive memories for the men.
--from "Audio Liner Notes", The Human League: Greatest Hits

Coincidentally, two years plus a few days ago was the last time I saw Emily. Two years less a month ago, ish, marks the last time she communicated with me in a nonhostile fashion. Eleven months ago (to the day, huzzah for leap year) the divorce went through.

Winter is once more the time when awful things happen, is I guess what I'm saying. I spent roughly fifteen years (1995-2010) noting that Bad Things tended to either happen or start happening in February, but after my uncle Jim shot himself (and my then-partner offered basically zero sympathy/understanding), it felt like that was kind of the end of that, like it had gotten about as bad as it reasonably could get. And indeed, Februarys for the next several years were grey but functional. Not so much worse than any other time. Better, even, the couple of years we said "this is stupid" and booked a week-long trip to Mexico for sunlight.

Oh well.

---

I miss Emily.

I miss the friendship we had, more than anything. I didn't want to remain romantically involved with her; I didn't want to live with her. But I always wanted to stay friends, to be a part of her life and vice versa. Three and a half years later, it still hurts more than anything I can think of that she explicitly doesn't want that, in any form.

... I am also, finally, starting to get angry at her, because while I was Not A Great Partner for the first six months of 2017, she has been bloody awful to me since then.

Time and past time for some therapeutic private journaling, I think.

---

The engagement was "secret project rock" and the wedding was "secret project paper", so.

It's been a rough couple of weeks. I'm not sleeping well again, primarily I think due to stress. Vicious cycle.

I've been listening to "Who's Gonna Help Me" by Salt Thief, the folk-rockish viola duo James and I went to see a few weeks ago. They're good, and I'm looking forward to the new album in November.

she said i've troubles of my own and no time to help you

I still have no dishwasher and a concrete floor in my entry hall.

Emily's understandably unwilling to float me a loan to buy her out of the condo. Depending on how much she's looking for I may (may) be able to scrape up the amount. Not having to find another place to live has a certain appeal to it.

... just heard back from the mortgage broker. The process of buying Emily out may turn out more complicated than she'll want to deal with anyway. Though I suspect that a lot of that complication will come up if we sell the place, regardless.

To the extent that I was "dating" the really neat person I met a month ago, I got dumped on Wednesday. Still processing that.

Things with Erin are strained. (Understatement, I think.) I may be going north tomorrow, or I may not. I have no idea at this point.

I am out of maple syrup. This is not the worst of calamities, merely insult to injury.

Onward.

So.

Last week I went up north with Erin, and promptly fell into a depressive slump. Reasons/triggers include: being Not In My Space, and being aware that My Space didn't exist and hadn't for at least a month, or maybe years; being fairly well isolated physically from most other people; not having had a safe space to begin processing the breakup, without feeling like I needed to Hold Together for someone else; and needing to be halfway functional for some unpleasant stress that Erin was dealing with.

Also I tore another contact on Monday morning. This is becoming a problem. I don't know if it's the dryness up north, or the hard water getting into the contact case, or my bad habit of napping without taking them out, or just a bad batch. Whatever it is it needs to stop.

I didn't fully recognise the depressive episode until last Friday afternoon, when I realised that I'd been meaning to email some folks, or journal about what was going on, all week, and hadn't done that. And I had also only barely kept up with the work I was meant to be doing. That part shocked me into realising that there was something seriously wrong. Shades of the year before I got laid off. Which, I mean. One of my driving principles right now is "I do not ever want to go back to where I was in 2014."

Anyway, that got sorted, though it was more symptom-treating than disease-curing. And instead of going to a weekend-long music festival three hours away I spent the weekend sobbing at random intervals, because I was finally feeling my way through the breakup. That was ... I wouldn't call it good, but it's a good thing to have done. Everything hurts all the time, but a little less now.

---

Then I came back on Monday morning and moved into my new place.

The move went swimmingly and I continue to recommend Tranquility Movers for all your metro-Vancouver moving needs. I put the stupid Ikea bed's headboard back on the stupid Ikea bed by myself, with assistance from a multitool that I'd borrowed from Erin's storage locker the time I had to let the movers in to take a look at it and see how much stuff there was. (Putting together the stupid Ikea bed requires a Phillips screwdriver, a star-head screwdriver, and a flathead screwdriver.) I'd expected this to be much more of a production: the couple of times I've assisted Emily in rebuilding it, it's taken both of us and a lot of swearing. Yay?

I've put books (roughly 10% of the total library) and DVDs on shelves, and tonight James and Julianne are coming over for a bit to be sociable at me while I shelve the games, and then I can start scooting furniture again. The room is huge, something like 15'x15'. I've got a queen bed and four bookcases in there, and I could have my computer desk set up and it would still feel huge and emptyish. I may see about retrieving my Cargo furniture after all, it will certainly fit.

I don't think it's a long-term place. It's got a tiny galley kitchen with no dishwasher and less counter space than the tiny kitchen in the condo. This is unlikely to do well with two people who aren't both conscientious about doing their dishes immediately and putting them away as soon as they're dry. It's in a good location, but not ideal: far from James and Holly, and not real convenient to anyone else I know. And either I'll get over my living-with-someone-else weirdness, or it will prove too much and I'll spend most of the next several months hiding in my room.

But it's an excellent short-term place. And maybe it's good enough for the medium term, while we try to figure out what we're doing with the condo. And maybe, maybe, it will get me out to some other social-type things of the variety I'm looking for.

"Maybe" is at least better than staring into a blank unknowable wall, which is what the last month has felt like.

PSA: uilos and I have split up.

We still love each other a lot, and it's gonna be pretty rough for both of us for awhile. That said, if you feel like you need to choose between Team Tucker and Team Emily, I suspect Team Emily will need the support.

Doubt I'll be replying to comments, but we'll see.

My calendar tells me that Friday was National Boss Day. Mine celebrated by getting sick and going home midway through the day. I don't remember where Friday evening went; we must have stayed home.

Satyrday I slept lateish, and made pancakes because I was wanting pancakes instead of an omelette. Eventually I got on the road to head out to D&D, a little later than I might have liked, and stopped at Safeway to pick up crack chips. Was running not nearly so late as I'd thought, so I figured I'd swing by Trader Joe's to pick up a couple things of Vintage Cola (which, incidentally, tastes like the Platonic ideal of Coke).

( Cut for traffic bitchery. )Thankfully, after all that I got to hit a bunch of things with a hammer, so it was all okay. (In retrospect a Big Freaking Axe might have been a better choice than the Big Red Hammer. The difference between d10+2 ("d12 brutal 2") and 2d5+2 ("2d6 brutal 1") damage is mostly a matter of taste and whether one prefers a bell curve; the slight deficiency in average damage in the former is compensated for by its "high crit" quality, which means that if roll a 20 on my to-hit roll I get to add an extra die of damage. And most of the time I'm rolling two d20s to hit and picking the highest one, so my chance of a crit is effectively doubled.) (Here endeth the D&D neepery for the day.)

Satyrday evening daghain was in a play, and it would have been good to have seen that, but I was sufficiently beat that I just wanted to stay home. So I did.

Sunday started off with the sink flooding the kitchen during laundry again, which was about as much fun as it sounds. Eventually I got that cleaned up and finished and headed out for a ramble through Riverbend Park (on the Potomac, just north of Great Falls). Too warm, too many small children, and it turns out that what I was wanting was a ramble in company, but a decent walk anyway. Came home, had a fight with nixve, had dinner, tried to clear the sink with Drano, vacuumed, wrote email.

Was unfortunately still online at just after one in the morning, which led to an unexpected continuation of said fight, which led unrelatedly yet inexorably to getting sort of half-assedly dumped around two. There followed an hourish phone call during which, after some prompting, the dumping was performed with a whole ass, and then the ritual Changing of the Facebook Relationship Status, and then uilos being a Heroine of the Revolution. I remember hearing the clock chime four, and later hearing it chime 6:15, so I guess I slept for two hours in there. Emailed work to say "not today, sorry" and probably got another 2-3 hours of sleep. uilos also called in sick, so I had someone to fall apart on at random times throughout the day.

The apartment maintenance guys came by to fix the sink pretty quickly, which was nice. Later, I confirmed with nixve that it was neither a bad dream nor one of those things one says when exhausted but regrets the next morning, and talked with ancientsong, which helped an awful lot as well. Then home, and crashing.

Today I've listened to Inches and Miles and Trees Still Bend (which made me sniffly the first time I heard it, a little more than a year ago, and now just feels right and true). And now I'm at work, where I have an annoying blurry ache in my eyes and no keyboard tray.

Tonight is sushi with someone cool, and Wednesday is probably pumpkin acquisition, and Thursday is likely to be hanging out with elf, and Friday is Belly Horror, and Satyrday is Ren Faire and then ABG if we feel up to it, and Sunday is rislyn's followed by Tribal Cafe. I'm keeping busy, and sociable, and both of these are probably good things.

Ten years ago I didn't think I'd see today. I wasn't sure I'd see next month, really. I was something of a mess. I had close-geographically friends, but none that I felt comfortable talking to about what was going on. (Mostly because I was having trouble acknowledging it myself.)

Ten years ago was a week after Technicon and two weeks after a spring break I'd spent with scathach and her family. Ten years ago was my fourth semester in college.

Ten years ago I followed uilos back to her dorm room rather than go home and lie there on my own in the dark.

It's been a bumpy ride at times but I wouldn't trade it.

Happy ten years, babe.