A Little Night

Happenings:

• The bug is back from Oregon; his mom remains in the hospital, or more accurately is back in the hospital, with pneumonia and two small strokes (?) having followed her hip surgery. Prognosis is cautiously optimistic but it may take her a while to get home again. In the meantime, the bug seems to have picked up something on his return travels. We are quiet today.


• I have done rather a lot of circus since last time. Handstands, a semi-private contortion lesson with another Zillian person who is apparently twenty years younger than me, acro practice, more acro practice.


• Finished a drawing lesson. I don't like coffee cups anymore; they are annoying to draw. Screw you, coffee cups. Mushrooms were much better.


• Spent a fair bit of Saturday buying, transporting and installing air conditioner units for tenants. My co-landlords were all having Moments, and it really fit in pretty well around Porchfest, anyway, for me to take care of most of it. Then yes, also the bug played Porchfest, in the backyard of the same house because everything happens at Blue-Green Street now, and I sat between friends and felt relaxed and happy.


• Did I mention Moments? Yeah, Perse and her other boyfriend have broken up, creating a Disturbance in the Polycular Force. (Not very long ago the four of us usually ate Tuesday dinner together, so this does affect me... it kind of sounds far away from me but it really isn't.) Date nights are changing around, and my squirrel-family is losing their nice convenient poly-symmetry. This is gonna be a trip... in the meantime, my Sunday night date moved to Sunday morning and damn, Henrietta's Table is really delicious.


• I played with Cursor and Sonnet on Sunday morning, which means vibe coding, and it was very quick and very infuriating. I'm almost certainly going to do more of it, as my new crossword puzzle hobby drags me further into futzing with word lists.

On the macro level, there's a vicious heat wave here (I'm worried about the squirrels) and uh, the US has attacked Iran nuclear facilities. I'm reading that Iran has (or had?) an underground enrichment facility that only the US had the right plane and the right bomb to knock out, and I get why the world might be better off without an Iranian nuclear state... and this is still queasy-making.

I'm enchanted, at the moment, by thoughts of conscious flexibility and looseness. Twice in the last week I've learned very physically that there can be more (and easier!) motion of one part of the body when there's part that's held firm and part that is loose and able to move freely. And I'm messing around with this as a metaphor, as my schedule loosens and life flows along. This has been my problem with handstands, and handstand jumps, all along -- I actually have to be disconnected through a certain part of my body in order to let my hips rise. Tiny Coach got me to jump onto a yoga block taller than I ever have before by having me hold my arms firm, relax the rest, and jump repeatedly (boing, boing, boing) while allowing my hips to actually move with the momentum of the jump..... after we did that, I went and did hand-to-hands with my base and we had more success, both on Friday and on Sunday, with that too. I'm talking like several jumps to balance in a row on both days. We still seem to need a big pile of safety mats in front of us but they're not actually doing anything, they're just there. So yeah, isolations. Where to hold firm, and where to be chill and adaptable while taking in momentum from the world or from others, currently is a fascinating lens on the puzzle of how to plan a life.

I'm late with this post because of a date night switcheroo followed by being busy. And I can't believe how much has happened. Life seems to move faster now in some ways, not that time is passing faster but that a larger percentage of the hours I spend in a day are actually advancing the plot. So anyway, this covers ten days.

• I did a pact, or "tiny experiment", a la the book Tiny Experiments. In particular I had a long email thread filled with lots of goodbye emails from people at Zillian, many of which (but not all of which) warranted a personalized reply, and it was so hard to address that I'd left it alone for a few weeks. A week ago Weds after spending 2-3 hours on email and still not touching it, I decided to start writing five emails to co-workers every day for a week. Which I did! Yes, including on my birthday. I didn't really know how many I would choose to write, but this last Wednesday, suddenly, only two remained. Now some people have written back to my replies, but, anyway, good pact.


• The bug and I attended a full moon ritual & singing circle over at Blue-Green Street, and that was new for me.


• I went out to the No Kings protests on Saturday, and saw some really excellent signs (including the only boots worth licking are the ones worn by goth girls). I enjoyed the march, then went on to the rest of Norwood's 50th birthday party, which indeed I was in that town for; ended up spending a lot of the party with another of his exes, who I was wildly incompatible with in 2015. A funny moment in time, this one, where we found ourselves both being exes from the same era. I hugged her goodbye and she said "you're still a fucking weirdo", which is 100% true.


• My crossword puzzle collaborator and I got excited about a theme idea and started working on it in earnest, with a spreadsheet for possible theme entries etc, but then it became clear that it was too similar to another just-published puzzle and we decided to set that theme down. Back to the drawing board. Bit of a let-down, but I really appreciate how much time he's saving me by nixing ideas before I spend tons of time gridding them out... we'll get somewhere eventually.


• I played a lot of Chants of Senaar, carved away on my tree stump, and finished reading Black River Orchard which is the most fun horror book I've read in a long time.


• Early on Monday the bug left for Oregon, in order to help his mother in the aftermath of a hip surgery (which has now happened and gone well). I've been holding down the fort since then, which has meant a ton of cleaning. I had to take out the garbage/recycling/compost as well as tidy up everything for the cleaners. However, it was especially wonderful to have the squirrel over at my place on a Tuesday for once, and now the house is very clean.


• Israel attacked Iran, holy shit. Also vice versa. I had one of my Israeli friends over on Monday for commiseration and hangouts.


• Around and through this, handstand lessons have continued. Better focus means better results; Spring was happy with my press off a single folded-up panel mat on Tuesday. I wish I were doing more consistent, disciplined practicing on my own, but... that sort of thing is where the burnout lies, I guess. July will offer me more incentive to work on my own, when both my coaches are out for a while.

Today's been eventful. I spent most of the day in Salem poking around at all the little witchy shops, with friends; then came back and served dinner to five former co-workers (they're all better friends with each other than with me; I just volunteered to host their group, in exchange for my getting to peep their vibe). Right when that was finishing up, I got a text that Birdie, my bio-kid, has signed a lease for an apartment a ten-minute walk from me! Just across the square. OMG!! That's going to be crazy, just utterly bonkers, having her be local for a while.

And now I am really freaking tired. Time to fall over.