gremdark

Today I woke up at 6:45, gobbled a yogurt cup while I was getting dressed, and rushed off to teach elementary PE across town. By the end of the first period, I'd sweat through my dress shirt. I was glad I wore something breathable. The kids were fun, but I did strain my voice a little making myself heard across the basketball court. Used my ICE whistle for the first time getting them to line up. Now I know how to project with it, which is nice. My roommate brought a handful of them back from a local org meeting a couple months ago. They're tiny 3D printed things, but they make a loud noise and we all have one now.

ICE has a presence in my city, but they aren't often sighted in the neighborhood where I live right now. We're in the shadow of the local med school. Still, we live at a fairly busy four-way intersection, so we keep watch and look out for folks. Lately I've had to film cops from my stoop a couple of times. The local lads are real dicks.

After work, I was busy for another hour calling, texting, and emailing our current and future landlords. Both of them are personable, friendly sorts, but handling household finances is always stressful. My fiance's mother is tentatively interested in moving into our current house once we vacate it, so I made virtual introductions and talked her up. I also chatted on the phone with our future landlord, an aging gay widower who has lived on the same street downtown for decades.

Future landlord is buddies with my fiance's mother, which is how we found out about the property. It's a few doors down from his house, and on the tour he was telling us the names of every person who lives within a block of the place. The immediate next door neighbors, according to him, are "wonderful dykes." I DO like the man. He's an absolute champion complainer. 

With the property stuff sorted, I sat down for lunch with the cat and got to work grey rocking my way into getting the storeroom key from my fiance's mom's abusive ex-wife. She's absolutely miserable to communicate with, even over text. She's less hostile towards me than she is towards her former family, so I took one for the team. Ex-wife has been refusing to let my fiance's mom get her things out of the shared storage room they pay for. It has been more than six months of back and forth. Finally ex-wife agreed that I can pick up the key today at 5:00 on the dot. I must return it on Friday, before 5:00. There are stipulations. I don't mind telling you that by the end of the exchange I was physically shaking with rage/frustration/familial protectiveness/remembrance of times people have treated me this way. I'm glad I was able to do this so my fiance didn't have to try, but what a fucking nightmare.

At any rate, fiance's mom, fiance, his brother's girlfriend, and I are going to descend on the storeroom tonight and get all her things. We assume this is the last chance.

How's everyone else? I hope your day is less stressful than mine.

This time I remembered to queue up two hours' worth of music before locking myself out of my phone with my focus app. I use Focus Friend, which is bare bones enough that I don't need to think about it too much when I use it.

Today's missions are to clean the kitchen, tidy surfaces in the living room, and declutter the bedroom. We ran dishes this morning, and our roommate is out of town, so there's one less person around to make messes. Not too much to do. In between I'm hoping to keep plugging away at my Rare Kink Buffet fills. I had hoped to write multiple short ones, but what originally seemed to be a short idea is ballooning into a multichap. So we shall see. Wish me luck!

Progress! The house is a little cleaner, and I've added about 1200 words to my Rare Kink Buffet fill. This is chapter three, which I had hoped would be the last chapter. I also hoped chapter two would be the last chapter, so it appears that the length of this one is just utterly out of my control.

The local school districts are starting spring break today, so there's little substitute teaching work to be had. What little there is gets snapped up seconds after the listings go live. So I'm giving myself the gift of sun, writing, and light chores.

When I want to force myself to do non-phone things instead of doomscrolling, I like to lock myself out of my phone with a focus app. Usually I set up a long music queue before I do. Today, I forgot. I stared sadly at the two hour countdown on my phone screen, knowing I'd be so much more productive if only I could listen to something. Then I looked across the room at my record player and felt a bit silly. 

In my defense, the record player has bluetooth, so I use it as a giant bluetooth speaker a lot of the time. I'm still embarrassed. At any rate, I'm listening to a Simon and Garfunkel record right now.

For those who aren't active on Tumblr right now, a tl;dr. A new update to how notes on reblogs work, which has so far rolled out on desktop and to some mobile users, is breaking the way most people use Tumblr. Each reblog-with-text now has its own likes, comments, and notes section. This means that not all interactions on posts are visible to the OP. Artists are in an uproar, but this also breaks aspects of the block function and removes the ability to turn off reblogs on posts that have been reblogged with text.

With that in mind, I've tentatively offered to give mutuals and longtime followers of my personal tumblr access to this account if they DM me. I'm nervous about that, because I like keeping my online identities pretty siloed. I'd previously only connected this account to my fandom identity. I have a good group of followers over there, though, and I'd be sad to lose them. 

I don't think this is The Big One where everyone flees the Tumblr site like rats from a sinking ship, but it does feel as big as the 2018 porn ban, with the added uncertainty that these changes rolled out the day they were announced. The Changes blog on Tumblr has blithely said that they can see the userbase has strong feelings, which they claim they'll monitor over the "next weeks" of this rollout. I'm certainly concerned and making backup plans.

Those of you who use Tumblr, what do you think of all this? What are you planning?

( Brief discussion of current geopolitics )My fiance and I spent the morning doing yard/beautification work at our fabulous local trans org's new community center, which is still a fixer upper. I moved a giant load of downed branches and picked up two bags' worth of trash, and my fiance assembled a trampoline someone had recently donated. Later we agreed that doing that work was the only reason we felt even remotely sane for the rest of the day. The org we worked with does exemplary work for local queer folks and immigrants. It's good to spend time with the other people in our community who care about seeing that work done, and doing something positive with my hands was a great way to burn off the fear/anger energy. A little group of teenagers showed up and did some raking. It was really lovely to see them.

In the afternoon, while alternately obsessing over the news and resolutely trying to think of other things, we went to a dear friend's surprise birthday party. When she first came in, ~30 of us were packed into a back room waiting to leap out. One of our number was her two year old nephew, who predictably started wailing just as everyone shushed. One of his parents hustled him out a back door, and my friend was none the wiser until our cue. The party was a roaring success. I only knew a handful of people there, but her husband had done a wonderful job with the guest list and everyone got along excellently. And there was prosciutto at the buffet.

We stopped by the pet store to get crickets for our housemate's tarantula, then ate a quick dinner and headed out to an indie wrestling show at a local bar. It was my first time attending a show at that venue, and I had even more fun than I expected. The highlight was a comedy match between a time-displaced caveman attempting to become our ruler through combat prowess and a gentleman billed as "the world's deadliest talking mime." There were a great deal of invisible walls, lassos, and other props, which couldn't be ruled against because the ref couldn't see them. 

I'm glad my day was already booked full, because seeing all the normal people who inhabit the world around me is a great antidote to the dull feeling you get when you spend too long reading headlines without going outside. It is that bad, and it's not going to get better soon. It is that bad, and also today a group of semi-strangers and I made our community space nicer. So many people in my circle of friends and family have early voted because I talked to them about it. It's always humbling and disconcerting to experience such joy at the same time as I'm feeling so much anger, sorrow, and fear. But we need that joy. That's how we keep showing up for each other tomorrow.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and secure. Good night.