merely tenacity

I wrote a whole entry that can be boiled down to "fucking dental surgery".

So, fucking dental surgery.

Hopefully, in a couple days, when I don't feel half-mad from pain and general dental trauma, I'll write a nice coherent bit about how awesome indie ttrpgs can be and the one that I was playing that just ended with us all dying in a very narratively satisfying way, and why I loved it so.

Is petulant the right word for this? I think I'm going to go with petulant for the moment.

I could swear that somewhere in the poetry anthology A Formal Feeling Comes, there's a line that includes the phrase "wail uncritically" or "uncritically wail" that I tend to think about in bouts of what I assume is self-pity, but might also just be depression. Or those more extreme times in parking garages when I just let myself shout in the confines of my car, spilling out things like "I don't want this" and "please make it stop", like bad luck was some adult I could beg for mercy or solace. I don't know why these things have to be in parking garages, but while I can cry silently and remain mostly functional and coherent, noisy and saying weird things is almost only reserved for alone in the car in the anonymity of a parking garage (even if they're not anonymous and I am probably scaring the pigeons when I do).

But I'm not there today, my uncritical wailing is more just grumpy and grumbling, unwilling to figure out what action to take, on the tail end of a cold, on the tail end of healing from a bad fall, looking down the barrel of four appointments tomorrow (I roll from therapy to a med check to an optometrist to a cardiologist), feeling like the lack of things to do is something that should feel better than it does, or my days should be easier to fill, that not working for money is a privilege and I should use it for _something_ even if all my somethings feel a little inadequate, hollow or pro forma.

Go through the motions, omnia, maybe you'll find something to make meaning of?

Uncritically indeed.

Fell down yesterday into a literal pile of rocks, doing trail work in the Fells. We were re-building some stone steps and tightening up the edges of a trail, and we were gathering rocks from a leftover quarry pile (among other things, the Fells was a quarry in the 1800s) and I somehow manage to entirely lasso myself in a bittersweet vine and hit the ground while moving rocks. Which maybe a tiny bit of a win that I didn't hurt myself doing something I was trying to do, like I was being smart about lifting and moving rocks at least.

All falls are immediately followed by the desire to pretend I'm fine (this was entirely around strangers, making it an even stronger impulse) and I just sort of shut down, made my excuses and shuffled out of the woods before everything stiffened up. Stage two is wild self-recrimination, I should have both been more careful in the moment and maybe not even put myself in a position where I was doing something that I could have injured myself, and then adding some catastrophizing and thinking about how if I've once again damaged myself in a year-long recovery way, have I been doing enough with the period of time I had a functional knee?
(answer: no, I've been some combination of depressed and unwilling to go melt in the heat and feel like I haven't been doing any of the things that I think of myself as liking to do.)

But today the pain is a little less stabby, all the other strains/bruises are showing up and I'm just cranky. I don't know if there's the kind of damage I'm going to have to follow up on or just give a couple weeks and s and if I ee what happens. I canceled on the alpaca festival and Hands and Hips yesterday, and little brother and his family today (and meeting their new puppy, so you know I'm serious that driving doesn't feel like a good idea). I rescheduled my massage on Tuesday, I don't think I have to cancel on anything else, it's not a plan-heavy week (the big excitement will probably be seeing how well I react to getting my tdap vaccine) maybe trying to stay off my feet will mean I finally starting doing some of the research-type things I've been avoiding, like looking into local landscapers and how to start muzzle training Noodle so she can go to the vet safely for herself and the vet (she's apparently cage-aggressive, which we hadn't found out until a couple months ago) and if I can find a better way to get ketamine therapy.

I play in a lot of online indie ttrpgs. If an entire week goes off without a hitch, it might be as many as four. I can't remember the last time it was four, but there is a theoretical outcome that has me playing Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and then either Friday or Sunday afternoon.

Mondays has been Brindlewood Bay every other Monday, but as of next week, the alternate Mondays will be taken up with Perils and Princesses. I have absolutely no idea how I got so lucky as to find the amazing human who runs both of them on start playing, but she continues to blow me away (and in addition to her regular job, she's a paid GM to save up for her girlfriend's engagement ring) weekly with both her skill and her kindness.

Wednesdays is a brand new game of The Between, by which I am deeply, deeply intimidated by. not to the point of it not being fun, just everyone feels very experienced in general, familiar with the system and some combination of competent and confident. J, who has been coming to Thanksgiving forever and who lives in DC now, said they were excited to play with me, which is both exciting and feels like something I can't possibly live up to.

Thursdays is Wanderhome and I'm absolutely in love with both the system and the human who runs it. I've been lucky enough to play with C for almost a year now, both Yazeba's and Wanderhome, and I think they're just a fantastic human being, and I think talking to him was the first time I really got to bitch about how toxic AA is with someone who was also sober and dealing with lingering feelings about how they fucked up so much of their past.

And sometimes there's a pickup game of Yazeba's, and I'm currently in a short run of Girls of Genziana.

So I'm playing a butch old lady with a marshmellow heart solving local murders and uncovering a cult, a Victorian Dr Frankenstein equivalent who is building a monster because someone told her she couldn't and someone else told her she shouldn't, an emotional damaged porcupine-person who is trying to help everyone else get where they're going, because for the moment she doesn't have anywhere to go, a superstitious maid whose version of being extremely charismatic is being blank enough that everyone just projects what they want on her. And sometimes an old woman who literally sold her heart who is trying to make the safe place for everyone else that she didn't have for herself, but also is too hurt to know how to engage with the people she's trying to help.

All a little bit on the nose, in the end, but even in the depths of the insecurity and anxiety, so much fun and so interesting.

There are a lot of things I want done around the house that I lack the courage or the confidence to do, both big and little and I feel like if I buckled down, watched some youtube videos, realized I'm not going to render the house uninhabitable if I fuck up a cupboard door more than it is already fucked up, and asked Hands to borrow some tools I could actually do, but instead I don't and instead beat myself up on the regular for doing so. I don't work. No one pays me to do anything. I mostly keep the house clean, the pets well attended to and the errands run, and when I'm at least at 60% functioning, the house full of food. I volunteer a couple places every week, but usually no more than 6-8hrs a week, I hang out with Spark once-to-twice a week. So I should be chock full of both time and energy with which to do all the things and yet the list of things I would "like" to do seems to remain constant or ever increasing.

I live in absolute dread of making things worse across the board. My mental health, my relationships, my back yard, the aforementioned cupboard door, and when I pair that with the assumption that I'm probably going to ruin everything I touch (both literally and metaphorically) that makes forward motion somewhat difficult. And I want to know all the things before I tackle anything, but it turns out the internet will provide me with an endless supply of confidently delivered contradictory information, adding to the paralysis.

I want there to be someone to hire to teach me about house-things, or classes to take. I want someone to explain what's happening to the front door (I think the veneer is peeling off and that the only fix is replacing) or supervise me recaulking the bathroom and give me real-time feedback.

But also I don't want it to be anyone I already know, because I can never tell until the actual moment if it's going to be one of those days that not knowing something feels socially dangerous in a way that makes curiosity really hard to access. I spend a lot of energy committed to being cheerful or at least not-super-defensive about gaps in my knowledge, and I genuinely like it when people teach me things, and in general, I feel like no one's judging me when I don't know things. But also spending so much time using every scrap of willpower I had to fake functionality left me with some situationally inappropriate reflexes, I get muddled on what is and isn't okay to know/know how to do. (Or I find myself asking questions not to learn, but as a placating/fawning response even when there's no threat and then I'm not actually learning anything because any information won't go into any sort of long-term storage.)

Eventually I'll commit to calling a handyman, or fucking it up and then calling a handyman, but for now i guess I'll spend a lot of time thinking about the problem without taking any action.

(it kind of counts if I wrote it yesterday then didn't press post, right?) I guess as long as I post twice today, by whatever weird score I'm keeping with myself, it counts.

I'm in Mystic, CT now which, among other things, not one but two ancestral MyMaidenName burial grounds (one of which you have to trespass to get to, I have only seen it once attending a MyMaidenName family reunion and couldn't find it again), between the two spanning back (I think) at least 250 years. The bloodline goes back further, my father in his retirement decided to double down on genealogical research and traced himself back to the Mayflower by five or so different paths.

My father was very committed to enrolling all his children in the Mayflower Society (an organization for people who can do said tracing back). My little brothers acquiesced, one sister-in-laws said he had to wait for her kids to be able to consent, the other just let it happen. I declined, on the basis it was creepy and I did not wish to, and refused to provide him/them with a copy of my marriage license or with something legal stating Light was really truly divorced when he married me. I have gotten letters from the society in the intervening years, indicating I still had an open application. Along the same lines, my great aunt was a member of not just the Daughters of the American Revolution, but also the Colonial Dames of America, the fancy version for people who held some sort of advanced rank during that time. (the myth is up until this generation, a MyMaidenName has always been in a war)

I don't talk to my parents anymore. There's a lot going on there and I've written and deleted three paragraphs about it at this point, so clearly it's a topic to return to to. But even having severed that tie, even knowing all the horrible things my ancestors must have done to acquire and keep land and money in the New England region for that long in the general if not specific ways, I still like this idea of place-based continuity somehow. I don't think I'm especially proud or smug, I didn't _do_ anything, and I'm still trying to figure out if what I like about it can stand up to daylight.

But there's something about not belonging to my parents, but still belonging to this place, like I can skip over the people who birthed me and still have roots. Something animism-adjacent I suspect.

(here we truncate this entry because it is long and circular and bedtime)

Be inspired, omnia, try to post in July. Not full "since last we saw our antiheroine" updates, not deathless prose, just posting.

Once upon a time someone "installed" a bank of three kitchen cabinets above, a section of countertop, and three cabinets below in our basement. (as if someone had taken a five foot long chunk out an existing kitchen, ceiling to floor and then precariously screwed it onto a couple of 2x4s that I don't even understand how they are attached to the unfinished basement wall.)

We've lived here since 2019 and I've always hoped to take them down and replace them with something a little less tragic and a little more useful. Clearly, because I'm telling you this story now I haven't. But, after first discovering I was emotionally labile enough to cry over drill-confusion, I have now removed at least everything we've abandoned into the cabinets, and taken down the upper half. While i have and had many hopes/plans, apparently none of them addressed what am I going to do with the spiky nail ridden tetanus cabinet traps after they're not attached to the wall. I know sometimes to make something tidier you have to make it messier, but also the garage has lost the minimal amount of cool it's mostly-undergroundness lends in the morning and I am dizzy, so I'm just walking away from the disaster, pretending I'll deal with a little more of it tomorrow, and then going on vacation until the following Monday. Future me's problem, I guess?

I made a card for Spark, who is away at camp, to their specifications. Is it important for a 7yo to know that an adult human is shit at crafts and still makes them? Possibly. Is she discerning of the quality of my crafting or going to pay more than minimal attention to the card I send? Probably not. Is it hard to step away and just send it and not try at least two more times? Definitely.

I want to hold myself to posting weekly summaries, if nothing else (though I keep half-writing other entries) and in service of this will stop over-thinking what order to summarize things in and just do it.

Books: finished Rough Pages by Lev AC Rosen, the third in a series about a queer detective 1950s San Francisco, which both feels very good and is full of what I believe is period-appropriate homophobic brutality that is hard to read, finished the anthology Faeries Never Lie, which had some excellent stories and some adequate ones, and re-read Zodiac by Neal Stephenson, which simultaneously has aged very poorly and is a fascinating snapshot of Boston at very specific time and says interesting things about the omnia who adored it back in high school.

Cooking:  Marinara sauce from the moosewood cookbook, shallot gravy from nytcooking for our new year's day tofurkey roast, and vegetarian sloppy joes from the leftover marinara sauce.  I've been struggling with cooking lately, we've been scavenging or ordering what feels like a lot, and I wish I didn't feel quite so much like every night I don't cook I've somehow failed, but here we are and I still can't motivate myself a bunch of time. 
 
Outdoors: an amazing First Day hike at South Cape Beach State Park and a social hike through the Fells, but it's been too windy/cold/wet for it to be appealing to go out solo.  

Leaving the house to see the world: I went on a local queer and trans hike, and it was lovely and odd and I continue to be filled with this longing for community, with no real idea what exactly i mean by that, and even if I could figure that out, I suspect I wouldn't know how to form it.  (this, of course, bears both further and permanent examination) But also, I went into the Fells office to sort paper, and I've discovered the exciting thing that once you're trained you can just wander into the public library and shelve books, so I've done that.  

Games:  It was an exceptionally good week for online gaming, I got to play in three online games, my weekly Wanderhome game, a Gawain and the Green Knight themed Descended from the Queen hack and a Norwegian wind farm setting for Desperation, a game which I would like to play with everyone ever.  

New Year's Day and Eve were lovely and quiet, Light had a board game thing he went to on NYE, Abundance and I stayed home and played Overcooked and drank sparkling cider, then New Years Day all three of us played a bunch of Mysterium Park and made a tofurkey.

I'm having a lot of feelings about January, I always do, no matter how hard I try to shift it to solstice, calendar years and birthdays feel like pivot/reflection/inflection points, it's a month that contains a handful of local social things that I don't participate in and this year there's a permanent background wailing about the inauguration. And on the one hand, I feel like you can never entirely rip a quote out of its original context, on the other hand it is a very useful sentiment, so I'm just going to keep muttering something about beginning as I mean to go on, and I'll get around to addressing the fact that I'm always both beginning and going on any day now.  

I keep wandering off into long confessional-adjacent prose, so here's my attempt at briefer summaries so I actually hit post.

I solsticed, solo again.  I annoy myself remaining poised on this brink of enjoying a solo practice and longing for community, but we decorated the holiday tree (I continue to love our ornament collection) I hiked around the pond during the day, crunching through the snow and getting to see an absolutely glorious bit of the early side of the sunset.  I ate yellow food for dinner, watched Taskmaster New Zealand with Light and when everyone went to bed, I curled up in front of our gas fireplace and the rainbow-lighted tree, to the intense dismay of the dogs, Nonsense kept sighing more and more exaggeratedly as the night progressed and I continued to complete fail to follow her suggestion that I stop fucking up her routine.  I journaled, I thought about what I wanted to take forward and what I wanted to leave behind.  I made clove oranges, and did one of the 500 piece puzzles my little brother challenged me to compare finishing speeds on.  The sun came up, and I passed out and now the days will get longer, and I'll be able to drive later into the day and that usually feels better.   

(here I remove an essay about (for the moment) my feelings about car shopping) 

Since then, I've stayed at Delight's overnight to hang out with their fantastic kittens while petsitting, (here I remove an essay about pets, the pets I've had that liked each other, the pets I have that don't like each other, how dead pets reconcile me a little bit to the idea of ancestor work),  volunteered at the Fells office (here's the essay about finding places to volunteer and the way I volunteer), finished Andrea Stewart's The At Thieves, (here's the essay about why my reading numbers for the year are at an all-time low and why I didn't like this book), played in both a Brindlewood Bay and a Yazeba's game online (here's an essay about aging in narrative gaming) made lasagna (here's the essay about cooking, and reasons why it may have wandered away from fun into mostly a chore), attended our nigh-yearly Melissa Ferrick post-christmas concert at Passim (the essay about how I'm not exposing myself to enough new music) and greatly enjoyed watching Nonsense dig craters in the snow in the backyard. 

More of the same, even if everything feels a little bit of different flavor of awkward or lonely. The woods are still there, I'm still about to bring a delicious-smelling cake to our annual Cakemas, and I'm about done with a satisfying cross-stitch so here's the hopeful chorus that goes with the mopey song of this entry.