gement | Travels and entertainments lately

I went to Bumbershoot, thanks to my wonderful father, who came and stayed for the weekend and sprang for tickets, and kept track of all the schedules. I listened to a great variety of music, walked until I wanted to fall down.

At Bumbershoot, I developed an active taste for iced mochas thanks to the free Starbucks station where I drank four of them a day to keep myself on my feet. I've always despised coffee. If I desperately needed the caffeine, I would occasionally drink quad shot mochas to bury the taste of it under chocolate. Now I honestly like mochas. It's wacky. I also got a pair of 80s mirror shades which my family oddly thinks actually flatter me, and an Undriver's License, which I love.

I went to Folsom Street Fair (nsfw if you don't know and wanted to google for context), thanks to

arjache who took me on a TRAIN in a SLEEPER CAR and it's amazing how much I love train travel. The travel was easily the best part of the trip, and given that the rest of the trip was walking with arjache and hobnobbing with my fellow fetishists, that's saying something.

I had to deal with a lot of poser and imposter syndrome and fear of missing something baggage at Folsom. I couldn't get read as male to save my life, which was completely understandable (surrounded by people who looked like me identifying as butch women, and very macho cis men cruising for other very macho cis men) and terribly frustrating. Then that turned into a pile of "am I just a woman lookyloo-ing at the gay men" and "why am I here windowshopping kinks instead of trying to actually get more of it into my real live bedroom" and... it was just hard.

When I don't get acknowledged often enough, I start wondering if there's anything to acknowledge, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I got some nice validation when I got home and I try not to fret.

Yesterday I took a short ferry trip and met more of J's family for the first time. It went about as well as might be expected, which is to say we were polite to each other and now I don't wonder what they look like. To quote Rimmer, "Over the years, I have come to regard you as people that I met."

Today and yesterday's entries have been rather down compared to how I actually feel. It's like I have two lines running, my mood which is generally up and my issues which are generally down. It's just a matter of which one I'm paying attention to. I'm under the impression most people have this separation, but I'm not sure.

And now I am posting this without rereading it, which is hard. Go me.