Norwescon was fantastic.

I dressed as Logan 5 from Logan's Run.
I also dressed as Jessica 7 from Logan's Run.

I have asked people to send me their photographs of both. We'll see what comes in. But I did both.

My mom did the sewing for both. I made the Jessica necklace (out of aluminum foil, cardboard, hot glue, and velcro cadged from a dead bike helmet!) and molded my own hand-gem, though I didn't wire it to blink in time.

And then I spent the vast majority of my Jessica time in the company of three of my favorite imaginary Internet friends, neo_prodigy, big_wired, and box_in_the_box.

Downside: I only know of one picture of me in the dress, and it's not brilliant.
Upside: Four hours of fantastic and really emotionally reassuring conversation.

I also won the Easter basket drawing for Hard Limits Press, a local indie spec fic publisher, but since the basket was the books I already bought, I'm letting them send their promo copies to more strategic homes. But I felt lucky!

And then I came home and my spine said, "Double binding for two days straight? Hahahahahah, NO."

My posts are (in my mind) usually more artful. They're also usually months apart. Let's try for a short flurry this time.

SO BUTCH.

This week on Butch Dates with Daddy, W. and R. make quiche and give each other haircuts!

No, really. We also made pound cake.

I'm told it's slightly more butch that we used the clippers for my desperately needed haircut (even though it was four lengths with fades), but I'm pretty sure that's wiped out by the omelettes for dinner.

By the way, W's chickens are in overdrive right now. That's not a euphemism, that's four dozen fresh cruelty-free eggs that needed eating.

I reported this to J. He said, "Oh yeah, you're livin' the Leather lifestyle."

I did not report the rest of the date to J, as he has a rather delicate constitution. ;) The evening went well enough, over all, that we're retroactively declaring it our belated anniversary date.

It is so, so very good to have a reliable time and place for unequivocal guy space, and the fact that it's been consistent and reliable and a really good time for 16 months now is straight up fantastic.

We had a room, but J ated it.

We were looking for a new housemate, because The Magic Housemate of two years bought his own place and thus will no longer be spontaneously maintaining ours, randomly making enough food to share, offering rides, doing twice his own weight in dishes, or mowing the lawn too often. (Sigh.)

Then J's room flooded. Again. Fifth time in eight years. Immediate action from the landlord, fixed in 48 hours, just like the previous times.

We're writing to the landlord to get the rent changed in light of this being a *three* bedroom house with an untrustworthy storage room, pending three years with no water getting into the room. It's never gone longer than 24 months continuously while we've lived here.

But J has always hated having a basement room. He just couldn't bring himself to justify making everyone else pay higher rent to take one of the nice rooms and leave the crappy basement room unrentable.

J gets to have nice things. We have decided. We are taking him to Ikea, where he will buy the first $1000 of furniture he has ever bought for himself in his life. It feels weird to support this kind of rampant consumerism, but he has several decades of only furniture found on the street or gifted (not so much as buying a bookshelf second hand), and I think at this point it balances out. J gets to have nice things.

And I get to vicariously shop at Ikea, because I have plenty of Things already, thanks, but Swedish Modern is so shiny.

"I don't feel like I deserve to feel very overwhelmed"

"I don't feel like I deserve to feel very overwhelmed," quoth caladri in a recent post. This is about that.

( Long vague post about feeling vague for a long time. How my life feels between exciting bits. Hint: Not so good. )

Gender stuff has been weird.

Pronouns, names, all gendered markers have been feeling actively weird for, when I count it out, several years at this point. They fit wrong, like itchy sweaters.

( Gender wrassling below the cut. Not terribly sexy, sorry. )

I want to be all the things, and in the absence of getting all the people to see me as all the things all the time, whatever bit is not being recognized squeaks. I'm living with a nearly constant squeak. This is not just frustrating, not even just annoying anymore, it's BORING. It's tedious to have the same problem over and over, with no emotional movement, nothing that I can tell people to do to fix it.

I've asked a couple of partners to start using "they" as my pronoun, and sometimes "Shape" as my name. I also answer to "Space," "M," and "Ferret." These words are place holders. I say, "I'm between gender identities right now, but I'm sending out applications."

I'm not asking that of everyone, though if you think of using "they" that would be awesome.

I think I'm going to start to ask people to be mindful of gendered role words, though. Those I consistently want either neutral or masculine if neutral isn't a choice, and they weigh more heavily than pronouns.

Prince. Time Lord. Sir. Handsome.
Sibling. Kid, Kiddo, Sprogling, Child-person (better than either daughter or son).
Person (better than lady or gentleman in most situations, unless I'm exceedingly dapper). Ferret.

"You, sir, are a ferret and a gentleman."

It'll have to do for now. Stupid sweaters.