harena | Reading

I survived MCing a party!

My program was a little too hard, which was partially my fault for being...challenging, and partly my fault for not being totally up on what dances are actually currently in the Cambridge Class repertoire. I thought Bampton Strathspey was going to be an easier one, sorry y'all!

But I got several compliments from various people, and I genuinely think I did a very good job briefing. I made a couple of stumbles, but I think I redeemed myself out of them nicely, and I think I was quite clear overall. I'm happy about it! Next priority: well, okay, figure out what I'm teaching on Thursday for my class, and THEN my next priority is writing my Pinewoods program. Which is due on the 22nd, so gotta get on it, yipes!

The past weekend with SamSam was lovely! We had mostly very lazy days (which is to say, huddling inside and avoiding the cold) but also walked four miles round trip in the softly falling snow to visit Gather Here. Did you know there's a big lovely (kinda bougie) crafts store in Inman Square? It had so much beautiful fabric! It was nice to be able to show off cool things about my city to Sam, and also to discover them for myself.

Work today was...a lot. I mostly managed to do the things? Which is good --it's like, the first day since September where I actually had all my lessons prepped before I left the building. And I did a little grading. And I am very very tired and all the students are both tired and off the wall and we have five and a half more school days to get through before I can just get on a train and gooooo.

Of course, getting on a train and gooooing will be made more complicated by the fact that there is exactly one weekend left before chrimbo, so if I'm gonna manage to go shopping for any presents, I need to do it like _now_. Maybe it would be nice to buy my mother a chrimbo present? I think they would enjoy that??

(note to self, actually go to bells at least once this weekend so you can a) return your BPL library books and b) go to Q's nuts in the Boston Public Market and buy a bunch of those for stocking stuffers).

Dunno what else there is to say. [CW: gun violence] I am fucking livid at the parts of the universe that are contrasting my lovely weekend at home with, like, multiple major shooting incidents. Can we fucking not? (says only country where this regularly happens). [/CW]

hope you have love and wholeness in your heart and that you are taking care of everyone you meet as much as you can handle doing so.

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

I am having a lovely day!

SamSam is in town, and I elected to play hooky from work (more accurately, use one of my increased number of personal days THANK YOU UNION I LOVE YOU) so that we could hang out today and also because my work-brain is _fried_ and so it's a very very nice concept to just...not be there for a day. Here's some of the things we did:

*We went to Amanda's house quite early to watch the biathalon, since Amanda and Sam are in the same biathalon group chat. I find this extremely pleasantly baffling, but it was very very good to hang out on the couch with some friends and enjoy them being very excited about a thing. Occasionally they would give me context, or I would ask a question, but mostly I just got to watch people be excited about something, which I find splendid. We also watched the kittens be doofuses and just generally chatted, which was splendid!

*Home for a bit of lunch, and then we grabbed our ice skates and headed off to the rink near the school, which has open skate for a couple hours on Friday afternoons. We skated for a little over an hour and it was pretty grand! Sam likes ice skating _immensely_, which makes it a delightful sort of thing to do together, even if I'm not particularly good at it. (I don't really regret that I've fallen out of Tech Squares, but I do miss that particular part of Easthill. I want more dancing on skates!)

*After skating, we walked on to Make&Mend, which I only really went to the first time like six weeks ago. I think going at least every month or two is probably a really good idea for me, in terms of getting to see interesting crafty things and also to support something that I want my neighborhood to be.

*We walked home, which was...not as pleasant as it could be, since cold and windy, but we did swing by Saus in Bow-Street-Market on the way. So cold and windy but also french fries!

*Once home, we collapsed for a while and had good nap. Woke up enough so that they could read me some book and I could eventually make dinner, and this is all a really nice precursor to another couple days of hanging out together.

Currently I am writing words and they are brushing my hair out and we're listening to music and that's all reeeeeeally good. I am happy for this!

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Okay, well, it's not _done_ but my room is a damn sight _better_ and that's pretty cool.

And by "damn sight better" I actually mean "I got rid of two of the boxen that've just been sitting around taking up space all over my room since I moved in in 2020". Which is...fantastic. I'm not remotely done cleaning, either up or out, but progress is happening! That's quite grand! Someday maybe I will have everything tucked away in a place it belongs, having gotten rid of all the things that shouldn't actually be in here. What a good fantasy.

(I am being sharp and salty to cover up the fact that I am actually quite happy to have regained a little bit of space, and irritated at how long it takes me sometimes.)

I am nowhere near finished, of course. My desk is the biggest disaster area (although I've definitely made progress on it, we're like, eight inches deep of shit instead of sixteen). And there's an endless number of papers that want sorting, but that's like, a longterm plan. Not something I expect to get done anytime soon, not even if I'm procrastinating on my grading real good!

That being said, I had a point somewhere in the span of time I've lived in this room where I was trying to sort papers for about twenty minutes a day. Do that for two months and I'd have everything done, I expect. Just....you know. Consistency is hard.

The surface reason I am cleaning is that SamSam is visiting this weekend, but the real weekend is that having my room be a catastrophe is a pretty strong Blues Clue¹, and also _definitely_ one of the ones that chickeneggs² me. So, having latched onto the slight mania of "you have no idea how badly I do not want to do my grading" means actually trying to get my roomspace tolerable?

We're through the long dark November. I made a note in my calendar for November first, next year and all subsequents, telling me that my brain's about to turn into shit and I might want to do something about it. What should I do? No one knows the answer to that.

I mucked with my phone so that it goes into "focus mode" for two hours each afternoon. No games, no internet. Chat is okay, because I almost never am _mindless_ and stuck about chat. So far I haven't broken it, which means that it ~cannot be broken~. Unlike, say, the timers on my various phone games that theoretically say I can only play like 15 minutes unless I go make it longer which is very easy to do. Sigh.

And I'm trying to crawl myself out of the work hellhole --the above is theoretically helpful for this. Man though, I'm looking forward to it being solstice real bad. Arise fair sun, and slay the envious moon³

I hope you are finding the ability to do the things that bring you comfort and joy. I love you!

~Sor
MOOP!

^{1: "what idiot called them depression symptoms instead of..."

2: Did you know that you can just say things? It's ridiculous that language works in any capacity whatsoever! I say so much entirely impenetrable nonsense, and yes, lots of the time it's partly that I'm quoting things, but sometimes it's that, like, I'm just making up weird things that maybe only make sense to me.

So, instead of finding the term "negative feedback loop" my brain decided to hand me "chickenegg", as in "which came first". Am I depressed because my room is a catastrophe or is my room a catastrophe because yadda yadda

3: Case in point, this is a reference! It's a Kate Nyx song lyric.}

sorcyress

Thought to myself "I should go make a dreamwidth post", and holy shit, I knew it had been a while when I posted the anniversary post, but I hadn't realized it's been basically a _month_. Blugh. Blugh!

(we just figured out Blues Clues, y'all. :P)

Here's some stuff that's happened between Racheline and Patty's wedding and now:

*I have been struggling pretty hard with brain stuff, which is okay and happens, but is annoying! It's all the usual culprits come out to play --don't wanna do any grading or actual work, just want to burrow and hibernate because that's the correct way to do things when the sun goes away.

*I am real sad about living in the world I live in in 2025. I am sad that capitalism. I am sad that transphobia. I am sad that rampant xenophobia that's fucking up the lives of my students. I am sad, and it's hard and weird to just go on as normal.

*Tonight the polycool went out to see Club Drosselmeyer! I've been vaguely aware of this weird little Boston tradition since 2017, when I saw their unrelated show Save the Munbax, but never actually managed to try this one. It was fun! It's a lightweight puzzle hunt mixed with immersive theatre mixed with a dance floor. We had a very nice time, I think, and appreciated that we could sorta split up in ways that let those of us who wanted to just chill and work on puzzles do that, and those that wanted to go chat up all the characters do *that*.

*Thanksgiving was really good --Tuesday and I did it jointly with our collective families, down at my parents house. It worked out unsurprisingly well to have Cameron be in charge of the kitchen, with me providing big-sibling-bossiness as backup to their decisive understanding of what needed to happen. The driving from here and back was much less good, and I'm excessively grateful that I have train tickets for the next big trip.

*I don't know what else I've had in the way of ~adventures~ it's mostly just been the everyday. I liked the snow this morning, that greeted me when I went to bells. I've been trying to work on some projects, like actually getting the downstairs closet resorted and bringing some stuff I don't need to the school for coat drives and clothing swaps and the like. I'm teaching SCD this month at Cambridge class, so that's exciting! My weird tiny dance that I run is also really exciting, even if it's not as flashy --I feel good about it though!

My life is mostly good, but the ADHD and the seasonal stuff have been harder than usual. Millions of little ways to improve on that, I suppose. I picked up Habitica again, and that was helping for a time, but has maybe slipped out of grasp some. Hopefully tomorrow (don't look at the time, I mean Sunday when I say that) will be a good chance to catch up on a little bit of that.

Goodnight, I love you

~Sor
MOOP!

Under the Couch Where My Shiny Stuff is...

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