Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Why haven't I posted for four days? Well, nothing much happens when you can't leave your house for two days, not even to take the bins out, due to an ice storm that shuts down your city so hard that even the buses stop running. So I saved you from reading a non-entry. You're welcome.

I went to the Mercury on Christmas Eve, which I'm not sure I'd ever done before. I went because, honestly, I had nothing better to do, and I was curious to see who shows up at a goth joint on Christmas Eve. Not only was the joint jumping; everyone looked very festive in their devil horns. That's right: it was a theme night, and it was aimed squarely at me. But I didn't wear the whole Devil Girl outfit because I have a Big Red Dress with a black faux-fur collar and hem that I like to wear to Christmas events. A & J were there, A with her (le sigh) fella. I didn't dance, but I had an excellent time being social. I think this may have to become a tradition for me.

Good: My mass transit mojo was working on the way home.
Bad: I got an awful lot of mud and salt on my Fluevog Francesca boots. I spent almost an hour today cleaning, conditioning, and shining them, but I still think they could benefit from the tender ministrations of a bootblack.

Am I going to the thing that the Re-bar people are putting on at LO-FI? As much as I loved Re-bar, I think I'm clubbed out (and tapped out) for the weekend. They shall have to pah-tay without me.

I'm not sure what I'm doing for New Year's Eve. I've already been to the Mercury on a Saturday three times this month, so I'm thinking I should do something else. For New Year's Day, though, I have a ticket to the daytime ravey thing on the roof of the Monkey Loft, which is always a good time. It occurs to me that I don't have to go anywhere that night, but I hear the FOMO calling.

I'm on vacation until next year. It was time, boy howdy. I'm not planning on going anywhere and I'm OK with that.

Oh: I rode my bike for the first time in a week this afternoon. I thought the wind had lifted the tarp, but it seems more likely to me that whoever made off with my rear fender did. I mean, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if my fender had fallen off during a ride because I remove my lights afterward, and my rear one is right above the fender. Honestly, who's going to successfully fence a plastic bike fender that has several thousand miles worth of dirt on it?

Shouldn't have: gone to the Merc last night to hang with J, A, and seelenschwester. I didn't stay out too late or overindulge so... it wasn't that bad?

Should have: applied grout sealant, as the home inspector said to do every six months when I bought the place. Yesterday marked six months to the day since I moved myself, as opposed to my stuff, into this here Devil Girl House.

Should have: covered my outside faucet. It's supposed to freeze here in a couple of days.

Yes, the hardware store on my usual bike route had its anniversary sale this weekend, complete with free complementary hot dogs & popcorn. I never had an Impossible® dog before yesterday.

Should have: gotten a magenta ink cartridge to I could print out more photos and mail them to Mom. I must say, it's a lovely if steep walk from my house due west to Ballard. There are public stairs, some cool Halloween decorations, and a house with gingerbread on it that I'm pretty sure is about 120 years old.

Speaking of Mom, Good Sister called yesterday afternoon to give me an update from Florida. GS's main message is that Mom's downward slide continues. Mom's talking less, probably because of aphasia. Although Mom can legally vote in this election, no one has taken any steps to make that happen, which GS & I agree is a bummer considering... Florida.

You can tell I'm in a funk because I haven't posted in four days. The house payment money situation is getting me down. Things aren't dire, but I really need to start saying no to things. The repair bill for my 15-year-old car didn't help; the Wendling whined unattractively about how long it took.

Yay: I had the coven over on Friday night. Tacoma Girl brought way too many munchies from HMart, but that's one of many reasons why we love her. I got to tell some Folsom tales again.

Meh: I went to the Mercury even though I shouldn't have spent the money. In my defense I was a good girl, going home after two hours and two drinks. Yay: hanging with J&A. K came directly from her wedding; I didn't recognize her. Watching her dance in a long, white, simple halter dress – she's an actual, factual fashionista and that dress was very her – was a high point.

But it also reminded me that I came alone and was about to go home to an empty house. That I'm having difficulty affording. Not my favorite.

One piece of good news: my son is getting off my health insurance at the end of the year.

My whirlwind weekend is nearly over, so it's time for an account. I'm not using my personal laptop to write this because it's packed for Florida. Oy.

But back to the weekend! First, the date with Comfy Lady was, while not the bacchanal I had hoped for – gosh, maybe I should have told her I was hoping for one* – still pretty great. She cooked dinner for us, and we house-hunted over the internet, watched Janelle Monáe, and cuddled while I unwound. My eyelids stopped twitching while I was over there.

My hair is extra purple. Yeah, Mom hates it, but it's also the same color it was the last time she saw me.

Dinner in Wallingford on Saturday with Much Younger Woman! I got to tell London stories. Happiness.

Caturday at the Mercury, wearing ears borrowed from Comfy Lady. (Aw!) Lots of people were ready to experience "stupid", as organizatrix seelenschwester describes it. I got to see leenerella in the wild! Now there's a lady who needed a night out. After one absinthe I assuaged my munchies with a vegan burrito at Lost Lake. Recommended. Caturday is one of my favorite nights, and now Tacoma Girl wants to come along someday because of course she does.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. This afternoon was house hunting for the first time since 2000. There was the too-small place in Fremont, the too-popular place in Greenwood, and the too-sketch-grim-and-beat-up place in Licton Springs. It would be nice if the too-popular place in Greenwood fell into my lap, but I shouldn't count on that. This is going to be a process, I'm pretty sure.

Oh yeah: sushi & beer with the coven in Greenwood. I may not be the worst girlfriend in the world, but I need to try harder not to have things in common with certain bad girlfriends.

My alarm is set for 0300. Ungh. The next entry you see should be transmitted over my mom's WiFi.



*Yes, this is kind of a lesbian stereotype. I'm conflicted about fitting it.

On my way to my date with Comfy Lady yesterday evening, I learned that the Mercury was to reopen that night. It was announced with all of four hours' notice.

For folks outside the Seattle area, the Merc is our beloved Goth joint. H tells me it's one of four remaining in the entire United States*. It's been serving up strong drinks, stompy music, black-clad eye candy, and occasional goofiness since the start of the century.

I was a little trepidatious about asking CL to take me to the Merc after our date, but she's good, giving, and game, so off we went. Seeing as how it was Capitol Hill after 2200, finding parking meant circling half a dozen blocks and walking two more, but we made it.

What's changed:

• masks, which people were really good about wearing
• vax cards, duh
• really good ventilation
• new paint, new soundproofed ceiling, and new lights
• The bar isn't quite restocked yet: I had to drink my absinthe neat, because there were no sugar cubes. Hand, Staple, Forehead!
• Prices are higher, but still not what I'd call high.
• The Mercury is now non-smoking. If what H said is true, there have been some legal changes.

What hasn't changed:

• seelenschwester was spinning, dressed as an angel of death, and she was there to make her Fleischpuppe tanz. She gave me heart hands, and I gave them back.
• The strength of the drinks. Said Comfy Lady when I got my absinthe, "That's a big shot!" "Welcome to the Merc," I replied.
• The same art was on the women's restroom stalls and above the main bar. Something was hung up in the back hall, but no artist was credited.
• The furniture. What was the cool kids' table back in the aughts had queer women making out last night. I approve, naturally.

Goths spotted:

• A certain tall, brunette, outdoorsy and athletic woman whose first initial as we all know it is I. She said to me, "Let me look at your face!" She was bouncily happy, and probably the most adorable thing I've seen in at least two years.
• A certain fashionista – she actually works in the industry – whose first initial is K who's always looking fantastic in something distinctive and amazing, and last night was no exception.
• H the young blonde from Thursday night! Good to see her putting her money where her mouth is about supporting our beloved Castle Greyskull. Comfy Lady agrees that she's unreasonably attractive.

Shallow fashion details:

• the violet brocade overbust corset from Dark Garden that I got in '19
• a long, straight black crushed velvet skirt, slit up to there, that I picked up at a Goth yard sale back in the aughts
• Fluevog Gladstone boots, in black
• every piece of purple jewelry I own
• MAC Instigator lipstick

I've never encountered a vibe that happy at the Mercury, well, ever. It wasn't a sardine scene, but turnout was quite respectable even with the short notice. (It occurred to CL & me that the short notice may have been intentional to prevent a sardine scene.)

And Comfy Lady? Loved it! I tell you what, the last seventy-two hours have been made of win.




*Where are the other three? NYC, LA, New Orleans, pretty much where you'd expect.

I had my first Skype date with the Tickler during the COVID-19 outbreak. It's worth noting that it's not our first Skype date ever because she used to do long business trips overseas during which I'd be her amateur cam girl. My outfit? Fluevog Soft Rock ankle boots, a black lace thong, jewelry. Yes, I put on makeup because that's what I do for dates.

The Tickler is trying to close on a house in Tacoma, and there's some urgency in the matter: the lease on her current place runs out next month, and her landlady-cum-ex is eager to sell the place quickly. It isn't emotionally fraught, but the timetable isn't exactly easy.

( Sexy stuff under here. )
It was good to see her and I'm relieved that she's doing as well as she is; she's self-isolating because a co-worker tested positive, which is ironic because she usually works from home normally and doesn't spend much time near her co-workers. Still, I guess I was expecting something more than video - even solid video, thanks Skype - could deliver. We started yawning, air-kissed, and signed off after just under 90 minutes.

I got ready for bed, climbed in, and saw a message from R of R&J fame*. JQ, the usual Friday night DJ at the Mercury, was doing a live Twitch stream of a set. I didn't have Twitch, but I signed up toute de suite and jumped on. It was a pretty great set, and best of all, dozens of Goths including Mercury staff and old-schoolers from the SeaGoth bulletin board who haven been to the Merc in years were on the chat. That right there was the highlight of my weekend. I was blasting Goth music from my phone while on my back in bed right around midnight, probably annoying the upstairs neighbors**. I was tempted to pour myself some absinthe, but didn't. Mental note: I need to throw JQ and the rest of the Merc staff some cash.

Plan for today: exercise, cook, dehydrate.



*I really need to come up with nicknames for those two. I know: IOnan & Fashionista, respectively! Yes, there's a good explanation for those.
**If I have to hear their sex, they have to hear my music.

Long time no write! Big gaps in this here journal mean one of two things: either I'm feeling down, or I've been preoccupied. This time it was the latter, happily: my college chum H flew up from the Bay Area on Friday evening, and we pah-tayed.

Friday night: pizza at one of my favorite joints, Cornuto. They have Nutella calzones. So wrong, and yet so right.

Saturday: H's reason for traveling here was to perform with her dance team, Twisted Sisters, at the Folklife festival. She left chez moi early to go rehearse while I dealt with a crashed server at work. Eventually I took the bus down and got to see H's team do their "rapper" dance. It has nothing to do with hip hop, and more to do with "swords", or more precisely flexible strips of steel with a handle at each end like those once used to clean off ponies that hauled coal out of mines. No, I'm not making this up. So you got this group of five women, each of whom holds one end of a sword in each hand, stepping, twisting, and jumping while holding onto their swords for dear life, while their "fool" does fool things.

Did I mention that H is 5'0"? And that the fool was a good-sized man in a bowler hat? Disaster failed to strike, but it's definitely a risk. I will grudgingly admit that the rapper dancing was pretty cool. The Morris dancing, though, I thought was meh.

H's team did two unofficial performances on Saturday. Between gigs, we saw a Filipina miraculously avoid getting her ankles smashed between bamboo poles. Also, a nine-piece marimba band made up mostly of high school kids who appeared to come from maybe two families. I gotta love watching a girl of maybe sixteen with an ecstatic face like a German Baroque angel, turning pink from sun and exertion as her straight blond hair flies, heavy metal style, from the motion of whanging opposite ends of a bass marimba. A mallet or two escaped, but they had spares ready to go. The groove was right on. Oh yeah: Nyamuziwa Marimba did not appear in the program. It may have been an unofficial performance like Twisted Sisters that day.

I took H to the Mercury. She'd never been in a Goth joint or tried absinthe before. We rectified that. Splendid! We also watched people. We were home by 0100 because H needed to be in reasonable shape for...

Sunday: The official Twisted Sisters performance, on a stage, which was of course the only time anything went wrong, but the crowd was with them. Much energy. I took H to Capitol Hill for Tacos Chukis, walking around Broadway & Cal Anderson Park, ice cream, watching skateboarders from the shade, and a little book & record shopping. 'Nuther words, it was kind of perfect. We got on a southbound train together, and I bid her farewell at my usual transfer point for the bus home.

ETA: H & I don't get to see each other very often because of geography. I do love spending time with her, though. She's known me since 1985 and may have some decent blackmail material on me, if she can remember that far back.

I've been hibernating in my lake place today because a) it's cold out there with chunky rain and b) I've been slightly hung over from the Merc last night. You'd think I'd know better by now, but it was good to see peeps.

But before the Merc, dinner with the Siberian Siren at the Highline. I spent most of that time listening to her describe how her real estate business is blowing up in a good way. If you've got to have a Russian oligarch, I'd rather have an anti-racist lesbian Russian oligarch who's all about helping out other women. Real estate is... kind of interesting? I guess? But I'm happy for her. She's worked hard and gone through a lot.

It was lovely to see seldom-seen folks last night at Ye Olde Spooky Clubbe. But do you ever have one of those nights where you're pretty sure everything you said is stupid? That was last night for me. I blame enough alcohol (Thanks, Mercury bar staff!) and not enough sleep.

---

Speaking of stupid, a consistent and justifiable complaint of the Siberian Siren's is that I usually wear my beloved vintage Coach purse (the one that its former owner called the hippie bag, some of you may recall) with a black nylon REI backpack to hold my laptop. This situation is suboptimal because a) the SS is correct that it's not a good look, and b) I have extra bulk both in front of and behind me when I'm standing on a bus or train. So I took the poor widow's $10,000 the plunge further into hipsterism, hit the sale at REI, and got a black Chrome messenger bag. It has a seat belt buckle in front for quick releasing. It looks waterproof on the inside. There's room for both my laptop and the hippie bag; no way am I giving the hippie bag up because it's more suitable for outings on foot without my laptop, and it's just too well designed and made, even if I could stand to re-dye it. We shall see if I love the messenger bag, but I'm sure the E line and light rail passengers will thank stop hating me.

Yesterday: took care of business - car and hair - and ended up missing the women's march against hate on Capitol Hill, for which I feel a little guilty. Went to Mercury with ionan and my ex-co-worker M, who was a Merc virgin. M is a liberal evangelical Christian, so it was... an interesting exchange of cultures. Oh, and my makeout with another woman got compared to "Showtime softcore". Oh my.

Much social today: the last Mourning Market (*sniffle*) at which I replaced lost & destroyed jewelry, going all the way up to Snohomish County to say hi to ravenmimura and evillinn, and then to a casual meeting of protest artists organized by Grenade. Yes, Grenade is cute. Shaddup. I have an idea; I just need the time & energy to execute it. I still need to stuff envelopes going to Georgia.

ETA: The letters I printed out for Georgia on Friday don't mention Trump's phone call to Taiwan, which will definitely damage and may completely end diplomatic relations with China, the US's largest trading partner and, I think, creditor.