Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Sleeping: I've suddenly started falling asleep not too early, and waking up right around the time my alarm goes off. Shorter days? Lower temperatures? I don't care, really. It's a welcome development.

Eating: That meetup thing last night near my place? Had me as the only attendee. The organizers bailed due to COVID exposure, so good on them. Funny Lady invited me to a different thing in Belltown, but I was hungry and didn't feel like making that trip late on a school night. At least I know how long it takes me to walk to Tangletown from my house: about half an hour. Tangletown Public House? Decent food & booze, plenty of outdoor seating. A good place for the COVID-conscious. And Tangletown has lots of places for eetz & drinx.

The Wendling tested negative for COVID yesterday, and I tested negative today, not that I had any symptoms. This means that a) the Tickler can come up and see the solstice parade as they wanted to, and b) I can get my hair done this weekend.

Whew!

It's worth pointing out, however, that I agreed to go to the parade without checking my schedule, and I have a hair appointment late that afternoon. The parade starts early in the afternoon — if we're lucky because it's full of hippies. The Tickler is copacetic, though, because they understand how hard it is to reschedule such things. Mental note: propose dinner on Saturday at Issian.

My back is complaining because I spent Juneteenth doing all the housework and errands.

The door to my balcony is mostly glass, and now it's glass covered in translucent adhesive Devil Girls. I printed out a selfie, altered it, and cut the silhouette out with an X-Acto knife dozens of times. Go me!

The weather is perfect in Seattle. Aw to the yeah.

Walgreen's was again useless for a COVID shot. I again made the mistake of telling the truth about when my last one was, and since I'm under 65 they wouldn't give me another. Off to Dr. Funnyname I go.

But! I'm now in possession of €200. Says one what's been to Treffen, cash isn't necessary often but you might need it for some small vendors. Otherwise preparations are going swimmingly: schedule shuffling, etc. I'm thinking of calling up the hotel and paying for that... somehow.

I have a date with Dancer tomorrow evening. One of the worst people I know got a richly deserved piece of news he didn't like. Physical therapy is working. I'm feeling pretty good.

There's something else I learned, or rather had confirmed, while I was talking to Rebecca the Lambert House staffer. The fraction of the youth that Lambert House serves who are homeless has fallen during my time as a volunteer.

How good is that? Parents still kick their kids out of their homes for being queer, but has the rate of such incidents fallen? That would be wonderful, but there's a less pleasant alternative explanation: homeless queer youth just aren't showing up at the house.

I can think of why that might be the case. Early in my years and Rebecca's, the biggest complaint about the house that the youth had was that we weren't doing a good enough job of keeping banned youth out; one day's group of floor volunteers wouldn't necessarily know what had transpired on an earlier day because the records were all on paper. One of the first things that executive director Ken Shulman had me do with the database and front desk app was add features to make communication between volunteers about such issues more automatic and to alert them to potential problems. Maybe what I did worked.

Are homeless youth historically more likely to be banned for substance use or other inappropriate behavior? It would be wrong to assume so, and I couldn't honestly hazard a guess. I have access to the data that the house has on that, but I've never queried it myself. And that data is based on voluntary reporting by both the youth and the volunteers, so I can't promise that it's any good.

Mind you, COVID scrambled everything. Lambert House, the physical building, is again open to the youth five afternoons a week as of October. If we're going back to the situation of ten or twelve years ago, I guess we're going to find out shortly.

I had a slightly dull week, followed by a brilliantly overscheduled weekend. (That's sarcasm in case it wasn't clear.) So I'll try to keep this short enough to finish before the Tickler arrives.

On Thursday while out grocery shopping I ran into plantae! I invited her over to the Devil Girl House, after of course warning her about the devil girls on the walls. She came over and... drank nothing because nearly everything I have to drink is either caffeinated or alcoholic. But it was lovely! There have been no more MOOer gatherings since the start of the pandemic; that was where I usually saw her. And then she had some capital-I Issues with her health. But then I moved into her neighborhood! She's one of these people I don't really get, but like a lot anyway.

Friday at 1400: XBB COVID shot.
Friday at 1715: My first hair appointment with razorbits for the first time in twelve weeks. (I was a jeenyus and scheduled my previous appointment during Folsom.)
Friday at 2100: The Mercury withack_yeahright! She had all kinds of info about Treffen – she says to get lodging now, now, now, unfortunately. She also had Burning Man plans which I might even be tempted to join in on. And she had all sorts of juicy tidbits about her trashy ex and his girlfriend. To my surprise and delight, I didn't have too much to drink, introduced her to Lost Lake, and got home on the bus around 0100. I've invited her to the Devil Girl house next month, and we're going to hit Portland together in January. Awesomeness.

Four hours' sleep later, it was time to get sugared a week late – sick kid – then get the balance of my sleep and finish cleaning house.

Whew!

It should be a fabulous evening and brunch (?) with the Tickler. Watch this space.

( Mild kink ahoy! )

Yesterday evening was Trans Pride in Seattle's Volunteer Park. As last year, there was no march, but there were speeches, performances, and a whole lot of booths. But unlike last year there were waaay more people, and I'd bet you an awesome T-shirt that most of them were trans or non-binary. It wasn't Folsom crowded, but walking between the booths wasn't always possible.

I've never been to a trans event that people dressed up for so much, either. I was in my psychedelic skater dress and gladiator sandals because it was a) warm and b) on a grassy slope. I wasn't totally slumming it, but I did feel a bit underdressed.

Oh yeah: I haven't seen a higher percentage of people wearing masks since a kink event several months ago where there were door people enforcing masks. That's right, Middle America: the transes are better than you are. So are the kinksters.

Today: I have black fingernails, silver shoes, and slutty clothes crying out to be worn. It's Pride Eve, baby.

( Gross nasal stuff under here. )

The only thing I can recall that was kind of like a COVID symptom lately was one epic coughing jag in the middle of the night, but that was back when it was super smoky outside so that's what I ascribed it to.

To be clear: I feel fine now. No more gross body stuff. But did I have a mostly asymptomatic COVID case? I could take a PCR test and find out, I guess, but to what end? I know I definitely had it six months ago.

I went downtown this afternoon and got my third (Shhh!) COVID-19 booster plus my flu shot. I'm a regular pincushion. And the COVID booster? Is one of the new ones that protect against omicron variants. At least this time I didn't have to bend any rules to get it when I did: it's been five months since my last booster, and it's been more than 90 days since I was infected. We shall now see to what degree these two shots kick my butt. I hope it isn't too much because I need to do an epic house clean tomorrow before my date with the Tickler on Saturday.

While I was down there, I walked to REI to see if the bike headlight I ordered last month had come in for pickup. It had not. There's been some SNAFU. Fear not: I picked up another light at my local bike shop because I, you know, don't want to die. But having two would be useful, especially for Burning Man. And yes, I'm strongly considering going next year.

I'll do this in chronological order. It makes a better narrative.

Yesterday afternoon, Volunteer Park in Seattle Featured two events I wanted to go that overlapped in time and were within 200m of each other. The first was the second annual trans picnic. Once again, several hundred trans and non-binary people converged near the Asian Art Museum and... had a picnic. Yeah, it was pretty low key. Some people said it was bigger than last year, but that wasn't obvious to me. There were certainly hundreds of us there, along with food, which I missed, and more importantly, water & soft drinks. It was the kind of event that makes me want to kidnap random geezers from conservatives areas, get them out of the trunk, and go, "See?!"

But instead of random geezers I got to see D from back in my Microsoft days. Her life sounds weirdly like mine: another trans techie. I put the heart sticker on my name tag that meant it was OK to flirt with me, but that didn't happen, and I didn't make much of an effort myself because...

...there was the Goth clothing swap just north of the stage. The eye candy is a major attraction. I swear, clubbers could learn a thing or two from young people who go all out for a booze-free (but, surprisingly, not food-free) event in the afternoon. I saw Shiny H looking way too fabulous for a clothing swap; I swear that girl is as big around as one of my thighs. Did I need clothes, though? No. But did I get some anyway? Yes, but only a couple of small items. I might have snarfed more if I'd shown up earlier. Then I would have been faced with painful decisions after getting the clothes clean.

I texted the coven that I was heading for the Hill to the Merc* unless somebody came up with another plan. namoda was already there and in need of eetz, so Witness it was. Pity Tacoma Girl didn't come with us, but I always have a good time with the coven and any proper subset thereof.

And then I got home on the bus around midnight, which is when my son texted me a photo of his positive COVID test. Right now he's isolating in the apartment underneath the Devil Girl House. Luckily, Ex was at the beach and hasn't been in the same room with him since Wednesday. I haven't, either. It was providence that we got his apartment all furnished just a couple of weeks ago. It's not the use for that apartment that I'd prefer, but it's very, very good to have right now. Ex asked me to get him Pepcid & Zyrtec or generic equivalents to forestall long COVID. I did as she asked. He complains of chest pain when he breathes, which I found alarming until Ex said that she sometimes gets that with colds. Poor kiddo. Seeing as he's not the social butterfly that I am, he almost certainly got it at work.

Oh: ( mild kink )




*It may have been a good thing I didn't go to the Merc. They had an open membership night that filled up the joint. It was a sardine scene, which I'm OK with, but it was all new people. Good for the Merc, though.

So I, uh, went to Kremwerk on Sunday night for the long weekend's Flammable house music night, which started up again in February after the hiatus that began with the closure of Re-bar (*sniffle*) in 2020.

Good:

• Still the same super-gay flammable crowd. Lots of shirtless gay men, and even a few hundred-footer* lesbians.
• Choonz were a-OK.
• Kremwerk has renovated their upper level, bringing together their fragmented spaces into one larger room named Cherry.
• Getting my social on with a random first-generation immigrant from Japan.

Less good:

• There was maybe one mask on in a capacity crowd. I spent most of my time by the fire outdoors.
• The Japanese lady advised me to be more manipulative with my son, like her parents. Yikes!
• I hit the wall at midnight. I'm either out of practice, under-caffeinated, or old.

Am I looking forward to Pride weekend, especially Saturday night with Taller Woman? Hell yes. Am I going to go back to my usual ways with house nights? Not just yet. ¡Viva la Merc!



*As in, you can tell they're lesbians from a hundred feet away.