Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

My son is in LA as of yesterday. I slept fine. Huh. We'll see about tonight.

Latex dinner last night. Got to talk to Rubbermaid last night for the first time in a couple of months. She'll be spending the summer in Berlin. I'm a little bit jealous, but as I told her, I'm disappointed that I won't be able to throw myself at her. I mean I could and I just might, but sheesh.

It's enough to make me want to hit the apps again. The apps don't make it easy to tell them, look, I'm a lesbian in my middle late fifties with certain... tastes, looking for roughly the same not too far away. Surely it isn't that hard.

I ordered the next three books of The Expanse from Powell's. May Goddess have mercy on my soul.

I check my son's US mail because I have a) the only key to his mailbox, and b) executive function. Yesterday there was a thank-you postcard from the campaign for Susan Crawford, the Wisconsin supreme court justice who won election the other day despite Musk's attempts at buying votes. The Wendling must have donated to her campaign.

This is noteworthy because I don't remember discussing the Crawford campaign with him at all, so I'm virtually certain that this was his idea. And he's not exactly rolling in dough, either. I am proud of my son, and I'm going to tell him so when he buys me a burger tonight.

The Wendling asked the other day if I could "show him how to make spaghetti". Yes, he's 27. Yes, I jumped at the chance. No, I didn't ask him what took him so long.

As I was cooking away, he offered to stir the sauce. (I use sauce from a jar and add browned meat, garlic, and herbs. No big deal.) He acted like he really wanted to Do The Thing, which wasn't what I was expecting. Happiness.

I told him to tell his mother because it would make her happy. He already had.

Last night I slept poorly, and for only a few hours. Even that much was thanks to one of Tacoma Girl's weed gummies.

I saw the election news at 0500 today. Right after my alarm went off at 0600, I made it to the downstairs toilet and dry heaved. My son, perhaps hearing me from downstairs, came up. I cried in his arms. He said, "Stay strong." Never have I been more grateful for him.

And here's the cherry on top of this shit sundae: I got a hold of one of the lawyers who my agent recommended, and she said that yes, if push comes to shove I will owe that money back to the mortgage processor. So I've paid it, even though it's a significant fraction of my savings.

I've got girl 'roids for at least a year. Replacing them may be a little ticklish.

My passport has several years left on it, but I've been told to renew anyway.

My son paid his first electric bill yesterday. Yes, I reminded him, but I fully expected him to forget about it by the end of the day, and he didn't. Go go executive function.

Now for the down part: he's transferring his college savings account that his mother and I started when he was little to his savings account. He's that sure he's not going to college, he says he needs the money, and he's surely old enough. Le sigh.

So I had that coffee with former co-worker C, half expecting her to propose a real estate transaction that I really don't want. Luckily, that didn't happen. What did happen, though, was some intense talk about being queer when you're married to a man, wanting children when the window for easy baby making is closing, and dealing with elders. It was a lot, but it was good. And no, it wasn't a date. We hadn't seen each other in years, and I get the funny feeling she needs someone like me to talk to.

And then I found out that my son tested positive for COVID. That meant that I had to return Ex's car to her down in the south end, devour the leftover gluten free seed crackers that she made, take transit home, and make dinner. I didn't get to eat dinner until 2200. And in lieu of biking this morning, I went grocery shopping for my son and myself, because that didn't get done yesterday either. I'd scheduled both a hair appointment and the Tickler for Saturday, and I've informed them of the situation. I'm strongly considering staying home and catching up on the house projects that I didn't get done.

Edited to add: I'm low on sleep and I have Lambert House trans group this evening. I'll be making lots of tea today.

Yesterday my son forgot that he said he'd come over for dinner. But if he had come over, I would have needed to go grocery shopping late last night after my Lambert House volunteer shift.

Speaking of Lambert House, I promised to do some database monkeying for them on Sunday, but I napped instead of going in the afternoon as I'd put in my calendar. I remembered just in time to bop on over to Capitol Hill and back before bedtime. The actual monkeying was mercifully fast, and my mass transit mojo was working.

I managed to do laundry before or between meetings this morning. It was definitely time: I was low on warm socks and unsexy underwear in my dresser.

The Wendling says that his union and his employer have reached a tentative agreement, so there will be no strike — this time. Whew!

I had thought that the track maintenance on Seattle's one and only light rail line was ending on the 27th, but neau, it's ending on the 4th. In any case, on the way to Capitol Hill I got treated to a ten-minute wait at UW station with Butt-showing Dude followed by a half-speed climb up the Hill. I didn't take the train home.

And where was I going? Drinks with the latex folks. It was a nice little bit of socializing, including (re-)meeting an attractive woman my age — who is of course monogamously married. I really need to get on the stick about dating, now that the January chaos is mostly over.

My son's union is holding a strike vote today. He says management at PCC walked away from contract negotiations yesterday, and he's voting in favor of the strike. Luckily for me, there's another supermarket even closer than the nearest PCC. (PCC is both better and, thanks to his employee discount, cheaper for me.) I may soon be cooking more and walking less. Time to put my money where my mouth is?

Good Sister gave me a birthday phone call yesterday evening. I found out a couple of things. First, she & her husband really are looking at moving to Roanoke to cut costs; they've already let their girls know that they're about to have less storage space for the girls' stuff. Second, she's already making plans in case she gets dementia. As she put it, Mom had everything planned out except for that contingency. In grand Good Sister style, she encouraged me to start on this, too.

Sheeut. My son isn't even launched, and he's making no moves to. He's in no position to take care of either of his parents having a serious, long-term decline. If I try to have a serious conversation with him about my brain someday turning to Jell-O, his anxiety will crumple him into a ball.

And oh by the way, having moved heaven and earth to get into the Devil Girl House, I'm so not thinking about getting out. Yes, Seattle is expensive. It's also livable for a trans person with no car as hardly anywhere else in the US is. You get what you pay for.