Category: slice of life

Generic Life Stuff as I go about my days.

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Bloganuary writing prompt: What are your favorite sports to watch and play?

People Speedrunning Video Games.

No, seriously.

It’s very awesome to see people become so good at the game that they beat it in record time. They have an intimate knowledge of not only how the game itself works, but the quirks and nuances of not only the format the game is in, but also the system the game is played on. It can get pretty technical when you think beyond speed, though that alone is still pretty impressive. I personally enjoy the runs where glitches are exploited and the game is utterly broken– that takes time and dedication.

When a speedrun tournament is happening, I block off my evenings and not move from the couch. The outside world ceases to exist. I’d have a spread of finger food, hookah, drinks, and other friends that enjoy video game content (but if it’s just me, the spread is much smaller). I cheer on my favorites, jump up when a hard trick is pulled off, and you know I’m shouting when someone breaks a world record! I laugh, I cry, I wish I wasn’t hand-eye-coordination impaired.

These events are my Super Bowl.

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Bloganuary Prompt: In what ways do you communicate online?

Largely text-based, with the occasional voice memo if I’m not streaming.

I assume people are only interested in the big guys, the Web 3.0 jockeys. And the only one I reliably use is Discord. The mention of Facebook Messenger is strictly obligatory: I’ve family that can’t (or wont?) use anything else.

I’ll also say, sporadically. I’ve slowed down, considerably, since I reevaluated my social media consumption last year.

The platforms and protocols I do use seem slower in comparison to, say, Twitter– especially if they’re reminiscent (or artifacts) of the algorithm-free Old Internet, like Mastodon or XMPP. Forums are just snail mail compared to anything else… and that’s exactly why I prefer them these days.

I do still use email, just not nearly as much as I did a decade ago. It’s still good for long-form conversations and to talk shop (when it’s not a receptacle for coupons and news).

And I blog. Of course.

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Bloganuary writing prompt: What is your favorite animal?

I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. (Cats are a close second.)

Sonic popping out of a manhole, saying Hedgehog. Noun. A burrowing animal.
This panel gets a lot of mileage.

Let’s get the obvious reason out of the way: nostalgia! Not only is Sonic the Hedgehog my favorite color, but I grew up in the 90s as the Cooler Mario hit our TV screens. I loved the games, enjoyed both cartoons, and I read just about every damn issue of the Archie Comics series (and I am subscribed to IDW’s current run). Oh, and Sonic was totally my boyfriend as I pretended to be Princess Sally, crawling and climbing on the wooden playgrounds to thwart Dr. Robotnik’s plans.

…

…Anyway.

I relate to the hedgie. I relate to hedgehogs so much, my ALBI FACTS are cribbed from actual hedgehog trivia. I have terrible eyesight, solitary (introverted), and I seem most active at night. Being in the hedges is also a great time. Oh, and I make weird noises. And I bite. And, depending on who you ask, my Black queer ass could be illegal in 7 states if things keep going the way they are.

For fun, I like thinking about astrology things. Virgos are Earth signs, right? So it stands to reason that we can associate symbols or animals that are related to the earth, to Virgo. And if burrowing in gardens isn’t earthy, I don’t know what is.

I deal (as most of us do) with what the science types call The Hedgehog Dilemma. In my own words: It’s when you want to get close to another hedgehog, but if you do, you’ll very likely poke and be poked by quills. And if you have any empathy, you’ll think twice before snuggling up to a quill-less critter because you might end up hurting them, since they don’t have the same defenses. But to be human, sometimes you just gotta risk it.

…But I am willing to risk getting hurt sometimes. Perhaps it’s inevitable.

Sometimes, it’s worth it.

Amazing Facts About [Me]

And that, ultimately, is why I can relate to the spiny creature so much– because it embodies the struggle of a one-bitten-twice-shy-and-guarded-introvert, but also looks really cute while doing so. And while hogging the hedges.

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CONTENT WARNING: death, death mention


This weekend, I saw someone die on the shore.


The asterisk: it was very likely they died on the shore. But I hope they didn’t.


I was distracted– trying not to lose the hat I borrowed– when my partner noted a crowd gathering not too far from where we were . When I saw someone laying on the sand, not moving, I stopped frolicking.


I stood there, unsure, not wanting to stare but concern grew in me. I checked it carefully for any hints of morbid curiosity. The waves crashed at my back, pushing me to return to land and I do so; the higher waves weren’t fun anymore. I look around self-consciously, and I was not the only one to leave. Maybe they thought the same that I did– that being in the water still having fun while someone was dying seemed… wrong.


I sat where the shore was dark-wet sand, a compromise between needing the comfort of nature and the Wrongness I felt if I stayed in deeper waters. Two women walked by, asking of anyone else knew CPR. I apologized for not knowing. People were taking turns. The crowd grew. This Someone still hadn’t stirred.


I focused on the sand-wave combination burying my feet.


I tried to fit the experience to my intrusive thoughts earlier in the day: don’t go too far, remember the riptides, don’t go too deep, I can’t lose you.


I thought, how would the world be like if everyone stopped what they were doing and acknowledged a life in peril or a life possibly lost. Overt, Obvious, Empathy.


I thought of that Buffy episode where she couldn’t call her deceased mom “The Body” and I also refused to call Someone “The Body” holding out for as long as I could while people were still doing CPR.


Someone started waving their arms; the medical team arrived with their direction. Minutes after, the police were on the scene as well. We decided to leave. Our beach bag was almost in the way of the med’s four-wheeler. I felt guilty, and promised I would not have been mad if they ran it over. I couldn’t help but say, “I hope they’re okay.” And there was an apology; because it was likely they really, really weren’t going to be.


But I was compelled to hope. Hope that Someone would pull through.


When we left, they were still doing CPR. I think. I saw a stretcher. I don’t remember much else.


At the back of the resort, we rinsed off our feet. Someone at the gate asked questions.


And then I hear it: “She was my friend.”


I can’t say what hasn’t been said before, already. About death, I mean. But my experience is still uniquely my own, at least through only my eyes and the thoughts attached to what I saw– my personalized reminders of our morality.


A morbid, juxtaposed footnote for a wonderful beach trip celebrating our birthdays.


It isn’t as haunting as I thought it would be. But maybe “haunting” is just too strong a word for the effect.


The day after, I checked online for any news of the incident. And two days later it did float into my mind as I was rinsing my grapes. And it is the sole subject of this post.


I suspect it will come up again, the next time I visit the beach. Or I’ll give into the urge to resume my news search.


I’m wondering if I am the “right amount” of haunted.

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So anyway. I love being silly. There is no intro paragraph and I’m not gonna hit you with the Thesis/Main Idea and Three Reasons Why. I’m not going to drag this out with citations and lengthy examples (okay, maybe some examples). I’m just going to braindump on why I enjoy being so damn silly and preface a codifier with a question that has haunted me since middle school:

What's Normal Anyway?
Read the webcomic about being a trans man, or even better, buy the book! 

Everyone’s "normal" is different, when they’re not confusing it with other words like "standard," "straight," "middle," and "white." Sorry for getting political (end sarcasm; I ain’t fucking sorry), but you pick up the shorthand if you stick around long enough. Lemme tell you (in my opinion, but I am stating it as an absolute fact!):


It’s some boring shit! Normal is conforming. Normal is what’s expected. Normal votes red or blue. Normal is binary, has rules and criteria, and other things that feel dull and uninspired. Normal is alla that.


Until it isn’t.

Two panels from a Penny and Angie page; Mary-Ann is diffusing a tense teen situation by cracking jokes, causing Michelle to laugh. KatyAnn: Are shawls... schmalz? Michelle: Pff ff ff ff ff ... Do you work at being this weird? KatyAnn: It's God's gift. I have the frock of mockery. In the second panel KatyAnn also has a halo while she sticks her tongue out, smiling. Two angelic smiley faces float above her head, too.
This pink-haired white girl and her lines here live rent free in my head.

My normal can be different from the normal of someone else. My normal can involve the pills I need to take and how many ants I see in my windowsill (which should be ZERO). My normal also includes a daily joke in my morning routine and sending memes to my loved ones. My normal is non-sequiturs that only make sense to me– sometimes. I dance in my chair. I say goofy things to take my coworkers off-guard. I have the same three tired jokes in rotation but damn it, they are played out for a reason!


How did the fire fall in love? It met its match! While you groan at that one, rethink normal and be weird. Or is weird the normal? Meditate on that!


"Why are you like this?!" My nesting partners exclaim when I set down a large shriveled seed of some sort onto their belly button as they mind their own damn business.


Because it’s fun, duh.


And, sure, to be serious a moment (just one), it could be a defense mechanism of some sort. Obligatory "was the weird kid in high school" (ask "M," we kicked trees during our lunch break). I definitely leaned into it the older I grew and… at some point, you realize that being weird is pretty okay. Even better when you find a support network with a bunch of other weirdos. One person’s weird is another person’s normal, and vise versa.


You know those old folks who do weird shit and just don’t give a fuck? That is real. But why wait? Be weird now. Be silly. Or… I dare say… you can even dare to be stupid.


You know the song! It was even featured in my favorite toy commercial, that 80s Transformers movie. At some point the cast was moping around until this mustached robot weirdo of a self-insert character pops out of the wreckage and distracts them with a cycle brawl– with, I assume, that song blaring out of his speakers– until Hot Rod showed up and started to speak his language because he’s also a goofy bitch. The punches died down, everyone eventually made up, the Optimus Replacement got put together, and with their powers combined they rocket off that junk planet once they were done dancing on it.


Weird Al (Wreck-Gar) and Hot Rod swapping Energon rocks.
A Genius annotation stating the obvious: Weird Al is telling you to do stupid stuff.

So, it’s also kinda like that. I guess.


Maybe I can…


    • bring a smile (or grimace) to someone’s face,


    • diffuse a weird and tense situation (by just making it weird),


    • defang bigots (putting the demon in Pride Month),


    • be the kid I never got around to being, and to be the kid that I was,


    • make the child across the aisle giggle.



When I can can, when I want to, I be silly and smile about it. Because holy shit, do we have a lot to frown about lately. So Imma dance a bit, draw hearts on my face, then get to work putting a spaceship together out of wreckage and stuff.


Or, you know, just because. No reason. Don’t think about it, Morty.


…


I’m still leaving a tip when I get sushi, though. You wrong for that one, Al.

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Once again, the logo for the series "My Love Story!!" has been edited poorly, this time to read "My Hysterectomy Story!!" The "Love" has been blacked out.
Seriously? This joke again?

A lot of folx have been asking me about the procedure, as well as what made me finalize my decision. I’ve written about the latter in detail already (and will link here), so I will focus on the day of. But in short, I decided to do this because of health issues, being childfree, gender affirmation, finally having the means, and timing. I finally have decent enough insurance (but even with insurance, it was over 5k USD!), and with our political climate and reproductive rights being threatened… I figured I better get this done while I still could.

So, after the cut, the details on how it went. Imagery of my insides included! Content warning for talking about surgery, body stuff, and graphic imagery.

Continue reading →

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As of typing this entry out Roe v. Wade had been overturned. Many states have tightened their laws around reproductive health and anti-trans rhetoric has been going through the USA like wildfire. I would like to put a call to action here to SUPPORT YOUR NATIONAL AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS and if you’re able, GET INVOLVED.


Content Warning: there will be talk about body stuff, but especially about bodies that deal with menstruation. Mine, of course. More of the entry and, uh, details, is after the cut.


Continue reading →

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On a drive home from work I call mom, because my car can do that now and I need something to do on my 45 minute commute. We were discussing hobbies and things and I kept putting myself down: “My nesting partners are so creative with building things with their hands! All I do is stream video games and write for my blog.”


She goes, “What sort of things do you write?”


I reply, “Oh, anything that comes to mind.” And, I added with only a little hesitation: “I’ll send you a link.” To my credit, I actually did in a rather tight amount of time. And I did not forget, either.


In retrospect, I was only a little apprehensive. When I Officially Came Out on Facebook last year, there was only a little bit of apprehension then, too. I’m about to be 40 in a few years. It’s time I stopped pussyfooting to others about my truth. I’m also a firm believer in Show, Don’t Tell, so while I could’ve summed up my blog with “Introspection, Observations, and Rants” I really thought it better to just show it to her.


Besides, she knows what sorta weirdo I am already.


A blog is very reminiscent of how I handled my composition notebooks when Harriet the Spy was popular in the 90s. As the opposite of Harriet M. Welsh I did let anyone read my journal (and, thanks to the hard lesson she learned, I also learned to keep the really mean juicy bits in my head)! It was full of observations, quotes, song lyrics, boring day stuff, and doodles. In high school, a classmate was so enamored over the phrase “Satan’s Day” I penned that morning that he read the passage to the entire class! While it lacked malicious intent, said passage was still raw in my mind during that time, and I just felt mortified.


So, maybe I’m just predisposed to writing publicly about things. Just, you know, No Adults Allowed until I became one. And, perhaps, not so fiercely private– mom can attest to this; I was always as such from when I was a child. It was so I wouldn’t even tell her the nightmares I had so she could comfort me, and I refused to practice the recorder instrument in the house. I opted to make weak flute noises in the car, with all the windows rolled up.


Well, there’s still no nightmares here, and you won’t be getting context for Satan’s Day. Just things I’d like to share. If you’ve read my disclaimer you know the drill.


As for my mom’s response: she cried. But not in that “jfc you still think Garfield is funny” disappointed crying, the “you are so much like your dad, with your way with words and creativity” crying. Because he also wrote poetry and was a pretty damn good drawer to boot. I like to think I got my flair for storytelling from him, too… and my tendency to troll people. You know, annoy them a little. Like not telling people what the fuck Satan’s Day alluded to.


I’m proud of what I write, except maybe that one post on Halloween a few years back or so. So this was also like “ma lookit me” as I run up to her and show her my crayon drawing of flowers and rabbits.

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As I keep mentioning, I’m from Florida. But what is more relevant for this entry is that I grew up in a trailer (and later, a house) in the woods. So when I was younger I was surrounded by trees and spent a lot of time among them– going on walks, sitting on giant rocks, crossing railroad tracks, and getting lost, tripping, ripping your shirt, and worrying your mother to death.


To say it was a culture shock when we moved the The Suburbs a decade and change ago was an understatement. There were houses where trees should have been, and the trees that were around seemed very spread out. I had to go to an honest-to-goodness nature preserve for my woodsy walks, and that is something I take advantage of. In addition, due to lack of a transit system and a steady set of wheels, I was used to walking everywhere.


I was drawn to the isolated patches of surviving wood, and the creeks running parallel to the highway. And the more I used the sidewalks, the more likely I’d wander off them. I forage for blackberries, green onions, and chives whenever they were in season. I explored some of the city on my feet, starting with the concrete, through the bush, along a creek, and back to a sidewalk again.


Hashing is a mixture of athleticism and sociability, hedonism and hard work; a refreshing break from the nine-to-five routine. Hashing is an exhilaratingly fun combination of r*nning, orienteering, and partying, where bands of Harriers and Harriettes chase Hares on eight-to-ten kilometer-long trails through town, country, jungle, and desert, all in search of exercise, camaraderie, and good times.

About Hashing


Last year I began hashing with my nesting partner; a combination of my pestering and his desire to share a hobby with me. I kept hearing amusing and frankly, fun stories from him and I wanted to experience it for myself. It was also a way to get my homebody out of the house (read: exercise), and to satisfy my “be more social” goal that was set back by COVID’s beginning. It felt very much like my ambling about in my college and early-post college days, minus the cheap beer.


Yeah, there is beer (if you want it)! The cheap stuff, because there needs to be a lot of it! And on the path, there are marks we could follow to the next stop (or get punk’d, if the hare is a jerk), and we drink another beer. Some of us run (and we make fun of them), but most of us walk (and we also make fun of them), but we all have a good time. Oh, and remember when I said “fun”? I meant debauchery. We sing rowdy songs. We (with consent!) slap each other’s butts. We sing a lot of vulgar songs, with cursing and naughty words. We also like to party, to the point where pants sometimes go missing.


It’s been a little over a year now since I began hashing. I saw interesting out-of-the-way sights, met some pretty cool people, and had a fun time doing all of that.


Hash House Harriers have different “kennels” around the world; the foundation is the same but each kennel have their own traditions and marks! One tradition is being bestowed a “Hash Name,” but how you get one differs from kennel to kennel. For our local group, you have to hare your own trail first. After being talked about, pestered, and interrogated, whoever is on your trail that day will decide on a name based on your answers and what they know from hanging out with you.


Oh. And the names tend to be Not Safe for Work (remember the debauchery and rowdiness). And you gotta hate it at least a little bit. I am excited to do my naming trail today. I am the normal amount of socially anxious/nervous, and (said in jest) utterly terrified of what bullshit name they’re gonna stick me with!


On Out, shitlords!

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Like a lot of people, I’ve been in what’s been called “Survivor Mode.” You do enough to get through the day, most times by any means available to you.


I feel like I have been doing that since I graduated college.


Now, this happened over a decade and change ago. I graduated at the tail end of a nasty recession and the job market was hit hard. Furthermore, I had a ton of student loan debt– and due to predatory practices of this particular degree mill and student loan company collaboration, it was a lot. This combination forced me to still live at home a little longer and grab any job I could (and being a mailroom clerk, conveniently, did count toward the school’s lofty “over 90% employment rate” upon graduation). There was freelancing done here and there, and sometimes I managed to land the fabled Job in my Field, and I even started a media company with some college friends.


To put it gently, I have been burnt out from “the industry” and have PTSD symptoms when I think about going back. But my college degree, while not worth the paper it was printed on, is proverbially collecting dust. But in being able to survive business implosions, “relieved of my duties,” cheapskate clients, scams, and eviction, I had to settle for the classic 9-to-5.


I think about the “How I Got Here”s quite a lot: like a lot of folks, we were instilled with the “earning a college degree will get you employment” thing– and disappointed when it wasn’t that simple, or even possible. The aforementioned for-profit school and predatory loan distributors. My weaknesses in interviewing in an over-saturated market. My portfolio, which won awards but not jobs. I dwell on the negatives and the “What If”s along with the steps I have taken.


It’s a little harder to remember why I wanted to go into Web Design in the first place– but not as hard as I always think it will be.


Way (way) back in high school, I took all the computer courses available to me. I enjoyed them all, but the ones I liked the most were when we dealt with… Frontpage. Further back– in middle school– I was enamored with all the information other people put on the World Wide Web… how each individual put together images and text to convey what they wanted to. And I thought, “I can do that. I can build sites for people who are unable to. I can put information out there that is more accessible.” And the more I learned, the more I saw how I can create something like that.


With the advent of Content Management Systems, Web designers feel obsolete. But it still takes a person with the know-how and a good eye for color and execution– or at least, someone willing to get their hands dirty being elbow-deep in tweaking code. Accessibility is more important than ever, and I’m not just talking about readability. We have to make sure images are described accurately and accessibility tools are accounted for.


I am content, even happy, with where I am now. I’m still here, after all. There is a roof over my head, gas in the tank, and food in the fridge, despite my cravings for Taco Bell. I’m even blessed to have a job I actually like and enjoy! I am indeed surviving.


I may need to balance an old passion with the… practicality of keeping myself clothed and fed.