You Don't Live Like I Do

I've been so excited for the last few days since we found out about this Mask Bloc folk-punk gig that we could go to.

A gig where D and I weren't the only two wearing masks!

I had a great time, particularly liked two of the acts, Albatross and Octavia Holyoke. When D's girlfriend asked us if Cheap Dirty Horse were playing, this was my introduction to that particular musical group, but then after Albatross's set when we were all outside drinking and/or smoking, they made an offhand reference to playing the washboard for Cheap Dirty Horse so we saw I guess one-seventh of them after all!

Albatross played a sweet song called something like "Song I Will Never Sing for My Mother" about being trans, they (don't know their pronouns, so this is the Unspecified they) introduced it by saying it includes their deadname but they don't think of it as a deadname, so it was nice to get some representation for my own experience there. The song also referred to their testosterone gel as smelling like gin, which made me a little sad because I think it smells like hand sanitizer (which is why mine is known as planned manitizer); I'm used to a better class of gin I guess!

The pub's gammons were clearly a little unimpressed with those of us in the side room for the gig. When D and I went to the bar to get a last pint, still wearing our masks of course, an older white guy next to D challenged him about why he wore a mask. D mildly offered that it was because of the ongoing covid pandemic, and the guy got weird, saying stuff like "they won't work" and trying to tell D he'd developed one of the vaccines but also people's immune systems were good enough. We just ignored him and went outside, but very sweetly the lady who'd been serving us at the bar (who was wearing a mask when she did! all the bar staff did when I saw them) actually came out to apologize for this and assure us that that guy doesn't normally come there, she'd never seen him before. It was really above and beyond, I wouldn't have expected any response from her at all, we also had never been there before, so I was touched by the support.

It was a great nice, after a great day of helping plant trees and fruit plants for a "forest garden" near us, having a cider in the sunshine, taking a nap, we even got to cycle to this gig.

The good news is that today has been less uncomfortable in the ineffable way that yesterday was.

( The bad news is that today I've just been depressed. )

D has been doing sterling work with getting our household on solar energy: not just getting four or five quotes and comparing them carefully (of course they're all slightly different), but researching the minutiae and also explaining things in a very accessible way to me, who it turns out doesn't know much about how electricity works.

This afternoon we had a final video call with the guy from our chosen provider, which was very pleasant -- the guy was friendly, it's always fun to see D as happy as the prospect of getting most of our energy from the sun makes him -- and after that we officially went forward with that proposal.

I thought I'd written about six months ago -- though actually I'm not surprised that I didn't -- that after my grandma died and my grandparents' house had been sold, my parents got a third of that money and they put a chunk of it in my bank account (despite my protestations that they keep it all; Mom said she knew I'd say that and it was no use arguing, so I didn't argue). Mom wanted me to put it toward something for the house, something big and good, rather than have it just trickle away on bills and stuff.

I was at a loss what to do about it at the time, but of course here's something wonderful. The cost of our solar energy installation is about half on the battery and half on the solar panels, and the money I think of as my grandma's will cover one of those halves.

Mom happened to ask a couple weeks ago if I'd thought of anything to do with it, so I told her about the solar panels, and she seemed pretty happy with that. (My dad was if anything a little jealous; of course the funding for such things has been stripped away from the U.S. (though Minnesota seems to be trying to do what it can so hopefully that'll change soon.)

(Of course, being my mom, she asked exactly the same question again yesterday, because she does not actually take in the information I tell her or that she has specifically requested, and when I answered it again, this time she was like "oh, yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you've spent it on something..." The first time was much more fun!)

On the drive home from gym this morning (D was able to come along! it was so lovely to have him there with me for the first time since February), D was as usual pointing out the Good Dogs. We saw so many dogs enjoying a Saturday morning walk in the at-least-partly-sunny weather.

When my attention was directed to one particular dog, I couldn't help but notice that we were also going past a Greggs. I thought D would like to know that I was now thinking about pastry, so I said so.

We kept going, and my tired happy brain didn't think anything of it when he didn't turn the way he usually does to get home. We were chatting away, and he still hadn't turned, and then it occurred to me.

"Are you going this way so we can go to Greggs before we go home?" The one nearest our house was one of the few reasons that he'd still be driving this way.

So I got two vegan sausage rolls for brunch (I always eat breakfast before gym or I'll be too hungry to function). They were perfect: still hot (because Greggs is so busy on a Saturday morning, everything is fresh) and flaky and delicious.

As we left the shop, I said "Thanks for doing this. It really was just an offhand comment."

"Yeah," D said, "but a lot of the best stuff happens from following offhand comments."

It's true. I'm so glad we get to share so many silly little adventures.

Yesterday I went to London for work yesterday so had been up for 13 hours by the time I got home just in time to make dinner.

I was again this morning to travel luckily a much shorter distance for work. But still: in person, in new places, it's exhausting.

On the bus back home at lunchtime, I'd be more excited about getting there if I didn't have a couple more meetings this afternoon and a lot of tasks to pick up now that have been neglected over the last couple days while I've been busy with all this stuff.

By the time I finished work, my slight headache had turned into so much sensitivity to light and then sound that I took my migraine-y self to bed as soon as I'd managed to eat the dinner D made.

I suppose it's a very understandable time to have a migraine, but it's also very disappointing that, now that I could relax a bit, I can't even concentrate on anything, can't go to the gym like I'd been looking forward to, etc.

I've just had a cute, kinda meta conversation about psychological safety at work.

I mentioned it offhandedly in the big team meeting this morning and just now a colleague called me just to ask about it. He said he hadn't heard of it before but he was interested. I'm no expert but I tried to explain that it's about feeling safe to challenge people, to be unpopular, to be more of your whole self at work.

It was nice that I could use an example where he once asked me about a new colleague he started working with who uses they/them pronouns; he wasn't sure what that meant or how to use them so he asked me.

And of course him asking me this is itself an example of psychological safety. Something that he noticed himself at the end of the conversation. He's cool, I really like him.