ice water and ocicats

...sounds like something you'd rather not get stabbed with, doesn't it? Though at least the wound would be freshly scented. At any rate, the bug and I flew and drove to get to the amusement park, rode roller coasters for two entire days, and came back. I had various new experiences:

• First time at Cedar Point, and actually my first time in Ohio. We stayed in Hotel Breakers, which is right on the island about 5 minutes' walk from the amusement park entrance gate.


• First time going to a hibachi grill place! Loud but fun, with the chefs squirting stuff into people's mouths and having fun making fire. We had shrimp and salmon that came out really good.


• First time on a tilt roller coaster, Siren's Curse, which opened just three-ish weeks ago and may have been my favorite. So smooth and sinuous, with great music and gleaming new everything.


• First time going up over 400 feet on a roller coaster, Top Thrill 2, built last year and currently the tallest roller coaster in the world. My extremely honest notes on that one say: Throat hurts from screaming “oh fuck yes”, or maybe some other scream.

There was a bit of physical misery from heat and sun, and iterating on the best thing to wear. I'm pretty sure my dream outfit would consist of capri-length cargo leggings with zip pockets, and a quick-dry sun protective T-shirt with flutter sleeves (for lots of UPF on the shoulders, but ventilation for armpits). But I also did pretty well on the second day with long athletic shorts with no pockets, plus a small waist bag. Minor sunburn, despite running myself out of both the kinds of sunblock I bought. Sore feet each day.

But we rode roller coasters, which I love! We had twelve on our list, and managed to knock off nine of them the first day despite a) wasting most of our early-entry time and b) the park closing down the rides two hours early for rain. The next day we hopped right on the early entry, and used it to get onto the remaining coaster that had always had a huge line (Millenium Force). Listening to others in the line around us, we learned it was only running one of its three trains -- the yellow one, while blue sat on a side line and red lay in pieces somewhere under maintenance. I daydreamed then about having deep deep knowledge of the place, and all the coasters and their cars and the various modes of operation; knowing what a good day and a bad day look like for the park maintainers. And then we rode the yellow train.

That particular ride had a really good drop, and here's the funny part about coasters; the way the train is plummeting toward the ground, yeah, but as that happens there's also a lightness and floating that happens between the rider and the train. Once I'm feeling familiar with the overall sensation of coasters I actually like to relax during the drops and feel the float, before bracing myself for the curve at the bottom. Some coasters give a lot of this same float at the top of hills, where negative G is scary as hell to me but zero G feels cozy and floaty and loving. Some corkscrew rolls / heartline rolls do this too (and loops hardly ever do it, though I also love a good loop). And this is why I only hold on tight for the first big drop or two of the day -- after that, it just wastes a good floating opportunity.

Did I mention that coasters just make me HAPPY? In nearly all the photos from rides I look the same -- hunched forward, sunglasses in place, mouth open in a big smile. After a while we started calling it my "avid turtle" thing. It's a little dorky, and also pretty much the happiest I ever get to see myself... so we bought two of the pictures, and I have brought out my old "racing turtle" icon for this post too.

What else? We had good teamwork, staying in sync for food and bathroom breaks, taking time out when the bug had a back spasm early on the 2nd morning. I did take one ride without him -- Steel Vengeance, which sounds mean, but the line was short and it let me report on how rough the ride was so that he could decide about it. But aside from that hour or so, we were really well matched as park goers. We had food deals built into our tickets and, thus, ate fairly horribly for a couple of days. I even ate a bag of Cheetos, and was reminded how hyper-palatable junk food really can be (must try to forget again... but oh, that crunch). Even so, there were salads and fruit cups, and I don't know about the bug but I don't seem to have gained weight. I guess 13 hours of being outdoors and mostly on one's feet will burn some energy.

I did lots of people watching. It's not often I see so many people of all ages in small groups, being fairly unguarded. So I saw a whole lot of play-fighting among the young males of the species, and a lot of teenage girls getting used to having breasts to display. White girls in Lululemon running shorts or skorts, black girls in yoga pants and assertively false eyelashes. Kids wearing band/album T-shirts from way before they were born. Different accents. Lots of sports teams on T-shirts, but also some serious roller coaster afficionado gear (If it's not Intamin, I don't care). The dad with missing teeth saying to his teenage son, not too unkindly, that you can't be scared forever, it's just a roller coaster. Middle-aged folks like us, quieter, being able to see the young'uns and knowing we're essentially invisible to them. Ah, and we also watched birds -- the pretty ones turned out to be grackles.

It's good to be home with the cats again, typing this on my new monitor. We had minor delays in getting home, but nothing that still matters today. I'm grateful that all the driving of the rental car went smoothly, and that we were able to sync the entire trip with my squirrel's trip to the island he visits every year.

I'm late with this post because of a date night switcheroo followed by being busy. And I can't believe how much has happened. Life seems to move faster now in some ways, not that time is passing faster but that a larger percentage of the hours I spend in a day are actually advancing the plot. So anyway, this covers ten days.

• I did a pact, or "tiny experiment", a la the book Tiny Experiments. In particular I had a long email thread filled with lots of goodbye emails from people at Zillian, many of which (but not all of which) warranted a personalized reply, and it was so hard to address that I'd left it alone for a few weeks. A week ago Weds after spending 2-3 hours on email and still not touching it, I decided to start writing five emails to co-workers every day for a week. Which I did! Yes, including on my birthday. I didn't really know how many I would choose to write, but this last Wednesday, suddenly, only two remained. Now some people have written back to my replies, but, anyway, good pact.


• The bug and I attended a full moon ritual & singing circle over at Blue-Green Street, and that was new for me.


• I went out to the No Kings protests on Saturday, and saw some really excellent signs (including the only boots worth licking are the ones worn by goth girls). I enjoyed the march, then went on to the rest of Norwood's 50th birthday party, which indeed I was in that town for; ended up spending a lot of the party with another of his exes, who I was wildly incompatible with in 2015. A funny moment in time, this one, where we found ourselves both being exes from the same era. I hugged her goodbye and she said "you're still a fucking weirdo", which is 100% true.


• My crossword puzzle collaborator and I got excited about a theme idea and started working on it in earnest, with a spreadsheet for possible theme entries etc, but then it became clear that it was too similar to another just-published puzzle and we decided to set that theme down. Back to the drawing board. Bit of a let-down, but I really appreciate how much time he's saving me by nixing ideas before I spend tons of time gridding them out... we'll get somewhere eventually.


• I played a lot of Chants of Senaar, carved away on my tree stump, and finished reading Black River Orchard which is the most fun horror book I've read in a long time.


• Early on Monday the bug left for Oregon, in order to help his mother in the aftermath of a hip surgery (which has now happened and gone well). I've been holding down the fort since then, which has meant a ton of cleaning. I had to take out the garbage/recycling/compost as well as tidy up everything for the cleaners. However, it was especially wonderful to have the squirrel over at my place on a Tuesday for once, and now the house is very clean.


• Israel attacked Iran, holy shit. Also vice versa. I had one of my Israeli friends over on Monday for commiseration and hangouts.


• Around and through this, handstand lessons have continued. Better focus means better results; Spring was happy with my press off a single folded-up panel mat on Tuesday. I wish I were doing more consistent, disciplined practicing on my own, but... that sort of thing is where the burnout lies, I guess. July will offer me more incentive to work on my own, when both my coaches are out for a while.

Today's been eventful. I spent most of the day in Salem poking around at all the little witchy shops, with friends; then came back and served dinner to five former co-workers (they're all better friends with each other than with me; I just volunteered to host their group, in exchange for my getting to peep their vibe). Right when that was finishing up, I got a text that Birdie, my bio-kid, has signed a lease for an apartment a ten-minute walk from me! Just across the square. OMG!! That's going to be crazy, just utterly bonkers, having her be local for a while.

And now I am really freaking tired. Time to fall over.

Executive summary: the bug and I flew out to Montana last Friday, set up 1/2 a bathroom and 1/2 of a different bathroom for the needs of a heart surgery patient, got the patient home, carried around some heavy things and then (mostly I) spent more hours than you would believe on organizing pills and prescriptions. Much of this in a house with a covid-positive person and many cobwebs. Then we came home as soon as possible, getting caught halfway and staying an extra night, but finally being home again.

But it's longer than that because if there's one thing I have Big Feelings about, it's the state we were visiting. And of course my dad. Cobwebs and things. At least the old curmudgeon decided, after the surgery, to let me help him, which he was dead set against before.

( Cut for length, and big feels that may or may not come through )

I'm not DONE with the whole endeavor. I'm still the one making sure all the prescriptions happen, not to mention finding a treadmill installer, and I think my days of blissfully keeping my phone on silent are over. Also I really can't deny it, the generational control dynamic just flipped and I don't know if it will un-flip.

The bug was absolutely amazing -- not only did he do all the things listed above and more, he put up with my dad and the covid risk and did everything I asked, while forgiving my snippiness and petting my head and telling me I was doing a really good job. It was ridiculous, and I'm beyond appreciative. He knows I'm onboard for something similar for his parents someday but still. I could never have done so much with just one person or, personally, held myself together without him. And as for me... I'm sure I did the right thing by going out there, and I'm sure I was hella effective. Kind of in East Coast mode sometimes ("kind but not nice") but I think they understood I felt responsible and had a job to do.

Might have more to say later, if you can believe that, but now it's time to go flump in my own bed.

Sometimes I'm not sure every week is worth writing about... and yet, when I devote a little time to thinking over what happened, there've always been some memorable stuff.

• Attended a Moth "story slam" event in my town, with squirrel, where we stayed to intermission before going back to our nest for some Super Mario World. It's clearly doable with some practice! We are both thinking of telling a story someday. It was pretty fabulous how raw and unapologetic some of the storytellers were.


• Attended a bodybuilding contest! Well, I guess we just saw the ceremonial flexing and giving out of awards. Again we stayed just for a while, long enough to see my friend from Costa Rica who was competing, and then we got out before seeing the women, which is probably okay because I think the fake boobs and over-done makeup were going to depress me. I don't really mind people doing extreme and probably unhealthy things to their body for the sake of a look on a particular day, etc, but let's at least have gender parity.


• Finished a book and The Three Body Problem (show) and a podcast I was listening to about the dangers of meditation, all in one day. On that last one, it was interesting to hear one expert on meditation-related troubles say that meditation helps about 1/3 of people, does nothing much either way for about 1/3 of people, and is negative for about 1/3 of people.


• The big tech horror show continued, with wide layoffs in our so-called "Core" division; the one that's been largely responsible for internal tooling and developer experience across the company, and also the one that we've been encouraged, over the last several years, to hand critical infrastructure over to for safekeeping. So much for all that; and yes, they got a friend of mine who I'm now trying to help out. In return or, rather, also, they're starting to offer dividends of 20 cents a share? NOBODY CARES, assholes. But the folks in charge now are just squeezing all the money out of the business, now. Juicing it, looting it, pick your verb. Oh, and did I mention that we've dropped our requirement that vendors pay at least $15/hr and offer benefits? Yech. I am truly disgusted that the stock price is up on all this news.


• In my small locus of control, I pushed on my little spite projects, and to get a document of my own reviewed and also to get my reports to sign up for design reviews. I talked -- again -- with one of my more senior direct reports, about picking up management for my little legal team, in an attempt to keep the group together without me one day.


• I talked with the squirrel about aging/dying parents and how, apparently, it's very difficult to transfer wealth out of India. My dad also has some very illiquid assets, and the conversation was enough to get me to look up estate liquidators in my dad's state. I mentioned that if he dies this year I'll get paid bereavement leave, and was told that was a macabre thing to think about; well, maybe so, but just mentally playing out what would happen. Part of me is sure he's too ornery to go just yet.

I haven't been stretching as much as I'd like to be, overall, but I did do a Micah Walters middle-split workshop (on video) and liked it enough that I'm doing it again with afelsingail tomorrow. And this weekend I had actual fun at open studio. The bug came, there were no Lions in sight, it was a lovely day, and I did a little bit of acro with a friend who, like me, has been doing less acro and more handstands lately. More of that, please, yes.

Very little happened until the end, and that was on purpose.

• As foreshadowed, promotion discussions at work. Two full days of high-stakes video meetings, not counting prep or follow-up work. It meant I worked from home, no office at all. I got what I most wanted: the case I cared most about, and did the most mentoring in support of, got approved with flying colors. Ironically that case is not my own (temporary) direct report who self-nominated and who I thus did my best attempt for; that one didn't get the promo, as I knew it would not. (To paraphrase slightly, the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a manager's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.) I was pretty brain-dead after all that, and barely made it through my allotted half-day of work on Friday, and then fell asleep during the movie part of my date with the bug.


• On Saturday I spent two hours learning dance lifts with the Monk! We utterly nailed the first two tricks, including one that nobody else in the class really got but I found very natural. I traded civil words with Lion, who consistently shows up to these things too. After class the Monk and I went over to Blue-Green Street along with the Monk's friend, and hung out in the gazebo and had snacks and chatted with the squirrel (who gave the Monk some chilies from the garden). Quite pleasant and covid-safe, listening to the rain on the roof and being all cozy underneath.


• On Sunday I got my first real tattoo! I wasn't 100% sure it would happen, since the dude hadn't emailed me back after I sent him the artwork, but it did happen. A few hours later I'm having a little bit of the "oh god, what have I done" feeling that follows many irrevocable actions or major purchases, because the design I rendered with loving mathematical precision is now transcribed by hand onto a stretchy medium and it therefore seems IMPERFECT in a way that worries part of my brain. It's about right though, as things go, with the overall effect I was going for. It's going to be fine! I paid $440 entirely in ten-dollar bills, and learned about a new band (Audioslave) and was entertained by tattoo stories.

I failed again to get the new covid vaccine, as my local pharmacy ran out of the vaccines again. Bug got his and was super tired the day after, and I'm rescheduled -- a bit aspirationally -- for next Thursday.

The black swallow-wort seed pods are turning color and bursting.

Yesterday's performance went well, in the way of live theater, which is to say it wasn't perfect but it was a good run. "Such a good run" according to my coach. Me, I count 1.5 mistakes, with one obvious one -- but that means I a) kept track of the music the entire way through, b) sold the character well to the audience and c) hit all my handstands. A mantis can't ask for much more, especially when we didn't get into the space until the day of the performance.

Detail:

• The earlier part of the day was moderately disastrous, in that I almost passed out during the tech rehearsal. Those lights were fucking hot, and I must've held my breath during my backbend walk because I got confused, found myself dizzy / out of breath and was quite quite unpleasantly unable, in my KN-95-based costume mask, to recover. It was a bad run. The show had changed to allow performers not to wear masks anyway, so I borrowed scissors from someone and cut holes in the KN-95 part so that I was really breathing through just a thin layer of costume fabric for the final performance. In the end that was so, so nice, and indeed I've never been so clear-headed all the way through a run. Breathing really does help and I'd been playing on hard mode for months.


• In a snippet of my choreo I stand up on my cane, do an easy Y-scale, then pistol squat down. That was not difficult at LCS but it was suddenly an extreme challenge in the performance space! Everything was so far away that my eyes couldn't fix on anything close enough to help me balance. I practiced a little, looking down at the front row of seats helped, but still missed the pistol down during my performance and stepped down early. I can't really blame myself because the conditions for that trick had legitimately changed so much at the last minute, despite all my practice. I mentioned this to one of the coaches/organizers and she said "oh yeah. That's real."


• Before my act the MC said what I had asked them to say -- that I'm a longstanding LCS student who's performed before in group numbers and was doing my first solo act. Also (joke) that no heads were bitten off during the making of the act. And then after my act they said some more, in particular that I give them hope about circus for the rest of their 30s, and into their 40s and beyond, "because flexagon is not a teenager." A REALLY big compliment coming from them. Also intellectually interesting because that giving-hope thing is something Helios thought would be good about the performance, and I had been thinking it wouldn't be, because there weren't many age clues to see with that mask/makeup/costume. Still, as I get older my age is going to start becoming more interesting to people in this context, and it gives LCS a good chance to broadcast that they're welcoming to older adult students, so I'm certainly okay with them saying it.


• I was the 2nd performance in the show (first half, at my request) and it was a huge luxury to get it over with and be able to enjoy the rest. Indeed, I got heisenbug to bring me a hard cider from the bar at intermission. After supporting my fellow handbalancer at the start of the 2nd act, I spent the rest of the show drinking that cider and eating takeout pad thai. NO REGRETS. Would be early in the show order again.

I was pleasantly buzzed by the time we were able to go out and talk to the audience members, and then we had a few people over for a (very chill) after-party. We opened a bunch of windows and mostly wore masks, and I foam rolled and let Helios work on knots in my shoulders and feet, and someone brought wine. It was late before I washed all the makeup and gel and glitter off me, and I woke up early today, but whatever. My sleep schedule will recover. And eventually there'll be video and pictures.

I can put the sewing machine away again now.

It's been a wild week but let's start with the allergy patch testing I just did. This was Science and, as such, was pretty fascinating: on Monday they taped tiny squares of many common allergens to my back (115 of them, apparently some of the most extensive patch testing you can get done anywhere), on Wednesday they removed the tape and looked for any initial reactions, and on Friday they looked one more time. The whole time I wasn't allowed to work out or get my back wet in any way, though I could wash my hair in the sink and take sponge baths.

My worry here was that I could have become allergic to some of the materials in my Essure implants: nickel being the most common culprit. It turned out that this doctor knew all about Essure and had been an expert witness in the trial against Bayer that took it off the market(!), so he was intimately familiar with the contents of the implants and made sure I got tested for nickel and gold. (He didn't have platinum but, as I told him, my wedding rings are platinum: if that annoyed my skin we would have known by now.) If any of those were an issue I'd have a disturbingly exciting time getting rid of the allergens.

And my hope was that I'd find something else I was allergic to, so that I could start avoiding it and maybe see my back get happier.

Good news and bad news: yes, they found some allergies! Bad news, two of them are very commonly used in fragrances for various personal care products. I've confirmed that linalool, which sounds like some kind of made-up Dr. Seuss sludge, is in both my shampoo and conditioner, which have been sluicing down my back for years. There's limonene in some of my favorite lip stuff from Tarte, though I haven't had any problems with my lips so I suspect that the shampoo/conditioner is a much worse problem; and apparently I am also allergic to octyl salicylate which doesn't seem to show up anywhere in my products. Both limonene and linalool are naturally occurring in a bunch of plants... linalool in particular shows up in "more than 200 natural botanical oils, including lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot, jasmine and geranium" according to the internet. Goodbye lavender. Both are known to be allergenic and are banned as ingredients in the EU, but are naturally all over the place in the US where we are obsessed with nice smells.

Buying new, unscented shampoo and conditioner now from SEEN, which is apparently run by a friend of my allergist.

The fact sheet given by the doctor is nice in its simplicity and directness: Your body has changed and is sensitive now to things that didn't cause you trouble before. You will be allergic to them for the rest of your life. You will always need to avoid them. Okay okay fine, but I'm going to grumble about it a little.

In the meantime, the bug and I flat-out ordered our Thanksgiving dinner this year. Complete with a pie. We've done so many holidays with just the two of us (and the cats) that we haven't shared in this year's communal agonizing over whether to travel or get together with someone, but it's the first time we've moneyed our way out of cooking.

I think it's fine. I've got enough other stuff on my mind and to-do list.

I went to LA (the Venice part of LA, if you know the area) and that was a first for me. My hotel was a 20-minute walk to the office, along Venice beach, which I'm told is peak SoCal and is certainly peak something. I've never seen a beach so wide and nice, or so many people living outside in tents (I wasn't sketched out by the latter at all, just amazed at a place whose benevolent weather allows it). I looked at sunsets over the ocean, and walked with a few others to Muscle Beach just to hang from the rings there and say we did it. Was going to have dinner with my ex Smitten, but she flaked on me.

I also cried a lot, missed about half the summit because I was having intense 1:1s instead, and probably figured out a huge part of why my skip-level director is so unhappy with me. ( Sigh, work )

Now for a broader observation: the level I'm at objectively sucks. It's very much halfway between two better-understood levels, and I know three women at my level, in my office, with my score. All of us are blazingly unhappy. So some of this is baked in, and can't be helped. The obvious solution is to get to the next level but I don't even want to anymore, and the other one is to lower my expectations. Or at least go back to first principles: my career has already gotten me the one thing I wanted most out of it. The rest is extra credit. As it happens, I'm going to spend my next six months playing hard for that extra credit, but maybe I'll be able to keep some perspective as I do that? We'll see.

Work did bring a litter of kittens to the office last week, and also gave me a flower (an insane rainbow-colored rose) so there was that, too: the bizarre and occasionally delightful perks.

For my fellow Fluevoggers, a shout-out to the new Soft Rock lace-up platform boot. Yes, I know they're weird. They're weird and 100% me, they have the right toe-box shape (same as the Axe 2.0 and at least one other pair that I have), and they give a nice ankle snuggle. I am going to wear these puppies with EVERYTHING.

I also spent a few days inserting my nose into the Dark Forest trilogy, aka Remembrance of Earth's Past, by Cixin Liu. It started off slowly, but each book went faster than the last and, damn, I love it when the world ends. Not every science fiction author has the nerve, but nerve is not Cixin's problem. And reading is good for me.

I also watched a lecture on the biological underpinnings of religiosity. Some of it is stuff I was familiar with, but not all. For instance, I hadn't noticed that the four most typical focuses of OCD are also the four most typical focuses of religious rituals: in particular the cleansing of the body, ritualized preparation/consumption of food, entering and exiting places (typically churches; many folks with OCD have trouble with doorways); and numbers/numerology, like things coming in threes and tens. There is also a form of epilepsy (temporal lobe epilepsy) whose giveaway symptom is extreme interest in religion and philosophy, along with a reduced sense of humor and a manic desire to write... wow. Kind of gives you an idea how religious tracts and books might get written in the first place.

heisenbug is now officially more stressed about work than I am, or at least surpassed me for a while earlier this week, so that's a thing.

I'd say I'm 60% recovered from travel to Iceland -- or rather the return travel. Flying west is hard on me physically, it was a brutal week of calibration for managers at work, and there was some emotional unpacking of the trip that was... well, human and mostly predictable. First time for this group all traveling together, so that's what we get. This weekend was also weird with my sister-in-law visiting, but at least I'm home, in what I call "my box" when talking to Norwood: as in, I'm a fancy toy and this is my box where I'm safely stored away when not in use. An amusing and comforting turn of phrase, for me.

Anyway, Iceland last weekend. It was in fact cold and rainy, but we found a good bakery, and had the foresight (OK, the good luck) to get a hotel right next to a landmark that was visible from far away; that made navigation easy. I bought a hat and mittens, and later gloves. Climbed on a statue or two. Some things I learned or experienced:

• Fermented shark is not really food, it is something they serve to troll tourists. Hint: if they serve it in a stoppered glass bottle, it is trouble.


• Lava tunnel: beautiful, rock-scrambly, constantly wet and raining inside because it had rained the day before on the surface and Iceland is 100% porous. I was glad for the water-resistant hiking pants I bought, and glad to have acrobat-balance, and I basically just liked the cave very much. Our group was fast. We got all the way to the end, and explored all three tributory-endings and two side caves on the way back, which is as much as any group ever does, and we got back faster than scheduled too! Oh, somewhere in there I made a hero of myself by worming down between some rocks and recovering a really visible piece of trash that our guide said people had been trying to get out of there for months. Lion had tried already, and he has longer arms, but I am skinnier, and fearless about headfirst wiggles.


• Ruby chocolate is an interesting, vaguely raspberry-flavored fourth variety of chocolate made from reddish cacao beans. It's not for sale in the US yet, but it is in Iceland, and I like it.


• I got to see the ground ejaculate! Three times! There is no better way to describe what happens at Geysir... from whence our word "geyser" comes, btw. It was neat visually, if also like a sulfurous mud puddle stenchwise. Also saw a waterfall, and Thingvellir national park, which is of geological interest and at which there are... rocks. It was rainy, and the paths are mostly of black volcanic rock that gets wet without really getting muddy. Mud requires some clay content in the ground, it seems.


• Blue Lagoon: I had worried that this might be super cheesy, but it was actually fabulous. Only cheesy if by that you mean "civilized", and it was a lovely break after so much cold! Being in warm, sometimes hot water while cold rain nibbled on our heads was great, with lava rocks all around, and the whole thing steaming. The water, a mix of fresh and ocean, was just slightly bouyant. We walked slowly over to the in-water face mask bar for face masks, puttered about, rinsed off the mask, puttered more. After we visited the in-water actual bar for our included free drink, and they had cider, I commented that I was about at max decadence. Which was true. (We all laughed at an obvious Instagrammer, who went halfway in the water with dry hair and heavy makeup and spent a long time trying to take selfies with the wind blowing her hair just right.)