It is extant.

My brother has the other candlestick.

I am so grateful to him for taking care of it.

He texted me in his reply, "Easily my favorite piece."

So, I don't really want to go over there and take it from him.

Even though it was promised to me. From Grandma. In writing. Her handwriting, even. There is no question that it is mine.

But I'm not the one who protected and cherished it. He is. So. He can have it. Since he loves it so much. For now, at least.

I feel like he deserves it more than I do.

I feel like he is more of a member of the family than I am, somehow. I am a lost little tendril, and offspring that doesn't fit as part of a larger tree or network of relations. I am an aberration, an anomaly, an accident.

But. I want to go touch it and hold it and take photos and videos of it.

Soon.

little green cousins.

I love today's xkcd so much:



alt txt: "If only my ancestors had been fortunate enough to marry into the branch of the bacteria family that could photosynthesize, like all my little green cousins here."

First belly dance class at Studio Datura in over ten years.

dooooooooooooooooood.

I just took a belly dance class. With Rachel Brice.

Rachel Brice is arguably the best fusion bellydancer in the world.

She opened a studio here in Portland back in... 2011? Where I trained in American Tribal Style bellydance with Colette, but Rachel was not teaching beginners back then.

I quit bellydance classes long before pandemic. It's been at least ten years since I've taken a class?

To get to study with Rachel at all is a once in a lifetime experience, and she's teaching a whole series!

Just signed up for the rest of it.

I'm so lucky!

I've been wanting to get back into bellydancing but none of the available classes/teachers felt right to me.

I had no idea she was teaching at all, I just happened to find out through Alessandra today whilst catching up and sparkling her. There were drop-in slots (???) and I was able to get in. Shocking. I think people just didn't know/expect this to happen. I certainly didn't!

Class was *really* hard. I forgot most everything. But at least my body vaguely remembers the arm motions, pivots, and body wave. It's in there somewhere, though I get my feet and hips all mixed up.

YAY.

It works with my schedule perfectly! Tuesday nights! She is even away the same week that I am in February so I won't even miss that week because she's away, too!

I get the feeling we are about the same age. It's sweet, her origin story is falling in love after seeing a group perform at a Renaissance Faire at age 16. This is also precisely how I fell in love with tribal style bellydance, although I did not seek out any classes until much, much later (was still too busy figure skating, back then).

Life can be soooooooooooooooo magical.

...

Therapy was wonderful this morning. I am making massive strides, we are seeing a sudden leap of improvement after much diligent hard work and I am so grateful. I am not falling into deep dark pits, I am pulling myself out of sad swings with my own tools and strength, I am gaining strength and stability enough to perform basic adult tasks without such a struggle, I still have a loooooong way to go - don't we all - but things are so much better.

My foot feels fine. Beginner classes are relatively gentle and bellydance is so low-impact, it's why I began dancing this style in the first place, back then I was still in excessive chronic pain after recovering from hip surgery and couldn't to much more than wiggle flat-footed. It is *hard*, intricate wiggling though! Not easy at all. Exhausting and challenging and humbling and so so fun. The music! The music is so great. I missed it desperately.

I am so happy!

snow and political action.

Our beautiful Oregon coast got a thick dusting of snow, my fb feed is full of beautiful images and video - it is very rare for our mild, damp coast to ever get snow so it's kind of a special occasion. It's headed this way. We'll see how much we get overnight. It's not expected to accumulate much.

...

I called my State Representatives over the illegal actions of Musk staffers taking over the US Treasury dept and gaining access to all of our personal social security and tax information, payment info, shutting down safeguards to keep that huge government payment system safe, etc. etc. etc. I haven't called my state reps since the government shutdown back before pandemic, I don't think.

There is an incredibly helpful app called 5calls.org that gives you your state rep numbers by entering your zipcode, and provides a helpful script for a number of issues, including the Musk fiasco. I will call every day until this is fixed (even if it is never fixed), I don't know what else to do and I feel like I need to do something. I don't have the resources to fly to DC to protest, as tempting as that is to think about.

If anyone knows of any other useful actions to take, I'm all ears.

I hope others are using the 5calls platform, it's amazing. It really did take me just five minutes to leave messages for all of my reps.

I don't usually talk politics here at all, but I feel like stopping the illegal takeover/violation of our country's national Treasury that holds personal financial sensitive information for all US citizens is not a partisan issue.