much adultness

Josh was away into the sunrise to go climb with friends at Smith Rock today. Avalanche and I have the house to ourselves!

I am set up in the dining room, ready to tackle taxes. I would LOVE to finish today!

The sunrise was so beautiful. The sky stayed pink and purple for an hour.

I love the new little door mat I got recently. The $3 snowman one I got at the thrift store was disintigrating, and I went for a slightly fancier new one and re-arranged the others and now they all match and fit well where they are, it's pleasant. My eyes are often on my toes so it's comforting when there is beauty there.

I am so pleased with Josh's little cozy corner on the couch, he loves the little space heater I got for that corner (there are two giant windows there so it's hard to keep warm), I researched the best kind that doesn't have any scent and this one is really perfect - the little one in my bedroom always smells a little like plastic but the couch one by Vornado never does.

Avalanche is staying down here with me, resting by her tunnel. Always nearby. My lil velcro cat :)

Had a nice catchup last night with Alessandra, I didn't get any sparkles but she says she will be around more so I will ask again when she's feeling better. I gave her tons. Also got to see Karissa and Ian, I want desperately to sparkle Karissa too but they took off just before we did and really there wasn't time. I will have to catch her again soon. But it was super nice to see them!

I discovered a headlight out and did the youtube thing and went to Autozone and bought a new pair and replaced it myself (they were very kind and gave me disposable gloves for the chore, after offering to help). What a cool feeling it was to turn on the lights and see it light up! The spare one is in my glove box waiting for the other bulb to go out :)

Mood feels fragile but still not low, more like, medium, I will take it!

...

Wanted to mention one thing that happened at the club Thursday. I often dance on the stage there, because there's more room and privacy (in that random people can't just touch me, I don't mind them looking), but I am mindful not to hog it because other people want to go up there for other reasons, and it's also just fun to mingle with the crowd, sometimes.

But because of the way I dress and maybe my confidence, I get a lot of attention and it's not always wanted.

So last night, this guy who's been coming around for a while, maybe my age, I've definitely caught him watching me and smiling more than a little, and he came up and started dancing with me and told me, "I've always thought you are SO beautiful!" which I thanked him for, but, as the song went on, he got closer and closer and sort of got up in my space a bit too much, which was too bad, because he seems nice enough, but it made me uncomfortable and I eventually had to shimmy away to another part of the dance floor, and made my way back to the stage.

Later, I saw him try this again with arguably the prettiest girl in the club. (She also happens to be trans. I only know this because we've talked a few times. She is very passing just visually, if you ignore her height.)

The interaction went more poorly for the guy hitting on her this time. She not only told him no, she told him to leave, and I saw her gesture angrily toward the door.

He immediately backed off, stayed on the other side of the room for a bit, and left after not too much time had passed.

And I just. Need to reflect on the stark contrast of our approaches in handling this guy's unwanted advancements.

I'm not saying either was right or wrong. It's just. I envy her ability to shut him down more forcefully. There's no reason I couldn't do that, it is a safe place for me to express my feelings and I have support there, I was surrounded by friends, Finley and Manders were both still there at the time, along with several other friends, and the staff also always has my back.

Why don't I be more direct and just claim my space?

Sigh.

...

Time to start werkin'.

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Editing to add: Avalanche is now directly under my feet. :D hashtag velcrocat

progress... and as close to perfection as reasonably possible lol

finally in the filing stage of taxes, it's slow-going but I can see the light, lol.

I took some deeeeep dives into rule pages on the irs website. I just really want to understand the self-employment tax forms as thoroughly as possible.

It sucks that it takes so much time but I just really want to understand that I'm doing everything right.

I know I am too tedious about this stuff. I literally will change things by $3 just to make sure it's as correct as possible, that's not a good use of my time but I like the feeling that I'm doing everything as correctly as humanly possible.

Taking better notes this time so that I don't struggle so much to find next year's info. I also paid an extra $8 for my "free" tax software to pull info from last year for me, I'm sure it's worth it, especially going forward - this year it's still a lot of manual entry due to moving.

I will need to do some IRA contributions before I'm done, I think, so not sure I can finish tonight, but I'll be close! Tomorrow should be the end, unless I hit some unforeseen major snag. So far everything is clicking into place really nicely, just, kinda slowly.

I spent some time with the laptop outside on the back patio and took a walk here and there and have been eating yummy things to keep me going like avocado toast and dried mango.

The eggs from the chickens up the hill are wonderful. Happy chickens! The shells are sturdy, always a good sign. The yolks are bright.

Okay back to it. Avalanche is in heaven with mom around in the house all day, this hasn't happened since my surgery recovery :) Usually I'm either away working, running errands, hiking, dancing, or silks-ing :)

let it go.

Just wanted to add, I was feeling really guilty this morning for all of the sad posts here and on insta when I was so depressed for so long. It gives me a sliver of relief to express it, but I don't want to bring anyone down, it's always temporary and it will pass and it doesn't seem meaningful to push out the suffering onto others' eyes who are already struggling under the weight of the dark things of the world. I do even in my darkness try to also post light things, but I need to try harder, or stay more quiet, when I'm that down, or just, post more gently sad things, even when what I'm experiencing is shredding clawing gnawing unbearable pain. It's a ghost. The pain is real but the disease is not reality. It's sooooooooooo hard to believe this when in its grip.