I've known that Evan was my duprass since early spring of 2012; as of today, our partnership is public and official. We're now betrothed and will get married at some point in the future yet to be determined. While in many ways this doesn't change a thing, it's joyful to be able to call him my partner and fiancé.

Photo op from Mt. Tabor at early dusk after the proposal below!

I'm on the cusp of going on my first actual holiday/vacation type thing in about a year. Evan and I are going to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, tomorrow, staying in a large beachhouse with his parents, sister Arwen & family, and brother Dana & wife & daughter & granddaughter. I'm really looking forward to spending time at the beach, and sleeping, and doing some social things, and having a lot - lot - of downtime. :) There will be internet and phone and such, but I'm determined not to check work email at all and to put that part of my life completely on pause while I'm gone. I suspect it will be easier said than done, but I'll try to make it happen.

I printed up my Wraeththu novellas to bring with me to re-read and edit, and it makes me feel a bit odd that I've committed to doing this. I've never revisited any completed work of mine for a serious edit like this before, and I'm uncertain as to how the process will go, if I'll be appalled or if I'll enjoy reading it, if I'll be overcome by memories of what my life was like when I wrote them, and of the initial major overhaul/edit/rewrite from 2009. Hard to say. Hopefully it won't be traumatic or demoralizing. I'm also bringing my notebook to work on my Charliefic which I haven't written on in a couple of weeks. I suspect I'll get a bunch done on that while on break. This will be a very different situation from Evan and me going away together… although now I realize Evan and I have not actually had a holiday together yet, just the two of us. The trips we've made since we've been a couple have all been with our families— and we like our families, but I've just made a verbal commitment that after this trip and the one in September to go to Wenatchee to spend the better part of a week with my dad and stepmom, we will take our next trips just the two of us. I'm pretty sure that our five days together with his family (absent one sibling and progeny) will be just fine. As he pointed out, they are a family of introverts. But I bring with me from my own family of origin (at least to do with my mother) a sense of dread about doing my own thing and being seen as asocial and trying to isolate myself. I believe that there will be a healthy balance of doing my own very-much-needed-downtime activities (reading, editing, writing, reading, knitting and dicking around on the internet, walking, jogging on the beach, sleeping) and group meals, some organic conversation, and working on puzzles. Some of my worries are because I've only spent short periods of time with these folks (2 days) except for his sister Arwen and family, who I know well from when Evan lived with them. I'm probably worrying unnecessarily, but I articulated all of this to Evan and he (unsurprisingly) was very understanding.

So I'll have my computer and will definitely still be online, and hopefully quite productive while also being a lazy, lazy person. :)

I've not been able to say something like that in what seems like (and could well be) years. I guess since my last story for Yuletide. A few months ago it was suggested to me that I go look at ron_draco_fest and I did, and I thought, "Well, perhaps a brand new spin on a pairing that I thought I'd written all I could about is the way to kick-start my Muse and writing creativity." And, it's worked! I'm a week late, and embarrassed, especially since it's not even 8000 words and I used to blow those out in no time back in the day. But I like the story, and for the first time I enlisted evannichols as a second beta. My loyal friend emansil_12 (who guided me to this fest) served as the first. In some ways this is an unexpected dream come true; when I was married, especially when I was first in the throes of writing, I'd really wanted my wasband to edit and say how great I was and want to delve into my writing as much as I was. That didn't happen. It got pretty ugly.

But now I'm in a relationship that is different from that one on an amazing number of profound levels, and one of them is that we honestly do enjoy reading each other's works, and editing for one another.

The reveal and posting for the Ron/Draco fest isn't until March, so now that that's off my plate, I figure I'll focus on reading and knitting for a few weeks. Though I think I'll jump on Evan's bandwagon of 'closure' for this year and I'll finish that fun, long Gimli-centric fic, as well as a Finduilas/Denethor fic that's languished for 2 years now. ::headdesk::

This week has been more exotic than usual in that evannichols has been home sick as of Thursday. It seems to be a cold that started out as congestion and head swimmy-ness and some coughing and then settled into a chest cold. Much better that than the flu or somesuch. It meant that during my more conventional-hours workdays on Thurs and Fri I was able to come out during breaks and lunch and check up on him, converse, and have company. I really enjoyed it, even though the only reason he was home was because he was/is under the weather.

I'm resisting whatever it is, though in a random act of just experiencing life, I whacked the crap out of my pinkie toe yesterday morning on the edge of the bed. Picture below. I may have fractured it, hard to say and frankly, not really much to be done about it. I'm icing it again this morning and will not be picking up my jogging again until it has a chance to heal. I've not actively limped in ages, but yesterday Evan and I did get out of the apartment to run (well, walk very slowly) some errands in the nearby blocks. We were quite the pair: Evan sniffling and sneezing and coughing, me hobbling along and not at all at my usual Thev-speed, which is At Speed.

( bruised toe :( )

I'm off in a little bit, borrowing Evan's car Ian to get more tissues and to swing by the bank. Then my 1-10 shift, then two days of jury duty! Something entirely new and different. I'll be well prepared for tedium, should there be any: my composition notebook to work on my Ron/Draco, a new issue of Vanity Fair, and a knitting project on circular needles. Yee haw!

Oh, and I filed my taxes yesterday. I'll be happily anticipating my refunds.

Two new changes that will make a tremendous difference in my world:
❶ I bought an office chair! For $20! And it's purple! This is a tremendous step towards me having an ergonomically satisfactory working life. Evan brought it in when he dropped me off this morning and already I can tell how much happier I'm going to be.
❷ Evan and I are going to move in together. We have a place! Closer in in SE, very close to our original stomping grounds— for both of us, interestingly enough. It's a complex where he's lived before and really liked it, managed by the same people, and we can move in by December 1^st. OMGYAY. Not only of being with my beloved every day, which is huge, but also that really for the first time in my adult life, I will be in a space that I co-create and in which I have my own space. Even when married my stepchildren had their own rooms, and I had nowhere to go to retreat if needed or desired. This is an incredible psychological moment for me. We are engaging in a very conscious choice to blend our lives and days in a thoughtful, respectful and joyous manner.

I could just about explode from the happy. :D :D :D :D

This has been a while coming, and I haven't really known how to post about it. I received a call from my mother this morning; my maternal grandmother, Mymable, died last night. She's been declining for a year now, and has been on hospice care for several months. Evan had kindly offered to drive us up there if I wanted to, but since she wasn't really recognizing people, I decided to keep my memories which were of seeing her a couple of years ago (she's been living in Bellevue, WA, outside of Seattle) at her 90th birthday party and during visits when I saw my aunt. Mymable was 92, and is quite likely why I became such an enthusiastic knitter. I have so many fond memories of visiting her and Grandaddy in Ruston, Louisiana- including the year we lived there in 1981-82. I'm not sad for her, but mostly for my own mother, who isn't doing very well health-wise herself, and neither is my stepdad. I feel a bit helpless in that I don't effectively how to be there for her. The rest of her siblings were in Bellevue with Mymable when she died, and mom was back in Virginia. Her choice, of course, but her own life is rather challenging. My own inability (or discomfort with) to reach out for help when I really need it, well, I do believe I came by that honestly from both sides of my family of origin. But it has made me very sad this morning that finally I'm in a solid place emotionally myself, with the very strong support of my own partner now, to reach out to her, and there were so many years when she and I didn't really relate as adult to adult.

All that said, I'm rather melancholy as I get ready to work remotely for the first time. I'm so grateful that I'll be swept into emails and in the comforting environment of Evan's living space, and that he's here and wants to comfort me as needed.

Eventually I'll get a hold of some pictures of me with Mymable and post them. I don't have any of my own photo albums right now, but I'll rectify that in the months to come, too.

Yesterday was my last day at CompView. I gifted myself with two days off in order to have some down time before transitioning to full-time work next week. As a super-special gift to me, evannichols also took Friday off, and I'll be taking him to a belated birthday breakfast at Slappy Cakes. He also generously gave me a decorated envelope that said "Kristi's Massage Fund" so that I can get a much-needed full-body massage during my time off. Portland is full of places to go, and since he knew I'd have a much better idea of where I'd like to go than he would, he gave me the self-created gift certificate Tuesday evening as a part of my sleepover. I had a stroke of genius thought Wednesday morning, which was to contact another massage therapist friend (I did get to know a few during my time living with Julia, who ran in acupuncture and massage therapy circles due to her career) and I was able to schedule an appointment with a lovely woman named Karla. I'll simply go to her apartment this morning where she has her own treatment table and get my very sore body worked on.

I've managed to sustain some mystery injuries, including my right shoulder (no idea) and hips (probably from a combination of the jogging and lots of inner- and outer-thigh work), the omnipresent knots and tension in my upper back, and being generally sleep-deprived and continually sleeping on a mattress with only 3 slats. Anyway, this morning I treated myself to a hot soak in the tub with epsom salts, something my massage therapist friend Joseph has recommended for literally years. They had the salts at the dollar store, which at last prompted me to do this. I'll plan to have another soak post-massage on Friday in the upstairs bathroom at evannichols's house when his sister and her family are out for the day. Self-care. What a concept! I'm not sure what to do about my innards, though; I'm still suffering from a loud stomach, often unhappy bowels, but thankfully no actual pain. Today I think I'll stick to jello, yogurt, a banana and oatmeal. Maybe I'll lighten up on the celery, too; I thought it was innocuous, but perhaps not. And maybe switch to tea for a few days, rather than my beloved coffee.

Soon I'll put on casual clothes and walk up to the closest grocery store to do my recycling and mark that off my list. Shouldn't be too many other people there around 6:50 a.m.!!

Had a very productive morning post-phone call with evannichols, then an as-always delightful lunch with him at BHFT. On the way home, instead of coming straight home, I went to my massage therapist friend Joseph's house for some pre-arranged much-needed bodywork, and then… YARN DYEING!! I'd been telling him about my Somewhat Secret Endeavor a couple of weeks ago and he said, "Don't buy dye — I used to do all kinds of tie-dyeing. I have great dyes. Come over and we'll use them!" So I brought over a few short skeins of some neutral-colored yarn from a sweater I'd dismantled, and have now officially done my first yarn dyeing. I can tell I'm already hooked. Well, especially when in somebody else's company and without having to come up with the space and materials myself. But he's game for me to come over with way more yarn and do a bunch more; he's grateful because he's been meaning to get back into that part of his life and just hasn't. So I've been a positive impetus for someone else! And I think the yarns are going to be beautiful and things are really falling into place for this Grand Endeavor. FWIW, I also have yet another interview this coming Thursday, though it's an initial interview for a placement company, not the client company. I have yet to hear anything from the two places I interviewed last week and am trying to remain as upbeat as I can and thinking positive thoughts toward the universe about my future position. Which will happen. I am tenacious and pretty good at selling myself by now.

And in the meantime, there's the Grand Endeavor and lots of creativity and yarn dyeing! And evannichols! Having him on my team goes a long, long way. :)

I mentioned that evannichols and I share our dreams in the mornings that I spend the night, which is almost as effective as writing them down. For the most part I don't write them down as having memories of that many realities becomes overwhelming. But I felt I should share part of my dream from early this morning as it was a new scenario to me, and doubtless various therapists would have something to say: toward the end of this dream, I'd been working out and had on a black unitard (the kind with a tank-top-top, rather than with sleeves) and gone into the locker room to get a shower. Once naked, I turned around to look at myself in a full-length mirror and saw that I had a penis. That faced backward. As one does. o_O But nobody else seemed to think that was odd. There was more that I won't share, but it was certainly an exotic dream to tell evannichols this morning!

He and I will get ready to go to the Oregon coast for our overnight, and we may go out of our way to Tillamook to do the self-guided tour of their cheese factory. I was more excited about the prospect (that was my idea since he doesn't eat dairy) before I looked at their website and saw that they no longer offer guided tours through the facility due to health and safety regulations. So we'll see. Must say that the best tours in that genre that I've experienced have been the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee and the Maker's Mark distillery in Kentucky. But alcohol gets distilled, so even if you let people wander past the huge vats while the stuff is fermenting, germs and such will be taken care of. Not the same with cheese. ;)

Lastly for today, I've been meaning to post this gem of evannichols's for a few weeks now. You know how there are particular names for groups of animals, some of the more exotic being a pride of lions or (my favorite) a murder of crows. After trying to pass a cluster of bicyclists at a crosswalk a few weeks ago, I decided we needed a name for a group of bicyclists. About five minutes later, evannichols came up with a 'wheeling of bicyclists.' It's pretty perfect! And so useful here in Portland, which is, according to a super-fast Google search, number 2 ranking in bicycle-friendly cities both in the U.S. and the World (at least according to Virgin Vacations). It's easy to come up with Portland-relevant sentences in which this new term is apropos: "I was walking down the Springwater Corridor and was nearly run over by a wheeling of cyclists going at speed." "I tripped over part of the sidewalk because I was staring at the legs on that wheeling of cyclists waiting to cross the river."