Went to the Solstice parade on Saturday [fig 1]. Brought Dog. It went fairly well. Dog did great, other than stealing a whole snootful of fries [fig 2, recreation] as we shifted seating positions. But mostly he layed or stood nearby while we sat in the curb. He was at pulling level 14 afterward but he did better waiting around in a crowd than I expected. Better than I often do.The sun wasn’t bodily oppressive, a relief for a parade about how it’s daylight for like 143 hours this week, though I sure missed my sunglasses 1Remember back before you were injured and traveling when you were going to help…

Did LI about fear today in therapy. I have a lot of fear in my life – I don’t really know how to feel safe – but I also don’t allow myself to do or not do things just because I am afraid. Which is a great skill in dire survival situations and a terrible thing all the rest of the time. In theory it’s useful to be able to do things even when you’re afraid but I suspect it would be much more useful to simply feel safe once in a while. I can reconstruct lots of fearful scenarios from my childhood. Situations where my options were to do…

On a note from the weekend, fucking Father’s Day. Isn’t a day explicitly for the fundamental basis of patriarchy a bit much? I know that’s not how everyone feels about it, but “that’s not how I feel about it” is the same thing people organizing a straight pride parade say — we don’t have to care about systematic oppression because we think we like the way it impacts us individually (and are intimidated by alternatives). I’m not much for calendar-based celebrations in general, but parent-related days make me extra salty. We could celebrate providing care without tying it to the assignment of exactly one or two (mostly) gender-serrated legal owners.…

One of the things I like doing with weed – a thing I imagine is pro-social – is use it to think about other people. I’ve thought quite a bit about the state of mind weed can put me for that purpose, and how to obtain it reliably. Today I figured out that a lot of it is just being less ashamed to think about you. Weed can help me believe that my attention doesn’t cause you harm. That I can like thinking about you without being a monster. It’s pretty hard for me to believe that my attention can be pro-social. It’s why I imagine I can be useful…

I submitted some WIP for my BZ report to my boss. They liked it but also misunderstands how it works. They asked for interface changes that are just not technically possible. I do still intend to pretty it up a bit – like I said maybe some javascript will give it the round corners or whatever people are hoping for – but it does internal analysis and I can’t just slap the existing BZ data set into tableau. Still, I’m glad they were mostly satisfied. And I think it actually does what they want, if they can get past their dreams of animated graphs. Honestly I liked it better as…

In therapy I did LI about the feeling of being ashamed to want or to give care, and in particular to feel good about giving or receiving care. My default reaction is to imagine that I’m hurting people if I’m involved in caring and it feels good. Even when I walk Dog, my brain is pretty sure that it would be better if I did mine seperately and hated his, because me liking the walk means that he didn’t get what he needed, or even that I somehow stole from him good feelings he might otherwise have. And the idea that I should have care from others is right out.…

Sunday I got through all my planned activities and then had a drug day. I got a bit of a late start at like 2 PM – I prefer to start before noon to make it easier to get to bed at a reasonable time – but I had already planned Monday off for recovery so my schedule was flexible. I did about 125 micrograms 1The actual dose is a little hard to determine because I don’t own a mass spec, but I took 1.25 grams of dilute fluid, which I’d estimate around 125 micrograms of active compound. of LSD. I feel like things went really well, at least within…

It’s been a busy week, not without accomplishment but definitely without stability. I’m glad Shanda will be back tonight. In therapy Wednesday I talked about practical tools for avoiding dissociation during my next piercing. A thing I’d like to avoid because it’s very unpleasant and because it will take me away from the people I am with. It’s also a thing I’m ashamed of because of the way it was part of punishment interactions with Mother. This process included some general advice 1Actually the advice was much more specific but the generalized concept is more useful to me. I like to be prepared but I often find improvisation less stressful…

The company I order my colorful and enormous leggings from has ceased retail operations. I wish had known it was coming because I would have ordered a few more. But today I found out they are continuing to operate as a private label manufacturer, and that they have no minimum order size – they will do one-offs. That means I could get custom prints, which sounds real exciting. Or would be, assuming I had design. It’s not really my strong suit but maybe I can make something geometric and colorful. As the subject line suggests I’d love to have your help to – your own design or assistance with mine…

The robot party went well. I put on my ice drag king warpaint and hair [fig 1,2] and rode up in the back seat of a van with some underclassman’s mom. You know, to get the full high school experience. I brought ice bottles and juice boxes and pasta salad and doughnut holes – everything a growing boy needs. And of course some intoxicants, to help keep that growth properly stunted. The hair color was a medium hassle to put on but looked good and was excellent sun block. The face color was a little melty out in the sun but did pretty well I thought. But I got to…