Christmas Shoes

Despite being short-sleeve weather* in Seattle it is cold enough to turn my fingers bright colors [fig 1]. I wonder if this stuff would help me react to being too cold – I’ll have to check the color change temperature. Usually, with my short nails, this stuff is white [fig 2], but it’s still fun to play with when you drop water on it or touch something shaped and cold.

I got Shanda to help me switch shoes. I literally have a backup pair in my closet at all times and it’s still _very_ hard for me start wearing a new pair, even when the old ones are dangerously worn out. They literally make me fall sometimes but I still can’t quite see them as done. I’m so worried that I won’t have shoes that fit, or that are in good enough shape for people to not complain about. Even holding a box of new, identical shoes doesn’t make me feel safe about it. I need a spare spare pair. And to keep the old ones. And to keep the old old ones. And then still to wear these until they literally fall apart. But Shanda just puts them on the rack** like it’s not a monumental task with no possibility of a good outcome. I wish I could have trained her to help me with this earlier.

All popular Christmas is terrible even if it didn’t start that way. On that basis “Make It So” is played out and I give you “Wonderful Deep Space Nine”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cCTgRax94o

Made the rounds today in a birthday and holiday gift exchange. Got myself did up before we went [fig 3]. I got a thing for M that I think is amazing – it gives me the feels and I’m not even the target – and another I haven’t seen but I understand to be a home built and engineered art project, and so should be great. Got to correctly name J in front of your parents, which I hope was a support and not a punishment. I’m also part of a picture of unprepared J, me in costume, dressed-up Shanda and grey sweatshirt B, which I haven’t seen but I assume is real good. And made J react – among other things you admitted knowing who Felicia Day is – before you even got to the note, which I didn’t expect to see but was happy to get.

Sort of a sad day, when I’m leaving again and everyone is going back to work. And all my childhood Christmas and birthday and travel trauma. Shanda is coming out soon but it still is sad to leave. I like my life in Cleveland. It’s helping me with my abandonment and 20 other things. But traveling either way is still missing people. Technically I think practicing missing people is good for me, since I was denied it for so long. And so is living without a plan – I still don’t have a return date, even 6 weeks in. But I could stand to do it with less air travel.

In Cleveland I’m finding it easier to believe that my day job should be managed adversarially – as a dangerous scam – and that the other people involved will prefer that. Managing other people’s feelings for my benefit is A) obviously a thing I ought to be doing but often couldn’t because of my belief that any self-interest at all is unacceptable and B) I’m quite good at because I’ve been practicing my whole life. I have been imagining for years now that I could manage feelings for company interests but never for my own. That’s silly though, and taking big credit for tiny work is what people want me to do. They’ll literally pay extra for the manipulation, and feel better about it while it happens and afterward. I always wanted to be The Music Man.

ZiB 

*Since I currently do not own any long-sleeved shirts technically all weather is short-sleeve weather. I even left my rain jacket in Cleveland, and my good bathrobe, so it’s really slim pickings.

**I did make her order a new backup pair before I even thought about putting on the new ones. And I kept one of the old pairs. But still, new shoes, and less falls.
— 
Sent from a phone.