who only by moving can balance

1. My strategy for dealing with my insomnia last night (leave main light on, read book until can't any more, pretend is afternoon nap) was good for 4 hours' sleep, which I think is more than I'd have managed otherwise. Hurrah for coping strategies.

2. I have now finished the first Mary Oliver collection I borrowed from the Saison Poetry Library, and it's amazing and I love her (You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.).

3. I need to be in work this afternoon (and building steam has been turned back on, which means that the clean lab isn't at ambient outdoor temperature, hurrah). I was starting from Oxfordshire, via Paddington. I had my wheelchair with me. Paddington is conveniently just north of Hyde Park, which is just north of work. I had an absolutely fantastic explore along the Serpentine - ridiculous waterfowl, several types of snowdrop, narcissi, silver-fern bramble (one of my favourites), a whole pile of beautiful gradated dogwoods interspersed with salix, gorse in flower, birches with pink bark peeling, a tree with astonishing pink catkins, hellebores and mahonias and...

4. ... and yesterday afternoon I visited the Oxford Botanics with That One Lady. They are tiny and adorable and have a whole series of beds organised by which medical discipline the plants were or are used in. Also, lots of my absolute favourite iris (they're predominantly a sort of pale sky blue in person).

5. The 1am bugfuck nuts appears to have been followed by starting a bleed. Thanks, body, for your utter predictability; on the plus side, in the middle of going "EVERYTHING IS SPIDERS" I did at least manage to spot that that was likely what was happening.

6. Actually, one of the other ways I dealt with the insomnia was putting together a tentative setlist for the 10-minute poetry reading I'm doing as part of a General Evening, in late May. I'm going to have to think a bit carefully, because I've selected 9 poems and put them in a coherent order, so that + patter is clearly going to be too long... e-mail to the organisers time, I think.

7. In fact, the General Evening is a monthly event I performed at with Lashings last night. I remain absolutely astonished by my ability to make a room burst out laughing via the medium of improvisation on an approximate theme of my lines; perhaps I shouldn't be, because after all I've been managing that for nearly five years now, but hey.

8. The Situation with the Partner continues to Make Progress. We've managed another several good & useful conversations; things aren't fixed but we are stubborn enough that we're pretty sure we're going to manage, at this point, and we've got a stopgap in place.

9. It's nearly 5pm and the sun hasn't finished setting, yet; currently it is painting the sky gold, and it is glorious.

10. Thank you to, like, half the Internet for taking care of me during meltdown last night - so, so grateful that you will make the time for me. <3 Special shout-out to flippac, who handled the brunt of it solo with no warning. ♥

my first Lashings rehearsal was on April 26th 2012 (or thereabouts); as of roughly 25 hours ago I am officially a full Lasher rather than an apprentice, and most of that time was me taking FOREVER to write up the results of my feedback session.

(also, I would just like to take this moment to go holy SHIT is EVERYONE I KNOW shagging -- to first approximation, the answer appears to be "yes", or failing that "not yet...")

1. I wrote a thing on my relationship with the NHS for the LashBlog. It's titled I love the welfare state. (-- and if you're interested, a DW feed exists! lashingsofgb_feed.)

2. I am currently wearing Glasgow on my clavicle and Marquis de Carabas on my wrists, and I reckon I smell amazing, and... that is helping. A lot. (See below.)

3. jeshyr made me a choker! ... well, they didn't make it for me personally, they made it for their Etsy store and I couldn't resist buying it. It's the minimalist rainbow and silver necklace, and it is a kind of jewelry I can be comfortable wearing, and that's kind of amazing. (See also: reclamation; broadening occupiable spaces.) Unforch I kind am kind of critically unimpressed by both my ability to take photos of myself with my cameraphone and my face this evening, but nonetheless have some photos of me wearing it. (That's not a request for compliments; I mention it more in the spirit of: we were joking, in IRC the other night, about how - even though I talk about counselling, even though I talk about the sads, even though I talk about things that I'm scared about - I can sometimes give the impression of being ~perfect~? And - I'm not, and for all I talk about liking my body and self-compassion and so on, I do think that it's important that I say: me too. And I think it's important that I record this so that my future self can look back and send me hugs. Thank you, future self - it does actually help. x)
( Two photos. )


--- ahaha, thank you, Indigo Girls: during the time of which I speak/it was hard to turn the other cheek/to the blows of insecurity

[Original post, 24th Jan, LashBlog.]

I'm choosing to repost this content here because of the terrifying news that it's been recommended that tramadol be upgraded to a Class C drug. I spent five years being routinely disbelieved by everyone about the amount of pain I was in, because I could go from "normal" to "can't speak in complete sentences" in a matter of minutes, and the only outward sign that anything had changed would be... not being able to speak in complete sentences. So I was making it up, right?

Well... no. And like I said elsewhere earlier today, in the UK it seems to be much easier to get hold of a prescription for neat codeine if you're able to rock up to your GP and say "So, I've borrowed some spares from a friend; I've been taking [dosage] and have noticed [xyz] improvements in function and quality of life. Could I have a prescription of my own?" Than if, say, you just show up and say "I've been a responsible citizen but maybe this will help?" I'm currently going through a similar phase with temazepam: I've taken 30mg this calendar year (and therefore ever), in three doses, and it's been enormously helpful. When I asked a GP for it, without disclosing I'd already tried taking it, I was told that it was awfully addictive, and that there were concerns about drug interactions. Sooner or later I'll get around to being pushier about it - and, yes, I choose that word advisedly.

Fundamentally, I consider anything that makes access to adequate pain relief harder a bad thing. Criminalising responsible drug-sharing makes access to adequate pain relief harder, and is a massive issue in terms of common behaviours among people with chronic pain that I've had this discussion with. This is not a good plan, and I'd really rather it didn't happen in my country.

---

( The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. )

It's... something I'm not, by and large, in that I bind and I don't wear female-coded clothing, but that doesn't change the fact that I've got waist-length hair an an alto voice and hips like whoa. And honestly, most of those things I don't mind? But I don't really know, most of the time, how to make myself read queerer than what I already do, how I already dress, in my armour of DMs and cargo shorts and corduroy trousers.

But.

But then Jesus & His Judgemental Father sent me a patch to go with the two albums I ordered from them (one for me, one for the library). And I bought the kind of jacket I've always secretly wanted - heavy cotton, lots of pockets - and I've sewn the patch onto the arm, and I've put all my pin buttons onto the lapels, and I've been going out in public with a rainbow flag and a badge that reads "genderqueer" and.

And I feel scared but I also feel safer for it.

I'm surprised - perhaps I shouldn't be - by how similar this feels to the summer I started spending time in public visibly unshaven. But it does, and I am, and -

- thank you. Thank you, so much, to every single one of you who's made it possible, made it easier, for me to do this. Thank you.

This song is for every teenager who's ever come out... and for every one who hasn't.

Every day of my life is a transformative work: an essay about my relationship with my body, and how coming to terms with being trans* and coming to terms with being disabled have changed it - and about the parallels I feel between those experiences.

It is also navel-gazey as all get-out ;)

1. Public transport (trains! The Eurostar! Even the X5!)
2. Beautifully sunny spring weather
3. Bouncing around Oxford with a bunch of queers
4. Singing! In a group! With theatre!
5. Mattor panir and pantomime
6. French toast and deliberately reinterpreting V for Vendetta as a criticism of misogyny in socialist and anarchist movements
7. Fannish squee, and especially getting to rec fanfic
8. My first clutch of patches for Dreamwidth are awaiting review, and I now have the camel book for better learnings about Perl
9. I've got the beginnings of a series of short-but-nerdy Avatar fics planned
10. I am getting much stronger and much more confident at the wheelchairing

... it has been a PROPER awesome week or two, okay. :-)