I was in a meeting a little while ago, small-ish, all people from other organizations, and when one of them said she had written more than, I think it was 8,000 words on crossings (the street design/built environment kind, not any other kind) and was annoying her colleagues by having to go all the way back to "what even is a crossing?"), my first thought was is it possible to get a crush on someone for their work??! haha.

I think she was surprised and delighted when my face lit up. I tried not to sound like I am a big weirdo. So we arranged a follow-up meeting.

Which ended up being last week so when she said she had to postpone it because that day she had to take her kid to the hospital for surgery on a broken finger! I wrote back saying I was happy to postpone but I wasn't sure when to postpone it to because I was waiting on a similar surgery situation at an unknown but hopefully imminent date!

And then of course surprise surgery happened, and I didn't sleep the next day, and I've been back at work on a reduced and reactive basis so I forgot all about this.

But today she emailed me (subject: "Best wishes for your ankle!") so I emailed back and neither of us was doing anything this afternoon so I put in a meeting for the next half-hour slot. And somehow I and/or Microsoft fucked up the invite in a way I've never seen or thought possible?? so she has to send a new one and I got to feel mortified of course.

But we did finally talk and it was fun. Lots of tangents and chats and we really clicked and we overran our initial half-hour by 45 extra minutes, and only stopped them because it was the end of her work day.

It was really nice to have some fun human interaction, that is also useful from a work point of view!

Today gave me the novel experience of being scolded for my dog peeing and pooping while I was bagging up his poop and taking it away!

Gary has as always attracted a lot of attention from strangers. He's very endearing, and all the things that make him wonky (the missing eye, the head tilt, the snaggletooth) seem to increase that.

So when he was exploring the alley that several front doors, including ours, open up to this morning and I heard someone say "hello" behind me, I turned and said "hello," slightly distracted by seeing him squat for a poop so I started to get a poop bag out (we have a little holder for them clipped to his leash which is terribly convenient but it can be a bit fiddly).

But then this stranger said he didn't want my dog "pissing and shitting" here. I was surprised but, wanting to reassure him that we hadn't made a special trip here to annoy him, pointed out our door and said "We're staying just there, so--"

"I know where you're staying," he snapped. Ahaha. So we've been annoying someone in blissful ignorance for a day or two already!

We are scrupulous about picking up after Gary, but to hear this person tell it, this was "his home" and he asked if we let our dog piss and shit in our home.

I mean, as it happens, since we brought him back from dog hospital a couple days ago where he nearly died, yes we have cleaned up pee on more than one occasion!! I was so tempted to tell the cranky neighbor this but figured it wouldn't do any good.

So I just asked him where I should take my dog instead. "Outside!" the neighbor said. I lifted my eyes to the sky above us, then lifted my eyebrows.

I totally understand not wanting dog poo in the vicinity, but there wasn't any! I can say this with some confidence because if you have a dog you also have a poop detector (and floor-food/garbage/small-animal detector). And if he's seriously worried about dog pee, I would like to assure him that rats are peeing on his alley every night. Probably other small animals too! And it's fine! It's a concrete area, it's not like Gary's even peeing on grass or trees or anything that it might conceivably harm.

He continued ranting as I tied up the poo bag and Gary started wandering off (handily, in the direction of the bin!). "I don't know where you're from, but when you visit other people's homes there do you let your dog piss and shit everywhere..." I probably would've stayed to argue, but the dog is too sensible for that kind of nonsense, heh. I let myself be led away.

Gary is wise: I actually think there's nothing I could say to this person that would be more of a punishment than them having to live that life every day, with different dogs and owners staying in this explicitly dog-friendly place we rented.

This morning I emailed the artist to reply to his invitation with my apologies for not being able to make it to London for today's event for it.

His (very quick!) reply included "You have made a very important contribution to the project, and people find your story compelling."

I'm honestly shocked at that because a) I'm no artist and b) I barely remember what I said to him on the phone, haha.

Especially since this piece is partly about memory and fragmentation, it's so funny that I'm desperate to know how I contributed to it and I never will.

[personal profile] diffrentcolours left his onesie (pink, with blue and purple so it's the most bisexual thing ever) in my room. I just saw it as I'm getting ready for bed, and the Imp of the Perverse briefly consumed me with the temptation to put it on and flop around like a kid in grownup clothes. (I'm listening to the post-Twins victory episode of the Twins podcast I listen to and it's so much fun.)

Oh, speaking of the Imp of the Perverse:

Yesterday, thanks to an Icelandic friend living in Sweden talking about versions of the name Erik, they mentioned "the Elfdalian name Ierk, also used in words like Gambelierk (old Erik (the Devil))."

I perked up at this, naturally. Like, wait: does that mean "old Erik" is a name for the Devil? I suppose like "old Nick" is in English*. (Or old Harry, in Andy Hamilton's Game.) My friend confirmed this, so now my "scary Halloween name" on Mastodon is "Old Erik 👿"!

My favorite part, though, was a Dutch friend telling me

In dutch we have the expression 'dat mag Joost weten' (only Joost would know) and I researched it as a teenager and found out that the Joost in this saying refers to the devil.

And a friend in Norway (I think?) said

Around here, the name of the devil is often substituted with "Søren", to provide a further example

When someone said there's no such name for the Devil in English (odd when I'd just mentioned old Nick, but whatever), a couple of people mentioned Old Scratch, which I'd forgotten about! Any more you've heard of? In English or other languages.


*I enjoyed this dive into why "Old Nick" is a name for the Devil. It's one of those things no one knows, but the attempted explanations tell us a lot about ourselves and our culture and how language works (and doesn't work).

This evening I had a phone call with an artist who's working on an installation,

a virtual reality experience constructed from sound and image.

In undulating bubbles around an abandoned bus, visitors discover the voices of blind and partially sighted "witnesses” who share their personal experiences and truths. This is the testimony of the missing passengers, and a platform for their voices to be heard.

So my voice was recorded to be part of this. I'm not an artist so I'm excited to be Participating in an Art!

Of course the thing will be in London. But I do have to go there a couple times in October so I'm hoping one of those will line up with this because I would like to see it (or, hear it; he told me the VR setup includes sound cues as well as visual cues to lead people to the points where the snippets of recordings will be).

He asked me three questions:

  1. How would you describe the experience of being a blind or partially-sighted person? You may want to include descriptions of daily activities, or other senses, that bring your experiences to life for the listener.

  2. What is the most important piece of information that you would like to communicate to sighted people about the challenges of living in a majority sighted world?

  3. Have your dreams been affected by being a blind or partially-sighted person and, if so, in what ways? Please include any examples of dreams you remember. If you prefer, you could also talk about the way you, as a blind or partially-sighted person, imagine things.

I talked about how I'd gained sight rather than lost it, my optic nerves, what my nystagmus is like, my journey from a medical-model upbringing to discovering and embracing the social model in adulthood, and for the last question didn't talk much about how I literally dream because I don't have anything to say about that, but talked about a recurring anxiety dream I had for many years, because I think it's related to me being partially sighted.

In the dream, I'm a passenger in a car and I suddenly realize the driver has disappeared. The car is still zooming along though and I somehow manage to climb into the empty driver's seat without affecting that. Then I have to drive, or just steer really (it's definitely an automatic I'm "driving"!), speeding along freeways/motorways full of other cars. It's never a quiet road or a two-lane highway. Always a big speedy road, often in a city, often at night with the other cars just blobs of headlights and taillights.

My dream-self has knuckles that are white from how hard I'm gripping the steering wheel, and a stomach that's churning. I weave in and out around other cars in traffic, constantly certain I'm going to crash the car. But I never do.

The dream just goes on and on like this -- not getting easier but also not getting so difficult that I crash -- until I wake up.

I remember once being almost as frustrated as relieved that I was just about managing to keep the car going, because it was so stressful and scary and tiring and my only reward for "success" here was having to do more of the same terrifying task that was being somehow asked of me.

It all sounds like a really heavy-handed metaphor, but also I'm not surprised that driving a car is how my brain chose to illustrate this so many times because it does seem like a terrifying responsibility, and I'm constantly admiring of anyone who's willing to drive me anywhere.

This opportunity to contribute to the Arts had caught my eye because of the mention of public transport in the title; I always look out for stuff like that, since it can be relevant to my job at times. But here, there was no other mention of it. The questions weren't about that at all, as you can see, which I think is interesting. Fair enough that what is going on inside strangers' heads on a bus might have little or nothing to do with the bus at all.

Or anywhere: I remember distinctly having this revelation when I was a kid: in a car on a freeway as it happens, but this was being safely driven by my dad. I was in the backseat, and I cannot remember if we were going out or coming back home, but I was either excited about or basking in whatever we'd done on that particular trip (Twins game, Disney on Ice, something like that). I remember looking at other cars in the next lane, especially when traffic was slow enough that I could see inside them. Other kids, their strange blankets and toys cluttering up their own backseats, unknown adults driving, often I couldn't see anything inside the car and only knew if it was blue or red, big or little, going the same or opposite direction...

Suddenly I realized the people in all those cars didn't know we'd just been to Disney on Ice or were excited about the upcoming Twins game or whatever, and that meant I also didn't know where they were going or why. Were they on longer or shorter trips than us? Was it fun like this or scary like when I had to go to hospitals? I had no idea. It was dizzying, how little I knew. And I would never know. There was no way to know.

I spent a lot of car journeys after that making up stories about the people in the other cars we went past.

Anyway, back to tonight! The artist seemed happy with my answers, I have no idea what he'll make of them and I'm terribly interested to find out.

[222/365]

Aug. 10th, 2023 09:14 pm

I've just done an interview for someone researching isolation, loneliness and mental health in visually impaired people. It's a topic very near to my heart and hey I love an excuse to talk about myself.

Made me laugh that the interviewer said in his last email "I've put the Teams call in for an hour and a half but don't worry, it's unlikely to take longer than an hour" and then we finally hung up after almost two hours.

I've thought about this stuff a lot!  And I do like to talk about myself!

In Wickes (DIY/home improvement store) earlier, I laughed when our three items were rung up and the cashier said "£1.90."

The juxtaposition of that and the guy ahead of us who had a flatbed cart with many bags of "sharp sand" (what is that?) made me laugh.

I said this to [personal profile] diffrentcolours, the cashier overheard me and said "That's why we don't have carrier bags! Everyone's either getting huge things, or stuff they can take away in their hands!"

That made me laugh too. I'd never thought about it, but it's true! You don't see Wickes bags.

I wore my Public Service Broadcasting t-shirt to a bar today and its logos of increasingly-abstract radio telescopes got the attention of someone with a PhD in astronomy.

That t-shirt, which says "I believe in progress" on it too, has started a lot of conversations -- but they always make me feel a little weird because the line is deeply ironic (it's from the album about the history of coal mining in Wales). The person actually started the conversation by asking what the last word was, since it was hidden by the strap of my messenger bag.

It was nice to just talk about Jodrell Bank instead!

[127/365]

May. 7th, 2023 10:39 pm

Today I had the affirming experience of going to a gay sex shop (with my boyfriend and friends who are also dudes) and no one batting an eye.

I'd been in there once before, many years ago, with a then-boyfriend who was interested in going but too scared to go alone. I was sorta just there for moral support and sorta having more fun than he was (and I was just looking at underwear and a calendar I still remember all this time later, of French rugby players). But naturally I got some dirty looks, no doubt I made my boyfriend look straight when we were in fact two bi people.

And I'm glad I managed to not make my boyfriend look straight this time. Indeed the guy who was enthusiastically encouraging us to buy ridiculous dildos only singled me out to tell me "your mask is hot."

This made me laugh in surprise. It's just because of the neoprene cover, but still. I've been told a bunch of times that my mask is cool, but I never expected to hear that it's hot!

The other day, a friend I met on LiveJournal, that's how long we've known each other, messaged me and said she'd bought a secondhand shirt that it turns out didn't suit her and she thought I might like it so she was happy to mail it to me.

The photo she sent was a black t-shirt with stars made of silver sequins and a planet that coincidentally happened to be in bi colors: a purple planet with a pink and blue ring going around it.

It turned up yesterday and was a delight. So I wore it today and I felt really good about it all day. It fits me well and I love that, even though it's a "women's" shirt, it doesn't feel overly femme on me.

Our plan for today was "meet a friend for lunch, maybe do something with him after."

It turned into a spectacular day of

  • D buying rum-filled dark chocolate truffles for me
  • a stranger striking up a conversation in HMV about my mask and eventually about being bisexual
  • going to the Jewish museum (where I hadn't been since before its vast and impressive renovation and D never had)
  • stumbling across a baseball-themed bar, of all the things, with batting cages and chairs with backs made of old bats and punny cocktail names (I had a Home Rum and D had a Circus Catcher; they came in red Solo cups and we ended up tipsily watching a video of circus catch highlights to illustrate what they were for D
  • a nice cheap dinner in a café when I realized I'd only eaten half my lunch all day
  • sharing a table with strangers at another pub, one of whom was from San Francisco and another one who talked to D about old computer games
  • finally a drink in the Molly House where yet another stranger struck up a conversation with us -- it was the day for that!

Sitting outside means you meet all the good dogs. Outside the pub this afternoon, I got to say hello to a Boston terrier called Eric.

When Gary and I were out for a walk, B, the lady who runs the garden center told me "I was telling my friends about you the other day."

Oh dear, I thought. Was this a "person who's weird about their gender" thing? Or was it a plural you, "people who live together in some weird relationship configuration"?

"My friend is a copyeditor," she said, "and she was telling me her opinions about the Oxford comma, and I told her I know a linguist, I told her what you said about it."

I do not remember ever talking to her about Oxford commas.

I don't know why I would! What I would've said is "sometimes they're better, sometimes they're worse, it's daft to have a hardline opinion one way or the other." It's not a memorable opinion! I'm very much in the Vampire Weekend school of "who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma," heh.

Though I do vaguely remember getting trapped (literally trapped, I let Gary sneak into a bit he likes while it was empty and then like three customers and B suddenly appeared and blocked our way out!) while I was wearing my "The more I study linguistics the fewer pedantic I become" t-shirt; B complimented it but told me she did judge people's language. I'd have been surprised if she'd said anything else to be honest; she's very blunt in an endearing way. I don't remember Oxford commas coming up specifically in that conversation! But then I probably wouldn't because they're so dull. Prescriptivism is generally so dull! If it wasn't doing so much harm in the same way other bigotries do, I'd never think about it at all.

But man, it's funny the things people associate with you or remember you for, which can feel so random to you living in your head all the time.

As I left work yesterday, the people replacing the bathroom were working outside the front door (a bit of sawdust zoomed around my glasses to get in my eye), and I heard "...'cause I'm the king of wishful thinking" and smiled to realize that builders are still listening to the radio.

On my walk back, I was almost home when I heard another radio near some other builders working on a house; this time I heard "oh yeah, life goes on..." and my first thought -- well my first thought might have been wow, this kind of radio never changes does it but my second thought was of my dad, who changes one of the names in this song's title to make it match his and my mom's names. It's such a dad-joke thing and I love it so much and I miss my parents so much.

My third thought was I am not going to cry at a John Mellencamp song, goddammit.

And I didn't. But it's not usually such a close-run thing!
Some old friends who used to live nearby and moved away a few years ago are back visiting. It's always so great to see them. Their kids, who I babysat all the time as newborns and toddlers, are full-blown agents of chaos now.

One made her dolls* into guns and was shooting me with them at the top of her lungs. "Ah but the gun doesn't work if it's too noisy," I said, so she had to whisper "bang!" before I dramatically slumped into the sofa.

Her mama said "Erik, you can babysit anytime," haha.

It is always so great to see them but after two hours of this we were all reeling -- even Gary looked a little bewildered and traumatized. It didn't help that [personal profile] diffrentcolours and I had just gotten back from the pub where I'd had two entire pints! (Of a delicious beer, Seven Brothers (they spell "Brothers" with a 7 in it somewhere but I'm not going to look up the stupid spelling) Honeycomb Pale.) I look forward to being asleep soon!

* The dolls were Ariel and Prince Eric, so I also had the hilarious experience of hearing my name in alarming contexts all the time. "Oh so the cow [another toy] squished Eric, huh?" "What happened to Eric? Why are his legs like that?" [personal profile] diffrentcolours was amused that the "gun," first pointed at him, was called an Eric-gun.
"Is that the doorbell?" [personal profile] diffrentcolours asked when we were still in bed this morning.

"I didn't hear anything," I said.

Then I heard knocking.

"Ope, I guess it was!" I said as I scrambled into my bathrobe.

In the past, this would never have been a question because we didn't have to hear the doorbell, we'd just hear Gary barking his head off and zooming towards the front door. But lately he's been super chill about this sort of thing! I still usually close a door between him and the one I'm about to open, but usually he just looks at me like "what are you doing that for?"

So that's what happened before I opened the door to a delivery person, who greeted me with [personal profile] mother_bones's surname. I cheerfully agreed like I always do, and he handed it to me and said "thank you, sir!"

To get sirred when I'm barely out of bed, when I think I'm doing the least possible gender so no one would see me how I want to be seen, is a pretty good start to the day! (While I still have no gender identity to speak of, my ideal gender presentation is masculine.)

And the parcel turned out to be [personal profile] mother_bones's much-delayed Christmas present for [personal profile] diffrentcolours, a custom-made pink camo onesie that fits him really well and looks absolutely adorable.
Yesterday when he was giving me a lift to work in the sunshine, [personal profile] diffrentcolours said if it's this nice tomorrow, we could maybe go sit outside the pub that I guess is my local now. I never had in the year I'd lived here; we'd only recently ascertained that it has outdoor seating.

It was as nice today, so we did go. And, seeing the place was near-empty (two or three other people who were about to leave as we went to sit down) when we were ordering our pints, and since it was only a couple of degrees above freezing, we sat inside!

Amazing. I think my second time in a pub in the last almost-two-years. I love pubs. I was delighted to see the boring ads, look at a muted TV full of football scores, listen to a very generic playlist I never would've chosen myself. I wouldn't say I like these things, of course, but I feel good around them.

Of course with the whole place to choose from, an old Irish man sat down near us. He asked if we like music, perhaps after seeing me mouth along the words of the song that was playing ("Harvest Moon," and I was just thinking a couple nights ago about how much I detest Neil Young but I still know all the words so...).

We ended up trying to explain Lizzo to him, since I was wearing my Lizzo t-shirt. He's definitely convinced her name is Lizard despite it being in big letters on my shirt and us repeatedly telling him.

I do hope he goes and tells his 11-year-old granddaughter that he's learned about a musician named Lizard. It's just the kind of thing your grandpa should be telling you when you're eleven, I feel.
Gary demanded a walk pretty early this morning (well, it felt early because I was slow getting us downstairs: I wanted a shower and wanted to give [personal profile] diffrentcolours a chance to get his breakfast without Gary-related interference) so we went into the direction of the garden center. Someone walking a big floppy dog came towards us so I sort of hid Gary behind a van to try to keep him from going bonkers. With only limited success. And once we emerged I noticed Brenda who owns the garden center was actually there helping a customer. Usually we can bimble around in the mornings without disturbing anyone there!

The two of them were looking amused at us, so I sheepishly said "Sorry. He doesn't like other dogs."

"Me too!" Brenda said. "In that I don't like other people, I mean." I loved that she had to specify that she didn't think herself in comparison to "other dogs."

In other to cover my amusement, I offered solidarity: "He doesn't like other people either," I said.

"Well it's good he knows his own mind," said the customer, which is a great white-British-lady phrase for "here's a rascal I approve of."

"Yeah! He's good at boundaries," I said which made them both laugh. And then Gary wanted to go off and sniff other things.
Work today was bookended by dog care, it was pretty great.

First my doggy friend Beaumont was looking for someone to provide the attention and time outdoors that he usually gets from his dog walker. Since he lives on my way to work, it was easy for me to leave early to go see him. He greeted me with many barks -- having only seen me in the park, he might have been surprised that I know where he lives! -- and a real reluctance to go into the garden which I could sympathize with because it was raining pretty hard. I had to show him it was okay out there, and helpfully barked when I went back inside because I do not belong there! I can see his point! I'm so used to my own dog being so chill that I forgot other dogs will steal your wellies and chew on them if you leave them unsupervised for a minute, so he kindly reminded me of this important fact about dogs.

Then I went to work, and by the time I got home I only had time for a much-needed cup of tea before I had to take Gary to the vet. Nothing's wrong with him...well, nothing new!...he just needed his nails clipped and we don't want to do that at home any more. But we had quite a long wait in a room full of other nervous dogs, so it was hard on everyone.

I got back home and managed to make dinner and eat it, despite how tired I was. I'm very tired now.
Soon after I got home from work, [personal profile] mother_bones said "something so hilarious happened, but I want to tell you and [personal profile] diffrentcolours at the same time," so I was left intrigued.

He works late on a Wednesday, and then stayed upstairs later having another video game date with his bestie, so I'd had a few chances in that time to remember "ooh there's a funny story to hear, I'm looking forward to that!" and then forget again.

Not too long after [personal profile] diffrentcolours came downstairs to eat his pizza (before we ate all of it -- and if Gary had his way, he'd be included in that "we"), I said "Oh, we can hear the story now!" and explained to him about this.

[personal profile] mother_bones had clearly forgotten too because she had that pre-amused look of someone who knows what's coming, and she started by chuckling and saying stuff like "Right -- I don't even know where to start."

She was talking to The Person at the Garden Center Whose Name We Don't Know. We know the other one well, who owns it, and this lady is super nice and I've never known her name and [personal profile] mother_bones can never remember it and we both feel really bad about it. Anyway. That one.

The two of them were talking about Gary and how great he is -- Gary's first walk, of four today, took us past there and she spotted us and took the opportunity to compliment him effusively, which I thought was very sweet. Then the lady moved on to saying something about the people who are always with Gary -- 99% of his walks are done by me or me and [personal profile] diffrentcolours -- and she asked, "Are those your sons? Or...daughter?"*

[personal profile] mother_bones said she just threw her head back and howled with laughter. "I must be looking old today," she said (she is older than us! and I'm not a lot older than her actual sons and [personal profile] diffrentcolours isn't a lot older than me, but still...!) She also did her best to reassure the horrified lady, who was realizing what she'd just said, that this truly wasn't anything to feel embarrassed about, that it'd made her day.

"I did attempt to explain our household to her," [personal profile] mother_bones told us. (Which will delight the lady who owns the garden center, who's spent years trying to figure out why random people seem to live in this house what with the previous lodgers and for all she knows I'm just this year's one.) "And then we commiserated about what it's like being in our fifties, because we're about the same age."

It sounds like a totally adorable conversation, and it does amuse me every time I think about it now. We were all very sympathetic to the idea that no one could tell our relationships to each other just by looking.** I asked her if she'd told her actual sons about this, because they'll both think it's hilarious as well. [personal profile] diffrentcolours said "Yeah, among the people who'll find this funny: my boyfriend, his boyfriend, my two real sons..."


* Yes, I am delighted that my gender is still baffling to people who see me in every possible state of disarray (sometimes I do not want to walk the dog and yet I still walk the dog but I feel my clothes indicate my lack of interest in my body interacting with society at these times, and since gender is nothing but a relationship between a body and society, I am delighted to know mine is still capable of seeming like probably-someone's-son then)!

** I've found, with tradespeople and delivery people and that sort of thing, that I'm assumed to be either of the other two if the person has one of their names, and I'm assumed to be the gay partner of either of the other two if they know me not to be the name they have on their contact details, or if I'm like standing next to them or something. Best version of that was when a plumber was here and [personal profile] mother_bones and I were downstairs, dog-wrangling and moving stuff out of his way and whatnot. At one point he said "did I hear water running upstairs? I'm going to have to turn off the water..." and [personal profile] mother_bones said "Oh yeah that's fine, it's just my partner upstairs" and the guy, when he heard this, looked at her, looked at me with a very clear isn't this your partner?! look on his face, and looked back at her slightly more worriedly. I worried I'd only imagined that look from him but when she and I compared notes later we'd both independently noticed this, heh.

Profile

the cosmolinguist

July 2025

S M T W T F S
   12 345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
OSZAR »