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I'm in love with a goddess <3

The last time I saw SJ Tucker perform live, so many things about my life were different.

Last time I saw her live was in 20176, at New York Faerie Fest (an event I'd really love to get back to someday, and I'm kinda bummed the timing just never works out, but end of the school year is _hard_ with burnout). I hadn't realized it was that far back --I did some checking of dates and the like, because sometimes it is very nice to have your entire history stored online¹ in an easy-to-access format.

So wow, I can add to the "things that were different last time I saw my favourite artist perform live" that I was technically still employed by the fucking private school. It wasn't just "before the weekend that Everything Changed", it was a whole year earlier than that.

The last time I saw s00j perform live, I was still dating her ex². :P

And I wasn't dating 60% of my current partners. I was still dating Sparr. I was living not in nBs or DanzaHausa but in ARSES. I did not yet have a therapist, which means Jenn is gonna get a hell of an infodump next week because have I mentioned s00j to her before? not sure!

But anyways, the me who was seeing her tonight was not the same as the me who saw her last, and yet and yet and yet. I didn't cry through the entire show, which is good (there wasn't a space for me to dance, so I couldn't manifest proper my own power to counter hers). I did cry uncontrollably through Little Bird and Wonders, which is good.

She was double-teaming with Ginger Doss, who I'd not heard before, and who has a beautiful voice, the kind that makes fellow enbies perk up and think positive thoughts about what that can mean for them. (The last time I saw s00j perform live, I didn't sing and that's such a fascinating and important shift in my own life).

And the thing that is the same between me then and me now is that she is still my favourite artist. Pretty sure if you'd asked me at any point in these nine years "hey Sor, who's your favourite musical artist" her name would cross my lips. That hasn't stopped or changed. She is still passionately important to me, and her music is still a huge part of who I am.

So it was really fucking good to see her, but honest-to-god, nothing made it as clear how much I have grown-the-fuck-up in the last decade as doing so. Because yeah, I still cried, but after I could hug her and exchange banter and be friendly (she said "hi Kat!" and even if she just got a reminder of my name from the very short guest list, that kicks ass). I'm not ever gonna match a goddess on her own turf, but I've reached a point where I no longer have to be weird about visiting her there.

It's nice to not spend the entire concert sobbing, yanno?

There's another concert tomorrow night (they said, at an hour small enough that tomorrow starts to feel meaningless) and I think it will be nice to go to that too. And it's a good reminder that there've been concerts and livestreams in between and I've been not as good about attending those as I once was, and I should really get back into it.

The me is different, and the her is different (hell, last time I saw her she had not yet made a whole-ass human) but sometimes the mood stays. The good parts stay.

(Persist, resist, and bloom <3)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Okay, not my *entire* history, but I did see the post I made where I was first squeeing about kissing Austin, and boy, I never have really been subtle about that sort of thing, have I?

2: A thing I'm not sure I've ever connected publicly in this journal, but yeah, if you've been a long time follower and remembered some particular cryptics, that's what it was? Iunno.

SetList:
Roses in the Rocks
Little Bird
[two Ginger songs - She Wolf and Hippie Pocket]
Wonders
Believe in Lullabies
[two Ginger songs - Talisman, Gaia Lives]
La Sirene
Chalk on the Sidewalk
[Ginger/s00j collab - Ma Belle]
Wild Times
[Ginger song - Thankful]

(I originally wrote "as best as I can remember" but hey, when you are crammed up in the very front row, and you notice someone holding a notebook that looks like a setlist and then they foolishly put it down on the ground, you're gonna take a picture. The only memory part was remembering the bits s00j swapped out and what for, but I've got that)

(no subject)

I am visiting my mom, and it feels good to help them actually accomplish things around the house.

See, my grandparents died back in March, and that means that my mother currently owns a substantial amount of their _stuff_ that needs going through. Some of it is being kept, because it's cool or sentimental. Most of it is going to the thrift store because we don't actually need, like, all their clothing or whatever. This is a hell of a sorting task we've got on.

And I helped out going through everything in the garage! There's now a large pile of things to go directly to the dump (which is a Saturday project) and there's one bin full of laptops/electronics that need to go to Aunt Sara to go through, and one bin full of papers that are (probably) super recycleable but might not all be. And everything else got hauled in one of two van-loads to the thrift shop! We did it! There is still heaps and heaps of this project to do, but we actually did one substantial piece of it.

I'm going to be taking just masses of pens and some pairs of scissors and a few rulers, which is wonderful to have good classroom stuff. And a few other neat things --I continue to collect my grandfather's handkerchiefs, and I may be about to own my dead-grandma-Ruth's copy of the Joy of Cooking¹, we have to check with Sara.

Tomorrow I'm going to wander over to Veronica's house to hang out and co-work --possibly that looks like doing useful digital tasks like organizing photos, plausibly that's me playing Stardew Valley while she does real work. We'll see. And then Saturday evening I'm going to an itty-bitty s00j house concert (omg so excited) and then Sunday and Monday and Tuesday are just working days again to keep going through boxen from the shed. It's a nice project to be a part of, because I am always nosy and like looking at _stuff_.

And it feels good to be helpful, yes I have it to a sin sometimes, but sometimes it's just a virtue to be able to make other people's lives easier. To look at someone and continually say "let's do something productive", to help encourage those jobs that are continually in want of being done to actually be so. It feels nice that I am helping!

That's what I've got. Goodnight, friends. Keep taking care of each other.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Dead-Grandma-Ruth is not Grandma Brin, my grandda's second wife who I knew. She's my mom's mom, who died when my mom was in college, because fuck cancer, and never met my da or me. She was, by all accounts, fucking cool as hell.

Further Massachusetts small town adventures

Austin and I decided to do MORE ADVENTURES today!

(look, as mentioned last post, it's basically the only _weekend_ we have in common, it's nice to try and make the most of it!)

Today's plan was to do morning service ringing, and lunch with the bellringers, and then at 2:30 go to Salem on the....ferry? The weather's plan was ...not worth taking a $35 per ticket private ferry when we already have active weekend passes for the commuter rail, making the train ride essentially free. And the train left at literally the same time. We hopped on the 2:30 and were in Salem just after 3! The biggest difference between yesterday and today was that we didn't bring our bicycles today, we were operating on blue bikes only...which works, because they have a Salem/Lynn network!

(they do not have what you would call "continuous coverage" between Lynn and Boston, mind. But taking the train to Salem and then blue biking around up there is an excellent plan!)

We spent the first bit of Salem Adventure wandering around and going into little shops in order to mostly sightsee/windowshop. There was a really lovely crystal shop that was just chockablock full of shiny things that I didn't get, and then we stopped in to my absolute favourite of the witchy shops. It is one that feels most...not touristy? I mean, it's RIGHT on the main strip, but it sells way more herbs and bones and dried flowers and antler tips and shit like that than most of the competitors. Pretty sure it's The Coven's Cottage. It's where I bought the bone that sits on my altar (since 2019) and today while browsing their "random bones, $3.99" bin, one basically fell into my hand and my fingers curled around it exactly like it belonged there and that was that.

I was explaining to Austin that I don't really read spellbooks or books about magic or anything like that, because the woo I work with is pretty seriously on the "it will show itself if you let it" method. Bones that look like a knife and then slide into your hand are definitely on the right track. It will go nicely next to the little iron bell I got at the Joie de Vivre end-of-things garage sale.

We also stopped by "Goodnight Fatty" which is a cookie shop selling omg decadant cookies. (At the very end of the day we had just enough time to swing by again so Austin could get a box to take home). Delicious stuff!

After an hour, ninety minutes, of this, it was time to get bikes and go on the next stage adventure: biking up to the tip of Salem and seeing the ocean at Salem Willows beach. It was a lovely ~1.5 mile ride along mostly bike lanes (!) and very little car traffic. And the first thing we saw when we arrived was a huge arcade!

Austin talked me into "look at the ocean first" and so we sat on a bench and stared out across the rocks and seagulls to all the boats, and we waved at Beverly and generally just filled our souls.

(spoiler alert, we did several discrete rounds of that, including the one where I finally got Austin hooked into the Merlin app. He is currently two birds behind me and I fully anticipate coming back from MD to find him forty birds ahead.)

After some ocean we went to wander the midway strip and see what was there. We peaked into Kiddieland and watched some children on the car racing ride, and admired the beautiful wooden carousel. The arcade was huge and classic --maybe 1.5 times as big as the one at Scandieland, which is my usual yearly "play skeeball and throw things to knock down the clowns" event. It was a nice mix of old and new (and Austin was astonished to learn that modern arcades are all just phone games from ten years ago)

((okay _modern_ arcades are all Japanese style gachapon variety, and there were a small number of those too))

But it was also loud and crowded and overstimulating and hadn't we passed a mini-golf place back on the strip a bit ..?

Yes, we had. It was the smallest miniature golf course I've ever seen, and I was absolutely thrilled with it. I doubled par in the first half, did rather better on the back half, and got two holes-in-one in a row. There was one other family playing through, and we very much enjoyed watching them in between our own banter and fun. Seriously the course was so tight and tiny and fun!

After that, we got dinner at a place we believe is named "crab shack" which was the prime exemplar of the beast. Seriously, I had the thickest most delicious clam chowder and Austin had a delicious crab roll and there were onion rings that we couldn't finish because we were full of other stuff and I had a corn on the cob and so happy! So round! So delighted!

...and then Austin looks it up and says "well, the 'Holy Cow' ice cream parlour has amazing reviews" so OFF WE WENT to become even more full and round and happy! While standing in line looking at the flavour board, we note it says "National Ice Cream Association (or something like that) #1 flavour of the year" next to their "Ritzy AF" --a butter ice cream with toffee-ritz brittle in it. Uh. Yeah. Absolutely yes. Austin got his paired with their Key Lime Pie, I got mine paired with the Easy Peazy (as you might expect, a lemon curd ice cream that was apparently the #3 flavour), it was GREAT! Dang dang dang!

We made it back to the train in just the right amount of time, and then had a lovely cool bike ride home from North Station. I am very happy!

~Sor
MOOP!