Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Conclusion: I should find someone to talk to me about my gender, IN FRENCH. Candidates: my actual therapist; or the social worker at Checkpoint Bern (a native Francophone); or seeing the trans specific social worker at Checkpoint Lausanne.

After Zurich Pride, I'm planning on doing Pride Romandie (much smaller) in Bulle (medium size village, ie, tiny in terms of places that have pride parades). Friend Hobbit S and their partner V will pick me up in Bern and drive me there.

Hobbit S has been asked to point-person an Asexual gathering/marching conglomerate. Parade too small to require that all groups have A Float. I found this out when I suggested that we three (all some flavour of trans) meet up with TGNS.

S is unsure if they should Organise an ace thing.

Me: OH happy to join up there!
Me: I can volunteer my rusty French! I thinK I can even explain why I'm there without implying you're my partner!

And then I had twenty seconds to think and... okay I COULD probably describe the circumstances of my ace-compatibility and how I know that, via describing K, etc. Or I could just... grab the available mostly-fits term, demisexuel*le. (I would have to make strategic choices about nouns and adjectives and pronouns, and I can't get any iel-users to explain how they do grammatical accord, if they don't all do the soft-stop * form, which I'm pretty sure they don't all do and also isn't a top option for me, I just sound like I can't speak French.)

I do not grab this term in English, for two reasons: firstly, most people I know who ID as demisexual react with repulsion to the concept of polyamory and all CERTAINLY go :s to the idea of bangin' on a first date, which I do occasionaly do. My... whatever, my weird situation is composed not of "know well before being able to countenance sex" so much as "I don't actually lust after people, most of the time, until AFTER I've already slept with them". IE, i require the "deep connection" of "able to have sex with this person, and indeed, I did, look" before wholistically lusting. (Some exceptions apply) Most demisexual and grey-ace people I know regard my sexual choices as repulsively hornt.

Secondarily, I have reason to believe that if I invested in asexuality as my primary identity I would use that to restrict myself. Given my well-attested Repression History, and that I... keep dating people with higher libidos than me, and envying them, like I WANT to be hornt but am not... this seems unwise.

And of course RIGHT NOW given I'm off the pill for once, and considering taking T, it seems foolish to sign up to an identity primarily understood as "not horny".

BUT. If I had to introduce myself in French in an ace space, then yes, I would say demisexuelle (probably in that form), with a bit of a shrug. And I therefore realised that if happened to hook up with a francophone... yeah, I would use demisexuelle to approximate my whole... DEAL. And I would feel a lot less angst about it than I would using the analagous term in English. It's just a WORD. If it achieves the COMMUNICATION GOAL, then HOORAY, I have COMMUNICATED IN FRENCH.

I think I really need to talk to someone about Gender in French. My German just isn't good enough to do the job, but my French might.

(Also: what if I signed in to Lingoda classes as Ed and just... used M grammar? It would feel fake. But deliberately fake as opposed to offensively fake. I don't know if it would fuck up my language aquisition, but I feel like defaulting to m is a common grammar error, so if I aquired it, a few weeks of immersion or a chunk of fr>de should break me of it...)

Thursday: after stressing all morning because the maintenance men who were supposed to come at 10 didn't come until 1.30, it turned out they had a master key, and therefore I could leave them in my flat while I went to Basel.

Basel was hot! I acquired about 15 books from the main library, which is an excellent library with multi-storey open stacks. I met up with Hobbit S and, briefly, their boyfriend. Boyfriend fits exactly Type 2 of Polyamorous Men (the probably harmless type with bad hair). Hobbit S is delightful, and showed me the mysteries of the library, and then chatted to me for a while in Tibits after.

Friday: I had only medium success at salvaging my workload, but I did interview N. re the Lords of Misrule audio production of the Canterbury Tales, which was vr interesting. I took more naps than is really normal?

Saturday: I had a video date with Shiny lined up, and dinner with J and her partner Y scheduled for my place in the evening. J had been disappointed I couldn't make it to go swimming with them Thursday or Friday, so we planned to visit a museum on Saturday afternoon. I'm actually quite glad this plan fell through (they overslept and their dessert plans took longer than expected), because although I got my whole house vacuumed before calling Shiny, I did not get the chicken in marinade or the vegetables pre-prepared. A quieter afternoon let me do that.

J and Y are both a delight to talk to; dinner (roast chicken with plums) turned out deliciously. I forgot I had set the table outside, though, so we ate inside in front of the hot oven! Ooops. They brought wine with, and I broke my streak of abstinence - my goal was never complete teetotal, and I do intend to resume comfortable social drinking once I feel like I've broken the mental pattern that was leading to drinking too much at home. For now, though, I'm resetting the 'a month dry gets you a reward' calendar, so no reward for august. Nominated reward for September is a printer, and I really want a printer at this point, so that should prove reasonable incentive.

Sunday: Has been quiet. Podcasting. Knitting. Ordered some brightly patterned fabric, so I really need to get onto sewing some stuff with the LAST brightly patterned fabric I ordered. German class happened, and was pretty boring.

A Week has happened, and I am kersplat. Have been kersplat since Tuesday, really.

Work: In keeping with my regression to the irresponsible undergrad I never really was, I wrote an entire conference paper on Monday. I finished my 'word vomit' hand written not-really-draft in the morning, then wrote it up (3400 words at that stage) in the afternoon. Cut it down at 8 on Monday morning and the seminar/study day/thing started at 9. NOT my finest hour.

The study day itself was a success, though! I think.

I ... had some interesting responses to the conference paper, but I can't figure out how to process them yet.

Subsequently I have been wrung out and not got anything else written. Some reading, some admin, that sort of thing, but neither phd nor postdoc writing. Oh, and I sat in on a zoom rehearsal of the Lords of Misrule, the York medieval drama troupe.

Social: had another Date with J on Monday evening, which probably contributed to my being wrung out. Date nice! Vegan-ish restaurant in the city after swimming.

Tuesday afternoon I called Shiny and it turns out I was so wrung out I had... nothing to say, except to describe cats I had met / seen on Zoom. (Study day had pet show and tell time.) Happily I got to call them again on Thursday, and normal human conversations were had.

Called Dad on Thursday, too, and caused him great confusion, since it turns out I have never actually CALLED his whatsapp, and so he did not know how to answer it and put it on speaker. He seems in good spirits although not having an award-winning streak of Knowing What He's Doing (forgot to pick up Ms11 - who turned 11 last week - from school). Ms 11 made him a unicorn cupcake for his birthday. I gave him "Cunk on Britain", which I am amused to note he is pronouncing 'coonk', presumably to avoid unfortunate assonances that Ms Cunk absolutely intended. Also gave him and Ms 11 a joint gift of Fluxx, because such things are important. Unclear how Dad feels about being forced to play games (he enjoys some games, when dragged into them; he never, ever, enjoys starting games).

Health: Lost a chunk of Tuesday and most of Wednesday to a Mysterious Malaise that, waking from an unexpected nap in a fit of coughing, I briefly feared was The Malady Du Jour. Cancelled my trip to Basel accordingly; but as anyone could predict, I was absolutely fine by Thursday. Diagnosis: psychosomatic symptoms associated with overwhelm from daring to do FOUR human-interaction things in FOUR days (i thought it was three but perhaps playreading counts).

Household: I put up many postcards! More than I have had up since Sydney. On the solid backs of the kallax cabinet-cubes and drawer-cubes, assorted art cards; australian modernist art on the side of the kallax, under the print of Cazneaux's bridge photo.

On the front of the three cabinet-cubes, two Tolkien postcards, two abstract art postcards from the Art Gallery of WA, a Miffy art card, an art card with an engraving of seven dwarves, and a notecard that's been blu-tacked down of GIANT COLOURED PENCILS glued together and then carved, as seen in the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery in, I think, 2009.

On the hall closet doors: surrounding the heritage map-poster of Newtown, city of sydney archive postcards, various vintage photos of Sydney. Surrounding the heritage map-poster of the city centre, art, various (but mostly modernist) of the Bridge and harbour. I haven't decided what goes with the poster that's a collage of Marrickville bus signs and old Marrickvillia. I have also realised that I need a card or ideally print of Adelaide Parry's The Bridge to go with my Cazneaux print and the Preston, Cossington-Smith, Trail, and Cazneaux cards of same. Wouldn't mind upgrading the Preston to a print, in fact. Annoyingly they AGNSW don't seem to sell the small-size prints that match my existing Cazneaux anymore. (Didn't predict that I'd end up collecting modernist art of The Big Coathanger, but here we are.)

At any rate, I got all those up and felt very smug, and yet, I have so many more postcards! And I found a bunch I bought in the UK in 2019! I may have to make a choice between 'tasteful decor' and 'wilderness of postcards'.

I did hang up the sketch of K done by Stella The Human (not Stella the Cat): I hung it with actual NAILS. Measuring was involved! I think I will endeavour to surround it with the best of my *free* postcard collection. I was thinking of buying diploma display frames (the ones with no border) and collaging them onto A4 or A3 and hanging them, but while I might get away with two nails I doubt I can COVER that wall with nails, and I'm not sure about sticky picture hooks. I could just collage the art postcards onto thick A4 card and then poster-tape them up.

In garden news, the oregano is so determined to go to seed that I gave up and made myself a bouquet of fragrant herbs. Fine, be like that, herbs. The mint is also bolting - the ones from the windowboxes. The peppermint that I bought from the supermarket, for its part, is doing its best to turn into a vine - tiny leaves, looong spindly stems, curling around the plant stand.

Otherwise, today was relatively uneventful. Laundry and grocery shopping happened. Monthly account-balancing (as usual I was somewhat out. I think I'm underestimating the amount I get charged for int'l conversion fees). Ordered further instalment of vegetable boxen, to start 13 Aug. Also ordered new bra and new sportsbra, and booked a private German lesson. I have all my classes booked ahead until this point in August, in fact, although I get a refund if I cancel with more than 7 days notice. I'm determined to plough through A2 at a quick clip (current estimate says I should be done with A2.1 by mid-October, and thus with A2 by the end of the year).

Done Saturday:
* Some chores
* Called Shiny, as per yesterday's filtered post
* Good Omens readthrough with wildeabandon et al. Very fun! Very good people! Also I enjoyed being the stage directions. I'm considering asking to give up my MC slot next time in favour of God or more stage directions, actually...
* Ordered a hard copy of The Mercies, b/c no kobo aus. Also a plastic file folder, to meet the free shipping level, and to store my swiss papers in.
* I think I ate leftovers for dinner and more listening to 'What Belongs To You'? Not sure, tbh.
The DW reading post happened in there somewhere, at least.

Done Sunday:
* Called brother, had a nice catch up. He's doing... better. There was, like, 50% less bitching about his phd-holding colleagues, which was nice vis a vis less bitching and also vis a vis amount of times it seems I'm expected to explain what a PhD is for anyway. He had anticipated what I was calling to inform him of, vis, that I might not make it to his wedding.
* Called mum to inform her of same fact. Predictably she took it worse than brother, but not BADLY per se. She was the one who was like "will you be upset if they don't postpone for you?" Me:.. no. I am the last person you should postpone a wedding for.
* Meditation
* Washed the bathroom floor
* Probably some other stuff but blowed if I know what.
* 1 (one) scary email
* More Greenwell, some Penumbra. Some colouring-in.
* Made roast eggplant with spinach and pine nut pilaf.
* ACTUALLY attended german class, despite the reminder not going off on my phone.

Done Monday:
* Groceries. 150 chf worth, + 20chf in boquet and pot flowers. The latter are an indulgence; the former... THREE TIMES AS MUCH as I spent in Geneva, idek. Almost too much to carry. The flowers were a mixed bunch though and I'm pretty pleased. The pot were... small and purple.
* Made toasted sandwiches with egg, Jack M's banana ketchup, capsicum and cheese. Could have used some pineapple (*ducks*).
* Ordered online some egg rings (a set, one round and three fun shapes) and egg poaching dodads, fed up with my egg-frying experience.
* Read more of Solga
* Laundry - hung in the hangy room because someone was using the tumble dryer. Found some teatowels of mine, i guess I had dropped them and someone put them in the hangyroom?
* Did TWO pomodoros on phd>book, although the second turned out to be more COMMode related.
* Placed another Betterworld order
* Happy Hour with KHC and the drummer. Got deets of KHC's hairdresser in Fribourg; have booked for June 19.
* Cut up some more cardboard and fed it into the cardboard recylcing bin's tiny mouth.
* Got notif from régie that I can expect delivery of my free planters tomorrow (plants to follow soon). Pleased to report I could understand the gist of the letter in German without google translate.
* Previewed some docs for MF
* Et dinner, same as yesterday except cold and now with feta cheese.
* Am making this post.

I am having an ongoing problem with my google calendar. I put all my everything in it. After forgetting German a lot I went into iphone settings and told it to notify me 10 min beforehand. It does this for most other things, but not German classes, so far. Why, I cannot tell. I reinstalled iCal, synced to Gcal, and told it to give me notifications; it did not notify me about happy hour with KHC (although gcal desktop did), but that might be because not enough time to sync. I have gone through my phone and manually disabled 'sound' on almost everything except calendars, since that seems to be the only way to get a BEEP YOU HAVE A THING but not constant beeps. Remains to be seen if this... works.

Project: do not bombard Shiny with chat is going okay.

This has been Pandemic Updates.

This morning I made pancakes and ate them on the balcony, and started reading Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I'm only about two chapters in, and am already blown away by her prose and her... I don't know what to call it, exactly, but it's there in God of Small Things and it's there in this one, and I haven't found anything in between that quite tastes like they do.

Other facts:

- yesterday I spent 200 chf on a handbag. It's a very nice, very understated handbag made of good leather, so probably worth it. (There was a Fossil bag I liked, on sale, considerably cheaper, but it had suede panels and was probably more fashion-dependent.) Friend R went shopping with me, and I think I disappointed her: I did not want sparkles, or colour blocks, or quilt effects, or tassels, and most things with gold embellishments I thought were too overdone (for me: underdone for R, I'm sure). I kept gravitating to bags she described as 'my aunt has one like that'. Basically I wanted something considerably smaller than my satchel, that I can wear with a dress, and that won't draw much attention (so I can carry it with ANY dress. Or with a more masc outfit if I so choose).

- We then went prowling through the makeup section. I learned a lot of terrifying things about makeup. Again, a bit weird, because I'm attracted to makeup as a THING, but evidence proves I don't bother wearing it. R kept being like 'this would look good on you'. Well, yes. Except I wouldn't wear it. I bought some single-use face masque sheets from Sephora, though, and that turns out to be quite rewarding. I haven't had a good masque since I stopped buying clinque (the Sukin mud one may or may not have been good for my skin, but it didn't feel like anything on and was therefore a disappointment).

There have been some Girlfriend Situations in the past week that have varied from bloody brilliant (gosh I'm looking forward to seeing her!) to anxiety-hamster to quietly worrying.

A general announcement regarding Christmas correspondance*: I have an arbitrarily-assigned budget for the purchasing of stamps. Once I exceed that, there will be no more Christmas cards. There's not so much an order of priority for postage as a mixture of luck and deadlines to various countries. If you get a Christmas card, lucky you; if not, it is probably just that I ran out of money, not that I ran out of love!

*This announcement does not pertain to persons of non-christmas culture or persuasion.

So on friday I was going to make tomato, lentil and rosemary soup - except I didn't have rosemary and my carrots had gone manky. Nor did I have celery, the other customary ingredient.

Instead, the following:

1 x onion, fried with thyme and a generous pinch of sweet paprika
2 x cloves garlic, chopped and fried with above
A handful of baby potatoes, halved and fried for a few min with the onion
1 x cup of lentils, pre-soaked
1 x cup of borlotti beans, pre-soaked (and brought to the boil and RINSED at least once)
1 x can of tomatoes
Vegetable stock equal to the capacity of the aforementioned can (about 480ml?)
Bring to boil, then cover and simmer until potatoes are soft, then add
Pinch of cracked pepper
1 x medium capsicum (bell pepper), in chunks
Simmer until the capsicum starts to soften

Serve with DELICIOUS DELICIOUS PAIN RUSTIQUE or similar.

That kept me going for a few days. Then last night I made a stab at Eggplant and Lentil Stew, using a mix of honey and lemon instead of pomegranate mollasses. That was more like mushy PURPLE food, because of the eggplant. I added some green beans, and another capsicum, and served on cinnamon-and-lemon rice. It was pronounced good by housemate and leareth, with the caveat that leareth would have delighted in any food she didn't have to cook, since it was 9pm and she'd just got in from the airport.

Next weekend housemate is having a board games night, to which everone is bringing sweets and her boyfriend is providing norwegian hot dogs. I'm pretty sure I can stretch my budget to making fancy salad in large proportions, given how much I love feeding people.

Sunday night I had a small assortment of people over for a two-course fondue dinner. As I'd managed to sleep until 1pm (don't ask), most of the day was taken up with preparations. K made almond macaroons; I soaked lentils for a lentil, basil and tomato salad side dish. Then a tedious process of grating cheeses, slicing breads and chopping chocolate.

The end products were thus:

Roast Pumpkin with cheese fondue. Which was a-fucking-mazing. The pumpkin turned a glorious bronze colour and smelled fantastic, and infused the fondue with a delightful sweet tang. I'd used gluten-free countrygrain bread for the bread layers, which worked remarkably well. And in the absence of anything identifying itself as gruyere, this was made on a mix of emmental and generic made-in-germany "swiss style cheese".

Slightly less heavy, Swiss Cheese Fondue, which caused me to buy brandy for the first time in my life. Again, not made with the recommended cheese, because although the extra food miles involved pain me a little, the extra cost in the Tasmanian-made version was alarming.

We served these with an assortment of sides: salami, very popular; potatoes, likewise; broccoli, mostly consumed by K; proscuitto, popular but i think it was overwhelmed; and pickles, not so popular. Obviously pumpkin could be scraped out of the former dish.

Then for dessert:

Choc-orange fondue, made on cointreu instead of brandy. Candied orange rinds were also provided, but not the macaroons from the recipe (K made Campion and Curtis' easier version).

And a variation on the Family Circle "Fudge Sauce for Ice-Cream", which I don't think I've ever chronicled here:

( Instructions! )

I made the above on white chocolate, since we had a few blocks to use up. It was sickeningly sweet and amazing. Strawberries and marshmallows rounded off the dessert portion. We, that is I and Peta and Kiera, also drank two and a bit bottles of wine, including the "Shook me all night long Moscato" I've been saving for a suitably hideous occasion. It was in fact hideous, and Peta dubbed it 'Angus piss'.

This was all well and good, although I was sad to throw out the pumpkin at the end of the night. I suppose I could've turned the remaining fondue and pumpkin flesh into cheesy pumpkin mash, but we had ZERO FRIDGE SPACE left after storing the small side dish of cheese-and-GF-bread fondue and the leftover white wine fondue. And the chocolate ones, of course.

Just as well we did save the savoury ones, though, because K and I just had a most fantastic leftovers experience. You know those moments when you suddenly feel like you're living in someone's unrealistic fantasy of what young professional people do in their child-free evenings? Yeah. We fried mushrooms and chorizo and made toast and broccoli and reheated some roast veggies and a dish of fondue and stood around in the kitchen spearing small food on forks and laughing at what ridiculous foodies we are even when eating leftovers.

( Photographic proof )

I think the chorizo and mushroom were better fondue sides than anything we came up with on Sunday, actually.

Still in Gerringong. Because we tried to put me on the train but the train did not turn up. I am ensaddened, because yesterday I stuffed up my connection at Redfern and thus missed my connection at Kiama, so Maddi and co. came to get me and I didn't get to go on the cute diesel train after all. And today the train didn't turn up! So I haven't been able to catch the cute diesel train.

SADFACES.

Also you guys I have the best girlfriend.

Today we went to a picnic. Not just any picnic, but a *feminist* picnic.

We talked to Actual Humans. And I think I may have got sunburnt and I do seem to have become overheated, which is weird, for me. We thought about going to buy food, because we have very little of it, but that sort of ended after a grumpy encounter with Harris Farm.

Now I have to prep class for tomorrow and also learn Latin words.

Also I feel quite shitty. Don't know why. It's K's job to get overheated and mine to ruin baked goods, but clearly this week we have swapped.