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...)

Grindlewald and surrounds, 3-6 August

Day 1: dragged self, Tom Binh pack, and wheely trolley of foodstuffs, to Chalet-Hotel Bodenwald, which is also the 'Camping Eigernordwand' site. In non-corona times they have a kiosk, a restaurant, and a bar, quite a nicely contained set-up: about ten min on foot from Grindlewald Grund station. My route took me to Interlaken, where I changed to the regional line - owned by the Jungfrau Railways company, who also operate the tourist rack railways in that area. Train splits about twenty minutes from Interlaken, taking you to either Lauterbrunnen or Grindelwald. Then there's a wishbone-shaped rack railway from either of those places (opposite sides of a mountain) to Kleine Scheidigg, and from there the train up through the Jungfrau to the glacier. I did not take these routes, because although there's a super good value 'coronapass' for swiss residents this summer, a lot of time in tunnels (both the train tunnel and the glacier tourist tunnels) with half of switzerland taking advantage of that pass didn't strike me as Coronasafe TM. Grund IS, however, the first stop on the Grindelwald arm of the Wengernalp route, so I did get to go on its steep rack-rail down from the village to the river.

Hotel operator had misread the booking.com form and thought I had booked two rooms instead of one; I spent some time trying to get on to booking.com help centre to resolve this.

Discovered hotel room had a huge bath, so I trooped off (on foot, the long way around, in the rain) to the village to buy cheap shower gel, desserts, and perishable food supplies. Given the rain, I wanted fondue, but crowded restaurants with closed terrasses also didn't sound wise. Instead I ate chocolate mousse in a bubble bath, and made pilaf. Listened to some of Unwell, started reading A House In The Country.

Day 2: cold, rainy. Called Shiny; stayed in. This counts as a relaxing holiday because the hotel wasn't plagued by landscaping noises, unlike my flat. Read, listened to podcasts.

Day 3: Made myself two servings of wombok salad for two day's worth of picnic lunch. Set off into town, obtaining coffee and a trekking pole on the way to my destination. Took the First cable gondola up to First; hiked from there out to Bachalpsee. The route is a mountain bike trail most of the way, so graded and very easy going, but it still took me longer than the signposts said, and I was glad of the trekking pole. Backalpsee, which is is quintessentially Alpine it's in the Google 'alpine' backdrop theme set, was very pretty: some people were swimming, while there was me in jeans, a compression vest, t-shirt and light jumper. I did push the sleeves up, and got quite a sunburn. Saw many cows; particularly enjoyed the live commentary offered by a group of middle aged English women on the persistent efforts of one young bull to press his suit upon uninterested lady cows.

The cable car broke down on my way down and we were evacuated at Bort. Choice of walking down (about an hour) or waiting for a bus. They HAD a mini-bus branded with the cable car company brand, but didn't seem to be putting passengers from the orderly queue in it (some people, yes, but not people from the queue). There was a lot of waiting for a municipal minibus to come, and be dangerously over-filled with people. I rode down the mountain standing, balancing myself on the roof with my arms, and balancing a little old lady -who was making distressed whimpers and sliding sideways - with my thigh. This was not very Corona safe, but also just... not very safe???

I picked up sugar in town, in order to sweeten the pancake mix I had pre-made and forgotten to sweeten. Pancakes and ice cream were consumed, by me. Dinner I had in town, as it was sunny and the terrasses were open. I was hoping for fondue, but the place I found that still had terrasse space wasn't doing fondue in summer (fair). A delicious steak was an acceptable consolation.

Day 4: Packed up my stuff, checked out without having to dispute my booking again, and proceeded down to Interlaken. Put my luggage in the lockers, and then had a picnic lunch by the Aare canal. From there back up the line to Wilderswil, where I changed to the Schynigeplattebahn, a rack-railway that goes to, well, Schynige Platte. A nice long ridge with great views of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. More hiking around here, too, but I was tired, so I limited myself to ambling around the alpine botanic garden they have up there, before coming back down.

On return home I scrubbed the fridge, and tore a nail so far back it bled while unpacking, and then went crash.

Friday, Sat Sun... ugh I'll update you later. Holiday was worth it, but the tail end where I keep trying to re-energise myself for being a Productive Adult is less fun.

I am really pleased with what I'm putting up on speculumannorum these days. I had a bit of a hiatus after the breakup, but I've taken tons of great photos lately.

Examples:

( photos, yo )

Hello hello it's time for another round-up post! Not sure that anyone reads them, but I having started I shall continue. As with previous such posts social media has probably given you some idea already...

( Pictures, nattering, etc )