a garden in riotous bloom

Fundraiser for a friend

2024-01-14T09:16:42Z

My friend sovay's beloved cat Autolycus just died after a long illness. He was one of the world's best little cats, and Sonya and Rob did everything they could for him, at great expense. If you have a few dollars to spare, please consider donating to the fundraiser to cover the vet bills.

https://gofund.me/cf55b268

And hug your kitties, especially the tiny loud voids.

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"The hint of such a visit is most affectionately welcomed"

2023-06-10T06:01:15Z

After many years of wanting to go, this year I will finally be at 4th Street Fantasy! Will I see you there?

I'll be easy to spot; look for a badge that says "Asher (rosefox)". I'm Asher everywhere now. (But no worries if you slip up.)

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"The one who"

2023-04-22T00:30:16Z

Hello, here is a brief announcement: I'm now going by the name Asher (pronounced ASH-er). It means "happy" and I'm very happy to be making this change!

I've been feeling dissatisfied with my name for a while. Despite many years of stoutly asserting that I don't need a gender-neutral name to be nonbinary, people who see "Rose" are always going to assume I'm a woman. Assuming I'm a man isn't ideal either, but it's less wrong, and in most contexts I'll be giving my full name as Asher Rose Fox, which is a pleasant mixture of signifiers. I also love the expansive initial vowel of "Asher", its Hebrew meaning (which is specifically about being on the right path), and its unambiguous Jewishness.

My pronouns are still they/them. My old email address will still work, but you can drop me a note there if you want the new one.

If you forget or slip up, that's okay. Rose is still going to be my legal name and my middle name, and it won't upset me to hear someone use it by mistake. I'm also holding onto 'rosefox' as a fannish identity, and it will remain my username here and elsewhere, at least for now; it has a lot of history that's meaningful to me. But whenever possible, in contexts where you'd use my actual name, please use Asher for me from now on.

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"As far as I've heard, the fight's still on"

2023-04-06T06:40:29Z

A couple of years ago I realized you could sing "Mi Chamocha" to the tune of "The Wellerman". I mentioned this to a friend tonight, and this resulted. Chag Pesach sameach!

( Wellerman earworm warning )

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"Sweep, clean, open up the washing machine"

2022-03-21T00:55:39Z

I'm tidying up my DW circle and removing access from accounts that seem to be disused, or from people who don't tend to comment on my posts or I'm otherwise no longer feeling much connection with. It's nothing at all personal, just some housekeeping. If I removed your access and you'd like it restored, drop me a note here. All comments are screened.

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"I'm looking for love"

2021-11-27T02:31:20Z

I did the anonymous love meme thing! Because we could all use more love.

✨ holiday love meme 2021 ✨
my thread here

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"The distant past"

2021-10-05T00:28:04Z

Okay, this is a long shot, but if you long ago made me a two-CD mix called "Roserie" that includes songs by Roland Orzabal, Freezepop, Wolfsheim, the Birthday Massacre, Ladytron, and Scissorkiss, please identify yourself. I assumed it was from nonethefewer but they say not. The Scissorkiss track really narrows it down to people who lived in the Boston area in the early '00s. It's a great mix! I just have no idea where I got it.

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"Everything looks like a nail"

2021-09-16T23:54:20Z

For some people, it's traditional for one's first act after Yom Kippur break-fast to be hammering a nail into wood, to start building your sukkah or generally to symbolize beginning a year of intentionality and creation.

So I guess it's really convenient that my last day at my job (by mutual agreement, and in a very friendly parting) was last Friday, and I can mark this as the moment of officially relaunching my full-time freelance editing practice:

https://copymancer.com/

Here's to a year of taking big steps to do more of the work I love and build more of the life I want.

Shana tova!

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"There's a fire in your brain and you're thinking of drinking gasoline"

2021-08-14T03:49:00Z

Hiiiiii Readercon is happening online right now and it's very exciting and please join us! $25 gets you access to all of this for six months:

https://www.readercon.org/program

Look at this thing, we made this thing, this thing is now really happening for real and it's amazingly great? I'm getting whiplash from being "at Readercon" for hours and then closing my laptop and suddenly being at home, and also my arms hurt from all the fast typing in Discord and everything. But worth it!

(and in two days it will be over and I will no longer be working an unpaid full-time job on top of my paid full-time job, that's going to be pretty great too)

I cannot possibly convey the extent to which this convention is a hallucination that we dragged kicking and screaming into reality—all cons are, but this one we truly had to invent from scratch, and it's fucking wild to me that a spreadsheet and a document we (mostly the godly chellenator) threw together last year have now been Pygmalioned into actual existence through a great many people putting in immense effort. It's absolutely trippy to me that that's a thing that can happen. I'm not, like, mad with power, but there's no experience that compares to just fucking making up a thing that hundreds of people show up and do for a weekend. I haven't felt it this intensely since Callahanicon 1 in 1997, which I guess is the last time I spun gold out of straw like this, and I've been riding that confidence high for a quarter-century, so let's see how long this one lasts.

Not really coherent rn but this is what's up and what's been up, how are you?

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"But do I really feel the way I feel?"

2021-07-26T00:46:14Z

Does anyone want two tickets to see Marc Cohn at City Winery NYC on Tuesday evening? They're requiring proof of vaccination or a negative test at the door. Show and venue details are here.

These tickets were my birthday present to myself last year, and postponed to this year. I was really, really looking forward to this show. But even with City Winery's precautions, I just can't bring myself to go.

Tickets are free to the first person who asks for them, and I hope they bring you joy.

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Facebook help

2021-05-16T04:16:30Z

Do any of you know how to get a wrongly disabled Facebook account reinstated? leiacat needs help. Comments off here—please reply over there.

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"There are good checklists and bad"

2021-04-28T20:21:21Z

Just in case anyone else is trying to remember what routine medical care looks like, here's the list I made for me, X, J, and Kit of checkups one or more of us might want to schedule now that the adults are vaccinated and dropping covid numbers are making it safer for Kit to go out as well:

General physical + bloodwork (including annual review of meds for interactions and needed changes)
Eyes
Ears/nose/throat
Teeth
Shoulders
Arms/hands
Back
Knees
Feet
Skin
Cardio
Pulmonary
Neuro
Psych
Sleep
Allergy
Endocrine
Gastro
Colorectal
Gyno/urogenital
Chest-o-gram
Medical/assistive device maintenance/replacement

Also regular personal care:

Therapy
PT/personal training/gym
Massage
Mani/pedi
Depilation
Haircut
Dietitian/nutritionist

You might want to schedule one or more of those too! And let me know if I missed anything...

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"A feast in our tummies, night rain at the window"

2021-03-29T04:04:06Z

Our Seder was a smashing success. Highlights included Kit asking "Why is this night different?" and then immediately pointing to Hannah's partner and saying "Logan!" (it's true, having him over for dinner does make tonight different!), X and Logan deciding that Elijah is in such a hurry to visit all the houses that he doesn't have time to go to the bathroom, Hannah reminding us all not to lick our pinky fingers after we dipped out wine for the plagues, J carefully putting on an apron to protect his nice shirt while he was cooking and then forgetting to take it off before sitting down to dinner, Kit finding the afikoman at the exact right point in the Seder by pure coincidence (they were wandering around playing with their dolls and spotted it), and me singing "Mi Chamocha" to the tune of "The Wellerman".

X: Do you pee behind bushes like Elijah?
K, scornfully: I pee in the toilet!
R: Invite gentiles to your Seder, they said! It'll be fine, they said!

Kit was really good for the whole evening, delighted to have extra people to play with and reasonably engaged by the pictures in the haggadah even when they didn't much care about the story we were telling. They ignored most of what was on the symbol plate, though they did suck all the salt water off the parsley leaf before rejecting the parsley itself, but they went to town on the matzo ball soup—a far cry from last year.

Our cooking plan went perfectly, and of course we made far too much food. The symbol plates were generously laden, and we went through the service so fast that we hadn't had time to get really hungry, so we had matzo ball* soup with my homemade stock—so damn good, never doing it any other way ever again—and GF matzo balls and meticulously slivered celery and carrots, and then had no room for actual dinner. We decided to take a break and do a round of clean-up to buy ourselves some digestion time. My grandparents had a tradition of Elijah bringing gifts of knowledge, a.k.a. books, to all the kids, and of course I'm happy to continue that tradition, so Kit was well entertained by a collection of Daniel Tiger bedtime stories while the rest of us bustled around.

* Why do I want to spell it "matzah" when I'm talking about the flat cracker form but "matzo ball" for the soup form? Transliteration habits are so weird.

Once the table was cleared and reset, each of us managed a small bowl of lamb or chicken stew and a couple of pieces of chocolate and a nibble of afikoman, and then we called it quits. Kit skipped the stew and just had chocolate; apparently the going exchange rate is 1 afikoman = 1 piece of chocolate-dipped marzipan. We'd meant to steam asparagus, but there was no time and we couldn't have eaten a bite of it anyway. It'll keep for tomorrow, or whenever we're able to think about food again.

For the last few weeks I've been shifting to lower-carb eating and smaller portions, so I'm super extra stuffed and feel no guilt whatsoever. It was a most excellent feast.

Kit often finds it hard to listen to people singing, but when I put them to bed, they let me very quietly sing "Eliyahu HaNavi" while rocking them and listening to the rain, just like in their delightful More Than Enough picture book (from which this post's subject line is taken). It was a very good end to the evening.

As for the omer count, I'm thinking of folding a little origami flower every night, and stringing them into a garland when I'm done. My room needs more decoration and it feels like a nice way to celebrate the growing season.

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"Let all who are hungry come and eat"

2021-03-28T04:48:42Z

My mom and her husband managed to catch a three-week cold a few weeks ago—that's definitely what it is, just an ordinary rhinovirus, and their pulmonologist is mystified as to how it's hung on this long—and they're on the mend but haven't had a chance to do any Pesach prep. I was very chuffed to make and deliver Seder plates for them, including lamb shank slices that are frankly large enough to be the main course. (We braised them in wine and spices, because my family tradition is to give each person a symbol plate and to eat everything on it, and roasted bones are very symbolic but not very edible.) I thought I'd miss having a Seder to go to tonight, but it felt appropriately holidayish to do this mitzvah instead—and to get to really hug my mom for the first time in a year.

Kit saw me packing things up, said "Gramma's not feeling well, I need to cook", and put on their apron; they were a little disappointed to learn that all the cooking was done, but they carefully helped me put the care package together. They're such a sweet kid.

Tomorrow we'll have a "second" Seder that's actually our first, in person, with our governess and her fiancé. They'll get here mid-afternoon so we can cook together, and then we'll see whether we can get Kit to actually sit through a Seder. We have the PJ Library haggadah, which is pretty accessible (though I don't like its English translations of the blessings at all and will substitute my own), and we've been practicing finding the afikoman by hiding some of Kit's toy matzah. They're capable of saying "Why is this night different from all other nights?" but not of doing it on command, so we may try all reciting it together, or doing repeat-after-me. The youngest person is supposed to ask the four questions, but nothing requires them to do it alone.

And a month from now, we'll do a Pesach Sheni with my mother and brother and stepfather and stepsister, in person, because by then I should have been able to get at least one dose of some vaccine or other, and it will be as safe as it can be to dine outdoors together in what I hope is beautiful late-April weather. It feels very appropriate for it to be a Pesach Sheni; I want to write off the whole past year as tamei from being in close contact with death, and it will feel like a make-up not just for this year's Pesach but last year's too.

Chag sameach to everyone celebrating, and chag kasher v'sameach to those for whom it's meaningful!

( Our cooking plan )

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"No, surely not, no. No one was alive then!"

2021-03-27T05:02:11Z

If I count my DW's lineage back to LJ, which I think is reasonable to do, it is twenty years old as of today. (Almost to the hour, in fact—first post was at 2:43 a.m.) Userpic is approximately how I looked at the time.

My second post, because of course I immediately started posting multiple times a day, is timestamped 4:32 a.m. and concludes thusly:

And now I'm going to bed. Really.

No, really, I mean it!

Why are you looking at me like that?

I am extremely amused to be posting this at 1:05 a.m. when I really ought to be on my way to bed. Age 2 or 22 or 42, some things don't change...

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"Down the road we went, counting moons"

2021-03-21T20:58:21Z

It's the Equinox, and the Omer count starts in just eight days. I wonder how I should approach it this year. I do like R' Yael Levy's book of Omer meditations, which has that knack I associate with good horoscopes and Tarot readings of feeling startlingly personally relevant. But I also like DIY... Maybe I'll try to take a daily photo of something growing or seasonal produce and really immerse myself in the seasonal aspects of the Omer, from the first shoots of spring to the first fruits of summer. That's easy to do this year, with everything so early* and Pesach coming while the trees are barely budding, and it'll also get me outside every day, which is a mitzvah in its own right.

While poking around at resources, I found this gorgeous setting of the prayer of intention before counting. I'm putting it here so I don't lose it. I could easily listen to it every night for seven weeks.

I'd love to introduce Kit to the Omer count, but they can only count to three. Maybe I can still do a seven-by-seven sticker chart with them or something. Or a spiral "map" like this.

If you do Omer counting, how do you do it? A quick blessing and count and done? Thematic meditations or activities? Other thoughts?

* Shavuot is in mid-May! I think of it as happening near my birthday! (But of course it does on the Hebrew calendar—it's only out of sync with my Gregorian birthday this year.**) And that probably means another virtual Shavuot, which breaks my heart. Maybe I'll be vaccinated by then and able to get together with at least a few friends or something.

** I had not previously contemplated what it would be like to observe my Hebrew birthday, and the thought of my birthday coming weeks earlier or later every year is weirding me out. I have very specific seasonal associations with my birthday, particularly the pungent scent of ailanthus trees and the proximity of the summer solstice. Global warming is messing with the ailanthus blooming season and that's already disorienting; I would find it very challenging to deal with my birthday being weeks off from the solstice on top of that. But associations can be made as well as broken, so I will tentatively try thinking of my Hebrew birthday as coming eight days after Shavuot and see whether that's enough to help me feel anchored from year to year.

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"in your lying down and in your rising"

2021-03-20T15:00:04Z

I finally woke up early for 9 a.m. Torah study! The student rabbi sent out such cool texts for Parashat Vayikra and I was excited!

What I have learned from this is that waking up early sucks, trying to interact with people and be emotionally and intellectually present after waking up early sucks even more, Zoom is the worst possible way to do Torah study, and I should not attempt this again.

Oh well.

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"It's what's for dinner"

2021-03-15T05:03:10Z

I've taken our Airtable meal plan to the next level with an inventory table. I did a full inventory and reorg of our upright freezer (long overdue). I'd love to do the same with our fridge and pantry, but it's hard to find the time, so I'm settling for adding things as we put them away or as I notice them. When I make the meal plan on Sunday night, I put "leftovers or ordering in" instead of a specific food, and list some inventory options. When I make the associated cooking plan, I note which inventory ingredients go into whatever we're cooking and build a shopping list for whatever we don't have in inventory. Then even less thought is required during the week.

Of course, this only works if the inventory is up to date, but I'm doing all right on that front so far. And if I go a week or two without updating it, it's still pretty easy to catch up.

Knowing what we have makes me much more eager to use it, especially now that I'm adding perishables. This week we need to use up the meat from a rotisserie chicken, so for Tuesday lunch I'll put it on a frozen pizza crust—bonus, I'll use up the open jar of tomato sauce before it goes fuzzy—and Tuesday dinner can be pasta with the rest of the chicken and whatever's in the open container of pesto. Iron Chef My Fridge is fun!

We probably won't do any bulk cooking next weekend because X and J will be recovering from their second vaccine shots, so the following week we'll be very glad to be well stocked and well organized. After their first shots we did a whole week of not cooking and mostly eating from the fridge and freezer, and by the end of it we gave up and ordered in just to taste something freshly made; it was very satisfying to clear out so many things, though.

My other food-related project is slowly moving all of our recipes into Whisk, which will build a grocery list for a given meal plan and also do nutritional assessments. I'm still happy with Airtable for the nitty-gritty of meal planning, but Whisk is aces for recipe organization.

On a meta level, it feels really good to have the mental wherewithal for this. Even a couple of months ago, there's no way I could have managed it.

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"They dismiss the weather as 'not warm enough yet' "

2021-03-10T04:15:35Z

HELLO SPRING I MISSED YOU

Yesterday I went out on a neighborhood stroll and saw snowdrops and one perfect golden crocus. Today Kit and I took a walk in t-shirts, and tonight J and I went out for an outdoor dinner and walked for a couple of miles in light jackets, and it's SPRING.

We left the bag of salt downstairs because there could well be another freeze before winter fully gives up and slinks away—I see a low of 29F predicted for Sunday—but whatever. The trees are budding and the daffodil shoots are shooting and spring spring spring.

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"Fluently, easily, with flowing strokes of the pen"

2021-02-28T04:32:17Z

Kit and I revised the bedtime book again today, since it had been a while and they've explained more to me about how they feel at night. It turns out they're more lonely than scared, so we've been working on specific techniques to address that, like talking to their stuffed animals or to the sound that woke them up ("Silly heat pipes! You're so noisy! We'll call a plumber for you!"), and I wanted to update the book to reflect that.

When I asked whether they wanted to work on our book together, they immediately ran to get some paper from the printer and a pen. They propped the paper on the couch, took pen in left hand (they're firmly a lefty, as we always suspected they would be), and began to "write": long looping scribble-waves, drawn fluidly from right to left, that look like a cartoon of writing. As they "wrote", they narrated what each page said.

I was floored, honestly. I've never seen them do anything like that. They went on for pages! I photocopied the two that were most densely written on and added them to the printout of the book. (Then I had to stop Kit from poking buttons on the printer, as they hadn't seen me use it as a copier before and were very intrigued.) Kit wrote them as part of the book and I felt they should be included verbatim. I didn't catch much of their narration, but one thing that was clear was "my grownups come back to me", so I made sure to add that to the book's text as well.

Later I showed the pages to J. "What does this say?" he asked Kit. " 'I love you,' " they answered. We melted.

Today they also traced a very credible straight line on one of their write-and-wipe drawing pages. And they pointed to Daniel Tiger's 5-Minute Stories and said "I want a 5 story, please". They got very shy when I asked them to confirm that they recognized the big "5" on the cover, but that's fine, we've been through their shyness with speech and I know they'll keep practicing until they feel confident. It feels like real reading and writing are suddenly just around the corner. So exciting!

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"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine"

2021-02-19T05:30:16Z

My 20th self-wedding anniversary was on Tuesday. I wish I'd had a chance to write about it then, but we had an unexpected two days without childcare, and between that and the sleep training, my brain is very fried.

So... 20 years. That is a good long time. I mean, it's not like I could divorce myself, but it's pretty awesome to still be actively engaging in self-marriage: taking my ring off at night because I can, putting it on in the morning because I choose to, and doing my best to cherish and support and care for myself and be my own best advocate.

All these things I will be to myself:
Kind
Respectful
Courteous
Honest
Gentle
Patient
Loving
Generous

When I think about habits I've taught myself, I don't usually include those, but I should. My wedding vows were certainly aspirational in 2001. Now they're second nature.

2001 was a very big year for me in a number of ways—9/11 being the most obvious—and this is the first of those 20-year anniversaries. In March it'll be 20 years since I started my LiveJournal. April, 20 years since I had a wrenching mental breakdown. June, 20 years since I moved to San Francisco and met J in person. And then the September–December stretch of endings and beginnings. I'm glad that litany starts with my pledge to be good to myself. I needed it desperately then, and it will see me through the memories as well as it saw me through the happenings.

I usually take myself out for dinner for my anniversary; obviously that's not an option this year, and I'm not sure what to do to replace it. I hardly do anything out in the world by myself these days. I can't even go for walks at the moment because I think my PT would leap through the screen and throttle me if I risked my back by taking a walk in the ice and snow. So that will have to wait.

My other tradition for big anniversaries is buying myself jewelry. It often features the fourfold knot that's in my original wedding ring (see userpic), though for my 10th anniversary I bought myself a plain band to honor my masculine side, so that's not a hard and fast rule. I went looking for the entry about that ring and was amused to see this:

As we were walking down St. Mark's, I reenacted my wedding ring purchase: walked over to a jewelry stall, glanced at the rings, picked one up, put it on, it fit perfectly, I asked how much it was, the guy said "$10", I gave him $10. Now I have a tenth anniversary ring that's very different from my wedding ring. I've been vaguely thinking I should get a more masculine ring to wear when I'm crossdressed, and this one is perfect. It's a plain band of brushed white metal (I'd be very surprised if it were silver; it looks almost like steel but is probably nickel or something), broad and hefty without weighing down my hand. It is comfortably androgynous. I might start wearing it a lot. I still love my other ring, of course, but this one is very apropos to who I am right now. Maybe I'll get another one in ten years to suit who I am then.

I did actually get another ring late last year, sort of: I gained some pandemic pounds and my old rings no longer fit, so I borrowed a similarly plain ring from X. But it's time to properly choose and buy one for myself. So instead of St. Mark's, I went to Etsy and bought a silver and eilat stone ring. I've been coveting eilat jewelry for months, and that design is just perfect. I'm considering getting a second one in a more masculine or gender-neutral style (maybe this or this?), but my wife remains my wife, no matter what gender shifts I go through, so it seems appropriate to go with a more feminine ring first.

I do wish I could go to St. Mark's and stop at the first jewelry stall I see and buy the first ring that fits. Maybe I'll also do that when it gets above freezing next week and the ice melts a bit. In the meantime, I'm very happy with this, and looking forward to the next 20 years and beyond with my amazing, supportive, fabulous wife.

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"If you don't weaken"

2021-02-16T05:58:09Z

Once again unto the Kit sleep-training breach. Or solitude training, rather, because—as the child sleep specialist told us—Kit doesn't have a sleep problem, Kit has a being-alone problem. I've often said that the biggest downside of a 3:1 parent:child ratio is that there's always someone right there, and we have to consciously make space for Kit to be alone, which they often don't want to be. Add in the need for a bit more supervision and assistance because of their mobility challenges, plus a year of pandemic isolation, and you get some very close attachment. We've spent the last couple of months encouraging solitary playtime and getting Kit used to the idea that we might say no when they ask for time with us, and now it's time for the next step.

( Four nights with various challenges )

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"What I care about is music"

2021-02-06T06:00:52Z

Live music meme via sfred! How nice to see a proper old-fashioned meme cross my screen.

First Gig - Undoubtedly many children's productions of Peter and the Wolf and the like, but the first proper concert I remember is seeing Debbie Gibson at Madison Square Garden for a friend's birthday in (I think) 1988.

Last Gig - TMBG at the Bowery Ballroom with J and Lorelei and a friend of hers, 2/8/20. In retrospect, being in that room full of people all yelling together was riskier than it seemed at the time! Mostly I remember how ecstatic Lorelei was to hear "The Communists Have the Music" and how loudly the crowd sang along with "Your Racist Friend".

Worst Gig - I hated the Garbage concert I went to in 2015, which made me very sad because I love their music. But it was just noise and noise and more noise and super-heavy bass that made me feel ill and I couldn't wait to escape.

Best Gig - Whenever I get a "best" or "favorite" question like this, my only response is rapid blinking. Insufficient parameters! How do I compare Dream Theater and Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden* with David Ostwald's Gully Low Jazz Band at Birdland, or the Chieftans at Carnegie Hall with Savatage in a San Francisco waterfront dive, or Alice in Chains in a suburban Oregon high school's shoddy basketball stadium with Sooj and Vixy singing directly into my ears in a darkened train car? How do I rate the most technically outstanding TMBG show I've been to (Bowery Ballroom, 8/1/07) vs. the one that was most emotionally meaningful (the Fillmore, 7/17/02)? Impossible. I'll just say I've been blessed to enjoy a great many wonderful live shows in my time, in an enormous variety of genres and venues.

* I was quite distressed when I couldn't find the entry I was certain I'd written about this show. I thought maybe I'd deleted it by accident, so I searched my hard drive for a key phrase... and found it in my Twitter archive! At least I wasn't wrong about having written it.

Loudest Gig - See above re: Garbage. Flogging Molly was also pretty loud, but a lot more fun. I generally like loud bands as long as I have earplugs, so I don't notice their loudness, and I also tend to see them at fairly large venues. Like, I assume Iron Maiden was loud, but they were playing at MSG and it's hard even for a very loud band to sound loud in that giant cavernous space.

Seen The Most - TMBW says I've been to 22 TMBG shows. No one else comes close.

Most Surprising - TMBG had a while of picking really dreadful opening acts, so when I saw Noe Venable open for them in San Francisco, I wasn't expecting much. She was incredible. I grabbed her album from the merch table and still listen to it now and then. I also have to mention the inimitable S.J. Tucker; I did not expect to encounter a world-class musician at Lunacon.

Next Gig - I had tickets to see Marc Cohn on my birthday last June. They've been rescheduled and re-rescheduled to this July; they might be re-re-rescheduled depending on how the spring goes. But one way or another, it will happen and I will be there! I also have tickets for two TMBG shows that have been re-re-rescheduled, so one of those might happen first.

Bucket Gig - Beyoncé. I'm not enough of a die-hard fan to be happy with the seats I could afford, but she's such a magnificent performer and I'd love to be able to see her up close just once.

Would Have Loved to See - Too many to list, going back people who performed well before I was born. But one show I was invited to and regret declining is Moxy Früvous back when all my friends were into them and we didn't yet know what a shit Jian is. I think I would have enjoyed that.

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Five-minute actions, days 15–16

2021-02-06T05:26:16Z

Yesterday I clicked a Resistbot thing.

Today I set up a small monthly donation to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. I got Kit The Big Day by Terry Lee Caruthers and Robert Casilla, a picture book about the first Black woman to cast a vote in Tennessee, and it really moved me, so I wanted to support an organization that's helping Black women vote today. The Committee is one of the foremost groups working to restore and protect voting rights across the country. I've been a fan of theirs for a long time and was very pleased to see that Biden tapped Kristen Clarke, their president and executive director, to lead the DOJ's civil rights division. They seemed like a good choice.

Maybe this weekend Kit and I will write postcards.

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"Pump it up a little more"

2021-02-04T23:55:45Z

Kit just negotiated for what they want. I think this is a first!

Usually when they ask for something and don't get it, they just get upset or beg. But they wanted me to get down the pump that we use to reinflate their sports balls (they just like pumping it as an upper body workout), and I said no. They went to X, and X also said no. And instead of crumpling, they earnestly looked at me and said, "Pumper, in my room only! Please?"

I was so impressed that I said yes. They smiled hesitantly like they couldn't believe it had worked. We shook hands to seal the deal. I got the pump down and brought it into their room with Kit bouncing alongside me chanting "Only only only!", and they happily settled into pumping it up and down in front of their mirror.

They later brought it out briefly and I said, "In your room only, remember? We shook on it!" They immediately took it back in their room and shut the door, possibly to remind themself not to bring it out.

I feel like this should go in the baby milestone tracker or something. I'm so proud.

I can hear all of you more experienced parents saying "You may regret this in a few years" but trust me, I am not concerned. My brother, a proto-lawyer from birth, once responded to our mother's request that he clear the dinner table by batting his eyelashes and saying, "You made the mess. You clean it up." She was shocked, then belly-laughed and said, "You get away with that... once." So I'm fully prepared to live with a relentless negotiator, and I also have a good role model for encouraging it within limits.

Besides, as another parent of a speech-delayed kid once told me, nothing is sweeter than the first time you wish your formerly silent child would please just stop talking. Kit used to whisper one word at a time. I'll take argument and bargaining over that any day.

Addendum: Kit was so empowered by this that they became the boss of bedtime. When their ocean sound night light turned on, I heard them say, "Ut! I tell my parents," and then they came out and yelled, "IT TIME BED." (Prepositions are hard, so Kit mostly doesn't use them.) When I took off their pants, they asked to keep their shirt on to sleep in. They tolerated toothbrushing and then announced, "I read a story my bed." They brought their chosen book in and we sat down on the bed to read it; halfway through, they abruptly told me, "Put house 'way!" (Their playhouse is where they have school, and we put it away at night and on the weekend.) After asking them to ask a little more nicely, I took the playhouse down, and we finished the story. They asked for a Daniel Tiger story and I read that one too, and then I tucked them in and turned out the light.

At this point Kit realized their efficiency had a downside: they were in bed with lights out a full 20 minutes before this usually happens. So they tried to get up, and I said no. They said they needed to sit in the rocking chair with me, and I said no. They said, "Where my socks? My feet cold." Kit never gets cold, even with bare feet on the bare floor in winter, and they were under three blankets, so I was certain this was not true. But they do often feel very strongly about having socks on and we tend to go with it, so I got them some socks and tucked their feet back under the covers. Running out of excuses, they ventured, "It bacteria on my teeth." I was quite impressed that they would rather brush their teeth again than go to bed, but I held firm. Eventually, for lack of any other option, they went to sleep.

I can't emphasize enough that I love every minute of this. Every single minute. And I fully expect to keep loving it through all the challenging questions and assertions I'm going to field from my kid for the rest of my life. I truly wouldn't have it any other way.

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