An Exercise in Futility

Somebody had brought their not-really-wanted nail polish to the queer social event I was at last night, encouraging people to use or take home anything they liked.

And just because I was sitting at the table near them for a while without much to do, and because I like bright colors, I ended up painting my nails. Bright yellow. (I was drawn to it because it looked like a fluorescent hi-vis yellow in the bottle. Once it was on it's "just" a nice bright primary yellow (someone else looked at it on me and said "I wore that color for a Simpsons drag show once," to give you an idea of what yellow it is), but that's still good.

I used to love nail polish, that and really chunky colorful jewelry were the only "girly" things I ever got excited about. And even then, my mom was always trying to steer me toward soft pinks and stuff and I chose more blue and green and the most "unnatural" colors.

But I haven't done my nails since before I left my old house. I was...busy, and then for a long time it felt too femme, like I struggled so much to get people to stop misgendering me, I didn't want to make that any more likely. And by the time that stopped being a concern I was well and truly out of the habit and all my nail polish that hasn't been touched in five or six years should probably be thrown away.

But here I did my nails very happily. It was nice that it didn't feel weird or feminine at all now. It just felt queer.

Also while making dinner tonight, I realized that when I'm chopping vegetables it's way easier to tell where my fingers end and the peppers or whatever begin if the ends of my fingers are bright yellow.

Not that I usually struggle with this, I'm used to doing it mostly by feel. It was weird that my eyes could help out!

That got me thinking about starting to acquire new nail polish (the old stuff I have needs to be thrown out really) based on what colors are easy for me to pick up!

The yellow has already half chipped off, so I'll have to see if there's any nail polish remover in the house that works! But this probably won't be the last time I paint my nails.

Queer club Halloween party tonight: the blood-red face paint dripping from one of the organizers' foreheads was in fact glittery.

There was also a LARP vampire, a few sets of fairy wings, some witches, somebody wearing a shirt he'd attached forks to and covered in fake blood to make it look like they were stabbing his torso and arms, who only belatedly realized that this meant he couldn't hug anyone, or squeeze as close to anyone else for the group photo as had been encouraged...

...and D and I as sheet ghosts, underneath fitted bedsheets that'd had the elastic taken out and holes cut for our eyes. D insisted on a slot for his mouth too, which he intended as a way to consume snacks, but the slot was too small to fit a cookie through. "I can see the crumbs on the mouth," from it someone later commented when he explained his costume.

V loves sheet ghosts and it was very nice to have costumes that they helped us make.

I woke up and looked at my alarm clock: 8.30. That's early!

Then I looked at my phone which said 7.30 - that's REALLY early!

"Gained an hour," but on the one Sunday in months when I have no plans at all so it doesn't do me any good.

I'm not normally bothered by the clocks changing -- I'm not normally bothered by eight-hour timezone changed -- but today once I got out of an excruciating conversation with my parents (they have their first laptop and they don't know what "browser" means and "the printer is in a file and I can't get it to come out!") all I could think was ah thank god it's bedtime and it was seven forty two pm.

8:42 I could accept as a typical time for me to go upstairs and get ready for bed. But this is silly.

And I was also very hungry and very overwhelmed by the time I ate dinner, because "the same time as usual" was in fact an hour late.

I got up early and went to the gym and then basically went right to the Springsteen movie, and now I feel physically and emotionally amazing but by 2pm on Saturday I'd done everything that I had planned for the weekend and it's a weird feeling!

"I saw an ad for the talking dog car movie on the toilet that came up out of the ground!"

That's a real sentence that I heard diffrentcolours say this afternoon.

I was an hour late for the away day, thanks to a combination of my own doofusness and regular transport hell. And this was so stressful for me because I knew an hour in that I was gonna be involved in the agenda item.

But of course it turned out not to matter because nothing ever gets done on an away day. I mostly think I'm pretty extroverted and neurotypical in this regard but since covid I'm like "...does any of this justify the increased chances of contracting a deadly and disabling illness?" and of course few things are.

One thing that would feel worth it for me is to have someone here to rub my feet. I just got back to my hotel room after wandering around, sometimes with my colleagues, finding food and trying to be normal enough.

The planned afternoon session couldn't happen and so we just carried on with more of my topic from the morning. It was hard work and stressful, and I'm not sure if much good came out of it.

I don't want to sound miserable; I did have a nice evening because I spent it with my favorite team member K, her support worker who's great company and who's also very kindly willing to help me out if I tag along with the two of them, and her friend W who I hadn't met in person before.

I kinda wish I had a support worker, not for every day but for trips like this. But I don't know anyone feasible and I don't want to deal with Access to Work so. This is the lesser evil. But it is nice to be able to borrow K's support worker on team events. And I met W's support worker today too who's also great.

It was a grim drizzly counterprotest today, but I helped with logistics for there to be hot water for tea and coffee, and at one point I waved at and made heart-shapes with my hands at people in the windows of the asylum accommodation.

It was a nice moment in a kinda grim day; I've been thinking way too much about angry white men lately. Nice to literally turn my back on them and focus on the people we're there to support.

It's a small gesture, they're all small gestures, but doing them is better than not doing them.