Dispatches from a happy Hullian

Yesterday was Father's Day and also two weeks into me sleeping in the new place. It's shaping up — I keep chipping away at the move; there are still boxes and bags in the front room at the new place but all the rooms feel pretty homey. Father's Day included going to Ada's concert where she sang '22,' which involved more Communauto adventure than anticipated — Elizabeth couldn't unlock her booked car, then I grabbed one that turned out to have a flat, and walked to the replacement. Third time lucky! Also, the concert was running late so Ada got to sing despite our travails. Afterward, we hunted for a brunch place and found a spot at Alpina up in northern Aylmer. They were slammed but nice and the food was copious and tasty.

In the afternoon I found a couple of items from the dregs of garage sales to fill out the kitchen and back deck, and then Andrea and Morgen came over and we went to the nearby city pool all together and had supper. It was lovely to show them around and splash in the pool (I'm not a huge swimmer but it was mostly goofing around in the shallow end).

Things are still mostly cordial with Elizabeth — she got brunch for us, she's offering to help with stuff — but August scheduling is presenting some challenges — trips and plans and kid preferences on what to participate in. More discussion required, I guess.

Union-wise: it's likely real, I plan on handing over the presidency of the subgroup (the local committee) to a young, keen activist (votes permitting) as I've wanted to for a while. That gets me to the state I have wanted to be in for a while.

Lastly: car and ferry booked for adventure with Ada! Lots more to plan, but it's getting real!

My back is sadly hurting quite a bit, but I think it's on the mend. No long run for me this weekend; maybe I'll sneak in a few short/medium ones over the week. Marathon minus six weeks!

I think it got that way because last week was a bit of a doozy. Some hard conversations, plus my union is having a bit of a week, and our living room/dishwashing/cooking setup is not exactly ergonomic during the renovations. With any luck this week will be less bonkers.

I'm writing from a new-to-me desk in my basement lair. The old one was a converted sewing table with duct tape over the sharp edges; the new one is from my meta-metamour who was moving house and wanted a home for some stuff that wasn't coming with him (or anyone else in his soon to be reconfigured household). Vivien got a new bedside table, there's an improved bed coming to some kid (possibly Vivien as well) and we may turn around and rehome the wardrobe that was part of the package deal. The desk is from the era of tower desktop computers but I the setup feels pretty good. Elizabeth was kind of appalled by all the (quality) chipboard coming into the house but I feel it was an improvement over the stuff it's replacing and none of it will wind up where she has to look at it. I think the initial shock has blown over. Over a year ago I did a Year Compass and wrote that I wanted to make myself cozy with a new desk. I'm late but here it is. Maybe I'll take another look at what I was promising myself as 2022 was turning into 2023 and see what still resonates and whether there are some low-hanging fruit there.

Renovation: walls sanded, and this week should be a flurry of activities: painting, cabinet delivery, probably not a restored bathroom just yet but close. We did get to see my parents in law, all use their shower, and then go out to a very springtime sugar shack lunch and hike. Lunch was delicious and the hike was very muddy — I didn't quite keep up with my household with my back hurting, but in trying to keep up with them my parents in law were going at their own pace behind me. So kind of a short solo hike.

I turned forty yesterday… sometime before March I threw out that my fortieth birthday would be nice if it was anchored in beer and board games — get a bunch of people who like one or more of those things and want to celebrate with me and make a day of it.

We had a scale down a bit but both of those things happened (not all at the same time) — Elizabeth and the kids had gotten Gaïa and I played a couple of rounds with Oscar and Ada after breakfast. The standard game feels like it's a bit to draw-dependent with few interesting decisions or back-and-forth opportunities, but the advanced version (especially minus the mean cards — volcanoes and thunderbolts in our game made it so that you kind of had to ride out the violence and then play in earnest once everyone was out of ammunition) is a nicely-balanced short game.

The kids gifted me with many supervillain-themed pictures, a felt medal and a hat made from a pop bottle with an antenna and googly eyes.

In the middle of the day we had a backyard party. Elizabeth had made lime meringue tarts, we barbecued some veggie sausages, we took cover when it rained :) Heather, Andrea and Morgen came for the first while until Morgen needed her own bed for a nap, and my folks turned up as they were heading out. It was the first time this year I've seen my parents in person. I hope we can figure out a visit down there; either a day trip on a nice day or a weekend if we can tinker with our bubble configuration or get to a better place in the pandemic.

Turning forty has been kind of overshadowed by the circumstances. I'm no longer young in the terms of my union, I guess when it seems prudent I'm due for a medical check-up. Ten years ago Oscar was still in utero and I was a young and promising Methodologist, more I'm more established and shifting to be a manager and Oscar's going to be a teenager before long. I'm more readily out as bi and polyamorous and organizing workplace things for Pubic Service Pride (which wasn't really a thing in the Federal Public Service ten years ago). I'm trying to be a bit more conscious of taking care of my body — choosier about food and letting there be leftovers, morning walks, an actual ergonomic chair in my basement lair. I feel like negotiation is a theme of the last little while: bargaining, working out pandemic safety measures in our bubble, trying to line up a working like that's as good as possible. Stabilizing the wobbly bits of my life, too.

Maybe I'll have a bigger party for 41 or 42, but I liked being celebrated yesterday. It's a nice round number, but it feels like a kind of transitional time for me.

Last night, with the kids in the care of my parents-in-law, Elizabeth and I went to Atelier Denu at UQO. She brought her drawing supplies and I brought a bathrobe and sandals (for the break, so I wouldn't get cold).

There were about half a dozen people drawing, which is a small crowd for Denu, probably due to the brutally cold weather. The platform had chairs on all sides, but people clustered up at and near the tables, putting them in something like a 120° arc. Shawn had given me a quick training on Monday and I'd tried a couple of timed poses to see what my legs were willing to do for me ahead of time, but I was planning on mostly making things up as I went along. In addition to the platform with its mat, pillows and sheet, there were easels, a ball, a broomstick and a little promotional beer pail at my disposal.

The poses started at two minutes, and worked their way up to seventeen. I did my best to vary facing and level, and mix props and propless poses. I think I got in a good variety, and managed to hold still even in ones that turned out to be physically difficult. It wasn't always obvious which ones would be: I did a supine pose with one arm off the platform that turned out to be quite tiring, and a long prone one, almost going-to-sleep, that had so many points of contact with myself that I felt like a big mess of pins and needles by the end. Climbing the easel, a big open pose with the broomstick, and some modified yoga poses were all easier than I'd thought they would be.

Mentally, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Once I was up there, I was thinking about position, stability, breath and keeping my focus on that bit of debris or architectural feature to keep my gaze and position stable, mixed in with wandering thoughts about life outside the studio. It was very much my yoga-space, as far as my thoughts were concerned, which shows both that I'm something of a technically-oriented yoga person (to the detriment of all the noble stuff my mind could be doing while in a pose), and that maybe the time and money I've spent on yoga classes can have tangible benefits — two modelling sessions would pay for one semester of weekly yoga at work! I think I felt most naked right after taking off my clothes, after that everything else was more pressing. It didn't hurt that the room was at a comfortable temperature, the doors were closed and the air was still.

It was also a notable night in that for the first time, we left both kids in the care of others. When we got back, Oscar was basically asleep: a little wibbly and fussy still, but in his room in the dark and easy to cover, calm and leave to doze off. Vivien was a bit distraught but happy to get Mama back, and Elizabeth's parents didn't seem particularly frazzled by two and a half hours of both kids. I think we all knew this was about what would happen, but it was still good to get the proof that Elizabeth and I can escape for a bit together. It took until eight months with Oscar for us to get a date in, so evidently we're something like 50% more confident by some measure this time around. A two and a half hour date isn't long, but not bad for parents with a baby who's still not into complementary foods.

I think I could definitely be a nude drawing model again. I didn't have any epiphanies or crises up there: it was a pretty relaxing and satisfying gig (although my muscles were a bit sore afterward). I'd recommend giving it a try to anyone considering it, and Denu feels like it might be a better-than-average place to give it a try.

I've been carrying around a list in my head of things to do while I'm 32 years old; now I'm committing it to the Internet. I've seen bucket lists and life lists, but the time horizon doesn't speak to my procrastination-prone and tactical nature, and I of course see New Year's resolutions, but I think going by my years rather than calendar years is more personal, and protects me a little from the list elements being fresh when the invariable collapse of many resolutions happens in late January. Also, some elements of the list were really dear and salient to me in the summer, so it made sense to hang them on my birthday (even if it's taken months to post them here). So, here are the things I would like to do or improve significantly this year:

• Floss more days than not.
• Make a conscious and courageous-when-necessary effort to improve my relationships in ways that make me happy.
• Make deeper use of this journal, as part of trying to be less guarded with people that I trust.
• Wear through multiple massage bars.
• Get the deposit back on beer bottles at smaller intervals and more reliably.
• Wipe out the mortgage and direct the resulting savings to a mix of responsible and fun things.
• Replace the chain-link fence with a durable, attractive, Oscar-resistant one.
• Get a check-up this year and renew my vaccinations; it's been too long on both counts.

In general, I think I have more guiding values than long-term specific goals, but here are some things (somewhere between values and goals) on a longer time scale.

• Have fewer secrets.
• Be entrusted with more secrets.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Make our house more comfortable, energy-efficient and adjusted to us.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.

I've wanted to write a little about how I handle financial matters, and how our household money situation works — I like reading about other people's ways of doing stuff on LJ, and thought I'd throw my thoughts into the mix.

( money and the pipes it flows through )