Update

The move is going poorly - or rather, it's not going. Cupcake's housemate has rescheduled twice already and has still not left yet. I'm going to be moving during the work week with little help because my friends - who were ready to help me over the weekend - aren't available during the week. Rather than dwell on that, I'll give a random update.

Spring has started and the strawberries I planted last year are coming back. I'm very proud of this because frankly I had my doubts. Of course, other garden things are coming back too. This move needs to happen but I really will miss my garden. Especially since I was the only gardener at the co-op so I know it won't be looked after once I'm gone.

Strawberries!

What else? I've done a lot of randomly wandering about Harvard Square. Today I managed to stumble upon these strange street performers. They were singing songs about rhinoceroses and yes those are orange rhino horns on their heads:

Two male performers dressed in orange with orange rhino hats.
One is playing the keyboard and one is playing the guitar.

I ate some pizza at Pinocchio's which has some tasty pizza. They've got a themed mural of Pinocchio running away from the whale with a random mermaid sitting nearby - all of them eating pizza, of course.

Whale mural at Pinocchio's Pizza. 

I also looked at some of the ivy covered Harvard Buildings and went into their library to check it out.

Brick building covered in ivy. 

Fancy library room with wood panels and a rolling ladder and a fireplace. 

White domed library ceiling with intricate carvings and a candelabra.

Birthday Party

Yesterday was my birthday but today was my party. I decided I wanted to go bowling so I told some friends and we all descended upon Sacco Bowling in Somerville. I picked them because they have vegan pizza, decent beer, and candlepin bowling that is wheelchair accessible. Due to some last-minute cancellations due mostly to illness, we wound up with eight adults and six kids. Cupcake brought vegan cookies and banana bread, and Aquafabulous brought cupcakes with candles for me to blow out. Huzzah!

Cupcake cheers on Joy, Primo, and Secondo.

Pacman bowls, Terzo, Secondo, Primo, and Bone's daughter all bowl too.

Bone and me.

Karaoqueen demonstrates her drink.

Me blowing out the candles on my birthday cupcakes while Pacman claps.

Mini T, Secondo, Terzo, and me.

It's My Birthday

Today is my birthday! Woo! Atticus is up for the weekend. She and Belle treated me to a birthday trip to the Chocolate Bar at the Langham Hotel.

Me, Atticus, and Belle.

Chocolate!

After the chocolate bar, Atticus and I went to Harvard Square where we bought some books and tried pretty much every product in Lush. Then in lieu of the house party we'd been invited to, we went back to my house for an evening of lounging about watching TV.

Sick Fierce Friday

Well, I thought I was over my cold but it turns out I wasn't. Womp womp. So I present to you my sick Fierce Friday look. Me, unshaven, wearing my pajamas and a blue mermaid blanket.

Me making a sad face.

My legs wrapped in my mermaid blanket with Rosie the dog visible in the picture. 

Canceled Plans and Cranky Valentines' Day

I had so many fun plans for this weekend. I was going to hang out with Tea, go to Aquafabulous' birthday party, visit friends in Worcester, go to the library, and babysit Mini T. None of that happened because I was super sick. I spent the entire weekend either in bed or on the couch. Though, frankly, it has been snowing like crazy so I probably wouldn't have been able to go many places anyway.

The one good thing that happened all weekend was that my housemates and I finally had our "oatmeal party." Terzo had been asking me for months to host an oatmeal party where we eat all kinds of oatmeal (oatmeal is one of his favorite foods). I've also been wanting to host a movie night. So since I was stuck inside feeling crappy anyway, I decided to combine those things. I cooked up a bunch of oatmeal and set up the kitchen table as a make-your-own oatmeal bar with toppings. Then we all ate oatmeal and watched cartoons.

Today it's Valentines' Day and I called out sick because I still feel like crap. I failed to make valentines for people because I was sick. And so far I've gotten several email valentines but no physical valentines, which has me feeling kind of down even though I feel silly about it. Hopefully next time I post here it'll be less of me whining.

On a funny note, though, the kid housemates asked me to read this book and I thought it was appropriate given my mood:

Picture of book page which says "I like crying. It helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life's problems."
The picture is a sobbing blue character from the movie Inside Out. 

Fierce Friday

It's Fierce Friday and I'm afraid I may be getting a cold. You know what that means: face mask time! Today I wore my trusty skull face mask, all black clothing, my black combat boots, a black cap, black nail polish, and my military cross necklace.

Selfie of me.

Body shot of me. 

Cooking Blog!

So I used to have a cooking blog. My brilliant idea of the week is that I'd like to re-start that.

Picture of spices in wooden spoons.

Aquafabulous has promised that it's easily doable to save my old blog so I'm going to save and delete it to make way for the new cooking blog. Why delete it instead of continuing it? A few reasons.

* I'm a better photographer now so I could probably take pictures of food that are actually appetizing whereas before the photos were of variable quality.
* I was less secure with people's names on my old blog and I'd like to switch to my current pseudonym system.
* My old blog was cooking focused but a bit more all-purpose than that because I didn't have this blog. Now I've got an all-purpose blog so I can reserve the cooking blog for recipes and just link back and forth to this blog as needed.
* I worked out a lot of kinks along the way about blog organization and I think I could come up with a better set-up now than I had before.
* I wrote that blog while I was dating/engaged/married to my ex husband so frankly, looking at it makes me sad. I'd like to take off all that content and start fresh.

Drag baking.

So there you have it. New cooking blog will hopefully be operational by the end of the month. It will be bilingual in French/English like my old blog. Also like my old blog I will continue to use both US and metric measurement systems so my friends in other countries can cook the recipes too!

This Weekend

Yesterday I spent all day/night at work. Today I'd planned to visit friends but they got the same virus my house had. Instead after church I went to the GLBT Immigrant Solidarity Protest with Plum and the kids. They grabbed their rainbow gear and I dressed in red, white, and blue because I felt like being patriotic.

Me and Terzo.

Plum, Secondo, and Primo. They're wearing rainbow gear and Plum is holding a cardboard sign.
The sign says "Land of the FREE to choose: loves, gender, home."

All of us with our homemade cardboard signs. Mine says "No Pride for Some without Liberation for All"
with "pride" in rainbow, "some" in peach tones, "liberation" in red/white/blue, and "all" in brown.
Secondo's sign which is a pink and blue stripes that says "Love." The others are hard to read.

Crowd shot.

Another crowd shot.

Primo and Terzo holding up their signs. Primo's sign says "You Are Welcome" in colorful bubble letters.
Terzo's sign says "Donald Trump is being wrong." in black letters with drawings around it. 

Pro photographer got a photo of all of us marching.

The march ended up in front of this church.

Fierce Friday - Frozen?

I had some trouble deciding what to do today for clothing until I decided to take inspiration from the song that was stuck in my head. Guess which Disney movie I'm inspired by?

Picture of my snowflake necklace, light blue shirt, and different shade of light blue hoodie.

Don't know yet? Here's a hint…

Elsa from Frozen.

Yup. Frozen. Kids movie and maker of the most contagious song ever. I'm wearing white pants, a light blue t-shirt, a light blue hoodie, a snowflake necklace, sparkly earrings, and light blue nail polish.

Me smiling at the camera.

Body shot.

Resolutions - One Month In

Well it's February second. Today I accompanied Cupcake to divorce court. Here's a picture of our accidentally coordinated outfits:

Me and cupcake. I'm wearing a light purple button down with a grey sweater over it.
My outfit coordinates with Cupcake's eye makeup. 

That's not what I want to post about, however. Instead, because we're one month in, I figure now is a great time to update about my New Years Resolutions. Here we go…

Diet

Tracking my food has been easy and really interesting so far. I'm saving the list for the end of the year reveal, but I'll say that I've added a category titled "Laziness" for food I could and should have made myself and that "Chocolate" is its own category. One problem I failed to anticipate was how often I feed other people. Adding this in means that the totals for what I eat will probably be slightly inflated but I'm keeping it in there because I'm looking less for how much I consume and more for an accurate gauge of how much food I would actually need to plant for the year and that will include feeding house guests. In this same spirit, I'm not including food I eat while visiting friends because I wouldn't be planting food for that.

Exercise

I'm signing up for one of this session's classes at Esh Circus Arts with Bone. Registration opens on Valentine's Day. I've also been working out sporadically at the gym at my work since it's free and exercising outside is too cold.

Picture of a fat white woman doing circus tricks.

Finances

Things are going swimmingly. My most recent charity donation was to CAIR Massachusetts aka the MA chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. They're America's largest Muslim civil rights organization. I decided to donate to them because I feel sickened by the anti-Muslim sentiments of my government and I wanted to do something to help Muslim Americans.

Photograph of a woman using an american flag as a head scarf.

The charity I donated to before that was to United We Dream, which is the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation. Their mission is "to organize and advocate for the dignity and fair treatment immigrant youth and families, regardless of immigration status." This donation was in response to the anti-immigrant policies the government has started rolling out.

Spirituality

I've restarted my daily gratitude sharing with Feather. I've also gotten back in the habit of regular prayer and church attendance. 

Blue text on a yellow background that says "Become Love."

I'm working hard on my "become love" motto. It's harder than you would think to stop judging other people. For me the judging isn't about how other people look but about how they act. The biggest problem for me are that I get incredibly frustrated by people who I feel aren't working hard enough to improve themselves and their life situations. The problem is that a lot of the time these people aren't just "lazy" they're struggling with mental illness or some other problem that is impeding their ability to do better than they are doing. Given that other people's lives are really none of my business anyway, I think I could be a lot kinder than I am about this. 

Also, as I've been working my speech with the true/kind/necessary rule, I've noticed that I have a couple of friends in particular who seem to bond by complaining about people they dislike and it's hard for me to redirect the conversation and avoid getting sucked in. I need to figure out what to do about this.

To-Do List

So far I've knocked one off my to-do list: get a professional massage. 

I'm Moving to East Boston

Now that I've told my housemates, the cat is out of the bag! Starting March 1st I will be living with Cupcake in East Boston!

White and orange kitten coming out of a paper bag. 

There are lots of things I really love about living in this co-op, but the environment here has become unhealthy for reasons that I'd rather not discuss in this blog. I'm going to miss my housemates, my garden, and Medford in general. Luckily I won't be too far away so I plan to come back and visit regularly.