our first proper snow of the year, and it's still coming down; the only folks on the sidewalk at a quarter to seven were me and a guy in one of the amazon tuk-tuks. i left the christmas tree lights on so joe will wake up to the cats basking under it like sea lions at the wharf. i have at long last transitioned to reading the new jessica mitford biography, and while it's not especially difficult to tell an interesting story about mitfords it's a relief to be out of the land of shaggy memoir. memoir is hard, turns out! (every version of the nonfiction book i plan and re-plan in my head has a little less of me on the page; it's not that i don't think there are worthwhile braided narratives out there, it's that voice tells a better story than anecdotes do, i think. is this a story, or even a voice? i think it's a ritual.) chances are good, though i shouldn't talk about it, that the anti-abortiion protesters won't be at the reproductive health clinic this morning and we can all go home after chatting about sci fi and knitting in the basement for a while. i have missed that over the past few months; trying to fall asleep in time to get proper rest before one of these shifts is stressful, but it does me good to share space with these people. my social life as a volunteer has contracted since i stopped working at the bird hospital and the bookstore; i spend plenty of time at the library uptown and the atmosphere is wonderful, but i'm mostly in charge of a quiet study room, so i'm not talking to anyone. i get little concentrated bursts of company when i head out to monitor police at protests, but the experience of interacting with that crowd is, weirdly, overwhelmingly negative; as a rule, they're absolutely terrible at following directions or staying on topic (when we're chatting on signal about upcoming trainings or actions, not actually showing up for them). ditto the folks in charge of election protection that i met before monitoring a poll site this november. discouraging if not a little terrifying! but if widespread meaningful change is going to happen, maybe the incompetent need to be part of it as well? i'll be going for an early-to-me walk with my dad tomorrow, our equivalent of a holiday get-together since he's usually spoken for on christmas itself with my stepfamily. i suspect that this year they went down to virginia, where my garbage stepbrother has relocated to better terrify athletes and international fans as a member of the administration. i was too surprised this summer when his mother bragged about the work he was doing to make any kind of meaningful response, and maybe that's for the best, much as i've never decided which one poisonous text i'll send him before he blocks my number and/or changes his own. you'd think that since i now run so often and for so long i'd eventually get to the end of my grievances, but there are so many things to stew about, internets!
i think i've actually found a podcast i can put on instead of cable news as i finish my quilt after joe's gone to bed. i'm a little reluctant to look into how many episodes there are total because it's going to be like five, but what a quintet! it's a former coast guard helicopter pilot speaking with other pilots and authors about women in aviation. everyone is almost painfully competent, and there are no commercials. it's possible that in making my way through these stories i'll find that i don't need to tell one myself after all, but that wouldn't actually be a bad thing, if your point in making things part of the world is that they aren't yet. what isn't yet?
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