Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Last night before I crawled into bed to fight off the aforementioned headache, I broke down and turned on the furnace. I'd thought I was going to have to do that on Tuesday, but Wednesday afternoon and yesterday morning turned out to not be too bad, and I just dealt with the frosty nights by means of fuzzy sleepers and lots of blankets. I think we've got a few warm-ish days in a row coming early next week, and it would've been nice to make it all the way to the end of November, but the house just didn't warm up enough on its own yesterday and I knew I'd have to be up and active getting stuff ready and getting last-minute stuff done (either staying up late as I usually do, or falling asleep early and waking up whenever like I wound up doing (crashed around 22:00, after beating the headache into submission with Ultram and ibuprofen, woke again at 01:30 (and a couple of times in between))).

The house very quickly went from 283K to 289K. That's one thing about the heat in this place -- it's expensive to run, but boy does it warm the place up quickly.

For folks too lazy to do the conversions, that's 50F/10C to 60F/16C. It's actually a couple degrees warmer in the office (those temperatures are from the hallway and the kitchen). Warm enough to make the fuzzy sleeper too hot (I think that might be what woke me the first time (I fell right back to sleep), though pain woke me the second time and got me out of bed). Warm enough that being naked no longer feels chilly (though a bathrobe still makes sense when passing through the colder parts of the house). Basically, I've got it feeling like recent not-too-cold-day late afternoons, in the middle of the night. (Don't worry, I've been known to turn the thermostat up a bit when I have guests.)

I'll have to try to get around to bleeding the radiators sometime this morning.

After the headache receeded and before I fell asleep, I did have time to think about what I'm thankful for. And I realized that a lot of the things I came up with amounted to "I'm glad things aren't any worse than they are." I wondered whether to feel bad about being thankful for somebody's absense (someone I just didn't want to put the emotional energy into trying to deal with just yet). And yes, I did find enough actually positive things to be thankful for that I didn't feel like a complete pessimist.

I'm not going to list everything here (though I guess I should do so in my old-tech paper diary), but a few stand out.

I'm really thankful for The Homespun Ceilidh Band, who give me a chance to make the magic happen reasonably often. (And a reminder: we're performing at Darkover, tonight after the costume contest and Saturday afternoon.) I've mentioned before that I feel that band is greater than the sum of its parts, and it feels really good to be a part of making that Sound happen. It feels really nice to feel -- to be -- that good. I also like my bandmates as people, so it's a double win.

I'm thankful for my skills in general, the ones that I've had to work hard to obtain, the ones that feel as though they were sort of handed to me, and the ones that I'm seeing my way to obtaining in the future.

I'm thankful for my friends. I've got some really good close friends, and I've got a lot of really good people in the next category out from that. People I'm thankful to know, people who I appreciate spending time with when I get to spend time with them (and that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough with most of you, but I'm thankful when it does happen). People who provide me with insight, companionship, fun stories to tell about each other, good conversation, emotional support, inspiration, teaching, opportunities to teach ... Friend stuff. Connection.

I've gotten a lot of help from my friends in various ways, and I'm never sure whether they know how grateful I am. There are several overlapping groups of people, each of which could be called "my community": I'm not sure whether to say that I've got a great community or great communities ... either way, I'm thankful for that.

Actually, most of the rest of the list (except for being thankful that my housing situation just became a lot less stressful) is people. My brother's wife's family, whom I like and hope to spend more time getting to know ... Thrir Venstri Foetr ... individual friends and ex-lovers (and near-lovers and crushes despite how painful having a crush on someone can be) ... artists whose art I'm glad is in the world ... people who accept me as a transgendered person, and people who appreciate me as an intergendered one ... people who appreciate my spirituality and in doing so remind me how important it is ...

Well, I've gone on longer than I meant to about that -- the plan was to just mention that I do have a bunch of stuff to be thankful for, and to note a couple of patterns I'd noticed in my thinking. Anyhow, the whole detailed list is probably interesting only to myself and to people wondering whether they're on it, so I'll shut up now.

Of course the biggest thing I give thanks for is the same thing I give thanks for on Easter (well, actually a whole lot more often than that, but you know what I mean). But that takes this post in a whole 'nuther direction.

Now to go move clothes from the washer to the drier and start getting everything ready for Darkover, so that if I fall asleep again (which I should, 'cause I really need the sleep, but I'm not sure that I will), I don't have to worry about how much I have to do between waking up and leaving the house. (I've got a stop or two I have to make before I go to the convention, so I've got to get out a little early.)