After a very sleepy morning, the ホームBASS received a delightful surprise when two packages arrived at the door. Scout was immediately excited to climb to the summit of the boxes and I had to distract him with some crinkly paper to be able to lure him away long enough to open them.
Saga praying up at the moon and some aliens on the back of the new hoodie is everything. I love the whole idea behind it, and it’s definitely going to be keeping me warm and comfy at home during the winter. The new shirt is so much more textured and vibrant in tone than I had expected — I love it. It’s the kind of piece you can interpret a little differently every time you look at it because of all the little details that have been incorporated into the collage. What shall I pair the shirt with to form an outfit…? ♡♪
沙我くんの特典ビデオカッコよかった…
Saga lounging on a couch after a hot live, footage of him playing bass, kissing and licking 焔ちゃん’s neck after a solo… heaven. 💋🗻
I felt so inspired and energetic after holding those pieces in my hands and trying them on that I decided to make お弁当 for tomorrow instead of my usual sandwich 😋 not that it in any way approaches the coolness and beauty of those clothing pieces… お弁当が可愛い系だからね 笑
💜🍴For supper, tonight’s ホームBASS special was pierogis with greek yogurt instead of sour cream. Yes, I’ve increased my ability to eat yogurt! My body needs those sweet, sweet probiotics… it also needs sweets. And naps.
Last weekend I met up with my fellow local writers to discuss symbolism — next weekend, for the first time ever, I am going to participate in the “Canada Army Run” (though I’ll be walking). I grew up an army brat and work in the national defence sector now, so it seemed fitting…
Here’s Scout sitting strangely on the couch next to a photo of the adorable Shishamo coin purse design. Cuties.
I had my alarm set weeks in advance to wake up early and set up the living room to attend ALICE NINE.’s grand finale from afar. I set up a moon light on the windowsill near the loveseat and Scout hopped up to lie down beside it, as though he could sense the gravity and anticipation in the air.
There were audio and connection issues in the beginning and so I missed the first thirty seconds, but then–
アリス九號. never fails to surprise me, and it was in exactly that way that the Last Galaxy live began. I truly hadn’t expected the first song in the setlist to be GEMINI-0-eternal, but when they then leapt right into 閃光 after it I was both delighted and confused at the choice. Until I understood what they were actually doing!
The idea to weave the GEMINI suite evenly among the other songs in the main setlist was an incredible one, not least because it’s something they’d never decided to do before. But Saga is a storyteller when it comes to music.
It truly was a climax of a live the whole way through, with them playing their hearts out during each and every song; they were absolutely bursting with confidence and good humour (or intensity) as they played so many beloved big numbers and classics from their discography. The beauty of this live wasn’t simply the songs they played, but the energy and atmosphere they gave off while playing the flow of this setlist.
Even just watching from home, I was in awe and felt so proud of the amazing live they played — a culmination of their history, their hard work together, and also a celebration of the sheer fun they have onstage performing music for us 九組達.
A celebration of the world of sound they created, one that transports us to imagined realms.
They did two encores… and if you think I didn’t sit on my loveseat at home and clap, chanting アンコール in time with everyone at the venue until they came back on stage, you’re mistaken 🙂
アンコール！アンコール！★ミ
I love that they did the G3 line dance on stage, and from there it just got wilder and wilder! The sheer hotness of Saga headbanging his way through the song… the sheer hilarity of a drummer in a Nao-mask coming to replace Nao on drums so that he could run around in the crowd for a couple minutes… lol! Utter fun to see how this classic retained its roots and grew into something even bigger.
Ending the first encore on 春夏秋冬 was so feel-good and it’s kind of wonderful that the song has mostly stayed the same since the beginning. You might say the song is like a time capsule of their energy from 2005!
I chanted アンコール with great anticipation before they returned to play the second and final encore.
I teared up at the beginning of Waterfall, but by the end was smiling again at how beautifully they brought the song to life. Shou then thanked everyone individually in a quiet, heartfelt MC, during which Saga gave him a hug instead of replying in words. After that, it was time for the big, beautiful finale.
Grace and the beautiful name.
A breathtakingly beautiful flow of songs to purify the heart.
To me, the beautiful name has always been and will always be pure joy.
Next to beauty of Waterfall and Grace, it soared even higher.
言葉にあまりできないほどに、素晴らしかったです…♡
After the live, Saga made sure to point out the two suites besides GEMINI that had been nestled into the live. birth in the death and Living Dead, which were played during the setlist flow between GEMINI-I-the void and GEMINI-II-the luv, form a suite that links the GEMINI album to the GRACE album. Then, at the very end and for the first time, they played Grace and the beautiful name one after the other — the second suite, this one connecting GRACE to VANDALIZE. Thus, Saga explained afterwards, GEMINI GRACE VANDALIZE are not a circle of albums (as I had been thinking), but a line — with I. as the first song and Waterfall as the ending of the album trilogy.
I love Saga, the way he thinks and creates ♡♪
So without further ado, the piece I made inspired by some of the compositions Saga has made that I love most. The day before the live I woke up with an image in my mind and spent the rest of the morning trying to draw it on the page… even colouring the piece in and picking the perfect dried flowers out of my collection to add to the imagery.
The Phoenix of the jelly fish Galaxy
Within a universe of pure white darkness floats a galaxy like a jelly fish inside which the life force of a Phoenix will be burning bright for eternity 真っ白な闇という宇宙には 浮かんでる海月のような 銀河の中で Phoenixの命の炎が 永久に燃えてるよ
May our Last Galaxy be graced.
For this art piece, I borrowed from the concept of birth in the death and Phoenix again, as well as GRADATION and jelly fish — and I borrowed from the grandeur, love, and beauty of songs like Grace, the beautiful name, GEMINI, and Waterfall… another little homage 🙂
One flower is gently floating off into the void of pure white darkness (a favourite bit of lyric symbolism), and another flower has just bloomed on the jellyfish galaxy. Or is the galaxy a phoenix? Or is the phoenix a universe? Are those little golden raindrops stars or nascent galaxies, tiny-huge nebulas?
I wonder… ♪
Thank you so much アリス九號.… Thank you.
I enjoyed this live to the fullest and I think Saga did too… the setlist was gorgeous.
Until we meet again, let’s protect ALICE NINE.’s world and the songs that made it.
Saga with all the other members of ALICE NINE. — SHOU, HIROTO, TORA, and Nao — will take to the stage in a grand finale, thanks to the tireless efforts of their staff and the whole team behind the scenes helping to set everything up and make it as magical as possible.
I won’t be there in person, but I will be there in spirit, thanks to the live broadcast that they’re putting on for everyone who wasn’t able to make it out or wasn’t able to get their hands on a ticket (because they went so quickly!). During his pizza party the other night, Saga said with a laugh that their last rehearsal before the finale had “felt normal” and that’s kind of how I feel going into this live as a fan.
It’s bittersweet to not have been able to manage going in person, but even knowing that it’s their last planned live for some time (as you can never know what the future holds, or what things each member will pursue after the freeze), it still feels strangely normal. Part of that feeling might stem from the fact that I already knew it was possible that the last live of theirs I’d get to attend would be last November — and so I enjoyed every moment then to the fullest. I wish I’d been able to go to the tour this summer… but even having wanted to do that, I don’t regret in any way going in November instead and having the experiences there that I did. It was the right time to go. And it healed something inside of me. And goddamn were those lives ever fun. Incredible. Being bathed in the visceral sound of Saga’s bass lines… 🙂
I know that Last Galaxy is not a normal live, and I know that I’ll feel that fully when I’m in the moment. Right now what I feel is gratitude — that I get to attend this moment from afar. There was no live broadcast for TOKYO GALAXY, and there was no broadcast for their 10th anniversary pre-hiatus live either. But I get to be there in spirit for this historical, emotional, sure-to-be-amazing live.
If Saga felt like the rehearsal was “normal” then maybe that means that he feels satisfied with the setlist he proposed, and that none of them felt rushed or unsatisfied with the flow of the live they are choosing to play together. Sounds like readiness, confidence, and peace to me.
The perfect emotional base upon which to heat up that venue and rock us all out, move us deeply.
I’m so excited to hear, see, and experience this live that as soon as I woke up I started drawing and writing something as a little homage to this momentous occasion. And now I’m off to add the finishing touches 🙂
Saga and ALICE NINE. have completed their Act 4 Summer tour and now all that’s left is the big finale in September. It seems pretty definitive that I won’t be able to travel to Japan and attend in person… but I will be with Saga and the band in spirit. It is sad… logistically, I just can’t see a way to do it, barring a miracle. So I’m just going to support and cheer on from afar and look forward to (hopefully) going to attend something that Saga does after the freeze… ♡♪
I’m currently working on interview translations for the deep-dive for Funeral (so much glorious content) and then I’ll move on to the GEMINI suite. It is strange, I admit, but even though I consider the GEMINI suite (and album, of course) to have been such a huge influence in my art, I’ve kind of been skirting around the prospect of translating the lyrics of the suite in full. Oh, I’ve read them many times (listened even more) — it’s just that, I’ve been afraid of making them sound less epic than they are. But that’s silly. The original poetry will shine through no matter what. It helps that a fellow 9kumi asked me if I planned to do deep-dives on those songs, giving me an even more concrete reason to face that imposter syndrome and just do the thing!
So there you have it.
I’m doing it.
And the imagery of the lyrics is exactly as rich, as introspective, and as epic as the music sounds.
It was much later than I’d planned, but I finally recorded the Brothers Grimm fairytale that I rewrote to start the newest series that will be part of The Side B Anthology: Sable’s Tales, or ST for short. It was really fun to adapt The Seven Ravens in my own writing style and so I will slowly add more to the series. It was fun to record the narration too, of course; here’s an outtake of me making fun of one of my voices to Scout (who attended the recording by snoozing underneath the comforter of the bed behind me).
This weekend I intended to sit down at my laptop and write more for Casseltaur, but instead had a sudden flash of inspiration for the next fairytale re-write so I ended up typing away at that instead until I had a first draft. As a kid, one of my favourites was Little Red Riding Hood, but having read a few versions and retellings over the years, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to shape it in my own words.
This is basically just a fix-it fic lol.
Casseltaur, meanwhile, gets weirder each time I sit down to do the worldbuilding for it.
Which, of course, is a good thing. :p
I’m now on week two at my new job and the amount of change it has brought about in my day-to-day life already is incredible. Scout and I get lots more time together, for one thing. Aside from that, my commute is actually pretty energizing now (what?!), and I have so much more time and energy during the week to clean, run errands, and even write and translate. The new team I’ve joined are great bunch of clever, funny people and I’ve barely scratched the surface so far of what I’m going to need to learn to do this new job correctly, but they’re all very supportive, and this kind of challenge is exactly what I wanted.
Also, this week I started watching episodes of Gundam The Witch From Mercury before work while eating breakfast. It really takes me back to my childhood, watching anime in the morning over a bowl of cereal… キャリバーンがやっとデター！Obviously I want to watch the latest Dragon Ball stuff (lol), but the next thing on my list is とつくにの少女 (The Girl From The Other Side), which I started reading the manga of a year or so ago, but stopped because I couldn’t get the next volume, I think. In any case, I hope watching it will be just as beautiful and mysterious.
In terms of live-action TV, what I recently finished watching was the arctic season (6) of the survival series “Alone” (set in Northwest Territories, Canada). I used to watch quite a number of similar wilderness survival series back in the day because seeing people living off the land and personally finding the pockets of abundance in a given landscape is both impressive and soothing, in a way. CONTEXT and Casseltaur both involve living in an arctic zone at some points in the plot, so my watching was sort of research-ish…? I did learn a number of really cool facts as I watched, anyway.
Also: one of the survival experts was basically an arctic Forrest Gump… if that isn’t a good enough endorsement, I don’t know what is. Haha.
One of the survival experts made an incredibly beautiful, durable shelter and was just so adept at creating handmade things from natural materials. Another was doing fine in terms of shelter and food but decided to leave early because he realized that time with his wife and kids was more valuable than the prize money (or bragging rights) he could win if he spent more time away from them… nothing but respect from me for that mindset.
Last night it was a documentary about the concept of infinity that I watched (A Trip to Infinity) and it was a delightfully strange thought exercise for my mind — it gave me goosebumps in the best possible way. I think it’s safe to consider this research-ish as well. As much time as I’ve spent thinking about the concept of infinity and of how our universe is configured, there were several things I hadn’t considered before — facts that tilted, stretched, and reframed my imagination and thinking on the subject.
The office surprised me with a pizza lunch the day before my last, and I really do mean surprised. I was working the last thirty minutes til my actual lunchtime, enjoying my music and the stillness of the room as everyone else went to work in another, when my fellow team lead came up to my desk with a serious question and asked if we could go talk. I felt kind of concerned and followed her. She led me to the closed board room door saying we should talk in there and motioned for me to open the door. When I saw that the room was completely full of coworkers apparently having a meeting, I automatically made to close the door, but before it was shut, everyone was saying “surprise!”
Feeling somewhere between sheepish and embarrassed, I went inside and thanked them (my fellow team lead had not allowed me to shut the door and make the tactical retreat I had intended to).
My embarrassment wore off as they started cutting the pizzas, and I thanked them all again (also mock-complained, “you guys really got me!”). Those two huge slices were definitely a tasty alternative to the sandwich that I had brought with me that morning.
Then, finally, it was my last day at the office I’d been working at for years, that I was going in to every day for most of the pandemic. I’d had quite a bit of notice and time to prepare beforehand so all of my responsibilities and jobs had been neatly handed over to others before I left (with plenty of time to train each person and make sure they were comfortable with the hand-over), the result being that I had no regrets upon stepping out the door for the last time yesterday afternoon.
I felt light, ready for the next chapter of my life to begin.
So I decided to kick it off by leaving early and going to Bluesfest for the first time since 2019.
Going back to this music festival after so many years was fun, even comforting — but I am also so much more centered now than I was back then. It didn’t feel like a new beginning, it felt like taking the next step in my life by leaving my old job, and then setting foot in this familiar place, days away from starting a new one.
The weather was warm but the breeze was cool making of the evening a perfect one for going to see some bands play outdoors.
I was a little late arriving to the River Stage for the first act, Pony Girl, so I encountered them mid-song, having never heard them play before. They were having such a blast on stage, it was impossible not to get into their music. When they suddenly played a clarinet solo outta left field, I knew I was in the right place, their songs delightfully unusual — art pop being a music genre I hadn’t been familiar with until their performance. Thumbs up for these talented, energetic, local musicians!
The frontman told the crowd they were having an amazing time playing for us that evening, which was especially important considering the night before had been the exact opposite: their rehearsal space had started flooding… with sewage. Yikes, man. He gave us extremely clear (read: comically roundabout) directions to the merch tent to buy their new album, and then got emotional thanking us for coming out to see them — because there’s nothing quite as special as “playing music with your best friends.”
And it showed. They just kept grinning at one another, sharing said jam session among friends with us, the crowd.
We cheered as they ended their set and began clearing away their instruments and equipment for the next band as the sun began to set.
As the sun continued to set, casting warm golden light onto the stage, Allison Russell came out with her band, beaming at us in her glittering blazer. Though she lives and works in the US, Allison Russell explained (en français) that she grew up in Montréal and that performing at Ottawa Bluesfest had been a longtime dream of hers. A dream so big that she’d missed her daughter’s first performance in a play to fulfil it… and we, the crowd, were grateful for her and her band’s presence that night.
I’d never heard any of Allison Russell’s music before and was touched by her lyrical storytelling through her radiant singing voice and radiant, radical message of love, peace, and acceptance. She spoke of growing up with an abusive adoptive father, of running away from the abuse, finding her chosen family, and of slowly unlearning the shame that her adoptive father had forced on her through his white supremacist ideals. It made the overpowering sense of love, compassion, empathy, and acceptance in her songs that much more beautiful. She introduced each member of the band as part of her circle, her chosen family, and all four of them radiated with purpose as they played, whether the song was sad and heartfelt or whether it was uplifting and euphoric.
They took their final bow to our enthusiastic applause.
The crowd packed in elbow-to-elbow as they cleared away equipment and rearranged the stage between bands; the sun had set entirely when Fleet Foxes came onstage as a cheer went up from the crowd. Their opening vocal harmonies were so soft, so clear, and finally seeing them live I understood that up to four band members would sing together at once for those beautiful, layered melodies, that it wasn’t several tracks layered together as I had figured. It was a wonder to see and to hear. I was also fascinated by all the different instruments they played throughout the performance.
The crowd was utterly thrilled by the performance (me included), singing along to songs, whooping, cheering, calling out to the band — and the band seemed pleasantly surprised by this enthusiasm, with the frontman continually exclaiming “thank you so much!” with a grin after almost every song.
Hey man, that’s our line! 🙂
It was particularly meaningful to me to hear Your Protector, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Blue Spotted Tail live, three of my favourite songs by them. Your Protector gave me chills… Blue Spotted Tail was so quiet and beautiful, the lyrics deeply touching. Something about Blue Ridge Mountain’s lyrics just puts the coziest sort of image in my mind.
I heard about their self-titled album through one of Saga’s entries on his old ameblo. It wasn’t nearly as easy to sample albums back in those days, so I just decided to trust Saga’s taste and buy it on a whim — it became one of the most-listened to albums in my library (especially when I was writing), and is the album that clued me in to the fact that folk rock is one of my favourite genres. Thanks, Saga! ♪
They played right up until the minute it turned 11, and then they stopped and left the stage… an Ottawa bylaw prohibits loud noises past that time, so even though the whole crowd was ready to call out “one more song!” (and I’m sure the band would have wanted to play one) they wouldn’t have been allowed to do an encore.
It was a gorgeous concert.
I made my way home, tired but glad that I’d gotten to hear such great sets, and went to bed as Saga and アリス九號., on the other side of the world, were setting up to play what would turn out to be a seriously wild and passionate live at 新潟NEXS… ♡♪
It was truly a momentous occasion at ホームBASS last night, as Scout discovered that mixed in with cans of food and a bag of litter were some new toys! But not just any toys. Bath toys. That float.
He hasn’t had another bath yet, but he was absolutely delighted to just be able to admire his new ocean friends before bed.
This morning I drifted back and forth between the offline writing laptop and the web-dev laptop, preparing a new page for Alice9Lives while Scout cooled off, belly-up, on the hardwood floor. He’s a perfectly strange character, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Just after breakfast, he was having fun untying the bow of the ribbon I use to keep some kitchen cupboards shut. He untied it and then carried the ribbon over to me, utterly pleased with himself. I had to figure out another way to tie it to keep my little tactician out of trouble lol
I spent the afternoon chatting with other writers at the monthly pub meet-up and aside from just relaxing and catching eachother up on our writing lives (during which time I heard yet more interesting bits of advice), we also discussed how to keep the monthly meet-ups going because the current Ottawa Writers’ Circle is set to close at the end of the month. We sat around the pub tables and discussed rudimentary plans to keep parts of the group going under a new name. At the very least, we wanted to make sure we’d all know where and when to meet up again the following month.
I volunteered a subdomain for this purpose (until or unless we decide to buy a domain as a group), and others volunteered to take on organizational responsibilities so we could carry over some elements of the original group (it has a huge online user base and had many events, so we just chose to focus on maintaining the core elements for now).
Much like last month, a contingent of introverts stayed behind at the end for a bit of extra conversation (myself included) and then, once more running into another meet-up group that needed our space, we said a quick goodbye and headed our separate ways. My feet carried me to a newer shop downtown: Midori Gifts.
Correction: I intended to go to right to Midori Gifts to peruse the cute stationery imported from East Asia, and was on the right street, but I walked almost four blocks in the wrong direction. Yep. I completely passed the store front. When I finally checked the map and realized my mistake, I felt incredibly embarrassed (also amused) and made a u-turn. The store’s selection was exactly as cute as I’d expected. I may or may not have bought a new eraser and sketching pen to add to my regular lineup…
Oh, I got one other thing out of the afternoon: a mild sunburn. This, despite having slathered on sunscreen beforehand! Ah, well… nothing a bit of deep moisturizing tonight and tomorrow won’t soothe. I was craving a salad of all things on the way home (fun fact: the tastiest salad I’ve had in the city so far is from my fav pizza bar) so I picked up some greens and Scout and I have been settled in at home ever since. In fact, we’re enjoying having the windows open for some fresh air tonight, since there’s no smoke and the temperature has cooled…
Over in Japan, Saga is preparing to go onstage with the other members of アリス九號. in Sapporo… ♡♪
Is it just me, or was the latest season of Black Mirror gorier than usual? Another excellent selection of thought-provoking short stories, though, and superbly acted. I ended up watching the whole season over the weekend, riveted to my seat with horror.
The rest of the week I’ve felt depleted of energy, though. Not exhausted, but depleted. I’m not sure how to explain the difference, but I suppose it’s something like this: exhaustion is sort of pleasant after putting a lot of effort into something, and a good night’s sleep will generally fix it, but depletion is a persistent lack of energy that a good night’s sleep can’t remedy. Normally, I wake up before my alarm, but this week I’ve struggled to get out of bed with enough time to catch the bus. And I keep forgetting to charge my phone.
If I think of it with a bit of emotional distance, as though it were a scene in a book, it’s almost comical, the number of times I groan and hit snooze, completely out of it. Even Scout, who normally will wiggle himself under my pillow to wake me up for breakfast, isn’t trying to get me up every morning. It’s like he can tell I’m not myself this week.
I finished reading Carmilla (a rec from the Queer for Fear documentary) and was pleasantly surprised by how overtly queer-coded it is and by the fact that I found the writing style more or less enjoyable to read. That’s saying something, because I normally find novels from that time period a bit of a slog to get through.
After the first half of the first season of Gundam The Witch from Mercury, every other episode has at least one scene that is like an emotional gut-punch. It’s good, just… emotionally harrowing.
The cover art for the Everyforest is still very much a work in progress, but last night’s sketch feels promising.
Last weekend I finished the first installment of a new anthology which I am tempted to call Sable’s (Tall) Tales. It will simply be a collection of classic fairytales that I’ve re-written in my own style and these, of course, will end up on the podcast eventually. The first story I chose to re-write was The Seven Ravens, because I simply loved the sister protagonist’s bravery in going on a quest alone to free her brothers –and the fact that the originally translated text implied that she had a disability. I made this much more overt — a gutsy, clever heroine who saves her brothers with a support of her trusty walker.
Saga seems to have mostly left Twitter at this point, and so there’s very little reason for me to stay on the site either. Rather than move firmly to Mastodon or some other microblogging platform, it seems more sensible for me to try and get back into the groove of long-form blogging instead.
They released another photo of Saga’s birthday hoodie and there IS a UFO on it. Has the inside of the Nose Mountain been visited by aliens?
Find out on the next episode of The S-files…
🛸✨👃
Ahem.
The design for the T-shirt is even more intricate than I had realized, too, and the symmetry of the two pointing fingers makes the eyes even more compelling somehow. I love the ST logo as well, and the colours… ♪
The silver amethyst pendant is simple, classic, and beautiful, but since I already have an amethyst pendant… ♡
Oh, and I’ve finally finished translating the entire GRACE album; they’re all up in the Cryptography section! They’re beautiful. I’m glad I took the time to fully understand and reflect on all of them.
I went to bed before finishing the writing of this entry, and finally woke up just before my alarm this morning feeling relatively well-rested. Scout was very pleased that I decided to join him at the window begore breakfast to see what little creatures were scurrying about outside.
In preparation for Saga’s birthday today me and Scout made pizza from scratch for the first time in a while yesterday (I have a cake in mind to make for tonight or tomorrow, too). This was meant to lead up to an online pizza party this morning, but unfortunately Saga felt too physically wrecked from the lives earlier in the week and so had to cancel. I’m a little worried about how Saga must be feeling, but glad that he chose to cancel the event instead of pushing himself. Hopefully he still had enough energy (and wasn’t in too much pain) to enjoy his birthday to some degree with family or friends… feel better soon, Saga. ♡
It’s been a very slow day here for me and Scout — intentionally. I did a little tinkering on the laptop in the early morning but then both me and Scout laid down and napped on and off into the afternoon while I did bits of editing on my phone. I had the leftover pizza while watching some more extremely cute episodes of はじめてのつかい and then gave Scout a bath. He actually splashed the water with his paw a little! I have every intention of getting him a floating rubber duckie for future baths to see if he’ll play with it… he’s basically a mischievous little kid.
Scout’s currently sitting next to me, grooming his still-damp fur, but it’s just about time for his allergy medication and his supper, so I’m off to do that.
I hope you have space to relax this weekend, drink plenty of water, and do something you enjoy.
I’m at the tail-end of the Easter long weekend and boy do I ever have an update.
For starters, I’ve been sick all weekend.
I started feeling under the weather when I got home Thursday (after someone had come into work feeling sick and not bothered to mask or cover their mouth while coughing and sneezing — to their credit, they did choose to go home early), which turned into feeling sick on Friday and though I tested negative for covid that evening, I woke up the next morning knowing I definitely wouldn’t be going in for the Saturday shift I’d agreed to lead earlier that week. I told my manager exactly that and explained to my Saturday-shift coworker what flow to follow for her tasks that day, then I contacted my brother to ask him if he could find someone else to visit Pearl this weekend (thankfully, someone else was available), and finally, I crawled into a blanket cocoon with a box of tissues.
Later, I learned that a third member of my team had gotten sick and tested positive for covid and so I tested again.
Sure enough, the second test came back positive.
I’m just thankful that these symptoms don’t feel much worse than a bad cold, and that I decided to take precautions and isolate even when I thought I might just have a garden-variety cold. This means I’m going to have a lot of cleaning and disinfecting to do over the next couple of days as my symptoms clear and I prepare to rejoin the outside world.
Scout and I have been resting and watching Pose together (we just started season 2), and I have been drinking and snacking voraciously since I got sick!
But let’s back up. This isn’t the biggest thing that’s happened in the past week.
That… was Tuesday morning.
As usual, Scout tried to nudge me up out of bed for breakfast after I dared to press the snooze button, and I complied, still only half-awake. We went into the kitchen, I grabbed one of the new cans of food I’d bought for him to try and peeled off the lid… and stared.
The can was smaller than usual and its lid thicker than usual, and I’d misjudged my strength in opening it, causing the lid to slip and slice the back of my hand open. It welled with blood immediately and my head went blank for a second; then I brought my hand over to the sink to try and wash the blood off which just made more well up. I tried using a napkin to stop the bleeding but that didn’t work, and I was feeling woozy, lightheaded as though I were about to fall. I kept telling Scout, “it’s gonna be okay” and reminding myself over and over under my breath, “don’t panic, stay calm.”
The next part is a little jumbled in my head, but here are the basics. Shakily, I grabbed a kitchen towel and wrapped my hand in that, pressing it to my chest in the hopes that the pressure would help. The wooziness got to me though and I fell awkwardly onto the floor, at which point I started to get a little scared. I was able to get back up, though, and (kind of comically) took out a spoon to try and get Scout’s meal out into his bowl.
It just felt like I had to make sure he had food before I fully focused on getting my wound taken care of.
I’m pretty sure I let myself fall to the floor again against the wall after I gave him his food, trying to think of what to do. The wooziness wasn’t going away and I was the only human in the apartment, so I did the only thing that made sense to me: I called 911.
I know. Even though it was a very deep cut, it was still just a cut, and I probably would have been okay to get myself to the hospital with my hand wrapped in the towel, but I truly didn’t know if I was going to faint completely or not, and I didn’t yet know how bad the cut was, so 911 seemed safest.
I was so out of it when I called I actually told the operator I was a year younger than I actually am. They were very kind and to the point, and I gingerly went out into the main hall sit and wait, unlocking the door for the EMTs. I rang them into the bulding, and then they got me to sit in the bathroom so they could assess my hand. They explained that I would need a tetanus booster as well as stitches, but that thankfully the wound hadn’t been deep enough to cut muscle and hadn’t nicked any nerves either.
I was so lucky!!
I thanked them for applying gauze to the wound and bandaging my hand and, having given me the all-clear otherwise, I also turned down their offer to be driven to the hospital by them in an ambulance. Having been patched up, and my body no longer in shock from the sudden wound, I was okay to get to the hospital myself — it only made sense that they should go back to being on standby to help someone else.
All of this happened well before my shift at work so I sent an email to tell my manager that I would not be in for obvious reasons (lol), those reasons being that I had to go to the hospital and get sewn up, and thus began the next leg of my adventure that day.
I charged my phone, gave Scout some extra food, packed some books (to avoid using up my phone battery), very carefully got dressed, put on my coat, then headed to the bus stop to make my way directly to the hospital. It was actually a nice sunny day above zero, the bus was relatively empty, and I arrived at the emergency room without any issues.
The estimated wait time when I arrived was 12 hours, but I thankfully got seen in less than 5, and though the process of getting sewn up was not fun (lol), the nurses and the doctor were all really kind throughout the intake process and procedure itself — three stitches on the back of my hand, between my thumb and forefinger.
I went home, cleaned up the floors and counters in the kitchen (I’d spattered quite a bit of blood), reassured Scout that everything was okay, and then had to face my newfound fear of opening cat food cans. There was no getting around that, though. I had to do it. So to make it feel safer, I fished a little cardboard box out of my recycling and surrounded the cat with it to protect my hand. Now I use it all the time.
As a little celebration after safely feeding Scout, I ordered myself a pizza :3
I went back into work the next day; thankfully, I’m doing a lot of training and quality assurance for my team’s work now, all of which I could still do mostly one-handed for the first two days. We ended up having a freezing rainstorm, and again, I was incredibly lucky that the weather the day before had been so good!
Now I’m sick though. haha!
I shower and do all my cleaning with a bandage and glove on, and so far the wound seems to be healing well. I am so, so eager to do a thorough spring cleaning (and disinfection) once this illness blows over!
In other good news, Saga made a full recovery from the flu, and ALICE NINE. are back to rocking out on their tour. Saga feels “better than before” [ apparently ]! And that selfie is the cutest, the sweetest…!
( I’m glad! I was worried about you! :)♡ )
I finally saw the setlists they’ve been playing while on tour and they are amazing. The last tour was really focused on GRACE, but this one is really integrating the songs from GRACE into setlists that celebrate all their eras. So proud of them, and can definitely understand how filled with passion each live must be!
Anyway, it’s still cold here in Ottawa, but we’re getting more and more sunny days, the Canada geese recently returned, and I’m starting to see buds on trees, so spring is just around the corner.
We got news today that Saga had come down with the flu, and though he does have a fever, it sounds like he’s relatively okay for the moment. They were definitely right to postpone some concerts for him to fully recuperate. I hope he starts to feel better in the next few days… I do worry, but of course Saga has family, doctors, and friends around him if he needs help so it’ll be okay.
Though as a musician, I can imagine it’s really frustrating to suddenly get sick that way… every fan and person who loves Saga just wants him to feel well before stepping back on stage.
My heart goes out to him ♡
The result of Arsenal’s latest match probably lifted his spirits a little, though…
I had finished my Sunday vacuuming and was well into researching publishing options for TE when Scout suddenly started pacing the floor in front of the bed, and then jumping up onto my pillow to meow loudly. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted. He wasn’t interested in playing fetch with his new toy, he’d already had breakfast, and the Scouthouse was clean (recently bought him a bigger, deeper box and he can no longer kick litter over the sides — total gamechanger for HOMEベース)… he only stopped meowing when I went over to the bed and asked him what he wanted.
He stared at me pointedly, willing me to understand.
Turns out, he wanted me to lie down and keep him company while he dozed and slow-blinked at me.
For 15 minutes. Then he was refreshed and trotted off happily.
Cutie.
In the time it took to sit down and type this entry up, Scout climbed up to the top level of his cat tree and started taking a proper nap. There are still several parameters to consider in order to decide how I’ll distribute TE digitally (aside from on this site), but I’ve read through several options and now they get to percolate in my brain while I do other things. Like finish writing the ending.
And plan for a full reformatting of the manuscript.
That’s going to be an adventure in and of itself.
This is completely beside the point, but whatever it is my neighbours are currently cooking smells so fantastic that it’s distracted me from what I was going to write next. I have put a large slice of the pie I bought last week in the oven to balance the scales.
Before getting distracted with that, however, I got distracted by deciding I would put on some bright eyeshadow for the afternoon (a new weekend ritual) but makeup is really not my forte and so the result was more off-putting than inspiring. It didn’t help that I then tried to distract from the wild eyeshadow by putting on an even louder layer of lipstick lol. Needless to say, I wiped it all off. This weekend is a naked sort of weekend, it seems. But I took a picture of my clean face anyway, because… why not? The makeup remover has such a soft, glossy residue that it kind of has its own sort of allure. And here’s some bright eyeshadow from last weekend for comparison.
There is just something that I love about wearing greyscale clothing and putting a highly-pigmented colour on my eyelids. Not that I’m opposed to wearing extremely colourful clothing… on occasion.
I’m itching to infuse some new pieces into my wardrobe this year.
Ah. The blueberry pie’s ready.
This is frickin’ delicious, in case you were wondering.
I am at roughly 3880 words so far for the completed section of TE’s chapter 10, with another 2000 rough-draft words to deal with (chapter 9 was only 3600 words, for comparison). The rest of it is all in disparate sections that I am steadily joining together and shuffling around… because of course I never write a chapter from start to finish. I edit that way, but I write sections, lines, and passages every which-way, like sticking post-it notes all over the screen (represented by highlighting things in all sorts of colours).
2000 words sounds like a lot to process, but I expect to cut out a good deal of that. Some of those lines and passages have been sitting in the file for a long time and no longer necessarily fit the narrative’s tone.
I’ll figure it out.
Some of those passages are probably at least a year old, if not older, jotted down during work breaks. A part of me is maybe hesitant to remove those sections because it feels like I should be able to make them fit, that they have history. It’s not unlike decluttering a room. What truly belongs in this space? What can I get rid of? What can I donate to another story?
Because of course I collect errant bits of prose like extra buttons, letting them sit in my metaphorical sewing kit just in case they might be suitable to mend a different garment down the line. You never know what offhand note might lead to an unexpected bit of inspiration or be a good fit for another plot.
I will end my Sunday rambling with this:
To be trans is to be human.
Trans people have always existed and they will always exist.
