Transplanting a Seattleite

I had a ton of fun in dealer rooms at RavenCon and at BaltiCon. Several dealers told me their Square or whatever device “didn’t do phones”, but of course they all did. And they were all surprised that they worked. And then one of them failed to notice a payment hadn’t completed immediately, but I was chatting with the neighboring stall and we redid it no problem. I also hadn’t bothered to check for the ack text that time, but I went back and checked all my previous purchases; it really was just that one.

Recently, when I was chatting with someone while buying furniture (hopefully this is anonymous enough because I’ve been buying so much fucking furniture), I was told they switched processors when their processor would only allow NFC payments (card or phone) up to $500. I will note: this is a _furniture_ store. The processor’s explanation was that NFC payments were less secure than physical cards (presumably with the chip, because if they meant swipe, boy, this is a much stupider story than I had thought). We agreed that this was foolishness, but then I got to thinking about it.

Isn’t a phone NFC payment — Apple Pay or whatever — _MORE_ secure than the same payment on the same card using NFC? I means, if I lost my card, someone could use the card. But the phone is gonna be harder. Obviously, for _me_ the phone is more secure because tokenization.

But the whole thing really made me realize just how befuddled we have all become about the many types of payment available and how they work and how to tell that they did work — or didn’t work.

Good news, tho — at the furniture stores, it is belt and suspenders all the way. They get my address, phone number, physical address, they make sure that the transaction completes, I get an ack SMS and another from the card’s app, and there is usually an emailed receipt and I also get a printed receipt. We know sooooo much about each other.

It does feel a little weird tho that so many people doing in person transactions on the business side appear to have a really shaky understanding of how these things work. On the other hand, stories of cashiers not knowing how to handle cash transactions where someone handed over coins to try to make things come out even are Legend.

I walked with M.

I went to Fly By Night and ordered T.’s chair. I also ordered the Norwalk couch and a mattress for A. and one for me in the new house (we are flipping bed sizes — she’s going from a full to a queen and I am the reverse). Everything to be held in the warehouse near the new house. Woot! Big Accomplishments! I also stopped by Lawless and looked at samples for reupholstering my wing chair Again (I think this is round 3? But I might have forgotten one). I’m going with pink, in hopes that one of the younger folks wants it for a bedroom, office or sitting area, because I have no place to put it. If they don’t, it’ll be at our current house until we sell it and then some lucky person will get a pink wing chair (which, I will just say, is NOT an easy thing to acquire).

We got to therapy on time, but A. wasn’t done with her hair yet. She was surprised that the therapist would be okay with her arriving with her hair a mess (I told her it would be fine and it was) and that the therapist would likely support her finishing that task during the session (she was). The therapist even supplied a mirror! But she wanted A. to problem solve propping up the mirror, and I wasn’t interested in spending the entire session on that task. I waited, asked A. if she wanted help, A. said yes, I provided two sentences of suggestions (something to prop it against and something in front to keep it from sliding, probably books).

Therapist was not happy. A. fled shortly after her hair was done to go to the loo and didn’t return for a while after, so therapist and I discussed how I had not allowed A. enough time to problem solve the mirror situation. I thought it was a lot more important to bring therapist up to speed on recent developments around A.’s sleep and gastro issues. We didn’t have a ton of time to work through any of this anyway, and we were coming at it from really different angles. I’m disappointed and honestly a little angry about the idea that I’m somehow to blame / responsible for any unhealthy attachment going on here. To be fair to the therapist, R. has described A. around me lately as being like a facehugger. There _is_ a real problem. BUT A. WAS CARTOONISHLY TRANSPARENT ABOUT THE HAIR NOT BEING DONE WAS EXPECTED TO AVOID THERAPY ENTIRELY. I mean, why fucking fall for that? And if that wasn’t obvious, she fled to the bathroom as soon as her hair was done.

Whatever is going on isn’t going to be resolved while sleep isn’t happening for anyone in the house, so that’s number one. The gastro issue is much better (who knows if it was a bug, sleep, lactase, a lot of Biena chickpea snacks or the probiotic that fixed it). I think we’ve all given up on the idea that we can get A. some meds to help her with the anxiety so at least we can quit talking about that. I’m annoyed enough with the therapist that R. is going to be responsible for transporting A. to therapy and then coming back home for his zoom bridge which occurs right when therapy ends. No point in burning that social activity down over this foolishness. I’ll pick her up. And I’m going to talk to her about whether she wants to keep going, and what will be involved in going if she wants to keep going. We’ll talk through when she has to get up, and how breakfast will happen, and that R. will take her and I will pick her up. I’m also going to set some kind of If You Are More Than 15 Minutes Late to Therapy More Than Two Times We Are Ending Therapy, with the understanding that high quality excuses for being late don’t contribute to the Three Strikes rule — if they leave on time, but the car dies, for example, that does not count. If A. hasn’t bailed by when we get the certificate of occupancy, we’ll have to figure out at that point whether to continue, since I for sure want to be in the new house on Fridays if at all possible. And if we do continue, we’ll have to figure out when to shift to for the new school year. Either way, we’re out at the end of next school year.

For background:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/04/the-non-partisan-puzzle-in-the-conversion-therapy-case/

And a couple days ago:

https://governorsoffice.colorado.gov/governor/news/protecting-lgbtq-youth-governor-polis-signs-bill-and-executive-order-protect-coloradans

SCOTUS said that a predetermined outcome was the problem. As the first link shows, that’s a really foolish and dangerous precedent that could crawl out and affect medical care across the board. I tend to think we’d all be better off treating the medical industry as hirable experts rather than trusted experts, but I also know this is NOT going to work for most people, so it isn’t a goal of mine for everyone.

What’s missing from both these links (it’s morning, I have things to do, I haven’t dug into it) is any discussion of all the pastoral counseling done in conservative churches, camps and so forth. It would seem to me that bans of speech, er, therapy directed at predetermined outcomes would likely cover those other activities as well. Heh heh heh. Will the future include a world in which het can only be validated but not advocated for in a therapeutic context? I would be fine with that. The way the original plaintiffs that led to the SCOTUS decision framed that decision was, hey, we CAN bring our worldview into therapy. The court signaled clearly that legislation that took a different approach to banning conversion therapy could work — whether it knew that as a whole or not, that was the effect, just as so many pre Dobbs decisions signalled clearly what the court was prepared to support.

Colorado’s prompt response is delightful.

Today, I was supposed to get A. to school, then drive from Burlington to Fitchburg to do two apartment tours for T. I did get A. to sleep through the night last night, by inventing a Pink Cottage for her to go into in her head, with some consoling magical elements. I fell asleep, snored, so she moved back to her own bed, and fell asleep and stayed that way. Finally.

Anyway. It was rough getting there (I’ll finish catching up on the blogging in a bit), and while we were looking okay on getting to school on time, as always it started falling apart around 9:45 am. I completely lost it, because I was trying to offload either the drive to Fusion or the drive to Fitchburg onto R. and he was doing his little dance of misinterpreting “Do you want to”. We had a phone conversation about how he wants to negotiate allocation of tasks. He suggested rewording of, “Can I”, and I pointed out that I used to do this, and he would said, “I can but I don’t really want to”, hence the current wording, and me taking on way too many tasks that should be split between us. He cannot really argue mental health requires him to go to work any more because he’s retired, and also, I was having a full on crisis of the sort that if exposed to outsiders would involve me being hustled off somewhere involuntarily. (<— This is not a joke.) (I know what that involves and I was having that kind of crisis.) (Things are really bad when I don’t get enough sleep. This is also a general truth.)

He wound up taking A. to school, and as near as I can tell, she got there on time. I drove to Fitchburg early, and T. rearranged things so that the tours started earlier and with more time between them which made that way less stressful altho still stressful. The Forest street apartment is super cute, but the stairs are deeply incompatible with getting a sleeper sofa up to the third floor walkup I was touring. Also, not sure how I feel about that steam heat. On the good side, it’s huge, and maintenance seems to be super responsive so whoever rents that place, I’m a little jealous.

The Willow Street apartment is probably what we will go with. T. wanted a tour of a 2 bedroom, which has two lofted bedrooms both open to the main room and thus no sound isolation of any sort anywhere. I asked to tour a 1 bedroom, and it’s the same but NO loft, just one bedroom and a big room with the kitchen, in the usual layout (walk in, kitchen to the right, peninsula bar seating, large room with windows — extra height because ex-factory building, bedroom, bathroom, you’r back to the door). No in unit laundry, but no mildew smell at all in the coin-op laundry on the first floor. Everyone’s very friendly.

Latest move in date for both is mid-July — they only JUST got their list of July 1 move ins, so it’ll be a few weeks before they have their August list, which they mostly already know but need to actually see commitments to moving out before they commit to re-renting. I think a one bedroom in the Willow Street building is the correct choice, even tho T. can’t fit all his planned furniture in there. He’s fine, and will just nix the dining table and chairs in favor of barstools. He went a little nuts on the furniture anyway.

I told him that I wanted to do some more looking around and would do more tours on my own and get back to him. That should get us to where we can actually get a mid-August move in date, which would be better all around. He’ll have to wait for some of his furniture, but getting fancy brand new furniture at this age is by no means typical anyway, so it’s probably for the best.

Oh, and I got an oat milk latte at Infinity Coffee right next door to Willow St and across from the intermodal station. Really Good Coffee. Nice people.

Meanwhile, there was the usual array of questions — some stuff about the garage, a bunch of things about window treatments. I did actually ask MC for a sheer in Reception to match the sheer in the Bar window, which will look awesome, and I’m approaching a complete solution for the window hardware and curtains that had been planned for Reception and then encountered the reality of the sconces I picked out for that window (and love).

There was a fire drill at A.’s school while she was in the loo, and head of school was amazing and helped her calm down but also expressed concern so I sent a detailed email update and am somewhat dreading what kind of reply I might get. If history holds, I’ll get something along the lines of, it sounds like you have a great plan good luck let us know if you need further assistance and we’ll stay in communication.

R. and I went to Great Road Kitchen for dinner and both had the poke bowl. They gave him extra mango (mine). It was yummy. It took longer to get A. to sleep and she slept in my bed; she’s too warm to sleep in a bed with so I went over to her room. Two nights of over 8 hours is really, really good.

(This is a catch up blog posted Tuesday morning)

I drove out to BostonWood Furniture to take a look at the bookcases in person. They seem fine. Their lead time is a little long right now, because one of their makers took a bad fall and broke his collarbone. Yikes. My dad did that as a kid, and R. did that when T. was little. It’s a horrible, extended recovery period.

I had a lovely phone call with JC while returning from BostonWood Furniture. R. and I went out to dinner at LTGT with the Bs, which was very fun.

I spent some time looking at recent pictures in ProCore, and saw one of the window in “Reception” (space between the kitchen and the bar, where the entry hall dumps into the main living room). I have these gorgeous silk lined curtains from India (during the tariffs, this was the one I received a legit message from DHL, reached out to the seller, and was reassured that they would be paying that — usually I’m the one who has to pay for it but in this case I picked a seller using a US side address, which I felt implied they were on the hook for the tariffs and rolled it into the price and I was correct). (I just want to say, I kind of want a court case that has the government suing someone for misrepresenting the value of the shipped item to avoid paying much tariff, and the argument revolves around whether it is a crime to misrepresent the value of the shipped item when the tariff itself is illegal but has not yet been found to be illegal but ultimately will possibly while the trial is in process. If you know of such a case, please tell me! I’d also take one where the shipper had to pay a fine, but then wanted to appeal it on the basis of the tariff being found to be illegal. I think the timeline was too short for any of this?)

Anyway. The silk curtains were for this window, and the lovely photo I was looking at showed the sconces (that I picked) right where the rod (that I picked) for the curtains (that I picked) was going to also go. Ooops. All. My. Fault. No one else was involved. *sigh*

I thought I’d have time to figure out a solution, but the Bs were done at the warehouse sale early and not inclined to return home, and immediately turn around to go to Hudson for dinner at LTGT with us, so they went straight to Hudson and asked us if we’d like to show up early. Which we did, but my head was all over the place. That’s fine. They have a great bar, and the brussel sprouts and the chicken was great.

Also! I asked MB (her) if IB might be willing to hang out / check in with A. while we were away in VA for a couple days in a few months bringing back my sister’s family and some of their stuff for a visit to the new house / first stage of their move. Or if MB knew of someone else who might be able / trustworthy for this role. (I found out a day later that YES! Yay!!!! Posting this whole thing on Tuesday June 2 as part of catch up blogging because Reasons).

T. made his way home successfully from Ireland, got through all the international reentry stuff and onto a flight to DC. I’m not sure exactly what he did, but he got to my sister’s, retrieved the box of stuff that successfully arrived there earlier today, as well as some towels and groceries for breakfasts, and into a rideshare to his apartment for the next two months. R. had no idea he was doing any of this, or why. There are days. It’s not like this was a secret or anything. R. knew he was in Ireland, but not why. I know I talked to R. about the timing on the end of the FSU sponsored learn-abroad ending and the beginning of the Washington Center internship.

C. was available as an in person sub for A. for her dance / fitness class but that didn’t get scheduled until fairly late and we missed it. Oh well! She did go to her other class and I brought her down and back because R. was Busy. I had both the chicken lettuce wraps AND the poke salad at the Yard House with a Kish and Tell. It was way too much food, but I did not eat anything for dinner other than half of a Rubicon blackout 4” cake. Which was plenty!

The rest of the day was spent going to the Old Circle Furniture Warehouse Sale. I had no idea what I was going to be walking into, but I’ve been planning the furniture purchases for the new house for months now and we’ve been customers of Circle for over a decade so we had a lot of familiarity with the things that might be present in the warehouse.

And we did _great_. I got 3 recliners (2 with integrated foot rest, 1 with an ottoman), a sleeper sofa (for the music room — not the gaines that I wanted but the perry which is fine, and obviously a different fabric but it is lovely and will work perfectly), a nice live edge with metal oval legs console / wall table also for the music room, and a half dozen of the Corinna chairs that R. likes. We ALSO got 3 hiteak palm dining side chairs and a hiteak dining director chair. And a ton of Houe — a big outdoor bamboo and granite table, a smaller but still substantial Pico table, 10 stackable dining chairs (lamella), 2 lounge rockers (ditto). Everything but the sleeper sofa is already in our house (the teak is on the covered porch, and one of the recliners is in the garage awaiting transfer — I’m going to reuphoster my wing chair again).

I was really uncertain about the Houe for the big deck, partly because I felt quite cold sitting on the plastic lamellas, and partly because they are powdercoated steel and if the powdercoat comes of it is going to rust. But then I thought, hey, this would work fine in the pool room. So that’s all different than planned and not a problem at all. I’ve made some further adjustments (still need storage, but now going with Chili for the color instead of the Ash Blue, and I think cubby cabinets instead of the lower console). I’m not going to bother buying the fancy Gloster dining table and chairs for the big deck. We’re going to mix and match what we already have and maybe add a few pieces from hiteak, and get a manorhouse expandable — until I change my mind again, which feels inevitable at this point.

I redid the slides and spreadsheet to reflect the changes and started collecting images. It was a really fun way to spend the day.

Oh, and I think A. has some of my sorbitol sensitivity issues, so I’m going to start giving her gas-x whenever she has peaches / pears / apricots and similar. She was up late last night feeling like something was horribly wrong but nothing was localized. I’ve given her ibuprofen and a gas-x for this type of thing in the past since I had no idea what it was and that always worked, but I bet I could JUST give her the gas-x and it would be fine. Probably pre-emptively would be better. I mean, not when she eats the fruit, but a couple hours later.

I got up early enough to go for a walk with M. at 9 am. Woot! It wasn’t hot yet and it was nice to get a walk.

I made A.’s breakfast and my lunch and headed out to the new house with the drawer pulls for the drawers in reception. I made a lot of decisions about knobs. Good day, a little muddy at the house but not too bad. The railing in the 2nd floor seating area looks truly, truly, truly beautiful.

R. and I went out to eat at Silver Girl. I had the beans and greens and the foccacia and the olive oil cake. It was slightly too much food, especially with the Tokyo Boilermaker (in a can! And a fancy little glass and sitting on a tray — very cute, and very well curated beer + whisky — I got it because the whisky was nikka coffey grain, and I trusted them to pick a matching beer and they really did). I also got a 1 oz pour of the Van Winkle 12 year reserve. I’m thinking I really do need to get a bottle of that. I have thought this before, but never successfully acquired any. I’ll probably keep not actually acquiring any.

Because it is a holiday weekend, Sunday is NOT the last day of the con, altho sadly the last day of the art show so A. and I both missed it completely. Oops.

We did a last minute loop of the dealers and bought a bunch of stuff — chocolate, 3 d dragon, some laser cut wood coasters.

My sister and I had dinner at the hotel. The buffet was fine. I was sad that Clock Restoration was not open on Sunday.

We had gone to Whole Foods to get some stuff including PB &J, rolls, baked goodies for breakfast, and then stopped at Kneads Bakery. This was my sister, K and I. Kneads was good! Great service, 2 egg breakfast above average not just on the sourdough bread, either, and a latte with oat milk. Mmmmm. K. was a bit frosty because she’d had to wait so long for breakfast. I’d had no idea and felt kinda bad about it and also hey, you are allowed to tell me what is going on and I will try to help. Also, could have eaten at hotel cafe or restaurant and charged it to the room.

My sister had planned to return home today, but switched her ticket.

I got a Lyft over to Target to buy a couple foam pillows and some fruit and a bag of baby carrots. All the fruit would be eaten (I’m posting this on the train home a few days later) but the carrots went into the fridge in A.’s room and froze solid. Ooops.

I went to the Walter’s Art Museum to see the Doureia Fletcher exhibit, which I expected to be good and it wildly exceeded expectations. I walked around some of the rest of the museum and it was fine.

I went to Cajou, which does vegan / plant based ice cream, using cashew milk. Absolutely fantastic. I had the baklava scoop and chocolate scoop with raspberry, on a black cocoa cone. Soooooooo good.

I went to Clock Restoration bar and grill. Speakeasy! Fantastic bar. The old fashioned is amazing. The sazerac was really good. I got the cobb salad and inserted myself into a very fun couple conversations. Love love love. Highly recommend. You can bring under 21s in, even (foreshadowing). I brought an order of fish and chips back to the hotel for A., and she ate all of it.

I did a few panels and may or may not update with details when I can refer back to the schedule because my brain requires prompting.

My sister and niblings arrived, and I got them checked in, and then my sister and I went and had drinks in the bar (I had drink, since I’d already had two). We ran into JB (agent) and PF (his latest author) not knowing at all who we were talking to initially. That was fun.

I went to Landry and Arcari in Framingham to look at a rug. The rug was nice, but I ultimately decided that the antiqu-ing effect was not for me. There was a different, actually antique rug that was fantastic, but too large for the space. Oh well! I saw the Logan Express facility when I headed out, so that was cool. That’s a big garage where you can park your car, check a bag, go through airport security and ride a bus out to past-security at Logan. I’d read about these elsewhere and only recently learned that there was one near me. Very exciting!

I went to Lane Bryant, where I also did not buy anything.

I filled out A.’s permission form for the prom. I brought A. home. Traffic was horrendous, despite it being fairly early (before 3 pm when we started). It took about an hour to get home, so I was late for M., but she was able to be flexible and we had a visit anyway. She did not care to walk (it was very hot, high 80s or low 90s — or mid 90s on concrete). I got a walk later on by myself while chatting on the phone with AY.

I brought a Nature’s Bakery bar, a cookie from AS, and a banana with me because I was out during my lunch time. When I got back, I had a large salad and then somewhat later I had a burger; I made burgers for A. and R. also (and fries for them, too). I had some cereal late in the evening. A little odd for food today, but it seemed fine.