The Packbats' Dreamfeed

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?
I started LiveJournal in 2002 when a new friend (soon girlfriend) heard me saying that I wanted to write more and suggested LiveJournal. "What's LiveJournal?" I said, and she gave me an invite code, and here I am.

I moved to DW in 2011, I can't remember which exact thing made me do it but it was after Strikethrough, before things got very Russian but I think they were getting pretty Russian.

2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?
Five.

3. Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?
I mean, they're all on my reading page. Most are pretty quiet; one I made for covid-cautious people and don't use much myself any more either (its name is a pun based on "herd immunity," that's how old it is...). The best are thisfinecrew, for U.S. political actions people can taken (often online or relatively low-spoons) and thissterlingcrew, the British version of the same thing. Very useful communities to have In These Times.

4. How did you pick your user name?
This one was picked by D and another friend (I now cannot remember who) independently when I was looking for a new one.

5. If you could change your user name, would you?
It's clearly from a very specific time in my life, when I was using the name Cosmo and studying linguistics.

As for changing it, I mean, I could. I have. My LJ went through a couple of names too. I almost never re-use user names either; I just use whatever sounds like a good idea at the time. I can barely remember what it was before, and would probably prefer that one now. I did make a concerted effort to get away from puns, things based on my real-life first name, or both; no wonder this is what my friends suggested for me, this is my Brand.

While I'm here, another point I've been meaning to make under this tag for a bit but haven't gotten around to: having been writing about my life for half of it now, I find myself wishing there was a way for tags to become, like, dormant or something. There are lots of tags that I want to keep having but am not going to add new entries to, so I wish I didn't always have to look at them in the list or when I'm choosing tags.

I thought I was doing okay on the weekend, but now that I'm back at work things are really rough on my brain.

Work is intensely demanding. My dreams were violent and graphic last night and I woke up wanting to do nothing more than call in sick but the work-placement person I'm responsible for started today and I had to be there to talk to her and try to find things to do despite having no idea what the rest of my team is doing and being in maybe the worst possible position to find tasks for a bright graduate who'll be here two days a week for a few months. I had two meetings in a row this afternoon with different parts of the org I work with that were properly existential: we stumbled over questions like "who's responsible for drafting the Scottish guidance on active travel?" or "what exactly do we want local authorities to do regarding the built environment?" This would be so unfair for a new person who feels like she's jumping in at the deep end just being in a meeting about what we're doing on one Government consultation.

I only realised today that I'd kinda conflated two different TfL invites and now the thing I'm going to London for tomorrow, I dint even want to and it doesn't seem worth it. I've got a train ticket I hate to waste, but bleh. Bleh!

Counseling is right after work on a Tuesday, so I managed to squeeze in a quick Teddy walk in the glorious sunshine (the weather has been amazing today, that's today's one saving grace) and then absolutely exhausted myself trying to explain my week. She's not available at rhe usual time next week but I won't be the week after, and the week after that she won't be, so I took the unusual step of fitting in an appointment at a different time next week; usually if my normal one doesn't work I just skip it, but it feels like I need more at this point.

I had this tab open before, but I've only gotten around to reading it properly now that it seems to echo that emotional literacy thing.

It's the arousal-valence model.

By identifying your current level of arousal and valence, you can start to build awareness of your bodily sensations and the connection between those sensations and your emotions.

It looks like a good next step for me in "what to do next," like it's all well and good understanding that I'm bad at identifying and acknowledging my emotions, but now what can I do to make this less of a problem for me.

The plan for today was to leave early, drive the four hours back to Manchester, and unload the van at angelofthenorth's flat.

I planned to be home by mid-afternoon. I was planning to make dinner, and I hoped to be back soon enough and with enough energy left over to walk Teddy at the usual kind of time, 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

We checked out of the hotel at 8, went for breakfast at the Starbucks in the Travelodge parking lot, and got on the road maybe half an hour later.

We'd just gotten out of town and on an A road/highway, I was just thinking about texting a quick "on our way!" for V and D to wake up to, but before I could fish my phone out of the pocket trapped by the seatbelt, ( details of car crash which sound scary so please be assured no one was injured! )

( And my pitch-black humor about the situation. )

The van was being driven by a friend of angelofthenorth's who has rented lots of vans, used to drive one for Argos, and was a very careful driver. He is a retired cop, so when we made it to a nearby lay-by/rest area, he called the rental company to report the accident, he described it very calmly and precisely, in slightly more technical terms than the lady on the other end was expecting. He said he hadn't been in an accident himself since 1990something, but all his skills were clearly intact from the many other incidents he'd called in like this.

The van wasn't badly damaged but wasn't safe to drive without the passenger side (he called it near side) mirror, and indicator/blinkers on that side too. (The mirror hadn't actually exploded, but all these things were hanging by the wires from the damaged housing.) So we had to call AA too, and wait for them to be able to send something big enough to haul a loaded Peugeot Boxer van.

The accident happened a couple minutes before 9am. After we were told "before 12.20," 11.40, 11.45 and 12.45, a nice man with a big yellow AA truck pulled ahead of us at 12.50, eliciting such cheers from the other two (who of course recognized it more quickly than I could) that I jumped a little.

We had to wait in the lay-by not far from where we'd set off, for a length of time that should've gotten us basically back to Manchester (minus stops to pee/get lunch/etc.). We were waiting there so long that angelofthenorth's blood sugar was a worry, but luckily it remained okay.

The AA man was efficient and kind, and it was a little bit exciting to get to ride in the back of his truck, which had such high steps that it reminded me of getting into tractors. He got us to the body shop he was told to take us to, we were told they would have arranged to swap our van for another one, but when we got there it was closed.

There was time pressure here too because we were also coming up on, and then quickly past, the time this poor guy was supposed to finish his shift, and his commitment to not abandoning us and our burdened van on a street somewhere in Swansea was coming up against not only the end of his shift and the beginning of his weekend, but the end of the time he'd be safe to drive -- he woke up at 4.30 this morning and I bet that seemed like a very long time ago as he was stuck with us while a surprisingly large number of telephone conversations were needed.

The looming fact that it was Friday suddenly loomed into relevance. The AA driver talked a lot about places closing early on a Friday, and already mid-afternoon I was seeing queues of traffic in Swansea as he drove us around. I hadn't expected we'd have to deal with Friday rush hour traffic of course!

Way too many frustrations, shenanigans and phone calls ensued. I'll spare you the grumbling and details but we by 2.45 we had the chance to use a toilet, by 3 we had access to a new van, by 3.30 we had swapped everything from the broken one to the new one (which while not ideal left me a little reassured by exactly what and how difficult it'd be to get it all into angelofthenorth's flat: before this, it'd been difficult for me to mentally separate what actually went in the van from the much greater amount of work I'd ended up doing in the sliding tile puzzle of moving things out of but then back into the storage containers).

Finally, we could set off.

It was 3.45.

Manchester was still four hours away.

I'd been hoping to be home by that point, showered, maybe had time for a little rest before I thought about walking Teddy.

At this point, the three of us determined that the best thing to do would be just to get home tonight, and unload the van early in the morning before it was due to be returned at noon.

It took longer than four hours, because we stopped for much-needed food in Abergavenny around 5, and maybe because this new van was limited to only going 60mph so we didn't benefit from the motorway/freeway driving as much as we might have.

I got home about 9.15pm, after an otherwise-uneventful trip back. angelofthenorth texted the group chat saying that a 9am start is planned for tomorrow morning, and then also saying "I feel like Erik should have a "please look after this goblin" sign round his neck."

I was very well looked after: helped to find food, to tidy stuff away that I literally just dropped when I opened the front door, hugged, and shooed off to a shower and bed.

I've never been so happy to be in my own house, hugged by my humans, and now in bed.

I'm in south west Wales now, helping angelofthenorth get her stuff from storage so her nice flat will finally have her nice furniture and books and etc.

We're here with a church friend of hers who drove the rented van, and we'll get to meet local friends of hers tomorrow as we tackle it.

We had a little look when we got here and I can see why she's intimidated by the task at hand: there's a lot of stuff and while we don't want much of it, some of what she does want will be way at the back so everything else might have to get moved. I brought tape and scissors and a sharpie so boxes that have to be opened can be re-packed and labeled.

It's nice to have a few days off work, and to be only needed as a henchqueer. I've had a nasty headache most of the day, so my two wishes for tomorrow are that it fucks off and that we don't get the rain that is forecast here (the storage containers are open to the elements).