• I helped conduct five interviews this morning (which as my manager who's doing them with me pointed out is always weirdly draining -- there's something about having all these potential futures appear before you, where the decision you make affects people's lives so differently, depending on what you choose...even here when it's only for a ten-week placement like this).

• I had a really demanding meeting this afternoon that I had not been able to prepare for at all. It went okay but oof. Coulda been better!

• Then we went to go collect groceries, and V's shoes which have been repaired.

• Then I had counseling. Today we talked about what we ended up calling different "circles" of my life: work, Minneapolis, local stuff (by-election mostly), household, community care, self-care... Normally when one circle has felt like too much there's been a nicer one I can shift my focus to, but lately it feels like they've all been shitty. It helped to talk about this even if it wasn't anything I don't think about regularly.

• I walked into my bedroom where I do counseling (it's on the phone) and my first thought was oh yeah, I meant to change the bedding yesterday and then I didn't...I should do that. And it was mostly done by the time she called! And I did the rest right after.

• And on only the second time I went back upstairs after that I remembered to take the laundry down with me! And the washing machine was free so I chucked it right in. This is all like warp-speed, by my usual standards.

I didn't even have time to walk Teddy today. But we did get fancy takeout (yay, vegetable tempura!) re-scheduled from me fucking up the plan last night, and watched some TV and I managed to stay mostly awake until 9pm. That's good enough.

1 what's your favourite kitchen appliance?
I never really thought about ranking them. The kettle is probably my favorite because it gets used the most.

2 do you have a collection of anything?
Random things related to Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch)

3 what's the best job you've ever had?
Probably the one I have now.

4 what's the worst job you've ever had?
Temping for minimum wage in a team that chased people up for overdue loans. I was new to the UK, so my partner and I were ineligible for all benefits, and I had a lot more in common with the people on the other side of these phone calls I could hear all day long as I was becoming The One Who Could Make the Printer Work and learning to like bananas because we had free fruit in the office and I needed the calories.

5 what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?
The green couch I bought the WonderHouse is pretty good. I can't remember where it came from; V sorted it out online of course.

6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
"Minimal effort" to me is taking something out of the freezer and putting it in the oven, which isn't a recipe. I guess in terms of things that I'd call a recipe that aren't difficult (and really pay off in how delicious it is, there's always the broccoli halloumi thing.

7 are you married or do you intend to get married?
I am not. I wouldn't say I intend to but I didn't intend to the other time either and it ended up being useful for geopolitical reasons so I wouldn't rule that out again in the future.

8 do you have kids? do you want them?
No and...I do not want to have them in terms of from my own body, and I'm fine that my life doesn't seem to have brought me any, but also if it had I think that would've been fine too.

9 are you on good terms with your parents?
...yes? This kinda came up at transgym yesterday: on the spectrum between good parents and shit parents mine are kinda...shit in practice but also... I talk to them every Sunday evening, which a lot of people would consider being pretty close and my parents consider less than the minimum to be happy.

10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?
ahahaha I have never found a good answer to this question. Do I have siblings in that I do and he turns up in anecdotes and suchlike? Or do I not in that if I say I do people ask stuff like "do you hang out with him?" and I can never hang out with him.

11 do you vote?
I vote in two countries! I just applied for a postal vote for the upcoming by election, because I can't remember if I'd done that since I got the notifications about it expiring.

12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?
Technically the mortgage on my old house but that didn't feel like a purchase. Next up is my Indefinite Leave to Remain which cost me I think I calculated about £7500 -- at the time. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, that'd be £12,828.24, and that's not counting that the Home Office has more-than-doubled the costs of those visas and applications since.

13 what are your hobbies?
Listening to podcasts, watching baseball.

14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into?
Hiking.

15 do you collect anything?
Aches, cynicism, grudges... wait, is this a question about knickknacks?

16 how long have you known your oldest friend?
I'm not really in very good touch with anyone I knew before I moved here, so probaby 18 or 19 years (despite being partners and good friends before that, neither D or I can remember what year we actually met but it was either 18 or 19 years ago).

17 are you a member of any clubs or associations?
local Queer Club. I have a gym membership lol. I don't think anything else?

18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education?
I'm a millennial, we don't get fields and careers. Not the disabled ones among us especially.

19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?
I had them all taken out at 18, I didn't want to, my dentist said I had to, they'd be causing me loads of pain. They never did. I'm still convinced he did it to get money out of my parents.

20 what's your favourite beverage?
Coffee

21 do you have any living grandparents?
I did until a year ago.

22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?
D's niblings, his sister's two kids. They are great. They're also tweens/young teens now so increasingly absent/mysterious/incomprehensible, but still such good fun when we do get to hang out.

23 what's the coolest place you've visited?
There are so many, and it's hard to compare them. At the moment my first thought is the Atomium in Brussels.

24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?
BA (Hons) Linguistics. It has been very useful to me: not in an employment sense (beyond the fact that I think having a degree made it easier to get my job), but it has been so helpful to me to be able to approach my life and the world through this lens.

25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a washing machine if you could only have one or the other?
Oh the times in my life when I haven't owned a (working) washing machine have been absolutely miserable. It's much easier to wash dishes by hand than to wash clothes by hand (or go to the laundromat even if there is one closer now than there used to be because it's where my barber was!).

26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?
We mostly shop online. D has a kind of master list that we just tick off what we need each week(ish) when we do the order.

27 what's your favourite household chore?
Mowing the lawn.

28 what chore do you hate the most?
Cleaning things I don't know how to clean/never feel like I get it clean.

29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?
We have so many, I'm so lucky. V looks after them; this is something else I would be shit at noticing in time. But I love living surrounded by them.

30 what's your living arrangement? (who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other?
I live with my boyfriend and his partner, in a suburban semi-detached house that I think was social housing? Sold in the 80s to a builder who...did things to it himself, many of which have consequences we're still living with. Technically the mortgage is D's and I'm a lodger but in practice all three of us contribute to the bills/food/household stuff.