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I’ve got a day off this week. No comics, no print shop, just… a weekend day. You know, like the kind that most people get. I try to give myself one of these every week, but it’s not always possible. For now, I have to cherish them as I get them. This blog post will just be a journal of what I did today on an October day in 2025 in my hometown of Portland.

Instead of using “my day off” to sleep in, I got up with my partner to take them to work. I needed the car today. They made me iced coffee and gluten free waffles, the kind with extra protein, with cream cheese on top and sausage on the side. I’m very, very, very blessed and thankful that En does the cooking. I hate cooking, I always have hated cooking. Thank you, En. It was raining, and the leaves just started turning red. We’ve lived in this apartment for just a year and some change, and there’s something special about the second go around in a place. The second autumn is when you start to notice patterns in how the light moves across the rooms, how the traffic changes on the street. It feels like home here.

We’ve been thinking lightly about what it would be like to move to Seattle in five years. It’s a bigger city, and so many of our friends live up there. It could be nice to try out for a while, but we decided to save the uncertainty (and expense) for another time, maybe under a different regime. Besides, Portland is home. It’s already perfect just the way it is.

Big Swiss

Anyway, En drove the car to work with me in shotgun. I hate driving on the highway in the city, especially when it’s raining. They’re from SoCal and are a much more confident driver than I. After all, my intention when moving here 10 years ago was to not have a car, and for the most part, I got by fine for years and years with just a bike and the bus. But the highway is faster than the side streets, so En drove and we listened to a portion of an audiobook they’re borrowing from the library. Big Swiss? From what I gather it’s a story about a transcriber for a psychiatrist that falls in love with one of the patients. I liked the part that I heard, so I think I’ll add it to my queue.

let Myself Be Bored

After dropping them off, I went to a pharmacy that had testosterone gel in stock. While in line, I challenged myself to not look at my phone, to let myself be bored, to take in all the details of the boring pharmacy waiting area, to let my mind bounce between wandering and observation like it did when I was a kid. It felt purifying. I felt my hand reflexively go for my phone four times. On the fifth time, I let it happen. Man, that’s scary stuff.

My prescription ran out last week, and the pharmacy near me wouldn’t have a resupply for another week. I had them transfer it to the closest one that had it available, and it was still only half my prescription. It was in a neighborhood I hadn’t been to in years. A friend of mine used to live over there 8 years ago, and going to the weird, small grocery store on that street flooded back memories of cat sitting, waiting for the bus in the sun, crashing on her couch when I was temporarily homeless, and crafting a katana out of foam for a cosplay. I was just 23. Time flies.

Revisiting My First Neighborhood

The rest of my morning, my mission was to find a replacement menstrual cup, which was proving to be difficult. En told me that Mama and Hapa’s carries some, so I went there next. I parked on a street I used to live on near the Mississippi neighborhood and reflected on how I lived there for the first four years out of college. I was so young, exploring my new city, going to book club, day dreaming about the future. Life is different now, but it’s good. It was good then, too. It’s always been good.

Menstrual cup search at Mama and Hapa’s (a zero waste store) was a success! It’s very soft and a good dupe to the Cora cup I had been using. Shout-out to this store, btw. They have the best dishwasher tabs, and En and I have been using them for years. My errands weren’t complete, I still needed to find a few “thinking of you” cards for my friends on the east coast. I wandered up and down Mississippi, stopping into the stores that were just starting to open at 11am. Nothing happens in Portland before 11am. (Or after 11pm, either.)

I impulsively ended up at She Bop and got myself a gift. I had been meaning to get new toys for years, and I’m finally doing it this year. I have one life to live, I need to be jerking off exactly how I want to. And bonus: they had greeting cards with silly horny sayings on them, which was perfect to send to my friends to let them know I’m thinking of them.

Lunch

I had some downtime in the middle of the day, which I intentionally did not let myself draw during. I spent time with my cat Peepee and wrote letters to friends and ate tinned fish on rice crackers. That’s all. I’ve been in a really grateful mood lately. I’m the most broke I’ve ever been, and yet I’m still so content and happy with how my life has ended up so far. Being 31 is very good. It’s a very peaceful, reflective year.

Moving Time + Sauna

It’s my day off, which in lesbian terms, means I’m helping a friend move apartments! Another year, another trip full of boxes in the Honda. This car is the one we packed full of En’s earthly possessions when they moved to Portland from LA in 2022. It’s how we moved apartments last year and how we helped other friends move, as well. For an itty bitty car whose seats don’t fold down, it can fit a surprising amount of stuff! Thankfully the rain let up for the rest of the day, which made this activity much easier. I met up with Paz and Cam to load up our individual cars and transport the goods to the other end of the neighborhood. I love North Portland. All that stuff about Seattle? Get rid of it. I never said that. NOPO TIL I DIE, BABY.

We met Cam’s new upstairs neighbors, a lovely lesbian couple, and now we have hiking plans in the works. And they gave me some gluten free bread! Am I… truly and divinely blessed? By the dyke gods themselves? Yes.

After wrapping up with all the bags and boxes, I got back on the road to pick up En, followed by an evening in the sauna with Cam and Paz to celebrate the move. We concluded with takeout from our fave Mediterranean place and watching YouTube videos about geographic regions in the United States.

I just want to remember this day. I didn’t think a day like this was possible when I was younger. It was kind of perfect. Life gets better once you can start living it.

🎵 Indigo de Souza “Real Pain” <— stuck in my head today