Champion of the snooze button, I slap my alarm off for a third time as I feel the light tip tap of my cat’s paws on the bed, approaching me. She knows when I really start moving, it’s kibble o’clock. It’s 8:12am on April 8th, 2024, what we’ve been calling Eclipse Day at my workplace for some time now; and unfortunately for this morning grump, it’s time to shake a leg. Cat cuddles? Check. Cat kibble? Check. Shower, brush teeth, slather the testosterone topical gel on my shoulders, moisturize, and retreat to my room while it dries and to take my meds. Most people who receive testosterone as their gender affirming treatment opt for the once a week shot. There’s also a patch you can wear to bed, but I flip around worse than a pancake on the griddle in bed. Matching a daily gel with my morning medication regiment was simple enough. I’ve been on T for 20 months and it has been the greatest boost to my mental and emotional health, even more so than anxiety or depression medication. If your vessel isn’t harmonious, it’s hard to be happy. If your basic needs of shelter, food, and health aren’t being met, it’s incredibly difficult to focus; and this is why it’s so twisted to be a trans person in the state of Indiana. As my testosterone dries to my shoulder, my cat gives the sticky chemical a sniff before returning to the window. Wait, how do you protect your pets during the eclipse, again? After research tells me I really don’t have much to do to protect little miss ma’am of a cat, we’re scrambling eggs to face the day. I already knew what I was going to wear to work, since my coworker and I are dressing as the sun and moon for Eclipse Day.
10:42am : an exciting lull in setting up the eclipse viewing party at the library – a beautiful orange and white cat is perusing our garden plots! He’s everything to us! He’s peeing on government property! He hops the fence when I call him out on his adorable trespassing.
11am : we have to break for lunch, since the grounds open at 12:30. I rush to the most local wemdy’s because I was distracted scrambling eggs at an unusual time and singing along to Hadestown, I forgot to adequately prep for lunch. The apple and emergency peanut butter crackers won’t do it – if only the strawberry summer salad was in season! Alas. The cashier gets really excited when he sees the plush magikarp hanging from my car mirror. Pokémon is honestly such a great connector. Remember Pokémon Go back in 2016? As someone who has quite active (undiagnosed) ADHD, I hyperfixate pretty hard. I’ve been fixated on Hadestown (the Broadway musical) since I had the blesséd chance to see the Broadway national tour over the weekend. Even though I majored in theatre at The Ball State University, musicals aren’t really my thing – I don’t always buy into the motivation to sing between the en scenes. Hadestown certainly doesn’t have this problem, and it uses jazz and incredible instrumentation to help the story along and set it in an accessible time and place, as well as give the damn fine opportunity to showcase the orchestra on stage. Not only is the music for Hadestown fire, it’s a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice tragedy, so my English literature brain is pleasantly tickled by the adaptive nature of the piece. But most importantly, it’s a show about hope in the face of tragedy. You know this story will end in tears – but what if we could
change it? Can you dare to imagine the world for what it could be, “in spite of the way that it is”? Can you love despite the hate? Can you hope despite the darkness? I’m hopelessly optimistic, despite the personal tragedies I’ve faced. Death is one thing; loss and betrayal and hearteache are others. Death is a permanent loss. It’s the inevitable tragedy. But I’ve always been hit harder by the avoidable tragedies, by the ones that could have been different with just the smallest different choice. What if I hadn’t kissed that girl at that college – would she have lied to everyone about me in a different way? What if I hadn’t let that horrible worm of a man move into our spare room; would I be living with HIV? What if I hadn’t moved away from my high school buddy – would I have fallen in codependency mistaken for love? That drum of what ifs, keeping time in each of our minds. But now is the time for lettuce and chicken chunks in pomegranate vinaigrette; no time to ruminate on these woulda coulda shouldas when I need to get back on the clock soon. Yay, capitalism!
It’s 1:18pm and we have almost 50 people on ground, which is exciting. It’s very warm out but as a summer person I am enjoying that greatly. A child tried to hide underneath our information table for the shade; I gently suggested the playground tube nearby. A girl no more than ten walked by, kicking a rock and muttering “that was the most depressing slide I’ve ever been on.” (Please note: a slide for a three year old and a slide for a ten year old ARE NOT the same slide.) It’s so wonderful to see kiddos playing outside and to see adults hanging out in harmony. There’s this mentality that people don’t go outside anymore, and I just don’t get it. If you provide enrichment outside, people will come! I’m proud Muncie is opening a skate park soon; I think it sounds like a great initiative for getting people outside. More investment in our community, declares the public librarian (to the surprise or no one).
2:36pm “my god, would you look at that!” an elderly lady declares, and a ripple of head look up, glasses and grins on every face. It’s starting to get cool outside (as the temperature can drop up to ten degrees) and people are looking ever upwards. I check out the sun every few minutes as it starts with a bite of a cookie that is soon to be swallowed whole.
2:59pm It’s dusky with the sun straight above and I don’t like it. My body is telling me something is wrong, that my hairs are raised beyond just the cold, but from this unnatural absence. Give me my sun back! The moon is but a sliver, that stereotype you could pierce your ears with, a sharp ended noodle. I’ve given up trying to get any photos. People are shouting “hurry up!” And “don’t miss it!” The birds have fallen silent. The parking lot lights have blinked on at the increasing darkness. I snag a few pictures of the crowd for work, pleased at the display of joy and wonder in this community.
3.07pm . The eclipse hits. It’s dark, too dark: dusk at mid-afternoon. Things had been almost gray leading up to totality, a strange haze like fog, a queer silence other than excited human
chittering. I hold my eclipse viewers to my glasses and watch as the last hangnail of sun disappears.
The glow around the moon is supernatural, inviting colors that didn’t seem to exist in the full sun. Cries of delight and amazement rang out from behind me on the library lawn. A regular patron who regularly identifies himself as homeless and autistic asks if he can take a selfie with me at totality, cuz “you’re my librarian” at this library event, and I hastily agree. My coworker is asked to join, and we quickly grab a pic, wanting to get back to the brilliant burst of solar light stretching over the sun, the dusk of the world around us with golden horizons and a dark blue overhead, the red bump at the bottom edge of the eclipse – a prominence, I believe, based on my research later.
People cleared out pretty quickly after the event, and soon it was time for a trash sweep and striking the event. A surprisingly number of patrons wanted to help, which is always quite sweet. One family came up to us and said they had came from Michigan had “knew they could count on the library.” It’s such a special reward, to know that you’ve helped someone that way, to provide a memorable service to fellow human beings. But not enough time to ruminate on that, not when there’s tables and chairs to break down.
4:50pm it’s time to head home- early, even! The powers that be at the library have decided to release us early since we have cleaned up properly and quickly after the eclipse. I personally think that it would be a crime to try to keep me in the building until 6:30, so I am personally very pleased by this decision. My coworkers all seem to agree. I think I’m going to head over to downtown and see if there’s any festivities still happening. …which, as it turns out by 5pm, nothing is. Time to treat myself to an ice cream sandwich from Insomnia on the way home – I deserve it! The frats are supremely active, but considering it feels like summer at 70 degrees and many teachers likely cancelled afternoon classes (if there were BSU classes at all), this doesn’t surprise me.
5:30pm I noticed as I was uncorking my Totality sweet white bottle of wine that I gave a sunburn, which makes the new cat tattoo I have appear as though he is jumping into a lake of lava. Lovely. It was nice to chat with our upstairs neighbor/property manager (i.e. yardwork lady) and her beautiful golden retriever on the way home, and my cat seems happy to see me based on the fact that she’s following me from room to room. I think I may deserve a little stardew valley time after such an exciting day – after all, the way that the pear blossoms floated on the early afternoon breeze sure did make me think of stardew, and cherry blossom season in animal crossing. My roommate gets home about fifteen minutes later and we swap our tales of the day before landing on Abbott Elementary.
7:14pm My roomie and I chattered a bit after the show, and as he goes to his room for down time I realize that real hunger approacheth, the kind that ice cream and sweets cannot satisfy. I
amble to the fridge, scritching kitty cat on my way out of the living room. Ohhohoh, what’s this refrigerated treasure?- leftover miso soup from my weekend with my Trans Boyfriend, “T”! A delightful dinner that also means I don’t have to cook. A twofold gift! I warm the soup up and settle into my favorite armchair, draping my softest blanket over my shoulders and scrolling through my recently watched on Hulu. Some particularly fucked up parts of Adventure Time are coming up, and the dichotomy between the colorful whimsy of the world and the manipulation of Flame Princess by Finn, and a step closer into the despair of the Lemongrab kingdom. “I can’t keep playing your little boy games,” Princess Bubblegum admonishes Finn. I can think of so many fully grown men who should need to learn this lesson. It makes me wonder how my father is doing; he very rarely participates in the family group chat, even on unusual days like today. My siblings and mom and I texted a bit about the eclipse, and they’ve moved on to Purdue basketball. I am happy to disengage from the sports and betting chat.
My trans boyfriend is currently occupied at his weekly T-Day (a local gathering of his close friends who are all on testosterone and do their injection dose together), but I have been chatting about how cool the eclipse was and finances with my Cis Boyfriend, “C”. I have two boyfriends, and they are also dating each other, all of us in one big happy polycule. We live within an hour of each other’s three locations. C works nights, so we tend to chat more in the evening. We discuss the best weekend to book a zip lining excursion in Ohio, where we can also visit King’s Island with T. I take a moment to appreciate how truly lucky I am that I have two people who want to ask and listen to how my day was, who support me in any aspects of life I may need, who understand that our hearts are big enough to accept all parts of each other in romantic and platonic ways. A lot of people aren’t sure how polyamory functions, but all it really takes is some effort and full honesty. These guys make me really happy, and I make them happy, and we communicate well. Simple as that.
Soup has been consumed, and I’ve been able to type away at the diary for a bit, so it’s time to turn back to the stardew valley dimension. I think if I hedge my time right, i figure I can make it to fall in my new save from the big 1.6 update.
8:18pm My roommate has had to use his stern stepdad voice, as we call it, because the cat has tried to climb his cross stitch. Seems like we need some local animal enrichment, so out comes her favorite fluffy teaser. Murder mittens time!
8:32pm The roommate emerges to ask if I’ve seen a particular cross stitching item, which I have not. My cat runs down the hall away from him, which presents me permission to pick up stardew again. I switch over to Spotify to once again dip myself into the insane sea that is Will Wood and the Tape Worms while I play through to the fall. Maybe I can even get the deluxe barn.
9:14pm my brother has sent me a Snapchat of his dog – which is usual, and lovely – and pans over to his hand, which is bloody and punctured. Apparently there was a disagreement between the dog and a cat. I quickly contact him to ask what’s happened and the need to clean the wound well. Luckily, it’s his roommate’s new cat (from his mom), which alleviates my immediate fear of a serious infection from a stray. My bro’s dog is really great with cats, but cats are rightfully scared of 65 pounds of excited shaggy black hair, so it’ll just take time to adjust.
9:47pm it’s the first of fall in my stardew valley file, and time for me to close my laptop. Wait, would it be cheaper to get “Night in the Woods” on steam or on switch? One moment. ..cool, they’re the same price. That can wait until I do some research about which platform will run it better. Now I can close my laptop. Might as well scoop the litter box to take out the trash along with the usual nighttime routine; then with the tooth brushing and the face washing and the lotion application to my unanticipated sunburn, specifically in my right arm. I pitter about the kitchen tidying up for a bit while messaging my boys, and before I know it it’s 10:27pm , when I can reasonably retire and scroll on Tumblr, perhaps finding fodder for the pathetically gay blog i curated to the polycule. I will inevitably fall asleep to the sound of my cat purring; “full of bees” as we call it, and be especially grateful for my day in the sun and that once-in-a-lifetime shade. 10:45pm , R7 signing off.