"actually, it's going really well"
Sep. 27th, 2022 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThe first night Josh was here I went to the other bedroom and hung out feeling super sick (with a bucket, just in case, since my bathroom isn't nice enough to hang out on the floor by the toilet) and I was honestly a little concerned. My random nausea hadn't been that bad previously. Then at 6am or something I realized that I'd been at a friend's house the day before, and she had pot plants outside. I'd given them a ten-foot berth minimum, and figured I was outside and I'd be ok, so I didn't think of it as an exposure event but I guess it was. Good to know.
Despite that, and a little bit of residual tired from that, it's been really nice having Josh here. He brought up a ton of produce and I've been making a lot of hot mix pickles (cauliflower, green beans, carrots, hot peppers, a touch of celery, a light brine with 1/3 cup salt and 1/2 cup sugar per pot, which is my preference) to complement my charcuterie meats. I'm always looking for a replacement for my store-bought pepperoncinis, they need to be appropriately spicy and gently salty and have the right texture. Maybe these will be that! Either way, more pickles to have with charcuterie are always welcome; there's nothing as nice as variety in a no-effort (or no effort at the time) meal like a charcuterie plate.
Work is less stressful because last week was the silviculture conference, not the office, and this week is vacation. I'm also making an effort to interpret the rules in non-autistic ways, so when they say "that's not allowed, but you can do it, just don't let anyone know or do it too much, but it's ok to do, but it's not allowed, and don't tell the wrong people you do it" I'll just... do it and not tell anyone, rather than trying to avoid it. In an ideal workplace there wouldn't be rules like that; in a non-ideal workplace that could accommodate me I could ask for what it means, does "not too often" mean once a week? Every two weeks? In a non-patterned way? etc. Being autistic usually means taking people at their literal word and being considered inhuman because of it. There's a real art to managing the space where everyone does something but kinda just says they don't, and I'm not great at it, but we'll try. Either way it helps relieve the stress of ridiculous rules that no one will change because no one follows them anyway so they aren't an actual problem.
I painted some signs last night for many of my perennials: the roses and the gooseberries, mostly. I'm putting little signs on stakes in next to them since all my other labelling methods have failed. A wooden board screwed to a stake is too big for crows or ravens to carry off, and hopefully the paint won't fade (the new formulation of sharpies, I've learned, isn't colourfast in the sun anymore so I lost my labelling this year. Frustrating, because the labels from last year are still colourfast). I wish I painted in a nicer font, but it's still a kind of charming effect to have things labelled.
Josh found a bunch of cascade ruby gold corn ears that were both not frosted and pretty ripe, so that's excellent. I should do a separate farm post for that and the new piglets.
For some reason it's only now, after more than five years living here, that I've realized my basement bathroom fan... doesn't have an outlet on my outer walls. It *may* feed into the sewage siphon tube thing that lets gas up, that comes out my roof, but that's a narrow tube three stories up from the basement. So I guess I need two additional throughhulls in the house: one for a vent hood over the stove and one in the bathroom downstairs. Both of them only need a five or six foot run to get outside, so that's not so bad. It also explains a lot about moisture in that bathroom. Those things are, unfortunately, on the list after the deck (currently collapsing). On the plus side, if I wait a little maybe I'll also replace the awful shower down there.
Despite that, and a little bit of residual tired from that, it's been really nice having Josh here. He brought up a ton of produce and I've been making a lot of hot mix pickles (cauliflower, green beans, carrots, hot peppers, a touch of celery, a light brine with 1/3 cup salt and 1/2 cup sugar per pot, which is my preference) to complement my charcuterie meats. I'm always looking for a replacement for my store-bought pepperoncinis, they need to be appropriately spicy and gently salty and have the right texture. Maybe these will be that! Either way, more pickles to have with charcuterie are always welcome; there's nothing as nice as variety in a no-effort (or no effort at the time) meal like a charcuterie plate.
Work is less stressful because last week was the silviculture conference, not the office, and this week is vacation. I'm also making an effort to interpret the rules in non-autistic ways, so when they say "that's not allowed, but you can do it, just don't let anyone know or do it too much, but it's ok to do, but it's not allowed, and don't tell the wrong people you do it" I'll just... do it and not tell anyone, rather than trying to avoid it. In an ideal workplace there wouldn't be rules like that; in a non-ideal workplace that could accommodate me I could ask for what it means, does "not too often" mean once a week? Every two weeks? In a non-patterned way? etc. Being autistic usually means taking people at their literal word and being considered inhuman because of it. There's a real art to managing the space where everyone does something but kinda just says they don't, and I'm not great at it, but we'll try. Either way it helps relieve the stress of ridiculous rules that no one will change because no one follows them anyway so they aren't an actual problem.
I painted some signs last night for many of my perennials: the roses and the gooseberries, mostly. I'm putting little signs on stakes in next to them since all my other labelling methods have failed. A wooden board screwed to a stake is too big for crows or ravens to carry off, and hopefully the paint won't fade (the new formulation of sharpies, I've learned, isn't colourfast in the sun anymore so I lost my labelling this year. Frustrating, because the labels from last year are still colourfast). I wish I painted in a nicer font, but it's still a kind of charming effect to have things labelled.
Josh found a bunch of cascade ruby gold corn ears that were both not frosted and pretty ripe, so that's excellent. I should do a separate farm post for that and the new piglets.
For some reason it's only now, after more than five years living here, that I've realized my basement bathroom fan... doesn't have an outlet on my outer walls. It *may* feed into the sewage siphon tube thing that lets gas up, that comes out my roof, but that's a narrow tube three stories up from the basement. So I guess I need two additional throughhulls in the house: one for a vent hood over the stove and one in the bathroom downstairs. Both of them only need a five or six foot run to get outside, so that's not so bad. It also explains a lot about moisture in that bathroom. Those things are, unfortunately, on the list after the deck (currently collapsing). On the plus side, if I wait a little maybe I'll also replace the awful shower down there.
