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May. 27th, 2024 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormNow that I'm home, and still on leave from work, I am finally able to sort some of the stuff out I'd intended to get to originally. My capacity is tiny, which is to say I have a couple to a few hours of movement/doing things if they're interspersed with resting per day, one phone call every second day or so whether it's practical/medical or for social, eating several times a day but minimal food-making, and that's mostly it?
So I managed to arrange for someone to pick up the pigs tomorrow, I'm keeping Baby and Hooligan back because they're old and friends. I unloaded the truck, which took 2 days and a furniture dolly (boxes of clay are roughly 40-50lbs and I just couldn't lift them the first couple days). I went in to my specialists appointment and they eventually gave me a bed to lie down on since I couldn't sit as long as I needed to without my head supported.
In February I'd ordered chicks with a friend and we got the reminder email last week, but I somehow thought they were coming next Sunday. Well, yesterday-Sunday she messaged me to ask where at the airport to pick them up. So yesterday I cleaned out the bottom chicken coop (6 wheelbarrows of light bedding) so I can move the silkies over into it so I can put the chicks to brood in the quail house. The quail house bedding is moister, so heavier, and I need to move everyone over at night when they're sleeping, so it'll be a couple days. Meanwhile the babies are brooding downstairs in a giant rubbermaid tub brooder on the sofa. Little Bear is interested but there's lots else going on.
When your memory sucks every day is a surprise.
I also had a talk with my supervisor, who-- you know, I think I need a lot more words to say "it's still bad and I don't get to see my doctor till after the leave is over because Healthcare so I can't really plan at this point"
A friend brought me by soup and bread. Another friend helped me out financially. I feel safe, and I feel like I shouldn't feel safe.
I haven't had capacity to do pottery yet. That's hard. Because I can do only one or two things a day I need to have food lined up and no animal/work/medical stuff, but because I can only do one or two things a day most days contain something I need to do, I can't get it all out of the way to clear my schedule.
My housesitter killed about half my tomato plants by number, and more than that by variety %. I still have maybe 16 flats of peppers and tomatoes, and I started a bunch of squash and leafy greens and re-started some of my precious northern cantaloupe seeds. I'm getting to the point where some of these I don't have backup seeds for, either because they're an F1 or a rare unobtainable variety or whatever. That isn't to say I can't get other seeds and start them next year - it's too late now to start more tomatoes or peppers -- but it's a loss. Turns out the plants started dying after a week and instead of messaging me to ask what to do the housesitter decided to wait till I came back to explain. Who knew what could have been saved in that time?
She also, like every human to enter my house without intimate knowledge and care for me, threw out the "rotten" tomatoes in a bowl on the counter -- my seed tomatoes that the parent plant is now dead, so that line's done -- and I'm pretty sure fed one of my prosciuttos ("moldy cheese") to the pigs to get them in the pen when they got out, and despite very very very careful instructions to take only the meat from the downstairs bedroom freezer (which had frozen and thawed) to lure the pigs in used the gorgeous salmon Josh brought me from the freezer in the carport instead.
A ton of things in my house are unique, irreplaceable, and don't make a lot of sense to people without exposure to the concepts behind them. When people visit and try to be well-meaning (and don't have unique homes of their own) generally irreplaceable or hundreds of dollars worth of stuff gets destroyed. Other people's houses are frequently inexplicable to me but I don't think I destroy stuff like that? I've finally got mom trained, pretty much, and Tucker and Josh understand. But it's frustrating and I think it's yet another reason I wish I had more space-- space to entertain separate from the living space which contains what I do with my time everyday.
Anyhow, that aside we've had good rain on and off, more than we've had in awhile. I'm hardening off my tomatoes. Something on my back deck eats lettuce but all the leafy greens other than lettuce I planted out there before I left are doing well. I have a silkie - looks like a giant white cottonball -- who can somehow hide effectively in an empty field. Little Bear had his first shots, is microchipped, and will shortly be fixed and I have a vet. Every time Little Bear goes to the vet they exclaim "he's such a delightful cat" so who knows what happens back there.
I need to get the wherewithal together to till my garden but we still have some lows in the forecast, even though the actual temps have been turning out very high. With the loss of so many tomatoes I started a sweet corn grex. My southmost garden is now fully planted, more or less, and waits only for a path and little greenhouse. It's woody perennials, needs underplanting with herbacious, but still. Has lots of haskap, hardy cherry, ribes, elderberry, etc and lots of blossoms this year.
Some apple seedlings from last year survived -- I knew my winter would kill some, since those seeds are from california -- and I'd like to catalogue them when I have wherewithal. I sorted through my seeds and put away anything I'm definitely not growing this year (missed the favas window, pulled out individual squash seeds, chose my corn path, put away the tomatoes and peppers, etc) so I only have a single dairy crate of seeds left out that I'll be putting in. The year is shaping up.
Every night Little Bear stalks me up to bed and settles in with me and Whiskey.
Solly has been sleeping in the muddy stream to keep cool, and here I thought she was just getting out.
The goose nests were eaten by the pigs when I was gone, but there might be a couple they missed.
The ambient temperature here varies between 10-27C indoors and 4-25Coutdoors (barring a little frost here and there) and is comfortable open window weather. Somehow n Vancouver a much smaller range was sticky and both too warm and too cold.
I'm not strong enough right now to unscrew the hard-water-encrusted thingers under the sink tap so I may need to hire the job out, annoying when I know exactly what I need to do but less annoying than not having running water in the bathroom sink.
I'm slowly sorting through "what if rest doesn't increase my capacity, it just maintains it, and I'm like this now". So: instead of telling a friend I can go for a walk with them, I would probably invite them over? So: I need to plan my systems much better and more efficiently. So: I need a cart so I'm not using the same wheelbarrow for chicken manure and bringing groceries in from the truck?
Threshold loves me. I love being here. All that, good and bad, and things are ok.
The psychologist I was referred to asked twice if I had things I enjoyed, hobbies, etc. Of course they want to steer me towards depression. The first time I just said yes. The second time I said "Yes, tons of stuff, the best is my tomato breeding program where I'm finally into the F2, so after 3 years of work I get to see the results finally, to see it opening out into a whole bunch of possibility-- and of course we're starting the little pottery studio in town, and there's a garden club" and I think he finally believed me. But it's hard for people to believe, I think.
If you're disabled you're supposed to be dissatisfied, unhappy. If you cure the unhappiness you're supposed to cure the disease, too, especially in "women". I have pain sometimes and a weird lack of function other times, enough that apparently I'm setting my jaw hard to get myself through things and have worn through the disc on both sides, which is what's causing the ear pain? But I'm happy. It's very possible to be in pain and also to be happy. And it's obviously possible to not do everything you want to do and still be happy, because in this near-infinite world how could anyone ever be happy otherwise?
Loving my life, and living in a life I love, has always been my most radical and least-understood act. Even when it's hard and it hurts and it's lonely. Even when it's not safe because of course it's never safe. Even when, even when.
I've been sitting up typing for 40 minutes now. The rain has restarted outside. I need to lie back down. Two cats are sleeping on the foot of the bed. Sometime later I'll go out and clear out another third of the bedding in the quail shed, or maybe do some pottery, or maybe do a run into town for more chick starter. I'll not chain multiple activities together, I'm learning that. And things will, for now, be ok.
So I managed to arrange for someone to pick up the pigs tomorrow, I'm keeping Baby and Hooligan back because they're old and friends. I unloaded the truck, which took 2 days and a furniture dolly (boxes of clay are roughly 40-50lbs and I just couldn't lift them the first couple days). I went in to my specialists appointment and they eventually gave me a bed to lie down on since I couldn't sit as long as I needed to without my head supported.
In February I'd ordered chicks with a friend and we got the reminder email last week, but I somehow thought they were coming next Sunday. Well, yesterday-Sunday she messaged me to ask where at the airport to pick them up. So yesterday I cleaned out the bottom chicken coop (6 wheelbarrows of light bedding) so I can move the silkies over into it so I can put the chicks to brood in the quail house. The quail house bedding is moister, so heavier, and I need to move everyone over at night when they're sleeping, so it'll be a couple days. Meanwhile the babies are brooding downstairs in a giant rubbermaid tub brooder on the sofa. Little Bear is interested but there's lots else going on.
When your memory sucks every day is a surprise.
I also had a talk with my supervisor, who-- you know, I think I need a lot more words to say "it's still bad and I don't get to see my doctor till after the leave is over because Healthcare so I can't really plan at this point"
A friend brought me by soup and bread. Another friend helped me out financially. I feel safe, and I feel like I shouldn't feel safe.
I haven't had capacity to do pottery yet. That's hard. Because I can do only one or two things a day I need to have food lined up and no animal/work/medical stuff, but because I can only do one or two things a day most days contain something I need to do, I can't get it all out of the way to clear my schedule.
My housesitter killed about half my tomato plants by number, and more than that by variety %. I still have maybe 16 flats of peppers and tomatoes, and I started a bunch of squash and leafy greens and re-started some of my precious northern cantaloupe seeds. I'm getting to the point where some of these I don't have backup seeds for, either because they're an F1 or a rare unobtainable variety or whatever. That isn't to say I can't get other seeds and start them next year - it's too late now to start more tomatoes or peppers -- but it's a loss. Turns out the plants started dying after a week and instead of messaging me to ask what to do the housesitter decided to wait till I came back to explain. Who knew what could have been saved in that time?
She also, like every human to enter my house without intimate knowledge and care for me, threw out the "rotten" tomatoes in a bowl on the counter -- my seed tomatoes that the parent plant is now dead, so that line's done -- and I'm pretty sure fed one of my prosciuttos ("moldy cheese") to the pigs to get them in the pen when they got out, and despite very very very careful instructions to take only the meat from the downstairs bedroom freezer (which had frozen and thawed) to lure the pigs in used the gorgeous salmon Josh brought me from the freezer in the carport instead.
A ton of things in my house are unique, irreplaceable, and don't make a lot of sense to people without exposure to the concepts behind them. When people visit and try to be well-meaning (and don't have unique homes of their own) generally irreplaceable or hundreds of dollars worth of stuff gets destroyed. Other people's houses are frequently inexplicable to me but I don't think I destroy stuff like that? I've finally got mom trained, pretty much, and Tucker and Josh understand. But it's frustrating and I think it's yet another reason I wish I had more space-- space to entertain separate from the living space which contains what I do with my time everyday.
Anyhow, that aside we've had good rain on and off, more than we've had in awhile. I'm hardening off my tomatoes. Something on my back deck eats lettuce but all the leafy greens other than lettuce I planted out there before I left are doing well. I have a silkie - looks like a giant white cottonball -- who can somehow hide effectively in an empty field. Little Bear had his first shots, is microchipped, and will shortly be fixed and I have a vet. Every time Little Bear goes to the vet they exclaim "he's such a delightful cat" so who knows what happens back there.
I need to get the wherewithal together to till my garden but we still have some lows in the forecast, even though the actual temps have been turning out very high. With the loss of so many tomatoes I started a sweet corn grex. My southmost garden is now fully planted, more or less, and waits only for a path and little greenhouse. It's woody perennials, needs underplanting with herbacious, but still. Has lots of haskap, hardy cherry, ribes, elderberry, etc and lots of blossoms this year.
Some apple seedlings from last year survived -- I knew my winter would kill some, since those seeds are from california -- and I'd like to catalogue them when I have wherewithal. I sorted through my seeds and put away anything I'm definitely not growing this year (missed the favas window, pulled out individual squash seeds, chose my corn path, put away the tomatoes and peppers, etc) so I only have a single dairy crate of seeds left out that I'll be putting in. The year is shaping up.
Every night Little Bear stalks me up to bed and settles in with me and Whiskey.
Solly has been sleeping in the muddy stream to keep cool, and here I thought she was just getting out.
The goose nests were eaten by the pigs when I was gone, but there might be a couple they missed.
The ambient temperature here varies between 10-27C indoors and 4-25Coutdoors (barring a little frost here and there) and is comfortable open window weather. Somehow n Vancouver a much smaller range was sticky and both too warm and too cold.
I'm not strong enough right now to unscrew the hard-water-encrusted thingers under the sink tap so I may need to hire the job out, annoying when I know exactly what I need to do but less annoying than not having running water in the bathroom sink.
I'm slowly sorting through "what if rest doesn't increase my capacity, it just maintains it, and I'm like this now". So: instead of telling a friend I can go for a walk with them, I would probably invite them over? So: I need to plan my systems much better and more efficiently. So: I need a cart so I'm not using the same wheelbarrow for chicken manure and bringing groceries in from the truck?
Threshold loves me. I love being here. All that, good and bad, and things are ok.
The psychologist I was referred to asked twice if I had things I enjoyed, hobbies, etc. Of course they want to steer me towards depression. The first time I just said yes. The second time I said "Yes, tons of stuff, the best is my tomato breeding program where I'm finally into the F2, so after 3 years of work I get to see the results finally, to see it opening out into a whole bunch of possibility-- and of course we're starting the little pottery studio in town, and there's a garden club" and I think he finally believed me. But it's hard for people to believe, I think.
If you're disabled you're supposed to be dissatisfied, unhappy. If you cure the unhappiness you're supposed to cure the disease, too, especially in "women". I have pain sometimes and a weird lack of function other times, enough that apparently I'm setting my jaw hard to get myself through things and have worn through the disc on both sides, which is what's causing the ear pain? But I'm happy. It's very possible to be in pain and also to be happy. And it's obviously possible to not do everything you want to do and still be happy, because in this near-infinite world how could anyone ever be happy otherwise?
Loving my life, and living in a life I love, has always been my most radical and least-understood act. Even when it's hard and it hurts and it's lonely. Even when it's not safe because of course it's never safe. Even when, even when.
I've been sitting up typing for 40 minutes now. The rain has restarted outside. I need to lie back down. Two cats are sleeping on the foot of the bed. Sometime later I'll go out and clear out another third of the bedding in the quail shed, or maybe do some pottery, or maybe do a run into town for more chick starter. I'll not chain multiple activities together, I'm learning that. And things will, for now, be ok.
