Timing

I'm really interested to see when the clematis flowers. They're all covered in buds right now, pretty much completely covered in fact, and so I'm anticipating a pretty impressive show. The first bloom of the year took a long time to go from bud to open, and I'm hoping these go a little more quickly. Still, I'm looking at one of two options: either they come out before my fall rose flush and keep some blooming continuity or they come out while my roses ramp up for fall and I get that spectacular two-bloom effect.

I can't tell you how pleased I am that they're forming so many blooms. It's supposed to be three years before they take off but these things are loaded. They -do- get an awful lot of sun and even water, so they've got a lot of food to burn on the display.

I feel the need to do some serious rearranging out there, possibly because I feel so completely useless when there's very little to do. It takes three minutes to deadhead the roses and then I'm left with some watering and.... that's it. I love that aspect of a patio garden, that I can rearrange it at will without harming the plants.

Hmmm. I'm feeling like it might be fun to pop down to the nursery today and take a look around. It's been awhile. It really is a very good nursery that we've got so close. I'll miss that a great deal if/when we move.

I need to watch my clothing/sunscreen. The shoulders have been in a constant state of very lowgrade burn for the last couple of days and could probably use a break. It's kind of a pretty effect but it isn't very good for me.

What else? I get to cook a whackload of real food today. It's been entirely too long since I did that. It'd be a bit of an issue at the Other House anyways -- those people are frighteningly picky eaters. Trust me on this. The SO will pretty much eat anything if it's prepared within tolerances but they actually bar whole categories of food ('hidden meat' and 'red meat') which together pretty much completely exclude my chili/stew food deals. Ditto, I suppose, sausage in my rice bakes. Time to learn new recipes, I suppose.

Very little sleep last night, all things considered, so I'll probably head back to bed soon too. I'm studiously avoiding that book -- Spider Robinson either puts his best stories at the front, or he gets very predictable with too much reading at once. I figure if I leave it for awhile maybe the break will do my interest good because it is neat stuff -- just relentlessly harping on the same moral/kindness themes.

The cherries on the tree outside my window are swelling and even thinking about going red. I love cherries, they're definitely a favourite fruit, and on this tree they're incredibly thick. It's a wanton display of fertility, really, and tell me there's nothing sexy about eating a bucketful of cherries and getting that juice all over yourself? All those mouth-sized curves...

And that, as they say, is that. Later, and be well.

When the World Ends

Oh, man. Right now I'm in one of those states where some intense dream tangles up in another layer of dream and that tangles up in reality. I'd fallen back asleep with the SO, and this is th general outline of what I dreamt:

Quicksilver's player from OS was in charge of a some sort of peaceful protest faction of something or other against something or other else. His group got in a disagreement of some sort over something with a bunch of other people. He owned a landing pad near Science World.

Everything got kind of set up for some sort of a confrontation by which the people he was arguing with would take their jets and try and overfly this landing area to some unknown purpose. He, in turn, set up defenses -- some of those defenses.

(There was a little part here which involved shopping in the garden center and going to view these defenses, which really looked like labeled stations at a museum more than anything).

So Quicksilver gets a bunch of his people to drop over his landing pad in a bunch of these rigid parachute-things which are supposed to take up airspace so the jets can't overfly. But, the parachutes end up not slowing their fall, and the jets end up ramming into them anyhow. So Mom and I are in the car and they start falling, and fireballs start going up, and we start driving away. There are jets skidding down the street burning, behind us, that we have to outrace and avoid. Mom, bless her heart, stays nice and calm.

So we stop by to see the SO, who is kind of laid back about the fact that most of the city and most of the people we know have gone up in flames. I somehow end up at a UN meeting downtown with some of the survivors in it -- it's a small meeting.

Cut scene to the SO casually leaning up against the wall in bed grinning at me. All this stuff has happened but he doesn't care. He just wants sex.

Now I -really- wake up, not the above fake waking up. I know this stuff didn't really happen, nor is it going to. The SO gets all cuddly and I panic, get up, and come write this. It hasn't really helped extricate me from the dream-feeling, but it's a start.

What's that song? When the world ends I'll be lying in bed? I think I need a copy of that. I've been dreaming almost every night recently. That's both a good and a bad thing, I think, but it will take a bit to shake this feeling.

Ah, well, I needed to get up anyhow. I seem to be synched to the Juggler's wake schedule -- 10am when I wake up for the last time. Interesting, no?

Meep Meep and Disclaimer

I'm going to the nursery with the SO. Cue happy music! I should remember sunscreen. It's not very sunny, but even so...

I've turned this funny orange colour now that the burn is subsiding. I liked the mild burn ruddy wind-touched look, but this orange is really weird. And really orange.

Been doing 'relationship work' with both the SO and the Exotic. Lots of work, we're looking at maybe three to five hours a day, so I'm not getting triumphant feelings out of it because I'm too beat down. I -am- getting a lot of sleep, though, and I think we're getting somewhere. The Exotic and I are building communication skills and reassurance that we can use those skills without being taken advantage of between us, and the SO and I are ironing out our reconnecting bits.

I miss the flaming fights that had satisfying resolutions. This is mostly ...hey! This is mostly me helping other people along, I guess, and so since I'm not missing anything I don't get anything out of it when it's resolved except maybe a hope it doesn't come up again and a hope for the other person's happinesss now -- neither of which are immediately apparent and so neither of which trigger done/comfortable feelings. Aha.

I don't miss the fights enough to come up with something really deathly important to me and bludgeon people with it, though. Admittedly, I think I do need to work up a nice disclaimer for the livejournal. Something along the lines of:

Read anything in here at your own risk. I'm not responsible for your reaction to the contents, and if you choose to interpret my stuff soley on the contents of this livejournal you deserve whatever you get and I will laugh at you as you writhe in madness and pain! Muahahaha!

or something like that. Some people do seem to be reading it as a personal communication to them, which it in no way is. If something has to do with you in any meaningful sense I -will- tell you first, kay? Believe it. Ask for clarification before takiing anything in here as gospel of any sort. I'm not even -trying- to put a Greenstorm-to-Human translator in this stuff.

That'll do as a disclaimer for now, I guess.

Note

The SO likes fondling me in the Juggler's shirt. Lucky for him and me, since I'm wearing it a whole lot lately. :) It makes me feel neat: it says '91 on th eback, it's the Juggler's, and according to the SO it's 'soft'.

Oh, and Wik, name the song:

Hello it's me, the absentee,
It's been so long, have you forgotten me?
Two busy lives and countless miles have that tendency on memory
Oh it's been such a long time
It's so good to hear your voice on the line...

Well, Now.

Dreamy, doggedly-stable afternoon (I slept through most of it in a series of one-hour naps).

(The Earth is tired of humankind and I think this world... Is gonna wash up anyhow... Lalalalalalalala -Aquabats, Chemical Bomb, for Breklor)

Wonderful burst of high/interest at the nursery. Contented glide downwards through chili-making and random chat online and dish-doing.

Bottom-out about ten minutes ago when I pried the SO away from his computer game for a lap to cry on. Now, what? Up again? Tomorrow's a high exercise day, so probably.

There really is a sense in which I hate my mind; I hate the way it lets me down and drops me into this befogged darkness sometimes. I hate the way that no matter how much time I spend sitting there telling it, these people around you love you, that I can't make it believe that.

I'm so grateful that it will at least take a statement like that, I love you or I care, from another at face value. I'm so grateful the SO is willing to repeat it to me when I need.

I'm so envious of the way the Juggler and the Other Woman know it from each other without needing that reassurance constantly. It tears at me, knowing that's possible and that I haven't achieved it. I crave that stability, that connection to another like that. Right now it's painful to think about it and so, of course, I dwell on little else.

I'm going to talk now, and you'll read or not, but you'll remember my disclaimer below. This is the core talking, the dark bits bubbling up, and if you allow a word of this to mean anything to you without talking with me first I hope your shadow may never find rest.

...or not. He came in when I was midway through typing, and I realise that such a thing was unworthy of me. Sometimes poison is better unspread; broken glass better kept safe where it will injure no passers-by. Someday I will get up and be able to find a he whenever I need; he will not always be leaving or sleeping or busy. Then I will always be worthy of such a thing. Now I try, but sometimes I can't be. Something about an observed life... and incentive to observe.