Out With The Old

Note: the bottom part of this post is important to me. If you don't want to read th ewhole thing, I recommend going from the ninth paragraph down or so, rather than from the top

It's been a very odd week, all told. Shifts in my lifestyle are a-happenin'. Some of the changes I like, some I don't like, but I think they're probably all related, pushing each other along in a ball of consequences. These are the changes I initiated in the move to Tillie's.

Before last night, I'd slept at home for something like four nights in a row. I may well have not done that for just over a year and a half. It's an odd thing to think about, because right now I'm sharing the little one-bedroom apartment with Tillie, all my stuff is packed, it's the time I could realistically be expected to be away a lot. Instead I make choices which involve me staying at home rather than, say, going to Graham's or Juggler's overnight so often.

Part of this choice stems from a bit of a pickup in the stuff I need to do in my four-day work-week. Things have become more cleanly compressed into those days, so they're very busy, and I need to get so sleep and wake up early on them-- not prime date evenings, and close to pointless with Juggler sometimes because of how late he gets home from work. So, it just makes sense to stay at home and get the sleep I need.

Part of it comes from my attempts to eat more reasonably-- home is where the not-eating-out food is.

Part of it is because of assorted rat stuff-- I want to see my babies more, because I love them, and I also need to do more rat maintenance for the whole allergy situation.

All of the above is compounded by the fact that I can get home every day, so I end up there to do that stuff, and I also go through and feel homey there and choose, often, to cancel things and stay in.

I'm not sure I like some of the consequences-- namely, I'm really not getting much time to slow down and talk to Juggler or Graham. Hopefully this is a temporary thing, caused by Graham's allergies, my weirdness to scheduling, and my busy work-week instead of some sort of "the habit has been broken so it ain't happening anymore" sort of thing. I figure, in two weeks I'll worry a bit, and more after the move, if I still need to worry.

Anyways, this whole thing looks like it's turning into the reason I moved: I want to spend more time at home with my babies I said, and now, after an adjustment period, I am. It's good. It's definite change. It's a shift in th elifestyle I've had for a very, very long time. If it keeps shifting this way, I might be breaking ten-year records. If it keeps shifting this way, I might throw out the phrase distributed living and be some sort of a normal person in this regard.

On an intensely related but hard to link verbally note, I spent a lot of yesterday with Bevan. We walked around downtown and Stanley Park in the rain, getting wet, while I was dressed like a rock start and wearing my contacts. We talked. We then headed back to his place. Now, Bevan is the oldest of four boys. I have three younger brothers who are in approximately the same age range (mine are about two years younger than his). They live in a graciously laid-out house with a dog who is very like the dog I grew up with, and two parents.

I have trouble conveying the way this felt properly. We sat at the big wooden kitchen table by the windows (it's always a big wooden kitchen table, they're harder to destroy) and I drank tea to warm my fingers. Boys thudded down the staircase, thumpthumpthump as they jumped the landings. Bevan did this too. They drifted through the kitchen moodily or grandstanded through as the case may be and chatted. They spoke in brother-speak to each other, where no words were mistaken because these people has learned language together and had so much shared background. His mom made me tea. His dad showed him how to put pizza in the oven.

I remember that for a lot of my life I lived in this, and it was love. Dad wasn't always crazy, mom wasn't always depressed, there were days and times like this when I felt held to the world as if by the thickest glue and I never wanted to struggle. At one point I said to Bevan, if this were my home I'd be sitting here with a book. Do you know how many times I did that, going up and sitting at the big wooden table and reading when supper was being prepared, and the boys would congregate as they got hungry, and the dogs would be under the table, and there was just that sense of people who belonged there? I usually read during dinner, or dad would tell me to put the book away and I'd do it reluctantly for the first five minutes. Our stairs were better than Bevan's, the landings were spaced so you could jump from landing to landing and never touch the stairs once. We had two dogs with nails to click on the floor.

And right now I just sit here typing with my eyes blurred and try to fit words to the situation, and I feel this overwhelming urge to violence, to shoving these memories into your head so that you'll understand, because they're too real and too big and too intense to convey any other way. I don't want to delicately choose words to evoke. I want you to have been there.

Because of this, because of yesterday, an enormous part of my life has been given back to me. Kynnin, I don't know if you read this, but you're the only person outside my family who remembers what my home was like, and that was only after the divorce when we rattled around like peas in that huge house. My own family has burned it out, the bad parts tainting our memoried so that we never go back there and we lose the memories in the shunning.

Bevan's been very good for me in this way twice now. He reminds me a lot of Kynnin, intellectually and physically, and I've rediscovered my enjoyment of abstract talk with him without being too shadowed by memories. Now there's my family.

I'm feeling intensely grateful right now for all the people in my life. I think I have a Big Six now instead of a Big Four: Bevan (as above), Tillie (take the bedroom tonight), Juggler (OMFG a trustworthy boy), Trevor (just liking someone is enough for years and years of friendship), CrazyChris (ironically, reminding me how to be sane with the emotions I'm given), and Graham (for emotional entanglement baybee).

These people are my friends, and also the edges of my soul; they're responsible for my being a part of that vast(ly cliched but real and true) current of humanity.

So there.

Love y'all.

Blood Day

Well, actually blood-yesterday-evening.

Events of the last two weeks contextualised, or coincidence? Only repeated data collection can say.

IM

I've got google talk. I've caved. Anyone I should know about on there? I'm dryadess at you-know-where.

Blueberry Bushes and Spring

So I'm trying to convince Juggler to put in an edible hedge. He's gonna put in a hedge anyhow, so it may as well be something nice, right?

Luckily, around my community garden, there's an edible native Canadian plant garden (aka 'ethnobotanical garden') which showcases some choice species. I strolled out there today with Juggler. In the running are:

amelanchier (aka 'Saskatoon berry' or 'Juneberry' or 'Serviceberry') which has gorgeous flowers in springtime, and is in the rosa family with things like plum and cherry (to give you an idea of the flowers). These plants tend to have more genetic diversity than blueberries, which means the plants won't be as standardised in size, ripening time, or disease susceptibility. Birds would love these for many reasons, they're more 'native.'

Blueberries, which are deciduous like amelanchier, have less showy flowers, but are more delicate in size and appearance. They also have more conventional and less seedy fruit, and could be planted for a deliberate long harvest season-- for instance, plant early varieties in one section of hedge, midseason in the next, and late in the next, so over the course of a few months the hedge would ripen from one end to the other. There are mini blueberry bushes that could be quite small, and some very large one. I'm not sure how well they'd take to pruning; it depends on when the flower buds form and on what type of growth (I suspect they flower on new growth, which would reduce yield substantially in the next year if they're pruned for shape. On the other hand, something is better than nothing). Blueberries are related to azaleas and rhododendrons, which thrive here, and they'd likely adore the spot (which gets very light shade).

vaccinium ovatum is a close relative of blueberry, also known as 'evergreen huckleberry'. It's an evergreen plant with black, slightly tart berries that, my research tells me, can be sheared into a hedge if that's done around June (this suggests that blueberries can be sheared right after picking, too). There's a local variety developed at the local university, which is kind of neat.

So, yeah. Do edible hedges, people.

More garden notes follow:

Someone kindly put some compost on my plot last fall. I realise that my community garden is close enough that I can go cut some lemon balm for tea in my slippers if I want to. This is cool for many reasons, including: I can get lemon balm for tea in my slippers, I can take compost to the community garden compost bin and put it in, thus wasting less garbage space, and I have a patch of dirst that I can walk to easily to play in. I'm happy.

My roses there are doing well, and the damson plum is budding. On the deck, one plum is in full bloom, the other looks like it's leafing rather than blooming this year. The roses have an inch or two of growth on them thus far, and the muscari and violets are blooming their fool heads off. Even the fig buds are looking suspiciously awake. My Japanese maples are are at their best, little tiny delicate leaves unfurling.

Even Juggler, who rarely comments on aesthetics, looked up at the cherry blossom/magnolia combination along fifth street coming back from the garden and said, 'that's really amazing'. I'm happy. It's good. I should get some food in the ground in my community garden and get it growing. But, what to plant?

MAybe I do like spring after all.