Holy days

This was an excellent holiday. It had the things I love over the holidays: cooking, passive entertainment, a slower pace, special foods, family, pretty lights, regrouping for the future, some time outside. Someone even sent me a secret surprise gift (!) though that shook me a little. I took over a whole week off, and I managed that feeling of being outside of time and space.

There was some experimental baking and some less experimental baking: I made chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow pieces in them, next time I'll only sprinkle the marshmallows on top. Tucker made shortbread and reese's pieces cookies. Together we made a golden crispies cereal bar thing. He made challah. I made roast duck and got a shrimp ring and cheezies and pfeffernusse. He made french toast, and my friend sent me jam that I ate on it. I still had plenty of aged eggnog from spring (Islay was the best booze; rum and Canadian whiskey were the least good, adding ceylon cinnamon-infused booze was also good) and some clamato juice and cherry juice and tea and fancy hot chocolate. Lovely.

I was feeling a formulaic show (no real anxiety about people dying or getting hurt because that's not the formula) with folks who had each other's back and a writing team that respected their characters rather than using any of them, even bit parts, as the butt of jokes. I'd managed to forget the first season of Leverage where there's a terrible heteronormative dynamic around drinking and nagging, so watched a bunch of season 2 and 3 with Tucker -- it's one of his favourite shows so there was room for me to analyze it a little bit while watching. I think last time I had a holiday that felt nice like this we watched Gentleman Jack together.

Josh was up here the week before Christmas, and Tucker was here more-or-less the week between Christmas and New Years, with some breaks. I like these long stretches with people where we can dig in to being together; either a couple hours or at least a couple days works for me, but the middle space I can feel the grinding of gears and never quite get settled ("trouble with transitions" says descriptions of autism). I felt close and loved and there was time for some conversation and doing stuff together as well as just being together.

I did end up getting a tree. My beloved fibre-optic tree was thrown out when I left New Westminster back when (I lose so much stuff in moves) and it had been pretty difficult to find a fibre-optic tree since then. I finally found a little one on sale, the greenery isn't as nice as my last one but it has gold glitter and a little urn-thing as well as fitting on a side-table. I really enjoy watching fibre-optic threads shift colours, specifically, and being able to sit on the couch and watch the tree has been excellent. For some reason strands of lights or other colour-changing lights don't do it for me; just the tree.

I'm cementing in my head what will be done this year: a gate cut in the upper field, some variety trials, a bunch of potatoes grown for starch and thus clearing out my laundry room boxes to build a potato cabinet, some fencing, front deck redone, maybe a re-cover of greenhouse, maybe my aspens dropped, and a quote for fixing the shed with the wood foundation and the collapsing root cellar (I will not be able to afford to fix the shed or add on to the house but those are the two options I'll need to consider to make this place really livable for me). There was a potato infection in the maritimes so seed potatoes will be light on the ground this year; I need to order those soon. Aphrodite has also asked me to plant her a rose garden, as she did the summer I started and then stopped living with Josh, so that will be done this year. I guess my first garden will get roses in that imported soil where it's visible from the deck; it already has the one. I don't know whether I'm supposed to make a mandala/maze type shape or what; we will see. The wild roses do grow well here.

We've also finally been getting snow. Cold without the snow feels especially perilous; even with all the snow blowing everywhere and obliterating my hand-shovelled pathways it feels safer to have cold with a blanket of insulation. It's been hovering around -20 +/- 10C, a good temperature for all the snowshovelling I've been doing. It's been good exercise. A big dump of snow last night means I'm going to get someone to come in and plough all the way back to the chicken coop for me since it's between knee and thigh depth now and I am not hauling water and feed back through that in the -37C we have forecast. I have not fixed the snowblower yet, obviously. We'll see where all this goes. I'm wondering what it would cost to get a blade for the truck; it probably isn't cheaper than the snowblower but it's one less engine to maintain, and I bet it would be a hilarious learning curve figuring out where and how to push snow without destroying things or leaving inconvenient piles. We're deep, deep into solid waste territory with water: parkinglots are all full of giant piles waiting to be taken away to snow dumps.

Awhile ago I posted about an illustrated apple encyclopedia on fb, and the other day it arrived at the post office with my name on it. The return address was the address of the PG post office; the shipping label was printed on a computer and correctly made out to my PO box (there isn't street mail delivery here, so just because someone knows my street address doesn't mean they know how to mail something to me). Someone clearly paid attention to me liking it, knew my address, bought it, opened one book to admire it and left the rest in wrapping, then sent them on to me. I'm- it's a very thoughtful gift and I spent a lot of time crying about it because it's a really caring thing to do but I feel so alone up here, I want someone with that kind of attention and caring to have conversations and mutuality with but instead they're secret and I can't talk to them. It's- lotta feelings there.

Meanwhile I can go back to cataloguing my seeds today, carry some water and feed, and slowly pull things out of the way of where I hope the plough can get to. The truck is starting up super well with its new battery-and-battery-blanket (though I haven't checked to see how much electricity that's burning). The dogs got a ham for Christmas and now I need to manage Thea down from guarding Avallu out of the area by the house. The dishwasher is going. My aerogarden has given me dill and I think I'll make borscht or gravlax out of it. I have some korean ground pork and noodle recipes I'm looking forward to. The new year is a continuity from every other year, building and folding on times past, and I am grateful to have it.

Not Even An Announcement

It's time to make this a little more formal.

All my life I've wanted someone to see me, to not necessarily walk beside me every step but to know my story. That's where I kept my eyes when everyone got married, maybe had kids, got divorced, did careers. There's no one left in my life who's been there from the start and will be there until the end except one.

I'd have wished for someone who remembers it all and can put it in context; instead what I got is someone who's supported me every step, who believes in the spirit inside me wholeheartedly, who thinks it's important that I follow my calling and my meaning.

I don't have someone who loves me unconditionally, all the time, and is always able to open her heart to empathize with my pain. I do have someone who's learning to do so, and who sometimes stumbles upon it as the right thing to do, and other times who's able to invite me into that space of love and healing.

There is no one person who will complete me, who I can disappear into for years and never come out, though I've wished there is. Still, I have someone at my back, who speaks for me in community and whose well of interest never runs dry. When things are rough she'll entice me into what I love and I find comfort that way; when my interest leaps away into some new thing she lets me follow my joy and takes care of me as best she can when she's able.

Time and again she's pushed her limits to be there for me; not always, but often, and when everyone else fails she's the one who always comes through.

She can't be everything for me. Our physical intimacy comes and goes, sometimes it's fraught, and it's never as robust and immediate as it is with other people. She doesn't have as much capacity as I'd like, and time and again I've come up against her limits. She forgets to be compassionate in the midst of fixing things and soothing things. Her emotions overwhelm her and sometimes she forgets what to do or how to do it. She's not given to constancy and promises come and go and come again, though she's better at knowing her limits around that now.

Still, here we are, so many years later. She's been writing to me for well over twenty years now, for my entire adult life. She's been supporting me and in these times where everyone else is receding she's the one I trust not to go anywhere. Neither of us minds the ride of NRE, the bit of a break, and we've ridden out my various relationships shockingly well.

So it seems reasonable to acknowledge this now, to cement it with a symbol. I'm working with a designer on the ring; I'm not sure if I can afford the gold or if I'll have to hope the silver will survive maybe 40 years of wear. There will need to be a ceremony at some point, I've been chewing on that for a couple years but I'm not sure how it'll look. There may be a small private ceremony in the meantime. I don't know that there'll be a single set of vows; perhaps a small book to recall me to the heart of meaning here.

It's too bad monoheteronormativity is such a thing; I think when most people do this they get gifts as well as a dual income or childcare out of it. I won't be getting that. It's still important to do, and to do in the sight of community, though I'm nervous about that.

I don't expect this to change things but I do believe it will help me remember.

Timely

This was given me this morning:

When the time comes
to love yourself well
it may take you
a good solid year
to stop crying
about all you have
to let go.

Andrea Gibson

Always bothered me

For some reason folks don't seem to associate planting trees with land tenure. Have some sense, folks: if you want to be buried with a tree growing on you, want ten trees to be planted for every sweatshirt you buy, want your government to plant trees to stop global warming, those trees must all be planted on land that is then dedicated to them for (I imagine you would like) a length of time. Five years? Ten years? Two hundred years? That land was doing something before the trees were planted, what was it? Are they draining wetlands or displacing crops for this? Would trees have been planted there anyhow by someone else? (forestry companies in Canada are legally obligated to replant so anything that promises to replant on that land is a scam). Are poor people being displaced to plant the trees? Will the trees thrive on that piece of land without maintenance like watering? Are the trees intended to all live, they do get very large and usually are planted more densely in the beginning and then some die as they get bigger so the crown of the tree shades the ground. Does planting trees displace wildlife habitat for browsers or animals that need thermal cover like moose? Do you really think this is a good allocation of land, like for instance in land that can support agriculture or housing instead set aside for every dead person, or maybe just for rich dead people?

Bah.

Always bothered me

For some reason folks don't seem to associate planting trees with land tenure. Have some sense, folks: if you want to be buried with a tree growing on you, want ten trees to be planted for every sweatshirt you buy, want your government to plant trees to stop global warming, those trees must all be planted on land that is then dedicated to them for (I imagine you would like) a length of time. Five years? Ten years? Two hundred years? That land was doing something before the trees were planted, what was it? Are they draining wetlands or displacing crops for this? Would trees have been planted there anyhow by someone else? (forestry companies in Canada are legally obligated to replant so anything that promises to replant on that land is a scam). Are poor people being displaced to plant the trees? Will the trees thrive on that piece of land without maintenance like watering? Are the trees intended to all live, they do get very large and usually are planted more densely in the beginning and then some die as they get bigger so the crown of the tree shades the ground. Does planting trees displace wildlife habitat for browsers or animals that need thermal cover like moose? Do you really think this is a good allocation of land, like for instance in land that can support agriculture or housing instead set aside for every dead person, or maybe just for rich dead people?

Bah.