Greenstorm's Journal

Pottery show 2026

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:45:03 GMT

Well, it's set up. 228 items, of which 96 are tiny bowls and the rest have been made mostly since 2024. Probably 55 are mugs, some with very silly handles. The rest are an assortment of cups, candle holders, oil lamps, fairy houses, plant pots, bell beakers, demonstrations of experiments, tea canisters, plates, and all sorts of things.

It's distributed amongst 7 tables, 1 hanging rack, and 1 piano. Each table has a write-up on it, the couple pages total of description took three months.

Much is for sale, though some is literally just "my kitchen" with the stuff I use everyday, the prototypes which is mostly stuff that's gone wrong, and my plant pots and stakes.

The nicest display is probably the oldtimey one with medieval and bell beaker shapes. It has some pottery identification keys just for folks to get the atmosphere of things and a bunch of fake fur. I'm always gonna like bell beaker shapes though. The hundred bowls display (actually 96 small and something like 105 total) is also pretty nice, with things in a gradient across the table and some birchbark splits holding up carved/rough faceted white/brown swirled bowls which match the birchbark.

The least nice is maybe the prototypes (I wish I'd been able to write a little about each one and why it's good or bad) or the garden display which feels a little sparse.

There are three interactive spots, two asking folks to write in what they'd use a particular thing for (people ask me this all the time so I wanted to turn the tables) and one "which handle is your favourite, write the number" draw for a mug because I'm so curious. Wendy who runs it printed everything up on bright paper and pretty big, she says people won't read it anyhow but I feel better with it there.

I'm really really proud of myself. Even with a box of my nicest fancy stuff breaking before bisque awhile ago, even with cutting my thumb open and not being able to make things for awhile, even having to haul things up and down those stairs, I got it done and it's pretty.

The local photographer turned news person is going to interview me, take photographs, and give me some nice pictures of my stuff in exchange for some pottery. I have also traded some pottery for some of the really nice bread from the baker in town.

After finishing setup this morning I came home and have been in bed several hours. Bed will definitely be my thing for awhile, though the weather is turning and I both want to be outside and I want to start prototyping my TS Eliot pottery. I guess this whole illness is pretty much about not being able to do what I want though.

I'm still proud of myself.

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Mon, 07 Sep 2026 17:25:42 GMT

Yesterday I had a dream that Tucker stopped talking to me except enough to deny he was doing it, then moved away without telling me. I woke up feeling like I'd had a nightmare instead of something that had actually happened.

Robs ate something that was bad for him and had diarrhea every couple hours. It started a few nights ago, I noticed he was barking in his little run space and thought if I went to do something it would encourage him to do it again. But, having had experience with LGDs and barking in the past, as soon as he stopped barking I went and checked on him. He'd pooped in the run but hadn't yet got it all over everything. I took him out, put him in the front yard (which can dubiously contain him), took the stall mats out of the run, scrubbed it down, fixed the blockage which backed up the water so it didn't drain, washed down the stall mats without scrubbing (it was 4am), put them back in, put him back in, showered, and went to bed.

This is both why I was dreaming more (lots of naps) and why I started ramping up his time in the front yard again. I still bring him in for nights and periodically through the day and check on him lots but he is getting lots of time out front. Before noon the time overlaps with Solly being out and they lie where they can see each other, but actual intros are not good. It's a step in the right direction. Evening I spend some time snuggling with him and I think he's finally able to pay attention properly to what's going on around him after a day of being outside; he'll settle and look around with me, watch some things and alert to others and ask for reassurance on yet others. He even let Little Bear come into the fenced area and hang out with Hazard while we were sitting there without trying to pounce him (though he did a run at Whiskey, who was outside the fence).

He's trying to dig under the fence but doing it in the wrong place; the fence is on top of landscape rock which is over four layers of plastic (I hate humans) and he's digging a couple feet before that, where the landscape logs mark the edge of the bed. That's fine. He's also jumping on the fence which pulls the staples out of the wood, and I need to go tap them all in again. I keep giving thought to electrifying that one part but I worry about long-term consequences. He's clearly a bit lonely in a spot that's somewhat bigger than a city house's backyard, but has more for his brain to work on since he can see the whole road and neighbourhood.

It's his birthday, Robs. I still don't know the answers. I haven't asked his breeder to take him back yet. I don't know how I'm going to manage him over the winter, though I have some ideas. But it'll be extra hard to train him to be good with the animals when I'm outside less, though when the animals are confined to winter quarters it'll be just the cats to worry about and I think it'll be easier for him to mesh with Solly.

This is the backdrop to my pottery show that's soft-opening in two days. There's a reception in just under two weeks, at the same time as a poetry reading. I made over sixty tiny bowls in two days, thrown with the occasional break for a must farm style bigger bowl or a bell beaker (neither of those were thrown originally, so it's just thhe style rather than a true re-creation). The bisque kiln is cooling right now and I'll go in, glaze, and run a glaze kiln this afternoon. Then another right after, which will be "extra items" since the soft opening will have happened. In addition to probably 80 bowls total, there are some carved and some silly-handle mugs, some early greek era oil lamps, a couple plates, and the inevitable tea canisters.

Now that I've been immersed in pottery I want to make more, doing a bunch at a time or some every night keeps my ideas engaged. I want to mess with jugs and pitchers, to try a large must farm storage jar, to play with more oil lamps, and to do more carved/raw outsides to things. Plus I'd like to make a couple big deep plates (they're apparently called blates now, which Josh didn't believe but it's going around clay circles).

I also have started glaze testing for my "came back late from the hyacinth garden" series. I guess I need to make things to put that glaze on. I'm not sure what that will be: another hundred tiny bowls? something else? Must farm bowls? a bowl/plate transitionary series? Plus the "shadow of this red rock" part which I want to be through-holed vases, I tried making one and it collapsed so it'll be a lot of skill-building and reclaim to figure those out. I know eventually I'm going to need to learn sgraffito and revisit drawing skills for the Lil and Albert section, which is going to be Very Difficult. Maybe I can get away with making transfers?

I should be sketching more to capture the ideas. I don't have ideas while I'm throwing. just fingertips.

And then finally our first frost is probably coming at the end of the week, te first real frost. We had a light one between when I put Robs in the kennel after finishing cleaning it at 5am and my waking up to take him for another walk at 7am but it wasn't a killing frost. I guess if I want leaves for impressions I better get them soon. I haven't checked the corn lately.

When Josh left I was lonely but also it's nice to have scraps of time to get back to doing my things. I don't have enough capacity to do it all.

I don't assume, with this illness, I'll ever have a long term romantic/sexual relationship with anyone again. It seems like, not only a lot of work, but I was pretty picky before and I'm much less of a desireable acquisition now.

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Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:06:49 GMT

Each stroke of Wendell Berry's words hone me as they go by, and as he died yesterday many are going by.

Thorough and connected moral thinkers are lodestones.

My body is full of the grief of loss and the simultaneous enormous presence of his lifetime of words. My control over my body dims like brownout lights, mind flickering, everything goes to this thought/feeling of being realigned, a compass needle on a planet finally and again with a magnetic field.

When people win a hard contest they often cry in gratitude and with the feeling, finally, of having enough for awhile, and of being good enough.

My feeling is gratitude and, with Wendell Berry having lived to think deeply for so long, of having enough for awhile. We had him: he lived, and so the world has more meaning.

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Tue, 01 Sep 2026 03:31:43 GMT

The least convenient part of this illness is I can't make decisions or comparisons or prioritize anymore.

The most frightening is the way emotions and reactions work now, and that's coming from someone with PMDD my whole life.

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Tue, 01 Sep 2026 03:26:57 GMT

I continue to wrestle with the Robs decision. I've walked him on my own a bunch and he's very well behaved around me for the most part. I don't know how to transfer that to when I'm not around. I don't know if it can be. I don't know if I just wait. I could very well ruin him if he's mostly just locked in a small area with no company for a year while I wait. I could well ruin him by just being angry half the time when I'm around him and he's just being a dog. He's good with the cats while I'm in radius, but really not good when I'm not. He's a friendly happy playful dog who likes doing dog things like running around with a stick in his mouth. Ugh.

When I'm stressed I make bad decisions like going to the pottery studio and entering a glaze fugue until I've filled the kiln (there were a lot of plates and already-glazed tiny bowls so it's not as much as it sounds). Now I'm exhausted and everything hurts and I still don't know what to do about Robs but at least I'm distracted waiting to see what comes out of the kiln? About a year ago I'd ordered some dry versions of my two favourite mayco glazes (muddy waters and cenote) and they finally came, so this kiln has the first tests of those to see if they need more or less water, plus tests of some glazes AND those pottery supply house/Tucker's red clays.

I already know the pottery supply house clay does hella "S" cracks, and the Tuckers does none. I hope the tuckers looks good. It's less strong to work with but I'm getting tired of trashing pieces for the S cracks.

It was hot for the week Josh was here but took up raining again as soon as he left. I ran the woodstove for something like 18 hours, the house got too hot, I let it go out, the house is cooling, in the morning it will be too cold. There may be a disability subsidy/cash back thing for a heat pump, not sure if it's aimed at the hot or the cold part of it, and I really want a heat pump for the shoulder seasons. It really only makes sense to run the woodstove below -10C.

What am I going to do with Robs? He can't really be in an enclosure where he the things in it will hurt him to eat, so teaching him to be ok with the cats in the downstairs livingroom isn't great, and they need to go through that space anyhow. And when it gets cold I'm not going to leave him alone in the small run, besides, that run is where the dogs come in and out of the carport when the main door is closed against snow for the winter.

Full circle.

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Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:59:09 GMT

Last night Robs was in his area in the front yard, fenced a couple days ago, found a way out, and killed four young ducks, probably by pouncing and licking them to death. There were no visible wounds, the fourth had a broken back and was still alive at first. Then he chased Demon fast.

Between that, the fly in the house that he chased for a solid hour, and general behaviour I'm starting to think he's just not going to be a fit. His chase drive is too strong. That's specifically what LGDs don't do; they defend, and I'm ok at dealing with resource guarding, but they don't chase. Solly is scared of him, and he chases her when she runs. He's fine with the geese except the limping one, who he maybe thinks of as injured (she technically is but it's chronic) and he'll chase her.

Instead of reducing my workload and making us all more safe, he makes anything smaller than himself less safe. I'd been managing him by keeping him in a small run and otherwise supervising him, in the hopes that a larger fenced space would let him have more things of interest going on and thus calm him down a bit. After all, making their world smaller and less interesting just makes it harder for them to be calm when they come out (-ish). But even with space to do more usual dog things, digging holes and chewing branches and lying on his back and wiggling across the grass and watching cars and birds pass, he doesn't seem to be improving. I think he'd be a great pig guardian, but maybe he'd kill the piglets too. He's actually really good with the adult pigs. I should probably try neutering him before I make any decisions but oof. I have so many thousands of dollars in that dog at this point and I think he just wants to be a people dog and not a property or animal dog. And I'm not a people. I'll sleep on it a couple days anyhow.

Anyhow Josh found the baby muscovies last night, we buried them under a Viking apple tree we planted, and I've started thinking seriously about returning Robs to his breeder. Josh has stayed an extra afternoon to finish enclosing a muscovy run I started... last year? but wasn't stable enough to do the roof. Between the week's worth of canning and the gutpunch of emotion last night I couldn't even sit up will 10am this morning. I'd hoped Josh wouldn't have to see the parts where I can't move, how much of a struggle it was to just roll over to say good morning to him, but here we are.

And, after a week of hot weather while Josh was here, the rain has started again. Good, because we've had a bunch of lightning strikes in the area and things had dried out; the soil we planted the apple tree in wasn't part of an existing garden and was very dry. But bad because I can smell fall coming.

This was always my favourite time at work, the fieldwork push at the end of the year. Soon the creeks will be steaming in the chilly mornings, already it's cold when I get up but I'm not layering on gear to be shed as I start through the bush. This year there will be no pulling up into logging camp smelling like leaves and old cruise vest at the end of the day, no wandering down the trailer camp hallways in bama socks to see what is in the buffet trays for dinner. I won't be completely swallowed up by the landscape, by my measurements, by the early-thinning leaves of the shrub layer that help me figure out where to put my feet. I won't be enthralled by my first or my hundredth sight of hydnelllum peckii (it never gets old). I won't bless wool for letting my sweat through in the afternoon but keeping me warm in those sharp mornings, nor will I doff my headscarf once the frosts take down the bugs. I won't stand on the moss and drink lukewarm sugary tea from my water bottle in a private sphere of silence and clean humic air. I won't spend long leisurely hours in a truck with a single other person, speaking sometimes and quiet at others, bound my the companionship of a shared purpose and freed by the many hours needed to cross all that forested space. I won't trade stories that, underneath, always betray awareness and wonder of the living world. I won't strategically pack the raincoat into my vest every single day to prevent it raining. I won't eventually pull into my own driveway, late at night and tired, light my woodstove, and shake needles and leaves and bugs out of sweat-stiffened clothing before I toss it into the laundry.

Fall is coming up here, and it's when I most miss my work. Just a hint of the scent of turning conifers in the air and all the memories waft out of my skin, waft out of the body that created them, and fill the air around me so thickly I hardly remember that this year my memories will all be bed, cats, and some couple thousand square feet of fenced-in garden.

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Thu, 20 Aug 2026 02:53:03 GMT

I'm feeling a little bitter right now, likely because regulation is basically yet another thing that requires energy which my body can't do when ...I need a better phrase than "when I've overdone it" and "when my battery is low" is stupid.

"When the veil is thin" maybe. Lady Amalthea said "I can feel this body dying around me" and that can mean so many different things from moment to moment, emotionally, but maybe that's the core of it. The system fails in many ways at once.

The disturbance isn't that I feel close to death, can come closer than I ever could to imagining what it would be like, but that my expectations from life are so changed. In those moments my hopes for the latter half of my life (hopefully) recede, or maybe expand, to breathing, to supporting the clamour of a heartbeat, to maybe moving my legs and arms to drag myself to the toilet, to hope a furry creature will come and offer me a little love as my solace.

All those other things I've done and may yet do more of aren't my life. They would have been, had things continued: garden, animals, pottery, maybe meeting a person or more and entwining a bit with them, drinking knowledge like dunking my whole head in a bucket and gulping it down all at once. For other people those are their life, solid, like aggregate is part of the concrete, inseperable without grinding the whole thing down.

My whole thing is ground down. It's exposed my dependency on so many systems that are populated with people, some of whom care and some who do not, but which themselves are built to take me down to nothing with enough deniability it can't be said the people who allow them have destroyed me. I don't like to be dependent, just as I don't like others to be dependent upon me.

I don't like to make the choice between staying continuously upstairs in the heat where there's phone signal or going to the cooler basement and missing a medical call: three strikes and they kick me off the list.

I don't like not having some time to assign as mine, beyond--

Oh, I give up. I can't write. I want to make an oil lamp in clay, light it, create a light that brightens things a bit and that may outlive me by centuries. I want to talk to someone who hasn't drunk deep from the propaganda mills their whole lives and thus doesn't just regurgitate the anxieties they've been spoon-fed. I want to sit in a room with someone who's excited about something that they have contributed to in part but not on the whole.

I want the tiles not to be falling off my floor ("I'm amazed they held on ten years" the tile guy said when he looked at my kitchen floor) so I can wash it. I want a shower I can sit in downstairs. I want to be able to sew clothes again so I can make myself something that lives properly on my skin.

I want, I want.

That's what's alive in me again, not the ability to do things but the ability to want them, to care. And at the same time I can't spend my energy feeling things, I need to get up and make food and walk the dog and, just these last few days ideally water the garden.

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Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:39:04 GMT

Estrogen + antihistamines definitely leave me with more enthusiasm for life and a bit more ability to link activities together without getting lost/caught and physically turning in circles in place trying to figure out what I'm doing, forgetting it, turning back, remembering, turning around, forgetting it, turning back (this is probably very weird to look at and very weird to experience but the neurologist who was really only assessing me for MS didn't think anything of it)

So anyhow, it means I'm doing a bit more just because I have fewer long fragments of just standing there. And that has completely trashed my body. Everything hurts, everything in my head, neck, throat, and ears is swollen, my muscles don't move right and when they do it hurts, gut stuff has flared (it seems pretty reactive to PEM), hard to breathe again, hard to move a lot of the time, standing for only a couple minutes makes my heart alarm go off, etc etc etc.

It's like I said, I need to re-learn how to manage these symptoms anew every time.

I was going to write about where I am in prep for the pottery show (PSH clay does s-cracks but is sandier/stiffer, Tucker's clay is softer but can collapse more easily and throws less slip/mud, writing things up, deciding what the last pieces I'll make are) and about Robs (gone to vet, he has allergies, vet and I agree that management on a farm wih a dog who eats everything would be VERY HARD so he has two medication options, I'm going with the pills but that means another expensive monthly animal, but it's more of a relief than trying to keep him from eating things, also he's disruptive at night so he's in his run at night)

But I'm kinda done. Ugh. Josh is coming up tomorrow and the house is really gross and I can barely walk.

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First pottery show

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:13:50 GMT

Eep!

I have my first pottery show coming up in September. I'll set up the space from the 2nd to 4th, and there'll be a soft opening some days after that, a formal evening reception if I want (I do want! And I will find a way to recline with my feet up, dammit, maybe with my C-shaped cushion and some blankets on the stage). There'll be a small pottery workshop mid Sept, then on the 25th I'll take everything home that didn't sell.

It's at the local lovely little art studio, so nothing huge and fancy and it'll be very comfortable.

Setup will need to include pricing and I'd like to write about groups of things and the iterative process, we'll see if that happens. I'd also like to ask the town photographer if she can photograph everything for me so I have a record. Between what I've given away, sold, and broken I'm losing a lot even from memory, like my favourite red-clay ash-and-turquoise mug full of tea I left on the back of my truck when I drove away from the garden club meeting a couple years ago. Sigh.

I'm also trying to make lots of stuff. I'd hoped to work through July and Aug on it but then cut my thumb too badly to go near mud and water. And unlike my past life I can't just push and then rest; I pushed too hard yesterday and couldn't sleep last night until the second dose of painkillers kicked in and that was only four cups, albeit with fairly dry clay.

This is the perfect opportunity to test some more clays.

The company I've generally bought clay from, Plainsman, is relatively local; that is it's from Western Canada and the only place that mines and makes clay here. They've always had an abysmal website, hard to navigate and without live inventory numbers or anything, though they had descriptions of their clays and pricing, and they had a ton of side information on a related site.

Recently they fired the guy who ran the related site and took down their site "to update and make a better site". Now, this means that no pricing info, clay characteristics, nor even a list of what they make is up, just am under construction sign saying they're making some wonderful site that will be out in some months.

This is the absolute stupidest thing. It's not like they need to take down their basic prices-and-characteristics site in order to make their fancy one. They can make their other one and just not link it in. And they're taking over six months on this project, assuming they finish it in the early fall; it could be much longer, who knows? But if I want absorption or particle size on their clays or even the name of a clay I'm SOL. Between that and some weird stuff with the guy they fired, and the fact that their red clays absorb more water when fired than I really like, I'm feeling very done with them.

So there are two other companies in Canada who do clay. I don't believe they mine their own materials but they do what is more commonly done, buy and mix to make specific clays. They're far east-er than I and clay does not ship cheaply since it's 40-50lbs per block (which here adds $25 per block-ish, and over half a dozen blocks you want to ship pallet freight with a loading dock thinger) but there IS a place in Vancouver area that carries them and Josh is coming up in a bit. AND the new place lets me order online instead of by email, and then pay easily and Josh just goes and picks it up.

Last time he came up he brought two kinds of red clay because Plainsman's red clay is their most porous (which is bad, it harbours mold) and because it's my most favourite type of clay to work with.

So I need to do a throw test on those quick, being mindful of which is which instead of just tossing them on the wheel, and that will help me decide between the two brands. Then he can bring up some more to test, and also some of whichever of the reds I like most.

And I can see how the glazes do on them.

In reality I probably will not end up writing much but will hopefully at least be able to use fabric and branches and whatnot to make a nice setup. I need to get some price stickers (?) because selling some would be nice, and label things as mine and decide on some prices.

I also need a sign which says "PLEASE TOUCH THE ART" and I'd like to number each piece and have a draw box: write down your favourite piece and you enter to win a prize. What people like and how they handle things is as fascinating to me as the physics and chemistry of throwing a piece and glazing it. People's bodies and aesthetic senses are all different and it makes me happy.

Anyhow, even though I have random pottery sitting on most surfaces in my house, including in my kitchen and in boxes in the carport, I feel the need to make a bunch more stuff. So I will be trying to do that for the next two weeks. I want to do little things easy to take home, and a couple big neat pieces that possibly have no actual purpose (!).

Whoah I jhave been writing a lot an just felt the room sway significantly, so instead og putting this away to do pottery I will lie down. But there you have it.

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Meds & paperwork update

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:50:46 GMT

Theoretically got all my disability paperwork in the other day (yesterday?) for the two-year own-occupation test that will decide about whether they make me 1) try to go back to work 2) keep funding me or 3) try to go back to work. I sent my bit in, I'd seen my doctor to fill out things back on the 24th and called today to make sure they'd sent it in (three weeks later). That went as follows:

Me: looks at the time, it's too early to call. Falls asleep.
Me: looks at the phone, it's their lunch break. Eats lunch, falls asleep.
Me: 2pm! Perfect. Calls, starts to explain the situation, their fire alarm goes up and they say they'll call me back. Sets alarm.
Me: 3pm: Alarm goes off. Calls. Starts to plain situation.
Her: oh yes! My colleague spoke with you earlier, we were about to call you back.
Me: so did you send the paperwork in?
Her: let me put you on hold to look. *does so*
Her: so I'm not sure if they got the ROI signed.
Me: I signed an ROI
Her: yes, but the hospital needs to sign one as well
Me: it's been three weeks and it needs to be in very soon
Her: we have an internal three-month deadline to get them signed
Me: ...my insurers won't wait three additional months after I wait for a doctor's appointment for the information *panicking silently*
Her: just a minute, let me put you on hold again
Her: *comes back* It looks like they sent it on the 24th, three weeks ago
Me: *breathes*
Me: decides not to ask for confirmation and just assume she's right the second time (before I asked for the fax cover sheet because they couldn't seem to figure out if they'd sent it in)

Anyhow that's theoretically done.

I'm on a medication trial for MCAS, which is basically "weird mast cell stuff folks will sell you lots of pseudoscience for"

Symptoms: weird skin stuff like itching, weird gut stuff, reflux, allergic reactions to random weird things, trouble breathing and swallowing, heart doing weird things, brain fog...

Treatment: take antihistamines

The most common way to diagnose is if you start taking a bunch of antihistamines and the symptoms go away, then you stop and they come back, it's probably that. There's a blood or pee test that tries to capture some ephemeral stuff but it tends not to work.

So anyhow, did I ever tell you that about two decades ago my skin was super itchy to the point I was sitting there thinking of trying to cut or peel my skin off with a veggie peeler, it had been getting worse for months, and so I decided instead of self-harming I should go to a doctor. The doctor said, take an allergy pill. It worked despite my skepticism. Been doing that ever since, more or less. There are windows it gets better. There are times the allergy pills aren't quite enough despite my rotating them and I'll take benedryl on top.

Then a couple years ago I started having gut stuff, reflux, food not going properly down when I tried to swallow, etc. I went to the doctor and got prescription stuff for awhile, then ended up with over the counter pepcid which I felt I could take more sustainably. It made things better sometimes but not all the time.

Turns out the medication trial for MCAS is to take: a sedating antihistamine, since bendryl can maybe cause dementia with long term use they go with a different one (which costs a million dollars and isn't covered by insurance, ugh), a non-sedating antihistamine like loratadine, cetirizine, or the other ones I've been rotating for two decades; and pepcid which inhibits something gut uptake histamines something but which is taken at a much higher dose than over the counter.

So I've been kind of doing this already, but now I have access to more information (it can "flare up" like most things can, due to stress or illness or other jolts to the body's equilibrium), to guidance on dosing (it's ok to take everything continuously, and recommended to find a "base dose" and then go up to higher doses when something is anticipated to cause a flare up) and to a prescription (which doesn't help because none are covered, but does help because they're still slightly cheaper than hunting around for sales from london drugs online, superstore, etc).

It's not that it makes everything all better, but it makes a lot of things better. My mind feels a bit less foggy all the time. Combined with the estrogen that means I feel less foggy AND I feel more emotionally stable, which is a very good thing. I'm sleeping more comfortably with less body discomfort and less crawling out of my skin.

My big daily doses of B vitamin complex are somewhat decreasing the other discomfort in my legs, the pins and needles and numbness and burning, if I forget for two days I definitely notice but it picks up again when I start.

So these are modest gains in terms of dealing with the world and life, but pretty substantial for quality of life. Being clearer and more enthusiastic does mean it's easier to do too much and get knocked back to bed. I think my muscles are more relaxed since I'm not always guarding against discomfort; anyhow it seems easier to pull/overuse/hurt muscles even if I'm not doing anything differently.

And finally my thumb stitches have been "fully" healed for a bit. About a quarter of my thumb pad is a weird combination of feeling numb and flayed, not recommended. It requires that after pottery or gardening I check it thoroughly because I wouldn't know if I got an abrasion or a thorn in it. It makes some activities very weird, like rubbing thumb and forefinger together is exceptionally weird. There is a big thick scar under the skin. But! The skin is closed, it's shed layers and toughened up, and I got to keep both my finger and my fingernail bed.

*I was going to post my answers to the disability forms here, then remembered just how often askamanager's sample resumes end up getting sent in as people's real resumes (before AI even) and refrained. I want to, because I hate the secrecy around all this stuff. It makes it both scarier and easier to other folks going through it. But there it is.

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PPS

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:03:04 GMT

Not impressed with current english nor current disability stuff on the concept of a mind-body dichotomy. I want to be more careful with my language. If I'm gonna be the only person who feels like my body is part of my whole (which is itself dichotomizing language) then so be it. I don't need to descend into the "meatsack" polarized nightmare of seperating from or hating my oldest and most faithful partner just because everyone else is doing it.

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PS

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:00:10 GMT

Robs and I get along MUCH BETTER now that I don't hate literally everything around me on a hair trigger with no pause. It's not an effort to tolerate him, he's just a pup that does things as expected. Yay estrogen I think?

Likewise world politics, I'd been picking up a bit of a "maybe we should just clean-slate everything" at the back of my head which had alarmed me.

Patience, tolerance, and proportion can be taken by patch or mouth and removed by surgery or chemicals, who knew.

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Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:54:34 GMT

Pretty much just laid out flat the last week between bits of working on the disability paperwork for permanent/long term/can I do any job at all not just my previous really high functioning complicated job which required everything from reading legislation to mapping to bushwacking. Almost there but it's almost due, and I keep putting in more consecutive time per day than I should and lying myself out again (you try writing something coherent and convincing in 10-minute-per-day intervals!)

Thumb is "healed" in the sense that the wound is closed and scarred over. All the skin that was under the bandage is now peeling off since it didn't have normal abrasion etc to provide regular turnover. About 3/4 of my thumb pad above the cut is numb/feels like a leg that's asleep and also covered in a cap of wax as if it had been dipped and let to cool.

I wedged a couple blocks of night/PSH500/M370 clay to make some rock-look travel mug cylenders. That was as far as I got. I'm aware my show is coming up in Sept so I'd like to get some things made, but I keep getting flattened before I can do anything. I think with the estrogen I'm able to be a bit more enthusiastic about things/my mind feels a bit more like myself, but my body and energy and ability haven't increased. This morning and yesterday morning I sat there waiting for my body to wake up and get going, like I used to in the before times, but it just sat there as if it were weighted with magnetic rocks.

Every time my mind changes I need to adjust what signs I use to carefully manage my body. More mental energy, more high emotions either pleasant or painful, even more optimism/hopefulness can lead to more crashes. I'm also starting to want to think about how to accommodate myself going outside my tiny round of grocery store pickup/post office/home/art studio. What would a trip look like for me? What sorts of experiences could I access, how often would I need to stop and rest, how can I stop and rest in ways that are affordable? Could I still do a dinosaur museum trip if I kitted out the back of the truck with the mattress and camp stove, if the museums had wheelchairs or I had a folding camp chair so I was sitting in them a bunch, and if I took my time and built in rest days? Is there any mask that would let me visit Vancouver-the-great-pot-smoke-smear without getting sick?

I'm starting to slowly put the pieces together about what's happening with my body. I've had histamine/mast cell issues/MCAS for a long time now, as determined by the fact that I've been medicating for it for decades and "a substantial improvement" going on the medication is basically how they diagnose it. I'm getting better medical tools and protocols to manage it.

Estrogen add-back makes the histamine stuff way worse. But estrogen makes my mind ok, and the histamine stuff can be managed with more (albeit expensive) medication.

That peels off a couple layers of things, the things that were happening before I got this sick. There's probably more but I'm learning slowly, a bit at a time.

Robs is doing great and settling in better with the cats, though not quite enough to be let out on his own. Solly is still scared of him but I haven't done much work there, it's next in the pipe after the cats.

House is ultra disgusting these days but needs to get cleaned before Josh comes up in a couple weeks, or at least a little bit better. All I've been managing is the dishes (loading/unloading dishwasher) and taking garbage out. I wish I had intact floors that could be washed upstairs. I'm very glad I have auto litter boxes and cat feeders, that's definitely a good part of the self-accommodations I've managed.

I seem to have been accepted for one of the gov disabilities, backdated a couple years, and thus the private insurance disability is withholding money because I'm "getting" that money now and they just need to top-up, but of course the gov disability won't get around to actually giving me the money for a month or three. Of course. I do wish I was able to better chronicle and label the gaps in coverage I get and do something with that info. I've been so lucky to be supported, it's very clear that the process is a sieve to clear out folks who don't have rich friends or family/big savings, eg to screen out lower socioeconomic classes. I'm not saying that's deliberate, but my experience with the gov is that everyone has a spouse and a couple kids and aren't even aware of anything that doesn't specifically service that, for instance "I didn't know we didn't have 100% insurance coverage for XYZ, I guess my spouse's coverage always topped it up" or lots of marriage-legal-kids privilege and none for alternate systems.

Anyhow, enough of that. The estrogen patch made me feel really stable but my skin fell off after a couple days under it, which then stops it delivering estrogen. It wasn't really painful but I'm not sure if I have enough skin to move it around and let the previous one heal. So I'm on a pill, which I've been taking in the evening, and it seems to make me a little weepy feeling around midmorning (though still much better overall). Small sample size so far so we'll see.

I wish I was well enough to go do something fun and distracting or even do a nice walk-and-play with Robs in the back.

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Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:31:49 GMT

I've been picking away at the edges of knowledge the long covid/ME/fibromyalgia clinic offers, they have tons of info, and nearly every time I turn around I discover stuff I've been doing is the right stuff (which I'm not doing randomly, all this evolved over the last few years from trial and error and knowing my body pretty well). Not just pacing, but neuro-retraining etc etc. It's funny because the way they prefer to give the knowledge is through online webinars, which I'm not great with not just because of the screne/information density but because if someone tells me to do something PDA will kick in. But being in the fb group for the clinic and having people talk about what they learned, I can pick up pieces and take them if they'll work for me.

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Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:26:14 GMT

If I don't write things they'll get lost but I've had too much going on.

Cut my finger open because I for some reason decided to hold a potato while cutting it instead of putting it on a cutting board. It was stitched closed at emerg a bit too tightly, so the stitches tore through my skin a bit and had to come out early. I am still babying it two and a half weeks later but it didn't get infected; normal cell goo did cause weird bubbles but the nurse said they were fine. I had to go in to get it looked at/dressing changed a couple times which super flattened me.

Did doctor's part of disability paperwork

Got most of my own disability online but it really flattened me, it needs editing and sending in still

Went out to a 1-hour social tea at the art studio, dressed up, sat at a table with people, drank tea, talked about weather and how delightful the scones were and how nice it was they had hats for everyone. It was really really nice, of course I had the two-day-later dip, and I didn't have the time I needed to recover because--

Dentist, didn't put it off even though other stuff was going on because apparently other stuff is always going on, teeth seem ok, inquiring about insurance covering a new nightguard

Somehow the folks who sent Robs up here, who I knew were credit card fraud people, managed to credit card fraud the airline so they're going after Tucker, who dropped Robs off at the airport. I don't know how this comes up three months later, nor how Tucker ended up responsible, but obviously the buck stops with me since he was just doing me a favour, and I'll likely be doing a police report more to try and mess up the fraudsters stuff than with any real thought of getting the money back

Meanwhile some help with property tax fell through so more money stuff. Money stuff needs to all be resolved by fall, which is getting close

Estrogen patch may be smoothing down my rage issues which is good, but may not stick to my extremely weird skin, which is problematic

I upped some of the antihistamines I've been taking regularly and it helps a lot with body discomfort. Estrogen makes gut discomfort way worse, high antihistamines offset it

Other meds are waiting in the wings but I'm not going to start taking a million things all at once

Need to get Thea to the vet and get her teeth done and a limp looked at. It might be time for arthritis meds for her.

Solly was having some real discomfort running around however when she was ok'd by the vet because the muscles were so atrophied, so I've had her in during the day and out overnight. No more bird losses and it limits her running around to animal stuff, she doesn't feel the need to warn off cars and bicyclists since they aren't around at night. She's a lot more comfortable now since she's using it a reasonable amount. She blew her coat and suddenly has that beautiful long-legged elegant look these dogs can get, after six inches of dense fur came off all around her and she stopped looking like a tank.

Robs and I continue to evolve, he's still itchy even though he's on this itch pill. I'm learning when he wants hugs and snuggles since he won't ask for them except by jump-biting, I'm still trying to get him to ask a different way and hes happy to ask for other things by sitting but not this, or I can't interpret it well. I've taught him "touch" where he puts his nose to my hand which is super useful for moving him around. He weirdly has both seperation anxiety, like he hates being on a line or behind a gate where he can't get to me, but he also still doesn't have that level of attention that the others have. I think he needs to spend a lot more time outside along with someone he trusts, to acclimatize to everything, but I can only manage 2-3 hours per day and a lot of that has to be lying/sitting. Solly is scared of him? I'm working on enclosing the front yard right next to Thea's guardian spot, which would seperate him from her but allow them to be right next to each other, and would keep him away from the cats' entrance. I've been working on this awhile but the above many things have intervened and it's been too much to push through.

We've had so much long soaking heavy rain in patches over the last week or two. I'm relieved for every perennial I planted this year. The weeds are engulfing everything. Somehow I've kept the corn clear and it's doing well: montana morado, a sweet corn grex year 1, and some crossed morden seeds F2. oh, and the favas.

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Mon, 13 Jul 2026 21:27:07 GMT

I'm extremely capable of having different emotions for a system vs the people or things within it and their individual behaviours. I'm only now realizing how many people don't seem to be able to understand that, nor maybe have that ability on their own.

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Sun, 12 Jul 2026 15:42:48 GMT

So up until yesterday I had never had stitches and never broken a bone. I'm actually not sure how, since I know I got the lump removed from my ribs and that didn't require stitches somehow, maybe they glued it up. But anyhow.

One of the things I most notice about my mind when it works (other than, you know, the big periods of it blanking) is that my micro-decisions are erratic. That's what worries me most about safety, honestly. I can sort bigger decisions out, but small short-term ones are especially necessary while driving and cooking: where do I set this down, what direction do I turn, do I touch this or get a hot pad, where do I look, how quickly do I move?

In this case I for some reason decided to hold a potato in my hand while cutting it. Unsurprisingly the knife went through the potato and, because I was slicing rather than wedging, went really deep into my thumb. I felt it-- I have a pretty advanced sense of "weird thing inside my body" -- and immediately clamped it, popped into the bathroom, wrapped it in toilet paper (I knew that was a bad idea at the time, toilet paper always sticks. I really should keep gauze, which does not stick, somewhere very very easy to get at because of course when I'm bleeding I don't want to go digging through first aid stuff), put pressure on it and popped my hand in the air.

I thought for maybe five minutes, got as far as googling "emergency rooms BC" and couldn't find the thing which says whether they're open or not, only what wait times are in the big ones. Then I thought fuckit, turned off the stove, tossed the roll of fencing wire out the back of the truck (it was loose because i was going to unload it, so I either needed to strap it down or toss it out) and drove to the hospital.

The wound itself was a really interesting experience. Whenever I took pressure off and peeled back the covering to try and look at it, a lot of blood came out. However it's really easy to put pressure on the ball of your thumb with your other fingers, and it's easy to elevate a hand. My hand and arm were pretty bloody from peeking, but it wasn't actively bleeding as I drove. That's good because I had a ten minute wait for construction on the way in (it's a 10-15 minute drive into town normally). I kinda wonder what the construction people thought because I drove with my hand on my head, since I couldn't hold it up muscularly and my head was a convenient resting spot.

The hospital was-- you know, I actually really like small town institutions. There's a fascinating juxtaposition between systems that are designed hierarchically, created for big-city high-throughput areas and indiscriminantly rolled out to the smaller locations, and the actual people in the small location who are the flexible elements in the system and generally roll with practicality. There are such diminishing returns in tailoring the systems for small locations - if you do a bad job only a couple percentages of people or metrics will be angry - that no one bothers. But it also means few people bother to enforce.

Anyhow, the hospital is also the regular medical clinic (closed on weekends, yesterday was Saturday), the labs, the community health location, etc. The emergency area shares a parking lot but has a seperate door. On that door it says, in permanent signage: go to the main clinic, doors are open.

Of course the doors are not open at the main clinic, it's only open daytime weekdays if that. So I ignore the sign, go in, look around at the three unlabelled doors that come off the airlock/vestibule thing, and choose the small one to the side that, I can see through the glass, looks like a waiting room. Already I'm picturing trying to navigate this with a crying child, active bleeding, or as a non-local.

In the waiting room there's one person in a chair, who leaves. There's a window with a computer type station behind it, like you'd expect for check-in, an ipad set up in a corner, and confusing signage ("press button for nurse" "register here" by the ipad, "go to main clinic, IT IS OPEN" (it is still not open). Eventually someone wanders by behind the glass and I say, "what do I do?" and she says "register over there" and points to the ipad station.

As always the ipad will not register my finger touch, so I stab at it a bunch of times and it pops up a sign "your call is in queue, if you hang up your spot in the queue will be lost" and I wait. I am impressed that they have managed to create a waiting line in a clinic with no other patients. That's some top-notch bureaucracy there.

It doesn't take many minutes to get through on the ipad. The person takes my medical card number, is silent a minute, and says, "you've spoken to the nurse"? I say no, and she says I need to do that first, and she hangs up.

I go back to the window and someone comes by and looks at me inquiringly. "I need to register" I say, and she says "no, you do that on the ipad" and, frustrated, I say "no, you told me to register there, I was JUST THERE and they told me to register here, and now you are saying to register there. What is going on?". Someone else walks up and sits down in front of the window and says something soothing, and after a minute says "ok, I need to take your vitals" and sticks a blood pressure cuff through the little window in the plexiglass, takes a thermometer and puts it in my mouth through the same window, and then clamps one of those thingers on my finger.

This is very weird, but there's not much else to do. I'm still holding a bunch of bloody kleenex around my thumb and keeping it elevated, it is still not actively bleeding. After a few minutes of taking and recording vitals the nurse behind the window asks me a bunch of questions, inputs them into the computer (it looks like she's new to this, no shade to her because I'm not in any clear distress but she is slow and needs to check in with someone else a couple times) and then says "ok, go register". I'm like: ??? And she tells me to go to the ipad.

So I go back to the ipad (there is only one movable chair in the room, so I bring the chair back and forth with me from window to ipad since 1) all the windows and ipads are at seated height and 2) I can't stand for long periods of time and am feeling kind of dizzy). I press the buttons, stabbing hard several times, and get into the queue again. I am now exceptionally impressed, they have somehow got me to wait in three consecutive lines even though there is literally no one else in the waiting room and none of those lines is to see an actual doctor.

It takes several minutes to get through the ipad queue, where the person on the ipad takes the same information that the nurse did (how long ago did you get the injury, how did you get the injury, what is your medical card number, what is your date of birth). It's hard to hear the ipad because there is somehow background noise in the hospital even though I can't see any people. The person on the ipad directs me on how to turn up the volume, which eventually has to acknowledge my finger on the volume button. "Ok, you can go now" the ipad says. "Go where?" I say, frustrated. There are no longer any humans in sight behind the window. "There should be a square room with chairs" the ipad says, and hangs up.

I sit in a chair in the empty waiting room. Someone comes in through the door from the outside and drops off a lab sample. Someone else is ?vacuuming?. The first person I spoke with pops her head out and says, very genuinely, "I'm sorry about misleading you earlier" and I am immediately charmed and feel bad for being frustrated, but she's gone before I can apologize in turn.

After only maybe 4 minutes a nurse pops out and takes me back to a room. I sit in a chair and she says "can I see the wound?" Of course the toilet paper is scabbed onto it by then, and it's a... you know a slash wound has lips, so even though the nurse brings saline to ease the paper off it tugs at the wound (painful) and the wound bleeds all over the little table in a puddle. The nurse says "I'm going to take you to another room, it will need sutures" and she brings me somewhere else, where she settles me in and, when I ask to lie down, she adjusts the bed/seat thing comfortably and is generally really nice. "I'll call the doctor in" she says, and leaves.

The way I understand it our hospital emerg isn't staffed overnight and on weekends, it's just doctors on call. On the other hand, the whole town is a 5 minute drive long. While I'm waiting I see a poster which lists "additional charges" for crutches, slings, and a couple other medical devices. Otherwise, though, I just ride out the wave of exhaustion from the adrenaline surge that got me there, notice that my phone is buzzing with a storm warning, and think that if the power goes out I'll just take a nap right there. It's comfy.

The doctor appears in maybe ten minutes. Given that the 10% of the people who come to emergency waiting rooms in the province wait 36 hours, I'm doing really well here: all my waiting has pretty much been administrative, not from overcrowding. He inevitably asks to see the wound, which is now covered in gauze but has still scabbed to the covering. I uncover it -- this hurts -- and it bleeds all over the pad the nurse put under it to catch the blood (she learns fast).

The doctor and the nurse confer a minute and go searching in the room for epinephrin(?) which they do not find. After several minutes of fruitless searching the doctor says to the nurse "if I stitch it up it will help stop the bleeding" and I guess what they were looking for was something to keep down the blood. In their search they have opened several of the wrong neatly tied packages, and though everything in the room is on neatly labelled shelves, the shelves are all labelled by use ("wound kits") and not by drug type. My blood, which had got on the doctor's gloves, is now in a couple places. "You must have hit an artery" he says, and I express surprise that I have an artery in my thumb. "They're all through the body" he tells me, laughing (he's not laughing at me, just generally a laughing sort of person, I'd say).

They pull out another pad to soak up blood, and then another, and put my hand on it. "You're ok with freezing?" the doctor asks, and I heartily agree. "This is my first stitches, please freeze me!" He does, and we joke about dentist freezing, that I'm a careful person since this is my first stitches, and just generally chat and laugh with each other while he freezes my finger (VERY WEIRD feeling) and stitches it up (VERY WEIRD even though I was frozen, there's some sort of proprioceptive sense that wasn't frozen but no touch sensation, VERY VERY WEIRD). I thank him, he thanks me (?) and heads out.

While the nurse is bandaging my finger she asks "how was that experience?" since she heard that it was my first stitches. "Really good" I tell her truthfully. My finger is still frozen, it's bandaged, and I walk out the door an hour after walking in, though hilariously 35 of those minutes were registering in three seperate lines.

Anyhow, I'm clearly not doing pottery, gardening, or much farming (wet poop) this weekend. I need to somehow get into the clinic to change the wound dressing Mon or Tues since I was told not to do it myself. My finger hurts, and I really can tell its elevation relative to my heart. I got my first four stitches. And I had a really good hospital experience, which is lucky: most people in the province don't, and if I'd been a couple hours later our emergency room would have been closed for the night.

Anyhow all that typing was done with lots of arm movement and my arms low, so I'm gonna lie back down, prop my hand on a pillow, and contemplate how cleanly I expect the wound to heal compared to if I tried to manage it at home. Also, dude, I wonder how many people died from flint knives while cooking.

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Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:51:11 GMT

In the accomplishment column, I talked to the mortgage broker today and she set my mind at ease somewhat. In Canada you need to "renew" your mortgage every five years, that is, redo it at whatever the interest rate is at that time. My renewal is coming up at the end of the year, so because interest rates are higher now my mortgage payments will go up.

I was worried they wouldn't renew my mortgage at all, since my income is weird right now, but it sounds like I'll retain the option to renew this one at whatever rate is offered since I haven't missed payments, and if I'm approved for long term disability (which is the paperwork I'm currently doing) I should have some other options she can dig up for me. She says that because I have so little left on my mortgage the interest increase won't be so bad either. So that's a relief.

With Solly's legs x-rayed and her ok to walk herself, and with Robs under the weather yesterday (I think because he ate the most disgusting marrow out of a bone; he's fine again today) I didn't even walk to the back once, dog walks were just sitting in the front garden in the grass, and I managed to get onto the wheel for the first time in forever. That means I still have to put on handles today, soon. I had cleaned the wheel all sparkling to use the porcelain up last spring, and so I could just sit down and throw (thank you, past me). I can't think in shapes right now or figure out textures, but past self left some handy sketches of the mugs I wanted to make next.

Robs also has broken seven bowls so I need to make more of those (he flips them, then jumps up and down on them. Yes, he shouldn't have pottery bowls, and his water is in a metal one and his food in food balls, but he had some medication that needed to be in a bowl and I don't have small metal bowls. Thank goodness pottery breaks into a couple pieces and doesn't shatter into sharp things like glass does)

My fig trees on the patio are doing ok, they should be potted up, and my nursery section of things to go in places that are currently waiting in pots is getting slightly smaller all the time as I plant a couple things a week. The corn is lovely, especially the montana morado. I think the breeder, Dave Christensen, also did the atomic orange which is surprisingly early too?

I picked some strawberries and ate them. I remain bemused by how the haskaps are earlier than strawberries. They hold well on the bush and I keep eating them slowly. The strawberries were delicious. Next will be saskatoons, then raspberries. When I remember I take a stalk of rhubarb (they are big stalks) and dip it in sugar between bites. I have so much weeding to do, and am hoping to do more of it now that I'm walking the dogs a bit less, and Robs is settling into a longline near wherever I am working.

There are some big fires on the highway down south, but far enough down south that the smoke isn't up here and it's not immediately impacting things like groceries. Heat is supposed to be coming but we've had some cold lately and we're fairly moist still. In the context of the world, where so many continents are having so so many heat deaths, we're extraordinarily lucky right here. Even with that light frost in July the other day.

I want to keep being alive, and keep doing the things I love. It's extraordinary to suddenly have hope I can do that, between actual steps to take medically and some assurance I can keep the house.

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Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:57:20 GMT

Crossposted to fb

When we're working on prescribing a medication, my doctor always goes overtime for me, describing the pros and cons of a couple different ones, listening to what's important to me and altering her suggestions based on that, even sometimes cancelling and changing a prescription she's just put in two minutes ago based on an offhand comment I make when my comment means a different medication would work better. (Me: "yeah, I do have trouble taking them at the same time every day" Her: "this other medication has a longer half-life, would you rather try that one? There will be fewer effects if you take it late. You would? Let me just cancel and change that prescription")

She's not House, but she does care, and she works hard and thoughtfully with her knowledge when she has something to dig her teeth into. I wish she worked in a system where she was allowed more than 20 minute appointments, though she is learning to game it a bit ("next time, schedule two appointments back to back, or at the end of the day so we can go overtime")

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Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:34:36 GMT

Really good specialist appointment this morning. It's with the clinic that's nearly all group stuff but she sent me with supporting documentation for disability and tax stuff, and with a list of like fifteen things to try medically with links to learning abotu each, and sent that to my doctor too, so I/we can work through them. She was good with pronouns and chosen names. And, most importantly, she was able to address my actual symptoms and put them into a framework that made sense when offering next steps.

It was fifteen (?) months on the wait list, since Dec a year and a half ago. A friend recommended the lnic to me and I'm very very grateful, I think I still have a year and a half sor the omplex diseases one.

I'm so so so so relieved. I'm happy to have some next steps to sink my teeth into. I'm also fully and completely exhausted in every way (it was a half hour zoom appointment) and glad I got a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jam yesterday and put a cup of tea next to my bed before the call. I'm just going to lie here with my eyes closed for awhile.

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Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:13:14 GMT

I'm tired.

I've been plugging my way through the disability paperwork questions on paper, which helps significantly compared to trying to do them on a screen. I can get up to fifteen minutes at a time and still do something in the day instead of being knocked out completely after ten minutes and not getting as much down.

The inability to go further is similar to how I felt after the car accident, though the way the brain fog and physical symptoms carry on into the rest of my life afterwards isn't.

I am, unsurprisingly, stuck on the "what does a typical day" question looks like.

Meanwhile I have something like a dozen appointments lined up this month, a couple doctors ones (for disability, and for a medication change), two specialist ones (one one-on-one and one "go to a webinar, they give you information, and you decide what to do with that information" because that's how these specialists work), one dentist, and a bunch of others I can't think of right now. It honestly makes me want to cry from pure despair, I cannot possibly do this many things this month but I have to. I'm back to losing core strength pretty significantly, and staying upright is uncomfortable at all times.

I'm trying to find some way to do speech to text to keep plugging away at the questions but with very limited online research ability it's not going well. I try to limit app access to my phone microphone, so I'm looking for something on my laptop, but it seems the recommended one is $600USD.

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Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:08:59 GMT

I hung my hammock in the far back yesterday, the newly-fenced area. I guess I need a new name because the far back used to be the newly-fenced area plus the slough and forest behind it that went back to the highway, but now that area is two pieces: the newly-fenced area and the rest, the wildland I guess, that will be a strip for animals along the highway and a tithe to the land, what permaculturalists call zone 5.

The hammock is a little cramped, the trees aren't quite far enough apart and the others are too far, but it lets me lay down while Robs is hanging out, which is good. He's been given treats for coming and checking in on me, for sitting politely, and for lying calmly by me for, what, a month and a bit now? So with just a dropped line so I can (theoretically) catch him again he's learning to exist without me in proximity, but also to check in from time to time. He was right up by me all the time at first, but as treats got more erratic he has been starting to calmly explore on his own, and not just excitedly dash to something and then dash around in circles. It's good to see him slow-sniffing along the fence or playing with a branch casually. The process of getting to know each other, becoming familiar and family, continues.

I've been letting Solly off in the far back too, only after we've walked back there and she hasn't seen anything to excite her. She trots off, does her business, and comes back for snuggles. She had a hairball the other day, exactly like a cat's, despite all the brushing I've been doing. I'll need to step the brushing up.

One trait of a good indoor dog is that they will poop and pee quickly outside, in a designated area. One treat of a good guardian dog is that they leave markings, poop and pee, along the paths of invaders and along the perimeter where they think it's most useful for territory marking. Solly especially will choose spots at 10-20 foot intervals along the fence where it has the most invader-scent, one interval per day poop session. Robs has at least learned to poop further away from the house, and sometimes to save pee for marking, but he's not into edges yet.

Anyhow, theoretically the hammock will help me recover a little bit.

Things to write abotu in future: witches parade, roses planted, tomatoes, berry patch, and neighbour fencing.

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Two conversations on Fort

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:00:57 GMT

I took my chainsaw into the chainsaw place to get it sharpened the other day -- it is a little battery one, and basically all I use now since it's so easy to take out for one or two little things and then put away. I got talking with the woman running the shop for a bit, she was from Ontario, and she mentioned that one of the reasons she feels comfortable in Fort is (I can't remember the exact words) because we're all pretty out-there people, or a collection of characters, or something like that. I was not wearing my "Forest Queer" shirt (I have two shirts, one says "forest queer" and the other says "if found please return to the woods") so I cautiously said "I'm not a churchy person, so I couldn't live in Vanderhoof, but here there's a lot more freedom because no one is normal so you don't need to conform to a normal" and she vigorously agreed.

I also stopped by the art studio where a neighbour was chatting with the person who runs the studio, and was drawn in with "Greenie! Just who we needed, we need your advice" and they asked me if there was (deeply paraphrased) a more christian-acceptable way to describe (I somehow wrote "prevent" and caught it on edit) witches. They do a witches dance on halloween at the thinger, and my neighbour had got a grant to take the witches group to more events, but some folks didn't like it because witches were bad. So I basically said that any type of power that rivalled the church would have the same stigma, unless they wanted to be nuns which was kind of the christian co-option of herbal and spiritual stuff for women? They laughed and said definitely not. So there are going to be witches in the parade this year, and in various events. They also tried to recommend acessibility options so I could join them, which I thought was really sweet, and I think I might, though not on the parade in a couple days.

These two conversations led to me fully forgetting a doctor's appointment, and thus missing it, despite it being on the to-do list I was checking off. Sigh.

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My home thinks it's Stonehenge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:41:19 GMT

Every summer solstice the sun skims just below the deep eaves the whole morning, filling the loft with sunshine like a glass bowl. In a house with almost no windows it's remarkable.

It's astonishing how much the sun moves up here. In winter solstice it travels roughly 90 degrees of azimuth during the short day. During summer solstice it travels roughly 270 degrees of azimuth, that is, both sunset and sunrise move 90 degrees along the horizon during the year. It makes calculating shade for gardening kind of fascinating.

This morning in the middle of the new back pasture there were ice beads in the long grass. No frost was in closer, but walking the dogs back there has taught me that west-facing slope is surprisingly cold overnight. Maybe it's just because it's so open, the furthest spot from trees or whatnot.

We've had a couple days of nice deep rain. Things feel green and alive again and probably are getting bigger by the minute.

I started planting the berry patch in the back that was the pigpen last year: boyne raspberries along the west side, red bounty along the south side, seabuckthorn with comfrey punctuation on the north side, haskaps on the east side, and evans cherries on the west end of the north-middle row. Right now the rest is planted in corn, tomatoes, and some brassicas and will be slowly turned over to more berries.

I just realized this isn't a bad time to start thinking about winter grains.

Tired. Getting core muscle failure ore often these days. Unsurprising. I very much want to make solstice pottery nonetheless. I probably will not, but we shall see.

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TS Eliot, always

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 02:48:05 GMT

As with everything he has nailed this solstice. Perhaps tomorrow I will put on my headphones and listen to him read his poem on repeat, in the garden. Today, tomorrow, this holy time, I find paperwork is not to my taste.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

***

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
“What shall we ever do?”

***

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was now living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

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