Growing family

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 04:04:08 GMT

Solstice/solly nee keesa arrived today. I picked her up a two-hour drive away, she'd already been in a truck an hour and a half to get to me. Her people were very nice, and very grateful I think that they found her a good home. She was carsick but put on a good face.

Thea accepted her somewhat nervously, perhaps because it was Way Too Hot and she didn't want to move much. Thea is such a good girl. Avallu DID NOT accept her on first meeting, unsurprisingly, so now I'm doing some rotation/separation so they can get used to each other's scents and stuff.

She's going to be a big girl, she's a little taller than Thea right now but in the super skinny adolescent stage. She's probably as long as Avallu already. When I'm sitting on the ground she's taller than me.

I was definitely contractually obligated to snuggle everyone -- Thea to reassure her she was being so good, Solly because she was in a new scary space and also is a go-out-and-return-to-snuggle snugglebug, Avallu to help him regulate, Whiskey because he got too close to Solly when she was eating and got snarled at, Hazard because everyone else was getting attention...

All in all, not a bad start. Will need to spend lots of time with Avallu and Solly's intros though.

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Therapy x2

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 21:36:24 GMT

It's spring. Things are overwhelming.

There are geese in my incubator, geese in my bathtub, geese in my livingroom (in a brooder), geese at my backdoor, and ...well, geese everywhere.

The pigs are out on their field, so far digging happily and respecting the electric fence.

26 trees arrive in the next few days and need to go into the ground (plus assorted bushes, of course).

2 relationships are ending this year. The third one needs some foundation work done.

I have been without local community for awhile because, frankly, I'm afraid to put myself out there in a culture I don't fully understand (is "drop by anytime" literal meaning? are there cues I need to know) and a smallish pool of people. I need to build community.

And field season is starting at work so I'll be away from home a bunch, 9 hours' drive up the lake with little to no communication.

It got bad enough that I started thinking, what if I'm too sad to get out of bed and I can't take care of the animals? How will I downsize to prevent that happening? Then I scheduled a therapist visit and helped a gosling hatch and had a good talk with Tucker. Things are better now.

When I took the first round of goslings outside for the first time they huddled under me and for a little while I was a mama goose (I will wear pants next time). They loved me and it was sweet.

I rescued a late hatcher from the nest of the goose family mama and it hatched in the incubator just fine. Everyone has an animal named Lucky, right?

The pigs are so happy and my dogs have been persuaded the pigs are ok to be out.

Tucker has been learning to feel and self-advocate for his boundaries to the extent we can start to see the shape of them, which is incredibly relaxing. It turns things from a scary guessing game into an issue of logistics.

And my therapist does the sort of redirection where I come in feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, and go out feeling like I have a plan and I'm looking forward to a new set of challenges. Also helps that they seem sympathetic but encouraging when I say it's hard.

It feels good to own my shit; the lack of control involved in giving my life to others is really unpleasant.

I need to do things with folks in my community, though. I have 2 in mind: helping someone with a garden, and chatting/picking up a thing from another person. Witness this: I need to do these things, I'm scared. I will do them both before the end of May.

Phew.

Life is ok, but it was sure a rough weekend.

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Greenstorm's Journal

Growing family

Therapy x2