Greenstorm's Journal

The other day, when I was picking up roosters, I went down one of those long, long roads that snakes through the hills and lakes and farms and forests and eventually turns to gravel. In the summer they're always washboard, and in my area they always eventually turn into forestry roads or else they used to be, which means if you turn down a side road they whisper out into smaller roads, rutted and overgrown, if you can get past the deactivation berms. Eventually they come out on clearings with various ages of trees, meadows full of young trees waist- or shoulder-high, or young forests with branches beginning to close and shade, or teenage forests packed with trunks like bodies on a dance floor. Because of our green-up rules it's usually a tapestry of all three.

I hadn't missed driving on loose gravel or washboard, especially since I run city-thickness tires these days instead of ten-ply. I still remember some of the tricks -- turning on 4H always helps, and you can usually keep one tyre on the bare line in the middle to avoid skidding -- but it's tiring. I didn't go far enough on gravel to need a radio.

I had missed seeing what was over the next hill. I had missed glimpsing a shine of lake or the drop of a valley and turning to go there. I miss putting my feet on the ground and following to somewhere no one had been in decades or longer, or where people had been briefly but were gone now with the whole left only to me, to my survey, and then to time and rewilding for the next sixty or eighty years. I miss... walking past the edges of roads, and calling out to talk to the animals so I didn't surprise them, and checking the browse and the tracks as I went.

I miss the feeling of my cruise vest, basically a better-designed high vis backpack, that over the years grew to fit my body until it was like a bison's or a camel's hump, settled into place with a short jump and than invisible to my notice until I needed the resources it held.

I miss standing looking down at a lake that no one has fished in, maybe only half a dozen people have swum in in the last century. I miss being surrounded by the real world, by the trees and grasses and berries and insects clicking and the knowledge of that wide web of life around me.

I miss grassy verges of gravel roads. I miss the smell of dust in the truck. I miss being so far out that I not only don't have cell service, but that I need to go back to the truck for its more powerful radio signal. I miss learning the names of the places around me and knowing other people know them too, had been looking at that same lake from the other hill years ago. I miss the rocky ridges that tore my lungs to climb and smelled like hot grass and juniper and that offered a view of the whole area.

I miss the feeling of settling into an even pace, not pushing, not dawdling, just engaging my legs in a comfortable gear and going.

I even miss the heaviness of caulk boots and never slipping on logs and winding my way over and under blowdown.

I miss the feeling of having my waterbottle when I was thirsty, of pulling it out and drinking, of the feeling of knowing I had provisioned myself and could care for myself and my body with forethought and with the bit of weight I was carrying. I miss the taste of my own well water when it had been warmed and sloshing in my pack.

I miss the tendrils of connection that all created, of sense memory and knowledge of the surrounding area that snaked out to anchor me in this place.

What goes on with me now is somewhat delayed-onset, and so today I've been in bed all day, barely making it to the bathroom, not cooking, as I knew I would after the absolute trainwreck of Friday. I wonder, today, if I turned off my phone and internet forever, if maybe I could venture back into the bush-- go a couple kilometers from the truck with an ultralight hammock and a couple thermoses of tea, sleep, come back the next day. If I didn't have to endure the gutting cognitive effort of handling people, could I have those experiences again? Just a little?

This is the first day I've felt trapped in my house. I've been trapped in my house lots since this all started, but today is the first day it's felt trapped instead of sheltered. The wind blew hard and steady all day and the aspens outside the open window sounded like heavy waves on the ocean. All day, from sunup till dinner, there was no peace.

Maybe it's that I hadn't expected it, hadn't had time to fortify myself against Friday's one-two-three-four punch of demands.

I need to cut my expenses by about half in the next little bit. I give real thought to internet being one of them. Musknet makes me morally uncomfortable anyhow, it's very expensive, and I could always go in to the library to post and read things. Would that get me energy back as well as money? Who knows.

Today is a hard day. Tomorrow I take Whiskerbearpantscat in to get a couple teeth pulled, which also won't be easy. Then I start to rest up for Avallu's surgery in the beginning of September.

And right now I have to find it in myself to go outside and feed the ducks, the geese, the chickens, the muscovies, and the dogs. It'll be easier, out there. My garden will call me and the muscovies will trill and the geese will follow me around -- they're starting to eat to fatten for fall now -- and I'll see what's blown over and will need fixing. If no one is in immediate peril then I won't fix any of it.

Today I took Siri back to the vet, with meds, to get blood and urine tested. He's been drinking a lot and if his food intake is disrupted he gets diarrhea, so I knew something was up.

I'd been overextending myself so I made no plans other than a quick trip in to the vet, stopping at the grocery for a pickup order they'd bring out to the truck, and going home.

I got out of the vet earlier than expected -- I've learned to put padding between things in town, so the pickup order was going to be a bit. I decided to pick up some sushi, then I got to the grocery store. As I pulled in to the pickup spot I got a call from the vet: Siri has diabetes, she wanted to catch me while I was still in town, there were 3 options:

-Put him down, she knew he was a stray I'd just found and this was going to take some commitment to deal with

-Insulin shots, which would require him to go into the clinic for a full day, then once every couple days for a couple weeks, then once a week for awhile, then once a month. He'd get the shots twice a day. The vet is a 5 hour round trip from me if nothing goes badly.

-A new drug she doesn't have much experience with, which he would take by mouth once a day, along with diabetic food. It would still require monitoring but some of that could be done by phone maybe. The drug isn't cheap but the vial should last a couple months.

I had pulled my truck really awkwardly into the parking space -- it's too long to super comfortably go into most of them, and I was trying to answer the phone. I'm sitting there on the phone in the row of 12 pickup spaces with someone pulled into the one space beside me that I was partially cutting off, while all but 1 of the other spaces were empty, sorting through this in my mind. The person in the other car, also on the phone, was glaring at me.

I went with the last option, the once a day drug that probably didn't require as much monitoring. This is why I can't keep my credit card empty, I guess.

I had ordered a bunch of frozen food because the plan was to go straight home. Even though I'd brought a kinda cooler thing running up to the vet was going to add an hour to me getting home, but so be it. I loaded my groceries into the truck, covered them with blankets and jackets, and drove the half hour back up to the vet, then back down again in pre-long-weekend-rush-hour (which, to be fair, is probably less in Prince George than nearly anywhere else people might live).

Got onto the highway, air conditioner blasting -- it had somehow gone from 19C to 27C -- and slowed down because the car in front of me had their flashers on. They were part of a line that stretched to the horizon, which at this point wasn't too far because of a hill. No one was moving.

After about twenty minutes the line of cars started creeping forward. Nothing on facebook about what was going on. Cars had been coming the other way intermittently, so I knew it wasn't a logging truck fully jackknifed or anything. Why weren't they alternating traffic past the blockage? Why were we creeping so slooooooooowly? At this point the cars stretched to the horizon behind me too.

Crested the hill finally and could see the long stretch to the next hill a little over a kilometer away. There were police lights flashing but it was too far to see what was going on. Creep, creep, creep--- never really stopping enough to leave the truck in park.

Turns out the police were worried about a suspect in the area (?) ahead and wanted to stop each car, make us roll down our windows, and say, "don't pick anyone up or stop for anyone in the next bit". They weren't screening cars on the way out of the area, just letting us know on the way in, and this was the way they decided to do it during the busiest time on that highway. When I got past the area, the line in the opposite lane was over a mile long.

I was in the line for about an hour, so that added another hour to my freezer groceries timer and "I'll eat this sushi I picked up when I get home" lunchtime delay. Between emotional stuff about Siri, stress from running all over and waiting in that line without knowing what was up (they had phone blockers deployed, so no internet, unless it's just that so many people were using all the signal), heat stress, and being already tired I'm impressed that I managed to get the truck into my driveway without ending up in the ditch. Most of the groceries were even still frozen, yay survival blanket supplies.

This is the kind of situation where, even if I'm figuratively crashing, there's not too much to do -- I can't really stop the car by the side of the highway in 27C with $300 of frozen groceries and a cat and nap or rest. The trip itself is pushing my resiliency, so then when enough events occur it's really not great.

Also someone should tell the cops around here about things like writing and signs. They could have slowed us to 50 and flashed a sign without having us stop drive-through style and have that poor guy repeat the same message to what must have been a couple miles worth of cars in the end.

Anyhow, Siri is home and recovered from the trip. Thank goodness he's such a good car and carrier cat. The other cats are loved on. I'm in bed, contemplating ability and a new symptom (random pinprick feelings, yay! I didn't notice a wasp had stung me earlier because I've just been getting that sensation kinda randomly throughout my skin).

We will see what tomorrow brings, but at least it will bring me a still-alive cat and some time in bed.

Two days of pottery classes learning teapots and after both days I come home and crash hard. I sleep and sleep and sleep and it's a challenge to get myself up the stairs or sometimes hold my phone, let alone lift anything heavier.

This is supposed to estrange me from my body. I'm supposed to be angry, frustrated with it, to stop believing it's an ally.

In dog training they say that behaviour is communication. My body is an ally. Together we experience joy and pleasure, this weekend and pretty much all days, in greater or lesser quantity. It supports me in taking care of it. When I consider there to be a need it bends its boundaries and allows them to be repaid later.

My society is not an ally. It proscribes the joy I'm supposed to be able to feel, reduces pleasure to a scarce commodity traded for a bucket list of abled activities. Like my body, my society has communicated with me through behaviour: when I have a need it will deny it and leave me without.

I've always been estranged from society. I have no interest in being estranged from my body. Human right or immense privilege, if food or shelter is withheld from me because of my body's capabilities that's not my body's fault. It's my society's. Likewise if joy is supposed to be accessed only through certain body abilities that's an external imposition. I've always had more things I'd like to do than I could reasonably do, both through number and ability. While this doesn't mean I have no loss or grief around some of them that is nothing new n my experience of life.

And so I stagger home to bed, fall asleep, wake up, type with my fingers burning, call the cat over to snuggle, and head back to sleep.

I planted more seeds last night. Herbs: chervil, fennel grex, summer savory, sage, thyme, that sort of thing. Also some sunflowers. One flat of seeds, with another of melons and another of cucumbers to go, I think.

It's amazing not to be able to remember all the seeds I planted only last night. I have no ability to inhabit that space and time, to access what happened. I used to always remember plants.

I don't know why I'm planting them in some ways. It's a habit of hope over the years but I can't look into the future and see planting or using them like I used to. It's a habit of hope that creates a feedback loop, though, pulling me forward into the world where the seeds sprout and where I'm picking leaves for salads and scrambled eggs.

There's no hope in me right now. I don't have the energy.

I'm used to running out of energy and letting everything release, relaxing back and knowing I did my best and savouring the emptiness of impulse and mind that comes after a push. That's not happening much right now.

( Med update and sui )

I can definitely deal with my body doing all sorts of stuff. I can handle working lying down sometimes, cutting back on animals and improving my systems, working towards a more accessible house and lifestyle. I could craft a life around afternoon naps and even not operating machinery in the afternoons and evenings. I could probably set things up so occasional semi-paralysis is manageable. Even things like the photosensitivity/headache and less screen tolerance is manageable with shifts to routine. And I'm already doing so many workarounds for the memory thing that many folks likely don't notice.

It's really hard to have this loudspeaker in my head telling me I shouldn't live, though. My first priority is that. And I'm not sure whether I'm relieved or not think there might be a long covid aspect to it.

So I'm planting seeds, which I can do on autopilot, pushing back.

I scavenged a bunch of sliding doors from the dump the other day for a greenhouse. I'm not sure if I'll split the double panes apart or keep them together, but it's a ton of glass.

I'm continuing the hunt for a housesitter since the one I had fell through, for May and for pagany stuff in August.

I'm making that doctor's appointment to get time off so I can do all of that without wheels constantly falling off my responsibilities in all directions.

Once I've done that maybe I'll even be able to start planning the garden.

It feels good to know I have more seeds in the ground.

I was going to write about sorting tomato seeds, losing the tomato vault, the number of tomatoes I have outside the vault, which seeds I was planning to give to whom...

...but for the second time this year I was scent-bombed at work, really badly, and now I hurt and I can't think and I feel sick even though I came home as quickly as I could. Cubicle work environment really are the devil. As is the concept that a "pretty scent" is clean or nice instead of "no scent" being the actual clean.

Scent pain makes me so aggro lately. Funny how that works.

Just took the first pill of my narcolepsy/hypersomnia med this morning. I've been sitting on them a couple months because I haven't had the space to take a pill and then wait it out if there are bad side effects. Today allows for that.

Enjoyably, this med interferes with the birth control pills I have been taking as part of the package to manage my PMDD and my gynecologist has not been returning my calls, so if it works then we move on to the next thing there with, I guess, my GP.

Will update.

It seems to take me approximately 2 visits per blood draw at the lab -- one to show up and learn there's something wrong with the paperwork, go home, call all the doctors, call them to follow up, and then two weeks later go back to the lab and get the actual test done. It's easy to give up after the first one.

I've had a similar experience with Tucker this week; he's been busy and we've been started chatting, I'd like to talk, and he heads out to a social thing, couple times in a row.

On the plus side I sold some pottery & soap at the craft fair, including repeat soap customers, and the gift shop at the historic site is carrying some of my pottery now. I also made and enjoyed making a pretty nice table setup. Turns out I love when people come up to the table, pick up one or two things, and based on what they do and how they touch and hold the mugs I can pick one up and hand it to them and it's the one they want. There are a few things -- handle or no handle, glaze tone, size -- that make up people's mug preferences. People also like marbled mugs. It's neat to get that feedback because then I can iterate on it.

I like when people I know end up with my things.

But, the result of two days at the craft fair was a full day in bed yesterday and some muscle and momentum issues today. It means I missed the pottery studio open day and I'm sad about that.

I also needed to do more housecleaning for Kelsey to come and missed out on that, so we'll see how that goes.

We also had our first real snow finally. It's a bit of a relief.

The juxtaposition of pottery, data entry for work that requires mousing in a web entry form for each of thousands of entries, and carrying water in buckets to the animals has wreaked serious havoc on my right elbow. It hurts, but it hurts especially when I'm typing or right after carrying water. In some ways it's nice to have a familiar hurt when my body is doing strange things, but I do worry about losing use more than I have. So far it's just concentration when typing that suffers, functionally.

I haven't sold the pigs. I'd asked some folks to help me write up the ad and none of them did, so I relied on that instead of trying to sidestep PDA and grief and do it myself. That means I'm out of money -- worried about paying basic bills for the first time in maybe decades -- and hauling heavy water. The more important this is to do, the harder it is to bypass my PDA and do it. If I took a week off work I could probably manage but I do not have that week. I haven't been able to bear the thought of just shooting them all.

That said, this Friday and Saturday I am selling pottery for the first time at a little local sale, at the historic site at the original Fort. I have zero idea how it will go and no real expectations of selling a ton of stuff, but it would be nice.

I have thoughts about pottery, a lot of them, but pretty much only when I'm physically engaging with it. I don't have a visual memory. I have no idea what things look like if my eyes aren't on them. I could describe them pretty well if they were in front of me, but when I'm writing that doesn't really happen. I can collect only fragments here:

I use many different clay bodies -- clays -- and they all feel different and finish different. I love them, I love the contrast between the many surfaces that can be created from even just one clay and the quite different surface of glazes. I do not want to cover up the whole of anything with glaze, really.

I'm starting to have skills to create the shapes I want, instead of having them happen and then needing to stop before the piece collapses. Shape and line is fascinating, and when I sit down and do a set of pieces on the wheel each shape relates to the one before it in that set. For instance, I'll do a cylinder, then a classic vase curve, then invert it to a curved hourglass, like that. Those pieces, usually three to five, speak to each other and feel like a set in my mind even if they're different sizes and, obviously, different shapes.

Glazing is awkward and hasn't settled into a rhythm. I don't have a lot of space to store glazed pieces at the studio and every time I get in the glaze room other people come in and ask questions and want to do their own glazing. It's super understandable because glazing is weird and intimidating and we haven't had much instruction on it, and I am kind of positioned as the person who knows what I'm doing. I love answering these questions and helping.

But, I don't have a visual memory, and one doesn't have glaze buckets all open at once, and pieces need to dry between layers of glaze. So I would love to make series of several pieces where the glaze also relates to the other glazes and to the shape, but that requires an intense concentration and uninterruptedness I don't have. Right now everything is haphazard, "I know I like this combo" rather than "what best fits this series of shapes and how do I best show off the raw pottery as a highlight to glazes" let alone "how do I catch my poetry into these forms".

I suspect as people learn they will be able to work on their own and also answer other folks questions and I'll be able to find time to glaze when other people don't flock in.

There's a long time between shape creation and use of a vessel. Because of that long time and the burst nature of finished products -- the glaze kiln runs maybe once a month so I get several objects back at once -- it takes a long time to get feedback on the actual purpose of the item. I'm still creating in that time, with no feedback. I'm still iterating on a couple things I made in the summer without that actual use to direct me. It's an interesting feeling.

It's astonishing the number of things that can be made with clay that are actually useful. Not just cups and plates and knicknack holders but jars and dog dishes and shower caddies and shelves and rings and beads and buttons and so on. And wall sculpture. And signage.

I've made enough beautiful things that it's going to feel sad to part with them, but the ones I use are the flawed ones. Not sure if that's an aesthetic preference or if it's because I feel safe attaching to them or just because my first pieces tended to be flawed and I got into the habit of using them. It will be unusual and extraordinary, though, if people choose objects they like to use and then use them? That's a kind of sharing that doesn't happen with most things I make.

There is a weird and unnecessary chasm between pottery as a craft and pottery as an art in the community that's mostly erased in practice because of course it is, humans don't actually work that way, but exists in the discourse.

As in natural systems (how is our brain interpreting the world not a natural system?) edges are useful and intriguing.

I have always liked playing with the unexpected and will continue to do so.

My kitten, henceforward Bear, not only likes joining me on the wheel but also lounges among the drying pieces. We were joking that he's quality control, but actually two days ago he was lounging among the drying pieces, sniffed them all, and reached out to tip over and break... the ugliest one. He has never broken any others. So, fair enough.

I want to make this into a villanelle but I'm kind of freaked out right now

The mind is so powerful,
So powerful.

I wake after a night of crying
I can't move my arms

Five minutes, ten.
My head slumps to the side on the pillow

I'm awake.
I can't move my arms.

How lazy I am, I think
This is something people do all the time

Just move an arm
Just move it, get up, and go to work

How lazy I am
The mind is so powerful

But not powerful enough
To move my arms

Right now it's my job to love all my animals super hard, and super carefully, and super thoughtfully. It's to make sure I spend lots of time with all of them letting them know they're good, and occasionally if they are not good figuring out what's going on and offering them an alternative. For the first several decades of my life I did this sort of thing without thinking, but since I've only recently recovered my ability to love this feels like jumping in to a very deep pool without taking a breath.

It leads to lots of lovely times, snuggling and watching, but also sometimes to just not knowing what to do and reminding myself to have patience.

Avallu is 7 today. I hate that I likely have fewer years with him in the future than I have had. So many tornjak owners have groups of 3-6, they're good in packs where they have traditionally protected sheep and generally done their intricate social structures. While Solly will keep my hands full for a couple years, I don't know that I ever want to be without a tornjak. Even with that, though, Avallu is unique. It's with him that I first really understood how much an LGD is a relationship partner rather than a being who takes commands. I've come to value his perspective deeply, and he trusts mine for the most part.

Thea has been doing magnificently with Solly and Avallu. She keeps them separated, and when Solly gets too energetic at chickens, Thea and I will glance at each other to see who will intervene. She also does magnificently with, for instance, the little black bear outside the back fence the other day. I appreciate more than ever how calm she is with the livestock.

Solly is learning fast, which means she's doing lots of experimentation. Aside from recall she doesn't have a clear trajectory, one day will be better and the next will be worse. Her recall is excellent because she adores my attention, and I am careful to call her back and snuggle her and tell her I love her often, so she doesn't associate it only with bad things or with being put in. She's maybe somewhat calmer with the geese, learning to walk by them slowly, but the chickens are so flappy and interesting I need to really figure out how not to have chasing them reinforced for her. I may have to build them a new coop. I am not entirely sure what her mouthy/grabbiness is supposed to achieve, I know she's trying to get me to do something, and she's doing it a little less. It's obviously not an ok behaviour to maintain since she's a huge dog, will be bigger, and can do real damage that way. At first I would give her a stick to chew on instead, and she would take those and chew on them eagerly but that led to her mouthing my arm more often. Now I just turn away. Need to think about this more.

I put 1300 square feet of potatoes in the ground yesterday, or rather, under straw. I have a couple rows left. It's difficult, whatever is going on with me, I had to sleep and rest for nearly two days to be able to do that, and then I woke up this morning with my arms and legs tingling and buzzing. I need to get myself in order for the doctor's visit this week and push for, I guess more tests, but I don't know which ones. At any rate I'll have potatoes. The straw is a great weed suppressant, and I'll put down chips in the rows between, and that'll give me an easier summer of management.

Forecast for the summer is steadily higher-than-average temperatures. The grain crops are not doing well, it's too dry, and farmers pulled off an early hay crop but it was small. Fires are staying away from my town for now but the situation is pretty worrisome.

I think less about that, though, and more the practice of love which my animals need from me right now. It's been a long time since I've had humans so absent from that part of my landscape. I feel like my 12-year-old self, growing gardens and snuggling with my dogs and rabbits and nearly completely divorced from the doings of humans.

Tomorrow I will have to get back to work after my week off sick and see if I can stay upright and awake. Send good thoughts please.