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The post office doesn't deliver to the door here; you need to go in with proof of address and they hook you up with a post office box which most of the world doesn't deliver to (including the postal service that removed door-to-door service and replaced it with post office boxes) and then you need to go in when there's someone behind the wicket to get packages.

Lately the post office has been understaffed, so we've only been able to pick up passages between 11 and 1, and 2 and 5:30, on weekdays-which-are-not-holidays. The closures are announced by handwritten paper on the post office door.

For me this means two things:

One, if I go in to get mail as part of doing other things before 11, I don't get my mail, because I have a two hour window of activity per day and so I can't wait around for it to open, nor drive back out later that day. So I can get my mail another day, but that is basically my full window of activity two days in the week instead of one because of the drive out etc. And I can't plan around it because it's not posted online, just on a piece of paper in the post office. After 2 weeks they send your stuff back.

Two, there's a long lineup of people in there when I go in. Before I could hit midmorning and pretty much miss most folks, but now I both spend longer in there because I'm waiting in a line and am exposed to more people. In fact, I'm exposed to every single person in the town, because we all need to go into this little room to get our mail. I've been pretty chill about my post office covid exposure because I pretty much only see one person a week for more than ten minutes, and my post office trip was very short and there were basically no people in it. The situation has changed some there.

Meanwhile the one grocery store in town has significantly reduced its offerings and raised prices. In the last six months prices have close to doubled, and many of the things I used to get are no longer available. I'm not sure what the store is full of, but it's sure not things I'm used to buying. There's also nothing reliable, something that's usually there will just sometimes not be, and then will maybe be back next week, or next month, with a blank spot on the shelf. They've cut things like cornmeal and seasonal veg, and they don't reliably carry any particular brand of cat or dog food anymore, so I'm mail-ordering those.

The other grocery store is kept by the local First Nation, and it's got an eccentric set of stuff as it always has, and also a dollar produce cart that's let me have some treats like a bunch of bell peppers more than once. I probably need to shift most of my grocery shopping there, but they don't have online shopping and curbside pickup -- again with covid risk and also energy, but also thinking on my feet to put together meals from what the store carries.

All this has led me to try once again to reschedule my covid booster, which is overdue by something like six months. Our gov sends us a text message when we're able to get our next booster, along with a helpful link. Many times I've clicked on this link, walked over to get my medical card number (this itself actually requires some stairs, so the attempt isn't low-energy) only to find that there are no available dates in town. Pretty sure I actually did my last booster a couple towns over because of this. I'd even gone in to the pharmacy to ask about it, and the pharmacist said I could just book online, they had frequent boosters there, but again, it kept showing nothing.

Well, I've been gardening and not much else for the better part of a week and a half so my mind seems ok, and someone was coughing in the line to the post office the other day, so I gave it another try. Tap the link on my phone, no appointments in the calendar thing for the forseeable future. Wait, I thought, what if I try this on my laptop?

Turns out the link they send to text message has a mobile mode which prevents seeing, and thus toggling, a thinger which then allows the available dates to show up. Now, I have not had the ability to figure this kind of thing out for quite some time, but in my earlier life I likely would have persisted and managed.

Do normal people get their text messages on desktop/laptops? Like government ones from phone numbers? Does everyone else not have this issue? Does no one get a covid booster anymore so it doesn't matter?

Anyhow.

I can feel the town gently decay as the mills all close down, and as the network of services -- post office, doctors, transport which is everything from busses to airlines to major connecting roads -- also begins to come apart. The biggest, best-run First Nation is taking up the slack when it can, like with grocery stores and even apparently a bus to the big city. None of it is online or, I want say, predictable and reliable, but it's there.

(Incidentally I think you get the bus by calling some guy, but I don't know the number to call offhand, and I also feel pretty weird gambling that the bus will run in time to get me to and back from a flight or anything. There's a paper with the number... somewhere in town on a cork board, but it's not the main cork boards for communication used in the grocery store or post office, so I can't remember where and go back and take a picture to capture the number. But other than the bus there's driving for a 4-hour roundtrip or hitchhiking, so)

I got someone to come look at fixing my deck the other day. He's booking into 2026.

I just planted a hundred baby apple trees, with daffodils underneath, and 78 survived last winter. I have another couple dozen to plant, along with peonies which might not flower for years (and which I need to go in to the post office to pick up). I don't want to leave.

I also don't think I can live anywhere else, really. I can't drive in the really big cities at this point -- I think my cognitive tics are not safe for it, where I can't follow through on decision-making quickly -- and I certainly can't take transit there. Living closer in but still somewhere relatively small is significantly beyond my financial reach -- I'm not even sure I'll be able to renew my mortgage on disability payments, if I do actually get disability payments. (Canadians need to "renew" their mortgages at the current interest rates every five years minimum, so they need to be re-approved for the mortgage, and my income is either down or nonexistent and interest rates are up).

Anyhow, this is a lot of atmospheric rambling from someone who's spent all its time and energy gardening and been very happy to do so.

This much typing and my fingers are slowing down, all the letters are doubling and I'm hitting thr wrong keys. So, enough for now.
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-38C on the truck this morning. She started, yay battery blankets, and I ran her for half an hour to prep her for restarting later, so I can go into town at lunch and check the mail. The main room was 19C this morning, impressive for the end of a 10-hour stove run in weather like this. It's the kind of weather where, if you dump a bucket of water on the ground, it makes noises like you've started a fire and it's getting good teeth into the kindling.

I'm so, so grateful for that 6-8" of snow we got right before this. The snow blanket on the house keeps it a good 10C warmer in here.

I fed and watered animals this morning without a hat and it was a mistake. I had to come back in and get one. Working from home so I can bring them water on my breaks because it will 100% freeze. Everyone seems pretty cozy, the chickens fluffed up almost round on their perches and the pigs nearly invisible under the straw. I am very glad to have got that last minute extra straw. I'll use a couple bales to build an extra windblock for the ducks since they say it'll be colder again tonight than previously forecast. Either way the prep I did in -20 is paying off. This is terrible weather to work in, even if it is beautiful.

This is probably the day the interior humidity drops below 10%. Drying clay pots and plants slowed it down a bit, I guess.

There are six animals plus me curled up in the woodstove room right now, and I know Whiskey is right around the corner on the stairs. The dogs are napping after a morning patrol while I fed things; the cats are waiting for breakfast.

I'm tired, and much is in doubt, but this could look like being happy.
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-30C. Lake freeze up last night.

Tense

Jul. 5th, 2023 06:44 pm
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There's a fire 5-6km just west of the highway between here and Everywhere Else. Even if it doesn't threaten my property or the town, they tend to call evacuation in when access to a town will be cut off, for perhaps obvious reasons. There is a rough backroad out of town but I think parts of it are currently washed out, and there's a longer road that leads into Mackenzie but I think that goes through several fires, and if not it is at least a very slow logging road with lots of loose gravel and dust. So.

Good: it's getting cooler because it's evening, there's a lake right there for the firefighters to use, they'll prioritize it because it's right close to us.

Bad: it seems to have grown roughly 30 hectares in a couple hours, everything is so so dry, there are so many fires right now.

I can hear the planes heading back and forth, I'm not far from the little local airport they use to refuel.

I do not currently have a way to transport my animals properly: I could take the dogs, the cats, and some geese or ducks or chickens. It's way too hot to put them in the utility trailer and I don't have a proper livestock trailer.
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Good things that happened today: good performance review at work somehow, starting a potentially fun but also one-off no-commitment project at work, talks with coworker, talks with Tucker, and a "community and health" fair with all the volunteer and health organizations in town set up in booths so I could talk to the BJJ guy, the thrift store lady, see my name on the brochure for the garden club, talk to the thrift store person, run into a bunch of people who I sometimes recognised, run into my neighbour several down who might want to buy piglets, catch up with another pottery studio volunteer, etc. Also people asked me how I was doing and I could answer "good" without hesitation.

Worrying things that happened today: I lost my hands while I was typing at work, as in I forgot where they were and couldn't feel them or understand where they had gone, my vision is still weird, I specifically stood in the grocery store trying to buy a small package of regular oreos by scrutinizing and reading all the packages but somehow came home with double stuffed ones, I had to put off a task that involved copying a set of numbers from a document into a spreadsheet because I couldn't figure out how to remember things long enough to alt-tab or hold the whole structure of copy-pasting and switching windows in my head at once, I was freezing cold all morning, and my water pressure is getting way too low so I'll need to resort to interim solutions.

Glad to be back in win-some-lose-some territory instead of lose-some-sit-some-out.
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I've been dreaming hard the last couple weeks. These are the long, complex, deeply social dreams I used to have when I was younger; days or months or a lifetime passes and I have enmeshment and intimacy with people. Some of those people exist in real life. Sometimes upon waking I find that they never did and that's pretty devastating because my feelings of care and connection remain.

I also haven't been writing much about non-garden things. Whatever is going on with me has made it difficult. To describe it I will conceptualize writing as having four components: having an idea to write about, being able to form concepts into words, actually doing the push to start (executive function?), and the physical labour of viewing a screen and navigating a keyboard and web interface. Right now I can do the first two but not the two. Bits of things to say float around in my head but I can't sit down and dig into them.

Normally writing feels companionable, clarifying, and positively connecting. I'm putting myself out into the world as myself (this is a practice for me that requires constant, er, practice, which is why this journal is public). Anticipating that connective feeling usually drives me to write in the same way that anticipation of a conversation with a friend might drive you to use your phone. There's usually not a barrier to me for starting. Lately I'm unable to anticipate or conceptualize that feeling in advance so I'm not able to start easily.

Furthermore my body is tired all the time, my elbow had been hurting, and there is still something weird with my vision. I quite often sit or lie there thinking of exactly what to say but the physical experience of writing feels overwhelmingly uncomfortable to me. I have an optometrist appointment this week so we'll see if there's an obvious cause for the vision; if not I'll follow up with my doctor because it has been awhile with this blurry spot in my left eye, with difficulty focusing, and with a patchy/bleeding overlay on light surfaces. Luckily basketweaving seems to have fixed my elbow. I probably just needed to work the unused accessory muscles hard.

Having said that it would be good to find a good speech to text device.

On the opposite end of that I've been doing an evolution deep dive and every once in awhile there's a Stephen Hawking quote. I cannot tell you how soothing it is to hear an AAC (augmentive/alternative communication) device being used. Part of my autism learning has been exposure to folks with situational mutism, that is, folks who sometimes lose the ability to speak but other times are fine with speaking. I get those periods, and I get periods where I can force myself to speak but it's really really uncomfortable. Having just one person in my awareness who uses AAC sets me at ease on an unexplainably deep level, like maybe someday I can do that too when I need it.

I've been pretty busy lately. I'm still very very tired a lot but I've been able to spend a couple hours at a time outdoors somedays. I took two day-long basketweaving workshops and learned to make willow baskets (!!) which felt really joyous and fun. The first one was on Friday, my Friday off, and was a small class full of delightful people including the person who runs my local food bank. It was a nice chat-and-work day. The second class was on Sunday, it had more people and was a lot quieter but I still found so much joy in making the basket. Not quiet pleasure, but actual joy, like a leaping of the heart.

I seem to be able to connect to the things in front of me right now. I may not be connecting well to the internet but every time I see my baby apple trees and tomatoes I'm happy. Those baskets and my pottery feel good. A seed exchange with the food bank person was lovely and I like her generally. It remains such a relief to experience joy and connection again after a winter without.

Some things are more complicated. The pottery studio in town seems to be turning from a "show up sometimes to volunteer" to "carefully navigate people to find out information and push a little but maybe ultimately be a structural/organizing force myself". I'll do that if need be but I'm a little bemused. I've been able to dodge the garden club and landrace gardening organization; I've been good at organizing long enough to know that the second I take anything on I'll be running the whole thing. It may be that if I want the studio to stay open I need to step in, though.

That's always how they getcha. This might be a record timetable for being sucked in though.

Also complicated is stuff with Tucker. With the exception of that one evening (which is scarring from years of society and probably relationships using "your partner feels hurt in this situation" and "you shouldn't be poly because it's bad" and which I totally understand) he's been really present and loving and available. Realizing that I have no obligation to interact with him, I am wondering if I'd like to explore how our interactions could be if 1) he's not in a job where he's super burnt out and 2) I have my mind and sense of enjoyment back. Both those things are true now and they might not have been true for a very long time. I guess we'll see how things go and I'll self-monitor.

Meanwhile counseling today will involve a deep dive into my symptoms that might be medication side-effects (this counselor has lots of experience with autistic folks on various medications, we tend to react differently), some way to track symptoms and make decisions about trade-offs, and hopefully a strategy to approach my doctors and an approach to deciding what do to next. I'm feeling woozy a lot but happy, and I think I need to clear up the woozy before I'm driving 4 hours a day dodging logging trucks on resource roads. If I were in the city it would be fine, but with this much driving it is not.

More random things: donated a bunch of seeds to the burgeoning local garden club for them to give away as prizes, that may count as having given 120 or so packets of seed away locally. Big win.

Food bank can take both eggs and inspected frozen pork. Come to think of it, I wonder if the local teaching kitchen would mind hosting a bacon workshop? That might let me get out from under some pork belly. Contributing to the food bank is a win-win-win; I get to support the part of my community I most want to support, I don't have to run a perishable food retail business (though maybe I can tax write-off a sufficiently big donation?), and folks get food.

Cats are eating 1/2 can a day of wet food mixed with 1/2 can of water each. Their energy levels and coat quality have noticeably increased.

I guess volunteering with the pottery studio is volunteering? I've been looking for something to volunteer with for years here but it's mostly only during working hours. For instance the health and wellness fair that has all the clubs and volunteer folks put out a booth and people from town can go look is Tuesday afternoon, with just a touch of after work time.

I ordered a new, bigger collar for Avallu. He'll let me brush his right feather but not his left so I'm glad I'm working on it a little at a time. He's really enjoying this routine brushing, as am I. He's getting extra snuggly. Now if only I could maintain a routine.

Did I mention I have like 275 apple seedlings growing? Extraordinary. I feel so lucky.

I've been listening to a podcast called "Evolution Talk" lately. I was initially skeptical about 10-15 minute episodes written in an easy-to-digest style since I normally like very fact-based deep dives. The guy comes from a radio play background too, and has voice actors for folks like Charles Darwin. I've found over time though that it's a delight: short enough episodes that I can usually keep my attention through one without having to turn it off and rest, and he's a very clear but comprehensive thinker. He also does a bunch of series on a topic and he really digs into subjects like popularly-unknown folks who worked on pieces of the idea of evolution, multiple theories and how they're supported, etc. He also has his sources on his website which is becoming a requirement for me to take something onboard.

It's been raining and snowing and raining and sleeting. My towels are out on the line and have been for a couple days. On the other hand it's supposed to be 25C next weekend? This is a very springy spring.

Anyhow, very long update but I'm still in here. I'm just less physically and emotionally able to internet than before.
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My coworker takes guesses at breakup every year. It's been as early as April 6 and as late as I think May 16 in the last twenty years. He has a neighbour identify a particular strip across the lake that has to be ice-free. This has been a long cold spring; I guessed May 12th. The prize is bragging rights, which is why my PDA self can participate. I have serious issues with competition.

The long cold spring hasn't stopped it being a dry spring. The ground was dead dry last fall and we got a normal amount of snow or just barely above normal. There are spots on the mountain where we did controlled fires last fall and it seems like with snow off them they're still smouldering this spring. Uncomfortable.

Home?

Apr. 19th, 2023 09:06 am
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So last night I posted on fb that it might be good to put a trampoline in my livingroom instead of a sofa. I have a sofa downstairs, and a trampoline is multi-use: you can nap on it but you can equally do body stuff on it.

This morning my co-worker, the one I work closely with, came up to me and said he'd thought of doing the same thing awhile back. I was describing how I'd prefer aerial silks but I wasn't sure structurally how my house worked, and he offered to come put up hooks for aerial silks. Not that I can't do both.

It's been a long time before someone came up to me in person and said "yeah, I'm like that too". Like, I'm tearing up a little. Mostly it's like "I never thought of that" accompanied by either "that's so cool" or "I could never do that".

The roads here feel as familiar as my own skin when I drive them. The seasons are each year different from the other, but they hold me in a familiar pattern now. They shape my activities with the same light steady pressure that I shape clay on the wheel.

And today I felt seen.

I think the green hair is working.
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The pottery studio in town opened last year but hasn't had open hours yet.

Recently they sent around an email to people who had offered to volunteer, asking if we were willing to volunteer to oversee open hours. It would be pretty nice to have an every-second-week shift in there, especially if I could use the wheel while I was there.
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A book I've seen recommended and would like to get my hands on eventually: "At The Bridge" by Wendy Wickwire.

https://youtu.be/mQwkB1hn5E8 may have been what was recommended today, as well.
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So my internet out here has been a wireless hub that runs off cell signal. It worked pretty well in the beginning, but it's pretty awful now - I stopped doing youtube videos in part because I can't upload them at all anymore, and now I'm beginning to lose video quality. I'm paying $100 for this, and the company that provides it has no interest in assisting.

Much as I dislike Elon Musk's whole thing, and much as I wish the government had gotten in on this, the only other options I have are getting a landline and dialup ($75 or so) or starlink ($140 plus the unmanageable startup cost). I could try getting a cell booster (same cost as the starlink startup equipment but for a much slower and less sure outcome).

I need to pay down a couple thousand dollars of feed debt from the animals, so I don't really have the ability to take on an extra $40 plus the nearly a thousand to get the unit right now.

I may just... go into work instead of working from home for awhile and get rid of home internet, with an eye towards maybe doing starlink once the feed is paid off. There's a touch of data on my phone.

I've been chewing on this one awhile but it's really coming to a head lately. My work stuff still runs, barely, but I don't know for how much longer. I'm pretty upset about the whole situation - the gov is paying companies a whole bunch of money to run fibre down along the southern highway but it isn't coming up here. My understanding is our cell tower is degrading and no one is interesting in maintaining it, which is why it's getting worse out here.

Bah. Infrastructure is so bad out here. Capital investments, but no taste for maintenance. They're putting in a new hospital but they can't staff the one we have, they keep closing the emergency room down from lack of staff.

At very least, the current internet situation is not a disincentive for moving off-grid.

Away

Oct. 6th, 2022 01:26 pm
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There's a 160 acre place near town. It's off-grid, tucked up against the mountains with it front to the broad valley full of hayfields. There's a roughly 1.5-2km driveway to get there, accessed from the driveway of the house below, which is basically on the road. This drive goes through woods, pops out into a field, pierces into woods again, and then opens into the little clearing in which the house and its 5 outbuildings sit. It's tidily kept, despite the fact that its inhabitants are dead and its current owner lives abroad.

Rumour is, it has a pretty good push-button generator/solar system that the gentleman who lived there made for his wife.

Rumour is, it has gravity fed water.

It's certainly beautifully quiet, remote in a cozy secluded way rather than a frightening way.

It's not currently on the market but when I mentioned having too many neighbours to my friend, she said she thought it may be looking for another owner.

There's a barn and a chicken coop for sure. I've only driven up the driveway and left but the people at the bottom of the driveway, who care for it, may be willing to show me around.

I don't think one can get a mortgage for an off-grid place.

I could bike to work from there, it's on the road to the dump so it avoids the problematic part of the highway I currently avoid navigating. It's 10km to work instead of 13 or so, but not all paved.

I'd said I don't want to do off-grid since it would be too much work, but right now my only grid umbilicus is the power line. My water comes from on-site, in the well (a mechanical powered system, not gravity fed). My sewage goes into my lagoon. My internet is wireless (I'd need starlink up there, I bet).

So it would be learning another electrical system. It would be paring back some electric use, ditching active hydroponics and maybe most grow lights, not sure how much a freezer draws in summer (I turn mine off in winter anyways).

Something something fencing.

Roughly 3 acres cleared and groomed currently, about what I use on Threshold.

SW slope at its back. Olie Creek (the map says) goes along the base of the hill behind it. It would be colder than here, shorter season by a little, I think.

Receiving slope on SBS dw 3, technically.

I could have people there without being watched. I could go outside without clothes and feel comfortable again, which I haven't since the neighbours across the way moved in.

I would not regret having planted the trees here if I moved.

I have no need to move. I can explore this slowly and gently and see what I think.

Fall

Sep. 12th, 2022 08:36 pm
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Dead dark by 8:30

Getting hard to see the yellow kilometer markers against leaves turning yellow on the forestry roads.

Said roads crawling with hunters anyways.

Bears around every corner, coming in.

House groaning with food.

Cats swarming me as soon as I sit down.

Turning on the big outside light every night to help the dogs with the bears.

Everything burning more calories than normal.

Geese and ducks in ultra-gorging mode.

Piglets everywhere.

RVs everywhere.

Frost in the mornings, outlining leaves on the open slopes.

The slightest resurgence of blackflies.

Where do I put all this stuff?

So much to do before snowfall, how do I prioritize?

Plants everywhere indoors.

Time to excavate the woodstove, it's not a sidetable anymore.

Watching the fieldwork days dwindle as I check off the samples completed.

Thinking of roofs, all the time.
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Went to the fall fair in the next town over last weekend to hang out with Ron. I got to wander around for awhile before he got there. Some thoughts:

The smell of horses. I'd forgotten it in my body; I grew up with a couple horses, and it's such a sweet calming smell. It was lovely.

I maybe haven't been at something so intensely all-ages since I was that age? Not just kids-too-young-to-babysit-themselves and parents, or city folks and a very few of their only-child kids, but the whole spectrum of ages. Lots of teenagers and preteens in all the 4H barns, many kids concentrated in the kids play area full of transparent balls that floated on water and bull rides, but also just lots of folks around. I probably looked like that wandering around hand-in-hand with my first boyfriend. Because it was spread out over the fairground I could go closer or further from clumps of people, which was nice. I often prefer further.

I watched the heavy horse pull event for awhile. I'd never seen something like that before: draft horses are always lovely, but in this case they were in teams of 2 taking turns pulling a big metal device that got increasingly more weight stacked atop it. Each pair had to pull it a certain distance, I think ten feet, but could pull it further if they chose. Everyone was steered by reins on the ground. As each team went, they announced the "above team weight" so that must have factored in; there was one tiny but draft-shaped team that tapped out early but were so much smaller than everyone else that they were quite high above their team weight early on. I'm not completely sure how they decided who won; folks dropped out as they couldn't complete the pull or as they thought it was too much for their horses, and a winner was announced at the end.

There was tremendous variability in the nervousness of the horses, in their synchronization, and in how well they complied with their commands. It was really common for them to start forward before they were fully hitched to the weight, and several times teams had to circle around again to be hitched up after they took off too soon. Then again, a couple of them were super bullet-proof.

While chatting with Ron a couple things came up: possible work stuff, and he floated the idea of maybe a co-property-ownership housing type situation with him, me, and two other people (one of whom I know a little and like a fair bit). I guess I'm folks' go-to person for that sort of thing now? A different job would be a requirement for something like that for me. And perhaps obviously, the only reasonable first move in doing a land thing with someone is sitting down for dinner with them and actually meeting them all. So I don't expect that to go anywhere, but who knows, and it was fun.

The small animal barn was enticing. There were some duckles that were the same breed as I did this year: cayuga x pekin. They were lovely.

There were also a lot of baby rabbits for sale that made me very much miss my bunnies, I took pictures of all the rabbits for sale and the numbers but did not come home with any. That's probably for the best, since there's not a good rabbit vet around here and I'm not set up for having all my cords chewed. Still. I like rabbits and I miss them. They have real personality.

There were also some poor geese there, a mom with one gosling who was nervous and calling out a lot, and a pair who seemed a little less nervous but were probably why the first one was calling so much. Well, that and being down low around so many humans. None of them had water to submerge their faces in. None were for sale; if they had been I'd have just brought them home to get them out of there. All the other quite small animals were on raised platforms of some kind, so they were less loomed over, I guess geese are just too big for that? Either way, I like geese and if I ever take any to the fair I'll make sure to take a group of at least 3 or 4.

I did hang out with an alpaca for a bit. They are smaller and cuter than I remember.

On the way home a couple things happened: I listened to a super useful ADHD podcast that I'll get into later, and I stopped to pick up a ton of hog feed. While the feed guy was loading an ant (looked like an ant) flew into the neck of my shirt and started biting between my boobs. I brushed it off and it ended up under my shirt, biting my nipple. I could not get it out, and I felt really weird trying to deal with that in public. I think I've become a lot more body-conscious up here, trying to handle the weird local Christian whatever culture, and I'm pretty sure I don't like it.

Anyhow, good afternoon at the fair. I would have stayed longer but Ron got a text saying that a person he'd hung out with the day before had covid, so he left, and I figured I could get to the feed store before they closed. As I left I saw something intriguing which, in later research, turned out to be the farmhand challenge with folks hauling logs and things. In hindsight I'm sorry I missed that. Maybe next year.

Next big social event will be the music festival in the park next weekend. With this stuff it feels like it never rains but it pours; last weekend were so many potential things to go see and do, likewise next weekend, then it will drop off for awhile again.

Moments

Jul. 7th, 2022 02:28 pm
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Took my counseling appointment on my lunch break in the truck in the field at work. I was working solo today obviously, so I got the mosquitoes in the truck killed off and started the appointment. Partway through a young, skinny bear wanders through the area (I'd chosen an intersection in a gravel pit since it had reception). He comes out of the woods, pokes around, looks at the truck, gives it a wide berth but keeps posing around, eventually wanders back into the woods all while I'm on the call.
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Okay, but this is the problem with everything here.

I want to go biking (or remove some trees, or run the woodstove, or own a truck, or use a snowblower, or...)

I get out my bike. It needs a going-over: it's dirty and there's dog hair and lint in the chain and it's not shifting cleanly and I have no real concept of what's going on in the bearings and the tires are flat and I don't know if they leak or not.

In Vancouver I'd take it in to the shop.

Here I need to find degreaser which luckily I have and don't need to order online, find chain lube ditto, remember how to clean the drivetrain, and do it. Okay. Done.

Now I need to watch you tube videos on how to adjust shifters until I understand it, and do it--

But wait! I don't have a bike stand. So now I need to build a bike stand. I need to scavenge some lumber and get out my tools and design something that'll hold the bike, even if it's just some 2x4s screwed into a tree. Where was I?

Oh yes, now I need to go back to youtube and try and remember what I just learned about dealing with my shifters. It's my first time doing this, so it's gonna take awhile and I won't get it quite right so I'll need to come back to it a couple times-- on the first try I can't trust the bike on a long ride yet.

Tires pumped up, ok, but I have no idea where my bike pump is, I can borrow one from someone. Great. They don't seem to have a big leak but no way to tell if there's a slow one yet. So again I'll need some short safe trial rides.

Bearings, well, I've just spent basically all my free time on this thing for awhile. I have other things I need to do. I guess I just ride it and hope they're all good until they're not, at which point I stop using the bike and maybe bring it in to Prince George next time I go in.

Every damn thing I do up here is like this. It's one reason I'm so overextended. Any one thing takes a week of intensive learning curve and materials searching.

(Or more realistically in Van there's be someone to do it in exchange for some pork or something, and I'd cook while they did the thing, and it would be lovely, but hey)
greenstorm: (Default)
Deep dive this afternoon. Music and poem on poem. I'm looking for myself again. I'm bringing myself back here, to my body, to this container of joy and pain. I'm invoking my self. I'm feeling my self. Sometimes we only know we're there because we hurt? And I'm landing, cautiously, into this shockingly loud pulse and grind of flesh. My heart is beating. My stomach is-- that must be hunger? Ow. My lungs are stretchy, a breath in pushes itself out again instead of holding. The body can be so loud.

Love isn't here to be hoarded. It's a gift. It's always a gift, granted for a time and then passing on. I've been granted more than my share, always cobbled together in shapes few outsiders recognise. Always attenuated somehow. Always, in the end, so true to the person giving it. I always consider it an honour to be given something shaped from the giver, not squished into the expectations and templates we freight these things with. Tonight I've been left gifts: blessings on my garden, compliments on my corn, pictures of cats and of plants starting to grow, the lifeline of idle talk and checking in. They're left the way I leave gifts, dropped and run away, with the exception of Nicholas who seems to have taken the role of support crew these last days. I need support crew.

I have so many words. I've been writing about love here for twenty years. The last two years only have six posts tagged "love" that aren't really about the landscape, about plants, or about details of relationships, that are instead considering and probing and weighing and celebrating my heart where it overlaps with humans. I used to spend so much time on it. It's harder here, crumbs from afar really have been my only overlap with people.

I'm not here on this earth to not love people. Let's keep this focus for awhile. I suspect there will be things to say. First, though:


The Ubiquity Of The Need For Love

I leave the number and a short
message on every green Volvo
in town
Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423
The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?

Most just reply, Nothing's wrong.
I miss you, too.

Come quick.

Ronald Koertge


Lecturing My Body

Here's the deal: You
take care of me,
I'll take care of you.
The body's a car
Whatever's-not-the-car,
that's the driver.
Or the car's an animal,
the driver a zookeeper.
The animal's a ditch,
the zookeeper a wheelbarrow.
A wheelbarrow bringing
tobacco, whiskey
& even love because,
well, just because.

By Jefferson Carter

And some more... )

humanity i love you

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

ee cummings
greenstorm: (Default)
In the end I think the trouble with my entry point to Fort is the way monogamy sets up atomized social structures while nonmonogamy/queer culture leans heavily on an interconnected web of folks who have each other's backs. I mean, we might not even like each other, but we have each other's backs.

My understanding is the web of chosen family and mutual support comes out of not having traditional support structures, out of being kicked out of families and off jobs and needing to band together not to be attacked or killed. I don't think of myself as queer really, but I have that same webbed structure of support and I'm used to it.

Instead Fort has a typical monogamous structure, your married units and their blood family are the support. Folks outside those units might be nice but they're not there to have your back. It's probably especially entrenched here because there are so many big old families who take care of their own, and then transient people who just leave instead of establishing networks.

I do think it falls apart a bit in practice in Fort. I mean, a lot of those married units probably do not really have each other's backs. That's enough worse -- limiting your support pool even if it's not functioning -- that I'm not going to think about it more right now.

But here's the thing. I want someone to have my back here. Tucker did that for me while he was here, and now he is gone and I just... there's nowhere I can show up and be fed and just sit and be cared for if something bad is going down. I move my furniture on my own. I always, always have to figure it out.

I don't know. Hard times.
greenstorm: (Default)
This is kinda embarassing. You are going to laugh so much at this, especially the poly folks.

Or actually, maybe it's too much tonight. Call it small-town monogamous drama that involves everyone in town I have any interest in and takes the new person off the table and leaves it at that. Disappointing, extremely silly (from my POV), involves a bunch of suffering, is probably not surprising, and will take time to resolve itself.

Plus A&E are wanting to get back in touch.

Seriously, why do I do anything except garden? It all ends in tears.

On the other hand I feel so confident now in my actions. I'll do the right thing, and I do, and it comes from a place of care and connection and not these relics or torture devices society saddles us with. I'm free to offer myself clearly and set boundaries, freer than I've ever been. This situation fucking sucks but it hasn't shaken me, really.

I am sad, disappointed, and looking forward to doing a heavy lift for awhile. I mean, at least I'm here, to be here for folks if they need? But when do I get folks to be there for me?

Also, as Nicholas said, "My vague feeling is like hell you need this shit, and I'm trying to formulate the sentence "can't a person just get laid without drama" around your particular choice of pronouns and identities without much success so let's just leave it at that? Ugh."

Gah.
greenstorm: (Default)
Ah, there it is. I don't see the pattern yet but I've found the things that will require boundary-setting and careful navigating in this new thing.

This is somewhat uncharted waters for me; I'm in a society that behaves very differently from how I might want or expect it to. It's not as easy to interpret behaviours as I might like. There's a whole bunch of stuff I can't just ask about -- I will speak freely with anyone I'm in relationship with and that's not something I'll compromise on, but there's a whole bunch of stuff when speaking with other involved monogamous people that requires a very light touch and interpretation. I'm also running very low on sleep and it's starting to hit me.

This will be a good week to feel out my boundaries and catch up on sleep. Good to talk to some friends and just land here, in this situation. My town is small and I'm intending to be here for awhile. I'll need to navigate situations like this particularly well since there's not the same alternative, as there is in the city, of just jettisoning folks if things go sideways. I mean, I'm not much for that anyways but deliberation and repair are so important here. Honestly I feel confident in my abilities, I just need to actually remember to use them.

What do I need? What does it look like to begin as I mean to continue?

I'm too tired to think my way out of a wet paper bag right now. That's probably the first thing to sort out.

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