Greenstorm's Journal

-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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.