They say that gratitude practice is supposed to make people less materialistic but I find that's the opposite for me? So many things I appreciate are enabled by things, by the infrastructure of our society. I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate things without that infrastructure, but so much of it brings so much ease.
For instance, my vacmop. After using the kitchen pretty hard yesterday (coming in and out through it for a week in dirty shoes, two kinds of canning, smoking some meat) I ran the machine for fifteen minutes while waiting for the last canner batch and the upstairs floor is miraculously unsticky. I cannot overstate how much better this thing is than the typical sweep-vacuum-mop or even just vacuum-then-mop protocol. There's no weird stuff that gets missed by the vacuum and moved around by the mop, as always happens when the mop is not also vacuuming, and it gets the floors a lot cleaner on a genera level (it's not good at taking off clumps of stuff that are dried on, but the majority of the surface does feel cleaner).
Also, the smoker. Ron gave it to me, he'd clogged it up with non-smoke wood pellets using it as a BBQ, and Avi fixed it. Inagural run was yesterday and it made some very tasty ribs and smoked some bacon; I still have half a bag of pellets left and I'm going to run some of my prosciuttos etc for it for a bit before setting them to dry.
Aged pork. This... sounds weird, and honestly I'm not sure how to feel about it, but pork aged even in a vaccuum bag (obviously no swelling on the bag and no discolouration or off-flavours on the meat) for even up to a couple months is really, really good. It's got depth of flavour, it's a little more tender, I can't do all my pork like this but it's worth doing some. I trim all the outside so I'd have to cut chops after the aging process is done but I do want to try some of that.
The morning ritual of corn pollination is dear to my heart.
Growing corn is as well. I'm so grateful to have effectively limitless garden space.
Chocolate the muscovy, who is a fabulous mother and one of my original animals. She's hatched a set of 10 ducklings and I'm concerned they'll get the muscovy disease and die (it was a hidden nest), but she's just such a good mother either way.
The new butcher down the next town over. They seem like they might be willing to do the kind of custom work I need, and they don't slaughter so I can have my guy over to kill, skin, and gut and then move the meat down there to have it processed. That may be the way to help me get over the last bits of the excess of pigs I have right now.
Saskatoon berry lemonade. This is a collaboration between my favourite saskatoon bush, which just drips a ton of berries so I have to pick some of them, leftover lemon juice from Avi's lemon curd, and a half-remembered recipe I saw. It's super tasty and an amazing colour. I only got 5 jars out of it, I need to make some more.
I shared a meme about thinking of the world as a set of systems to engage with, that you can't just treat it as a set of structures to behave in an authoritarian way towards but that information flowing both ways is necessary to poking and learning. A ton of people in turn shared it, and I'm glad to know so many folks around me feel that way. I feel seen.
( The meme said this: )
Cool morning air through the window is so lovely, as is sweet tea.
I'm looking forward to a conversation with my usual people. I've had visitors so continuously that I think part of my feeling of lonelines and destabilization is just that I haven't made the time on my end to talk to folks like I normally do. That leads to me feeling adrift and unmoored and isn't about anything they've done, really (though it may be about us not being able to make time to talk when we're both busy because we don't coordinate schedules, but that's not for here or now).
It will be so nice to have some time alone with the garden.
This coming week has a bit of a social day at work on the jetboat. It'll be a long long day, we leave at 5:45, but I get to go up to the other end of the lake which I've never done before.
I have learned so much about my PDA this week. It's amazing to see it in action and know it for what it is.
A coworker I spent a lot of time with last summer came and said hi when he saw me at the grocery store yesterday. I'd recently had a dream about him, it was good to see him. Maybe I should follow up with a social visit? With my coworker from the last job who hosted hot pot night too, I think.
The salmon are in the creek that runs through downtown. It's early, I think. Salmon are magic, especially up here. Imagine that journey! Most of my friends won't make the effort to drive or fly it, let alone swim up 1000km of river rapids. (laughs)
I'm also just so glad to be sitting here with Threshold in this quiet morning, guest asleep, just me and the cool air and bird sounds coming in through the window.
And now I get to get some snuggles and get back to sleep for a bit before driving Avi to the airport. Both sleep and snuggles sound nice.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
