Greenstorm's Journal

My laptop died, 28 days after the warranty ran out. My previous one lasted ten years and I wasn't really prepared.

That means that at home I have, for communication and writing: my phone. Period. My phone is getting old and slow, and it's interesting to think that if it died I'd have no way of contacting the outside world or being contacted: not by call, email, text, IM, anything. My truck is throwing an engine code right now, so I'm two devices away from "walk 12 km into the library and hope they have public computers". Honestly I'm not sure I can afford to fix the truck AND replace the laptop, so we'll see where we end up when the shop gets back ot me.

During the workday I'll pop onto here on my work laptop but I won't sign into anything else, or do much; anything I do on here is subject to FOI requests and "what government workers are doing with your tax dollars" news articles.

So any research I do about a new laptop would be on my phone, as would buying a new one. I honestly can't bring myself to dive into that right now. Computers do not work like they used to and I can't deal with relearning it all right now.

Also in the evenings I'm not watching anything, writing emails, participating in forums, or having chatty conversations with folks since typing on my phone is not enjoyable nor is using the screen for video. I'm also not updating my plant spreadsheets, planning for gardening this summer, etc. I have gone back to paper lists for some garden planning, and I reference my old spreadsheets often; no doubt if I don't transfer all this into a 2023 garden spreadsheet I will regret it.

But, between that and doing some canning and being really tired lately, I've been mostly absent and will likely continue to be pretty erratic.

Warm again. We're supposed to have a stretch of warm + rain, which of course is on top of what was 3' of snow and is maybe a little closer to 2.5 now. The dogsled race happened on the weekend: I normally love it but last week's forestry conference kept me busy through the start of the long races, and I was in a pretty bad place mental-health-wise on Saturday, and then on Sunday I just wanted to stay in controlled environments and not jeopardize feeling ok. That said, Tucker's apartment was across from the lake where the event was held, so I could peek out and see the dogs in the sunshine.

Warm again and the new piglets got castrated, pushing the edge of the 10 day/2 week window when I'm comfortable doing it at home. Well, comfortable is a tremendous overstatement but it had to be done: they get castrated or they get eaten very young unless I can source that immunocastration drug. They seem to be doing alright this morning; because my anxiety is running so high it's fixating on everything, and one of them having adverse reactions to castration and bleeding out or something is one of them. That hasn't happened to me. I did castrate one with a scrotal hernia once and had to put him down immediately, which was very traumatic, but they all went cleanly here so far. I'll go out later today and watch them all pee but they're sleeping now with Mama Black Chunk, who's been let out of isolation with her babies. Actually it's pretty cute: when I went out the boar was spooning her, and she was spooning the babies.

I sold the 4runner to mom, which is basically the best news. I love that truck and didn't want to see it go to someone who wouldn't care for it. Mom lent her car to someone who had an accident and didn't know to leave insurance out of everything so they decided to scrap it because it got a dent; she was in the market for something new and I had this 4runner which I need to get rid of because I can't keep two vehicles. I'm so glad it's staying in the family. I need to get the windshield redone (they put sand/gravel on the roads up here in winter for traction, since it's too cold for salt, and it's pretty normal to replace your windshield every year or two since rocks fly up and crack them) and replace the battery and pull the farm junk out of it. First I need to shovel it out the rest of the way from under a snowdrift.

The peppers I planted back in January are up and the other peppers are ordered. I've also ordered some black plastic flats, which-- these are supposed to be extra heavy duty so they don't break every year. I keep wanting to get enough of a carpentry shop together to make myself some wooden ones but that hasn't happened yet so hopefully these last a couple years. I need to get the rest of my peppers into soil. I've also put artichoke seeds in. We'll see how they go. I'm starting to rattle what goes where around in my head.

I've also got start dates for most things on my garden spreadsheet; I do need to go through and winnow out what I'm starting this year and what I'm not. Especially, when I have multiple accessions of something from last year I probably want to grow saved seed rather than bought seed, etc.

I really do need to shovel my way out to the greenhouse and A-frame and start grouping out the geese.

I'm kind of tucking this here at the end but Saturday was pretty rough. I think my brother is going to manage to do what nothing else has, and drive me substantially off the social internet. I need to decide what to do about that: block him? Some other workaround? Gracefully let go of those parts of the internet? Hopefully my counselor can help me come up with some ideas this week. He's definitely infuriating and deep into DARVO right now. He spams the family chat with links about the "freedom convoy" and the constitution, ignores any facts he finds inconvenient, does the two-step "you can't trust media to report the science correctly/reading academic papers too closely to decipher them is some kind of trick or gotcha" and most recently "people are too specialized" (I it's think code for scientists are wrong) followed by "are you familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect" which is basically like being trapped in some sort of horror sitcom where someone who doesn't believe in science tries to use a science idea that explains how non-experts think they know a lot to explain why he, a non-expert, knows more than other people.

Horror sitcom is not my favourite genre. Maybe a laugh track would help?

Anyhow, being almost totally offline for the latter half of the weekend meant I watched Leverage with Tucker and had some time to think about a particular scene that had been picking at the back of my mind. In it a dude is flirting with a woman across a counter, and she is flirting back. At one point her hands are lying on the counter between them, he puts his hands on hers, she looks slightly uncomfortable, he lifts his hands away and says "the hands, it's too much, right?" and she nods and says yes and they keep flirting but he doesn't reach out to touch her again.

This little snippet of interaction has stayed in my mind, and I've finally dug out why. A lot of the male-assigned folks I've engaged with sexually would have had trouble getting all the way to the end of the four parts of this: 1) try something 2) collect feedback based on body language 3) ask for clarity if they detected something amiss and 4) course-correct and continue to enjoy the interaction. If they were actually willing to try doing a thing they'd be unable to assess for feedback, if they assessed for feedback and detected something slightly amiss they'd spiral into self-loathing and be unable to clarify and course-correct. Obviously this prevents meaningful feedback; anything other than positive feedback drags the whole experience to a screeching halt. I wonder if this is linked to protect women from even a hint of bad feelings/women are delicate flowers who should never have a moment's dissonance in their lives? I wonder if it's linked to a model of masculinity that's about prowess and always being right the first time? Or what's going on? Anyhow, that bit in the show made me happy.

The snow is in full-on retreat. It's still out there on the fields but it's basically off the yard and garden, more-or-less, at least on anything with a southern exposure that didn't get covered in hay or straw.

I have mama goose nesting beside the door, and the embdens in the woodshed.

Things are springing up in the garden: chives and stinging nettles, lovage and angelica, and I think borage sprouts. Brussels sprouts (! Roodnerf) and mint and welsh onions (Franz) overwintered no problem. There is a very very fat crop of voles and a thorough network of tunnels through my soft soil.

I was given 8 of someone's cast-off egglayers, so I'll be canning them throughout the week. I seem to be able to do 3 in a reasonable evening. After that I have a bunch of my own roosters to work through.

I'm also working through potting up over 150 tomatoes into their bigger pots and trying to get all the plant shelves set up. I won't have room indoors for all my starts, but the hope is they can go outside on the deck during the day and come back in during the night. Unfortunately a windstorm slowed down my hardening-off process so we'll resume that this week.

I got maybe 7 boxes of expired half-and-half (10% milk fat cream) which the pigs are enjoying this week, and a couple cases of romaine lettuce which the geese are especially fond of. Sometimes that program where I pick up expired food for the farm is annoying and fiddly -- there's so much packaging, which means so much time, and so much weird stuff -- but weeks like this its worth it.

Doing a fairly serious shut-down on internet time over the weekend was pretty great. I spent a lot of that time with Tucker, and a lot of it outside doing farm stuff. I enjoy farm stuff.

On the complicating side, my electric fencers are dead and I need to get those pigs moved like yesterday.