Greenstorm's Journal

My counselor and I were brainstorming what I'd need to live on if I can't work anymore, and how that might look. I've been feeling that this life, which I love, has an expiry date and maybe so should I in that case. I can't imagine giving up my animals -- my family -- and my ability to grow things. I can't picture just languishing on Mom's or a friend's second bed until my body annoys them into kicking me out.

I could be happy here even if the deterioration continues; emotionally I can handle not being able to think or move much, just lying with my dogs, getting up when I can. As long as I can feed myself and run the house -- paring away the extra animals, if there was a way to get supportive infrastructure and maybe replace wood with fully electric heat, set up a hydrant in the field so I don't need to carry water, fix the road into the back pasture so I don't need to carry feed as far. I'm not sure how I'd do that with less money but it left me with a sense of hope, that maybe it wouldn't need to be November that this life is over, but could be longer.

Either way I'm happy now, and happy to have had this.

I could spend a lot of time being frustrated that more prompt access to the medical system might actually have meant I didn't have to worry about this, that it's possible a couple timely specialist appointments would have meant I'd be perfectly ok right now, but there'll be time to do that if I do in fact lose my job because of it.

I'm still struggling with the idea that I might have to go on disability just to wait for specialists to get back to me, not because I'm irreparably sick but because I just haven't got to that right pill yet, if it exists. I can't imagine shifting my whole outlook to being ok with a lesser and continuously lessening level of functionality for a couple years, then getting used to the idea of going back to work full time after that again. It feels dislocating? Though I've got used to things I can't imagine before, I suppose.

None of this should maybe be as alarming as it sounds, but things are definitely deteriorating and I don't see any reason they should stop unless I can actually manage to get appointments with folks -- my doctor is currently scheduling four months out except there's maybe one to two days per month you can call in to get an appointment, after that her schedule is full and you have to try and hit the window next month. I can call the nurse's line and see what they recommend but just doing this stuff takes basically 80% of the capacity I have, and I can't navigate the system and work at the same time.

I had to take Avallu in to the emergency vet last weekend.

It's difficult here. There are basically no vets. There's a daytime emergency vet 2 - 2.5 hours away and no nighttime emergency vets. There are no farm animal vets, except some which do horses.

So if a dog or cat is not doing well I need to make the call early enough that they don't die in the 20 minutes of "first you need to pay for a virtual vet to diagnose and certify an emergency" and "then you need to load the animal and drive them into the vet".

I'll spare you the details but Avallu is ok. It was maybe a slipped disc and a UTI compounding each other? But I was afraid. He loves me so much and wants to do what I ask, but he was in a lot of pain. Loading him was rough.

The vets were great with him, though, and very good with my "he's dog reactive and person selective". They were polite to him and he was polite to them despite his pain, and they were adept at blocking all other dogs from his sight.

They were very busy, though. I ended up sitting in the car for six hours in 2.5AQI 200-300,mostly around the top end. That is where there's enough smoke it's hard to see the end of the street, and ash accumulates on the car in a visibly speckled layer over six hours. I'd left without a mask so by the end not just my throat, sinuses, and eyes were burning but also the skin on my face.

I'd also left in "shoot the neighbour's home, better cover up when I step outside to look at the morning" booty shorts, without putting on real pants. They show the bottom of my tattoo, which I think invited a young woman to give me a card and invite me to her church.

Oh well.

Pup is feeling better on painkillers, though he's noticably whiny when they wear off. He's moving though, and able to lie down, even on hard surfaces. He's also taking his pills well when they're encased in duck confit.

It's been a long time since I felt that level of adrenaline in my body. Over time, living here on my own, I've been allowing the barriers that keep me functional to wear down. I'll let feelings make me stop, let them alter my behaviour. Maybe I'll hug something. Maybe I'll cry. Maybe I'll go be curious about something. That all seems to be at the expense of calm, quick, measured behaviour in an emergency, though. I am not ready to lose Avallu and it took me a bit to get myself together when it became apparent there was a problem.

Money played into that too, but that's a different post.

Anyhow, pup is home and very loved and is not in big danger.

I'm still thinking about the landscape here.

Part of love, for me, is knowing something deeply. I love things that reveal themselves to me. I love being aware of patterning, of uniqueness, of what differentiates the beloved particularly from others of its kind.

When I left the coast I had a sense, not just of the ecology of the landscape, but of the ecological history and much of the geology. When I walked there I had a sense of the depth of sediment in the Fraser Valley underfoot, of the thick layers of sand out by point grey and laid down by an explosive reversal of the Fraser River, of the old edges of the ocean that etched flat places into the north shore mountains as the weight of glaciers lightened and the crust rebounded in fits and starts. I could feel the tall ghost cedars from the past marching around me in the city streets and the echoes of millions of wings and bird cries in the now-drained migratory stop in the wide sweep of wetlands now cut into suburbia and fields. Knowledge of the landscape lived within me, I was a part of it, and I loved it.

The north was so overtly a shock in not being able to recognise the plants around me that I didn't think of the landscape at first. There are so many plants here that I've learned through visuals and physical interaction first, and many of them I don't know their names yet even. The names get hitched on to my knowledge of the plants easily when I see them now, and regardless of names they're becoming old friends.

But plants are not the only thing here. The landscape is so present. One of the reasons I love it here is that the sky and the vegetation are in balance: unlike the prairies there's a definite topographic and vegetative presence, and unlike the coast the sky is actually visible through trees and hills.

That's not what I was trying to say.

What I was trying to say is that I can read the landscape here reasonably well now. A glance at the vegetation, at the soil texture in a road cut, and I can see into the past to the old edges of glaciers receding and dropping gravel, to under-ice rivers of sediment carrying and sorting gravel into sinuous wrinkles. The silhouette of the top of a black spruce, that little bulbous knob, speaks of rock ground to the finest dust and then left to settle in ponds left by chunks of lingering ice. My own land, Threshold, has deep rich clay from the huge lake that stretched for a huge swathe of the interior before it poured out towards the coast and made what we know now as the Fraser River.

I'm learning to know the land. I'm learning to know it in the back of my mind, without thinking about it, cataloguing knowledge that I can pull out later if asked.

As I know the landscape it becomes part of me. It becomes as much an extension of me as anything, maybe not as layered with connection and interaction as Threshold but certainly the cradle of time and space in which I am rocked, held, loved. The north welcomes people in a way that the coast never did in my experience, maybe because it was so disfigured and damaged by development down there. Those forests shudder at the continuous lines of hikers snaking through every green space, trailing urine and trash and compaction and status-seeking fitness experiences through every bit of every type of ecosystem that's left intact. Here? The land draws you in, revealing little pockets of this plant or that soil or a scar on a tree to indicate an old oolichan grease trail. We remade the lower mainland in our image; the north remakes us slowly but surely in its own image.

It's not to say I'm done learning here: there's more to learn than one or even a thousand lifetimes can encompass. It's to say I'm a person of this land now, our traditional frame of ownership reversed if you will, it will always live in me and it feels so familiar now, like perfectly worn-in clothing. Like home.

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.

#42

Maybe it’s only that the geese include me
As they circle the yard in a group,
Speaking softly among themselves:
Hello! Are you there? I’m still here.

Some days I write twenty pages
And some days my throat closes
And words escape me. Even then
I want someone to say, I’m still here.

Humans like consistency and I do too
But it’s not something I can provide.
The geese don’t mind
If I join their slow circuit or not
But when I do they say softly,
Hello. I’m still here.

I've been brushing Avallu some every evening, just taking out a basketball-sized amount of hair or so every night. He's starting to blow his coat, gently and not spectacularly. He's very happy when I go find him every night and bring him in for brushing.

Tonight I took off his collar and brushed under it. He was super super happy, tilting his neck to help me get the spots I was missing and then lying down with his head along my leg and closing his eyes and sighing happily as I very gently worked through the under-collar fur with a brush. For the most part his coat is very non-matting but that neck spot, under his ears, and the very backs of his feathers can get really dense and also really matted. I was just quietly brushing him, he was slowly falling asleep making little happy sounds, the house was quiet. Everything was exactly right with the world.

After having brushed out tonight's basketball-sized amount of hair from mostly that narrow band around his neck (and having spent lots of time petting him and snuggling) I went to put his collar on and even with all the hair removal it barely fit. I had to carefully part and de-poof quite a bit of his fur to get it on.

I hate to think that he's halfway through his life now, or more. The bond increases with all of them every year.

Love in unexpected places
In a winter of firelight
In your persistence
After two thousand days of seeking
Two thousand days of being the only one for whom my presence
Has ever brought
Peace

Turn about is fair play and I've never been fair
But now somehow--

**

The young own the world and you're no exception:
Fearless, cocksure, taking every pleasure with the ease of long practice
Your lazy sprawl believes you are always welcome, always cherished
And by believing you make it so

**

When it started we didn't speak the same language
And for years I wished we could talk
But you lean on me when you're afraid and I've seen your dreams.
When I cry you're the safest place I know.
You dissolve my despair into peace.
We have our secrets:
I have yours and you have mine.

**

Safety used to be my head on the inner curve of a human arm
Held, and drifting to sleep
No one holds me like that anymore
And the memory fades
Replaced by the dance of flames
The smallest purring small spoon
And the sigh of a dog dreaming

**

Guardian I named you
Spirit of the land
Soul of my earth.
I'd hoped you'd be brave
You have the courage to find joy every day.
How could I have known that not just wolves and bears but also desperation and despair would flee before you?
You see me as whole and protect me, map and purpose, flesh and soil
And inch by gleaming inch gain ground before my monsters.
Guardian of my land,
Soul of my earth,
Spirit of my spirit.

Two nights ago: poor sleep and a cat in pain. Yesterday: predawn emergency vet run to the city two (and a half) hours away, waiting for answers at a friend's place until late afternoon. Today: medicating cat and trying to nap my nervous system back into alignment.

When he was in pain he came to me for help. I'm glad I could help.

I'm glad I could bring him home.

It was awhile ago I came to terms with my dad living inside me: first my stepdad, charming, insecure, demanding, controlling, smart but maybe not clever, failing his whole life, pretentiously stringing together obscure references in patterns no one else saw, never letting anything go.

Sometime after that I came to terms with my dad living inside me, at least how I picture him from the small fragments I have; he ran off when I was very young so as not to hurt me, mom said. He lived in the bush for awhile in Florida, I was told. He was happy at the end, I was told, and left to ponder the implications of that. Hard relate, to be honest.

It's now, in this spacious winter when I'm alone up in my home, splitting wood and hauling water, that I am finally coming to terms with my mom living inside me. For so much of my life she has been the only parent I know. So much of my resistance in life has been to her voice, has been to learning not to have her voice be mine. It takes a lot of silence for me to finally hear the whispers of her as an accepted part of me. It doesn't escape me, though, that I am so much of her embodied, and with the exception of her marriages my life echoes hers in broad strokes in many ways.

It feels like something profound will happen when I love all the people who are parts of me, as parts of me, fully and without reservation. I'm not there now but it seems within mindshot, a couple glades over, a little ways down the path.

I grew up in a huge (albeit cold and unfinished) house, 4000 square feet and 5 acres for 6 people. There were always places both indoors and outdoors I could go to be alone, private, and safe. In the house if I didn't want to be in my room I could climb through the undrywalled bathroom, over the pile of contruction lumber and down the not-yet-or-ever-wired hallway, into the sauna-without-electricity which was basically an unheated unwindowed cedar room full of spiders, dust, and peace. It felt like the tombs of Atuan, known only by touch. Or I could go upstairs, through the library, into mom's office where she was never to be found during non-school hours since she was doing chores, making dinner, and taking care of my brothers and I could take a book off the shelf and hide under her desk (which faced away from the door). No one could find me and it was warmer in there.

When I graduated from highschool me, mom, and one brother moved into a 42" boat. The boat had three rooms plus a toilet room: mom's room with the shower in it, the front V berth, and then the galley-slash-salon with a couch in it on which I slept as long as I lived there. There was no privacy at all, visual or sound or anything, except when my brother was at school and mom was at work (and she didn't work in the office every day). The boat was (illegally, since we lived on it) moored in the city's downtown and I learned to live in public spaces at that time: the new library, the new plaza next to the transit station, the acres-big park with a bike path encircling it and swings, the big cheap clattering chinese restaurant with a million things on the menu which I could even occasionally afford.

I had no money at this time, I was working a very part time job for minimum wage and I was supposed to be going to school. I'd go to the university and use the computers there but I failed out of my classes pretty quickly; I was too afraid to talk to adults to ask them for help, and too poor to afford the textbooks. I tried to get a job following mom's advice ("just go in with a resume") but through some combination of the early 2000s recession, being too afraid of adults to talk to them, never having been raised around non-abusive adults and not knowing what to say, having no idea what working actually entailed since mom was a college professor and had hoed beans as a kid and dad hadn't worked, being deeply depressed, and being autistic I had a two year job search that failed to get me more than the occasional month or two at part-time minimum wage. At that point it was clear I wasn't doing well in university, and to motivate me mom kicked me out: she said I either needed to pass classes (which I needed to pay for myself) or pay rent on the boat. I wasn't able to do either.

Luckily my boyfriend had started working at a nice job at his mom's workplace at that point, and we could move in together to an actual apartment.

(This is so painful to write about)

For awhile we lived together in a couple of what were probably fine apartments, but that felt amazing to me: carpet! that was less than twenty years old! Smooth, drywalled, mudded, sanded, and painted walls! Molding at the base of the walls! Doors that fit their frames and frames that were finished! Showers with curtains! I felt rich. I was not rich. I was living with someone who we thought we would be together forever, but I was still only working the occasional stint in call-center jobs. He worked at a regional airport, so we lived deep on what were then the fringes of suburbs whose population mostly commuted to the city. He could drive, I could not. The busses to the city took a couple hours, and they did cost money. I grew tomatoes on a south-facing deck, walked to a yoga class and to the local nursery where I hung out, and spent a tremendous amount of time online.

It didn't feel unusual for me to be dependent on my partner, to not be able to leave. I'd never had the option of leaving while growing up, of living on my own. I'd never had enough money at one time to make up a full rent cheque even if I were to take every cent in my account and the change in my purse and spend it on just that one thing.

That was at least two apartments in the suburbs. Long story short we moved to a third apartment in the city to be closer to another couple we were dating. A year or two more went by, maybe more, I'm really uncertain of the timeline at this point. I was completely unable to get work in the city; I volunteered at the botanical garden for years, sold knives door to door for a bit but didn't have the network that business model relied on to sell to all my friends.

Finally one of my friends from the polyamory group had to go on maternity leave; she owned a cleaning business that she'd built and wanted to pass it on to someone. I started cleaning with her and I was completely terrible in the beginning, but she was patient and trained me up for months, introduced me to all the clients, and then eventually left it in my hands.

As soon as I had enough money to pay my own rent, my first partner said he needed some time living apart. I believed him. I suspect he believed him. The last time we ever had sex or an intimate date was in our shared bed, though, because once I moved out he made excuses about not getting together in private, got married to part of that other couple we were seeing, that person vetoed me with him and my other partner (the other part of that couple), and every time we got together for the next several years he'd express what seemed like real interest in meeting up but never actually follow through.

Anyhow, when I moved out I didn't know any of that. I found a room on craigslist in a house full of gay dudes. It was a beautiful old house, immaculately kept, with a big fishtank in the livingroom. At this point I'd developed some social skills but I still didn't spend much time in the shared areas, just up in the little attic room I had my own rights to. I kept my rats in there, my own fishtank for a little while, and my bed: that's all that fit. I wasn't home much: I spent a bunch of time at the home of the couple we were dating (I didn't really know I wasn't dating the one partner yet, and the other was still seeing me), and then my commute to work and back took a couple hours each way on the bus if I wanted to be on time. I learned the city's bus system intimately.

This is when I was first buying my own food. I remember buying a frozen brick of masago, the cheap orange kind full of msg ad sweetener, and eating about half of it on rice, then not eating any again for months. I couldn't leave anything in the kitchen, not even a dirty glass overnight, and friends didn't come to my place.

My home at this point was really the home of the couple I was dating, and my time was spent more there than at the room I rented. I'd swing home, hang out for a day, feed and play with the rats, and swing away again for a day or two or even three, depending on how much the rats were eating/drinking. In the other house I had no bedroom or anything like that, not even a drawer, so I lived with my bag full of housecleaning supplies including little vaccuum on one shoulder, and my big hockey bag full of clothes and books on the other. The other house meant stability though, it was people who loved me at the time, who cared for me and who I spent time with, and I (and partner) had been spending time there for the last several housing moves so it felt stable. It felt like home.

Then came the veto, and that house was no longer mine. I'd planted things there: a pawpaw tree, elephant garlic, raspberries, saskatoons. I'd built a greenhouse. I built a greenhouse in the backyard of the house I was renting a room from too, with the help of my other partner, and one of my roommate's friends offered me a job working with plants. I took it, and for the first time was, not full time employed or anything, but was actually employed by another person in a job where I could pay my rent.

A kaleidoscope of homes and partners follows: I moved on average once every six months for awhile, in with partners mostly but sometimes with roommates. This home had a hole in the floor that let in daylight and then the ceiling collapsed. That home we moved in as a group, lived there for six months while the landlord was always going to install floors, then got evicted when he finally did. This home was a studio space that one partner's brother let us live in for awhile, then kicked us out. That one I couldn't afford when the relationship ended. This one was really too much of my income. That one was a friend's place she rented me while she lived elsewhere, but I got the boot when she moved back in (that one was really lovely, and it's where I was the longest aside from here). There were sublets and sublets and sublets. I kept a PO Box in town, paid for, because it's the only way I could do all the legal documentation things you needed to receive mail for. When I needed to recover a password on the phone to do my taxes I ran through three or four possible postal codes when they asked what mine was.

I played ATM fishing every week, putting in two dollars so I could get at the extra 1.50 in my account and thus debit 3.50 at the store for groceries.

I remember moving my things in a wheely suitcase once in the summer, a gift that my aunt had got for me to pointedly suggest I should move out from living with mom before mom kicked me out herself. It was summer, and they're not made for that kind of use: the wheels melted right off.

If it was the right time of year I always planted things, if there was any outdoors at all. I tried to alway s be somewhere with outdoors. I could afford rent and mostly food, I always paid my rent, and sometimes I'd buy plants. I'd plant them where I was living. Years later I'd see them sometimes, flourishing if they hadn't been removed. I watched the saskatoons in front of that one house grow huge and full of berries.

I never stayed anywhere long enough to pick fruit. Tomatoes, a couple times. Mint, in very different types of locations, yes. I hauled pots of plants from home to home to home on the graces of friends who could drive and were willing to help me move.

I got so good at moving. I only ever had one dresser of clothes. I kept things in steamer trunks and books lived in boxes. The plants were awkward, of course, but there it is. I had a moving company I liked and that I eventually paid for; luckily I had a strong visual style so people would give me clothing they thought I'd like and I didn't have to pay for clothing; I could afford to move. Moving was my poverty hobby and my most expensive hobby.

Eventually my stuff went into storage. I don't remember when, or what spurred it; I think it was the breakup of a relationship where we were living together just the two of us, or maybe it was my decision to go back to school. Everything I loved was in a 10x10 box in an inaccessible part of the city (that is to say, busses didn't really go there) and I was in another box with a moldy futon on the floor, a rabbit, and a dresser in a house that was probably a negative 500k value on the multi-million-dollar lot.

Years later it came out of storage. I'd been at threshold a couple months by then, my own house, this house that I own. I'd been rattling around in it with a set of dishes I got on a facebook sales group, a week's worth of work clothes, a bed they'd left behind, and two of those tall barstools that are impossible to sit on. When all my stuff arrived on the truck it was like Christmas is supposed to be (did you grow up with nice Christmas presents?), all the things I wanted curated by someone who loved me and knew me well: my pottery wheel. My sewing machine. The mirror I liked. My lounging couch. My marshmallow mattress and the bed I can hang clothes on the frame of. Dishes I'd made. Festival clothes, fluttery silk and good for nothing but pleasure. Steamer trunks full of costumes and sweaters and kink gear and unfinished skirts. Boxes of books, and shelves for the books to go on. Old spiral bound notebooks. Booze I'd made and bottled in the hope of someday being able to sit somewhere and drink it.

People who place little value on stuff inevitably have enough money to get what they need, or a corner of their parents' basement where they still have stuff. People who say "it's just stuff?", I have no time for those folks.

Five and a half years ago I moved here, to Threshold, and my stuff came, and it was a completion. Three pieces clicked together: the land, me, and my nest of things. The next year we were evacuated for fires and I had one of the bigger trauma responses I'd ever had in my life: I was displaced, temporarily in someone else's home and unable to spend much time at my own home where I had put in a garden. My other partner was ghosting me and gaslighting me about the ghosting. I spent the weeks of evacuation in a dark dissociated haze where I could barely hear sounds; even with someone who loved me there, even with my animals close to me.

After that it slowly got better. When I came home the greenhouse had grown so much I couldn't get into it; Josh had set up automatic watering while I was gone and things had flourished. Winter, summer, winter, summer again: the seasons continued to come. The apple trees, here before me, bloomed every spring. Every spring! Ice locked the house and slid down off the roof and sheltered it in a cradle of white peace, while inside the woodstove breathed its heartbeat of full to empty, blazing to smouldering, over and over and over and over.

Last summer I was given a couch and put it in the basement, in the woodstove room. The room has a rack of squashes I grew for seed (I mean, also to eat) and is stacked with dairy crates of corn drying for seed. The dog door opens into this room and three cats and two dogs wander in and out freely. I spend so much time here now, sitting on the couch with my feet up on a suitcase (hard-sided, so I can set a drink on it if I need and my back to the firewood rack holding the next few days' heartbeat of heat. The wood stove creaks occasionally beside me, topped with the hum of a little heat-driven fan, and when it's windy I can hear the chimney singing. Outside is the winter's worth of firewood, right outside, the future sitting there in solid form and every week I split it and carry it indoors. Sometimes I go upstairs and get a jar of applesauce from the pantry, from the apple trees that where here before me, and I eat it.

This home makes demands of me and every demand is: stay, interact with me, I'm here, stay, you can't ignore me, stay. These demands feel like love.

I haven't opened every box from the moving years but I'm getting closer. Last night I took a rubbermaid of various things, noticed it was mostly winter gear, and I hung two dairy crates near the door. Shelves are beyond my budget, but dairy crates? I have a source. I labelled one "hats" and one "scarves" (considered, and discarded, "scarfs") and put the combination of work toques and unicorn toques in the one and the scarves from the box in the other. I took some other scarves off my coathooks and put them in too, which let the coats stretch out a little more.

The rubbermaid isn't empty but I'm one step closer to being unpacked. I have years of "important papers" to go through, mostly no doubt taxes and government correspondence about permanent residency and citizenship and paystubs that were so desperately valuable and so desperately hard to manage with all the moving, but can go on the fire now. There's another box labelled "ancestry" sent by my cousin on my unknown dad's side, and I think some sort of catholic baptism thing? My US birth certificate may even be in there somewhere.

Scarves and hats, two steps closer. In the summer I can reverse the crates and put pocket-vests and sunhats in them so I have somewhere to put eggs when I find them. Closer and closer.

The pottery wheel is out.

I've unboxed my sewing machine and ordered the part that got broken at Josh's place in 2016. I've made a spreadsheet of fabrics and put my patterns in one place, together, in one rubbermaid. I've assigned fabrics to patterns, pending toile making (I can't actually sew until the part arrives and I can fix the machine). I've cut out the base patterns, and much to my cat's delight have rolled out the big roll of paper to copy the patterns onto for useable templates.

I carry water every day for the animals.

I split and carry wood once a week for the house.

I move through my kitchen, through my livingroom and its current sewing space but sometimes its butchery space, its soapmaking space, its seed-saving space, for myself.

The wood shifts in the fireplace. The dog exhales and shifts in her sleep, head and limbs akimbo. Outside the geese honk quietly.

Last night there was something that could help me living in my house and I just did it, powerdrill was there to hand, screws were there to hand, I knew what the next months would be like and where I would need something, I put that thing there without it being a wasted effort or a ding on my damage deposit. That's the story. As you see I can tell you stories all day. The stories are just the setup, though, the context and feeling of chaos and kaleidoscope and helplessness and slow inching towards healing.

The noun to all these verbs is me, the person to this home, sitting next to the fire and beside the dog and typing thoughtfully on my laptop. Me, in the same home where last night I hung two dairy crates from an unpacked box, where four years ago I came back to find my garden overgrown and remnants of wildfire smoke still in the air, where five and a half years ago I rattled around on the floor in this basement with a puppy.

Somehow I'm still here.

Somehow life is still allowing me to unpack my boxes.

And you better believe I'm still planting things.