Greenstorm's Journal

So one of the reasons I came up to Fort particularly is to work with my friend/ex-boss Ron, who moved up here about the time I first took a summer student position in this town. In fact, we started in the same month-- he was friends with the folks who worked at my old job and so he felt maybe more integrated than me. Anyhow, I worked the summer here, went and tried another place the following summer, and in the middle of that summer texted Ron to say "can I come work for you permanently henceforth" and he made it happen. We worked really well together but I tended to keep a layer of distance, because he was my boss, though the structure felt pretty non-hierachical.

Since that company dissolved I've been going over occasionally during Saturday morning coffee, when a bunch of the folks who worked together at the old company would hang out at his place. It was generally a small-group setting, with folks I like, but it was still a group setting.

Well, Ron sold his house and is moving away at the end of the month. He asked if I wanted anything from the house and I went over and poked around and there was some stuff we put on a list and discussed prices for; I dug up some starts from the glorious old rose that lives at the house; and we just talked. We talked about his plans for the summer, moving into a truck he kits out and doing some contract work, and about my plans for the move. We talked about, I don't know, just stuff.

I'd forgotten what it was like to just hang out with someone I enjoy. A friend. I'd forgotten that I could just enjoy someone's presence; that there's a space that's not "intimate because we're involved in some sort of a co-project and it's intense" and "I'm doing this interaction because I'm supposed to and taking what I can from it." Just... it was nice. I enjoy him. It was good. And he's not busy tearing himself into pieces because of self-loathing or doing some sort of weird self-harm through overwork or whatever and that is also very, very nice.

So I've got myself a bedframe for down south out of it, and a hammock stand, and a couch the animals can go on. If I can enough pork, I will give him canned pork in trade. I've got the amazing old rose which lives at his home. I have a BBQ/smoker that needs fixing up. He may come and visit over the winter, and/or maybe if A&E are into it he could live in his truck rig there over the winter on and off for some $, it would be nice to have a friend there for a bit.

Love for me feels like pain. When I experience love, I also experience pain, they're almost inextricably linked. I'm reasonably sure it's a PDA thing, that pressure rising to meet the inevitability of my emotion and locking together into one fused experience. I cried on the drive home, music on, windows down. So much of my interpersonal has been so frought lately and it was good to just be able to just love someone and to have it be ok and not mean anything other than it does.

Meanwhile A&E have taken some time to digest the budget numbers and are starting to brainstorm scenarios down there and put them forward. As is my role I'm going to push for numbers. I suspect I need to ask them what it'll take for them to put numbers to their proposals, rather than for them to hope I'll do it for them. We'll run through a couple scenarios and see what makes sense; as before I've been acting as the reality check. I'm very tempted to tell them to take a small-business course, or at least something involving making a business plan, because I don't know that I'm the person to do all this instruction.

This process may involve me targeting fall for my move instead of midsummer. We will see. Gosh I want to spend time on a project with someone who can lay out steps and do reasonable troubleshooting right now. I miss that kind of interaction.

Anyhow I'm home with fancy roses and I'm about to put food in the oven. Things will be ok.

I guess I haven't hopped on okc anywhere other than the north for just shy of a decade? Set my location to the North Island the other day and gave myself a radius that just clipped the mainland and wow! Autistic folks, plenty of space outside the gender binary, lots of humans, it's kind of nice to see. Super interesting how people use specific causes to flag their identities/in-groups, too-- I'm inclined to be wary of that, but we shall see.

Anyhow, there are in fact new folks on there since I was last down south, but fewer new folks than you might think. We'll see where this goes. It would be nice to have some folks close by to connect with when I get down there, and doubly nice to have someone/some folks around compatible for sex.

Cor Viridis/Cor Viriditas is a go (google translate on "Cor viriditas" is hilarious)

Possession is at the end of May.

Machinery can go in then and till the garden up top (I think this was roughly 700 square feet).

Machinery will also clear the cabin field (+/-2 acres).

Machinery will put in some fencing (perimeter, maybe cabin field).

Machinery dates are all dependent on what's available and when.

Then I can go down with the animals, get them settled, build a nice pig shelter, figure out dog stuff and stairs (might be an issue).

Then? Maybe I can rest. Set up shelves, put lights on them, turn off my phone, and plant seeds for a week with the house lights off and the doors closed.

The as-yet-unnamed property. Viriditas? Maybe, maybe not. Hole in the wood? No. Greenheart? Maybe, maybe not. Its heart is the meter-in-diameter trees that guide a very flashy creek across it. Big. Old-ish. Mossy. Trickles of water over rock in summer, a roar at certain times of winter. That's the heart.

Before you come to the heart you are on a logging road that mysteriously starts being paved. There are plantations all around: second or third growth (probably second) all well-spaced straight uniform conifer trunks with jagged stumps of shaded, partially-jettisoned lower limbs, all dripping with green moss and undergrown with sword fern (polystichum munitum, stick'em like you do with a sword, munitions like weapons: sword fern). The road is pretty straight for a bit. Then the trees are less uniform, there's a spot that wasn't replanted by a forestry company, and a driveway goes in both directions: east and west.

Follow the driveway up west and, after a narrow band of bigleaf maple and spruce and improbably large alder there's a thicket of salmonberry (rich moist indicator) with some young bigleaf maples and spruce and alder coming up through it. This is where the fields will be. The soil is sandy brown under dead winter leaves. The end of this space is marked by a little lean-to-camper-shelter building that someone was living in so we couldn't poke around; that's the edge of the rich sandy soil full of salmonberries, the demarcation between that and the heart.

The heart is cautious. I'm not sure if it's beyond words or if it's waiting to see what I'll do before giving them to me or if I was just busy, my whole body an antenna picking up every scrap of information from the land while a human was trying to talk to me at the same time. It's a place that, if given my full attention, could fully occupy it. The big potato-chip bark spruce trees, the braided stream through mostly-soil-sometimes-rock, the start of skunk cabbage: the heart. It's not to be disturbed by the likes of me and my farming machinations.

Keep going up the driveway; it's definitely got a slight slope up now. The heart flows under the driveway through four culverts, three side-by-side and one additional. The forest opens out onto a wet lawn, brown and slippery with winter rain and dog poop. Here the soil is clay; ramshackle plastic fencing encloses an expanse of woodchips in which small trees and perennials are planted; beyond them woodchips surround some long thin unraised but undoubtedly heavily amended garden beds cradled in the curve of the question mark shape the driveway now assumes. On the other side of the grass from the garden is a small cobb structure with goats, surprisingly enclosed in equally ramshackle fencing and with little disturbance to the grass despite their couple-years-long tenure. That's for the best; a hole here betrays slick grey clay with no texture when rubbed between the fingers.

At the head of the lawn and garden is the house, but behind the house a steep sandy hill looms. It's covered in alder, leaning a little bit out for the light that is one of the major limiting factors here in the cloudy grey, and goes up about eighty feet: sunset will come quickly with that hill to the west like that. Anything that needs to have very dry roots will need to live on that hill: chestnuts, grapes.

The house itself is a rectangle studded with uniformly-sized windows. Irrigation for windowboxes hangs off it. The roof is flat. If it had angled wings instead of a straight rectangle, or if was stone, it would feel like a grand manor house. As is it's a big building waiting to see what happens next.

To the south, past the goats, less-even but still dense trees press up against the property line. In the milky-overcast noon sky they don't cast shade onto the middle of the lawn; when the sun is low in winter at least the deciduous components jettison their leaves and allow a little sun through. Hill to the west. Pass a waterfall, then a scatter of alder through grass and brush and a chainlink fence not far north: there's a neighbour past there that likes their privacy. Maybe a willow fence will end up there? And completing the circle, to the east, the driveway plunges into the deep shadowed green of the heart. Up here the property is about 200 feet wide, widening from the heart through down to the road to 400 feet. The house can feel the presence of her neighbours, of that plantation and of the privacy-loving neighbour of open fields screened by light brush and trees.

There's more, of course: the house has an inside, turning east from the forestry road leads to another several acres. I'm not there yet, though, I can feel the information and possibilities swirling and forming and re-forming into patterns and possibilities. Several things at a time, not every thing at a time.

Inspection, insurance, well test.

Accepted a well test that was documented according to public record (I guess they need to do a weekly test as per being a public lodge).

Inspection occurred, results are being discussed.

Insurance depends on some of the stuff found during inspection.

Apparently I'm the person in the neighbourhood to call if you have extra ducks. Someone is going to drop off some either east indies or Cayugas this weekend. Figures.

I've never had proper stitches before. I was able to take the bandage off and shower finally, and I don't quite understand by looking how it all goes together. The stitches themselves are maybe 4mm to the outside of what must be the actual wound, pulling it tight so the flesh between mounds up. Then the actual slash of the wound is not visible, it looks as if the cut was curled under and the top part of the skin was pressed together.

In short, I have no idea whether it is actually for real going to impact my tattoo. When I took a look at it before they stitched it up it seemed to run right through the text, but now I just cannot tell at all.

It does feel very very odd. It does not like me to stretch or bend, and even being upright for long periods of time makes it sore. Luckily I get to go to the field with summer students tomorrow. Should be distracting.

Anyhow, I don't know if this tired is my body trying to heal fast or just the result of decreasing my pills, which were definitely a stimulant. And, if the latter, whether it's a withdrawal thing or just a return to baseline.

I feel much less likely to leave my car electronics turned on for several days with this doseage, but no more likely to be able to use language when I need it or think through an idea when the tired hits. It's something, at least.

I've been collecting stories of autistic folks with this particular kind of tired as a burnout, so that's something else. It doesn't seem entirely uncommon. On the other hand I haven't asked any of them if it maps with their hormonal cycles. I'm definitely hoping the gynecologist can try some stuff before I move on to the next thing.

In completely different news, I went into the office today and had a face to face (while standing out next to the lake in the sunshine and wind) chat with my boss. We spoke for maybe an hour and a half? I suspect that's contributing to my tired. There's something about the folks at work here that are just much more draining than, well, my previous job or the people I choose to spend time with. I guess that makes me normal? I just haven't had this experience before.

Work is still trying to sort out how much work from home will be allowed after Sept 7. Until that's all sorted we are assumed to be going back to the office full time then. There are two possibilities for remote work: 1-2 days per week, which requires authorization from the top folks at the district, and 3-5 days per week, which requires authorization from the top folks in the North. The top top folks need to sort themselves out and give direction to the local top folks who then need to sort themselves out and give direction to us. Then we need to fill out our paperwork and get it signed off before anything can take effect.

Really curious where this will go. My current job isn't really portable -- I legitimately need to be in the field in this specific place sometimes -- but it has implications for the rest of government too. Assuming a move I'd definitely like to end up either working physically or remotely, or ideally a combination of both. Going in to an office in order to do something I could do at home is not at all appealing.

For the big moving search, a couple likely properties have come up but they're going fast and I don't think A&E are quite prepared for that speed yet. It's more likely they'll sell first and be able to come up with the millions in cash that one needs to buy in that market (seriously, multiple bidders with no condition of financing for places well over a million and closing on two million is... my brain doesn't do this. I honestly cannot imagine living in that world). For the smaller search we're coming more into accord on what we want, but because it's potential fallback option it's more looking and discussing than it is an immediate issue.

Lots of odds and ends.