Greenstorm's Journal

Now that I'm home, and still on leave from work, I am finally able to sort some of the stuff out I'd intended to get to originally. My capacity is tiny, which is to say I have a couple to a few hours of movement/doing things if they're interspersed with resting per day, one phone call every second day or so whether it's practical/medical or for social, eating several times a day but minimal food-making, and that's mostly it?

So I managed to arrange for someone to pick up the pigs tomorrow, I'm keeping Baby and Hooligan back because they're old and friends. I unloaded the truck, which took 2 days and a furniture dolly (boxes of clay are roughly 40-50lbs and I just couldn't lift them the first couple days). I went in to my specialists appointment and they eventually gave me a bed to lie down on since I couldn't sit as long as I needed to without my head supported.

In February I'd ordered chicks with a friend and we got the reminder email last week, but I somehow thought they were coming next Sunday. Well, yesterday-Sunday she messaged me to ask where at the airport to pick them up. So yesterday I cleaned out the bottom chicken coop (6 wheelbarrows of light bedding) so I can move the silkies over into it so I can put the chicks to brood in the quail house. The quail house bedding is moister, so heavier, and I need to move everyone over at night when they're sleeping, so it'll be a couple days. Meanwhile the babies are brooding downstairs in a giant rubbermaid tub brooder on the sofa. Little Bear is interested but there's lots else going on.

When your memory sucks every day is a surprise.

I also had a talk with my supervisor, who-- you know, I think I need a lot more words to say "it's still bad and I don't get to see my doctor till after the leave is over because Healthcare so I can't really plan at this point"

A friend brought me by soup and bread. Another friend helped me out financially. I feel safe, and I feel like I shouldn't feel safe.

I haven't had capacity to do pottery yet. That's hard. Because I can do only one or two things a day I need to have food lined up and no animal/work/medical stuff, but because I can only do one or two things a day most days contain something I need to do, I can't get it all out of the way to clear my schedule.

My housesitter killed about half my tomato plants by number, and more than that by variety %. I still have maybe 16 flats of peppers and tomatoes, and I started a bunch of squash and leafy greens and re-started some of my precious northern cantaloupe seeds. I'm getting to the point where some of these I don't have backup seeds for, either because they're an F1 or a rare unobtainable variety or whatever. That isn't to say I can't get other seeds and start them next year - it's too late now to start more tomatoes or peppers -- but it's a loss. Turns out the plants started dying after a week and instead of messaging me to ask what to do the housesitter decided to wait till I came back to explain. Who knew what could have been saved in that time?

She also, like every human to enter my house without intimate knowledge and care for me, threw out the "rotten" tomatoes in a bowl on the counter -- my seed tomatoes that the parent plant is now dead, so that line's done -- and I'm pretty sure fed one of my prosciuttos ("moldy cheese") to the pigs to get them in the pen when they got out, and despite very very very careful instructions to take only the meat from the downstairs bedroom freezer (which had frozen and thawed) to lure the pigs in used the gorgeous salmon Josh brought me from the freezer in the carport instead.

A ton of things in my house are unique, irreplaceable, and don't make a lot of sense to people without exposure to the concepts behind them. When people visit and try to be well-meaning (and don't have unique homes of their own) generally irreplaceable or hundreds of dollars worth of stuff gets destroyed. Other people's houses are frequently inexplicable to me but I don't think I destroy stuff like that? I've finally got mom trained, pretty much, and Tucker and Josh understand. But it's frustrating and I think it's yet another reason I wish I had more space-- space to entertain separate from the living space which contains what I do with my time everyday.

Anyhow, that aside we've had good rain on and off, more than we've had in awhile. I'm hardening off my tomatoes. Something on my back deck eats lettuce but all the leafy greens other than lettuce I planted out there before I left are doing well. I have a silkie - looks like a giant white cottonball -- who can somehow hide effectively in an empty field. Little Bear had his first shots, is microchipped, and will shortly be fixed and I have a vet. Every time Little Bear goes to the vet they exclaim "he's such a delightful cat" so who knows what happens back there.

I need to get the wherewithal together to till my garden but we still have some lows in the forecast, even though the actual temps have been turning out very high. With the loss of so many tomatoes I started a sweet corn grex. My southmost garden is now fully planted, more or less, and waits only for a path and little greenhouse. It's woody perennials, needs underplanting with herbacious, but still. Has lots of haskap, hardy cherry, ribes, elderberry, etc and lots of blossoms this year.

Some apple seedlings from last year survived -- I knew my winter would kill some, since those seeds are from california -- and I'd like to catalogue them when I have wherewithal. I sorted through my seeds and put away anything I'm definitely not growing this year (missed the favas window, pulled out individual squash seeds, chose my corn path, put away the tomatoes and peppers, etc) so I only have a single dairy crate of seeds left out that I'll be putting in. The year is shaping up.

Every night Little Bear stalks me up to bed and settles in with me and Whiskey.

Solly has been sleeping in the muddy stream to keep cool, and here I thought she was just getting out.

The goose nests were eaten by the pigs when I was gone, but there might be a couple they missed.

The ambient temperature here varies between 10-27C indoors and 4-25Coutdoors (barring a little frost here and there) and is comfortable open window weather. Somehow n Vancouver a much smaller range was sticky and both too warm and too cold.

I'm not strong enough right now to unscrew the hard-water-encrusted thingers under the sink tap so I may need to hire the job out, annoying when I know exactly what I need to do but less annoying than not having running water in the bathroom sink.

I'm slowly sorting through "what if rest doesn't increase my capacity, it just maintains it, and I'm like this now". So: instead of telling a friend I can go for a walk with them, I would probably invite them over? So: I need to plan my systems much better and more efficiently. So: I need a cart so I'm not using the same wheelbarrow for chicken manure and bringing groceries in from the truck?

Threshold loves me. I love being here. All that, good and bad, and things are ok.

The psychologist I was referred to asked twice if I had things I enjoyed, hobbies, etc. Of course they want to steer me towards depression. The first time I just said yes. The second time I said "Yes, tons of stuff, the best is my tomato breeding program where I'm finally into the F2, so after 3 years of work I get to see the results finally, to see it opening out into a whole bunch of possibility-- and of course we're starting the little pottery studio in town, and there's a garden club" and I think he finally believed me. But it's hard for people to believe, I think.

If you're disabled you're supposed to be dissatisfied, unhappy. If you cure the unhappiness you're supposed to cure the disease, too, especially in "women". I have pain sometimes and a weird lack of function other times, enough that apparently I'm setting my jaw hard to get myself through things and have worn through the disc on both sides, which is what's causing the ear pain? But I'm happy. It's very possible to be in pain and also to be happy. And it's obviously possible to not do everything you want to do and still be happy, because in this near-infinite world how could anyone ever be happy otherwise?

Loving my life, and living in a life I love, has always been my most radical and least-understood act. Even when it's hard and it hurts and it's lonely. Even when it's not safe because of course it's never safe. Even when, even when.

I've been sitting up typing for 40 minutes now. The rain has restarted outside. I need to lie back down. Two cats are sleeping on the foot of the bed. Sometime later I'll go out and clear out another third of the bedding in the quail shed, or maybe do some pottery, or maybe do a run into town for more chick starter. I'll not chain multiple activities together, I'm learning that. And things will, for now, be ok.

Thoughts don't come easy on this new medication. It gives me access to physical energy/ability to do things, but that energy is drawn from the same pool I'd use to think, and it doesn't make the pool any bigger. The more I draw on the physical pool, the worse the cognitive pool gets. It's also striking how clean the lines are on what my mind can do and what it can't do when I look at cognitive tests. I'm so curious about it and I'd like to know more.

(think of that last paragraph like a 5 mile run where I pause and just sit, doing the mental equivalent of panting, and decide that's enough on that subject because there are other things I want to write about).

Today I was once again thinking about how PTSD and autism are linked in our society. More specifically, how perception of actual reality is discouraged-- how people with sensory differences are taught from very young that their senses are lying to them. Sunlight, or heat, or cold, or sitting in a chair, or low noise-- those aren't really painful, don't be silly. Twirling, or standing on your toes, or doing proprioceptive activities, those can't possibly be stabilizing, they're distracting, don't be silly.

So it's hard to learn, not just what pain or pleasure or stability feel like, but also what reality is. It's hard to interact with the actual world because we can't share those experiences, we need to keep them secret.

(another pause for cognitive breath, while I give up on where that train of thought was going)

It's beautiful here today. Good crisp below zero, bright sun bouncing off the snow, if you had a south-facing rock you could nap in front of it while the thermometer read -15C and it wouldn't be cold.

I started a ton of pepper seeds on the weekend. Last year I'd tried really hard not to start too many seedlings, so when the garden club started up and started selling seedlings I didn't have any extra. The year before I was going to be moving to the Island so I didn't start much. This year I can go back to starting lots of seedlings and Corrie said she can sell them at the farmer's market, I guess people snap up anything that looks like a seedling no matter what in the spring. So: peppers started. Tomatoes will be started roughly beginning of March. Squash will be started roughly mid-end April, along with cucumbers. Not sure if I should do lettuce etc?

I definitely need to set up my big shelf for seedlings. Right now things are being started, waiting for dividing in a flat, under my one light. Looking forward to this.

Meanwhile my body hasn't been able to do pottery much, and Tucker was here last week, so that's been slowly humming in the background. TS Eliot is always on my mind. At some point my skill may be enough to capture some of this.

Whip-smart, sharp, a little mean
Always ready with a come-back
Always willing to dive into new ideas and
Argue.

It's what we valued-
What we value. A performance
Of quick wit
Between one thing
And the next
Never losing audience
Attention
Never asking more
Than they can
Give
Solidifying their approval
Before their
Next appointment
Or text message.
Satisfied
They were worthy of our
Attention
We approve
And move on
To a quick vacation
In one country
A new this or that
Enough novelty
To fill
A bucket
List.

What if it took months to communicate an idea?
What if it took years to learn a place, what if we spent so long learning slow ideas
That each one had time to crease itself
On our faces and our hands, written markings of the lifetime
Of integration of single thought into an ecosystem
Of other deep thoughts?

What if we sought, not the fastest, but the slowest,
Not the flashiest, but the deepest,
Our thoughts poised in composed contemplation
Absorbing each nuance of what exists
Before sliding one toe and then another slowly
Into the bottomless pool of accumulated knowledge
Celebrating when we integrated with the slightest of ripples instead of the biggest splash?
What if, what if, what if we all moved gently,
What if we watched before we moved, humble in our abilities, leaned on the value of others' thoughts,
What if, what if, what if we sat by the fire in slow contemplation
Laid out a constellation of what ifs
Against a whole sky's worth of context
Before weaving our actions into the tapestry.

What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, our minds weren't slipping into tragedy but into wholeness. What if, after racing over the surface, we allowed us to finally rest and slip below the surface into the embrace of--

What if, what if, what if, what if,
But there are no awards, you can't measure slowness, can't value unfilled space, can't even wait until the end of a short novel or a long slow poem without answers


With respect to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00013-0/fulltext#: edited to fix link

New med is managing to more or less keep me awake through the workday, but it wears off and the end is a struggle. Even more because I was requested to go in Wednesday and while there were good and necessary networking bits I'm not sure my body is able to sit up in a desk for 8 hours straight anymore. Anyhow, I was extra tired yesterday, so I made it to a couple minutes before logoff time.

I thought I signed out, but apparently I didn't. I immediately fell asleep anyhow, and woke up an hour later to many texts and an email chain (the ringer on my phone is habitually off) about how I had missed my check-out for the day, they were supposed to call the police but they knew I didn't want that, so they'd had some folks call around and found a co-worker who could come and do a wellness check on me. That's the point where I woke up, responded, and the thing was called off.

So, um, that was embarrassing. It was also somewhat reassuring, in that they tried pretty hard to avoid the letter of the procedure (calling the police) because they knew I took issue with that. The "call the police" thing is direction from On High, supposedly based on direction from the provincial work safety body.

Luckily its unlikely that the police will kill someone on a wellness check in this context because we don't really hire that kind of minority. Folks know what's good for them, I guess?

In a normal forestry office I'd buy everyone who worked on not calling the police a beer, but we're across two offices and I don't even know how that would happen. One of the more frustrating parts of my particular brand of autism is being too alien to accurately communicate my positive emotions to neurotypical-ish folks. Or anyone, really. I'm a "leave a present on the porch, ring the doorbell, and run away" type.

Okay. Some of this might be edging into language now.

I've written a lot about how I generally have been able to surround myself with people who liked or could tolerate me even when I present more as my actual self. I have ways of flagging, innoculating, etc so that happens. It happens best in situations where there are lots of people to choose from, so folks who aren't into being around me can select away.

Moving up here was at first not a problem because I selected into a workplace with people who were compatible. When that company went under I landed at one of only a very few places in town I could work in my field. While I thoroughly screened my direct co-worker and he's an excellent fit the rest of the workplace is not. Additionally the professional society is... extremely not, and both hit my PDA pretty hard. Note for later that the professional society is required in order to do forestry in BC.

Meanwhile there are plenty of people who I think are similar to me up here but I haven't figured out how to form community with them. Most of them are women, supported by a spouse, whose free time is during the day. Most of them have lots on the go.

And then the pottery studio started up and there were a couple folks with dayjobs who were also really interested in doing things. I was hopeful. It was and is a chaotic startup. As it falls out, though, the people with power in the situation are people who seem uninterested in actually doing pottery. One of those people at least is someone with whom I'm an anti-communicator, which is to say we completely misunderstand and badly interpret what each says completely every time (for instance, pretty sure when I tried to say I was happy to help get things off the ground she thought I was saying I was burnt out and reassured me by saying I was only supposed to come in a couple times a year, then when I pointed out the misunderstanding she said she went by what people said and not by the fluffy things they meant). The other is frequently on vacation and overwhelmed, though I think she and I are slowly learning to communicate.

And these people, for whom pottery is on par with going to see an occasional theatre event or going on a little vacation, seem like they'd like to populate the studio with other similar people: folks who make five or six things a year, who come and talk about their grandkids, who are a little uncomfortable with glazing but aren't really into learning about it. So when I come in and I want to learn about glazes and am happy to do research into them and put together a collection of synergistic recipes that don't need a huge variety of ingredients and a shopping list, or when I want to try and make sure people's work is finished before their access to the studio ends, or when I practice on the wheel a lot to reach a skill goal (which I still haven't done) they... don't know what to do with that, are suspicious of it, and functionally or systematically reject it.

That level of enthusiasm, of doing things more than on a surface casual level, is of course a deep part of my personality. So now the place I was hoping to connect with folks, to form community, where I could go and spend time and casually socialize without the demand of hosting an event... that wants to spit me out. I get along great with the attendees, it's the people running it that are the problem.

And to add just a little sting, the pottery studio is part of a nonprofit and they charge a membership fee "to make sure it isn't just a group of friends doing it for themselves" but actually serves the community. But. I'm not the community, I guess. I never really am.

So what I'm feeling is a lot of alienation, but not the cheerful kind I felt previously where I recognise that I'm different and accept that there's lots of diversity among people and I just need to sort myself into the right places. Instead it's feeling more personal.

And I think a lot of that is because my support system is kind of slipping away, and also because my PDA is overwhelmed.

But, more about that later. I think I've done well to get this far. It all feels very intense and uncomfortable and I feel somewhat helpless in the face of it. If I thought I could live in the states I'd run away to stay with my pottery mentor for awhile; she's encouraging, she appreciates that quality in me that drives me to learn things, and she's one of the old guard geek bipolypagan folks so I feel culturally at home with her.

I guess it says something that my escapist fantasy used to be running away to do canopy science where no one knew me, back when I was in a big group of people who I got along with, and now it's to run away to someone who knows and accepts me now that's what's lacking.

This is a post about impostor syndrome, neurodiversity, and power.

Honestly a lot of my autistic masking seems to function like AI, where it takes likely things instead of factual things and makes a reasonable narrative from it. I also have a translator state, where I soften my actual self, but that takes a lot of brainpower. Saying the expected or reasonable thing, even if it's not factual, can happen easily when I'm caught completely unprepared.

Give me this day my daily round
Of time measured in field and raindrop,
Of garden and greetings of bright-eyed companions of fur and feather.

Forgive the way my heart is swallowed up by the land
Separated from all you would have me be
Brightened and deepened beyond your ken

As you will one day forgive the land for swallowing my body.

And lead me not into the mire of your expectations
Correct clothing, correct language, correct tone, every muscle correct
I will never be correct. I can only fail. And so

Deliver me from your judgement, turn away if need be
Watch your clocks, make your rounds
With your own kind.

For thine is the society
And the power
In this brief interlude
Until we are dust.

Yesterday was cool with almost no smoke. I was able to open the windows and little breezes played through the house. It was lovely, especially since I was cleaning house for Tucker's arrival. I even washed all the squished mosquitoes off the bedroom and bathroom walls! It's been long enough since I was a housecleaner that I begin to forget how much difference those little things make to the feel of a place: cupboard fronts (which I did not wash), walls, light switch plates, baseboards. It makes a house look newer and lighter.

I'd got these tiny tiny pouches from the grocery store trash run that said "add to 1L of water, let dissolve, and spray" and they were a bathroom cleaner. They worked surprisingly well, and even more surprisingly the scent didn't bother me. I guess the format is meant to reduce the number of spray bottles and weight of water that gets shipped around. I have a couple more to drop into cleaning buckets of hot water (not how it's meant to be used, I know) for big wall-cleaning days. I continue to be grateful for my vacmop.

Today the smoke is creeping back. I'm in the office to figure out what's going on with this summer: my fieldwork is a no-go, since more than half the road-accessible area of the district is under evac alerts or orders for fires and at least a couple of the blocks I was going to sample are probably on fire. Between the smoke and the alerts fieldwork is probably counterindicated.

This morning I put on my "neurodiversity is beautiful" shirt and wore it to work. Previously I've worn autism-coded symbols but not anything with the word. I figure I may be dizzy, tired, and disoriented but that's the best time to pull off representation - when I'm too occupied by living to overthink it.

Wish me luck on scooping some good work out of the pile today. Contracts all summer will destroy me. I can't even put correct names on itineraries lately.

#53 F3

It’s just us two here:
Me, and the whole wide world.
Humans didn’t stay,
One of us was too big for them.
Last year I ripped up flowers
Bending the tiniest part of the world to my will
Cradled my offspring under lights all winter.
The ravens watch over me
And take their share in exchange
A reminder that flesh always tears
In the end.

I am the meaning-maker,
My stories stitched together to support
The weight of my demanding mind
My life bigger than the compass of my memory
Glutted with years of joy
And honed by solitude.
I always watched across the room
Watched you,
Watched myself,
Told stories as kindly as I wished they’d be told about me.

In the beginning I named myself
And like any good spell the name remained
While the world burned the rest away.
In the beginning I named myself
And like any good self I remained
While the world burned away.

When the story is complicated there’s an ending close behind
No one can abide uncertainty
At least I can’t, and the wide world isn’t talking.
The flowers I ripped up last year are growing.
It’s just us two here.
Humans didn’t stay.


#54 Global warming as a failure of relationship 3

Humans once said they yearned
For the nature they actually spurned
They judged it by looks
And wrote lots of books
Any wonder the atmosphere burned?


#55

There's something about that last glimmer of light,
Sky some sort of deep aquamarine and bright enough
To show up the wind-tossed aspens as they hiss against it.
You don't understand, it may have been light this late,
Until an hour before midnight,
In the city too. But if it was
There were too many streetlights
And it never made a difference.

The sky is glimmering. The aspens are hissing. The fan tosses white noise and breeze into my warm attic-shaped room. Summer is beginning, and I am home.