Greenstorm's Journal

I've been processing roughly 15lbs of pork per day (this is final product, deboned and trimmed and canned, so maybe 50lbs skinned hanging weight per day, which means roughly 12lbs bones for stock or discard, 13lbs fat into strips for rendering soap, 10lbs trim) for most of the last 14 days. It's a lot of work, and that's got me through roughly 700 of the 1600lbs of hanging weight pork I need to process total. Basically because it's stored outside in the shipping container, frozen, I have to bring in a couple shoulder or legs, let them thaw in a cooler because I don't have fridge space for these huge hunks of pork, debone and trim them when they're fully thawed so the knife can get through but not warm yet because that's not food safe, then can that meat right away since I don't want to refreeze and then thaw and then can. The whole process needs a fairly precise timeline and a significant time commitment; I can't take out eight shoulders and then decide I only have energy for four of them, or contrariwise I can't suddenly decide I have energy to do another leg or two if I haven't taken them in to thaw 10-12 hours previously.

All that is to say, I've canned a lot of meat and need to can a little more, but it's taking longer than I want to get through it because of the planning/thaw process. I thaw conservatively, so meat doesn't go bad, but that means that when I have extra energy I can't get ahead -- and getting ahead in unplanned bursts is how I do my best work.

So this morning I took two overflowing totes of mostly pork legs (maybe 14 legs and I think one or two shoulders) down to the new butcher shop the next town over. They are butchers only -- they don't slaughter or skin -- and I've been eyeing them but lining up my slaughter guy and their availability seemed like a little too much. Last night they posted that they had free time to make sausage if anyone had meat in the freezer, so I called them up... and they're going to make me a 25lb batch of plain smoked ("mennonite") sausage, a 25 lb batch of pepperoni, a 25 lb batch of jalapeno-not-cheddar smokies, a 10lb batch of pizza/sandwich salami, and then grind the rest of what I brought them. All sausage will be pork-only. I'm curious about the weight of what I brought them, I think it's maybe 250-350lbs hanging weight? The legs have little extra fat and trim, and a smaller percentage of bone. We'll see. But it takes a lot of work off my plate, especially the part of the work where I need to debone and then grind everything while it's still cold.

It's especially nice because the butcher folks are a young couple who have been doing this business for less than a year, maybe. They have a great social media game and are really transparent about their work, their workspace, etc. I'd like them to stick around.

Now I just have a bunch of loins to debone and sort into chops and tenderloins, the sirloins off those loins to can the last couple batches (I don't have a bone/bandsaw, so the pelvis in the sirloin precludes chops, sadly), and then as many bellies as I want to make into bacon. I've been considering a bacon-making party; invite people over, have them make bacon, then take it home in cure to smoke themselves (or put in artificial smoke) so it gets out of my space. I mean, having bacon is nice, but especially my very fatty bacon is a lot.

Anyhow, the processing is going to cost some money and it'll return a pretty standardized product, but it's a weight off my shoulders and I'm glad to have someone else do it. If they do a good job I can offload more of it onto them in the future, like maybe the deboning for my canning meat (imagine how easy that would make things) and I'll be able to feel out how trustworthy they are at handling the very nonstandard, fatty carcasses of my little pigs.

This does mean I'm not making any prosciutto out of this batch, which aligns with my attempt to get rid of the really noisy charcuterie fridge but does mean that in a year I'll run out of prosciutto. Maybe I need to ask for a new, silent fridge for my birthday this summer.

Anyhow: self-care choices have been made. Now I can focus a little more on my spring gardening, that landracing talk, etc. It's important, because I'm definitely less functional than I used to be. Last night as the canner cooled I spent the whole evening in the bath with the NAFEX apple family tree talk.

Today we spent the morning at work learning about pine rusts. I first was really exposed to them in the landscape context at this time last year. I had a little more emotional bandwidth then so I was even more awed by the intricate evolutionary dance that needed to occur for these constellations of organisms to exist.

Imagine, if you will, an organism that spends half its life on a tree and the other half on an herbaceous perennial, a plant that dies back to the roots every year. It goes back and forth, with a different set of spores -- basically a different body -- not just for each of the two host plants but also for a stop to have sex. So far so good, there are plenty of organisms that need to hop back and forth between hosts. Thing is, one of these hosts is parasitic on shrubs, basically. So now we have an organism dependent on another organism that is in turn dependent on (but also very robustly hosted by) yet another organism, which takes long-term vacations where it sometimes goes dormant on yet another organism (that's the tree).

It's a big and intricate chain of dependencies and this area hasn't even been out of the ice age that long to evolve something like that. I'm impressed.

It was good to get out into the field, to hang out in the sunshine with some folks, and to solidify some knowledge I had that was previously pretty shaky. I would never say my ID skills are now 100% but I understand what to look for much better.

As so often happens when I totally shift gears, on the way back I realized: I think one reason I've been reacting so strongly to the situation with J is that it's echoing the situation with A&E. Something appears to be on offer, but every time it gets talked about in a concrete way that offer gets smaller and smaller. With A&E it went from living there without needing to work, to not having my own space, to needing to work, and now it may be not on offer at all. With J it went from sex and connection, to connection and snuggles, to connection limited by a set of arbitrary and shifting monogamous boundaries, and depending on what happens next it'll be connection when there are no kids around, when no one is too busy, when there's energy, when there's not honeymoon feelings towards a new partner, all the normal things that happen when a monogamous person shacks up and disappears for a number of years.

I know I need to redirect my attention into some of my garden groups. Those reliably bring me a sense of connection and joy. I was planting late last night, getting the corn into the ground, and tomorrow I'm off work to do more of the same. Being able to share that with folks working at the same level, even if they're far away, is really good for me. I've never spoken by voice, even, to someone who really gets into that stuff on my level-- or really their own level. Then again, I don't need physical proximity for that kind of connection. Description of goals, procedures, thought processes: that *is* the connection.

But I also still need to find someone to just have dinner with and talk. There may be a window where J can do that with me, but.

So I'm looking into the Pride and Poly groups from the nearest big town; probably they're not what I want but we'll see. I'm importing people this summer. Tucker has mentioned maybe spending a chunk of time up here this winter; who knows, maybe we'll morph into a Persephone/Hades relationship, winters only. But also it may be time to start looking further afield and actually attending permaculture convergences and whatnot. I also -- hah -- seems like a significant portion of the people I really like may be PDAers, but a PDA conference would be the most ridiculous thing ever. Sign up to and commit to a thing in advance? Right.

In the meantime these are my planting days, days where the earth receives me and we build and learn together. 24 corns! New dwarf tomatoes! So many kinds of squash! Melons! Ethiopian kale! A rainbow of potatoes! Beans that are as much jewels as the corn is! A billion kinds of lettuce! Brassicas of every description! Soup peas! Regardless of what's happening on my human side I have a deep comfort and satisfaction I only touched on for the first time last year with my tomato trial.

And I keep telling myself that one of these days, probably tomorrow, I'll have the time to jump onto the bicycle either in early morning or on the line between morning cool and afternoon heat and remember what it feels like to fly.

Okay. I'm pretty much stabilized as far as I ever am. It's weathering out, sunbeams lancing strongly through and under big heavy grey clouds. The saskatoons have started blooming - they're ridiculously extravagant wedding-white bushes that grow everywhere - and it's warmed up. Even my slow aspen clone is thinking about opening its leaves.

The long and short of it is that I dived into the new person fully, expecting that whatever the bumps were going to be I could handle them because I had lots of snuggles and sex and that increases my capacity a ton. When it turned out that all or most of that wasn't on offer due to mononormative something something secret something oh dear gods whatever, well, I'd already committed a lot of my energy and it left me flailing. I've got myself more balanced again and I'll no doubt keep picking away at that connection, but until he sorts himself out I won't have certainty so there's no point in hurrying about it. I do like my certainty. Too bad the world doesn't really offer it.

In the meantime it's planting time. As soon as I get this contract finished up at work I can take that time off I intended ot take two weeks ago. The big tiller still hasn't arrived - the delivery folks may be a little weird because of some historic Avallu interactions - but I have the little one and I can start with that. I got the gas for it yesterday. This time I know enough to put fuel stabilizer in *all* fuel, not just what I expect to be the last tank of gas.

A&E have, perhaps unsurprisingly given the general thrust of this, not had the resources to do clearing so they won't be field-growing down there. My garden is right back to being here and only here, just with a chunk cut out of it. The squash and melons have emerged, I'm planting half the squash three weeks before indoors and half direct seeded because I'm curious.

It will feel good to get my corn into the ground finally.

I am actively looking forward to getting my house functional again inside, not piles of seeds and transplants everywhere.

I probably need to sort out something to wear on the bike. Jeans or sweatpants are annoying in that context. Surely I still have leggings around?

Many years ago, when I was bicycle commuting between school and home late at night, I'd write haiku in my mind and type them into my phone at stoplights. A fragment that I don't remember the rest of from that time was:

"I ride my bicycle more than anyone"

Along those lines:

"I trust my mind more than anyone"

It is making a significant difference to my life to use the lens "is this so hard for normal people?"

Most of my life has been the opposite: I connect on points of similarity, and I dig for them, and whether it's that something is hard or joyful or whatever that is how I align myself. Overlying my root-deep feeling that I'm the only one of my species is this collage of moments where I have some kind of similarities with other folks.

Now I'm letting myself notice the opposite: when I'm the only one in the room struggling or the only one struggling so very hard.

When I'm at a (thankfully online) workshop about diversity, inclusion, and conflict and I'm sitting there hugging my knees and crying and everyone else is giving thumbs ups? When I'm losing tremendous productivity at work because I need to muscle through my PDA around lunch breaks having to be from 12:10 to 12:50 and not being able to move them ten minutes in one direction or the other on any given day to accommodate shifts in workflow or appointments or whatnot? When I lose an evening because the person in the next cubicle at work wore perfume? When I'm short vacation time because I have to use it to deal with loved ones' surgeries, and other folks get special leave because they're married? When I can't easily and freely mention what I did on the weekend because I'm trying to decide whether to out multiple partners?

When I can't talk about a breakup to anyone who's remotely knows what to say or has had a similar experience?

When I have to go looking for similarities in a room and prep it with shared experiences before I can feel free mentioning anything else about my life at all?

When someone reaches out to offer help or even to listen and it leaves me crying because I want it but don't trust that what I say will be believed or taken with care and respect?

In a room of a hundred people, these things mostly don't apply to folks. If I want a room of folks where I'm not completely an outlier I need to make the room; I'll still be an outlier but I may be more comfortable speaking up.

I don't know how to be a good listener to myself about this. After a few moments of compassion I slip into wanting to fix it. I need to do both, and I need others around me who do both.

Sometimes, legitimately, I am the one not getting what I need of many who are.

It's time to make this a little more formal.

All my life I've wanted someone to see me, to not necessarily walk beside me every step but to know my story. That's where I kept my eyes when everyone got married, maybe had kids, got divorced, did careers. There's no one left in my life who's been there from the start and will be there until the end except one.

I'd have wished for someone who remembers it all and can put it in context; instead what I got is someone who's supported me every step, who believes in the spirit inside me wholeheartedly, who thinks it's important that I follow my calling and my meaning.

I don't have someone who loves me unconditionally, all the time, and is always able to open her heart to empathize with my pain. I do have someone who's learning to do so, and who sometimes stumbles upon it as the right thing to do, and other times who's able to invite me into that space of love and healing.

There is no one person who will complete me, who I can disappear into for years and never come out, though I've wished there is. Still, I have someone at my back, who speaks for me in community and whose well of interest never runs dry. When things are rough she'll entice me into what I love and I find comfort that way; when my interest leaps away into some new thing she lets me follow my joy and takes care of me as best she can when she's able.

Time and again she's pushed her limits to be there for me; not always, but often, and when everyone else fails she's the one who always comes through.

She can't be everything for me. Our physical intimacy comes and goes, sometimes it's fraught, and it's never as robust and immediate as it is with other people. She doesn't have as much capacity as I'd like, and time and again I've come up against her limits. She forgets to be compassionate in the midst of fixing things and soothing things. Her emotions overwhelm her and sometimes she forgets what to do or how to do it. She's not given to constancy and promises come and go and come again, though she's better at knowing her limits around that now.

Still, here we are, so many years later. She's been writing to me for well over twenty years now, for my entire adult life. She's been supporting me and in these times where everyone else is receding she's the one I trust not to go anywhere. Neither of us minds the ride of NRE, the bit of a break, and we've ridden out my various relationships shockingly well.

So it seems reasonable to acknowledge this now, to cement it with a symbol. I'm working with a designer on the ring; I'm not sure if I can afford the gold or if I'll have to hope the silver will survive maybe 40 years of wear. There will need to be a ceremony at some point, I've been chewing on that for a couple years but I'm not sure how it'll look. There may be a small private ceremony in the meantime. I don't know that there'll be a single set of vows; perhaps a small book to recall me to the heart of meaning here.

It's too bad monoheteronormativity is such a thing; I think when most people do this they get gifts as well as a dual income or childcare out of it. I won't be getting that. It's still important to do, and to do in the sight of community, though I'm nervous about that.

I don't expect this to change things but I do believe it will help me remember.

This was supposed to be the last day of the high-level heat. Most places in the province beat their previous all-time heat records, most on two consecutive days; in some cases the new record was over 10C higher than the previous all-time record. Lytton broke both the Canadian all-time high temperature record and was also hotter than Las Vegas has ever been in recorded history. Nowhere hit 50C so at least there's that. Fort has not been spared. With careful curtain and air management I've been able to keep my main floor 8C or so below ambient at the hottest time of day and the basement has stayed 16C below or so. Thank goodness for the basement! But doing the largest possible air exchange at night to cool the place and set up for the next day has brought in hordes of mosquitoes; over dinner I swat enough of them that there's a noticable scatter, not quite a pile, around me. I'll be glad when that's done.

The fire danger rating jumped from moderate to high or, in many-to-most places, extreme in the last few days. As our high temperatures roll out, the edge of the incoming normal summer weather brings thunder and lightning. I, and everyone, hope that it brings some rain with it. I'm here alone; I don't think I have it in me to evacuate all the animals on several fronts.

As I do chores later in the evening to avoid the heat it's clear that the days are getting shorter. The sun was below the horizon by 10:30 and I'm sad about it. This year it feels like summer has actually arrived; we missed it entirely last year.

Today the yarrow started flowering. The air is hot and wet and with that semi-medicinal herbal scent breathing is like drinking hot herbal tea. A haze has settled on the horizon and the sun set through browns and reds. My pigs are quite alright -- they've made two champion wallows and don't seem to have suffered from the weather, maybe related to their origins in Georgia -- and all the other animals seem to have pulled through too. Tomorrow is supposed to be 10 degrees cooler, and I should be able to go outside after work and get some things done. I could also break down all the pork loins and shoulders that have been chilling since Saturday but it's been too hot to butcher them further in the house.

My counselling appointment was very good today, I saw my regular chosen counselor for the first time since before my weird medication/concentration camp breakdown (during which I mixed up my counseling and Dr's appointment and so missed both of them). Talking with her I began the process of knitting up the chaos into narrative, the process of making meaning of the world that allows me to drive forward. As I'd realized before I'm not quite sure where forward is, though, and I suspect I need to sort of learn to be just where I'm at again. Last weekend was a good start, there were hours of sitting on the grass with the dogs and watching cottonwood fluff and crooning to the geese and just existing, which I had not done in quite some time.

From three sources in the last week I've heard I need to learn to inhabit that space at will and I'm not sure how to do it. It's an innately unpeopled and demand-free space. It can't exist in proximity to transitions into and out of the world of humans.

I don't know. It does need to happen though.

Now to shower, and to sleep, and to maybe wake up into a day where I can go into the greenhouse after work and harvest myself a salad without dying. This was a good year to plant cucumbers and melons, they're so happy in there. It was not a good year to do a trial test to find varieties that would grow and fruit in my normally-cool climate. The trial is compelling anyhow. Early evidence supports the Lofthouse and William Schlegel tomatoes, plus stupice and bloody butcher and definitely sweet cheriette. My green grocery-store cherry looks like it was open-pollinated; at least all 8 or so of the plants I grew from it are very uniform, and they seem to be doing well too. Very exciting!

I hope you're both warm enough and cool enough, wherever you are, and that your air also smells like flowers.

Last week I picked Tucker up at the airport. The week before that I had counseling, and my counselor asked me: "why don't you like the idea of veto?" A lot came up, and over the two weeks a lot has been flowering from that.

My first thought was, I don't want veto power because I don't want to do the work of screening my partners' people; I don't want to be the one entrusted with the work of saying no all the time while they get to frolic around starting pretty things and not thinking hard about consequences and using me as (I'm unsure of this metaphor, but still) a backstop. I don't want the responsibility of making sure my partners' relationships don't do terrible things to my own relationships, and I don't want the responsibility of hurting two people who care about each other by coming down hard on them.

So I guess I see veto as what's necessary when my partner doesn't take my concerns seriously, or doesn't believe me when I say "hey, this is a problem". I see veto as a way for my partners to avoid doing their own work around whether a relationship is a good idea or not. I see it putting me, again, in the role of gatekeeper or hard-ass or logistics coordinator.

I think those are valid concerns.

But, having been setting boundaries and seeing how that feels lately, avoiding veto is also a way of avoiding my own work, of asking someone else to set boundaries so I don't have to. And, um... seems I'm dating someone who is just barely learning (actively, actually learning, but still) to set boundaries. So maybe one of the things I need to accept about the relationship is that I'll need to be extra good at my own boundaries. And that means maybe doing extra boundary work.

And if I am going to do that work, if I choose to do it, if that extra work is honoured within the relationship: then I shouldn't resent it. If I don't choose to do it, then I should actually not do the work rather than doing the work and harbouring resentment about it.

Which means... I need to be clear on my boundaries around how much work I'm going to do. I also need to be clear on what work my partners are currently doing, otherwise I feel left out to dry.

Recent talks have been going in this direction, and that's good.

Underlying all this is the question of what this work is shaping towards; what's the ultimate goal? That's a question I'm still working with. It's a lot bigger.

Today I am deeply grateful for the years I've spent learning myself, assembling a user guide so that when I need to work with myself in challenging circumstances I can do so. I can catch myself when I begin to spin into dark places, I can accept love and help where needed, I can sense what forces are at work and come up with a pretty good idea of what's good for me and what's not. I can self-monitor pretty well. I can be brave about my needs because I know they are actual needs, relentless, and heading them off at the pass is the simplest way to deal.

I am grateful for my people-picker which surrounds me with folks who really do seem to care and do good things in my life.

And I am grateful for my hope for the future, for my ability to envision a life that is better than my current one, reach for it, take it or something similar, and therefore iteratively improve my situation. Over and over.

Dave says, going to your place feels like a vacation.

It's only after he's left, when I've spent the evening eating hot dogs with home-canned tomato jam and tending my booze and animals that I realise: living at my place feels like a vacation for me too.

My space is perfectly suited to me. There's nowhere in the world except outside in an interesting ecosystem that I can go and be this much myself, with my skin off and my mind filling the container I'm in, out to the walls. There are few other places I can go and have so many things I love to do available to me, set up for my pleasure at a moment's notice. There's nowhere else in the world I can go and be so undisturbed by the outside world.

So tonight I do an enjoyable activity with myself, and exchange a bit of online chatter with people, and drink and spill tastes of a bunch of my wines &c, and hang out with my bunnies, and snuggle myself into a blanket. It feels like a good date with someone I really trust and who loves doing cool things. I do simultaneously feel an outward-reaching, a desire for company, but this kind of joy in myself can't come in company easily or often.

More and more I think about having a wedding with myself, buying a proper ring, having a ceremony (big & conventional or private, I don't know) and wearing that ring with the knowledge that should I ever form a partnership with anyone else again their ring will, not replace mine, but be beside it. That formal commitment to myself is awfully compelling.

Because even when I fuck up, I'm always here for me. I can always rely on myself to come through in the end.

And that's pretty important.