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I keep walking near this but not quite landing on it. I need to start writing again, probably as close to daily as I can manage, because that is the process by which I sort through what needs to be done and I make firm decisions and I can start moving forward confidently. I need to actually weigh out the good and the bad. I have to talk to myself and when I am not writing I don’t actually think things through. I get distracted too easily. I don’t have the same sense of building climactic drama and escalation of hormone level as I think through all the ugh and unh and contractions of muscle groups associated with each option.

Then when I have a decision I feel ok. Often I feel great. I know what I need to do.

I am really struggling with a bunch of aspects of this. The last few years have been really challenging. There has been a lot of survival mode and we have not been living in a way that is sustainable. We’ve been sprinting. We can’t keep doing this. Not everything is going to get done. We are going to do the best that we can. It will be good enough. It won’t ever involve everything we could do if we had all of the time in the world. It will be enough.

The secret to happiness is low expectations. I need to keep pushing on physical activity with the kids because right now we are all rebuilding after a lot of indoor focus. It’s time to work on being animals that have to be able to move around in a rapid manner outdoors.

It’s time to slow down and stand still and feel what is actually happening in the place you inhabit. What does this space have going on? What kind of creatures already live here? What kind of creatures could live here? What kind of plants live here? How happy are they? What would we like to add?

I had my day segmented into blocks of time. Then life happened and most of the first block got sucked into solving problems for other people. I could have let one of the kids do it, but I got rid of a huge pile of recycling at the same time freeing up a lot of the front of the bike shed. We could really use the space.

And so I sit here trying to get my head back on straight. I have been grouchy and irritable and I don’t need to be. I’m acting like I’m in a big damn hurry and people better get moving. I’m acting like there will be a consequence if we don’t “finish” in time.

WTF? There is no finish. Not really. It’s a fucking garden. I’m about to purchase a whole extra .75 acre. I will never. Never. NEVER. Finish.

Do you know what is more important than rushing at this point? Helping the kids to feel like they have ownership of the space so they take care of it more assiduously. Getting them to have more self-created small projects they can feel pride in. Let them fail and try again and fail again. It really isn’t that big of an amount of money. They are learning.

If I want to have adult children who want to live nearby and come visit the garden…

Ok. I need to be acting and modeling very differently. I have been acting like my goals were different. I have been acting like there is a specific thing in my head and I am racing towards the finish line…

Honestly I was like 85% of the way to what I wanted to have in place for the whole garden I had in mind for my dream birthday at 60.

Now… oh shit.

Maybe I’m just playing. I’m kidding. Hey…. it was a joke… ha ha…ha? What the fuck are we going to do?!?@?#E$>@#W:ERFLJaelrdsfhvn;zskdjhnvsdklz/nv

fuck

Ok. I need to go hang out with kids in the garden for a while. We need to have some chats about intentions and the fun parts and what they would like to do more of and less of for a little while.

Ah crap. Another committee meeting. But they won’t respond to fucking email. lolsob

So this is what is going on with me.

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Right now I am on a brief rest break before I either decide if this is a longer break so I can go to the queer social night or if I am going to go outside to work in the garden. Right now I am trying to get the house/garden set up for an open house with the home ed folks so I feel a lot of get up and go for the work. I’m trying to figure out how I can lay out walkways that let people understand clearly where I don’t want them stepping in my chaotic garden full of plants and different kinds of mulch all over the place.

So that is one piece. I have various irons in the fire with the home education community. I’m trying to figure out which relationships I should cultivate harder and which ones are unlikely to be a good usage of my time. I am feeling incredibly scheduled again. Time is, as it will be for the rest of my life, the biggest limiting factor for everything I do.

Exercise is going to be really over-represented in my schedule for the next five months. I am increasingly conscious of just how much cross training I need to build supportive muscles that are not used in running and to relieve tightness. I’m old. I need so much more effort to get to baseline and it fucking sucks. I’m tired.

Which means that if I am going to effectively absorb and use this exercise to actually get stronger I must sleep. Like, a lot. Even though it looks like daytime until almost midnight and then it is dusk for a little while again before it is daytime again. I’ve never been a great daytime sleeper. Which means I have to get up pretty dang early every single day and get in bed before 10 every single night. I don’t do well with adding in a run later in the day. As my runs get longer and longer I need to mostly just start earlier.

Dang, the other day in the park I met this older lady who told me that she ran her first marathon at 51 and she did it in 4 hours and 45 minutes. Fuck. I can’t even. I am really really really really really really hoping that I will be at least 1 minute less than 6 hours. I am not greedy. My previous shitty time was 6 hours and 45 minutes. I would desperately like it to be shorter than 6 hours. But I’m nervous sending that wish into the universe because I kept saying “I would just like to finish labour in 24 hours” for all three births and I never fucking did. That was a giant failure to manage a prediction/hope/goal for my bodily functioning. I actually went into the first marathon thinking I’d be something in the neighbourhood of 5 hours and 30 minutes. lololololsob

Since I am trying to decide if I am going out tonight: I could go find the giant pride flag and figure out the flagpole situation right *now* and have it up for my ride in since it’s pride month. 🏳️‍🌈 And it is pride month. Seems like a great time to be bonding with my local homies before the big event happens with all the folks who travel in from the villages.

Sometimes I wonder if we really understand people in the past as much as we think we do. Like, if I did not practically tattoo “queer” on my forehead every so often I would be entirely unremarkable and perceived as a normal cis-het mother. I really do believe that queerness is an aspect of my personality that is outside of what other people describe as their normal. It is part of the ravenous predatory streak I have. I sit on myself so hard at this point. Although the funny thing is that I don’t feel it as intensely as I used to. I suppose I would describe it as once upon a time I know I would have gone there. I am not going to speculate if that would have gone well back when. That would not go well now. Ok, bounce eyes.

Sex is complicated in a place this small. Holy crap. The dynamics scare me. Like, honestly. I fucked around so casually for so long. I would not understand how to avoid pissing in other people’s cheerios. No freaking wonder most human beings have low body counts. Yikes it could get really challenging in a place this small. I think I lack the diplomacy to do this tactfully. I am glad I don’t have to find out. It will never matter because Noah is not allowed to die before me. He has been informed.

But good golly I’ll dress as a garish motherfucker and wave a flag sometimes and coyly answer questions about for whom am I advertising. Since it really will never get to anything other than friendship I must fly that kind of outrageously if I am going to find my people and I am going to find them and find ways to integrate them into my life. I believe that queers need each other. Many of us don’t have families of origin we maintain contact with. A very large percentage of us do not have children. That doesn’t mean that any of us deserve to be alone. We have to find each other.

I mean, I can literally say: “Hey if you are one of those queers who feels like they really want a place to go and spend time and make deep community… I am going to be buying a tiny piece of land.” A piece of land small enough that we can do the vast majority of work by hand with folks not feeling exhausted at the end. I know so many people who talk about how much they wish they could build something like that. I want to make community. You’ll be welcome to come hang out in the forest you build anytime. The gates don’t lock.

I don’t wanna be Auntie… but I wanna be Auntie. That woman has had a full house of people she has been helping all of her life. First it was foster kids her mom took in and then it was all the stray people having troubles she knew. She raised her sister… and her sister’s kids… and her sister’s grandkids…

I wanna be Auntie with upgrades. She helped people in a way that resulted in a lot of deeply dependent, incapable people. Not all of them. Some of them just needed a safe place to sleep and eat for a couple of months then they went on their way and did fine. But then there are most of the rest of them. Last I knew she was in her late 70’s and working to pay a mortgage to cover the refinances her husband took out and to pay to take care of all three of her children who live with her.

I am not fucking interested in disabling my children.

I want to help people learn more about how they can teach themselves the things they need to learn in order to move forward. I mean physical skills, intellectual skills, emotional skills, academic skills, and most importantly how to set goals and work towards something they want. They get to figure out what that is. As long as you are not able to pick one I’ll push you through picking something for a while and we will both learn a lot as you learn why you end up disliking it. Over time they gradually pick better and better projects for themselves. They still fuck up… a lot… but that is the point. Fuck up now. Fuck up in ways that won’t matter in 10, 20, 50 years. Hell, most of these fuck ups won’t matter in 5 minutes. Just do it. Fuck up. Learn the lesson. Don’t hold back and wait. Don’t waste time. Think of all the better decisions you will make once you learn this. Doesn’t that sound nice? At some point it will be easier for you to figure out which decision will work for you without having to suffer so much at so many junctions.

BUT THEN YOU MOVE TO ANOTHER FUCKING COUNTRY AND HAVE TO LEARN ANOTHER FUCKING CULTURE AND JUST FUCK YOURSELF ALL THE WAY UP.

Cheezits mother trucker.

So I’m sorta categorising my community efforts as:

  • bike
  • queer
  • kink
  • maker
  • community resource sharing
  • gardening
  • political
  • proximity

That’s why I feel like whoa. That’s why I don’t feel like I’m getting to know people quickly. I’m trying to duplicate the full spread of the type of web I had in California and build all aspects of it at the same rate at the same time. While I’m fucking exercising a lot. I suppose the bike community is sorta good for that but a lot of my time there feels super awkward because I am not able to hear that well.

I mean look at the size of the fucking social life I’m planning for the next few decades. I’m going to need to be a fit bitch to ride my bike around to all that shit.

Cause that is what I’m aiming for. I’m going to go do shit. I’m go to make things with people. I am going to invite people to help me with the property.

It’s a whole fucking thing. If you ask people to do something for you they will like you more. And co-working is my biggest love language so I will invite people into my bubble and see who self selects in. And that will be a lot of the inner layers of the core of the web. That’s how it tends to work. It won’t be a perfect alignment, sometimes those very first points on the web are smaller but they lead to a giant nexxus.

That’s how your bestie picked by proximity ends up being the one to tell you “You really should go to the Disaster House Party. I think you will have a very good time.” Reader: I married the guy throwing the party. And then she leaves you to marry an admittedly rather cool guy who happened to live almost halfway around the world. So you name your children after each other because you miss each other so much. Then you decide that 10 years is long enough and you move 2 fucking miles away from her.

I mean, some aspects of my story are pretty hilarious. I follow arcs a long way. I know I should write you an email Pam. Hello, this is my social anxiety voice. You write your journals privately and share them selectively in email. You have what normal people might call “boundaries”.

Hello internet I’ve missed you. I miss this part of my inner story. Most of the time since I moved here I shut it off as fast as I can. In any conversation there can only be a couple of paragraphs and I know that I’d better keep my transition points SUPER FUCKING OBVIOUS while not in any way shape or form seeming to put effort into my, inevitably slightly graceless, transition into the next topic. Cheers, mother trucker.

Fuck every person who has ever told me to just be myself. Dude you don’t even know. Cultivated, curated, deeply thought about choice goes into so much of how I hold my body. I fucking pre-game for social events. I specifically think about what attitude I am supposed to exhibit. I think about how I need to hold my body to get the response I want. It varies based on the crowd and reason for the event. I am not natural but I am comfortable with what I am doing. I have worn this personality/skin-suit mechanism for quite some time. I struggle when I know I’m going to spend a lot of time pin-ball whacking against a lot of barriers. That is the natural and normal early stage of a relationship.

That’s where you have to refine your mental image of this person to progressively more specificity as they become more and more of an actual specific ensemble cast member instead of being part of the chorus in setting B. This is an especially graceless stage for me. Because I am shifting through everything I remember about someone as I talk to new people. I’m trying to come up with every detail of every conversation for the first long while. That way I can follow up on specific topics and build a sense of connection. What? You don’t think through this process? You think I just know so much about you because I happened to have that for you? Nah, babe. I am far from perfect but good golly I work hard. It’s hilarious how often whatever that person’s name is doesn’t make the connection. It depends on how often I hear other people talk about them. It depends on how well embedded in the web they are from multiple directions. If I hear their name I place it in a storyline in a way that I don’t from talking to someone and looking at their face. I will remember all the feelings I’ve had with them and I can sometimes, when I’m lucky, get people to also have that glimmer of oh yes. We had fun. I’m fun. Then we go on with our lives without even having to get into it. But goddess that takes time.

I’d really like to figure out how to figure more rhythm around my efforts in various places based on moon stuff just so that I have to synch with it more. I think it would benefit my garden tremendously. There are a lot of gardening tasks that want about a month in between the next thing. I need to build that feeling into my body and associate it with other definitive parts of my routine and that means I need to tie it in with patterns in the house.

I get to play with building a system. The funny thing is that it will go best if I make a plan and organise and make whatever decisions I want to make then I inform the kids what work they will be doing the next day so they’d better make sure they don’t have an emergency project to do tomorrow morning. Planning and making an agreement about what you will do 100% OF THE TIME RESULTS IN SOMEONE BEING EXTREMELY ANGRY AND FURIOUS.

See, I’m teaching them life skills. Muahahaha.

We have a real live group project all around us every day. We are all working on projects big and small all day long. We bounce around talking to one another and then going off to do one on one with someone for a while then we have another most-of the group contact for a while then the whole family again. We do it over and over all day. They are all managing different pieces of it.

Dude. I need to start clearing off one wall at a time in the studio and deep cleaning it. Cause then I can invite other people to scribble on the wall when they come over. I’ll clean it very slowly adding new nice white space only gradually. That way if people ever want to come claim a new place much further around the room their part of the weft will show up brightly.

But right now I feel absolutely knackered. I feel like I have a 20lb sack on my head; I am so tired. I am going to be running 3 miles tomorrow morning. I am going to be running 6 miles on Saturday morning. I uhhh think that I probably ought to stay home tonight and not go out. Ok, one decision made. I need to be in bed by 9, not in a bar in town starting home at 9.

Yeah. I think I am out of typing. That’s all I can be semi-coherent about and I doubt any of that was coherent. But I feel better. And that is good enough.

It’s not about you, David.

Fuck your measurements

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I have now finished all of the “soft” entrance to permaculture books and I am on to the textbooks that are deeply impervious to dilatantes like me. No, I am not going to buy a bunch of surveying equipment. I am not making a topographical map. I already know how water flows through my garden. I don’t need a map. I do think I know where I would do well to dig a small trench down the side of the garden that I will line with rocks and mulch with hay. That will ensure that a lot more of the rain that strikes the garden will land in the tree roots near that fence instead of washing into the burn immediately. Of course there will have to be an easy drain area down just before the water would otherwise hit the bike shed as that could become severely problematic.

I am realising I really do need to paint the wall white as that will do a lot to reflect light and create a hotter microclimate. That’s hilarious because ordinarily I strongly prefer not having white walls, c’est la vie.

I need to build a permanent structure for the grapes to grow up. One of the grapes was yanked out of the ground and left on the ground, I presume by Shorty. Building a garden means having to cope with all the other uses the garden has for other people. I feel like I am going to have to get over my fear of drilling into the wall.

I have decided that I need to start making scale drawings between now and the 1st of April (no foolin) because I am going to start putting some seeds in the ground and I need a plan. My property is laid out so that the boundary lines are pretty close to exactly a square with north on the top but my house is laid out so that I have the corners of the house almost perfectly hitting each direction. (Slightly more left as the “north” corner of the house is probably at 10:30 on a clock.) I want to refer to the sections as A/B/C/D starting with A in the NE corner and then going around the clock. The studio is in C block and it takes up a lot of space. D is the bike shed, chicken coop, and a bunch of driveway. A has a fair bit of driveway and the polytunnel. For my sake I am only plotting the parts with dirt I can grow in. I know I “should” have an overall property map, and I think I will, but I’m thinking of my layout in terms of the quadrants.

Around 2/3 of A gets good sun up until around 1pm and the other 1/3 is in total shade all the time.

Ack. Need to just hit send and give up on getting this whole thing written out in one go.

Jot down some notes then get up

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I am thinking about how I am going to make a place for bamboo without spending much money. I will start with digging a trench deep enough to put about 16″ deep rhizome barrier and I will build the raised bed around that going up about 12″ above ground. I don’t want a tall raised bed there but I think that something shorter would be risking a jump over the barrier. Bamboo is super aggressive.

I want it for a few reasons. It would provide evergreen visual privacy along a whole stretch of wall that is usually in full view of everyone who walks by; we are all a little uncomfortable about the fishbowl. Over time I will be able to harvest canes and use them (and share them with neighbors.) They provide a good source of habitat for birds who are currently being ousted by the gorse removal on our road. (Insert big sad face here). It will also deflect the north wind and trap the southern wind thus dramatically impacting the microclimate of my garden into a much warmer environment. Like, that’s pretty brilliant.

I don’t want an absolute solid wall, and thus keeping them in planters rather than letting them fill the whole area by the road with just a barrier between the road/driveways/wall. I have planted a lot of fruit trees very close to the wall so they will grow big enough to be harvested from the road (and so they are close enough to the wall to catch as much extra heat as possible.

It occurs to me that I should paint that wall white. It would dramatically increase how warm the plants got.

I should be talking to me more.

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I have a whole bunch of broken Wellie boots and broken luggage; I want put them up on the border wall between me and the road with plants inside. (Yes I know I will need to bolt them down if I don’t want them to wander.) Things I want to paint on them:

  • Not all who wander are lost; some are seeds floating on the wind searching for the right spot to sprout.
  • These boots were made for walking but then they got tired and put down roots.
  • With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding. With good compost, comes happy plants.
  • I would walk far more than 500 miles to get to Inverness, this lovely place where I get to build my nest.
  • I have seen 1,000 cities and this I must confess: the only one I want to call my home is Inverness.
  • When you have more than you need you should build a longer table, not a taller fence. Feel free to take clippings from any plants and if you see a fruit tree/bush heavy with fruit, come knock on the door. I’ll probably give you a bag.

I also want to make signs for all the plants in my garden explaining what they give and add to the soil and why I picked them for this spot. I would really like for people to be able to walk around my garden and get a mini-course on permaculture. By “people” I mean me because I am totally going to forget this shit if I don’t write it down and reread it a bunch of times. This is not a project that is going to get done this year, but eventually. In the meantime I am taking way better notes than I did in California.

It is really nice feeling like the time I spent in California in my garden was an absolutely fantastic beginner course in gardening. I had the time/money/sunshine/city water to make quite an oasis. Gardening here is very different in dramatic ways. I mean… for many months of the year I shouldn’t dig in the ground because the wee beasties are hibernating. I would take December off from gardening (and sometimes January) but really I was outside in the garden 10-11 months a year. There were different seasonal jobs; I didn’t have the same routine week to week. Here I really shouldn’t disturb the earth any more than absolutely necessary from November through May. Well, I’ll be honest and say there is some amount of tidying up I can do in November and December but it’s more clearing off the slippery leaves off the driveway and doing a compost turn. I also begin starting seeds in February.

Ok so maybe it is about the same.

Only it really isn’t! This is gardening on hard mode. I can start seeds in my bedroom and bathroom, which have to be kept shut from the rest of the house the whole time. I don’t have a single other place that could be warm/away from the cats. It’s pretty funny. If I got a thermometer in the polytunnel I could chance leaving some of the seedlings out there for the weeks of Fool’s Spring just to give them a little excitement with extra air movement but mostly I wouldn’t bother because it is too much work.

Mostly here in February and March I can read and research and plan. Planning is a Big McFlippin deal here. In California I could throw tomatoes on the ground and a plant would start growing in any month of the year as long as I watered it. Sometimes there would be a cold snap that would keep a specific plant runty, but I’d get a big tomato haul. Here I have barely been able to get tomatoes to ripen at all because I haven’t figured out how to keep them warm enough. This year I’m going to grow them in the polytunnel and see if that works better.

I can’t help but feel that I am keeping all these records because I have this horrible Cassandra-like feeling that my children are going to need to be able to look through my trials and failures so they can make sure they eat someday. Yes, reading blogs and books are an ideal way to start an education in the general sense but knowing your unique microclimate isn’t available unless you learn from someone who has stood in your garden.

I am sure my weird prepper shit is just a continuation of my same old, same old and yet this feeling is different in a way that is hard to define. I love my children, don’t get me wrong, but at this point I don’t see any sign that any of them are going to be a shooting star. They are bright people who will arrive at adulthood with a better than average emotional education and a lot of ability to learn new things and do jobs that interest them. I have a lot of worry around the ways they want to work earning them much money and in this late-stage-Capitalist-hellscape I have deep fear around them suffering in the future because I entirely failed to instill that motivator.

Somewhere along the way I discovered that my goal was to give them time. Time to figure out what brings them joy. Time to explore things and fail and try again. Time to become their own best friend. Time to do what they want during the day instead of what can earn them money. I recognise deeply that Noah pays for this time. He earns and we invest and maybe someday his children can have an easier burden. In many ways he has sacrificed his life on the altar of me and our children. He has taken the provider role very seriously and combined with all the advantages he started with like picking the right hobby at seven and a family that could pay for a very nice school.

Noah has given me time. Time to think about who I want to be. Time to figure out what I need to learn in order to become that person. I feel awed at the magnitude of gift he has given me in this life. I think often about how my entire life as it is now mostly exists because of Noah. I mean, I have friends I made on my own but I live where I live in the house I live in with the children I wanted so very much because of Noah.

The children who make me feel crazy and hostile and overwhelmed and like I just want to hide in the bathroom for a few years. I would not walk away from this life for all the money in the world. There is literally nothing I would rather be doing, even though I complain like it is my job.

Today I walked around my garden and thought about all the ways I am going to shift things around towards being a food forest and a playground. I started out with beds in the front lawn but most of it doesn’t really get enough sun anyay so I am going to move some plants, change around where the logs are and put playground stuff running through the middle. It’ll work. You’ll see. I measured with conservative edge allowances.

By playground equipment I mean a climbing structure and a slide and a separate swing. Both the swing and the climbing structure will be very amenable to hosting climbing plants for the guilds. It’s going to be fantastic. It’s kind of funny how much of this thought process is shaping up around my birthday party. My friends are going to be old as fuck. I am going to need to have a garden full of places to sit and admire the lovely plants. It will be good to have pretty flowers right at face height because a lot of them aren’t going to see that well anymore.

And some will climb up to hang on the climbing structure because of course they will. I will have swings that my adult friends can use. And they will get to walk through a forest of food to get there.

Trees take time. Building soil takes time. I only have 18 years to go. That means it is bloody important I get as much of the bones in place as possible this year. It takes time to fill in a forest. Buddy, I am already training branches.

How am I going to lay out walking paths so people don’t step on my damn plants? How am I going to create convenient congregation places around the garden where it would be lovely to linger and have a chat? Where will people be able to pick a snack in September? Oh bloody hell. It’s a lot to plan!

After a search it looks like apples are going to be my best and most obvious choice for the whole top side of the garden as it is literally lined in apple trees. Raspberries will hold down the bottom side. There will definitely be runner beans all over the place. Maybe I will have magically figured out tomato ripening. Courgettes, potatoes, and onions are not really snacking foods but I can cook with them. Ok. This will be good.

Hm. Unfortunately my birthday falls on a Tuesday the year I turn 60. Well I suppose it will be a week long house party. Oh wow, that’s an interesting thought. I wonder who I will still know.

Longevity in relationships is extremely important to me. I put up with some serious bullshit from my oldest friends. Because if somehow they have decided to have some appalling belief it is now my job to somehow embody a different point of view without sounding like a preachy asshole. It’s a tightrope some moments. I believe that most relationships involve some degree of masking and setting special boundaries for people in ways that create a lot of extra work for yourself. I don’t know how to “just be one thing” all of the time. I can’t. I know that large parts of me are not particularly acceptable in a great many settings. It was true in California and it is far more true here. I have to be mindful of what I say and where.

It is utterly exhausting. Every conversation goes through this at-speed filter of “acceptable topics” and I am glad I have expanded my range of special interests so that I can usually find a couple if I try a few different mannerisms and approaches. I assume it is kind of trippy for the people I go through four or five approaches with. If I feel waved off after the fifth I start treating them like furniture and I will probably never make eye contact again.

I need much more stringent filters here. It’s not that everyone is closed minded it is that the process for sussing people out takes a lot longer and I’m sure I’ve “gone too fast” a couple of times. Mostly I haven’t horrified anyone but I take very calculated risks with self exposure.

I acknowledge to myself that in my mind I need a triad of close friends that I talk to at least somewhat consistently and we have very few filters with one another. There is no such thing as a relationship without filters. Not for me, anyway. It has been three women for most of my life, not always the same three women. Now there is a man, well a demi-boy as he now understands himself and I can understand what he means when he says that. I can feel myself consciously and deliberately allowing myself to be filled in my “imaginary bucket” as I talk to the kids about emotional energy. I feel like a vampire sometimes. I feel ashamed sometimes. But I don’t stop and I know that none of them would like me to stop because the way we take and give to each other is mutually satisfying and not draining.

Sometimes I tell my children that when there are times that they don’t love themselves then they are welcome to borrow some of my regard for them because it is endless. That is really striking because it feels like such a lie. There are ways that I judge and think harsh thoughts and feel impatient in ways that are probably ableist and deeply unfair of me. I am by no means doing my job perfectly.

I’m not getting into that self-flagelation tonight. It’s too late to go down that road.

I just need to think about the fact that sometimes when I can’t love myself I allow myself to be carried forward by the force of the regard of other people. I don’t particularly go for “likes” but I have a deep and intense respect for the people I allow to judge me. For the vast majority of human beings on this planet, I don’t give a flying fuck how you judge me because you are not actually seeing what happens. You are not a reliable narrator. If you actually know me then you can judge me based on the interactions we have had, but not that many people have spent much time with me. There are just a few.

The people I have kept close for a decade and a half, or a quarter of a century are people who have enormous wells of experience with me and my family and they have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. They get to judge me and when I fuck up they call me to the carpet.

It’s kind of funny how these power dynamics and social dynamics work because it’s not as if this judgment comes without strife. I have simply decided that for whatever reason I am willing to accept that strife as a sign of love in that relationship. They would not bother to say this to me if they did not have deep love for me.

Except when they tell me that I am Borderline during fights.

If I am at all honest I am partially leaning on my triad because it allows me to fill my bucket enough for me to go deal with all of the other places where I am in some sort of position to feel like I need to share the resources I have in ways that benefit folks. A lot of the in-person stuff is hard because my life is not shaped like most folks. My time comes in different shapes and blocks than average in many ways and it makes it hard to get the requisite hours to become a friend at this age.

I do have a few young friends in town but with all of them the level of filters is still pretty high. I have talked about myself more with them than other people around here but I’m not random California neighbour casual yet. Oh my god it’s so different. I find myself struggling to be as reserved as is appropriate here.

Dude, just go to bed.

Tree notes

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I’m looking up trees I want. I know I want some natives. (Looking here for natives: https://www2.gov.scot/Publications/2002/06/14891/5585) I am thinking hard on placement for them. I may go outside of strictly native. I should draw a diagram with the root complications mapped out. Trees I think would be suitable that have no human food benefit:

  • Willow (exactly what kind is eluding me.) I would put this over near the burn, perhaps between the pond and the burn? The pond is going to shed a lot of excess water over time. Osier looks like a good choice. I can use it to make baskets. Maybe Almond? Hm. Looks like by the pond is a bad idea because that is near the septic plumbing system. Right-o. Maybe that’ll be the one closer to the shed. I should definitely not get what I think of as a weeping willow because the suckers can spread 50′ tall and wide and the roots go even wider. Gulp.
  • I think a Rowan tree would be quite nice. Rosiness type?
  • I already have some birch on the property but more would be nice. Research is showing that a weeping birch would be the best bet for the space requirements
  • Pendula Rosea (an ornamental cherry) or Pendula Rubra
  • Hawthorn
  • Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’

Definitely or possibly food bearing:

  • cherry ‘Kiku-shidare-zakura’
  • Morello cherry
  • Stella cherry
  • Fig because I love Noah sooooooooo much. (He loves them and I hate them.)
  • Malus domestica ‘Discovery’ apple
  • Bloody Ploughman apple
  • Grenadier apple
  • Hoods supreme apple
  • Lord Lambourne apple
  • Pear Conference
  • Pear Moonglow
  • Cherry Kordia
  • Cherry  Summer Sun

I need to make a chart and figure out which are self pollinating, which need a buddy (and when!), and when they produce fruit so I don’t get a shit-ton all in one month and nothing else in other months.

But it is after 1am and I should not try to start that now. Tomorrow (or later today…) the plan is to do a bunch of yard work so sleep would be helpful.

30th birthday musing

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In this filter there are currently: Mo, Alex, and Sarah(yes!) (all of whom I functionally think of as single), Mark/Laura, and Brittney/Joe (two married couples who at this point do not have children), and Ali/Mark and Deborah/Anthony (both couples have two kids and I think they don’t plan on more).

So this filter is relatively small. I’m giving you guys this run down so you have some idea of who I am talking to about this topic. 🙂 It is also worth pointing out that even though I like all the people in this group and I would want to spend a fair bit of time with you, I need my ‘family time’ and I need a lot of it. So we would not be locked at the hip by any measure.

I would like to go on a Disney Cruise and to Walt Disney World for my 30th birthday. That’s a bit out, not till September 2011 but pre-planning is required for a couple of reasons. We just bought into the Disney Vacation Club because given my vacation habits it’ll be paid for in like five years. 🙂 If I have some idea of who might be interested it changes a bunch of my potential strategies and it gives people a chance to start saving money.

Here are some of my nitty gritty details that I’m pondering:

I can rent a 2 bedroom cottage (174 pts) or a 3 bedroom cottage (281 pts) at WDW for six days. A 2 bedroom can sleep up to 8 people and a 3 bedroom can sleep up to 12. (Children under 3 are ‘free’.)

A 3 night cruise is possible (90 pts for us 67 for someone else) or a 4 night cruise (98/77) or a 7 night cruise (157/127). [Uhhh… I’ll have a maximum of 695 points to work with.]

If 8 or fewer people are interested and sharing rooms isn’t a problem technically speaking Noah and I could pay for two state rooms and the cottage with our points. It would wipe us out for while but it would be the most wonderful birthday trip I can imagine. In exchange for that I would request that folks contribute some reasonable amount that would at least cover the rest of the trip for us (airfare, food, park tickets, some souvenirs) because dude…I’m saving you many many thousands of dollars.

Alternatively some different combination of people could say, “I will join you at WDW but not the cruise” or vice versa. Or some people could say, “I would feel more comfortable paying for myself but I can only afford a 3 day cruise and 4 days at the park.” There are many different options available. It is also possible (and pretty common) for people to stay at multiple resorts during their stay in WDW. If my family goes before anyone else we can stay in a small studio and move to a larger accommodation when others want to join up and save a bunch of points. WDW has a whole process set up for moving your stuff. It’s pretty cool. 🙂

I am partially starting this negotiation so early because I am excited about the possibility and partially because I have to make my reservations about a year in advance and this way people have plenty of dithering time before I have to commit officially.

So…. yeah! I’m going to have decades of joy out of speculating about trips. I apologize in advance to the people who talk to me on IM and who may already be sick of this. 😀

Wallpaper ideas

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Now that I was shown the wonders of wallpaper (previously I didn’t consider them because my experience with wallpaper was all really ugly shit in old people’s houses) I have some awesome choices to make. I am interested in something that encourages a variety of imaginative play. I would like something that isn’t too ‘baby’ because I’m not going to want to change it particularly soon. I would like something that does not dictate that my daughter ought to be a tomboy or a princess. She gets to be whatever she wants to be. And I would like something that is not strictly speaking ‘girl’ because then little boys will scorn it because little boys are trained to be retarded like that. (We have a really machismo neighbor with a little boy Shanna’s age. I expect they will play because I get along with the mom. I expect that his father will make cracks if something is too girly because he’s already made cracks about how I shouldn’t ever cut Shanna’s hair because girls should never be allowed to cut their hair.)

Idea #1 which I like because it’s a neat old library and that’s always fun. I’m not sure how this one would age with a kid.

Idea #2 I like this one because it is very open-ended and it lends itself to all kinds of neat imagination games.

Idea #3 I think this one would age particularly well. I worry that it could be a little spooky for a small child. Of course I do love my tree imagery.

Idea #4 also very open ended but in a slightly more realistic sort of way. This one seems to me to be more about adventure and less about fantastic, if that makes sense.

Idea #5 this is less open ended but really fun.

Idea #6 neat, but I’m not sure.

More cheerful

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Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀

And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀

Planning ahead

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Second try, now with correct dates.

My mom is already pressuring me to plan Shanna’s first birthday party. I’m trying to figure out dates. Miss Jenny, Miss Laura, and Noah all have birthdays within a week or so of Shanna’s so we are thinking about a joint party cause sure why not. It gives us an excuse for having a wider array of cake! 🙂 So I’m going to do a date poll. Heavier weight will be given to the opinions of shared-celebration folks. 🙂