I'm not dead!
May. 30th, 2016 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeIt's not that I've forgotten LiveJournal exists. I come on here and read my friends' list almost every day. Few of you post that often, but enough of you post intermittently that I feel as if I'm keeping track of many of you. I suspect that may be a bit of an illusion, but that's okay. Social media is always a bit of an illusory beast.
I just saw![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slipjig link to a friending meme, and I think that it would behoove me to at least try to post more regularly. Sometimes I feel like my life is far too mundane to be of interest to anyone, but then, I love hearing about the little things that all my friends are doing. Going to work? I want to know how your day went! Planning a garden? Show me pictures of your squash! Taking your kids to school in the morning? Yes, please! Are your pets adorable? PICS, OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! Etc. So if I'm interested in all these small, daily victories and disappointments, it stands to reason that at least some of my LJ friends feel the same way.
So, what have I been up to since the last time I posted? That was in February, I am a little horrified to see, when my computer keyboard bit the dust. I got it repaired, it's working fine now, except every now and then it... decides not to. It's always a bit nervewracking when that happens, but it's never for more than about 10-15 seconds, and it's happened maybe twice or three times. I'm trying not to worry about it too much.
I've been procrastinating on applying for full membership of my Quaker Meeting, because I'm having serious performance anxiety about writing my letter to the Meeting Clerks. I have no idea what that letter should look like and, Quakers being Quakers, they are being super unhelpful about it, because they are all super kind and don't want to tell me how to do it. "Oh, there's no wrong way to do it." GAH. They are adorable, but I need a clue! A guideline! Something! I know at least one of you is a Quaker, or at least an Attender, the way I am for now. If you applied for full membership, what did your letter look like? (Not the gory details, I'm just looking for how to structure my letter, what would be relevant to include and what wouldn't)
Otherwise, things are going well there. I'm slowly figuring out how to manage being the Clerk of First Day School Committee. It's not a huge amount of work, although I will be taking over managing the schedule starting in the fall. Another schedule to manage, yay! Still, it can't possibly be as difficult as juggling the schedule at work (I'm trying to manage a 16-person schedule with only nine people and three part-time contract workers, so it's a bit of a challenge). Making sure two people are available one hour a week shouldn't be too difficult. We'll see how that goes when the time comes.
In pet news, I seem to have fallen back into my old, crazy cat lady ways. At the end of February a friendly grey tabby cat invited himself into my home. I had him checked at a local vet, found out he was less than two years old, and had no microchip. He was much too friendly to be a stray, so I figured he must have been an indoor cat that got lost. However, multiple posts on Facebook, Craigslist, Kijiji, and putting out flyers and alerting all the local vets turned up no owner. I kept him in my guest bedroom and named him Foster. He was an absolute darling. See, Exhibit A.
Foster was a sweetheart, but unfortunately was Not Good™ with dogs. He and Sergent couldn't see eye to eye on things, and so he eventually found another forever home with some local people, who were thrilled to have such a sweet kitty. The one unfortunate part of that is that the lady who got him told me afterward that she planned on having him declawed. I didn't think people who were into cat rescue would do that, because it's fucking inhumane and unnecessary, and if I'd known I wouldn't have let her have him. I hope I presented a convincing enough case to her that she didn't end up mutilating this lovely boy.
In the end, it turned out to be a good thing that Foster couldn't stay, because only a couple of months later,fearsclave let me know that Ben was once again looking for a home. Some of you might remember the twins, Ben & Jerry. Jerry unfortunately disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but Ben's new family had developed allergies, and so he needed to be rehomed. He's just fine with Sergent, so he's been living with me since April. He and the other cats, ironically enough, are having more trouble adjusting, but it's been over a month now, and the fights have stopped. Everyone has mostly agreed to disagree, with the occasional spat. Ben is a sweet boy, very chatty, and even though he weighs over fifteen pounds, he wants to be a shoulder cat.
So now I have a full menagerie again. I literally cannot take in more pets without breaking the law. Oops? (For those keeping count at home, I have four cats: Octavia, Juno, Maggie, and now Ben, and Sergent, the husky/collie mix,)
Octavia is still the princess of the house, but she has turned out to be a squishy, submissive kitten, who possibly thinks she's more dog than cat. She certainly gets along better with Sergent than with any of the other cats in the house, and does a fair bit of bossing him around.
She and Sergent hang out together, nap together, and chase each other around the house when they're both feeling playful. She taunts him, he runs her down, sticks his nose under her belly, and flips her like a pancake, much to her dismay. She's even more insulted whenever he gives her giant, slobbery kisses. It's all incredibly adorable.
She also has trouble remembering that the dog's bed is his, and not hers. Sometimes she will graciously allow him to share with her. ;)
That's my father petting Juno in the top picture, and my mother giving Maggie scritches in the bottom two pictures. Maggie who, I might add, is on the dining room table. My mother routinely professes to abhor the fact that my cats sometimes jump up on tables and counters. Ahem. You can see how much they want nothing to do with the feline forces of entropy in my household.
My mother tried a token protest about Ben when they were last here, but he came and rubbed up against her ankles. "Now, you see? THIS is a nice cat! Which one is this?" "It's the new cat, Mim. That's Ben." "Oh. Well." XD
So, in short, things are going well with them. It's nice to be at a place in my life where I can (mostly) have an adult relationship with my parents. It's been really nice, especially since last year I ended up going on two trips with them, and we had a great time.
Work has been insane. We're ridiculously short-staffed, as I mentioned previously, and I was called in for so much overtime I thought I would keel over from exhaustion. I had to cut back somewhere, and I ended up having to momentarily pause volunteering at the soup kitchen and going to the gym, just so I could get enough sleep. It's been rough, and we're not through the worst of it yet, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's hoping it's not a train. :P
There are other things I want to talk about, but they're maybe a bit more depressing, since some are health-related, and so maybe I'll put those in a post that's not intended to be a generally positive one.
Instead, I shall leave you with the picture of the progress I made on the progress I made on my community garden plot today. I'm renting an 8x4 raised bed at the Vanier Community Garden. So today I planted tomato plants and flowers to attract pollinators!
In short, I'm slowly re-aligning myself with my values. I'm trying to cook and bake from scratch more, getting back into being a steward of the earth and not just a mindless consumer. It's a process, and I still have a long way to go, but at least I'm moving back in the right direction. I feel like, in some ways, I lost a lot of myself for a while there. While there are still important decisions to be made, it's nice to catch glimpses of the person I used to be.
I just saw
slipjig link to a friending meme, and I think that it would behoove me to at least try to post more regularly. Sometimes I feel like my life is far too mundane to be of interest to anyone, but then, I love hearing about the little things that all my friends are doing. Going to work? I want to know how your day went! Planning a garden? Show me pictures of your squash! Taking your kids to school in the morning? Yes, please! Are your pets adorable? PICS, OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! Etc. So if I'm interested in all these small, daily victories and disappointments, it stands to reason that at least some of my LJ friends feel the same way.So, what have I been up to since the last time I posted? That was in February, I am a little horrified to see, when my computer keyboard bit the dust. I got it repaired, it's working fine now, except every now and then it... decides not to. It's always a bit nervewracking when that happens, but it's never for more than about 10-15 seconds, and it's happened maybe twice or three times. I'm trying not to worry about it too much.
I've been procrastinating on applying for full membership of my Quaker Meeting, because I'm having serious performance anxiety about writing my letter to the Meeting Clerks. I have no idea what that letter should look like and, Quakers being Quakers, they are being super unhelpful about it, because they are all super kind and don't want to tell me how to do it. "Oh, there's no wrong way to do it." GAH. They are adorable, but I need a clue! A guideline! Something! I know at least one of you is a Quaker, or at least an Attender, the way I am for now. If you applied for full membership, what did your letter look like? (Not the gory details, I'm just looking for how to structure my letter, what would be relevant to include and what wouldn't)
Otherwise, things are going well there. I'm slowly figuring out how to manage being the Clerk of First Day School Committee. It's not a huge amount of work, although I will be taking over managing the schedule starting in the fall. Another schedule to manage, yay! Still, it can't possibly be as difficult as juggling the schedule at work (I'm trying to manage a 16-person schedule with only nine people and three part-time contract workers, so it's a bit of a challenge). Making sure two people are available one hour a week shouldn't be too difficult. We'll see how that goes when the time comes.
In pet news, I seem to have fallen back into my old, crazy cat lady ways. At the end of February a friendly grey tabby cat invited himself into my home. I had him checked at a local vet, found out he was less than two years old, and had no microchip. He was much too friendly to be a stray, so I figured he must have been an indoor cat that got lost. However, multiple posts on Facebook, Craigslist, Kijiji, and putting out flyers and alerting all the local vets turned up no owner. I kept him in my guest bedroom and named him Foster. He was an absolute darling. See, Exhibit A.
Foster was a sweetheart, but unfortunately was Not Good™ with dogs. He and Sergent couldn't see eye to eye on things, and so he eventually found another forever home with some local people, who were thrilled to have such a sweet kitty. The one unfortunate part of that is that the lady who got him told me afterward that she planned on having him declawed. I didn't think people who were into cat rescue would do that, because it's fucking inhumane and unnecessary, and if I'd known I wouldn't have let her have him. I hope I presented a convincing enough case to her that she didn't end up mutilating this lovely boy.
In the end, it turned out to be a good thing that Foster couldn't stay, because only a couple of months later,
fearsclave let me know that Ben was once again looking for a home. Some of you might remember the twins, Ben & Jerry. Jerry unfortunately disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but Ben's new family had developed allergies, and so he needed to be rehomed. He's just fine with Sergent, so he's been living with me since April. He and the other cats, ironically enough, are having more trouble adjusting, but it's been over a month now, and the fights have stopped. Everyone has mostly agreed to disagree, with the occasional spat. Ben is a sweet boy, very chatty, and even though he weighs over fifteen pounds, he wants to be a shoulder cat.
So now I have a full menagerie again. I literally cannot take in more pets without breaking the law. Oops? (For those keeping count at home, I have four cats: Octavia, Juno, Maggie, and now Ben, and Sergent, the husky/collie mix,)
Octavia is still the princess of the house, but she has turned out to be a squishy, submissive kitten, who possibly thinks she's more dog than cat. She certainly gets along better with Sergent than with any of the other cats in the house, and does a fair bit of bossing him around.
She and Sergent hang out together, nap together, and chase each other around the house when they're both feeling playful. She taunts him, he runs her down, sticks his nose under her belly, and flips her like a pancake, much to her dismay. She's even more insulted whenever he gives her giant, slobbery kisses. It's all incredibly adorable.
She also has trouble remembering that the dog's bed is his, and not hers. Sometimes she will graciously allow him to share with her. ;)
My parents are doing well, although every now and then I can't help but be reminded that they aren't getting any younger. My mother turned 79 in March, and between arthritis in her hip and stage 2 emphysema, she's slowing down a lot. My father, who is a bit younger than she is, is also slowing down, but trying very hard to convince himself and anyone around him that he's not. Nonetheless, I worry a bit about them. He's been threatening to retire for at least ten years, but he doesn't really want to, and I think he feels he's being forced out of the university due to his age. Having been a young student myself, I can understand both sides to that argument. He's holding a tenured position that many post-doctoral students would kill to have. Part of me wonders if some of them aren't eyeing him speculatively every time they see him at the top of a flight of stairs. ;)
They visit here regularly. They were here last weekend for a belated Mother's Day luncheon, and we had ratatouille (because my father, on a whim, bought me the Ratatouille DVD as a present) and smoked salmon on my patio. They visit at least every two months, and when they're not visiting we call or Skype. They've mostly figured out the Skype thing, although I have to remind them to click the camera icon each and every time. Mind you, these are the people who taught me how to eat, drink, and use a toilet, so I figure it's not too much to ask of me to be patient with them while they learn technology. Also, someday in about forty years, I will be in the same boat. There will likely be young children yelling through a screen at me: "No, Nanna, you tap your wrist TWICE for holo-imaging! TWICE! No, Nanna, wait, you just set it to record!" etc.
Both my parents continue to protest loudly that they don't like cats. I present Exhibits B and C.
They visit here regularly. They were here last weekend for a belated Mother's Day luncheon, and we had ratatouille (because my father, on a whim, bought me the Ratatouille DVD as a present) and smoked salmon on my patio. They visit at least every two months, and when they're not visiting we call or Skype. They've mostly figured out the Skype thing, although I have to remind them to click the camera icon each and every time. Mind you, these are the people who taught me how to eat, drink, and use a toilet, so I figure it's not too much to ask of me to be patient with them while they learn technology. Also, someday in about forty years, I will be in the same boat. There will likely be young children yelling through a screen at me: "No, Nanna, you tap your wrist TWICE for holo-imaging! TWICE! No, Nanna, wait, you just set it to record!" etc.
Both my parents continue to protest loudly that they don't like cats. I present Exhibits B and C.
That's my father petting Juno in the top picture, and my mother giving Maggie scritches in the bottom two pictures. Maggie who, I might add, is on the dining room table. My mother routinely professes to abhor the fact that my cats sometimes jump up on tables and counters. Ahem. You can see how much they want nothing to do with the feline forces of entropy in my household.
My mother tried a token protest about Ben when they were last here, but he came and rubbed up against her ankles. "Now, you see? THIS is a nice cat! Which one is this?" "It's the new cat, Mim. That's Ben." "Oh. Well." XD
So, in short, things are going well with them. It's nice to be at a place in my life where I can (mostly) have an adult relationship with my parents. It's been really nice, especially since last year I ended up going on two trips with them, and we had a great time.
Work has been insane. We're ridiculously short-staffed, as I mentioned previously, and I was called in for so much overtime I thought I would keel over from exhaustion. I had to cut back somewhere, and I ended up having to momentarily pause volunteering at the soup kitchen and going to the gym, just so I could get enough sleep. It's been rough, and we're not through the worst of it yet, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's hoping it's not a train. :P
There are other things I want to talk about, but they're maybe a bit more depressing, since some are health-related, and so maybe I'll put those in a post that's not intended to be a generally positive one.
Instead, I shall leave you with the picture of the progress I made on the progress I made on my community garden plot today. I'm renting an 8x4 raised bed at the Vanier Community Garden. So today I planted tomato plants and flowers to attract pollinators!
I want to try to find a cucumber plant to put in there, along with a trellis of some kind for it to climb. I still have six other tomato plants, so I'm going to try my hand at container gardening on my patio, too. I've bought potting soil and a few pots, and at Costco today I saw they were selling a bin on legs designed for container gardening, which has got me all cranked up about gardening again. I didn't do any gardening of my own last year, and satisfied the itch by volunteering at Hope Garden, but the way the head volunteer/garden coordinator acted last year with some of the Shepherds staff left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't want to associate with someone who makes every argument public via "Reply all" in emails. That's gross and uncalled for. If you have a dispute, settle it privately, unless you're denouncing abuse. Anyway, I am excited about growing veggies again this year! Yay, garden!
In short, I'm slowly re-aligning myself with my values. I'm trying to cook and bake from scratch more, getting back into being a steward of the earth and not just a mindless consumer. It's a process, and I still have a long way to go, but at least I'm moving back in the right direction. I feel like, in some ways, I lost a lot of myself for a while there. While there are still important decisions to be made, it's nice to catch glimpses of the person I used to be.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-30 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-30 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 12:40 am (UTC)It's good to hear from you. I, too, am growing tomatoes -- in pots on my balcony. We'll see how it goes. I need outdoor space with dirt and plants, and I live in an apartment, so I do what I can.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:33 am (UTC)Best of luck growing your tomatoes!
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:10 am (UTC)It is always no nice to hear about your life!
I really need to do better about posting.... if only to show off my new tattoo work ;p
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 09:21 am (UTC)Haha! I totally can see this. I haven't applied for full membership myself, as I live more than an hour's drive from the only Meetinghouse in the area and my car is often iffy, so I don't feel like I can invest in the community yet :-/
I love all the photos of your cats!
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 12:49 pm (UTC)I've never applied for full meeting membership, but as much as I hate to say it, I think they're spot on: there's really no Wrong way to do it. My advice is to be as personal as you can: how you came to the Society of Friends, what it's meant to you, how you've changed, and why it's important to you to become a member. If they have any concerns or questions, they'll hash all of that out in Clearness Committee, which is what that's there for. (My ex Lauren always assumed that all they'd ask her in Clearness Committee was three things: has she read Faith and Practice, has she attended Meeting for Business, and does she know the words to "Simple Gifts"? Wholly inaccurate, of course. :) )
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:07 pm (UTC)It occurs to me that I should find a Quaker icon, if I'm going to be posting about that more.
In terms of the letter, I just want to know things like how it should start ("Dear Sir/Madam," "To Whom It May Concern," "Dear Friends," whatever), and just *how* personal it should be. I mean, I don't want to write a confessional, but I also don't want to write what amounts to a form letter. Am I overthinking this? OF COURSE I'm overthinking it! XD
no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-01 08:10 pm (UTC)