February 11th, 2026

[mousme]

 Oof, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I’m not going to try to catch up on everything I’ve missed, because that would take way too long. To quote Inigo Montoya: “Let me explain. No, there is too much—let me sum up!”

 

1- State of the Phnee

 

Okay. There is not a ton going on with me that I haven’t already covered.

 

Clerking for Ministry & Counsel is proving pretty challenging. The one guy whose wife appears to be using him as a puppet/mouthpiece has been kind of AWOL for a while, and instead of that taking the pressure off, his wife has decided to insert herself back into M&C (she was the clerk a few years ago) and is trying to “force” me to do things her way. So I’ve been having delicate conversations in which I am trying to let her feel heard while simultaneously maintaining boundaries and not catering to her every whim. She’s already produced a two-page written document about how much she hates the hybrid Meetings (I’m paraphrasing), and insulting the people who attend online (she called them “auxiliary” to the Meeting, which made my blood boil), and is insisting that the proposed Claremont Dialogue be help on the date and time of her choosing, which may simply just not be practical at this point. Bah.

 

We’re having a minor drama with a new attender, who shared personal ministry during a Meeting when I was at work that had a lot of people worried she might be having thoughts of suicide. The two active remaining members of M&C spoke to her and asked her about it point blank, and she denied it. She then apparently went on a fairly long tirade about how the Meeting needed to become vegan as it’s “the only ethical choice,” and they gently suggested that not everyone in the Meeting would agree with her, although of course everyone would respect her choices and do their best to accommodate her (we have lots of vegan Friends!). We thought that was the end of it, but it seems she took the conversation very poorly, and she emailed the new M&C email that I created and said she was “accused” of being suicidal and that she was ordered not to talk about being vegan because others would disagree with her. Which, uh, is not what happened. Anyway. I wrote back and am waiting to hear what she hopes will happen next in order to help the situation.

 

I did finish the first draft of the State of Society Report and have sent it off to the Clerks for review at the next Meeting for Worship for Business, which is this coming Sunday. Hopefully it won’t require too many edits once Meeting has finished ripping it apart.

 

In the meantime, I still haven’t heard whether I’m still going to have a job at the end of March. I am definitely not stressed about this at all. Nope. Not one bit. Apparently if they don’t respond by the end of February that means that my contract will automatically renew, but even then it’s uncertain whether they’ll renew me for one year, two years, or just four months to cover summer vacation and training. WHO KNOWS.

 

In brighter news, I’ve been doing a decent job at exercising on a regular basis. I’ve been a bit hit and miss with the weight lifting, but I’ve been pretty diligent about getting on the treadmill and have steadily increased my walking speed until I can comfortably walk 2mph and still work without getting noticeably out of breath. I am in fact writing this while on the treadmill! I’m continuing to lose weight after the surgery, albeit more slowly than my numbers-obsessed brain would like, but my brain doesn’t necessarily know what’s good for me. When I visited my parents a couple of weeks ago I took advantage of the fact that their condo has a pool in the basement and went for a 1km swim two days in a row. I was very sore afterward, but it reminded me how much I enjoy swimming, so I will be looking into finding a local pool where I can do laps or something in the coming weeks.

 

My parents are doing pretty well, overall. They haven’t said anything about moving into a smaller apartment for a while, and I’m not sure if that means they’ve given up on the idea for now, in the face of political uncertainty which might make the value of their condo plummet (and thus prevent them from living off the interest of the proceeds). I am not convinced they have the stomach and the energy for a big move like that anyway. My mother is turning 89 in a couple of weeks, and my father will be 85 in September, and moving is extremely hard and stressful, even if they hire a company to pack and unpack everything for them. They need to downsize most of their furniture and a bunch of other belongings, and while they have been making some progress in getting rid of some stuff (mostly books), I am having trouble imagining them “sacrificing” all the antique furniture and art pieces they’ve been collecting for over 60 years each. You never know, they might surprise me!

 

2- State of the smallholding

 

I have been torn between trying to purchase farm-related equipment now, while I still have a job, and saving money. I am leaning toward the purchases, because if I can get everything set up in time, then I will theoretically have the means to grow and raise more food at home in the spring and summer and preserve a lot of it to hopefully last us through the winter. I have so far been kind of failing at the whole “eat what you grow” thing, but as long as I don’t lose the house as a result of being unemployed, then I have a pretty good chance of setting up some more permanent infrastructure to help with becoming more sustainable, at least from a food standpoint. After that, depending on finances, I will start looking into becoming more energy efficient and sustainable—a wood burning stove, maybe some solar panels, or some sort of backup generator for the house.

 

I’m trying not to bite off more than I can chew, but the temptation is very high. If the weather cooperates, the optimistic part of me wants to spend every spare hour of sunlight I have available building infrastructure in the spring like the fence I so desperately need, raised beds, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, etc. I also need to set up a good water catchment system, since our area is prone to drought in the summer and I plan on having a fair bit of livestock that will require a lot of water. Given how much time each of these projects could potentially take, I am a little worried that it’ll just take all summer to get things built and I won’t be able to actually get the livestock installed before the weather turns again. We shall see, I guess. I am, as we all know, extremely prone to wildly overestimating both my abilities and energy levels as well as wildly underestimating the time it will take me to do stuff. So, this could all be a serious problem for me when the snow melts and the mud dries enough for me to be able to start work.

 

I really hope I can live up to my own ridiculous standards for once. I am pretty sure that the main barrier I’m facing is my woeful lack of good physical condition, which is one of the many reasons I’ve been hitting the treadmill and the weights to a lesser extent. If I can manage to do more building and assembling without throwing out my back or otherwise being in constant physical discomfort, then I might have a snowball’s chance in hell of accomplishing what I want. These days I have found I have a very low tolerance for manual labour before it becomes painful or at least intolerably uncomfortable because I am just not flexible in the slightest and my back objects to bending for more than five minutes at a time. So I need to drastically improve my endurance and flexibility if I want to get things done.

 

3- State of the news

 

*gestures wildly*

 

I don’t even know, friends.

 

It’s the Olympics, yay! The world is on fire, aah! The Epstein Files are being released but not released but redacted but not redacted but sort of kind of something something can we overwhelm everyone with the horror? ICE is gunning down people in the streets and not complying with lawful orders to release people in their custody. Trump has threatened to seize half of the Gordie Howe bridge which Canada paid for in its entirety and has an agreement with the State of Michigan, because somehow Canada has been “unfair” to the USA, even though Trump himself approved the bridge in 2017.

 

Yesterday British Columbia had a mass shooting in which 9 people died and 25 more were injured. The whole country is reeling, because mass shootings are rare (but not unheard of), and already the internet is alight with misinformation. It’s all so goddamned terrible.

 

IT’S A LOT.

 

Okay, this has gotten pretty long. I’m going to leave it there and come back later with more updates.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!