January 11th, 2026

 I’m backdating this post, and we’re all going to pretend that’s not what’s happening, mmkay? ;) 

 

1-State of the Phnee

 

It’s been a pretty quiet weekend. Last week took a bit more out of me than I thought, so I did take it a bit easier today than I had initially planned, but I did get stuff done!
 

Starting with yesterday (Saturday), I got up at ridiculous o’clock to go get blood tests done. KK also needed blood tests, so we planned to go together, except she forgot to set an alarm, so we ended up leaving forty minutes later than I wanted to. I should know better than to rely on her for early morning departures—the only time she ever gets up on time is when she has to go to work or to a medical appointment for herself. We get our bloodwork done at a local lab which KK said only takes walk-ins on weekends (but that I learned after the fact does in fact take appointments, so I will know for next time), so I guess there wasn’t enough urgency in it for her to get up on time.

 

Because we got there 40 minutes later than I wanted (i.e. right when they opened), we had a very long wait. KK has been reading a supernatural romance/comedy/smut novel about a half-demon(?) girl named Clarissa and made a valiant attempt to explain the plot to me as we drove there, as we waited, and all the way back home. For a lighthearted romance it was very convoluted. :P

 

We took advantage of the road trip to stop first by Canadian Tire so I could pick up more extension cords (you can never have too many!), stopped by the bank so I could have cash on me for my later trip to the local market, and we also stopped by the U-Haul self-storage facility where KK moved all her stuff late last year which she had in storage in the city ever since she moved in with me. She wanted me to see the space, since there’s room left to store some of my furniture as well, which will be useful. I’m not convinced I want to use the space, but I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense since it’s available. I’m just leery of taking on yet another of her expenses, since I’m pretty sure it means she’s going to start reimbursing herself from the joint account diligently, and there’s already not enough money in there to cover our expenses as it is if I don’t supplement it with my own money. *sigh*

 

I went back to the Martintown Market for produce, and I am pleased with the quality of the produce on offer there. I don’t think it’s necessarily local produce, but they source it very cheaply, so I can buy almost all that we need any given week for $15. I also bought a pork shoulder for $20, which I cooked tonight in the Instant Pot. The meat itself was spectacular, but I made the mistake of trusting the recipe I found online despite my misgivings about their choice of spices, so the flavour was not what I was hoping for. Next time I will eschew trusting the process and trust my gut instead. Luckily the meat was so delicious and tender that it more than made up for the lacklustre and slightly odd flavour.
 

I stayed up way too late with my D&D friends chatting about the new campaign and joking about the fact that we were a pack of neurodivergent nerds just parallel playing as we created our characters for a while. I think we sat in near silence for almost an hour at one point while we were all looking up statistics and various bits of gear. It was a lot of fun, and I am jazzed about the upcoming campaign. I need to firm up my character’s backstory and then write it all down for the DM to exploit as he sees fit, and I have a little under two weeks to do that. I may bore you all at a later date with my character concept and stuff, but not right now, as it’s not all clear in my head yet. But yay D&D!
 

A hefty chunk of Sunday got taken up by Quaker Meeting for Worship, followed by Meeting for Worship for Business, which lasted until 2:30pm! Ugh. I understand that Quaker processes are important, but sometimes they feel unnecessarily ponderous and cumbersome. Oh well, it’s a good way for me to keep a finger on the pulse of the Meeting, even if I don’t participate super actively.

 

There’s a bit of a controversy happening right now, because a member of Peace and Social Concerns wants us to sign the Apartheid-Free Community Pledge written by the Apartheid-Free Communities Coalition (which is a network of communities—mostly spiritual—that joined together loosely in 2022 to work to end what the consider the crime of apartheid in Palestine, which I agree with) along with the American Friends Service Committee. However, there is a small group of Friends who don’t want to sign the pledge, not because they don’t think that Israel is committing apartheid, but because the pledge contains the phrase “We declare ourselves an apartheid-free community,” and those Friends have rightly pointed out that we as a Monthly Meeting, as a Yearly Meeting (Canada-wide) and as a country have a LOT of work to do to dismantle our own system racism, oppression, and injustice. When we still have Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) massively overrepresented among victims, Indigenous people massively overrepresented in both the judicial and “child protective services” spheres, and dozens of Indigenous communities that still don’t have access to clean drinking water, I agree that it is a stretch to call ourselves “Apartheid-free.” Other Friends have said that the pledge should be aspirational (I paraphrase), but it does not sit right with me, the way it doesn’t sit right with the first group of Friends. 

 

There is a “threshing session” about it this coming Saturday, but as I’m working night shifts, I don’t know that I will be able to attend. I already have to sacrifice most of my sleep on Sunday for the Worship Sharing for the State of Society Report, and working two back-to-back 12-hour shifts on less than 4 hours’ sleep each time sounds like an absolute nightmare, especially since I will be working nights all week this week with extra overtime to boot because we have people off sick and others doing training course so that there’s very little wriggle room left on the schedule. Extra money is nice, even if it’s just a handful of extra hours here and there for me. I am near the bottom of the OT list, so I know when they contact me it’s because they are kind of desperate, too.

 

2-State of the smallholding

 

I got stuff done! There was a thaw on Friday that stretched into Saturday, so I took advantage of it to clear all the snow and ice that had accumulated on the deck and got it perfectly clean and smooth and safe to walk on. Of course, it promptly started snowing again last night (Saturday) mere hours after I cleared it, and it continued snowing for the rest of the weekend. *sigh*

 

As I said before, a hefty chunk of Sunday got taken up by various Quaker things, but once that was done I made good on my promise to myself to start getting the house better organized. I didn’t make a ton of headway, but I DID unpack the last two boxes of books in my bedroom and tidied up everything except my desk (that might be a project for this week, since I think it won’t take more than an hour or so to do). So now I have a bit more floor space to work with, and the whole room is looking a little bit better than it was before. I got rid of some trash that had wedged itself in nooks and crannies (mostly rogue packing paper), swept the floor, and consolidated the laundry into baskets to be dealt with by future!Phnee. 

 

The rest of my free time that day was taken up by making dinner and then having my weekly Zoom call with the parental units, who were in very good form, I am pleased to report. We have tentatively made plans for me to go visit them during the last week of January.

 

3-State of the news

 

I must regretfully admit that I spent the weekend under a rock and did not check any news headlines, let alone try a deeper dive into my usual outlets and sources. If you happen to know of anything important that I missed, please let me know!

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!