Corner of Bourbon & Division

My brain desperately wants to start new projects! WHAT IF WE LEARNED WATERCOLOUR?!? Of course, it's conveniently ignoring that last month we wanted to learn embroidery and the month before how to crochet and make socks. I still want to do all that, of course, but I haven't gotten around to it, and now my brain is all SHINY NEW PROJECT, IGNORE THOSE OTHER THINGS FOR WHICH YOU HAVE SUPPLIES!

Uuuugh.

Honestly, my brain is exhausting sometimes. 

I also need to get my act together and get things done around the house. Things need to be cleaned, and I need to start all my vegetables and maybe reorganize the basement to be more functional. I don't know if my brain will let me do any of it, but I need to at least try. If I can get up early enough tomorrow I'm going to go to Costco because we're almost out of eggs. I don't know how long we're going to be spared the egg crisis that's happening in the US currently, but I'm going to take advantage of the eggs while I can. I've been watching the price of eggs creep up over the years, and I can't say I'm enjoying it. Three years ago I could get a box of 30 eggs for $6.50 and the last time I went to Costco they were $8.99. It's still cheaper than at most grocery stores, although every so often Shopper's Drug Mart has a sale which I take advantage of. I can't fit the boxes of 30 eggs in my fridge but I use the cartons from the other eggs to redistribute them into more fridge-compatible sizes.

Speaking of the fridge, I need to figure out why it's been freezing all the food I place at the back. It's done a number on some of my vegetables, and I can't really afford to lose my produce like that. I should probably tell my property management folks about it, but that means letting more people into the house, and I really hate that. They already invade my home far more than I enjoy, but I suppose needs must. My dishwasher also probably needs to be serviced since it's been eight years since I moved in, and it no longer washes the dishes about 25% of the time. Everything breaks down over time, I guess. If I were handier (or braver) I might be able to do it myself. Maybe I'll give cleaning out the dishwasher filter a shot, gather all my courage and a bunch of tools and see what I can do about that.

Being a responsible adult is a lot less great than you're led to expect as a kid, let me tell you. :P

In the meantime, I picked up two more books at the library today: The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. I was a little worried when I put a hold on them that I wouldn't be able to read them in time, but they are both mercifully quite compact, so maybe my brain will cooperate with me and let me read them before I have to bring them back. I'm trying to build up a library of books that will help me with mutual aid and community building, both on a practical and theoretical level. So far my local library has been a little hit-and-miss with what books are even available, but I don't want to buy books before I know they'll be useful.

Okay, my shift is coming to a close. Time to pack it in. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I used to joke about starting an asphalt company called Good Intentions, and at the rate I'm going, I will have paved a superhighway to hell by the time my life is done. 

Today wasn't a total loss or anything. I did manage to crowbar myself out of bed much later than I'd intended, and then levered myself out the door to go to Costco. There are several in town, and the closest one to me is a Costco Business Centre, which has the advantage of selling grated Parmesan in bulk (not real Parmesan, but good enough for the kind of cooking I like to do). My regular Costco has also been out of paper towels for a couple of months now, or at least they've been out each time I've gone. So I was able to pick up a bunch of stuff I can't get at the regular Costco, but at the expense of not being able to find another handful of items I needed, so I'll have to go on a separate trip for those.

My original intention had been to go to both Costcos and the grocery store, then come home, put all the meat in the fridge, and then go to the basement to get my seeds started. In order to keep myself sort of honest, I scheduled a 2pm Google Hangout with some local people with whom I've recently started forging ties. We're all members of a Facebook group that's run by Sharon Astyk, whom I think I've mentioned in a previous post. That group is over 1,000 people strong, but I wanted to seek out the members local to me who were interested in forming a more practical mutual aid group, and since then we've connected over the Signal app (just in case social media becomes too unreliable or starts selling our information even more than it already is).

Anyway, I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to get through Costco on a Saturday, so my second trip and the grocery store trip both had to get cancelled in the interest of getting to my Google Hangout on time. I also didn't quite gauge how the Google Hangout would go ahead of time. We had a really interesting time, with a good but small group of people. Not everyone was able to make it, but three friends were there whom I've known for several years, and two other people who were new to me (in person, I knew their names from online). We talked politics, mostly Canadian but also what was going on in the US, and provided a Canadian Politics 101 explainer to a new friend who has just moved here from the US (they had previously lived briefly in Nova Scotia, but were mostly unaware of all the ramifications of politics outside that province). We also talked farming and mutual aid, and what values we wanted to uphold in our little group, and Covid precautions. It was a really good first meeting, and I'm looking forward to having more in the future--I just need to keep my ducks more or less in a row.

I didn't get my seeds started, but I did start two mushroom cultures (a pink oyster culture and a lion's mane culture), and I pulled out my grow lights and cleared off the shelves in anticipation of being able to start at least some seedlings tomorrow. I need to get to bed pretty soon (it's 10pm now, so 11pm is probably the earliest I'll be able to manage), and my hope is to get up early enough to get to Costco and maybe even the grocery store before Quaker Meeting tomorrow. It'll be really tight, because Costco doesn't open until 9am, and Quaker Meeting is at 10:30am, so I have no idea if I'll be able to get it all done in time. Maybe I'll try ordering the groceries either for delivery or for pick-up tomorrow instead of going shopping, and see if that saves a bit of time. I'm also contemplating putting off the second Costco trip to Monday, when I will have all day before my night shift to get that done.

I bought extra meat and eggs today, and I'll be buying some extra pork chops tomorrow (unless I go Monday). I expect some prices will be skyrocketing once the new tariffs are in place. We're going to have to get used to doing more with less, I think, so I'm stocking up a little now and will be working on stretching our food more than I have been. I also need to get into the habit of making bread at home more often. I am actually bad at baking bread, but I have a bread machine, and that makes things considerably easier.

Once the groceries are dealt with, I need to vacuum pack all the meat into portions so I can freeze it (much easier than freezing all of it all at once), and make a bunch of shredded chicken to freeze as well, for future use. I've found that the boneless thighs from Costco lend themselves very well to shredded chicken, which I make in my Instant Pot. I must say that my Instant Pot has been one of my better purchases in the past few years. I think I got it in 2022, if memory serves, and I've been using it pretty much weekly ever since then. It's pretty fantastic for making food in a reasonably short amount of time. I also want to make some borscht because I have some beets and cabbage in the fridge that are likely to go bad if I don't use them up ASAP. KK won't eat the borscht (because beets) but I really love it and haven't made it in years, so that's what I've decided.

I also need to wet-block the Hubris Shawl, and if there's time after that I will get some seedlings started. I need to find somewhere to plug in the grow lights, as the outlet expander that KK installed on the current outlet doesn't accommodate the plugs for the grow lights. Luckily (?) KK has an entire Rubbermaid bin full of power adapters and power cords and outlet expanders, so I'm really hoping I'll find something suitable. Otherwise, I'm going to have to move around everything in this basement, which will be an absolute pain in my backside.

Okay, time to head to bed. I can't promise a more interesting update tomorrow, but there will be an update. ;)

Not necessarily in that order. Come to think of it, when all the craziness has died down I may well do a Sergio Leone rewatch. It's been a while since I enjoyed a good Spaghetti Western. :)


( Nattering about the week that just went by and the week to come )