Corner of Bourbon & Division

I'm still exhausted. Today was the last day of working with the professional organizer. It went well and I have no regrets, but I still have a lot of work left to do to clear out and give away some of what we decluttered. The kitchen is in much better shape than before: I moved a shelving unit into the small space that serves as KK's office and leads into the living room and replaced it with a smaller shelving unit that was already in the kitchen and a small cart on wheels, so now the kitchen feels far more open, and there is in fact a bit more room to work with. The living room does look as though seven or eight tornadoes have gone through it, however, as it's full of all of the piles for donation and discarding. Oops. Oh well. Omelet, eggs, etc.

My mortgage financing is conditionally approved, although I have to jump through fourteen thousand flaming hoops to prove that the money I have in my bank account is actually mine, and there has to be a "desktop appraisal" of the property in case the amount I offered for it is higher than what the mortgage lender thinks it's worth. Uuuugh, why are finances so complicated and stressful?

I have scheduled a house inspection on Sunday morning with an inspector I haven't worked with before. My usual guy, Mike Courtemanche, was unavailable to work with me because this is the busiest time of year. The new guy comes recommended by my real estate agent as well, so I'm sure he'll be good too. 

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Alfred bird auction (although I won't get getting quail now that there's a strong possibility I'll be moving in just two months), where I shall hang out with my newish friend Val (we've been friends for about five years now) and later I shall head further out in order to spend some time with Dylan and Sarah on their farm. I have some plans to bring disinfectable footwear with me so that I don't accidentally track bird flu onto their farm just in case any of the auction birds have it, or some other horrible avian disease that will affect their poultry.

I have fallen asleep three times at my keyboard trying to finish this, so it's time to call it a night. I have to leave around 6:30 to get to the auction on time, so a full night of sleep is definitely in order.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

A new friend asked me to have a phone chat with her this evening because it had been a while and she doesn't have  a lot of people to talk to, so that took up most of the time I would have normally used to update my journals. It was a nice conversation, albeit one in which we both mostly commiserated about how tough things can be these days, given all the givens. This new friend is disabled and is having a really hard time on multiple levels with her health, with the healthcare system, with the disability and housing systems, and with the world being generally inaccessible to her a lot of the time because of people's unwillingness to mask. I think she likes talking to me because it makes her feel a little less like all of her words are going into the void. She's also an Attender at my Quaker Meeting, so I think this also kind of falls under pastoral care for me.

I get to "sleep in" a little tomorrow because I have another weird work from home half-day, but it's already super late, so I won't be getting nearly as much sleep as I'd like tonight. I didn't want to break my posting streak, however, so here I am, posting a wee update right before midnight. ;)

On that note, it's time for bed. I will be back tomorrow, hopefully with a longer update. Good night, 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. ;)

 Backdating this entry as well...

Peggy and I had a very good day with her Uncle Dylan and Auntie Sarah. I got up later than I had planned (the theme for the week continues), but managed to get there by about 11:00, so it wasn't too late, all things considered. Visiting the little farm is always a pleasure. I took Peggy's check cord with me (it's basically just a long, soft rope that clips to her collar and that then loops loosely around her waist) and we did a little work on impulse control around the chickens and everything else. The way the check cord works is that if she pulls too hard, it tightens around her waist in a way that's not comfy, and it loosens the minute she stops pulling. We're seeing some good results already, which is very nice.

Peggy of course did her due diligence of climbing her Uncle Dylan like a tree, and played hard with Shadow as well. Shadow was pretty well-behaved all day, and at the end of the day he was surprisingly pooped out! Normally Peggy crashes hard while he is still raring to go, which can create a fair bit of dog drama, but today both dogs conked out at about the same time, which made for a very relaxing evening.

I helped with the construction of the gazebo they are repurposing into a chicken coop to house a whole bunch of feeder chickens this summer, and we went out to the riverbank to collect fiddleheads, which was a first for me. I have very unfond memories of being served fiddleheads at school lunches when I was young, and they were always really bitter-tasting mush, so I had decided at the time that I didn't like them. Since I am now pretty sure they are not meant to be boiled to within an inch of their lives, I have taken a bunch of fresh fiddleheads home with me and plan to try them again and see if it's actually true that I don't like them, or if I can successfully declare that I have changed my mind.

Also, I got to drive the tractor! It felt very tippy to me (it's not actually that tippy), and even though intellectually I knew I was on pretty level ground my lizard brain spent the entire time basically yelling "SCREEEEEEEEE IT'S GOING TO TIP OVER AND CRUSH YOU AND YOU WILL HAVE RUINED YOUR FRIENDS' TRACTOR JUST AS THE MAIN GROWING SEASON IS STARTING OMG SCREEEEEEEEEE!" My lizard brain is very dramatic.

I did get the hang of it relatively quickly, at least, and I helped load a bunch of rocks into the bucket and ferried them to another spot. It was pretty exciting!

Have some photos of Peggy, Shadow, and her Uncle Dylan having fun behind the cut. :)




I don't know if it's just the endorphins of having such a fun day, but on the way home my brain was bubbling over with ideas and plans for the coming summer months. I know that my brain REALLY likes making plans (so much dopamine!) and then I rarely follow through on them, but I'd really like to make a go of at least some of them this year. It's past midnight now, unfortunately (the problem with visiting friends who are over an hour away is that it makes for late nights), so I am going to call it a night rather than wax eloquent about all the castles I'm going to build in Spain.

The goals for tomorrow are pretty straightforward. I am going to KK's to help out with de-cluttering, which is my main commitment. I also have Quaker Meeting from 10:30 to 11:30. I need to do laundry and get a few groceries (I should really get into the habit of ordering online for pickup, but I am terrible at remembering to do it in time and then the pick-up availabilities are too far in the future), and ideally I would like to get up early to take Peggy for a run so that she's not spending the whole time in her crate being bored while I'm at KK's. Oh, wait, I just remembered I have a Skype date with my parents tomorrow (we usually Skype on Mondays and Thursdays, but we got thrown off schedule this week), so that's two commitments I have. I also need to start putting those in my calendar so I don't forget. So many things, so little working memory. ;)

Okay. Bed. If I have time tomorrow after my Skype call with my parents I will post an entry about all the exciting dopamine-induced plans I've been thinking of. Sometimes getting it in writing gives me a better idea of whether something is actually feasible or if it's just me getting high off my own alternate reality thinking.

 Every part of me huuuuuuuurts. Okay, not every part of me. It's mostly my feet and my lower back and my legs to a lesser extent. All those muscles have seized up and haaaaaate me.

I did get up on time. I correctly predicted that anxiety would force me out of bed in time to get stuff done, and it did and I did! I cleared out a bunch of garbage/recycling in order to make sure there was a clear space to work in, and although Peggy freaked out and spent a good 30 minutes shrieking at the top of her lungs every time I went by to the garage or the basement, I got everything I wanted to done.

The professional organisers arrived at 09:30, and we had a super productive day! We cleared out so. much. stuff. I got rid of about 90% of my old paperwork, and donated 6 boxes of books (with more to come tomorrow). Unfortunately they complained to their boss that there was too much cat hair in the rooms we were working in (fair enough, as those rooms have been so cluttered for years that I couldn't get in there with a vacuum cleaner), and one of them isn't coming back tomorrow because she claimed she wasn't feeling well as a result. I *did* make a point of telling the lady in charge a month ago that I had multiple pets and that I needed to de-clutter rooms that hadn't been touched in years, and she assured me that no one had allergies or phobias, but I guess that only goes so far. She did say she'll refund me the part of my fee that covers the second person tomorrow, so that's something, at least.

The brightest part of the day was KK spontaneously volunteering to come over to help me build my new computer desk. Not only that, but when I left to fetch Peggy from daycare she actually put together my small bookcase for me too! I am incredibly thankful, because while I could have managed the bookcase just fine, the desk was more complex and would likely have taken me several hours when I was already very tired and very sore. She has the same kind of desk (mine has blue accents and hers is all black), so she remembered how to put it all together, which was quite helpful.

I picked up a rotisserie chicken and made baby potatoes, asparagus, and Caesar salad (from a kit, I was too tired for anything else) for dinner, and both of us hadn't eaten in a very long time, and it was goddamned delicious. As KK said, it hit spots we didn't even know needed hitting. We had meringata for dessert, and hung out and chatted and played with the dogs, and generally had a nice, chill time before she went home around 9:30. We're both really looking forward to moving in together, and it's starting to feel like reality now, which is pretty exciting.

Now it's time to faceplant into my bed. KK actually gave me one of those chair pillows for my bed so I can read/be on my laptop, so that's where I am already, but the important part is the faceplanting. I have more stuff that I want to do before the (solitary) organiser comes tomorrow so as to maximise her time here (more vacuuming, for one thing), so getting more sleep seems like a really good plan right now.

Oof.

Last week seems to be spilling over into this week. I hitched a ride with my friend julienne64 (alas no longer on LJ), and since she works 10-6 it made for a slightly late start to the morning.

KK was kind enough first to take me to fetch Peggy from puppy boot camp (Peggy is a very happy camper now that she's home), and has even let me borrow her car until I can get the GSVCO back, which is really awesome and I am very grateful to her indeed.

The rest of today was just... ugh. I don't know. I got nothing done except get pulled from one spot at work to another, and there was some employee drama that I don't really feel like dealing with but will probably have to deal with when I get into work tomorrow. Originally it seemed like I was going to have to work from home tomorrow, but since I now have access to wheels I can go in, and now I have mixed feelings about it. XD

Overall it's better if I go in, even if I don't feel like having to navigate everyone's feelings tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to start catching up on all the work I haven't been getting done for the past ten days due to all the technological shenanigans.

I've also been working on and off all evening on various things, and I am looking forward to my bed at this point.

( Trigger warning for cancer and death )

Moving on to stuff that's not about cancer and death...

I've been watching a lot of TV recently. Probably more than is reasonably good for me, but that's actually par for the course. The difference is that, rather than watching it during the down times on my night shifts, I've been doing it more at home. At work I've actually been working a bit more. But in the meantime, at home, rather than do anything productive, I've been watching Veronica Mars (among others) and playing an unhealthy amount of Stardew Valley.

Shockingly, I've been having a lot of trouble managing my time. It feels like I'm juggling too many balls at once (funny story, I can't physically juggle even two balls, I've tried), and so, true to form, I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed and just kind of, well, avoided everything except the bare minimum of what I needed to do to get by.

The good thing is that I have a puppy, and she needs me to get out of the house every day. I haven't always taken her for long walks, but I have taken her out each day, and I try to work with her on her training each day, so that's probably been the best thing for my mental health. That, and the fact that she is the cutest, sweetest, most loving dog in the universe. It's all very helpful. :)

Otherwise, though, things aren't awesome. I think the trigger for this latest massive avoidance is the extra $1,500 I'm getting charged for university. There's nothing like financial stress to knock me for a loop and make me metaphorically crawl under my own bed and refuse to deal with the world. Is it productive? Nope. Is it my default behaviour? Yep. So, something to work on, I guess.

I'm heading to fearsclave 's this weekend for some romping around in the wilderness with Peggy, and introducing her to the joys of fishing. Or, more specifically, to the joys of fish. fearsclave has a long-standing tradition of letting his dogs lick the fish before they get taken back and cleaned (thoroughly!) for later consumption. Hopefully we will have an excellent day of fishing, which means actually catching fish. Not catching fish is still a good day of fishing, but I would really like to see Peggy's reaction to a fish. My guess is that she will go bonkers. 

I've got a short list of things I want to get done before I leave on Friday. I'm working on keeping things realistic, because I have a tendency to over-plan and have a poor sense of how much I can actually accomplish in a given amount of time. Apparently that's a common thing with ADHD, the inability to properly gauge the length of time unfamiliar tasks will take. That, and forgetting that you need to plan time *around* the task. Also, I get overambitious about plans when I'm on nights at work. I have hours stretching in front of me, and it always seems like future!me is going to have tons of energy and motivation to do all these things, and in practice future!me is way more interested in catching up on sleep. So I hope I've worked it out correctly this time.

Okay, time to get back to work. These night shift duties aren't going to do themselves.

 Yesterday was fun but exhausting. Part of that was my fault, part of it wasn't. I got up early to finish my script, and was doing okay right up until I put on the new button-down vest I'd bought to wear to Capricornucopia and all the buttons fell off. In my defence, it looks like they were shoddily sewn on to begin with. :P Since I hadn't planned on spending 45 minutes sewing buttons (I am not a quick seamstress), that threw off my timing for the rest of the day.

I arrived an hour late for breakfast with my parents, but we still had a lovely time together. They've settled into the "elderly couple who've been married forever" cliché with a vengeance, and they are absolutely adorable. I watched them bicker amiably over how to write out the Saturday grocery shopping list, and nearly died of cute. 

miseri was a lifesaver and agreed to print my script for me, so I was at least spared a last-minute dash to Bureau en Gros and was able to get to his place before noon for the usual pre-Capricornucopia highlighting party with [Bad username or site: sorceror  and  [livejournal.com profile] tcaptain @ livejournal.com]. Wow. Autocorrect just tried to fix both those names for me. They're proper nouns, autocorrect! Grr. Anyway, after 13 years of doing this, we have the pre-party prep down to a fine art (except for sorceror, who still can't remember to take his allergy meds before getting together with us), and we had finished marking the scripts and bought food for the potluck by 14:00 with no difficulties.

The turnout was a record low this year, as I'd feared. Maybe I should take a page from Trump's book and go on and on about how this was the largest Capricornucopia in all of history. XD Anyway, it was still wonderful to see all the people who did show, up, and we had a good time. We took our time, and started at 16:00 instead of the usual 15:00, and took breaks between every play instead of having only one intermission. We finished at 18:00 on the nose, then hung out and chatted for nearly another hour after that. It was good to be able to catch up with the people I only see once or twice a year, too.

I still think this will be the last one, though. The fact that so few people showed up meant that we had very few people in the audience in order to watch the people on stage, even though we all made efforts to narrow down our cast of characters. We lasted more than most TV shows (except Supernatural and maybe Law & Order), so I think it's been a good run, overall. It's time to move onto new and different things.

In the meantime, I'm spending today quietly. I don't know how everyone else manages to work all week and socialize/run errands all weekend. I spent the week in training and then sped to Montreal and back, and now I am ready for a three-day nap.

I've been preparing to host an "Un-Christmas" lunch since, oh, the beginning of December. I invited my parents and fearsclave and his wife, Carolyn, and started menu planning three weeks ago and cooking last week. Because I rarely entertain, when I do, I want it to be memorable. I flatter myself that today went really well, overall. My parents get along really well with fearsclave and Carolyn, and the four of them had a great time laughing about living "near the North Pole," etc. Carolyn got to see how well Maggie and Ben were doing (I adopted two of their cats over the past year, when they couldn't keep them anymore).

This morning I got up early in order to finish the last of the preparation: a last-minute vacuum/tidy of the house, then make the mashed potatoes, mulled wine, wild rice, and green beans. I didn't get it all done before the guests arrived, and we ended up eating about half an hour later than planned, but it all pulled together at the last minute.

The meal itself was a great success. I started out with a beet salad with goat cheese and candied walnuts. It's the only dish which I managed to capture in a picture. The rest of the food got eaten too quickly for me to be able to snap a picture, but there were lemon tarragon roasted cornish hens, balsamic glazed green beans with almonds and cranberries, tourtière, mashed sweet potatoes flavoured with maple syrup, and wild rice with raisins and almonds. For the cheese course we had brie with truffles, bleu d'Auvergne, and Oka, and for dessert I made apple pie and rice pudding (for the gluten-free guest). We finished it off with coffee, and I think all of us may die happily of food.


I was too busy running around trying to get everything on the table and everyone fed and taken care of to get many pictures, but I did get a few, and my parents took some as well. Hopefully between the three of us we'll have a nice record of the day.

I am due to write a year-in-review post, which I used to do regularly and then sort of forgot about. Tonight, however, I have a D&D game to prep, so it will have to wait.