Corner of Bourbon & Division

You know, if all that was required of me to be successful in life was making plans, I would be acing this whole "being a successful human" thing. I love making plans, the more detailed, the better. The problem, of course, is that to actually succeed at things, you have to enact said plans, and that is where everything kind of falls apart for me.

KK kind of falls into the same category as me, and we are pretty terrible about enabling each other at making plans and then following through on maybe 10% of them. To be fair, it's a lot of fun to make plans, and I don't mind too much if all the low-stakes, castles-in-Spain plans don't come to fruition. It's actually really fun to talk about these things and throw ideas back and forth and build it up in our imaginations. I don't know if she is quite as aware as I am that our reach might exceed our grasp in a lot of cases, but I suspect she is.

I am also well aware of my propensity to make grand plans to completely turn my life around while I'm working night shifts (I talked about in in a previous post a few weeks ago, during another round of night shifts), and I have just come to accept it as one of my brain's quirky little ways of generating dopamine, so I just let it happen now and try not to convince myself that this time will totally be different, no, really! As long as I can accept that this is just an exercise in making my brain go *brrrt*, and that I have no expectations of actually doing anything about it, then it's a harmless little pastime during slower night shifts.

Right now I am trying to make sensible plans for packing up the house next week. Working 12-hour shifts this weekend means I won't get anything done, and there is no sense in deluding myself into thinking that I will somehow manage to do anything other than sleep and go to work. My current ambitious plan is to try to get a lot of packing done on Monday, when normally I'd spend a chunk of the day sleeping after my night shift. Don't get me wrong, I will still sleep when I get home, but it will be more of a two-hour power nap and then I'll aim to go to bed very early as a way of shifting over my sleep schedule as quickly as possible.

Tuesday through Thursday I've hired the professional organizer I had hired back in... March? I think? *checks calendar* Nope, first week of April. ANYWAY. I have hired her to come for six hours a day to help me pack up the garage and, if there's enough time, the basement. I am reasonably confident that I can pack up the upstairs on my own (minus KK's room and bathroom), and if I have friends able and willing to help pack the kitchen and dining room, that will also be really helpful. I might be able to do it on my own, but only time will tell.

So far most of the coworkers I have asked for a shift switch have said no, which is sad but not unexpected. I have two coworkers left who might be able to help me out. One is coming in for a shift today, and the other won't be in until Monday, so if the first one says no I'll just have to log into my email account from home to see if the second is willing to take one for the team. He very well might, since I agreed to swap weekends with him back in November so he could take his wife to go see Taylor Swift in Toronto, but it will of course be dependent on whether he has other commitments lined up already. Getting the weekend off to pack would be ideal, but if I can't get it, I will cope.

I have set one boundary with regards to the packing with KK, and that's that I expect her to pack up her own shit. I am by far the more able-bodied of the two of us, so I don't mind that I'm probably going to end up packing up most of the house on my own. I need her to still be physically functional by the time moving day arrives, so I'm perfectly willing to take that on. What I am not willing to take on, however, is packing up her office or her bedroom or her bathroom. Those three rooms are all on her, and I told her that many weeks ago. Like me, she hasn't started packing yet, but I don't plan on bailing her out at the last minute. Whatever she hasn't packed is just going to get left behind, and she can figure out how to get it delivered to the house. The chances of her not being ready in time are not super high, but they're also not zero, either. But I can't be responsible for myself, the whole house, the pets, AND her stuff. So she gets to be responsible for that.

Somewhere in the next ten days I am going to lose at least half a day to attend the closing for the house. I haven't heard from the lawyer, come to think of it, so I'll shoot them an email to make sure everything is still good on that front, or if they need more information from me or something. Great. Another thing to be paranoid about. Well, at least it should be a relatively easy fix, and it's 10 days before my official closing date (and more than one business week), so hopefully there's nothing to worry about. Anyway, I assume the closing will be done at the lawyer's office in Cornwall, so I'll have to drive out there and back, and even if it takes an hour or less to sign all the paperwork, it means at least a three hour trip, possibly longer.

I think it's still doable, God help me. I may just be deluding myself, but I am an incurable optimist when it comes to these things. I guess we'll find out!

All right, time to close out this night shift. I have a little over two hours left before I can go home and get some sleep. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I'm still at work for the next little bit, but I'm not sure I'll have time to write anything in depth in that time. The nature of my work is such that interruptions are all but inevitable.

I woke up with my lungs feeling a little sore, but some quick googling tells me that's not uncommon when first starting to use a CPAP, because your lungs are filling up a bit more than they're accustomed to at night, and your chest muscles work a little harder to exhale against the forced air. The discomfort didn't last very long, so I'm not too worried about it.

The quail laid a second egg for me this morning! They've been steadily laying one egg a day in the evenings, and I collected one last night, then found another egg this morning when I went to change out their food and water today. Tomorrow I shall be making myself unpopular with them because it will be time to change out their bedding. They've been doing well with the pine shavings I got them, but the bedding gets disgusting after a little while, so a full change is required. I am going to research the "deep litter" method when we move, since apparently that requires less regular cleaning out, and I hear it works well for poultry, especially in the winter.

I have D&D tonight after a long-ish hiatus, because we are all adults with lives and commitments, and scheduling is HARD. Since D&D is a basement activity for me (that's where the computer desk is), I will do my best to do some packing tonight too, since I'll be down there anyway. I ordered some pre-printed packing labels to help with identifying boxes, and I need to pick up some extra Sharpie pens and maybe figure out how to clearly identify what's in each box in a more efficient way than simply scribbling on the side in Sharpie. :P (Suggestions welcome, btw!)

I have reached out to two moving companies already for quotes, and am thinking I might try for one or two more. I want a quote for how much it would cost if we do all our own packing and for if I pay for someone else to do all the packing. I suspect the latter is going to be way too expensive, but it's worth asking, at least. I assume they'll want to do a walkthrough of the house to get an idea of just how much stuff there is (so much stuff), so I'm going to need to get the house tidied and semi-organized before they arrive. At least that should light a fire under me to get the ball rolling.

My goal this weekend is to get the entire basement packed up minus my computer desk, which I'm still going to need for the next few weeks. I'm also going to do a serious purge of my closet. There's a bunch of clothes I just don't wear anymore anyway, so I may as well donate the ones that are in good shape and toss the ones that can't be donated. Then I need to get rid of a bunch of the stuff that I don't need or use anymore, and pack up whatever I won't need for the next six weeks or so (books, old CDs, etc.). I'm going to ask KK to put one of our portable A/C units up for sale, since we're not using them anymore and the new place has central A/C. That will free up some space and put a tiny bit of money toward the move.

I think it's all doable, or at least I hope so.

Anyway, it will soon be time to go home, so I will catch you on the flip side, friends!

Tomorrow morning I have my appointment with the sleep specialist. I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am about this! The appointment is at 8:15 and they want me to arrive half an hour early, so I'll be leaving around 7:00 just to be on the safe side. I don't know what the traffic is like going there at that hour, and I don't want to be late. I hope that I'll be leaving with a prescription for a CPAP in hand, and it's my intention to get an appointment with a local provider I found ASAP. In fact, the plan is to call the minute I get out of the appointment and see how quickly I can get an appointment.

Have I mentioned that I am TIRED of constantly feeling like warmed-over crap?

Anyway, I am very excited about the appointment tomorrow. I hope it goes well. If it doesn't, I may very well cry. I wonder if I can get a same-day appointment. That would be ideal, but I'm not going to get my hopes up too high for that. I do hope I can get an appointment this week, though, and that they can accommodate a later time since I don't have a ton of time available to take off work. We shall see, I guess.

In unrelated news, the quail are still doing well. I changed out their food and water this morning, and once I'd closed the door behind me I heard some very loud and indignant tweedling. I initially shrugged it off, but the tweedling repeated as I went up the stairs, so I went back to investigate. I checked the quail's bin, and as I was puzzling over it I heard more loud and indignant tweedling and realized that one of the boys had managed to get out of the enclosure and was standing under the sink, making his displeasure known. I think he was mostly mad about being separated from his friends and girlfriends, or maybe he thought they'd make a break for freedom with him. Either way, I scooped him up and put him back, and he immediately settled down.

I now have four eggs! It's very exciting. I don't know which of the females is being such a good layer, but I am certainly not complaining. It might not be just one, either, but I have a completely unsubstantiated feeling that all the eggs are from one bird. I hope the other two get in on the action soon. Three small eggs a day is the equivalent of one normal chicken egg per day, which means a total of about five to seven eggs a week, if all the ladies lay regularly. I'm kind of excited for my first quail egg dish. I don't know if I should make a really simple omelette or if I should look up a recipe specific for quail eggs. I am tempted to at least do some research on that front. Quail eggs are considered a delicacy by many, after all.

I had my weekly Sunday Skype call with my parents. I tried to get them onto Zoom since Skype is disappearing in three weeks, but my mother especially is attached to Skype, so we're sticking with that to the bitter end, apparently. My mother is anxious about my move, and as usual her anxiety is translating into her getting super passive-aggressive and slightly nasty with me. This is not a trait I particularly enjoy, because among other things she tends to talk to me as though I am a developmentally disabled child who's playing with missile launchers. It particularly annoys me when she condescendingly explains to me that I will need to make a budget, and then tries to explain home maintenance to me while not knowing the difference between a septic holding tank, a propane tank, and a sump pump (literally the conversation we had today, no exaggeration).

Anyway, I have been dealing with my mother for 46 years now, and because I am an adult with good communication tools now and enough empathy to understand that it's my mother's rampant undiagnosed anxiety disorder causing her to act this way, I gently called her out on her behaviour and eventually redirected her energy to something more positive. She initially denied that she was being nasty, but eventually kind of grudgingly semi-admitted to it. The rest of the Skype call went much more smoothly after that, and she was in a much better mood by the time we ended the call.

I made a pseudo-roast chicken in the Instant Pot for dinner, and now I have leftovers for the week to go with my borscht, as well as rice, and a package of spicy lentil something-or-other that my friend Sarah gave to me last weekend. She's allergic to dairy and accidentally bough the packet even though it contains both butter and cream. Since it's spicy and has tomatoes KK won't touch it with a ten-foot pole, so that means I get to have it for lunch, which sounds delightful. KK tolerates lentils but only up to a point, so adding spice and tomatoes is literally a recipe for disaster.

I definitely need to step up my packing game this week. I've been feeling overwhelmed about things, so I think I will start in my bedroom instead of the living room, because it will (I HOPE, DEAR GOD) be easier to make decisions about de-cluttering and the like. I plan on significantly downsizing my wardrobe, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway. I have a dresser and a night table that I need to empty, as well as my small library of reference books. I also need to get rid of my terrible broken air conditioning unit anyway, which should free up a fair bit of space for staging my boxes. I should probably consider paring down some of my linens, too. I need to let go of some of my prepper tendencies here and embrace some minimalism where it comes to my immediate possessions.

Okay. Time to get to bed so I won't accidentally oversleep tomorrow and miss my sleep appointment. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 We got the house! *giddy dancing*

Today has been an absolute tidal wave of documents to sign: the waiver for the conditions, the representation agreement for my real estate agent (because our old one expired--oops!), a couple of minor counter-offers from the sellers about the exact closing date and a request to keep their loft beds, which I gladly accepted. I then had to contact one of the lawyers recommended by my real estate agent, and I will have to pay out a truly staggering amount of money for that particular service (as well as land transfer fees and the like).

I am very excited!

I also immediately began panicking about how much packing there is to do before we move. The new closing date, instead of being June 4th, is now May 26th. That means we have exactly six weeks and four days to pack up this nightmare of a hoarders' house before then. Of course we won't be moving on the closing date itself, but since that week is my week off from work it only makes sense to move sometime during that week so that I don't have to take extra time off work to make it happen.

Right now I'm in the initial planning stages of the packing. Mostly my concern is that I have nowhere in this house to use as a staging area for boxes the way I normally do, because there's just no room anywhere anymore. Previously I would have used the living room, but KK will likely not put up with that sort of thing for six weeks, so I'll have to come up with something else. I don't really want to use the basement, which is already kind of full, and it means navigating the stairs with a lot of boxes, both taking them down and then bringing them back up, because I can all but guarantee that movers won't want to navigate my death stairs any more than absolutely necessary, but I think it may end up being my best bet.

I want to break the house down into "zones" that I will give myself a certain number of days each to pack up, and hope I'm not woefully underestimating the amount of time it will take to pack everything. I know for instance that the kitchen is going to take much longer to pack up than I anticipate, because that's what ALWAYS happens when I pack up a kitchen. There are too many small bits and bobs, and wrapping up fragile plates and cups is fiddly and time consuming, so I need to give myself at least a week to pack that up. The basement and the garage are currently nightmares (especially the garage, oh God), but I might do as I've done in the past and rent a small U-Haul van and move a bunch of the gardening tools and other things that aren't as easy to pack into boxes myself.

Okay, all that stress has tired me out. :P Time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I am nearly done. Creeping up on halfway through tonight’s night shift (and by the time I finish this post it may be past that time, depending on how often I get interrupted for work).

 It's the first night shift of the week, so I haven't yet descended into the usual madness of trying to revamp my entire life and making plans to become a whole new person by next Monday morning. Night shifts do that to me every time without fail, but usually the urge to create new calendars and to-do lists and coloured charts doesn't strike until a few nights in. We'll see how long I last this time. I might go a little longer this time because I have the professional organizer coming starting next Tuesday, so that might already serve to scratch the itch since re-organizing my whole kitchen does kind of have a similar feeling to re-organizing my whole life.

I really hope that we can get the kitchen into a properly functional state. Trying to cook in there is making my soul shrivel these days. All of my cupboards are topsy-turvy, I have almost no floor space, no counter space, and I can't stand directly in front of the stove because of the storage rack thing I put in because I couldn't figure out how to use the space well enough to store all of my kitchen equipment. So, yeah, we have four days of four hours each to get the kitchen whipped into shape. I would love to be able to just open my cupboards and grab what I need without things constantly falling over or on top of my head. Part of it is an organization problem, but mostly it's a clutter problem, and that is why I am paying the professional organizer the big bucks. Although to be fair, for almost an entire week of work she won't exactly be making a killing after taxes. I think her hourly wage comes to more than mine, but I don't know that I'd be chomping at the bit to do her job.

I've got two hours or so until I can go home. Today is the only day before Friday when I'll be able to get a decent amount of sleep. Tomorrow I have an appointment (virtual, thank goodness) with the dietitian from the bariatric clinic at 8:30am, and then I got roped into a separate meeting with two members of Ministry & Counsel at 14:30, which means I'm going to get about two hours of sleep at best between those two meetings. I might be able to get away with going back to bed after that, but I'm not super optimistic. Then on Thursday I have a follow-up appointment with the naturopath (also virtual, thank goodness), so that means I won't get much sleep then either. I hate scheduling things during my night shifts, but in all these cases I had very little say about the timing. Blargh.

And, of course, somewhere in all that I have to get over my weird psychological block and get my seeds started for the garden this year. I'm reluctant to sacrifice my sleep today, but maybe if I leave KK to fend for herself for dinner I can sleep late and then start the seeds between the time I wake up and the time I need to leave. 

In unrelated news, I've been watching Chicago Med in my spare time, partly because I do like medical dramas (I was an early adopter when ER came on the air in the 90s and have never looked back), and it's not exactly good, but I can't seem to stop watching it because it's like a train wreck. There isn't a single character in this show with an ounce of moral fibre, and they all seem to spend their time making terrible, selfish, impulsive decisions based on their whims, often at the expense of their patients. All of these people are walking disasters who need multiple years of therapy and have no idea how to communicate. Chicago Med differs from most medical dramas that I've watched by having a pretty strong emphasis on emergency psychiatry, and one of the main characters is Dr. Daniel Charles, head of the psych department.

Now, I honestly don't know many heads of psychiatry who routinely hang out in the emergency room (Dr. Charles lurks around corners and observes patients), but apparently for the purposes of the show he does just that. That, and conduct wildly unethical "experiments" on patients and colleagues alike (giving out placebos to patients to "test" whether their problems are medical, lying to coworkers about the status of patients, egregiously violating his daughter's explicitly set boundaries, etc..). He's a weirdly likable character, mostly because Oliver Platt is a gem and plays him as an affable, cardigan-wearing father type with a penchant for collecting autistic-coded young women to be his protégées. I do understand that the show has to come up with drama because real life medicine doesn't make for good television, but if this were real life none of these people would still have their medical licenses.

Anyway, I think that's enough talking about television. It's just this weird little micro-obsession with a TV show. Definitely not enough to want to join the fandom or anything, but enough that I want to keep watching, apparently, in spite of the fact that the show is ridiculous in the extreme.

Okay. Time to wrap this up. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I've had Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, on my to-read pile for longer than I should probably admit to in public, and I'm about halfway through now. It is a difficult read, even though he mostly doesn't go into very gruesome detail about his experiences in the camps. It just seems extra important to read it right now, as history is repeating itself.

I will have to give this book a lot of consideration in the coming weeks and months, and maybe my takeaway once I've finished reading it will be different from what it is now. So far, though, what I've come away with aside from the horrors of the concentration camps is that everyone finds their own way to survive the horrors, that everyone has to find their own meaning and work toward that.

Earlier today, Sharon Astyk posted that the US has "crossed a Rubicon." She was referring to the fact that the Trump administration has begun deliberately disobeying judicial orders. Up until recently, they were mostly kinda sorta obeying them, but now to all appearances that has gone out the window.


I was talking to my mother on the phone about all of this, and she was lamenting that some of her closest friends seem completely oblivious to everything that's going on. The two women she was referring to are both very wealthy white women, and their money and age and general privilege will insulate them against most of the bad things that might happen if Canada were to fall to military aggression by the USA. I suggested she talk to another family friend because that family is Jewish, and if there's one thing I've learned from my Jewish friends over the years, it's that every Jewish family is always on the lookout for when it's time to pack up and go.

My mother was surprised at first, but she understood and accepted my explanation that Jews have been persecuted throughout history and are therefore extremely vigilant about when the next round of persecution might start. I did caution her to tread carefully, because the last thing I want is for our Jewish friends to be accidentally even more traumatized, but I think it will be fine. My mother is unlikely to talk to them about it because I'm pretty sure she'll forget about it, and even if she doesn't forget I trust her to be reasonably tactful about it.

I should point out that my mother herself is a war refugee from World War II (or right after, in her case). She and her family had to flee her country in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs and some jewelry sewn into the lining of my grandmother's coat that they might be able to sell later on. She carries that trauma with her quietly, and doesn't speak of it in terms of the terror and uncertainty and grief that was an intrinsic part of the experience. A couple of years ago we discovered some old photographs taken by my grandfather during this time, and the expression on my mother's face as well as on the faces of my uncle and grandparents, is identical to the expression I see on the faces of refugees in news reports. The look is identical and unmistakable: the trauma is universal.

So I'm not surprised that, now that we are watching the USA repeat the history of Germany leading up to World War II, that my mother is anxious about it. Hell, I'm anxious about it too, and pretty much anyone who is paying attention should be somewhere on the spectrum between anxious and panicked depending on where they live and how directly they're likely to be impacted. Right now, living in Canada, we are "safe" until the USA takes direct violent action against us, whether it be military or something else. The odds of the USA trying to annex Canada and in so doing triggering World War III are definitely not zero at this point. Honestly, if nothing else, this is teaching me a lesson about my own complacency: up until, oh, three months ago, I was convinced that it was impossible for there to ever be military action of any importance in North America. After all, Canada has only one major border, and it was with our longest-standing ally. At worst we might be collateral damage if some enemy of the US decided to launch a bunch of missiles at us. It never occurred to me that the US might turn on us. I always assumed that if there WAS a World War III, it would take place in the Middle East and probably have Israel as Ground Zero. Which would, of course, be terrible, but I wouldn't have to worry about my immediate loved ones.

Just goes to show, I guess.

It's been tough finding any mutual aid groups in my area, for obvious reasons. Mutual aid groups by their very nature kind of have to be kind of secretive because they use a diversity of tactics to make sure people get the help they need, and some of those diverse tactics are not always super legal. If nothing else, my own little group that so far is just chatting to each other on Signal is doing okay. There isn't a plan of action yet, but there's a lot of sharing of information and resources, and I think eventually when we've actually identified what the most pressing needs are, we might be able to move forward more effectively. Right now most of us are in the same boat: we're reasonably financially stable, but all of us are a few bad months away from being in a really tight spot, if not outright unhoused. So I guess it's just a matter of seeing what floats to the surface once the waters get agitated enough.

At some point this week i need to get my seeds started. It's at the point now where if I leave it too much longer I won't be have viable seedlings to plant. Putting seeds into soil will at least give me the illusion of doing something productive with my life.

 I know, I am a broken record. I regret nothing!

I will say that after multiple nights of going to bed early, including last night when I managed to get to sleep at 8:30pm, this morning I found it marginally easier to drag my carcass out of bed and face the day. I was just as tired for the rest of the day, but I was filled with less loathing at the thought of getting up and doing things upon waking, and I didn't hit the snooze button at all, which may honestly be a minor miracle.

It's 8:30 now, so I obviously won't be getting to bed quite as early tonight, but I also don't need to get up as early tomorrow since I don't have to be at work at 7:30am. I am still planning on getting up early-ish tomorrow because I want to try making yoghurt in my Instant Pot, and it's a lengthy process. Luckily I don't have to be around for most of that process, but I do have to be around at the beginning to get things going, and I want to make sure that I don't have to stay up late to put said yoghurt away once it's done, supposing it's edible.

The rest of my plans for tomorrow remain unchanged. Pick up my new red wriggler friends, go see my doctor to request a blood test, and then come home and dive into garden things.

KK is working from home tomorrow, so I'm going to have to get over all the weird feelings I have about Doing Things(TM) when she's around. Somehow having her home makes me feel incredibly awkward about trying to do things like clean the house or organize things or even do a bunch of cooking.

Also! There is a full blood moon eclipse tonight! It's very exciting. Unfortunately it will be at its peak at 2:26 tomorrow morning, but since we won't have another full eclipse until 2029 I have set an alarm so I can go take a look. I don't know if I will be able to drag myself out of bed at that hour, but I will at least give myself the opportunity. I got to watch the solar eclipse last year, which was super cool, and I'd like to watch the lunar eclipse as well.

Okay, time for bed so the odds will be more in favour of my not missing the eclipse. Catch you on the flip side!

Another short entry, because I am still tired and all I want to do is go to bed. However, I am determined not to break my streak of posting every day, even if it's just a short and mostly symbolic post. It's not even the end of February, so it seems like it's way too early to give up on this particular goal, right?

 Anyway, today wasn't much to write home about. KK and I attended the second part of the retirement course. The morning was all about maintaining your health after retirement, and it was the usual slightly gas-lighty, victim-blamey stuff you hear from people these days: most of your health is within your control if you engage in these specific behaviours! I'm not saying we should abdicate all responsibility for our health, but I swear to God, if ONE MORE PERSON suggests I try mindfulness, I will not be held responsible for my actions! Blah blah blah, exercise more and eat your vegetables, and 40% of cancer is preventable if you make good choices (that last one made my blood boil).

The afternoon was much better. Far less rage-inducing. We covered estate planning and what you need to write a will and some of the trickier legal things about financial and medical powers of attorney. Some of the stuff I already knew, but there was a lot I didn't know or realized I hadn't fully understood, so I was quite pleased with that. Sometime in the next couple of months I need to scrape together some money, hire an attorney, and have a proper will drawn up so that if I get hit by a bus, someone will be able to take care of my dogs. KK loves the dogs but she's physically not up to the task of caring for them, and has admitted as much, so another home will need to be found for them, one which can accommodate two high-energy hooligans. I wouldn't want them to be separated, especially for Pixie's sake: she's never known a life without her pack, and losing me, KK (whom she adores) and Rika and also Peggy would be scary and confusing and stressful for her. Peggy would also be stressed, but she at least has known life as an only dog, so she might be more resilient, but Pixie is a stage five clinger. With any luck, we will never need to find out.

Tomorrow I need to crisis clean all of downstairs because we're having guests on Saturday and I don't want to spend all of Saturday cleaning, especially since I need to cook dinner. It's funny because the professional organizer is coming at 15:00 and normally I'd want to leave all of the clutter and nonsense where it is so she can see the disaster she's getting herself into, but guests on Saturday absolutely trumps that. I might take some before and after pictures for her benefit. I'm fully expecting her to flee for the hills, but we shall see. The very good news is that she is perfecty happy to wear a mask while she's here, which is awesome. I appreciate people who are willing to do that these days, otherwise I wouldn't be working with her at all.

I have some semi-elaborate plans for dinner on Saturday. I am making green onion bread rolls as an entrée along with roast red pepper soup, then as a main course I have sesame chicken with curry rice and roasted asparagus planned, then a salad (Caesar salad because it's the only one KK will eat), and for dessert I plan to pick up something from a local patisserie, because the cooking alone is going to take quite a long time and dessert is not at all my forte. I hope it all turns out good!

On that note, it is time for bed. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

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. ;)