mousme | Entries tagged with quaker

1- State of the Phnee( Read more... )

Current Mood: determined

I think I’m just going to have to accept that updates are going to be sporadic for a while. I’m finding my home setup not especially conducive to sitting at the computer to write updates, because it either means putting my entire bed up, which is inconvenient, or else sitting on the edge of the bed to type, which is not super comfortable and puts pressure on my lower back. So I mostly get the opportunity to update when things are quiet at work, and things have not been quiet for a couple of weeks now. It wasn’t even quiet enough the last two nights to give me a chance to update. Oh well.

Anyway, this is a very long update, so I will put it behind a cut.

1- State of the Phnee

( Update under the cut! )

Current Mood: stressed

1-State of the Phnee

Okay, I missed a few days, there. I blame the sleep deprivation, because I just forgot about posting for three days and only remembered a few minutes ago. Oops? I’m going to give myself a bit of grace, there, because the last few days of night shifts were rough AF, as the kids are saying these days.

There’s actually not much to report since I last posted, at least. The State of Society worship sharing went well, even though I had some moments of frustration beforehand. The current set of Friends who are “in charge” of things are really bad at communicating with me. It could just be that my very neurodivergent brain is not picking up on all the neurotypical subtext that’s happening, but they act as if I should somehow read their mind and know when they are going to deviate from the standard operating procedure, which I cannot do. My ESP has never been as well developed as other people would like.

The same Friend who has been bitching about hybrid meetings suggested, less than half an hour before the worship sharing, that we should postpone it, because there was a clothing swap happening at the same time which had been “on the calendar for a really long time!” I had to forcefully remind myself that the Peace Testimony is an important part of being a Quaker, and that it would be very un-Quakerly indeed of me to reach through the computer screen and strangle her. Luckily another member of M&C who was there in person gave her a very firm “no,” because we have very tight deadlines for the SoS report. When the Friend pushed back, the M&C member gently but firmly told her, “If you would like to come to the worship sharing late, that is a choice you are welcome to make, but we will be starting on time.” Shockingly, she did not come late.

I tried to attend the Continuing Meeting of M&C in the afternoon, but the Zoom link didn’t work for me, and since it was right in the time that I needed to be preparing for work, I decided after 15 minutes of trying that I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I had already been up for 26 hours by then and did not have the wherewithal to fight with emails and Zoom and what have you. I will try again next month.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but KK gave me an Oodie for my birthday, which for those of you who are not immersed in American apparel companies, is basically an oversized hoodie made out of fleece that is extremely cozy. Mine is teal coloured and has lily pads, tadpoles, and frogs in various normal-to-weird poses on it. It is VERY cozy. Knowing that I was exhausted after not sleeping since the previous day’s threshing session on Israel and Palestine and the Apartheid-free communities pledge, I anticipated that I was going to get very cold at work. I am generally a person who runs hot unless I’m very tired or getting sick. So, I decided to bring it to work with me, which was both a genius idea and a terrible idea. It was genius in that I was very, very warm and cozy. It was a terrible idea in that I was so warm and cozy that I kept nodding off at my desk because the shift wasn’t very busy and so I didn’t have anything to work on to keep me awake. My shift partner was very understanding about it, luckily.

We had a mandatory Town Hall meeting on Monday, where our execs blue smoke up our asses and then pissed on us and told us it was raining. Okay, I am exaggerating ever so slightly, but it was 45 minutes of them patting themselves on the back for all their cost saving measures, and oh, by the way, we did sort of kind of lie a little bit when we said we wouldn’t be cutting jobs and your managers will be in touch with you over the next few days to tell you if you’ve been affected. Oh, but WE EMPATHIZE WITH YOU and we want to make sure you know WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER except that, of course, we execs are keeping our jobs, and it just sucks to be you, sorry not sorry. Blech.

Yesterday I got to sleep in a bit, then puttered around the house, then had a therapy appointment, and then I went for a walk with my friend Jan and her dog Lightfoot as well as Peggy and Pixie. It was a very nice walk, but poor Peggy was having a “clacky hip day” (she has hip dysplasia) and was struggling a bit by the end. We let them romp around in a field at the end of the walk, and Lightfoot and Pixie had a blast chasing each other through the snow, but Peggy was tired and sore and didn’t want to run, so she got quite cold standing still, and we called it pretty soon so that she could go inside and warm up. Next time I will bring the Brittanies’ winter coats with me to help keep them warm for longer. They’re usually okay in the winter, but I think we pushed Peggy a little too hard.

Today was a very quiet day too. I did some shoveling, took the recycling away from the curb because they changed the schedule on me over the holidays and so I’ve been putting the wrong recyclables out and my cardboard boxes were blowing all over the countryside. I spent most of the day hanging out quietly with the dogs, took some time to refill the quail’s food and water, and did some dishes. Nothing to write home about.

KK has bought herself a walker with wheels (purple, naturally) and is looking into acquiring a motorized scooter as well, for getting around outside the house. We’re not sure if our insurance will pay for both or only one, so she’s holding off making a claim until she gets the scooter and will go from there. Hopefully that will improve her pain levels while outside the house, because that’s been an increasing problem for her for the past few months. She got x-rays taken a few weeks ago, and the arthritis has progressed to her hips and her back, which is not good news. I’m hoping she and her doctor can discuss better pain management than what she’s been getting so far (which basically boils down to a lot of NSAIDs and Tylenol Arthritis). I don’t know at all what the future holds there.

2-State of the Smallholding

Apart from shoveling and quail, there’s nothing major on the home front. Given KK’s deteriorating health and pain levels, I am seriously considering talking to our local handyman about what it would cost to install a ramp in front of the house. Apart from KK my friend Amy is also a wheelchair user, and my mother’s mobility is getting steadily worse as well, so it would make a certain amount of sense to make the house more accessible. That being said, cost is going to be an issue, because I am not made of money, and while there are theoretically grants available for making your dwelling more accessible, I am above the income threshold where that would be available to me. The threshold is very low, meaning I would basically have to be unemployed or making minimum wage to qualify, which is luckily not the case. It’s one of those situations where I don’t have enough money to afford the thing, but I have too much income on paper to qualify for any kind of assistance in affording the thing. Oh well. So, yes, I will be taking to AJ (the aforementioned local handyman) and asking for an estimate and we will go from there.

3-State of the news

The entire internet is creaming its pants about Mark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday, and all I can do is roll my eyes at all the people who apparently cannot see beyond the surface level of his words. The speech was a very pretty one, and definitely an understated “fuck you, we’re not playing with you anymore!” to the USA, so naturally Trump has his panties in a twist over it. However, anyone who knows even a little bit about Canada’s history, its current political state, and the current state of the world, would have to side-eye that speech quite a lot. It was a speech that was designed to comfort the comfortable, and all those comfortable people at Davos gave it a standing ovation. There have been a few very well written critiques already, and I may post or link them in future entries for future reference (because the internet is only forever for things you never want to see again).

*sigh*

I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep and get a bunch of stuff done tomorrow. I would like to get in a workout, do some tidying around the house, and I need to do a bunch of work on the State of Society Report and finish up my D&D character’s history to send to my DM. So much to do, so little time!

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

1-State of the Phnee

Holy Hannah, I am TIRED, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I woke up on time for the threshing session and managed to stay alert and pay attention for the whole two hours of discussion. It was the usual blend of informative and frustrating, the way all group discussions tend to be for me. I’ve found lately that I don’t have as much patience as I used to for listening to people who don’t listen to instructions or speak only to repeat the same thing four other people have already said or to only talk about themselves when the subject matter is about a much larger issue.

This is not a flex, as the youths say these days, it’s a character flaw that I am working to correct in myself. I need to find more compassion and understanding and make space for people who are interacting with the world in a way that I think is incorrect. I recognize that this is an example of rigidity in my thinking, but I’m having trouble with the praxis part of things these days. I don’t have the emotional reserves to hold that much space for people I don’t know well and who are getting under my skin for their perceived flaws. Work in progress, I guess.

I got the announcements done for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and since no one from M&C has volunteered to be the Greeter, I will have to forgo most of my sleep tomorrow in order to get up in time for the start of Meeting. If I’m lucky I may manage to get a one hour nap before Meeting, and then I will have to be awake for the rest of the day until I get home around 08:00 Monday morning. I will have to invest in some caffeine, I think, to make sure I get through my shift and also don’t kill myself accidentally while driving home. It’s not ideal.

Speaking of work, there is a mandatory all-staff meeting on Monday at 13:30, because of course there is. So that means even less sleep, since that’s the time when I would have been recovering from my night shifts. *sigh* It’s a meeting addressing government cuts and what’s called “Work Force Adjustment,” which is the government’s fancy way of saying “layoffs.” This doesn’t affect me directly, as WFA only applies to indeterminate employees and I am a term employee. They can simply not renew my contract, and it ends there, whereas an indeterminate employee subjected to WFA is subject to different regulations and still has some rights. Still, it will be interesting to see what our execs have to say, since they swore up and down that they would be addressing budget shortfalls without resorting to cutting positions, and I am quite sure that that was horseshit. I am cynically curious as to how they are going to spin this.

In unrelated news, I have been putting off three things of varying levels of importance because they all involve having to make phone calls to people I don’t know. The least important is calling a local(ish) hairdresser to address the absolute disaster that my hair has become in the past year (it’s been at least that long since my last cut, and our well water is very hard and does my poor hair no favours). I also need to make a long overdue dentist appointment and am hoping to find someone local(ish) so I don’t have to drive all the way to Ottawa every time I need to get work done. I haven’t been to the dentist in a long time and am quite sure that my teeth are… not in great shape. I had a referral years ago to a periodontist for receding gums, and since I didn’t have $10,000 at the time to spend on treatment (still don’t), I can only imagine things have gotten worse since then.

Last but not least I need to make an appointment with my doctor. She and several other doctors left the clinic where I was a patient for over 10 years without so much as a by-your-leave, moved even further west from where I live (so that now it will take me at least an hour and a half to drive there), and are now charging an arm and a leg for a bunch of services they used to offer for free at my previous clinic. I was never offered the option of staying with my previous clinic, which is very frustrating, and now I can either pay out the nose and individually for things like forms and faxed prescriptions or pay a yearly “flat fee” for the privilege of accessing medical services. I fucking hate the slow creep of privatization in our healthcare system, it SUCKS. And of course when they moved their booking system was down for nearly six weeks and I can’t even access it without having to call first. I was supposed to get an appointment six weeks after my surgery, but since there was no way to contact them (no phone, no online system), it’s now been three months with no follow-up to make sure that, for instance, my blood pressure medication doesn’t make me violently ill the same way it did to KK. *sigh*

If I had even a little bit more energy (and a lot less anxiety!) I’d consider running for office, because things have absolutely gone to shit in this province and if I’m going to bitch about it I should probably try to do something about it. Of course, I don’t think I’d win. I am a terrible public speaker with the charisma of a boiled potato. However, I feel like the effort needs to be made in some way. Of course, I’d probably have to go and lock down all the fanfiction I wrote all those years ago, which all seems like a lot of work. ;)

2-State of the smallholding

The water heaters I got for the quail somehow got unplugged, so the poor things had no water when I check them this morning—everything was completely frozen over. I plugged everything back in and added some fresh water to tide them over while I waited for everything to melt again. I have no idea how it got unplugged—the only explanation I can think of is that I must have accidentally pulled on the extension cord when I was changing out the food and water at some point.

Sometime tomorrow I also need to make a point of putting out all the paper and cardboard recycling as well. I missed the last collection day, and things have really started to pile up.

There isn’t much else going on right now. I’ve been very passively trying to think of how to get help with “farming” things now that KK appears to have more permanently injured herself. She’s looking into getting herself both a walker and a motorized scooter to help her get around outside the house, and whereas in the past she was able to at least walk over to the garage to turn the light for the quail on and off and sometimes even check their water and food levels, she now either can’t or won’t do it. That means that when I’m working evening shifts or weekend night shifts, or in cases when I’m visiting my parents in Montreal, I will need to find someone else to come look after the quail and eventually the other animals I want to get. The original plan was that I was going to be primarily responsible for all the smallholding stuff, but that KK would be my backup on the rare occasions I wasn’t available or if I was ever ill. Obviously that’s no longer the case, so I need to find a new solution for that problem.

3-State of the news

There hasn’t been anything really new since my last post, just updates on the current (very) long list of global garbage fires. Greenland, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine… it’s a depressingly long list, really.

Our Prime Minister is now in Doha, talking trade with Qatar of all places. After China, I suppose it wasn’t that big of a stretch for him to decide that we can absolutely ignore all those pesky human rights violations and atrocities if it means making the big bucks. *sigh* I was already side eyeing the deal with China a little bit, but Qatar is in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations. I remember the horror stories that came out during the last FIFA cup, and I am disappointed but not surprised that our PM continues to prove himself a Conservative wrapped in a Liberal trenchcoat.

Okay, time to get some other stuff done. I have to figure out a reading for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and then if there’s time I have some personal projects I want to work on. I need to write up the background for my new D&D character, and I’m also working with some other people on a Soopar Seekrit Prodgikt which could possibly turn into a TV show (probably not, but the chances are not zero), so I have some writing to do this week.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: cynical

1-State of the Phnee

Today was very light on the sleep and very heavy on the Quaker. To quote one of my favourite TikTokers: “I shall explain.” (Seriously, if you are on TikTok, check out Philogène, she is hilarious!)

I think I mentioned that I had to sacrifice some sleep today because of the Worship Sharing on Health Concerns. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but boy howdy was I wrong about that! We were plagued by the weirdest tech problems I have ever experienced using Zoom. I started out by clicking the new link the organizer had sent just last night, and it didn’t connect, but kept showing a message that it was “waiting for the host to connect.” Now, I knew this couldn’t be right because the host/organizer has set up this meeting to not have a lobby/waiting room. I exited the meeting and went back to the original link that had been sent out a few days ago (identical to the one I clicked, I might add!) and immediately found myself in the meeting with two other people, but with no sign of my co-hosts, which was very weird as it was now a few minutes past the hour.

Before I could figure out what had gone wrong, though, I had to go into de-escalation mode with one of the attenders. She is one of the main reasons we started this worship sharing circle, because she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s sometime last year (if memory serves). She had been worried when no organizers were there when the meeting started and then struggled with the mute function and promptly burst into tears because she was so flustered and upset. We worked through it, but it was pretty distressing to have her become upset by the very thing which we hoped would be helpful. Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, folks, even in the very early stages.

I got hold of the host by phone, and she was in a state because her internet had gone down, and then once it was running again Zoom insisted on updating, making her very late to her own meeting. That was when she told me that she and the other host were in another meeting with three attenders because they couldn’t get the first link to work at first. I have no idea how that’s even possible, but here we are. She agreed to bring everyone over because I didn’t want to force the attender with Alzheimer’s who was already super upset to have to log off our meeting and then log onto another one, but a few minutes later she texted to say they couldn’t do it and so we were going to simply have separate meetings. Oof.

Things actually went well after that. The two attenders and I had a quiet, intimate conversation about the challenges they were facing, and I talked a little bit about the challenges we’ve been having due to KK’s increasing levels of disability, as well as the frustrations I’ve been having at work trying to get a very simple accommodation (I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but basically I have nerve damage in my spine from 2022 and I need a functional headset to do my job. One of the workstations at work has a phone which cannot take a headset because the jack is broken, and I’ve been asking them to replace it for nearly a year with no apparent progress.). It was a really nice conversation. The other attender is a really nice lady, but she is VERY ADHD and kept talking long past when the attender with Alzheimer's had mentioned she was tired and wanted to stop, so I stepped in after about five minutes when she asked yet another question and firmly but gently told her we were going to stop and have a few moments of worshipful silence. And THEN, bless her heart, she KEPT TALKING during the silence about how great silence was and how much she needed it. *facepalm* She is a sweet lady, but my God, the irony.

Once we were done, instead of being able to go back to bed, I then had to debrief with the other two hosts, because of course we weren’t privy to the contents of each other’s meetings. That debrief took another hour, so it was nearly 1pm by the time I was able to go back to sleep.

On the one hand, I am lamenting my lack of sleep, but on the other I am glad that I did choose to go, because otherwise who knows how upset that first attender would have been when no one showed up to talk to her? And my co-hosts and I were able to talk through some solutions for next time. We’ll be implementing some best practices moving forward so that we have some redundancies in place.

I’ve been working on Quaker stuff on and off since I got to work, too (when not dealing with actual work, that is). I’ve realized now that I’m the clerk of Ministry & Counsel that I really need to step up my game. I’ve been sort of coasting in a more advisory role for the past two years but now is not the time to be indecisive about things. The first thing I’m going to work on is our organization and communication. I decided after some deliberation and discernment with the other members of M&C to create a dedicated Gmail account for us. Originally, I thought this would be useful in preventing Members and Attenders from Ottawa Meeting from constantly bombarding only one member of M&C (who is a registered therapist) for advice and services. This way most of the requests will come to all of us, rather than just her. Now, however, I think it will serve a much more vital role. I’m going to use the calendar function to schedule all of our monthly meetings, as well as to handle the Greeter schedule on Sundays (we need an online Greeter and an in-person Greeter every time), and also all of our worship sharing sessions, Claremont Dialogues, and whatever else comes up. I’ve also created a bunch of folders in our Google Drive for agendas, meeting minutes, and reference documents. I don’t know how much the other members of M&C will use it (all of them are in their seventies and eighties), but at the very least it will allow me to track and share things more easily.

I’ve also sent out a bunch of emails from the new account to try to wrangle all the cats that have gotten loose in the past week or so. Here’s hoping I can get all my ducks in a row on this front. I want M&C to start being more active and present in the Meeting, because I get the feeling that we’ve been at a bit of a remove for years (long before any of the current members were there, for that matter) and many younger attenders at Meeting have no idea who we are or what we do. I’m going to reach out to the clerk of Adult Education and Outreach (I hope it’s the person I think it is—I will have to double check) to talk to them about the possibility of hosting a series of Ministry & Counsel 101 sessions: basically very short sessions, probably online, when people can come online, listen to a 5-10 minute presentation on a specific topic that M&C deals with, and then ask us questions if they have any.

I still need to write queries for our Claremont Dialogue about using technology/hosting hybrid meetings. I have a bit of writer’s block because I know that I’m super biased on the pro-tech/hybrid meeting side of things, and I want to write queries that will allow everyone to express their opinions but also encourage them to be nuanced and discerning when they do express said opinions. Being a spiritual leader is hard, yo!

In completely unrelated news, I’ve continued listening to Persepolis Rising and am happy to report that my favourite character is not dead and is just much older and even crankier than before. I am overjoyed. ;)

2-State of the smallholding

The kitchen sink appears to be stopped up again, which I only noticed just as I needed to leave for work. I can only hope that KK doesn’t somehow make it worse the way she did last time. I’m not sure where my plunger is, but I will try to locate it and maybe go to Canadian Tire to get a proper plumbing snake on my way home. I’m working an hour of OT this morning anyway for a coworker who has a medical appointment, and then I need to stop for gas, and there’s a Canadian Tire right next to the Costco where I’ll be getting gas for the car anyway.

I need to get over my weird psychological aversion to finishing up the tidying/cleaning/organizing of the main space in the house. Like, yes, sure, it’s all overwhelming and A Lot, but if I don’t do it, it’s not going to get done, and I am the only one it bothers, so obviously if I want it fixed, I need to fix it myself. Part of it is that I am resentful at having to do it by myself when I am not responsible for a significant portion of the disaster. I do realize that this is kindergartener reasoning: “It’s not my mess! So-and-so made the mess, it’s not fair that I need to clean it!” No, Phnee, you live in a communal household, so communal chores are communal. Even though I don’t have an official autism diagnosis, I suspect that this falls under the rigid thinking/strong sense of “justice” criteria as well. Having a strong sense of justice often gets mistaken for a person being more moral or ethical or just than other people, but that’s a misconception: it’s an internal sense of justice, based entirely on values that you pick up from your family, community, and immediate surroundings. Much the same way a toddler will stomp their feet and complain it’s not “fair” that they have to go to bed when older people “get” to stay up late. So, yes, I think that’s probably a chunk of what’s happening, here. The other part is that I just hate cleaning because it’s hot and painful and time-consuming and mind-numbingly boring, regardless of whether I listen to music or a podcast or an audiobook, or whatever else to distract me.

I’m not really going to have much time to do any of said cleaning until next Monday, after all that. Today I have my follow-up appointment with the bariatric clinic, tomorrow I will need to carve out some time for grocery shopping, Saturday there is the “threshing session” that I mentioned the other day, and on Sunday we still don’t have an online Greeter for Meeting, and then we have the worship sharing session for the State of Society Report, followed by the Continuing Meeting of Ministry & Counsel for all the M&C folks across Canada. All of this means that I am going to be absolutely *fried*, and that attempting to do anything other than very light cleaning is going to end in tears, either metaphorical or real.

Next week, however, I have several days off, and even though I have a couple of commitments I mostly have a fair bit of time to schedule as I please.

3-State of the news

Well, François Legault has resigned, sort of unexpectedly and sort of not. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has had a horrible year full of scandals, resignations, and horrifying budgets. They’re currently in a neck-and-neck race for last place in the polls. He has no clear successor, and they’re staring down the barrel of an election in the fall. It looks like the Parti Québécois may be poised to form the next government unless something huge happens between now and the elections.

In international news, all eyes are still focused on Iran and Greenland. There are ICE agents moving into multiple cities and states in the US, terrorizing the citizens and violating the constitution right, left and center. The silver lining is all the videos that have been posted online of ICE agents who don’t understand winter slipping and falling on their asses on the ice-slick streets. ICE defeated by ice. The irony is delicious.

Canada is looking at a 2.3% increase in dairy prices starting on February 1st. Ugh. It’s not a huge increase, of course, from an individual standpoint, but having dairy go up while all other prices are skyrocketing feels like an extra kick in the teeth.

In happier space news, a Canadian astronaut is heading to the moon this April, as part of NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years! This is very exciting. His name is Col. Jeremy Hansen, and he’s part of the Artemis II mission. Slightly disappointingly they will be orbiting the moon only and not landing, but still, it’s pretty freaking exciting. I hope they livestream the launch so people can watch. Yay, moon!

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: thoughtful

1-State of the Phnee

A shorter post tonight, I think. Yesterday’s got away from me, but today has mostly consisted of sleeping after my night shift. I was very, very tired after my OT because I hadn’t had the opportunity to take a nap right before work, so I got home, fed and watered the quail, and then (metaphorically) swan-dived into my bed for some mostly restful sleep.

Of course, I had to wake up early to meet with Mary from Ministry & Counsel to discuss the presentation we want to do reporting on the “Conflict in Meetings” workshop we attended last year, so I am not as well rested as I’d like. We had a really nice conversation, though, and have a game plan for the next week for how we’re going to manage the workload between us. Mary is a lovely woman, and I am hoping she and I will be able to get to know each other better in the coming months.

After that I improvised some dinner in the form of leftover goose, rice, and chicken broth for a not-quite soup. It was not as good as if I’d properly cooked it, but it was quick, easy, and tasted fine. If I have more time tomorrow, I may cook it properly in a pot, maybe with some aromatics, and see if that improves it at all.

One of my new coworkers is from Ukraine and he brought me homemade borscht for my late-night meal. I am very excited about this because I loooove borscht and rarely make it myself because KK doesn’t like it. My coworker makes his with pork, whereas my recipe is vegetarian, so I am very curious to see what it’ll taste like. As a thank you I brought him a carton of 18 quail eggs, because he’d mentioned before that he was interested in acquiring some from me. The girls aren’t laying super consistently because it’s winter, but I have more than enough quail eggs for now, so I’m happy to hand them out to folks who appreciate them.

My new treadmill also arrived while I was asleep! I haven’t had the chance to unpack it yet, so I will likely do that when I get home tomorrow and maybe give it a try in the evening after I’ve slept. I learned the hard way many, many years ago that trying to train or do exercise right after my night shifts is a recipe for disaster—I need to sleep before trying anything like that or I hurt myself. The last time, I was working with a trainer, and he was having me do the bench press. He put a weight on that normally I could manage with no trouble, and the next thing I knew, one of my arms buckled and I nearly brained myself with the bench press because the damned thing fell sort of backward. Anyway, the trainer was spotting me, so he grabbed the bar and all was well, but it was a definite learning moment. In short, I will sleep and THEN I will try the new treadmill. Yay!

2-State of the smallholding

I got seven eggs from the quail (in two days, I didn’t check for eggs yesterday, but still!) and Pixie stole one right off the table and ate it because she is a hooligan who can’t be trusted. *sigh* So far, the quail seem to be still doing okay, even though I am now super paranoid ever since the last female died because I just don’t know why it happened. With all the others I could make an educated guess (they got cold and wet, they overheated, they got snagged by a dog, etc.), but this death remains a mystery, so I don’t know what mitigating measures I should be taking. It’s all very frustrating. But yay, eggs!

I need to do some shoveling tomorrow if the weather holds up. I noticed things were warming up again today a little bit, which is perfect for shoveling because it means the snow will be wetter and I won’t have to fight with a layer of ice on the bottom. #CanadianProblems, amirite?

3-State of the news

It kind of feels like more of the same, which is both good and bad. Good, because it means there hasn’t been a new fresh hell to add to the previous fresh hells, but bad because the previous fresh hells are still going strong.

Trump has apparently declared the USMCA to be “irrelevant,” possibly forgetting that he took all the credit for negotiating it the last time he was in power. He’s basically throwing a temper tantrum because Carney is negotiating for trade with China, as far as I can tell

Iran is cracking down on protesters with a swiftness and ferocity that is breathtaking and terrifying. It has classified protesters and dissidents as “foreign agents” that need to be “dealt with.” Drones, CCTV surveillance, signal jammers, and a metric fuckton of propaganda have been their anti-protest tools of choice, according to CNN. They’re using the drones to spy on and record people in their homes, which is especially chilling, and managed a complete internet blackout almost instantaneously with military-grade signal blockers. State television also aired a report from a morgue showing rows of body bags, presumably as an attempt to deter more people from going into the streets to protest. And Trump, of course, is fanning the flames by posting inflammatory things on Truth Social, with no regards for the consequences of his actions.

The Narwhal is suing the RCMP in BC, alleging that they violated the rights of Amber Bracken, a photojournalist, when they arrested her in November 2021 while she was covering the RCMP trying to evict protesters from a camp on Wet’suwet’en territory. Alert readers may not even remember these protests because they were overshadowed by the [censored] Freedom Convoy’s antics in January of 2022, but for a couple of months this was a really big deal. The RCMP had tried to impose an “exclusion zone” that tried to bar people from the camp (including journalists, importantly) so that Coastal GasLink could build their pipeline without being bothered by pesky water protectors and other indigenous people. They arrested Bracken and seized all her equipment (camera, computer, etc.) and held her for three days before releasing her without laying any charges. This is going to be a precedent-setting case about people’s right to protest and the press’ right to cover the protests, so I will be watching the outcome with some interest.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

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!

Current Mood: accomplished

1-State of the Phnee

Day 2 after “leg day” has been bruuuuuutal. I can’t tell if this is just normal muscle soreness or if I maybe overdid it a tad yesterday. It didn’t feel like I overdid it, but right now I have to hold onto walls and tables if I want to get in and out of chairs because my thigh muscles have gone on strike. I pulled out the treadmill at work and managed about a mile before I had to throw in the towel because I felt a little woozy. I sat down with a fan blowing on me for a few minutes and feel mostly recovered now, so I guess today is going to be a 1-mile day and no more. Still, today is apparently “National Quitters’ Day,” when most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions (citation needed!), so if that’s true I have made it farther than most!

I miss having a bathtub. In the past I would have drawn myself a nice warm bath and had a very nice soak, but unfortunately my bathroom only has a shower stall. KK got the master bedroom with the ensuite bathroom with a jacuzzi tub when we moved in because it made more sense for her to have the extra space for her metric fuckton of stuff, but I will confess to being a bit envious of the tub (which she does not use, more’s the pity) on days when I would like nothing more than to soak with a good book. I do plan on eventually adding a bathtub of some kind to my bathroom, one of those narrow upright tubs like you get in France which are designed with more depth than width. I have always loved that kind of bathtub ever since my parents took me to Paris for the first time when I was 12. Shallow and long North American tubs are vastly inferior, in my opinion.

KK apparently also has to get bloodwork done tomorrow, so we will be going together at Fuck My Life O’Clock because the lab only takes walk-ins on Saturday. Normally I don’t mind getting up at 7:00am, but that’s on days when I won’t be getting to bed at 3:00am because I was working an evening shift. I’m going to try to get to sleep a little earlier tonight, but best-case scenario, that will be around 2:00 am, because I finish work at midnight and it takes at least an hour to get home, plus right now there’s a bunch of freezing rain out there, so it’s likely the drive will take longer. Ah, well. It will be worth it to get the bloodwork over and done with. I will just have to resist the urge to take a nap the minute I get home.

Today’s Ministry & Counsel meeting was super productive, and I am very pleased with how it went. Our “guest” brought the “concern” I was pretty sure she was going to bring, and I am irrationally annoyed at her about it. To be clear, I don’t think it’s irrational to be annoyed, but the level to which I am annoyed is probably irrational. She is very anti-tech (I think I mentioned this), and she has invented an elaborate fantasy in her mind in which M&C makes unilateral and draconian decisions, possibly specifically to ruin her life and the lives of others who agree with her, I’m not sure. She’s convinced that we moved from two tech-free Meetings a month to one tech-free Meeting with no consultation at all, whereas it was in fact the plan the whole time to reintegrate the online attenders with the in-person attenders as much as possible. Having one tech-free Meeting a month was the *compromise* so that people like her could have some time without the thing they loathe so much.

Anyway, her proposal is to go back to at least two non-tech Meetings a month (I’m not mad at that part, actually). More importantly, while she acknowledges that some people can’t come in person due to health issues, mobility issues, and distance issues, she wants anyone who is online to not participate in any way and to remember that they are “auxiliary” to the Meeting. Oh, sure, the Greeter at the Meeting House should make sure to greet the online attenders, but that’s it. They get to be second-class citizens who should only speak when spoken to, I guess.

*makes throttling motions with both hands*

Like I said, I am irrationally angry about this, and I am waiting to calm the fuck down before I do anything else about it. We’ve set a date for a consultation in the form of a Claremont Dialogue to see if there are as many people as she claims who agree with her (It very much has the energy of “People are agreeing with me in private messages!”), and to discern the best way forward after that. I need to be a mature adult about this because I’m the Clerk of M&C now, so I can’t just run around picking fights with people even if I think they’re being obnoxiously ableist.

2-State of the smallholding

Much like yesterday, I don’t have much going on right now. I’ve been checking in on the quail, and they seem to be doing pretty well as far as I can tell. Of course, I thought that before and one of them just spontaneously died, so I don’t know how reliable my judgment is on that front.

Given how little sleep I’m likely to be getting tomorrow, I’m going to have to be extra firm with myself in order to get the cleaning and such done that I have planned. The temptation to just take a nap and/or doomscroll on my phone will be very, very high. I’m also mildly concerned that my body will revolt, as it sometimes does when I haven’t provided it with enough sleep, and give me a crippling headache or something else that will sabotage my efforts to get shit done. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen!

I will report back in the evening on my cleaning and tidying progress. I know no one is actually interested in that, but I am using it as a form of accountability rather than anything else.

3-State of the news

The fallout from Renée Good’s death continues. A bunch of (hopefully) well-meaning white people have been using the phrase “Say her name!” and got really shirty when people gently asked them not to use a phrase that was specifically started by a movement that was about the erasure of black women who died violent deaths, usually at the hands of the judicial system.

*sigh*

How hard is it to just not do something when a marginalized or oppressed group asks you not to? But yeah, my fellow white women got all up in their feelings about it, which is depressing.

More video footage was released today that supposedly “proves” that she was trying to run over the ICE agent who shot her, except the video shows her smiling at him, saying “I’m not mad at you!” and very clearly turning her car *away* from him. I can’t decide whether the people in charge in the US have never read Nineteen Eight-Four or if they have read it and think the rest of us haven’t.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Alberta doctors have called on the government to declare a state of emergency due to overcrowding in emergency rooms. I’m guessing that Danielle Smith will be doing no such thing. Hey, remember when she was elected in October of 2022 and said she’d be fixing the healthcare system within 90 days? Yeah, fun times.

Otherwise, between work and the 2.5 hour M&C meeting today, I haven’t had much of a chance to get through the news, so I shall leave it there for now.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: sore

Whoops! I got distracted yesterday and forgot to post. Nevermind, I shall backdate as needed and we’ll pretend this never happened. 😉

1. State of the Phnee

a. I am slowly getting my ducks in a row for improving my fitness. I obtained some resistance bands with a bit more oomph than the ones I got myself for physiotherapy a couple of years ago, as well as some interlocking/puzzle-type mats for my bedroom floor because I am a wussy who doesn’t like sitting or kneeling on the floor (it bruises our boneses, precious!). My friend fearsclave gave me a two-week trial of an app called FitBod (a bit on the nose, but whatever) which provides me with exercises based on not only my fitness levels but also what equipment I have available, which is quite handy. It has a couple of bugs I need to work out (pun only sort of intended), such as giving me dumbbell exercises when I don’t own dumbbells, but it still seems well worth a try.

I also went for a one-hour walk in the late afternoon yesterday and got rewarded with a winter rainbow in the distance. I had never considered that winter could also produce rainbows, but it makes sense: snow is just crystallized water, right? And this rainbow was more of a large smudge than the classic arc shape, so that makes sense to my amateur brain. Anyway, it definitely made the walk in the ice and cold worth it.

b. My friend Jan put me onto a local market (the Martintown Market) which stocks up once a week on low-cost produce and also has locally raised pork and chicken. I went yesterday for the first time to check them out and was pleasantly surprised. It was smaller than I’d imagined, just a very small room with a dozen or so produce bins and two upright freezers right off County Road 18. I almost missed it because the only sign on the road is an itty bitty one that says, “Come in, we’re open!” without specifying what it is. Still, I was able to fill half of a regular reusable grocery bag with fruits and veggies for $15, which likely would have cost me twice as much if I’d gone to the grocery store. I tried to be mindful of how much I got, because a lot of people depend on that little store for their produce, and since KK and I are just two people and she doesn’t eat a lot of produce, I wanted to make sure there was plenty left for other people. I’m pretty pleased overall. I will see how long this produce lasts, and I will probably make this a regular part of my route.

c. I’m taking over as Clerk of Ministry & Counsel this year, which means putting together the agenda for every meeting, but more importantly I am responsible for writing all our reports and for putting together Committees of Care, Clearness Committees, and general care for the Members of Ottawa Monthly Meeting. I am a little terrified that I won’t be able to fill the shoes of our last Clerk, who declared they were stepping down last fall. Even if they wanted to come back, they are now facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, so they will have to focus on their health and family for the next few months. M&C are a great group, so I know I will get lots of support, but I’m still pretty intimidated.

2. State of the smallholding

a. I lost one of the quail on Friday. I’m pretty bummed because I couldn’t figure out why she’d died. She was dry, so it’s not like she got wet and then couldn’t get warm. I don’t think it was lack of food or water, and she showed no signs of illness or injury. I wonder if she didn’t get eggbound but didn’t suffer a prolapse like last time, but I’m not about to perform an amateur necropsy, so I’m just going to have to keep doing my best and see.

b. I got myself a new-to-me John Deere snowblower a few weeks ago, but I can’t figure out how to keep it running. It turns on just fine, but the moment I switch off the throttle (I might be getting the terminology wrong), it sputters to a halt. I will have to go to YouTube to see what I’m doing wrong and hope I can figure it all out.

3. State of the news

a. WELP. The United States attacked/invaded Venezuela during the night of the 3^rd, and kidnapped President Maduro and his wife and have declared that the US will be serving as an “interim government” until further notice, with no end date given. Also, apparently American oil companies will be taking over Venezuelan oil to “revitalize and rebuild” or some shit.

American interference in South American politics, and deposing dictators in general, has a terrible track record. This is blatantly not about the dictatorship, anyway, just about gaining control of Venezuelan oil. They’re just using it as a thinly veiled excuse to install a regime more favourable to the US, which will result in the population getting oppressed and exploited for several more years before they rise up and overthrow that government and then it gets replaced with something that may or may not be just as terrible. Fuck American imperialism, frankly.

I was hoping for a less mealy-mouthed response to this by other world leaders, especially Canada. People seem so impressed by Carney, but I am not seeing it. I wish Canada would grow a fucking backbone and take a firm policy stand on these matters, but I guess that’s too much to hope for. It will also be interesting to see how China reacts to this, since I believe Venezuela sells the majority of its oil to them. It’s likely to get messy…

Current Mood: worried

I am officially three days (and change) post-op.

It went super well. Better than I even hoped for, honestly. The surgery itself took an hour and a half, and I was in the recovery room for just under 4 hours. Normally they only keep you in recovery for an hour or two, but because I have Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea it was protocol to keep me there longer until they were sure I was taking in enough oxygen on my own before transferring me to a surgical bed.

I expected a lot of pain based on my reading and from KK's experience, but there was next to none. On the 1 to 10 scale I spent most of the time at a 1, sometimes inching up to 2. I once overdid it drinking water (two sips was fine, three was too many!) and the pain went up to not-quite-3 for maybe 10 minutes. At first I assumed it was that I was still under the effects of the anesthesia and then under the effects of the Dilaudid pill they gave me, but after well over 15 hours it became obvious that, no, I just wasn't in all that much pain or discomfort. So, yay, I guess!

My entire nursing team consisted of people whose names began with S: Sarah, Sophie (who was a 3rd year nursing student), Samara, and Saima. Only when the day nurse came in the morning I was to be discharged did the pattern break, because his name was Dat. They were all super sweet and kind and very patient with me, since I kept asking a million questions about what they were doing, and what was that piece of equipment for, and ooh, what were they checking for with THAT gizmo? etc. Sophie in particular was super nervous because she was obviously brand new and learning, so I assured her that we would learn together, and we had loads of fun examining the equipment, asking questions, and whenever I learned something while she was away I would tell her when she got back and she'd whip out a tiny notebook and write it all down. It was super sweet, and we had a good giggle about it before her shift was over.

The least fun part of the whole thing was trying to figure out all the unspoken hospital rules (should I use the washroom when the toilet has one of those cups meant to measure urine output, or was that meant for a specific patient? Except I have to pee and there's no other washroom! I'm supposed to take walks, but where can I walk where I won't be in the way? Etc.), and I was quite glad to leave on Thursday.

KK drove me to and from the hospital, and was somehow more wiped out than I was after all of it. She apparently overdid it by walking with me to the day surgery room and then sitting in the admittedly very uncomfortable chairs until such time as I was transferred to my bed for the night. She has spent most of the past few days napping as a result.

I wasn't up to much for the rest of Thursday, but we did stop at the pharmacy to get my prescriptions: I have about 10 doses of Dilaudid to take as needed for pain, and an antacid that I need to take every day for the next six months. KK has impressed upon me that it is VERY IMPORTANT to take said antacid unless I want to invite a world of trouble upon myself, so I've been very diligent about it. I took one dose of Dilaudid on Thursday but didn't need one last night, which was nice. I haven't even really needed Tylenol, for the most part. I am working my way up to taking all three of my vitamin supplements, because they are freaking horse pills and rather difficult to digest, but I should be able to work them into my routine (I need to take them three times a day, God help me) with some practice and a lot of alarms set up on my phone.

Yesterday the dogs were assholes and knocked over their glass jar of treats, which shattered all over the tile floor of the kitchen. KK very kindly drove me to town after her work day was over, and we stopped by the pharmacy so I could pick up some milk of magnesia (a nurse from the hospital called and recommended I pick some up "just in case"), and then I popped into Canadian Tire for some bags for our kitchen compost bin since we were almost out. KK went to PetValu to pick up new dog treats (they're the dogs' reward for going into their crates at night like good girls) and I went to the Dollarama next door to pick up a new (plastic) jar for the treats along with a couple of new pairs of reading glasses since the dogs ate one of mine and another broke very randomly the night before my surgery. It was the weirdest thing: I picked them up as normal and the arm just *fell off* like it was an injured starfish. No idea what happened there. *shrug*

Unsurprisingly, the house was in the same or even slightly worse shape than when I left on Wednesday morning. Thursday I contented myself with unloading and then re-loading the dishwasher, and yesterday I didn't do all that much except clean up the broken jar the dogs so generously provided. I did a few more dishes and put away the vacuum sealer I'd forgotten to put away before surgery (oops), and that was about it, as I was still feeling pretty tired after the surgery.

Today I was a lot more productive, but I'm still moving in slow motion. I took a shower, which felt amazing after not being "allowed" to shower for a couple of days to give my incision sites the chance to heal.

I got more dishes done, broke down a bunch of boxes for the recycling on Monday (it's a fibre pick-up day!), collected the garbage, and managed to clear a portion of the front deck so it looks a little less like hillbilly hoarders live here. I also cleaned my bathroom, which I should have done before my surgery but I kind of ran out of time (oops). At least it's clean and sparkly now! I checked on the quail and changed out their food and water and gave them all a generous helping of mealworms as a treat and as a small apology for not doing it yesterday (I did check on them and their food and water levels were fine, have no fear, I just feel guilty about them anyway). I also washed the incubator and put it away along with the heat plates for next year when I'd like to start incubating more chicks again. I won't be incubating any during the winter, it just seems like a bad idea to do it when it's super cold outside.

KK also left me a surprise in the form of a clogged kitchen sink which she'd clearly tried to fix using a plastic plumbing snake, which then got suck in the drain, and she just... left it there for me to find without telling me about it. I couldn't dislodge it (she'd rammed it in all the way, and theoretically I am not supposed to lift, push or pull more than 10lbs for the next month), and when I asked her about it she said she was hoping the sink would drain before she tried again. I had drained the sink in my attempts to dislodge the thing, so she tried again--and broke it off inside the drain. So now I have to call a plumber on Monday to get it taken out by a professional. I am not super impressed. *heavy sigh* If I didn't know better, I'd swear she was a man, given the amount of weaponized incompetence she seems able to wield at a moment's notice. The only difference is that, in this case, I didn't ask her to unclog the sink, so I guess she did try? I don't know.

I've sent out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow, and I did take a dose of Dilaudid tonight because I may have overdone it a tad today, and I was quite sore to say the least. My main goal is to not be in pain so I can get some sleep, and hopefully tomorrow I will be recovered. I still want to try to finish cleaning up the kitchen. KK said she'd help me with that today but ended up taking a four and a half hour nap instead, and there's only so much I can do at one time while I'm still recovering from surgery. Yes, in theory I should be resting/taking it easy, but if I don't get this shit done no one will, and the house will continue to deteriorate, so I'm tackling things in smallish increments and hoping for the best. Tomorrow I am planning on moving the last batch of quail that I incubated to the hutches in the garage, which will allow me to clean up and break down the brooder and put that away for the season as well. I will probably have to buy a second brooder for next year, because I discovered that while it can comfortably hold six quail, eight almost-grown quail are very cramped inside it and so they are all having very gentle squabbles with each other about food and water and mealworms. But yes, not having the brooder on my kitchen counter will save me so much space! I can't wait.

I must say, I can totally understand why people get addicted to Dilaudid. Pain? Never heard of her! I think that I'm still pretty safe since I've only had four 1mg doses in the past four days (I got a dose right before leaving the hospital on Thursday when they heard I had a one-hour car ride ahead of me).

Anyway, that's what's happened with me in the last few days. I hope you're all doing well, and I will catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: chipper

I hate scheduling anything during my night shifts. As far as I'm concerned, night shifts should be sacred and nothing should happen except working, eating, and sleeping. Night shifts are hard on the body (especially as I get older), and so prioritizing sleep is super important. This week, however, my rule went out the window and I ended up having something happen every. single. day. that I had to stay up for for some reason. It suuuuucked.

However, the sacrifice was not for nothing. I now have eavestroughs all around my house, which I didn't before. We've been in serious danger of water infiltrating the house all summer whenever it rained, so getting gutters installed was one of my priorities this year. We had some bad luck with the weather that meant we had to postpone the installation a few times, but the contractor was finally able to get it done yesterday and he did a fantastic job. I am very excited to no longer have to worry every time it rains. I still have to get some downspout extenders, but that's a minor detail and not strictly necessary. It's just that the grading around the house needs to be redone, so right now any water flows toward the house instead of away from it, which is why having downspout extenders would be helpful.

I also had an electrician in. Well, two of them came, but I think one of them was an apprentice or assistant. Anyway, they came to replace one of the outdoor electrical outlets which didn't have a GFI, making it a little more unsafe to use (although not completely unsafe) as well as to replace my bathroom fan which wasn't working and which my home inspector had told me I'd need to get fixed. Turns out the fan was totally fine, it was just unplugged. *rolls eyes* I wonder if the previous owners unplugged it because it is ungodly loud, but either way it's now plugged back in and working great.

We also worked out why my workshop/shed wasn't getting any electricity. Apparently the electricity was being supplied by a daisy chain of extension cords, which is, uh, not exactly up to code, and it seems the previous owners just took one of the extension cords with them when they left. Oops? Anyway, I got quoted about $4,000 to get the shed wired up properly because it would require a backhoe to go through my "driveway" (which is not a driveway, but it is hard-packed ground, so I guess it sort of counts as a driveway?) and dig a trench in which to bury the wire needed for the electrical supply. So the plan for now is to buy a new extension cord and use that until next year at least. It's not ideal, but as price tags go it's a bit steep for our first year in the house when we still have so many necessary projects (the grading around the house, some extra plumbing in the basement, reinforcing both decks to fix some stability issues, and of course all the gardening stuff and building up infrastructure for more livestock). I will do a bit of investigating to see if there are extra safety measures I can implement to reduce the risk of short circuits or electrical fires in the meantime. The previous owners obviously made it work, so I'm trying not to worry about it too much. I do need to source some firewood as the workshop has a wood stove and I would like to practice my woodworking skills over the winter without freezing my butt or my fingers off.

Ideally I'd like to get my skills to the point of being able to build a lot of the animal-related infrastructure that I want to install on the property. Right now I have bought two hutches for the quail, but they have some design flaws that make it difficult to put food and water in and also make changing the bedding a little harder than it has to be, even though the bottom has a pull-out drawer. Right now I'm still in the process of building up my basic tool collection. I just picked up a jigsaw and a miter saw on sale (very exciting!), and Karen already bought a circular saw last year. I have a few hand tools already as well as a drill, so I'm hoping to be able to have a full set of basic tools (as well as a small sawdust management system) by the end of the winter.

This morning was the monthly meeting of Ministry and Counsel, and the Clerk has asked that someone else take up the mantle for next year, so it looks like that person is going to be me. One member is leaving at the end of this year (it's the end of her term), another is bogged down with other commitments and doesn't have the bandwidth for it), one only just joined and wants to get more experience before taking on Clerking duties, and the other person wasn't at the meeting today (and I personally think he lacks the organizational skills for it anyway, as uncharitable as that sounds). I am a little nervous, as being the Clerk of M&C feels like a Really Big Deal(TM), but the current Clerk has promised to mentor me, as they are not leaving at the end of the year, so that's something at least.

In unrelated but potentially excellent news, I spoke to my father today since the results from his heart monitor came back, and there is a good chance he may not even need an ablation for his atrial flutter. He's being referred to a specialist for a consultation in a couple of weeks, and we will find out more at that time. Fingers crossed that it all turns out well!

On that note, it's time to get back to work. It got wildly busy last night, so I'm hedging my bets tonight. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: chipper

I feel like today was a bit of a wash. I was the Greeter at Meeting online today, but someone in the Meeting House (the same person who is constantly complaining about the "technology" in the Meeting House) took it upon herself to, as another Friend put it, "cosplay as Ministry & Counsel." I am trying and failing to not be annoyed by it. It honestly doesn't matter who says the things as long as the Meeting unfolds the way it should, and it did, but I have a red trigger button that revolves around people thinking I'm incompetent/can't do my job or telling me how to do my job, and apparently this hit the same button. In conclusion, I am MIFFED.

Otherwise I packed more boxes in the basement, which took more time than I anticipated. What's left in the basement is all stuff that's weirdly shaped or a bit too big to fit in most boxes, and a lot of it is really random shit that belongs to KK that I can't even identify, which makes labelling the boxes a bit of a challenge. Still, I made some headway, which is something.

KK is spending tonight at her friend H's hotel again, and so I have to medicate Rika the Chihuahua and feed Libby (the long-haired tabby) her special kidney food on top of the regular bedtime routine stuff. I'll be doing that in a few minutes, as soon as I've put the quail to bed.

I have also, because I am a special kind of crazy, applied to adopt a senior Brittany from a rescue group. His name is Odin, and he's 10 years old, and he looks like an absolute sweetheart, albeit with the same escape artist and counter surfing tendencies as my current set of hooligans. So, you know, he'll fit right in! Of course, there's no guarantee my application will be accepted. Rescues are notoriously finicky about placing animals, so they may find something wrong with either the new house, the new property, or my general attitude and philosophy with regards to owning dogs and the care and treatment thereof. I don't have a fence yet, although we do definitely plan on building a six-foot fence to keep the current set of hooligans from haring off and terrorizing our neighbour's dairy cows. I don't want to constantly be worried that my dogs are being a nuisance to the neighbours. Anyway, we shall see.

Now, I am off to medicate the dog, feed the cat, take a quick shower, and then lapse into a hopefully at least slightly restorative slumber. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but last week I fell asleep one night before putting on my CPAP mask, and I felt like absolute garbage the next day. So while I hadn't noticed the night-and-day difference in energy levels that other people have said come with using a CPAP, I can report with full confidence that it is, in fact, doing something.

Current Mood: optimistic

I have spent all of this shift halfway convinced that it's my third night shift instead of my second. I think it's the fact that I've already been working for nine days straight that makes it feel like it's later in the week than it actually is. I still have five more nights to go, including the 12-hour weekend shifts. I am not really looking forward to any of it, but it is what it is.

I managed to get about six hours of sleep and probably would have slept longer had I not had to get up early for my therapy appointment. I have made the grievous error of agreeing to multiple meetings and appointments this week. I keep trying to not schedule stuff during my evening and night shifts, and I keep failing abysmally. It's just never a good idea, but sometimes there just isn't another choice. Alas.

So later today I have a meeting with tow members of Ministry & Counsel about a small worship group one of them wants to start centered around chronic illness, and on Friday I am going to my new credit union to sign my life away in order to qualify for a reduced interest rate on my new mortgage. Okay, I exaggerate slightly for effect, but essentially I have to switch over to a checking account with the credit union and have my pay direct deposited there in order to qualify.

I've sent out feelers to my coworkers to see if anyone will trade my weekend day shifts in 10 days with me. Getting the weekend off to be able to focus on packing would be a godsend, but I'm not going to hold my breath. People are pretty accommodating at my workplace, but we're getting into summer vacation time and people are a busier with kids and commitments and stuff. Fingers crossed, anyway.

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

Current Mood: awake

I have just enough energy to do an 8 hour shift at work, and not much else. I'm still pretty congested, and although I didn't bother testing today I'm quite sure it would come back positive if I did. I also sound like something crawled into my throat and died. I've had a few clients tell me so over the phone. Oops? I assured them the Government of Ontario has declared me perfectly healthy, and yet somehow they were still skeptical.

The oil splash over my right hand yesterday has turned into two very impressive looking blisters on my ring finger and knuckle. They're still a little painful, but nothing terrible. It mostly looks like I've developed a highly localized case of bubonic plague, although maybe not quite so dire. I wish there was a lesson to be learned from this about kitchen safety, but it was honestly a freak thing, and I was merely the victim of the laws of physics.

I got an amusing call from someone from Ministry & Counsel on my way to work, asking me to help him troubleshoot issues with his new laser printer of all things. Now, faithful readers will likely recall that I am not exactly a computer wizard, and indeed my coworkers have joked for years that I have a "computer curse," wherein computers will randomly malfunction around me in ways that don't make sense. Anyway, I explained that I was driving to work and generally not a computer person, and then I suggested Googling the problem because that's my go-to when first trying to troubleshoot computer issues. Now, this guy used to be a really savvy computer person, but he hasn't kept up with all the latest advances, so it wasn't like I was talking to a babe in arms. He thanked me and told me he'd try it before hitting up one of his techy friends. I am still baffled but also slightly honoured at the thought that I project enough competence that people now randomly call me to help with completely unrelated stuff! XD

In house news, I'm going to need to find some extra energy somewhere in order to start packing up the house properly. I've hired someone to come help pack in two weeks' time, the week before the move, but it's only for three days, and that won't be enough to get it all done. It should be a huge help, at least, to have one other able-bodied person there. In the meantime, I need to pack up as much of the rest of the house as I can.

I feel like the most boring person ever, because I have very little of substance to post about lately. Hopefully I will have something more interesting soon. Thanks for bearing with me, friends, and I will catch you on the flip side!

Current Mood: blah

Pixie was much improved this morning. She was excited to get out of her kennel and was even more excited to have some plain rice to eat as a snack. Said rice and water stayed where they were supposed to, and while she's not back up to 100% demon spawn levels of energy, she was pretty bouncy all day and counter-surfed, tried to climb the cat tree, and resumed her vigil by the basement gate in case I decided to let her downstairs to eat the quail. So I think she's pretty much on the mend, although I intend to stick to plain rice for at least another day to be on the safe side.

I was the Greeter for Quaker Meeting today, and it went well. We've had some ruffled feathers in the Meeting of late, because everyone is very much on edge from, well, everything. *gestures broadly* The constitutional crisis in the US, innocent people getting deported to what is essentially a concentration camp in El Salvador (technically it's a prison, but the pictures from there are horrific, with men packed in like sardines, sometimes 80 to a cell, having to sleep standing up, etc.). This is not to say that I believe guilty people should be sent there either. No one, regardless of their status, should be sent to a place like that. Not even the worst, most horrific offenders, because that place is a horror show and even the worst criminals who have committed the most heinous crimes must be treated with a minimum of dignity, because they are human beings.

There's also the Canadian federal election coming up on April 28th. KK and I went to the advance polls today and cast our ballots. There were very few people there today, but CTV news reported that 2 million Canadians went to vote in advance on Friday, which is apparently a record! This is very encouraging indeed. I went over to the Elections Canada website, and of our population of 38,131,104 people, we have 27,642,171 people eligible to vote (i.e. citizens who are 18 years old or older and not the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada). From what I can see we've had a voter turnout that hovers in the 60% range, give or take, for the past 30 years, so I'd love to see more voter engagement this time around. I think I've missed one election in my adult life, although I don't remember which one it was. I have forbears who died for my right to vote, so I'm not about to squander it.

I just had a quick Skype call with my parents, and my mother immediately ratted out my father who apparently passed out today. He tried to blow it off, but I was not having it. I have extricated a promise from him to go see a doctor about it tomorrow. My father had a stroke nearly three years ago, and even though he was very lucky and came out of it with no ill effects, that still puts him at risk for another one. He said he wasn't feeling sick or dizzy, he just lost consciousness for a few seconds. *beats head against the nearest wall* Both my parents are terrible patients, and they tend to be noncompliant with a lot of the treatments they are prescribed as well. To say I am worried about this would be a fucking understatement. I reminded my mother that she had agreed with me that it would be a good idea to get a Life Alert button (or an equivalent, but honestly my research showed that Life Alert is one of the more comprehensive service providers out there), and she once again agreed with me. I don't think I can count on her to get one because I don't think she has the wherewithal to go through the whole process, and my father is pretty resistant to the idea at all. I don't know if I can convince both of them to go through with it, but I am damned well going to try.

Having aging parents is a LOT, y'all.

Okay. I am going to go do a last check on the quail, and then go to bed. I changed out their bedding today (it was *gross*), and they are super happy. They dug and scratched and floofed their feathers and made little nests in the pine shavings and made happy quail noises. It was absolutely adorable. They also laid two more eggs, which is awesome. I think tomorrow I will finally be making a recipe using the quail eggs, now that I have a full dozen (meaning the equivalent of about four chicken eggs).

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: anxious

Somehow today felt like my busiest day of the week. I got up just in time to fly out the door in order to go to Quaker Meeting for First Day School. Unlike last time the place was full up with children, so I was kept pretty busy. Two Friends took the older pre-teens and teens to the kitchen downstairs for a poetry workshop, and I set up in the "nursery" with a pair of siblings, six-year-old C and her three-year-old brother G.

C is at the exact age when a lot of little girls become "directors," or what is often very uncharitably referred to as being "bossy." I had to very gently redirect her a couple of times when her orders turned rude (mostly just to remind her that saying "please" is important when asking someone to do something for you and not just order them about). While G happily played with a toy cash register and a Fisher Price garage thingie with an elevator, C started with the play kitchen and served me a toy ice cream cup with six scoops of ice cream. I pointed out that it was a lot of ice cream and that I wasn't sure I'd be able to eat all of it, but C wasn't having it. "You can eat it. Just look at your stomach--it's really big!" I mean, true, but also, ouch. Out of the mouths of babes. I'm pretty sure there was no malice behind it, although it's likely she's already unconsciously absorbing some of the fatphobic messaging we have in our society. Anyway, I agreed with her that my stomach *was* big, and then she "helped" me eat the ice cream.

Once the ice cream had been consumed to her satisfaction, she grabbed some paper and colouring pencils, and proceeded to instruct me on how to colour a pattern she'd learned in school. It wasn't my favourite activity, but I've spent time doing way worse things. C and G's grandmother spent a good chunk of time with us too, and helped to wrangle Gabor when he got a little too rambunctious and tried to go get his mother, who was in Meeting for Worship at the time. He fussed a little, but a promise of crackers and cheese got both kids settled pretty well, and eventually the Resident Friend came through with some pre-made Ritz crackers and cheese filling.

After that we had yet another called meeting for the State of Society Report, and it took fully an hour and a half to read through the latest draft and dicker about punctuation and specific word choices and all manner of details. I understand that it's necessary work, but at this point I've been ready to chuck the State of Society Report out the nearest window.

Once the called meeting was over I had barely enough time to run home and turn on my computer to join the first meeting for Nominating Committee. I've agreed to be the co-clerk with one other member of the committee, and we spent the rest of the meeting talking about potential nominees to represent Ottawa Monthly Meeting at Canadian Yearly Meeting. Overall, it was quite productive.

I'd barely finished with Nominating Committee when it was time for a Zoom call with my parents. Luckily my father understands Zoom enough to help my mother log into the calls, and so the only real problem we have now is that my free account only allows us to chat for 40 minutes at a time. We had a really nice conversation, and then it was time to throw dinner together, eat, wrangle the dogs, and watch an episode of The Equalizer.

And then before I knew it, it was time for bed, and here I am. The entire day went by in a blur, and I am exhaustipooped, to quote KK. Time to pass out for the night. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: blah

I had so many things I wanted to get done today and I only got a fraction of them done. My main mistake was going to Costco with KK. I was originally planning to go alone because I usually do, but our membership renewal is coming up and we also had a rewards "cheque" that apparently only she can redeem at the cash because she's the primary account holder.

Turns out, shopping at Costco at midday on a Saturday with KK is really stressful. Mostly it was the circumstances: the place was packed to the gills with people. Normally I grab a cart and sort of use that as a shield against other people, but since KK was there she grabbed a motorized cart to drive, and that left me kind of adrift, with people coming at me with carts from all angles, including KK, who did not have great control over the motorized cart. I tried walking behind her but she kept stopping the cart because she thought I was "slowing down," which would then make me run into her. She told me to walk in front of her, and when I did she kept nearly running into me with the cart. I'm used to going at my own pace, and trying to navigate personal hazards and keep track of KK and stuff was actually pretty draining.

I used the cheque at the cash register, so apparently they don't check particularly hard to make sure you're the primary cardholder, and KK's electric cart started acting up and refusing to go. She kept having to switch it off, wait a few seconds, then switch it on again before it would respond to her commands. We managed to make it through checkout and went to the membership counter. By then my brain was buzzing a little, and things were so loud that I couldn't hear most of what KK was discussing with the lady at the counter. Eventually I approached when KK indicated she wanted my opinion, although I only caught bits and pieces of it. We eventually settled on switching things up so that I'm the primary account holder since I'm the one who does most of the shopping, and then things got hilarious.

The service rep looked at KK very seriously and said: "So you understand, everything will now be in your daughter's name and go to her?"

I giggled and told her I was very flattered that she thought I was that young and good-looking. KK got her up to speed on the fact that I'm six years her junior, and the poor lady was a little embarrassed, but we all laughed it off. I can understand the misapprehension: I was standing back and not really participating in the conversation (because I couldn't hear, but from the outside it looks like a very teenager-y thing to do), and my hair is currently dyed bright blue, and since I was wearing an N95 mask it made it harder to see my actual age. Anyway, we had fun with it.

Then KK's cart died again and we were stuck for a couple of minutes while she got it going again. We flagged it to one of the employees, who told KK that it was because she was leaning too far forward in her seat, but it died again once we got it to the car. After that there was no shifting it, so I ended up physically dragging it across the whole [expletive deleted] parking lot. Let me tell you, dragging an inert motorized shopping cart is not even remotely fun.

We got home and I put the groceries away. Actually, yesterday, at KK's suggestion I completely re-organized the fridge in a way that is supposed to be more ADHD-friendly, with the produce in the fridge door. At the very least, this will keep the produce from freezing in the fridge. I don't know why the fridge keeps freezing my food, but I've been losing more than I would like to that. Hopefully this will work out in the longer term. The fridge door isn't super convenient for keeping vegetables, unfortunately, it's just not the right shape.

I was signed up for an online workshop this afternoon on community building, and that was super interesting and I don't for a second regret it, but I didn't get my seeds started, and tomorrow is going to be taken up with Quaker things for basically the whole day. I might be able to get it done Monday, but I was really hoping to get it done earlier than that. Maybe I'll stay up later tomorrow night, since I'm starting night shifts on Monday anyway, and try to get some of the seeds started then instead. I did at least figure out some of the grow light setup, and I will try to sort out the rest tomorrow. Either way, I am entirely out of spoons, and probably in a serious spoon deficit at this point.

Okay, on that note, it's time for bed. I have to be at Meeting early tomorrow to be ready for First Day School. I don't know if there will be any children there, but I need to be ready in case there are.

Current Mood: drained

I can't think of anything to write about tonight, which is kind of a problem since I'm trying to maintain an updating streak. The days are sort of blurring together this week, which often happens when I start evening and night shifts.

Ministry & Counsel are driving me a little nuts this week. There has been a flurry of emails about the State of Society Report, which honestly should be finished by now but people from the Meeting keep goddamn nitpicking at it and I am ready to scream. There's also a lot of dithering about whether to extend the contract of the Resident Friend, who has come to the end of his three year contract. Everyone seems to be in favour of extending it, but typically contracts don't extend beyond three years, and the previous Resident Friend actually hired a lawyer to force the Meeting to extend her contract for a number of reasons I won't get into here so as to protect her privacy. It was super messy, and everyone is understandably a bit skittish about having a repeat performance, even though there is absolutely no indication that the current Resident Friend would do the same. It's not even up to Ministry & Counsel whether to extend the contract, we just make a recommendation one way or the other. Bah.

I have decided this year to pay someone to deal with the ocean of poop in my backyard after the winter season. I want to put in a couple of raised beds, but this will work better if the yard isn't covered in dog poop. Two Brittanies produce more poop than you'd imagine over a single winter season. Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of making the backyard look less like a muddy cesspool for the dogs to wallow in. I actually paid someone for the past two years to do a spring clean-up, and that company stopped offering the service in my area (it may be temporary but they can't give me a timeline of when they think they'll have someone in my area again), so I found another service with comparable prices. I'm actually pretty impressed that there are two companies that offer poop removal services in my city. Who knew?

I've ordered groceries for tomorrow, and I must say that ordering groceries has been a blessing. I was always reluctant to take advantage of delivery because it felt like cheating, somehow, but honestly not having to spend two hours a week on grocery shopping has changed my life. Two hours doesn't seem like all that much, but my God it drained all my energy like no one's business, and it would just wreck half a day (prepare the list, drive to the store, shop, drive home, unpack the groceries, collapse from lack of spoons). So, yeah, now I either do pick-ups during weeks when I'm working regular day shifts, or delivery when I'm working evenings, nights, and weekends. I'm trying to view it as an accommodation and not feel too guilty about it. I also make a point of tipping as well as I can (the website has a limit on how much you can tip the delivery person, alas).

Tomorrow I have therapy in the morning, and then my last evening shift starting at 3pm. KK had an appointment with the registered dietician from the bariatric clinic today, and it looks like I'm going to have to work a little harder to get more protein and nutrition into our everyday food. I've been looking at one of the bariatric cookbooks I got when she first told me she was going to get the surgery, and much as I feared, a lot of that food is quite simply stuff she won't eat. So much of it is tomato-based, or involves tofu or mushrooms or beans or coconut. Most of the recipes sound delicious to me, but I will have to make some serious modifications or maybe just take inspiration from them rather than following them exactly. I've had some success in the past from substituting some ingredients in recipes, so hopefully we'll be able to find something that works.

I'm planning to incorporate increasingly bariatric-friendly recipes in our meals, so that KK will have a chance to get used to them and it won't be a huge change all at once, once she's past the point of the liquid food/puréed food part of the post-surgical diet. It will be good for me to get used to it as well, but I'm much more of an omnivore than she is. When I was talking to the dietitian on Tuesday I kind of had to rack my brain when she asked me if there were foods I didn't like at all. There are definitely some: I don't really care for olives, sardines, and liver, among other things. I don't think there's anything I absolutely won't eat. I'm not a huge fan of slimy textures, either, like undercooked eggs (undercooked whites are the wooooorst), but overall I can choke down almost anything out of politeness if I have to, it's just a matter of foods I won't seek out. Feeding KK stuff she will actually eat is going to be a hell of a challenge once I can't smother everything in cheese anymore. ;)

Interestingly, I found out today that KK is not as far along in the process as I thought. I'm supposed to talk to the behaviourist and then do the Pre-Surgery 2 course, and she told me today that she hasn't been to Pre-Surgery 2 either, whereas I thought she had already finished that stage. It's true that she's a lot more complex a case than me both from the standpoint of her physical health and her mental health, and so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she's had to have several extra appointments with the dietitian, psychiatrist, and behaviourist, on top of having to undergo that course of antibiotics to get rid of the h. pylori infection she was rocking last year. She started the process in early-ish 2024, so at the rate we're going I may get ahead of her on "the path" as they like to call it.

The only thing I want to avoid is having both of us in surgical recovery at the same time. It will be bad enough when I go through the surgery, because she won't be able to help me at all (and I am rather concerned about the weight restrictions for lifting/pulling/pushing because she won't be able to help with groceries or anything else), so having her be incapacitated after surgery with me unable to help her in any way is a recipe for disaster. I have to make sure I'm as functional as possible for the most amount of time possible. It's possible that once she starts losing a substantial amount of weight she might be able to do more around the house, but I'm not banking on it. I don't think it's a realistic expectation at this point.

Anyway, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

This weekend I'll be home for the most part, so hopefully I'll have the chance to get stuff done. Seed starting, cleaning, and a bunch of cooking and meal prep for next week.

Current Mood: thoughtful

There are lots of conflicting origin stories about Daylight Savings Time, but the one thing I know for sure is that it is hot flaming garbage and should be fired into the sun with extreme prejudice.

I got to bed later than I wanted, and then an hour of sleep was cruelly torn away from me, so now I am grumpy. I managed not to let the grumpinesss affect me too much during Meeting and Meeting for Business, but that's also mostly because I just kept my mouth shut for the most part. Meeting for Business went okay, even if the person clerking seemed to be a little abrasive to me. I'm pretty sure the abrasiveness is mostly all in the eye of the beholder (i.e. me).

I've been trying not to nod off for the past hour, so I think I'll call it a night and go to bed really soon. I had a pretty productive day. I got a load of laundry done, and KK and I moved the furniture so the Roomba could do its thing, and we played both The Princess Bride and Willow back to back as a sort of comfort watch/double feature.

I keep nearly falling asleep and waking up to dozens of extra letters in my post, so it's definitely time to call it a night. I desperately need to get more sleep tonight than the rest of last week.

Good night, friends!

Current Mood: sleepy

Why is driving so tiring? I spent five total hours on the road today, only a little less time than I actually spent with my parents, and I am knackered. We had a really lovely day, though, so I have no regrets.

We toasted my mother's 88th birthday with a half-bottle of Veuve Cliquot, and then had a delicious dinner of beef brochettes, bok choy, and ratatouille, culminating in a small array of absolutely delicious French cheeses. Montreal has such good cheese, and I haven't yet found a good fromagerie here in Ottawa. I also haven't looked very hard, I must say, because KK doesn't like stinky French cheeses, and it seems like a waste to buy it just for myself.

I came home about an hour ago, and sent out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow, and soon I shall be heading upstairs to lapse into a metaphorical coma in my very comfy bed. I've had a low-grade headache lingering all day, and I am hoping that sleep and maybe a bit more Tylenol will take care of it. I had some Tylenol earlier tonight and that has taken the edge off but hasn't completely vanquished it.

Tomorrow is Meeting for Worship for Business for the Quakers, and I have volunteered to be the bearer of News That Some People Will Not Like, namely that Ministry & Counsel has decided we're going back to three hybrid Meetings a month rather than only two. The person who is clerking tomorrow is one of the few but highly vocal people who haaaaaaates the hybrid meetings, so I expect there will be some sort of psychodrama about it. How much drama will depend probably entirely on how maturely that person handles themselves, and I am not holding out a ton of hope. I am honestly a little disappointed in this person, even though I am also unsurprised given what I know about their beliefs and personality. I hope that if they are sensible and get that the sense of the Meeting is to bring people back together, they will stand aside on this issue (and also not be a prig about it).

I've also been asked to serve on Nominating Committee, which is the committee responsible for getting other people onto committees. The Committee Committee, if you will. The main reason is that all the very experienced Friends who were on it have come to the end of their term this year, and the only people who volunteered are two brand new Attenders who aren't super familiar with the Meeting and have next to no ideas about Quaker processes. So it turns out that my eleven years of being in the Meeting and also being part of Ministry and Counsel qualify me to shepherd the newbies and be part of their education. It's a little nerve-wracking, but also the people who asked me aren't entirely wrong about my understanding a good chunk of Quaker processes, at least at the level of Monthly Meeting. I am absolutely ignorant about Yearly Meeting and all of the larger parts of the Quaker organizations in Canada, but luckily we won't be dealing with them at all.

Tonight is Daylight Savings Time. *weeps quietly* Maybe now that we're in a trade war with the USA we can stop aligning ourselves with them on their time changes, or just outright get rid of DST. I hate it SO MUCH. I'd much rather have the daylight in the morning than in the evening any day of the year. We're not even "saving" daylight, the number of hours of daylight in the day don't magically increase because of it, we're just playing a weird game of Find the Queen except with artificial time markers. Bah. Another reason to go to bed as soon as possible tonight, because I am going to be feeling that lost hour of sleep for DAYS.

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Page generated Mar. 9th, 2026 12:25 pm

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

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