elainegrey

Things i've done with my vacation:

"Mowed" with Mary Jane, our wheeled string trimmer aka weed whacker. I've mowed the past week with the same line. I've never had it last so long. I guess i haven't gotten it tangled up in branches and grapevines and shrubs. I've done some of the meadow and some of the future shed site, a so-so job around the outside perimeter and a good bit of the mossy glade, as well as the remaining bit of my "the best grass ever"  (Dichanthelium laxiflorum) lawn.

I also mowed a tiny bit of the "orchard" this morning with our new electric mower, up until the rain started. This mower is dedicated to doing tame areas.  Our old mower, with its notched and worn blade (that i sharpen, but there are no replacement blades available) i'll keep using for less tame areas. Unfortunately i hit something metal hidden in the high grass with the new mower. I hope it wasn't too damaging.

Picked berries. Shared lots of blueberries with my sister's family. Got the tall ladder set up at the mulberry tree and ruined a pair of shorts with berry juice from a mesh bag i was wearing to collect picked berries while i was up the ladder. Dehydrated a couple trays of mulberries, and have two trays of mulberries waiting to dehydrate. They are ripening up a little more, plus we're in Chantal's rain bands today. Seems reasonable to wait a day to run the dehydrator. I've got a bag of frozen mulberries, and i am slowly collecting blueberries in the freezer.

The figs are beginning to come in and i am so pleased with my pruning job.  The tree  makes a room, with a clear area underneath, but the branches droop down like an umbrella. And the tallest still can be reached from the shorter ladder.

Egg rolls!  I made a batch of filling with carrots and mung beans i sprouted, and then have fried up a couple batches in the air fryer. Very satisfying. I also rolled up some figs with shaved Parmesan cheese. Yums!

Quick rolls - i used a Pillsbury crescent roll sheet and dabbed with cream cheese pats, blueberries, and pecans. Rolled up and cut into "twirls" and baked.  Also very yum.

There was also laundry. It's almost all caught up.

I went out with my sister on Wednesday night to a high tech restaurant (order on your phone, pull your own beer (and cider) from a wall of taps paying with a special bracelet. Karaoke was happening and was mildly entertaining.  Also went to her house to hang out on the evening of the 4th of July.

I've been playing a little Balatro,  a game Christine's been playing for ... a year? ... mostly to delight her. Exponentile remains very diverting, like a fidget toy, although i am not playing nearly as well as my initial games. Admittedly i am listening to novels as i play. Finished a relisten of yet another of the Mary Russell novels, Locked Rooms. Next is The Language of Bees, which leads into The God of the Hive. I listened to The God of the Hiveearlier this year, randomly picking from the list, and that prompted me to begin the relistening from the beginning.   I also bought a Ilona Andrews book to finish a trilogy since the public library no longer has it, and added the list of all  the Ilona Andrews books i have binged on in the past months to Zotero. And yesterday i started the Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch at OpenLibrary, as that looks like enough to keep me busy while i am in this escapist mental place.

This morning i was pondering how i could set time aside to grieve and emotionally connect with the distress of the past months. (Really, starting with Jan 20.) I think i will try to do sun salutations in the evening, using adaptions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcJvBMYxQl0&t=294s.

Christine is home as of Wednesday evening and broadly much better (although this instant she is recovering from a panic attack during a migraine). Antibiotics remain a miracle. Also, thanks for our capabilities to culture bacteria.  Thursday morning her doctor called to let her know that Arecoccus urinae was cultured and she'd need a different antibiotic from the one she was sent home with on Wednesday and no, the one she was sent home with on Monday wouldn't work either.

This does explain the one Monday dose having no effect.

I think she got the call while i was giving a division wide talk, that seemed reasonably received: crickets from the audience. Too basic? Too much? Always hard to tell.

Yesterday was B--'s memorial. I took the whole day as bereavement, and have scheduled much of next week off (2nd & 3rd as vacation, 4th a holiday, 5th & 6th weekend, and 7th more vacation and my sister in law's birthday)

I continued to test negative through all of this, but my cough is acting up, which annoys.

Thursday morning

Tested negative yesterday afternoon; Christine strongly positive. Fingers crossed. Do i have a sore throat this morning, i wonder. (Every morning i go through latching onto some symptom to identify myself as coming down with COVID.)

Sick of masking. I am sitting outside (6:30 - 7:30 am) and have a collection of red spots which appear to be midge bites. Fie. I'm not sure our effective thermocell mosquito repeller is working on midges, and i don't remember having midge issues before... but i may have mistaken bite sites for something else like "chiggers."

Lunch time: I'm having one of my (mild!) trimengial neuraligia flares. But is there also a sore throat? I remembered our old scan-the-forehead thermometer: i'll start using it every time i am thinking, "Fever now?" and save the sanitation sleeves for once or twice a day.

Friday morning

No fever, but some sort of right side, ear to throat discomfort. Christine's sister, who seems a day ahead of Christine with symptoms, tested negative yesterday. Christine hopes to test negative today.

Carrie seems to have made it through two nights without her muzzle wearing just "pants" to protect her leg wounds. I did tape the cuff on the leg with the healing wounds one night, and the next just wrapped the one on her ankle so the pants (damp from the wet yard) could dry out.

--== ∞ ==--

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion ... He acknowledged the “fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety” of the treatments, but wrote that those questions should be resolved by elected legislators

I have nothing nice to say about scientific debates being resolved by legislators.

Some gratitude: Carrie seems to be healing quickly with large rims of fresh skin around the sores. She's tolerating her muzzle and is a model for us to wear our masks to minimize the odds of me coming down with COVID.

Reading yesterday gives me the impression that household transmission of COVID is less prevalent than i would have expected, with one article indicating that relatively few people shed large amounts of active virus.

This past weekend i made biscuits. I'm not sure what i did wrong that they didn't really rise up much. I'd made a first draft of a poppy filling (didn't remember to heat the milk before soaking the seeds, didn't read a recipe) and i slopped it over a slab of biscuit dough, rolled it up and then cut the log into poppy twirl buns. It was a lovely indulgent use of the poppy seeds that i collected last year. I picked most of this year's poppies, and the heads seem small compared to a dried poppy head from some years ago. I wonder if it's soil fertility or that the poppy volunteers are self selecting for smaller heads.

I have a large quantity of conventional fertilizer i bought early in our stay here, and i think i am going to use it up this year. Our compost piles just melt away and so we've been putting less than ideal things in them (Weeds, pet poop). I think once the conventional fertilizer is used up i will split our compost and see about getting the worm bins running again. And i need to be better about cover crops: the horrible stilt grass does not count.

Chapter 4, better gardening? I definitely haven't done good vegetable gardening in Chapter 3 (aka the past three years). On the other hand, getting the sochan/cutleaf coneflower established has produced a remarkably easy greens crop.

We arrived in NC May 27th 2016, so have entered the tenth year here. And maybe chapter 4? The first two and a half years we were here were about clearing the overgrown property, getting a fenced area for the pets and the "orchard."  Let's call that Chapter 1. Mom had her stroke in Dec of 2018. We still had some trees to plant in the orchard, but between Dec of 2018 and Mom's death June 1 of 2022, Mom's health and Grandmámá's health and care were constant concerns. I had a trip to Europe in there, and COVID certainly affected all those concerns for health fragile persons. I'm thinking of that as Chapter 2.

With Mom's passing i became focused on my health: i had just discovered the ADHD diagnoses of family members and realized it applied to me. A year later I had had my nose reshaped so i could breath through it, envisioning more energy from better breathing. I had a hard time recovering energy after the surgery. I finally pulled myself out of what i supposed to be depression, and then i was covered with spots. And so very tired. If this were fiction, the lethargy after surgery would be foreshadowing for the ITP diagnosis, and i can't imagine why ITP isn't the explanation for that low energy sense i had that year. Perhaps this third chapter ends with loosing two of our companions for the cross country move. It ends with Christine's sister becoming a widow,  promising some change in her relationship with Christine. Part of Christine's desire to move here had to do with her relationship with D--: i wonder how it will change. I hope it's a positive change.

I realize how different our experience of the political world was when we left California. NC's anti-trans "bathroom bill" was proposed or passed  on the same day we closed on the house. Trump's position as presumptive nominee occurred  as we were driving across country. I read the Doonesbury comics that are re-running George W era strips and feel horror at my nostalgic feelings for Rumsfeld.

My work world has changed in the third chapter: colleagues i was working with before we moved have left, including leadership changes that are beginning to reshape my work life. I hope i have the privilege of keeping my job until i want to leave. Were the world to continue as it has during my working life, i would retire in six years.

I am not optimistic. I think of the huge weight that sat on me in ... 1990? 1989? ... when i watched computer and climate scientists present their models of how climate would be in fifty years and the  dreary and dim prospects they presented. Every presentation essentially ended with a list of aspects they didn't have included or that we didn't know that might make the impact less drastic. I walked away realizing i'd be in my early 70s. I did consider switching fields. I talked to someone doing acid rain research whose advice was that if you wanted to save the environment we needed advocacy and public opinion changed, not more research. He had apparently "gotten into trouble" by trying to advocate for change politically. His advocacy was used to turn against his research, implying it wasn't impartial. He was depressed and probably not a good person for me to turn to, but there it is.

I did not foresee the disaster of politics or the possibility of a tech change like generative and agentic AI.  (OK the promise of "Agentic AI", something that could be a personal assistant has been promised by speculative fiction for ages.)

It seems like a new chapter. I dunno. One foot in front of the other.

The day after my reposting of Quaker House's post, which referenced an "imaginary insurrection," i read Electoral Vote's review (with historical and legal context on presidential rights). The section headed "...And in Court" notes the call up of the Marines was not under the insurrection act. A muted "yay" at that.

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Senate/Maps/Jun10.html#item-1

At the end of the month, my third nephew D-- is headed to "New Student Indoctrination" for his Navy ROTC scholarship to Fancy Pants Connecticut College. I believe it was a struggle to choose between that and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. I know the current administration was on my brother's mind the whole time, even if it is D--'s decision.  D-- spent one week last summer at the Academy's Summer Seminar and in the spring attended a "Candidate Visit Weekend."

When i think of the political context of those visits vs this summer... it's been a very long five months. I will get to chat with my brother on Sunday morning and will find out how the pictures of the Marines bivouacing in LA hit him.

--== ∞ ==--

Doe and rabbit in the front yard this morning. Saw the hawk (as well as a doe and rabbit) on Tuesday evening.

--== ∞ ==--

( Death and dying reflections )

Good news: No emergency medical visit for 7 days! Carrie's been to the vet twice after coming home. Healing well.  We're getting better at bandaging the open wounds. Carrie is off fentanyl, so she's gotten better this weekend at getting out of the muzzle and pulling the pads out of the bandage. So, i need to up my skills at wrapping.  I do wonder how long we need to keep bandaging. Two open wounds are each about a square inch, another is about four square inches. I think it will take a while.

 Sister in law D thinks she will be a widow in a week. Saturday morning i sent B a close up of an  elderflower cyme, all snowy petals wet from the rain with prominent creamy stamens. Later, checking the rain gauge, i saw that the white cala lily had bloomed and the flowers lay on the ground. I picked the two, dislodging the tiniest of snails, and then added a few lizard tail (Saururus cernuus) and an orange hummingbird mint (Agastache Poquito Orange) to make this morning's bouquet.  Elderberries are just beginning to ripen.

Other good news: i'd bought a bottle to deliver very targeted drops of herbicide to noxious plants (wild briers that have multiplied around the fig tree and on the other berm, honeysuckle twining on fences and out of control, trees on the septic field, poison ivy) and could not find it. I finally ordered a replacement, months after it should have been in use. And then i found it. And i was able to cancel the order in time. Yay.

Sequentially:

I left work early on Friday. ADHD rejection sensitivity probably is amplifying feelings about a meeting. I was just too emotional and so very very tired.  After an afternoon of reading, a visit with my Dad, and more reading, we watched the documentary about Ocean's Gate, the Titan submarine ... hubris, and the guy who ran Ocean's Gate sounds just like the exec director who is involved in my distressed feelings.

I did get a good bit done in the yard on Saturday, flame weeding while it was wet. Moved woodchips a short way to mulch an area at the end of the sidewalk that has been annoying to mow. Then i planted some annuals (coleus and lantana), some Trimezia gracilis ... babies? propagules? , and transplanted a chrysanthemum that survived the winter and has started blooming.   The lemongrass is in real soil for the first time in years, and i hope it multiplies. Finally, the native plants i bought are all in the new heavily mulched bed around the front yard apple tree.

Christine's been telling her siblings that "Carrie is avenged." I found a coiled copperhead in the woodchip pile when working yesterday, and killed it. I don't feel good about it but i would do it again.  There are brush piles in the woods and that's for them. But this was a little too close.

I then went on to have an ocular migraine and then a bad headache. Today has been less outside. I picked sochan and mint, spending time thinking about where i was putting my hands. I've got several Talenti gelato containers full of blanched sochan in the freezer, mint and bee balm on the dehydrator, and elderberry flowers hanging by the water heater. I imagine gifts of mint-elderflower tea.

I also made whipped cream cheese with the lavender syrup and pulverized dehydrated mulberries from last year. Very purple, not over sweet, and only mildly flavored.

I haven't seen the hawk this past week, and wonder if the smelly snake repellents have repelled the hawk. Instead, i've seen a rabbit almost every morning.

  I am avoiding feelings and reading and reading and reading. It;s been a fight not to go to the book and finish this.

I'm hoping the universe is done with sending us to the emergency room for a while. Carrie has spent the night at the veterinary hospital because she was bit  on her front left ankle by a presumed copperhead yesterday morning between 9 and 10 am -- probably more like 9:45?  And she's probably going to be OK, but there will probably be a long rehab of some sort with skin and tissue damage on that leg.

I am suspicious that maybe Carrie didn't see the snake? And that's how her foot was bit? Marlowe is so tiny, so Christine has insisted on keeping her in, but i don't know that that's actually going to help unless we plan to keep her in forever. Once Carrie is home and we need to let her out in the back yard, Marlowe is going to dash out.  However Christine's got to work through her anxiety and i need to let her take the lead on this.

I think the best we can do is the snake repellent (that Christine had distributed before she left to spend the afternoon with B--) and trying to keep the weeds down.

I'm off to meet my sister and dad to drink coffee in memory of my mom at the hospice where she died, and get my sister's weed burner/flame thrower.  Mine had it's final failure when the control knob fell off somewhere in the yard yesterday as i burnt it all -- well as much as i could of the stilt grass, particularly at the fence line.  I didn't burn it all : i kept noticing poison ivy and worrying that i was going to send myself to the emergency room by burning then inhaling the urushiol. I am not that sensitive to poison ivy. I occasionaly get blisters that i suspect are from blowback from fragmented leaves in the weed whacker, but i know i've brushed by intact plants and had no reaction.

In the past week I've watched a hawk survey my garden and other parts of the front yard for prey, and have clearly seen it carry off two snakes. I assumed it was mainly getting DeKay's brown snakes: it's welcome to all the copperheads it and its brood can eat.

(While on the topic of pests: Christine's found two ticks - before they could attach - but so far my pants-in-socks seems to have discouraged any interest in me.)

We said goodbye to Edward around 12:20 yesterday, a month and a few hours after saying goodbye to Luigi.  There was a cloud that was rainbow colored in the sky, a nacreous cloud (except May?! and 35° latitude?!) that greeted us as we reached the vet, that offered a bit of marvel to go with the grief.

The medication to allow Edward to breathe more easily failed and the prognosis became even more complicated. No prognosis had him leaving the cage where he was receiving supplemental oxygen, so we said good bye to him there.

We're shattered, and i have so much at work to focus on the next few days. A week and a half before i can safely see my dad.... No spots, so we're thankful for that. (I think Christine worries the stress of waking to Luigi's condition triggered the last flare of my condition.)

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, B-- (Christine's sister's husband) is now using supplemental oxygen.  D-- and B-- lost their two grey cats Atty and Scout to some seizure condition in late 2024 and this spring. We know additional grief is on the horizon.

So we will go through the change in our lives because forward through time is the only way i know.

--== ∞ ==--

I'd started working in the yard just before, the vet called. And then while Christine showered before we went to the vet, i put a few plants in the ground in the yesterday:

Better boy buried deeply in the eastern side of the back of the circle garden; a bigger Early girl to the west, and between them a "Sweet banana" pepper and a sweet basil. Last year a Matt's wild cherry tomato swarmed that whole area. I would have expected seedlings but maybe the winter weeds then pinestraw mulch was too thick.

Carmen (Red Italian frying pepper) east most, and the second of the four "Sweet banana" peppers in the east middle bed; the last two  "Sweet banana" peppers in the west middle bed, and one between the two tomatoes.

The Thai basil in the east front bed  close to the peony where sage thrived before.

I also pulled some seeds out from my collection - Zinna, marigold, sunflowers. I have struggled to grow sunflowers here but will try again, i guess. I mixed a bunch of collected marigold seed heads in the soil near the tomatoes - who knows when i collected those.  I should probably soak some of the hyacinth beans and plant them so when all the poppies die back i have something to replace them.  It failed last time i tried but i will try again. If i get my seedling kit going soon, i should start some more basil.

I'm leaning towards planting the  rosemary where i had it before but i don't know why that big plant died last year. I suspect humidity from all the stilt grass and Bears foot (Smallanthus uvedalia), then drought. But i wonder if the Smallanthus uvedalia had anything to do with it beyond the shade and captured humidity.