elainegrey

Me: what goin' on?

To Carrie who wouldn't leave the deck this morning until i came out to keep her company as she does her business.

To my accounts as yet another system (reddit), with a totally different identity (and absolutely no link to my phone number, ha, or phone) is hacked. I am sad i can't have MFA on dreamwidth or live journal. This may be enough to trigger me to shut down my LJ account because i just don't know what might happen if i lose control over it, unlike dreamwidth where i trust the ownership.

( Related but a digression )

I spent much time on Saturday trying to figure out why over ten hours on Friday there was a cancelled order for a $2000 Amazon gift card, three gifts of a Max account on a service i use to myself (charges pending at the bank), and my instagram account alertement me to suspicious activity and was forcing me to change my password. The all used different emails and authentication patterns and it's a struggle figuring out what happened.

It became clear that there is no way that you can get anything out of Amazon or the other company's security people. Amazon kept resetting my password when i attempted to get IP address, payment method, and what purchase system (website? app (which i don't use)? alexa(which i don't use)? I found a stack of others on reddit who had similar exploits around gift accounts

In the end i at least excluded some vectors of attack, added MFA to many more accounts and Christine will take on disputing the bank charges this morning. This morning i woke to find Facebook had changed my password because of suspicious activity.

--== ∞ ==--

I did call my dad and talk to him; it had been a week since i waved off his last minute Easter restaurant lunch. Between feeling sick and the combination of depressing venue and no reservation i couldn't bear the to  join them.

--== ∞ ==--

Mowing mowing mowing all Sunday. Thank heavens for the low humidity with this ridiculous warmth. And thank heavens for the leaves now on the trees because i was generally able to be in the shade for my efforts in the afternoon.

It's been a couple social weekends in a row, in March, and i've come tumbling down to a sick weekend.  Spring Equinox i have observed by trying to get dirt moved before the 80+degree days get too entrenched. I am feeling a little guilt today for not being more connected to my community of family in the ritual greetings at holidays.

The weekend of the 20th, my niece was in a play and the next day we had a big family meal with my nephew who was heading back to college. There were some Christine porcupine moments but we got through. The next weekend i needed to get plants in the ground and so took off work early to make progress. All Saturday was given over to more social things: my brother and father came to the No Kings protest with my sister and I, then that evening my sister's family, my brother, and Christine and i went to see Hail Mary. Christine went home (and my brother-in-law wanted to go but missed that ride) and the rest of us had a late dinner.

Then there was more digging on Sunday, Monday evening, and Tuesday evening. The raised beds are almost full as i get 50 cubic feet of soil from old compost piles and the moldered pile of wood chips that has languished in the drive for a couple of years, rich with worm castings and mycelium. I'm layering in some clay , hopefully making a good home for these plants.

Wednesday was the Artemis II launch, and then Thursday and Friday i was out of it with a head cold. Yesterday, too.

I planted the Thomasville citrangequat on Monday along with three different shrubby native mints - wild rosemaries or calamints: Clinopodium coccineum 'Amber Blush', Clinopodium georgianum 'Desi Arnez', and Conradina canescens 'Gray Mound'. I've a Clinopodium arkansanum from last year that has overwintered happily, but it's a low growing form - not a shrub. These plants aren't commonly used for landscaping, but are not attractive to deer and do have flushes of flowers like rosemary and savories. I am terrified i will kill them all because they are all sandy soil, sand hills, beach, limestone natives, but i have read they (like so many mints) adapt fine just fine. So i sprang for them and they are in the 10x10 bed between the drive and the garden plot, with the northwest corner anchored by an old apple tree.

This year was the second spring, i think, since planting that bed with the first wave of plants. The waves of cold have confused some of the daffodils and narcissus, but it's greening up nicely. The Vernonia gigantea, a type of ironweed, a tall fall blooming member of the Asteraceae with purple flowers, worries me that it hasn't survived or isn't thriving. It dies back in the winter, so i just trust it takes a while to send back shoots. (But the droughty year past makes me worry it hasn't rooted itself well enough.) The "Sunburst" St Johns wort -- a woody shrub --  was pruned by the deer last year, but i think it was to its benefit.  I'm hoping the shrubby mints survive and help give some winter structure to the area.

Two more plant orders are out there, being queued for delivery. One is for the companions for the citrangequat: a yuzu and two pineapple guavas. They probably should be planted further apart, and the chestnut is rowing so fast this might not be a sunny spot soon. Worry worry and second guess. The other order has much more highly bread and hybridized plants: two colorful yarrows and "Homestead purple" verbena as ground cover for the 10x10 bed (admittedly when yarrow blooms it is taller), a hummingbird mint, "Morello" also for the 10x10 bed. Then two monarda with very similar colors, but different bloom times, for ... well, i am not quite sure at the moment.

Work continues OK at the moment. An intense two weeks digging into some details.

Bruno and Marlowe continue to slowly come to terms with each other. Bruno is clear that he gets to sit with me in the living area in the morning while Marlowe is outside or escorted to a sleeping Christine. The doors separating them are open more often, even overnight. There are hissy fits, and Bruno still flits like a silent shadow to safety, but a future where we aren't negotiating seems possible.

As the temperatures swing here, from uncomfortably warm (i had to stop the HVAC from cooling last night, despite it being welcome) to chill (no frost warning yet), i wonder if our average is... average? Probably not. The warm is far too warm.

The "king bloom" of the apple blossoms opened yesterday. The other apples seem quite behind: the shade of the pines makes a difference. Somehow the tree has pollinated in previous years: i hope the bees can make it work this year. Blue berry blossoms are opening and inviting bees as well. I should probably give hand pollination of the paw paw a try.

Yesterday's executive functioning went well, remarkable after a month of flailing a bit. I might be on the edge of figuring out something. I did realize my image of what rest looks like is remarkably dim and fuzzy. For Other People it is the lounge chair by the pool or the ocean. There wasn't much rest in my growing up: the morning coffee my parents shared with each other on the weekend inevitably exploded into an argument as they tried to plan what they were going to do that day, a weird lesson in intimacy, communication and, i realize, rest and doing. For me, i think of when i was really sick as a child and spent the time in bed with scissors and construction paper.

I'm suspicious i rested on Sunday, and it didn't look like rest at some angles. There were lists and check boxes and time boxes. On the other hand, there weren't any intentions that lasted longer than ten minutes or maybe twenty. There was laundry. (The air while filled with pollen is dry. The Bruno bed pads and rags dried so quickly!) There was acceptance i was tired from the physical labor on Saturday.

The small multi-flowered yellow narcissus are still blooming, while the later narcissus in pale butter yellow and white haven't started yet. It has not been a good spring for daffodils -- yet? It's finally time for the native flowers: violets are rioting, the red buds are beginning to shimmer with color. One red bud i had transplanted some years ago on the south berm has blossoms. The volunteer at the other end of the berm seems strangely inert. The surviving dogwoods are opening their white bracts to the sky. I've lost some creeping phlox to a combination of weeds and drought. The spice bush blooms seem to have been lost this year, overwhelmed by the grey-green leaf-out of the invasive autumn olive and possibly their own leaves. The Chickasaw plum had so many flower buds, but i think rain and freezing weather limited the show. A juneberry in the woods by the driveway has a few high blossoms. The one i have planted still waits for the right time: perhaps it still needs a few years.

We have been in "severe" drought since January, the longest since we moved here, and the most severe since a terrible "exceptional" drought in 2007-2008. (None of this like California drought, which was "exceptional" from 2014 to the end of 2016.) No indication of any frost chance for the next ten days, barely any rain.  I've probably wasted all the money i have spent on grass seed.

It was overcast last night so i missed the moon-Venus conjunction and any chance of dim aurora.

I am intending to see some family at lunch today, and to dig and assemble my new raised beds. I hope to get the complicated parts -- assembly, leveling the site, trenching the French drain and adding coarse gravel, a screen, and finer gravel mostly done this weekend. Then i think smaller efforts trundling fill from various sites will be easier.

The Thomasville citrangequat has been ordered; tabs open for two pineapple guavas and a yuzu. I've ordered seeds of goat's rue (Tephrosia virginiana), a native legume with showy flowers, as a nitrogen fixing cover crop. I am imagining adding a few artichokes to act as a cover, too, until the trees fill in. Maybe a lavender.

My performance at work this week was not good, much frittering, and that needs to pull around.

I have a general frustration of "I want to have done X but i am not doing it." And just writing that down has illustrated something for me. I am not sure i have desires about actually doing, but i have desires i want done. That's.... interesting.

Monday's therapy raised something for me, which is the frame i have for doing things. At a very large scale i think i have values driving things. But when i get closer in, i have more "i'm not doing this because how-Mom-framed-her-activities or how-Dad-framed-her-activities or how-the-dominant-culture-frames-doing" than my own reasons or frames.

Phrasing that i want "to have done" something does help a little, because i think it helps me see that i am not engaging with the doing, really, and the doing is the next step. So if i want to have grafted the scions i bought to the crepe myrtle and fig before they scions die, i need to start thinking about wanting to be outside (yay) with a sharp thing (erm) maybe on a ladder (erm x2) figuring out how to try something i can only try once a year and that the success feedback comes very slowly, sigh, and that i may not succeed because i am still learning. Hmm, maybe i could just graft the current fig onto the current fig to have more practice. And i don't need to get all concerned with "is this really the best place" for the purchased scions, just graft them SOMEWHERE and see if it takes. If they take and i want to move them, that's OK.

Another change in my being is that i am a little more aware of the specific feelings/emotions that i am escaping from (generally to novels). Over my vacation, there was shame/frustration/anger of misplacing tomato seeds. I was aware of wanting to avoid those feelings and thinking about it. Yesterday, Christine was upset about something and also i wasn't ready to really face the outcome of Monday's therapy. So i read.

I am frustrated with the reading because i have a hard time stopping and there are all the things i want to have done that won't happen while i am reading. But i am also frustrated with my constant (it seems) inability to have done things. And that's .. ah, there, that is still a heavy emotion that will be hard to address except in little bits.

Monday i was very very tired after therapy, and i still feel tired today. I am in the muddle of why: am i sick (coughing more - -because pollen? or cold? or?), in a fatigue flare? Or emotionally tired and maybe i would feel better if i actually did something, anything?

I had a virtual visit with a health care provider and have an OK on doubling up on antihistamines. We'll see if that hits this lethargy.

Meanwhile, insane weather. The saucer magnolia is a cloud of pink. Maybe the rain tomorrow will somehow protect it from the frost/freeze on Friday morning.

I was obsessing with retirement through much of February because (1) approaching birthday (2) colleague on Big Project retiring (3) my uncertainty about what happens with Big Project when i retire. Not that it won't happen without me, but more assumptions that i will be there.

I took Friday through Tuesday off, partly as a birthday, partly to practice for retirement.  I don't know when i will retire. I've decided i don't need to really think about decisions until the end of this year and that's if i want to give very graceful notice. Things i am considering though are how well i am ding at work and how well i can manage myself without the big stick of work expectations hanging over me.

This long plus weekend was less than ideal in some ways. In ways it went well, i got outside on the two nice days and made significant progress in the north end of the garden plot. I cleaned most of that end up last year, held back stilt grass. It's now very mulched between the rows and some greens planted. I also set some time aside for birthday celebrations - Friday night with family, Sunday brunch with a friend.

But, broadly a good bit of the time was reading or sitting and poking at my digital stuff. My todo list is in worse shape now. My gardening data is a little better off: after making something complex, i turned around and simplified it so there is a prayer i can keep up. I didn't make progress on any of the miscellaneous to dos cluttering (like installing the new rain gauge). I shopped for new things to do, like some raised beds with my Dad's birthday gift to me that will then have some feijoas (pineapple guava, an evergreen to screen the heat pump compressor and all the power boxes on the wall) and a yuzu in it. Christine has bought a smart telescope for us, which will be very fun because it has an equatorial tracking mode that looks very easy and will make using it in our back yard easy. Watching people do astrophotography on Tokyo rooftops was amazing; our skies are reasonably dark: Bortle 4, "rural suburban transition" which one of the Dutch astrophotographers described as what he would travel to get.

In really good news, Bruno asked to come out of his room a few times in the evening and all of us sat in the living room together in the evening. Marlowe was indignant, but there were long peaceful stretches.  Bruno and Carrie are getting more used to each other: Carrie is still excited to see Bruno, but settles. Bruno relaxes around a relaxed Carrie.  Did have a bad pee event on the couch on my proper birthday, and i think the foam might still be drying out. Piffle.

Back to retirement thoughts: i have lots of vacation banked. I need to practice setting intentions and following through without work acting as the structure and the excuse for not doing things. Plants offer a touch of motivation as they at least have certain unstoppable issues, and the scion wood i bought to graft on the crepe myrtle and the fig is waiting for me in the fridge.

So i have some no-fat ricotta that i no longer need for the original reason. I figured maybe i could make something a little sweet and maybe it could satisfy my sweet tooth -- and it seemed like a good use for my dehydrated mulberries. I found some spice bush berries from 2024 in my pantry, preserved in sugar, and thought that might be a lovely combination. So: ground the mulberries, ground about a teaspoon of spicebush berries, and tossed the sugar from the jar in. Then spooned ... maybe half the small container into the bowl. I mixed, tasted, and ... brain churned, tastebuds argued, and... ah. It wasn't sugar, it was salt the spicebush berries were preserved in.

Oh my. So i mixed the rest of the ricotta in -- still really very salty -- and i read the internet. Apparently there is a drained, salted, and "aged" cheese called ricotta salata. So, i have put it in a filter bag and the tofu press and maybe it will be nice in salads?

H/T [personal profile] https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/profilecmcmck https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/ and [personal profile] https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/profileminoanmiss https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/ (hope that works)

1 what's your favorite kitchen appliance? My immersion blender with chopper and processor attachments

2 do you have a collection of anything? North Carolina made pottery. A small mask collection. I have large accumulations of books, plants, seeds but i'm not sure accumulation has the intentionality of collection.

3 what's the best job you've ever had? My current role is very satisfying.

4 what's the worst job you've ever had? It was the manager, not the role, that was miserable.

5 what's your favorite piece of furniture and where did you get it? I do not have a favorite piece. We have Christine's grandfather's quarter sawn oak craftsman desk that is meaningful, and the previous owner made a kitchen island with concave front, a cherrywood top and some other wood for the curved cabinet and drawers.  It is a gorgeous piece no matter how many times i catch my hips on the corners which arc out.

6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?

Bread and cheese isn't a recipe.... The "minimal effort" is confounding me. Minimal effort for one person is a muchness for another: i think nothing of cutting up fresh veg but it's a barrier for Christine. She makes things that require stirring which -- look if i have to do something to keep it from burning, it's not minimal effort.

7 are you married or do you intend to get married? Married for 35 years this year.

8 do you have kids? do you want them? No. "Want" seems weird to me in this context, although it seems a common enough frame for most people.

9 are you on good terms with your parents? It was very complicated with my mother. With my Dad, for a basic understanding of good terms, yes.

10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them? My sister is near and we spend time together when we can; my brother is far and we try to make time to video conference.

11 do you vote? YES

12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made? Our home.

13 what are your hobbies? Currently various yarden activities that are hard to delineate between hobby and maintenance and stewardship.

14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into? I'd like to return to photography, fiber arts (crochet and sewing and fabric dyeing), and visual arts. I  wonder if poetry and writing are still interests.

15 do you collect anything? I am not currently collecting pottery as i have boxes that are not on display, and my mother's collection is in a little limbo. The masks and the art we have is not hung. I suppose i am collecting things that would make living comfortable if the power goes out for an extended time and yard, forestry, and gardening tools.

16 how long have you known your oldest friend? Over forty. Not doing math.

17 are you a member of any clubs or associations? The professional group IdPro. The NC Botanical garden and the NC Native plants society.

18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education? Not during education, but i have gone through a number of changes in specialist knowledge.

19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed? I think they are all removed.

20 what's your favorite beverage?  Keemun tea.

21 do you have any living grandparents? No, but my paternal grandmother made it to 104.

22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours? Niblings are in my life, more or less. I'd welcome them more in my life.

23 what's the coolest place you've visited? Is this temperature? Or hipness? Because when i was in Ohio last week is was 0°F (-18°C). But only a few places i've been to in Ohio seem cool.

24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you? I have not used my certificate in GIS, but would like to.

25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other? Er, dishwasher, but there are not many laundramats where i live now. One five miles away, and if that didn't suit, one fifteen miles away.

26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it? List

27 what's your favorite household chore? Erm....

28 what chore do you hate the most? Erm....

29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive? I bring plants in for the winter, and this year they are not doing so well.

30 what's your living arrangement? who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other? My spouse and i live in a what i will call a cottage, although it lacks traditional cottage style elements. The weathered cedar siding inspired our front porch rework to have raw cedar log posts and live edge, rough cut slats in the railing, with "stone" facing on the masonry. Inside is cozy, cluttered, and comfortable  as opposed to stylish. We "own" it, and will really own it hopefully in less time than the ten years left on the mortgage.