elainegrey

Monday: lots of good insight about how much -- as some of you have pointed out -- i expect of myself, the frustration that i don't meet them, where i have embedded some unrecognized assumptions and expectations, feat about being more accepting of just who i am. Talked to my sister L in the evening. She's dealing with an empty nest (happily) and -- after a few weeks ago having a recurrence of Bad Things, a big motion is now scheduled to address root causes. I will believe the motion when the scheduled  things come to pass, but i am happy for her.

Tuesday: worked late, but there was enough time for a little mowing. Whole mowing a really horrible pain on the inside of my right ankle. Probably a yellow jacket. Fortunately the only response is just the freeking stinging shooting pain. It is now 24 hours and it just feels like a burn now. (Thursday morning: it's gone!!! Yay!) Much better.  So i needed to fast after dinner because ...

Wednesday: leaving house before 7 am for a 7:40 blood draw for the "wellness" benefit of $500 off my insurance premiums. (Still in pain at this point.) Still fasting. Need to avoid the analgesic until food is in stomach. Arrive. Check in. Wrong date. It's next month. Fortunately the other person checking in also has the wrong date so i can't feel like i am the only person ever to do that. Driving home i misread the temp gauge as a half empty fuel, and stop to get discounted gas since our grocery fuel discount isn't easily accessed. I don't realize just how complicated the interchange is for getting to and from the south side of the reduced access road when headed west. "Turn right to go left" (aka  Michigan Lefts or Restricted Crossing U-Turns or R-cuts)is a thing NC DOT is implementing. While i suspect NC drivers will do better with it than with roundabouts at speed, encountering them at morning rush hour was no fun. At least this interchange had traffic lights everywhere.

Workday intense with online conference that was highly relevant. Worked late, then to grocery, then home where we should have left outside lights on. ANOTHER appointment needs a change.

This morning i released Marlowe into the world under stars, and catch a satellite flash while gazing up.

I offer my own variation of the serenity prayer, that i know what is right for me to ask of myself, and where i should let go of expecting executive function to reign, with faith that i can get what is important done.

Someone else was talking about their sense of the seasons. For me, 1 Aug, halfway between solstice and equinox, is when i begin noticing then change int the light -- the shortening begins picking up speed and the plants begin to respond. With the equinox so close, the rate of change is faster and faster, peaking at the equinox. I am trying to accept the green and yellows of the early autumn: the Maxmillian sunflowers, cutleaf coneflower, crownbeard, and goldenrod blooming, the dappling of yellow leaves on the tulip poplars, and the sweetgums turning yellow here and there as their wild genes choose (nothing like the glorious color of selected liquidambars of suburban west coast). Driving across the river i could see the American plane trees have changed to olive green. A flash of red here and there: an early maple, a sumac. Our drought stressed buckeye has had orange leaves for a while. I count on the purple of the New York ironweed and the addition this year of aggressive blue mist flower to give me a break when the yellow is too much.

My plans and schedule are just full enough so that the unexpected and the unplanned can be accommodated. Part of it is developing a habit of doing a couple 20 min sprints each day, taking care of the household and myself (stretching or exercise) [incomplete, written on Aug 26]

My vacation turned to sick-stilled rest. Sunday i had a video visit with the UNC Health virtual practice and have a antibiotic and steroid prescription. While i would love to see my primary care provider, he's so booked. On August 18 i booked my physical at the next available date: February 22.  It is so fortunate to have an option where i can go online, late Saturday night, and decide that i can wait until 9:40 and not take the first available appointment at 6:30 Sunday morning. They clearly don't sit around if no one takes early appointments. I'd passed on the 8:30 appointment but got a text on Sunday morning that they were ahead of schedule and ended up being seen at 8:30.

I didn't work but did see my therapist yesterday. Summer disruptions have jostled our schedules and i thought i wouldn't see her for another three weeks. I'd spent some time at the beginning of my vacation reflecting on the "shape" of what i think of as "critical voices" or thoughts. I'd realized i didn't actually perceive a "critical voice" -- maybe once upon a time some conditioned stimulus caused me to frame negative thoughts about myself, but i have stopped much of those self denigrating thoughts. There is still a conditioned stimulus-reaction, though, and i know i have a learned aversion to the unpleasant reaction. I feel my day shaped by this in a way i don't like, don't want.

So, last Friday i took three of the stimuli that occurred in short order. Yes, they are in the "shape" of a "should" but the reactions are not really self critical but are feelings, and different feelings: frustration in one case, a complex of guilt, shame, worry in another, and the third had so much sadness i really couldn't finish writing about it on Friday, and right now i feel the sting of tears and the same tightness at the back of my throat following my esophagus to near my heart as i did yesterday when i talked to MK about it.

We agreed (well, i wasn't discouraged from thinking) that right now, sick, my faculties for feeling will probably spin these feelings into darker places than they will go when i am well. (That hard to distinguish depression-vs-being-sick state so learned in my body and mind has deep ruts i don't need to follow.) So first, i will get well.

Then i want to experiment with experiencing, interrogating, and i guess just feeling these feelings i have been dismissing like snoozing an alarm.

Still sick, but the meds are helpful.

In lines of visioning myself as i want to be, i begin these future routine fantasies. It's partly due to picking up Mason Currey's 2013 Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

In the warmer seasons, i am outside at 8am. We have the shed built, and i have a place for everything there. Gloves, tools, harvest baskets, etc. Maybe even a chair where i can switch from house shoes to yard shoes, although the front porch still seems fine for that. There's probably a basket by the door in the house with things that need to go to the shed. I pick that up as i leave at 8, and head to the shed, get the tools i need and head to the yard. I do a lot of weeding in the first few years but begin stretching to propagating plants again. I experiment with grafting. The garden plot's fertility is improved and so vegetable gardening is productive. I begin experiments in the woods. I clear invasives from a block aligned with the  compass, and survey what remains. I fence half off from the deer and watch what sprouts from the seed bank. I hedge saplings in places to create cover for deer and keep a sense of privacy. I come in at 11 and have a nice midday break with Christine before an inside afternoon engaging in my other interests.

gratitude, faith, health

Sick. Wednesday into Thursday i had lousy night's sleep: i got overwrought at having a hard time breathing, and settling and ended up finally settling at 2 am. I slept in and called in sick to work.  The rare times i have a hard time sleeping helps me appreciate my usual fortune at otherwise sleeping well.

I've had a virtual office visit and got some prescription cough meds, plus advice on decongestants that i will follow. I asked about contagiousness and the PA didn't seem to think there was much to be concerned about assuming i was washing my hands and coughing into my elbow. There was an implication of "you are likely less contagious than you were earlier in the infection" but it felt more like a dismissal of the concern than a statement of fact.  Benadryl last night seemed to have no negative effects on my sleep. Even with decongestants and the cough meds symptoms come through this morning.

I had PLANS for today. I spoke to Dad letting him make his own judgement, and he is up to meeting me for lunch but not for me to come over for dealing with the piles of books. [And he's not feeling well so we will catch up some other time.] I'll meet up with my nephew W at 3 and check in with him on what he wants.  I may still go to McKays on my own with the books to sell that i have at home. McKay's is apparently an amazing used book plus instruments and other things store, and i think i have enough books to make the junket worth while.

Meanwhile, figs. Coming home sick has meant my motivation for really clearing out the tree has been low. I think there may be a fungal something or other triggering unpleasantness -- the humidity etc is no help. And the "clean up fallen fruit" isn't necessarily happening as much as it should. Maybe tomorrow.

I do have a goal of making some fruit bars. I am pondering trying out a recipe that advises doubling the amount of figs leads to stability issue by doubling the figs but adding agar agar. A quick check confirms that agar agar is MUCH cheaper than Pomona's pectin. If i cook down 1.25*3 pounds of figs, use 1/3 as is, then add agar agar to the remaining 2/3, i could make a double batch and determine whether the structural integrity of double+gelling agent is equivalent to the recipe as is.

But maybe that's for tomorrow, says my energy check in (even though i want to give them to Dad and W---). I did do a round of dehydrator trays this week: three trays of the waning elderberries, two of Mike's Wild Tomatoes, and one of figs. I'm a little sad my July was so "off" and i didn't do more elderberries than i did, and i hope that i rally in time to still make plenty of fig jam.

I've been thinking about resilience and am listening to a short lectures with advice to focus on "GOALS -- gratitude, optimism, active coping, love, social skills." Active coping is something i do: what can i try to address what is "wrong"? I think i am generally grateful, but i don't mind trying that. But optimism: i think that one is hard. I know my mom trained me to see flaws. Some of that training was positive in that i can see where to improve. But what she (and my dissertation advisor) didn't know how to teach was when is something good enough. At what point does perfection become the enemy of the good?  I think the optimism comes to play with framing the imperfect. I think i end up framing things more negatively: "i can't do better than that (because time, energy)" instead of ... what? And then there is the ADHD "habit" cycle. I can have practices that support my goals with effort. Apparently neurotypical folks can have those become habits (like brushing your teeth or making your bed, chirp all the advisors) and build on them. Piffle. I don't have the part of the mind allows people to go on "autopilot" through any part of their day.  I am working on reframing this though, recognizing that my baseline is going to be different than typical habit/practice advice... and that i can allow for the reality that i will slip from practices and it doesn't mean i was practicing wrong [1], it means something (travel, sickness, focus on a project, learning something) has deviated me from the practices and with the investment of energy i can get  started back up again.

I recognize that i have to have a certain amount of resilience and optimism: i have kept trying to "get it" for decades. I've come to believe some significant amount of what i have labeled depression over the years has been the tension between not meeting my expectations for myself and trying again: but doing so by nagging and criticizing myself. Optimism (or faith?) is not constantly criticizing but believing if i accept the ... failures? imperfections? the missed expectations? ...  as perhaps unreasonable, i will keep aiming

My question of optimism vs faith is that i have leaned on -- when i was at the level of suicidal ideation -- faith that my perception of how things were was not accurate and that i would "get better" and would be more engaged with life. Is that actually optimism? In someways it was learned, too. After a certain point of cycling between lows i knew that i would not be stuck there forever.

I don't have confidence that i can stop judging myself and feel good about where i am, which sounds so bizarre as i write it. So i am trying to visualize myself accepting when i drop practices and trusting i will pick them back up.

Anyhow, this has gone on so long....

[1] This is a big deal! The energy it takes to search for the "right" way to keep up practices is significant. gratitude, faith, health

The best frame: i am tired and with a cold, but returned home, after an objectively very satisfactory week at the main office. Much progress was made; i believe my work was well valued.

Meanwhile, back in my experiential frame: 596 days until March 31, 2028 from today (August 16, 2026).

I've lost things this trip. A windbreaker left after lunch. Power block and cord in a conference room. (Might get that back.) Breakfast and lunch left in hotel fridge and remembered AFTER I went through airport security.

I gained a cold, possibly a sinus infection. My return home yesterday started with departing at 7 am and arriving home after 7 pm, the flight travel time extending well beyond the time to drive home. Just taxing around Chicago's O'Hare took for-ev-ah.

But i have also lost some heart about work. Maybe the exec dir will move on, but he doesn't understand our organization's values. He's an outlier, i know, but when i think of going forward, the Friday lunch i had with the exec director saps at it. I think if i was otherwise full of momentum and energy, i would be easily able to vault this, but all the little things that have nagged at me over the past years add more friction. There's a conference i "should" go to. It is valuable technical network building for the organization. But the business people know the value of it more than the engineering people, and if i am to go i have to draw the connections more clearly to this exec dir. I understand the need to justify costs; what i don't like is the attitude of the person i need to justify them to.

This fall Christine and i will sort the possibilities of retirement out. We have a fee-only financial advisor initial meeting lined up in mid September: that should help make real what we ar looking at if i retire on 31 March 2028.

At work i will do my best to ensure that others can carry on. I admit that not only am i sick, but i was exhausted before i left on this trip, diving deeply into the technical implementation possibilities for the big project with a change in direction. Maybe with recovery i will feel better.

It doesn't help to see a technological roll out of the AI client landscape that looks far more closed up and walled garden than it has to be. One of the things i am learning is that the AI client, the software that connects to the model and to the "context", is incredibly powerful in determining one's experience of AI capabilities. For the organizations that buy a enterprise level license with a AI client provider, i see the lock-in capabilities in these standards even if they are "open" and just sigh so deeply.

This isn't even beginning to think about the environmental and cultural impact. It's just at the interoperations standards level and seeing how even if, say, much more capable and efficient AI models are developed the interoperations choices will make shifting to better AI models harder if the big players (Anthropic, OpenAI) don't see value in it.

There are interesting things that could be done to protect and enable open data in this new world, but i didn't see these possibilities landing in any way on the people who could give the green light.

Sorry, sick journaling is probably not the best time.

So, the Quaker group i am part of has a mailing list on Dreamhosted Mailman. The group has been in disarray and a "rebooting" group had been looking at Groups.io, so when the announcement that Dreamhost was firing their Mailman customers at the end of the month we were in a better state than some -- https://emparrot.com/blog/2026/06/10/DreamHostMailman.html

But with that deadline (actually our admins told us the 21st of July not 31: maybe some risk management with that) i knew that there would be so many in our community for whom the move would be a challenge. So i raised my hands to help with the transition.

OMG groups.io, you are so weird. Chrome vs everything else differences, two different ways to get to a group profile but only one way works to change some things?  And the other way to change other things? And some things change in both routes to the profile?

So i've been doing tech support and video "office hours." And then there are the people who misunderstood the  offer for technical help as the zoom link for the worship groups.  And, after providing the times i am available like this

    Sunday office hours from 3 pm to 5 pm EDT/noon to 2 pm PDT     Monday by arrangement 2 pm to 7pm EDT/ 11 am to 5 pm PDT     Tuesday by arrangement 2:30 pm to 7pm EDT/ 11:30 am to 5 pm PDT

when someone needed help but not today, she asked me what timezone i am in.  Sure fine, i'll tell you, but it won't change my availability.

It's been lovely helping people, plus there was a conference last week, Wednesday through Sunday morning. Meeting for business and then worship. I attended what i could -- but came down with some malaise with brain fog and that took me out around 48 hours. I apparently missed some approval of nomination Quaker style drama. All that was minuted was a Friend stood aside. (To all nominations, someone? The process?) Later ...eh, gossip?... means i know the couple that friend belongs to, but.... I care because my service to the Online Presence and Tech committee was part of that approval.

Meanwhile, it is "high threat" wet bulb temps here. Yesterday i went to a "Forest crops" "Managing Your Forest or Woodlot for Food, Fun, Fodder, Craft Materials, Lumber, Recreation, Wildlife Habitat, Firewood, Medicine, and So Much More" workshop at a nearby folk school, partly to meet the instructor ("green builder, licensed General Contractor") and see if he could consult with us on shed/barn construction. I did pretty well coping with the heat until the very end of the afternoon.

The class was oriented to larger woodlot scales (20 acres) but i learned things. Urban forestry programs are fascinating. I had hoped for a more permaculture-y focus (ostrich fern? what forest edibles grow with what, where, and how?). I did get to meet some wild pawpaw.  We bored a 35 year old pine and got its age, held samples of wild and plantation grown pine and saw how different the ring growth was: plantation much wider and even.  White oak forest succession is a worry, apparently, because people haven't been managing or regrowth. Not my worry here, though.

Happy things

Worries alleviated: The new chairs are very comfortable.

Bleh-brown prints replaced: Replaced covers on four throw pillows that came with the brown couch we retain: two blue fuzzy pillows that are "dusty" blue but not dusty enough to match the rug. They are very soft for cats, though. The other are two blue toned "Strawberry thief" William Morris (inspired?) prints.

Rearranged the hassocks and benches to improved room experience.

Bruno has found a lovely cozy spot for himself on the bottom shelf of the table in the angled spot between Christine's chair and the brown couch. He spent much of the weekend in the living room with us.

Tuesday Carrie was up early, and it was good to see the comfort the two are growing to have together. Big jumps with Bruno's socialization -- but he also peed on the couch (possibly Carrie's presence in his safe space was just a bit too stressing). Glad i bought a waterproof couch cover.

Watermelon rind simmered in tomato sauce with onion! Watermelon rind roasted with peppers and onions! I think it's a great veg, not merely fiber (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40910198/), and it doesn't need All The Sugar that it gets when preserved (candied).

I don't know if it is happy, but i had much catharsis writing my self review as i reflected on what looks so hard and draining about the coming year.

I learned that shredded wheat is really shredded: it's not ground into a flour and then extruded into those threads.

I'm back to lots of executive functioning at work followed by disappearing into novels. Or into a tech project. The current project has to do with my personal executive functioning tools that  work great until they get over burdened, and then i tweak, then that works for a while, and then i tweak a different way and ... well now there is all sorts of cruft. So i started trying to fix some things and trying to do it right and now it seems like such a waste of time.

I think i spend too much time trying to deal with opportunity costs.

No chairs yet. The porch chairs we are in are similar seat sizes but are much lower. I will appreciate the new chairs when they arrive (i hope -- the whole  what-have-we-done buying chairs without sitting in them first hits me periodically. We did roll out the new carpet - huzzah! i like this ever so much more than the previous. The smaller rugs i got  for in front of the pet water bowl and at the door are good matches to the blue. The blue napkins we have -- probably thrifted ages ago -- not a match. The velour pillow covers -- not a match. I am going to start cleaning out linens.

Bruno is getting more and more comfortable out of his territory. He co-exists with Marlowe in the same room by being in a highly defensible position (under couch, in cat tree tube) and hissing and growling if she encroaches too much. But if Marlowe is not around, he's coming into the living room when i am not in the front room and being near people more.

Today was the first nice size harvest of blueberries: 1.5 cups. We went from eating a few at the bush midweek, to bringing in an handful yesterday,  to today where i think there are multiple servings. Huzzah. The elderberry has been covered with blooms, and they are so fragrant. I am not going to bother trying to use them -- dry them, whatever -- this year. If i do anything i should do a few more rounds of harvesting and dehydrating mint. The plants got off to a slow start -- they haven't started blooming yet so there's a chance.

This spring took so long to warm up and then went to hot so fast,  but the endive lettuces are doing OK. Best dill results that i have had for a while too. Big umbels slowly setting seed. I'm leaving the peas at it as i let a few pods get too tough. Maybe i can save seed.  I never seem to grow enough peas to be more than a novelty nibble. Austrian Winter Peas as a cover crop have been far more delightful -- i eat the tendrils and the flowers and it seems way more rewarding than waiting for these sugar snap pods.

Lunch today was chopped greens cooked in the microwave - mainly turnip -- mixed with some cream cheese and some salmon (I will invest in the King Oscar salmon cans while on sale), chopped dill, chopped endive and violet greens, and, because i didn't drain the greens well, diced rye bread. It was an odd form factor, but it tasted pretty good.

I think the one female flower so far on the squash failed to take. If i recall correctly this is a drought response.

I've dyed my roots pink and it seems to have been successful: no pink stains in the bathroom. Also, my platinum blonde (cough) at my temples is covered and the dark roots don't quite seem so clearly delineated.

I've wondered why people stop posting, don't say "i'm done", but drift off. As i watch it happening to me, i can see some of the reasons. Simply loosing the place, time, trigger to write to something else: that's happened in several ways. One is that i stopped letting myself access LJ/DW on work's computer. This was some years ago, but it was a big impact. Starting to write something in the morning would be interrupted until end of day. Maybe i can come up with a way around that.

The next is having other places to record things. This started, well, now probably 15 years ago when i started keeping logs in Evernote, then when i got fed up with Evernote and moved to Airtable. Oh, heavens it's been lovely to have the structured data of Airtable to log everything, to mix tasks and reminders and records as needed and to make it match just what i want and need. And it can be context free: log a health thing, an achievement or milestone, and not need to put it in context. It's slowly taken on all sorts of textures -- looking ahead, looking back, checking in the moment. I loose the context: explaining something here means minimally making a slapdash attempt to use my words and share why i am recording, why i care. In my log i just start recording things i am eating without explaining why.

I suspect screen time comes up. I think i spend too much time reading all the lifestyle and human interest in the New York Times after either an approaching sense of gut punch or horror that i quickly evade by skimming the latest judgement by John Hodgman. Instead of pondering some thought that triggers, i rush off to the next article that catches my attention.