elainegrey

Wednesday collapsed under the weight of too many concerns. I read  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children sitting on the deck in the sun: it helped. Mental reset. Christine & elephants yesterday and the wee hours this morning. I think once Greycie Loo is back from her teeth cleaning (off to take her in shortly) things may settle here.

Measuring the weight i felt i was carrying, i decided to not attend the Raleigh march and stay home. I suspect i'll end up working outside in the rain, moving dirt.

Carrie Dog is settling in -- which actually means she's less settled. She's getting a bounce in her step and i really wish we could let her off leash in the front yard. She just isn't quite under voice control yet, and she seems attracted to going down the driveway. She's got energy we don't know how to dispel. She's not interested in fetch. Long walks seem like a good plan, and Christine's sister has suggested a local dog park. I'm thinking of trying to tie her out while i work in the yard Saturday.

I've been thinking a bit about the Elephant In The Room, and what my needs are.( noodling )

So current action plan:

* Stay aware of my sense of balance, and when things tip to where i feel i have to carry more than i should, discuss with Christine;
* feel free to describe how things are going with L (my sister);
* review my self-care activities here.

These include
* continuing to delight in the landscape,
* getting out of the habit of video entertainment every night (I know i'm tired... we're tired... but evening numbing leads to "is this all" feelings),
* having a list of "work outside at twilight" exercise things to do & doing them, and
* interacting with other human beings (camera club, Meeting).

Things i feel i "oughta" but seem fraught with procrastination:
* exercise my ankle and get to a point where i can make some decisions about the need for medical attention or what,
* correspond with western friends and with family, and
* work with Christine as manager in getting photos in local venue.

--== ∞ ==--

On Tuesday i cleaned up a section of our road frontage. There is a small berm of soil right at the edge of the woods. I think it is associated with the power line easement. I like this berm as i suspect it provides a modicum of relief from the road noise. We want to have a visual barrier in that direction (as well as along our eastern perimeter), so my goal is to transplant holly and cedar seedlings to the top of the berm. The road is along the northern boundary of the property, so the shading will be along the road side. There are already some ferns (as yet unidentified) and some fan clubmoss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) growing on the north side of the bank, exposed to the road: they should continue to thrive in the shade of hollies and cedars.

I dug up two cedars (Juniperus virginiana) from the edge of the driveway and installed them on the berm -- much closer than the 10' spacing http://www.windbreaktrees.com/redcedar.html recommends. Well, i can always thin them. And it's much further apart than where they sprouted.

I was delighted to find many holly (Ilex opaca) and more cedar seedlings in the woods behind the berm. I'd like to get some Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria): it's a native of the coastal plain, a traditional tea plant that has caffeine. Somewhere i read it is the only caffeine bearing plant native to North America. Yerba mate is in the same genus.

Monday the elephants in the room were spooked into a stampede; yesterday was much unrest. I hope that there will be a lessening of distress today.

It's also miserable outside. There was a lovely drop in temperature as a storm came through, but by the time work was over, the tempts had regained ten degrees. I've really grown to appreciate doing things outside after work. It's just that even though it's five degrees cooler by 7 pm, the heat index was still 107 °F.

I went outside just before bed. Either it's too hot for the fireflies or they have all settled down: the light show has drawn to a close. The concert, though -- i wondered if it was louder than earlier this summer.  
I've just found several websites that may act as guides for me to sort through the katydids, crickets, and tree frogs that make up the massive chorus.

I had a panicky few moments earlier today. I think i am overwhelmed by the things i am behind on at work. And of course that leads to more procrastination.

Christine is dealing with the elephants as well as all the move stuff and the coping with HB2 stuff, so i miss her. I know that things have been getting better and that they will be better, but unfortunately i feel a negative feedback loop starting with my own stress.

In NC HB2 injustice news, Christine is getting her birth certificate changed. She has two choices: leave the name as is (Christopher) or change to her legal name -- which is a different last name since she took mine. This is very distressing for her: she'd like to just change her first name. Actually the whole thing is distressing, this is just salt-in-open wound distressing.

In good news, we do have an agreement with the sellers, which includes some fixes (the siding, the moisture barrier under the house) and there's a credit to cover the clearing of the septic field. We're also going to need to get someone to move a bedroom set from my folks place to our new place. My grandmother bought it while she was living with them. It's a dark brown wood: my mother, who is not as confident as she used to be about details speculated it was walnut. It's in a simple Georgian style with Chippendale style drawer pulls. This colonial/Georgian style is what i grew up with, and therefore contempt has been bred. However, after pricing real furniture, the fact it is free and not Ikea is making the decision to say yes easy. I'm still pouting, though, as i spent too much time adoring this Amish Arts & Craft/Mission style furniture.

I dreamed office HQ was eight hours of driving away. Did the basin and range and the rockies disappear? At least dream geography got I-80 correct.

My new year is in the spring, the beginning of March with my birthday. I've tried to use January and February as a dreaming time, a time to evaluate and set course. I'm not sure i want to change course this year, though.

The Elephant in the Room has been an overwhelming aspect of the past few years. We're in a phase where Christine is slowly assembling a vessel from shattered pieces of the past. I can see the progress, remember when all there were were shattered pieces. I know she's making progress, but it's still a difficult task.

I note that, because i feel aware of how the antidepressants i use cut me off from a treasured part of myself. Maybe i will see about reducing the medications, replacing with caffeine as necessary. Still, i make significant effort to keep an even keel with the Elephant in the Room shifting its weight unpredictably. I trust that the antidepressants keep my resources available to me and provide a type of predictability.

The focus on building habits, finishing projects, releasing the things we've accumulated that marked last year still seem valuable. I can't help but start new creative efforts, but the scope seems more focussed.

One lesson of the past year is that i am incredibly challenged when it comes to developing habits of doing things. I think it was a year ago i tried starting some basic intentional habits of the sort that most people have had since they were small children. I must still make a conscious effort.

In more selling off the china news (I suppose this is tedious to read about, but it's a bit of an adventure for me):
( Read more... )

Woe. I've some sinus infelicity and hope this has resolved before my planed flight east later in the month.

Meanwhile, the construction has begun next door. Bang, bang, bang. It is driving home the knowledge of our neighbor's forced departure.

We investigated our our-of-network health claims today. I now wonder if my calculations about going to the more expensive insurance were correct: it turns out that the charge for service is only considered up to the medicare contracted fee. Thus, 40% of the out-of-network provider fee is totally ignored. Back to the spreadsheet. [Edited to add: whew, we still come out ahead paying for the more expensive insurance that subsidizes out of network providers.]

I'm fighting my sweet cravings with carrot chips. I just found a second bag in the fridge, so apparently it's my intent to fight, at least.

I had my first self therapy session today. That is, i sat down and wrote what i would say if i was visiting a therapist. It was useful. I probably haven't been journalling as much as i used to because i don't feel free to write about the elephant in the room here. Writing in a private venue, imagining i was talking to a therapist, helped me process. The best parts were not having a commute and not having to give a long background. At the end of the session i was clear that what i am dealing with is loss. Having that frame helps.

Woo! Programming! Woo!

I have a buzz from refactoring. Also, i think i've demonstrated my insanity because i have a dictionary of dictionaries that are made up of list of two items, one of which is a dictionary, and the other is a list. It probably ought to be an object.

This is the first i've done object oriented programming. The programming i did in graduate school was FORTRAN or C written like it was FORTRAN. And tons of hack-like scripts.

It's also the first i've been able to just WORK on something days on end.

I'm a little disoriented but delighted.

--==∞==--

I am often doing a doodle journal in the evening and i would love to share -- but getting it off my iPad onto DW/LJ in a size that will not torture folks is apparently not a common thing. I may have just found an app (named "Resize Image") and will give it a go.

--==∞==--

Elephants do stampede periodically. I continue to have faith that his will become less of a concern with time: currently it takes up a large fraction of my attention and emotional space.

--==∞==--

Tomorrow we will have a celebration at work for two folks who have been with the organization 35 years and another who has been 20 years. Next April will be my 15th anniversary. (When the minnow and the whale merged, our hire dates transferred.) I am so glad for caterers because i really don't think i have the mood to put on a party. Being involved in planning tomorrow's party and the 50th anniversary party for my parents in a month is definitely pushing some of my limits. Fussing over presentation and decorations just isn't where my mind and heart are.

--==∞==--

I've reconnected with a friend from graduate school. I'm chatting with her on my ride home from work once a week. It's good to be catching up: i think both of us had a dark stretch and have simultaneously come out into the light. I might get to see her in a month.

My Dad shared on Monday that my mother had sat down with a photo album of the early years they had in their current house. Similar to how Christine's and my current residence is the longest i've ever lived in one place, the home my parents are in has been their address for the longest they've ever been in one spot.

He said that she had shared with him that she had forgotten so much of the times, the visitors, the people they invited to live with them (including an immigrant family, a Russian girl who needed surgery in the US, i think some students...). He noted that they have lived together without children in the home longer than my siblings and i were with them. She'd forgotten.

( She's been depressed. )

I'm hopeful for her.

--==∞==--

Today Christine has oral surgery. There's a chance that she will have bone removal that will require bone grafting to repair. She's been very distressed around breaking the tooth last week and the prospect of not only the repairs needed (for which this is step one) but also the opportunity that this creates for orthodontics. I've told her i had five or six teeth removed in childhood for my orthodontics, but she's not finding any consolation in that.

I'm hoping that all the pain will be well managed. I fear she is letting her surgery from some years back color her expectations: this is nothing compared to some of the treatments and surgery she's had.

This distress folds in with other Elephant distress: i acknowledge that i am spending time and energy on supporting her in her distress, and i am counting. It's been a year and a half of the deep distress. A certain amount of "where has the time gone" is answered with the time spent supporting her when she is in distress. However, it's getting better. She recovers faster and has far more insight into the distress. She expresses her concern that she's not getting better periodically, and i point back at the milestones.

It seems as if Christine's journey took getting to the point where every coping mechanism learned in childhood and as a young adult had failed, in order to start building new ones. There's an echo with my mother's experience, too, and i hope for both of them that new skills of relating to the world can be constructed so that they can thrive. I know how i shifted and changed with the trauma therapy work i did: the grief, the pain, so raw for so many years, healed. It simply healed.

Now i work on building anew. With the glorious release from the stress and demands of my previous role (both self imposed and required), i think i can build new habits, new ways of moving to the tides of time and energy.

--==∞==--

Yesterday's moments of good energy: talking on the deck with Christine, talking with KT about the work i did while she was out and the work we have ahead of us, some final analysis of how the combination of four different request flags should be handled by our system. (From the sixteen different combinations, we want only three major behavior differences.) The analysis definitely took me to a flow state.

I wonder what Edward Cat thought when he looked out the door this morning and saw rain (and did not leave the house). He's certainly older than the drought, but he's used to his ritual of leaving in the morning. I think he's sulking at the foot of the bed.

I delighted in hearing the rain in the wee hours. I'll go out in a bit and collect the rain water from a couple buckets. I imagine a new home frequently, and often design a rain collection strategy (no matter where i imagine the home).

I've been imagining living in a tiny house (not that we live in a large space now). There's the stuff question, which gets easier as i carve away things i might do and digital delivery of media makes it imaginable to reduce a library. I still can't imagine living without one floor to ceiling bookshelf (we currently have six, and that doesn't count the partial shelving, desk tops, counter tops, and floor space occupied with books). I would keep art books and poetry, i think, if i were to prune ruthlessly. The home i imagine though (putting the stuff question aside) would have a large outdoor living room. I imagine a space that could be shielded with outdoor awnings or clear plastic roofing as the season required. I think i could enjoy having people over in an outside space: i find i want every inch of interior space tuned to private life.

This outdoor living room has been easy to imagine in a drought here in a very temperate area of California. Even then, i am aware that we've sat on the deck in the evening light and retreated indoors, too cool for comfort.

--==∞==--

I've talked with Christine about a strategy for dealing with aspects of our elephant issues (ours in so much as the elephants affect me) and that seems to have helped me feel less distress.