elainegrey

Happy New Year!

May we all find places of safety when the political reality is too much, may we all know compassion and kindness and joy. May our health improve. May we find success and joy and satisfaction.

--== ∞ ==--

I've just declared email and post reply bankrupcy. I'll probably try do to the same in other places i feel too overwhelmed.  I guess i could sort of manage a housework bankrupcy if we were willing to have someone come in and clean, but i think Christine's a little too fragile right now. The holidays, so many family gatherings, and possibly the dramatic temperature swings bring on the elephants.

I've gotten some postal greetings and small gifts out, some shipped on Christmas Eve afternoon, others shipped yesterday at ten minutes to closing. I have thank-you notes written last January still in my card box. Sigh.

--== ∞ ==--

Reading

Gift books include the requested foraging book, Nature's Gardens by Sam Thayer; Kintsugi: Finding strength in imperfection that was paired with the requested kintsugi kit, and Sedaris' Holidays on Ice. I'm proud i did not see that many books i needed to bring home from Mom's library because no shelves. Tsundoku for life.

A Passion for Specificity sits in Kindle for both Christine and i to read.

--== ∞ ==--

Food ways

Apple-cherry pie with Vietnamese cinnamon is good. Canned cherry filling is pricy, though, so i was glad to have also found a bag of clearance apples that filled out the one can of cherry filling i bought on impulse.  I am very pleased with my growing skill at prebaking pie crusts (i buy the rolled up pre-made crust, one step at a time). I don't usually put a crust on top because usually i'm making quiche. This time i followed some advice that you should shield the crust at the beginning to keep from being burned later. This advice was a fail for me, as the egg wash glued the crust to the shield and i think i was more at risk of burning as i tried to remove it. Still, the "2025" decoration survived and the attempt at making fireworks with colored sugar wasn't ... a complete fail.

Yesterday, i finally got around to air frying some frozen battered oysters: yum!  I had them on a bed of rice and limas seasoned with a poblano cheese spread i made when i over roasted the last of my poblano peppers. That has worked well to rescue that infelicity.

Black-eyed peas and Brussels sprouts (surely the tiny brassicas count in the good luck dining?) for dinner tonight, possibly with corn bread, although that seems to be calling some elephants as Christine has gotten tangled with this concept.

[Wednesday morning] Dad just called, he has cut one thing short then another, and now he expects to be home in four hours: i don't need to go care for mom this afternoon. Yesterday's lunch was a fail as i put in far too much "Better than bullion" in the hot and sour soup -- so very very salty. Adding rice did nothing. I poured the left overs over even more rice and will try something like scorched rice a la liminal_space.



Yellow: the tulip poplars have had leaves here and there turn yellow. Some visible on my drives are even more dappled, as are occasional sweet gums. Many fall flowers glow yellow, and tobacco is a pale yellow green. I've passed a school bus turned to open bed truck, with a tarp over the tobacco harvest, with a leaf blowing out every few thousand feet. Elms and black cherries are turning, the elms brown and the cherries a gold that quickly goes to brown. Not whole trees a-glow, but a leaf here and there that promptly falls. One elm has looked oddly unwell, and i finally noticed the leaves are being skeletonized, eaten by (presumably) elm leaf beetles.

[Friday morning] Midmorning on Wednesday we had a power outage and i just felt all the misery of my body. I'm not entirely sure how much was stress vs stress triggered conditions vs conditions, and i'm not sure it matters. I took the day off to cope with the head and digestive distress.

Yesterday i plowed through meetings. The acute complaints had faded and the weather was beautiful (still is) but my energy is pooled through the floor.

( weight loss notes )

[Friday midday] I think i've finally made it through email from one volunteer thing and conference prep email. We just had an elephant stampede, and while i am thankful no elephats were sighted during the caring for mom period and my feeling dreadful, i have a small resentment about elephants showing up for the weekend.

Feeling so very behind on everything.

As i reread yesterday's post i see i tightly connected current events to the release of the idea of receiving a bequest. That actually happened a year ago when Grandmámá's husband died and my father described how long Grandmámá's funds would hold out.

Also, Christine interacted with the dealership investigating trade ins and was terribly disappointed, to being soured on everything. This would be related to the Sunday elephant stampede, and essentially riled all the elephants back up. It's going to take a while to get back to baseline.

(Reminder, "elephants" for "elephants in the room," where Christine is doing an admirable job continuing to work on some issues that were overwhelmed her ... seven? years ago. The improvement in these years has been significant, especially when i think back to where she was four years ago. But it still affects our lives and thus my short hand.)

I saw a physical therapist this morning for back pains. I'd partly solved the issue with a minute increase in the chair height, but her analysis is much more holistic as is her solution. I trust her so much, partly because she talks and notices issues i know exist without me telling her. I saw her first just before the pandemic: maybe this time i can develop a regular practice.

I may test picking a apples tonight with my 12 foot pole and new fruit picker device. I need to water -- and i need to water BEFORE i am thinking about getting the tank empty for forecast rain.

Abundance of caution led me to recognize the slight malaise Christine and i were suffering from a week ago and not see my parents. Other than that, there was no intentional withdrawal other than recognizing the little i got done over the weekend.

Wednesday brought unexpected elephants and Christine took a while to recover. I'm not sure what the trigger was as i wasn't with her: the holidays are not a good season. I bought the latest Liaden novel (#23) that evening and have since gobbled it up. I've also since made sure i know where all my digital copies are and have them all linked up in publication order in Zotero, where i keep reading lists and various resources.

Yesterday i was remarkably productive, partly due to having a sense of what to do. The todo list does seem to take a bit more time than i would like to groom it, but it's worth it, so far. I'm also making some progress on speeding through and being ruthless with email. Admittedly, there's a bit of a tension, and i will need to find a way to ensure relaxation.

I may be a remarkable person in that i might be able to kill off sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes. There was less harvest this year than last. Admittedly, i didn't delve deeply -- i can't remember how deep i found the tubers. I'm fermenting a quart of them and had some in my soup at lunch.

The yard is looking great -- if i can get the back glade raked the time sensitive maintenance will finally be done. Next, pruning and clearing -- oy, and planting all the things in the fridge. Right. That's next weekend. (Also, the seeds that need a winter start.) I do love that this time of year -- in the Persephone phase when there is less than ten hours of sunlight and theoretically there's no growth of most plants -- when once things are tidy, they are tidy -- no new weeds, no lush grass growth to catch up with. I imagine filming a little visit with the drone ....

Must run if i want to get outside for a little exercise/raking and then see my folks.

Saturday lawn mowing wasn't so good for my knee. Yesterday afternoon the cork yoga blocks arrived for my exercises, but this morning the iPad battery was drained. I'll try at lunch. Admittedly what we are working on is more to address general knee issues: it's possible i've been more ambitious in various walkings than i should.

Maybe i'll see about hiring my nephew for the 22nd -- if i can get a plan together. I took the day off yesterday. I didn't spend too much time thrashing over best use of time: i just plowed ahead with seeds. Spring seems to be running two weeks in advance, and there are seeds that needed cold stratification. A cover crop seed, lacy phacelia, is supposed to get in the ground on Feb 15th. Hopefully there will be enough winter for those. Given my knee, instead of wandering the woods putting pawpaw seeds, long stored in the fridge, in the ground, i potted them up. I was delighted the seeds looked healthy - not dry, not moldy.

Meeting for business went well, albeit completely off plan. No chance of numbering minutes, or even reading them back. I received quite a compliment from someone (J---) who had also taken the Larabee workshop on clerking, and who has clerked at both monthly and yearly meetings -- he let me know that when he told me i'd done well. So, yay. I haven't looked at my meeting stuff since: need to follow up on a few things.

We had an elephant consult, unplanned, triggered by me blurting. I worry... and i need to make sure i have on my oxygen mask so that i can take care of the Us. I need to find the balance between strength for the Us and the vulnerable for Me. If i'm too strong, she won't see how much i am carrying the elephant care. But if i tip too far, the guilt and pain of having elephants to manage will suck her down. She'll worry about everything and how it's affecting me. And we both need to hold it together to get what needs to be done, done.

Which is work, which is what i shoudl be doing.

When i last wrote, .... OK, Tuesday Wednesday Christine was fighting dizziness and some nausea. It's passed. It left her with some worries. She was feeling a little better Wednesday night so we went over to see my parents before they took another junket to Florida, this time for Grandmámá's 103rd birthday today.

My sister and i made my Dad promise to break up the drive and not let Mom "hold it" for hours (we don't need her to have more UTIs especially when she can't advocate for her health and raise the concern of an infection in a timely manner). My sister is terrified for their driving, Christine thinks they are mad, i think they are doing what they have done for decades and ther's a certain amount of self determination i feel we ought to grant them. Admittedly, when Dad was going on his own, i was behind her in insisting he fly if she was caring for Mom. Different equation.

My physical therapy session went well. Diagnosed as possibly suffering a small meniscus tear, but more "interesting" is an observation of a longer term issue with my knee: some patellofemoral issue where my kneecap is being pulled out of the groove by stronger outside muscles, leading to a "crunchy" feeling as i flex that knee. Since a knee specialist looked at an x-ray a couple years ago and remarked that she was surprised i was not complaining of pain in that knee because she could see issues developing (but sorta a shrug about doing anything about it), i feel confident in the observation. The physical therapist, however, has some nice exercises for me to do.

I'm feeling easier with my knee. There's some discomfort but i haven't made it twinge for some days. I'm hiring my nephew to come work with me outside today. Ten bare root seedlings -- persimmon, elderberry, and sassafras for native food stuffs, willows and a beech for woodland diversity more than anything, yellow buckeye and a witch hazel for their blooms, and a linden to plant as the beginnings of a Swedish garden.

It's been a rough week for Christine with elephants. We had the second incident of some cat urinating on the bed in as many weeks: we don't know Marlowe is to blame. Luigi who is so sweet also has been in some arthritic discomfort for some time. Could he be challenged to get out of the bed at points? It's a little frustrating and distressing, but i am thankful of our nine cats we are only having this issue now, when we have our own washer and dryer.

I am wondering about chloroplasts in lichen. On rainy grey days the lichen on the pine trees almost glows, and the overwhelming color sense i have of the north sides of the trees is a pale green, not the purple-brown i usually register as the bark color of loblolly pines. Does the lichen plump up in the rain, the chloroplasts activated, and the chlorophyll get "turned on"? And then at other times, do the chemical factories that contain the chlorophyll drain it away until needed again? It's just such a remarkable shift in color. Admittedly, the diffuse light of a cloudy day could make some difference as well.

The laptop has returned but i can't remember how i restored images to it over wifi in the past (or did i? Did i just suffer without access to my archive of email on the machine? Which i couldn't do at this point in time.) I'm waiting for a USB-C to thunderbolt adapter and thunderbolt cable to arrive today so i can duplicate the image i've been using all week and the hard drive while the machine is in "target mode". This is one of the machines with one and only one port for both power and everything else and ... oh bah, i could have used the usb-c power hub i got for my work machine to both power the laptop and attach the backup drive. Oh fiddlesticks. Well, i can try that, and hopefully return the cables unopened.

OK, gotta scoot to meet sister and nephew for breakfast.

I'm counting as day 1 a week ago when i spent the day with Mom. I'll work to fill in that day on Monday the 30th: that looks to be a rainy day as yesterday was.

Mom was delighted to see the album but wasn't interested in those photos but was going through other papers. She handed me a folder with one of my niece's birth announcements in it. (My back of mind immediately classified it as not for me to preserve as my sister must have the digital source for it.) Also in the folder were all sorts of articles on raising anxious children and so on. I recalled Mom's "meddling" and diagnosing and how painful that has been for my sister. It's lead to significant estrangement between my mom and my brother's family. I've taken those home to recycle.

There were other treasures, perhaps some more private than i should see, but i took them up and scanned them. I have a letter her mother wrote to her her first year of college in response to a Mother's Day letter. (I may have lost some pages and will need to find the letter again to complete it.) Personally, i note the comments about social anxiety (stated in different terms) and acknowledgements of class differences (again, in different terms). Also, her mother kept noting that they were raising good citizens. Citizens. I hold that in my heart at the moment, thinking of the current state of the country. I wonder how representative the letter is of their mother-daughter communication, if my grandmother was as confident as i read it or if she was more apologetic.

--== ∞ ==--

Christine has been triggered significantly. Holidays lead to a heightened sensitivity. Yesterday she was set off by a comment from a banking representative that she took as judgemental, causing a landslide of all her self judgement. Then my parent's plans changed: last minute changes leading to potentially more expectations are also trigger. Today, tomorrow, and then we have a family visit on her side on Saturday. Then the holidays will be "done." I can't but imagine how holidays -- with her siblings returning home from college and visiting with their families -- interrupted her almost-only-childness and created a chaos of expectations and "tradition" that she hadn't been part of forming. Maybe that's part of why the season is so triggery. It's hard to know. What i do know is that there are many for whom this is a hard and not-magical time of the year. I hope for some ease and grace for all, especially Christine.

The week has not been the best. Very humid so little inspiration to outside. Christine has had migraines and elephants and is conflicted over a get together with friends that is not quite scheduled perfectly for her radio responsibilities. I'm back off to Mom and Dad's today after continuing procrastination & avoidance of anxiety provoking project at work. I should work on data models and diagrams today: that makes me happy.

I wrote the county forester this morning as i believe one of the dead pines -- the one closet to the power line -- has Southern Pine Beetles infesting it.

( My note )

I would LOVE for the county forester to come talk to me about my woods. I wonder if we should timber the front. There are a few good sized hardwoods mixed in with the pines so it wouldn't be pathetic, but oaks need the shade and the oaks i've seen are still rather spindly. I had hoped for more time, time to plant chinqapins and hybrid chestnuts and filberts and persimmons and pawpaws and more beeches.

Must run - time for commute

With some surprise, i ended therapy yesterday.

I went in because the Elephants were wearing me down. Between advice and Christine's growing skills in elephant wrangling, that has passed.

Then i took the opportunity to go off one of my antidepressants, which has given me access to my emotions. The poor things and i aren't really used to each other, but i was well off when mom had her stroke.

And Mom had a stroke.

In the process i have become better practiced at being accepting of myself and not getting stuck in the negative frame. I still go to the negative frame --

... as i wrote, i used the term "extreme negative" and with just a moment's thought i can see there are much more negative ways to frame things. A meta example, nonetheless an example of the new inner auditor who pulls me back from framing everything as doom.

-- but i catch myself and reframe.

I don't know if i will ever be a person who immediately goes to "my life is wonderful and everything is doing great." Even. Though. It. Is.

The same auditor rolls their eyes and says, "Back it off there, Blondie."

So, "great" is perhaps not qualified well enough. But despite my mother's dysfunctional behavior through our whole life, my siblings and i all have stuck together and my father still loves her. While this caregiving relationship is hard and brings up heartache, we all are together with it.

Work is very challenging at the moment, but it's a challenge for me to grow into, not dysfunction challenging. (I wish i didn't have it at the same time as Mom challenge, but whatever.)

Meanwhile Christine and i both enjoy our quite times together, each of us taking care of the other where and how we can. We are both somewhat awed by what we actually have created in our landscape. Yes, there could have been much easier ways to achieve similar outcomes by paying folks with heavy equipment, but not only did we make this change, we made it with as small an environmental impact as we could. (I think of the many small plants i found and rescued from the clearing work, how we started with the goats, how much we tried to keep the biomass here and return it to the soil.)

Yesterday evening we sat under this amazing triple-trunked tulip poplar, the shape of which tells of how the original trunk was knocked far over and sprouts grew up from that trunk. Edward chased something in the grass: probably one of the tiny cricket or tree frogs the size of the tip of my pinky finger. Carrie ran and danced and pranced. Luigi sat on the table near us. The weather was exquisite, not too humid.

I'm surprised to have ended therapy yesterday, but i am managing my mental health well. The waves of procrastination and depression occur, but i'm not in a riptide of vortex where those waves overwhelm me.

How incredible.

In "Not exactly Florence" news:

Elephants have come to visit. Yesterday was a relatively very bad day, compared to all the good days. The addition of storm preparation to the elephants is a bad mix.

And we had 1.30 inches of rain last night, most of it in a brief downpour. I was driving home during the downpour, slowly, high beams catching the rain slicing through the night, the drumming of the rain on the windshield deafening. This morning i have inspected where the swales had fast enough runoff to flatten the young fescue seedlings, the new channels cut in the rain garden bed. I'll put "check logs" out to try and slow the runoff in the orchard and will try to add a few more topographic changes to the sand and compost in the rain garden to see if i can slow the water a bit.

In Florence news:

Everyone is talking about how they were without power for days during Fran, a major storm that hit twenty two years ago. I am hoping that the forecasting improvements and risk management plans at the power companies will make the response better than then. On the other hand, the power company is asking folks to be prepared for days without power.

We got to the grocery store for our usual run around 7 pm last night, after i drove up to a cluster of gas stations hoping there wouldn't be lines. The lines there were worse than at the station closer to our home, and, as Christine pointed out, some of the stations had crowded tank lines even when there wasn't the additional prepping chaos.

I wasn't looking for water, but we usually get a bottle or two of seltzer. One could get flavored seltzer in small bottles. Cans, liters and half liters of plain seltzer were gone. Someone was taking cell phone photos of the bottled water isle: completely bare. The bread isle was similar, with only hamburger and hot dog buns and a few loaves of store brand white bread looking lonely on the shelves. I did note that the cracker isle seemed a little depleted, too. We didn't go down the baking isle, so i don't know if there had been a run on canned milk. Canned vegetables were quite reduced, and all the vegetarian baked beans were gone, but several isles over packaged Indian meals were abundant. I've minute rice stashed so that's a few pleasant power-out meals.

There was plenty of beer and chocolate left (and i got nice dark chocolate) so no one had hit the critical (to my sister) supplies. It wasn't a madhouse, at least.

The gas station closer to us has a very large open area in front of the pumps. I don't know if it's actually property of the station or staging for the great deal of land clearing and road work near by, but it meant that nice orderly lines could form three and five cars deep at pumps. We appeared to be next to the too-smart-to-wait line. It appears that more cars have tanks on the driver's side than on the passenger's, so the passenger side lines were shorter. Someone backed up in line so they could use the shorter line to fill their driver's side tank. And then someone pulled into the tank space from the "wrong" direction. All the other tanks seemed to have patient folks willing to wait for their turn.

Our county isn't under a tropical storm watch yet, but i expect it will be tomorrow night if today's ten-day forecast is accurate.

I've only gotten two calls from my father telling me to prepare so far. I think my sister has had three. She's trying to talk our parents into staying in Florida. I wish her luck with that.