Barn Pixie

We have lived in this house for 21 years today. We moved into it May 1, 1999, which was impossibly long ago. I planted trees and tulips and daffodils, and tried to understand the neighbors feelings about her lawn. We've been here, in this temporary house, ever since. All the things we do 'just for now, we'll change when we have to, or can figure out the next thing' become more or less permanent, like this house, and living in the Valley. The things I've thought are more permanent don't last more than three years or so - the last house, the neighbors on the other side.

It could be that everything is in flux and thinking of it as temporary simply makes it easier to make small corrections so things work better in the short term.

Happy anniversary, house. Thank you for keeping out the wind and rain, the sun, most of the wildlife, the snow. Thank you for keeping the roof up, and the water out. Thank you for holding us together until we move apart. I'll work on the gardens when the sun comes out, I owe you that much

It is like a stone - I think I am thinking about Ari's death and I can't for too long, my brain just shears off into other topics and other things to think about that are peripherally related, but not THE THING. That is two deaths so far, that have nothing to do with the virus, and I am more wrecked over them. Yarn Harlot's grand daughter died at two days old, and I was wrecked for three weeks. I don't know the woman except through her writing, which I love but still, and I don't know her daughter, again except through her writing, and still these people are dear to me, even while thy are faintly fictional, and like all good books when somehting emotional happens, I have emotions about it. Ari though - Ari's death is someone I knew and worked with, someone whose parents I knew because of her and her efforts in the theater. Someone I watched grow up, and blossom. And to have her misery overcome her, that is so hard. Hard that she is not still here, hard for her parents and friends to lose her, like dropping something overboard in the deep ocean, barely visible and unretievable.

Her work in the theater was a perfect metaphor for her own self as well. She was happiest in the dark, in the middle of the night, at odd hours, but she brought light - she caused it to be shone on things that mattered, she brought friendship and company to the lonely, and knowledge to those who asked. Even after she left the high school she was mentoring the kids she had graduated away from. Even at home during the pandemic she was in touch with friends from college and beyond.

I have not cried so hard for a long time. I hate crying. I hate when things move me enough to cry, I hate when things get bad enough that the only response is to cry, I hate hate hate the physical act of crying -  water leaking from my eyes and my nose running and my head hurting and utter misery flooding through me. I don't like feeling loose and stupid afterward, and the feeling that one false move or one stray thought will bring it all back again. I have avoided crying a lot lately. Some part of me thinks that is avoiding something that is fundamentally human. Another part thinks I should not have to do something so deeply unpleasant for no actual reason. What do I know actually? Today, I know very little.

well fuck. fuck fuck fuck
one of my tech kids, who was also trans, took her own life this past week
This kid was so good, and so sweet, and should have lived forever, and just couldn't take it, and I am furious at the universe for failing them

The Boston Bean (what DO you call your non-binary child? esp when they're a fully functioning adult and living with a partner and acquiring other partners as they go along? I have defaulted to skookum bean, as well as beloved child. Any additional suggestions will be taken under advisement) got an email from their landlord asking if they were doing ok, and they wanted to answer them with --ha ha, we need to pay less rent, this is going to be an issue, at least until the virus situation lifts and Jared can get work--  So we talked about phrasing and intent, and I helped them edit the final email, and they sent it out (after a minor panic over the subject line - it is always the last details that trip us up?) and then had to talk. So we talked some more and they are thinking about a cat, because soft and independent and also soft and cozy.

Alice and I continue to remove daylilies from the southwest corner and side of the house, along with removing false bittersweet as we go along. There are a LOT of them there. My plan for disposal includes driving around the block and tossing them into various ditches in the neighborhood, especially on relatively unobserved land. There is a fair amount of farmland nearby, I can get stuff into those ditches.

I think we might have accomplished sourdough starter? Or at least starter of some sort. I halved it yesterday, and fed it and put the other half in a bowl with water and more flour and hoped something might happen. More than 24 hours and a half cup of sugar later, it has become a fairly well risen sponge, and I might try to make pizza on it tonight.

Gaudior posted:
and that right there is how I am. Fine, I guess? but everything is hard.

I got nothing. Literally - I tried to put together an online order for Peapod, and there are no, none, zero delivery slots for the entire next two weeks. I tried camping on the site, refreshing every minute or so, across midnight and into the early morning hours, but I missed the turnover, and there are no slots for the new day that is two weeks away from today either. Al is wanting delivery, and it is not happening, and I am assuming one or th eother of us will don a mask and gloves and brave one location or another for food. We are not, in any way shape or form, desperate, but merely looking into the future, it would be nice to have new groceries in a week or so. I tried to explain to Al that I was deeply uncomfortable with Instacart for grocs, but it may be moot if they are striking, because at least he won't cross a picket line.

We are having neighborhood drama around an old woman (who may or may not be losing her mind) simply turning her fierce little terrier out the door, but dragging a leash? which either indicates delusion about leash laws or the escape artist antics of said terrier. Anyhow, it chases and kills chickens, romps around the neighborhood growling at the innocent, and is provoking a lot of back and forth. When it isn't let out, it barks, constantly. This is stressful for everyone, especially the chicken and children keepers in the area.

When my mother is bored, she buys real estate. When I am bored, I research how to look after new kinds of pets, and also backyard farm animals. I know a lot about miniature cattle, particularly miniature Highland cattle (so. much. like. stuffies!!!!!) and miniature horses, and while I don't want chickens I did spend a fair amount of yesterday looking into raising quail for eggs. There are the truly tiny and adorable Button Quail, but they require being inside, and also are timorous and do not like petting. I want an animal I can pick up - that is most of the pint, right there. Cockatiels look promising, as do rats, but I have not moved past the research stage.

hi. Happy Saturday Sunday

just feeling blah, which is a thing that seems perfectly reasonable. I did find this person making purely gorgeous tiny things - the jellyfish tutorial is a serious education in ways to use resin, and layering things/oder of operations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKViHX2rC0Y

I finished a re-read of Murderbot, which I recommend highly. They use serial dramas the same way I've been using comfort reads, for reassurance in troubled times. Having finished Murderbot again, I guess I am forced (forced, I tell you) to go back to Leverage and watch ridiculously handsome and competent people trick bad guys. It is entertaining and cathartic! Also I can knit (mostly socks) which is also cathartic.

It is blowing about 30 knots of wind out there and it is a good day not to be at sea.

So I am maybe not coping as well as I hoped, because people keep looking hard at me, and asking how are you ~really~ and I have no actual useful answer? I am. I persist, and I am going along, and I have a head full of things I am working on not thinking about too hard, and I don't think I am, right now, terribly far off the mean? I know people who are sick - two neighbors, and Mayor David, and they are quarantined and recuperating, although they were pretty fucking quiet about it last week? I dunno. They were sick. And getting better. But still. We need the flags - I wonder why we don't have a set of international signal flags, or at least Q and the other one....  OK - the quarantine flag is L(ima); black and yellow quartered. Q(uebec) is solid yellow and indicates all aboard are free of disease and customs is requested for clearance. So we need L flags for houses with the actual plague inside, and Q flags for "healthy so far as we know" and then we can elaborate on that because the messages one can send via signal flags have their own delightful brevity that is easy to compose humor from when mixed up and hard ashore. On the hard, Mattie says.

I have noticed my focus on the news gets closer and closer to home as the national and state numbers start accumulating. When the country as a whole was teetering on the brink, the state had a small number of cases and no deaths, and now it is still smaller than the nation and I can only look at the county statistics and see that we have 12 or 24 or more cases identified, and certainly an order of magnitutde or more stealth cases, and it is close enough now. Now we have neighbors and friends getting sick with it, and soon enough, deaths of people I know.

And then it feels like borrowing trouble, and honestly if one more person mentions the grief article i shall bite something. It doesn't tell me anything. It says nothing useful to me. Maybe someone thought it was helpful to recognize that we are about to descend into a national crisis (with a bored toddler at thte helm) and it is ok to feel worried about it? gee thanks. Don't mind if I do. Or Anticipatory Grief - what kind of crap is that, that assigns a name to the lurking dread you are having that the world will change and you will fucking lose people that matter and nothing will be good ever again?? I mislike the grief people anyhow. It could be sueful to ahve some feel for the process, but it is so widespread it feels really stupid to section it and analyze it. So many different cultures have so many different ways of coping, maybe those are the things that should be acknowledged - coping strategies, a whole wide range of them, and also mourning rituals that people use to comfort themselves. It certainly feels like time for cutting off all my hair, and rubbing ashes into it, and wailing for while in a hut in the backyard.

That shouldn't sound like such a good idea right now, should it? Yeah, maybe I am not coping so well. Since no else is either, it doesn't win anybody much to say so. Forge ahead, one step at a time. Don't borrow trouble. Do something for someone else. Do something for yourself. It always boils down to the same advice, and the same basic steps to moving out of the darkness. Or through the darkness, I guess.

The mayor, a friend and parent of Alice's elementary school friend, tested positive for the virus. He's home, with his wife (an Ob/Gyn) and younger daughter. I have started counting my friends and wondering what 1% or 2% of my immediate circle looks like, and what some small percentage of people in town looks like and feels like. I do not like this part at all. 

I realized this morning, as I was working on 63/100 for #thecreativeproject that the last several weeks of daily work is composed almost entirely of things that are suspended or things that are tied down. Or today's effort which was things suspended between things that are tied down. You can see them on Instagram Which makes me think of the Tarot's Hanged Man - tied upside down in a tree, the only thing you can do is wait - possess your soul with patience, like I tell my dear demented Da when he gets fretful.

Saw my dad, distracted him for a couple hours. He was really concerned that Lucia might not come downstairs in time to make lunch, and he wanted her to come down before noon, so that lunch started at noon. Next time I bring a cookie, I'll save it for 11:30, and see if he won't feel so worried about lunch starting "on time".

Boston had the first 5 deaths from the virus
the local hospital is still clearing out space and hoping
the new from NYC is dire

I don't know how to think about it, or report on it.

I went walking around the neighborhood yesterday - Alice pointed out you can tell households by how close they walk, and friends visiting are farther apart - and the family next door was visiting with their kids and grand kids - six feet apart. The visitors leaning on their car in the street, the household on the steps, talking, catching up.

very little is actually happening here,it still feels like we are holding out breath,

the hatches are battened

I worked for a couple months on a freighter in the West Indies. It was 1978/79, big cruise ships were not so much of a thing as people chartering and sailing in the area, there were fewer billionaires... I digress.  We were easily the smallest slowest cargo carrying thing I saw until we reached Trinidad. At 200' and carrying 500 tons, painted bright red, little Louise Joan was more adorable and jaunty than anything else. It was entirely crewed by expat and escapist Americans, myself included. At full complement, we had three deck crew, two mates, one skipper, and a steward (cook, cleaner, you know - mom). Just before Christmas almost everyone left, and there were 4 of us, two mates, skipper and me as Steward. I was 18. I was dumb. It was a lot.

Anyhow, we had to open and close the hatches to get stuff on and off the ship. Three big hatches, basically open, reinforced holes in the deck, down the center of the ship, had to be opened for off-loading, closed if it rained, reopened, re-closed in the evening, repeat until the hold was clear, repeat some more until the hold was full. We carried bulk cargo - stuff that got loaded via conveyor belt and dropped into the hold. The hatches were covered with 2x8" planks, their length equal to the width of the hatch, with big steel staples at each end for handles. It took one person on each end to lay all the planks side by side to cover the hole, and then a tarp was pulled over the top to keep water out, and then the battens were placed over the top to keep the tarps from catching air and tearing and becoming less waterproof. The battens were long, flexible bits of metal that got hooked down along the sides. We were always stubbing our toes on the hold-downs.

So when I say the hatches are battened, I am thinking of these specific hatches, with the heavy planks and the tarp dragged over the top and tied around the skirts so it wouldn't billow and these long flexible things attached over the top, and getting ready to go to sea, where on bad days the water would foam over the bow and along the decks, and the hatch covers kept the water out of the cargo, and that is what kept us afloat.

hatches. battened.
hold on tight