Happy Spring!

Disclaimer: My keyboard is still broken so please excuse anything that should be capitalized and isn’t it only responds to the shift keys when it wants to.

It’s March, late March, and it’s Spring. This is what’s going on in my world.

I am working on a few goals this year;

1. getting a garden going for real this time,

2. becoming a “Fuck Yeah!” friend,

3. getting more movement into my days, (as I sit here blogging like a slug…)

4. eating more veg,

5. becoming more competent at my job, and

6. Decluttering!

There is some progress in all areas, however slight. The beds are in as of last Fall and I hope to get planting (with guidance) soonish. I am saying “Fuck Yeah!” as much as seems safe to friends asking if I want to do stuff. I am on my feet more for sure even if my phone isn’t showing the steps. It, like my little laptop, has issues and it dies a lot. I am eating slightly more veg and focusing on just making sure it happens every day. Tougher than I thought it would be. At work I am taking on some new responsibility, nothing huge, just helping cover while my boss is out on maternity leave. I am practicing to get better at commcat, trouble-shooting when there are issues with computers and printers, planning for Summer Reading as best I can. I also keep signing up for webinars but I have been missing most of them. I am just so burnt out on zoom and all that. I have a few coming up that I plan to actually attend and I intend to view the recordings of the ones I’ve missed. Decluttering is still stupid and complicated because my usual drop off places are still not taking things. meh. I do have some stuff ready to go and I will do more when it makes sense to.

One of my niece’s just got married! ^_^ YAY! So nice to have something to celebrate. She and her new husband looked gorgeous and I was so glad that we could at least be there remotely. My eldest daughter is taking a couple of online classes and doing well. My middlest is getting a little money in with a kind of online gig type thing and took over dish washing and it really helping me out. My youngest is in the final stretch of his senior year and is doing well, sticking with it, getting ready to ease into the future. My husband is still working remotely but is finally scheduled for his first vaccine. (YAY!) We will be celebrating 24 years together later this week. WOW.

Gaming is still the main source of entertainment around here, I think we are in and/or running about… 6-7 games. I am using Pathfinder 2e to run my husband in a one-on-one game. We used to run one-on-one a LOT when we lived far from anyone and had a young child. I’ve missed it like crazy and apparently he has too. ^_^ So I am still struggling with constructing encounters that won’t kill him. LOL. Even with all the charts and whatnot encounters are so brutal. I think I have been thinking about it wrong, like my math is somehow backward or twisted. I’ll get it sorted out. One-on-one is not a thing Pathfinder is super designed for so I am pretty much making my own “adventure path.” It’s fun and challenging and I am enjoying all the prep work. I have part one pretty well finished and have started part two. I’m not sure how many parts it will have. I was thinking two, taking the PC from level one to… 8? 9? 10? But I might keep it going. Have the main quest die down for a while, let him “Witcher” it up monster hunting all over Golarion and then bring the main quest back later. I don’t know, we’ll see how he likes the main quest as he hasn’t even started on it yet. He’s travelling to investigate a rumored event and I’ll have to see if he likes it or if it’s too weird for him. I can do grim and gritty just fine but it’s always leavened with chaos and whimsy which he doesn’t always “get.” If he doesn’t like it I know some people who will so I’ll just save it and rework it for them later and cook something else up for him. I love him so much.

Anyway, I need to get ready for work.

XXXOOO

a very nothing update…

The summer vacation that wasn’t is all but over now. Our Bug starts his senior year of highschool, virtual only, next week. He’s/We’ve been stuck home virtually 100% since early March so days have no meaning for him, time has very little meaning as well. It will be a weird adjustment for him to make having to wake up and login to his classes every weekday. I think he’s looking forward to having a schedule again though. This has all be so disastrously weird. We’ve all been stuck in a kind of limbo and it doesn’t seem like it will be ending anytime soon.

Once in a while something goes right and the amazing cleaner, Therese, made time for us today so the apartment is pretty much clean and shiny for our new tenant moving in tomorrow. I’m airing it out now too, it’s been closed up for months. I replaced the worst ceiling tile but it was a terrible pain. I will definitely pay someone who knows how to do that next time. Hopefully our new tenant will love living there and the pandemic will end and then we can all hang out together. She’s a similar kind of weirdo to us and we all game together online. Someday we will all BBQ together and stuff.

Work is still very odd. No one is allowed into the library except for specific little time slots to use computers. We still do curbside pick up and take home crafts but there’s no browsing for books and no in person programming. I’m trying to come up with take home crafts and activities for fall with no budget so that’s interesting. I need to figure out things for the teens and tweens to make from the supplies we already have. It’s kind of awkward. Putting together the bags is fun and everyone appreciated them so much. It’s so weird not having people in the library… but it will also be 100% weird when they start coming back in. Strange days we’re living in.

True Wealth

I just looked over at one of my very latest purchases, online purchases, I haven’t been inside a store since early March, and I was struck by the feeling of peace it gave me just to look on it. It’s a cellophane package containing, I think, 240 little skeins of embroidery floss in what I am calling “Every Color” with capital letters. I think there are 2 of each color so, really, there are many more colors in the world than in this little package, but it is honestly beautiful and I feel like I could make any design my heart could desire with this lovely collection of thread. It only cost about $15 which makes me happy because I love good prices. I’d be happier if I’d found it used, like if I’d stumbled on it at a tag sale or in a charity shop, I prefer second hand things. Second hand purchases save things from the landfill and can be had for pennies on the dollar of their original price. Awesome all the way around.

Anyway, The feeling I get looking at this colorful bundle was striking because I’ve been feeling so stressed lately what with the global pandemic and the failure of our leadership to contain or manage it and so forth. That peaceful feeling made me pause to think about it and I realised what I feel when I look at my packet of embroidery thread is wealth. I feel a great feeling of “enough,” of satiety, I feel content and confident that whatever I need to do with this thread I have got it covered. To me that is wealth. It’s the same feeling I have when my cupboards and fridge are full and their contents are varied. It’s that same feeling I have when my TBR (to be read) pile is vast, deep, and partially unknown, & when I know there are several books lurking there that I am positively hungry for. And it is the same feeling I have when I have several unpainted canvases, tons of paint, a bag of colorful yarn, or a drawer full of clean undies and socks. Oh! And empty notebooks and pens!

I feel so wildly, undeservedly lucky when I can look and see that any of these things are true, but I have realized that the truest wealth is time, is self-determination, getting to actually choose how you spend your time. I mean, we all probably know this, that time is the most precious resource. We have what we have and we cannot make any more of it. We can’t save time we can only spend it. I think the lockdown, and having to go back to work, made me see it clearly, undeniably, and deeply for the first time. For a few months, I got to decide when I worked, when I rested, when I ate, etc. It was disturbing and difficult at first, I made myself get up and go to bed on my normal schedule. I scheduled work activities each day, 2-3 hours per day to get the same number of hours in as usual but never having to work 7 in a row as I had at my job. That felt nice at first but wore on me terribly over time. Instead I worked about 4 hours 3 times a week and found that better, better still when I clumped those days together, though I was still able to be flexible to accommodate webinars and such. I finally found a wonderful rhythm, a way to order my life so I felt less stressed, had time to relax and pursue art, crafts, reading, journaling and other writing. I felt better than I had in a long time.

Now that I am back at work coving my usual schedule, quite honestly, I hate it. I work Monday and Friday evenings and all day every-other Saturday. It isn’t the number of hours that’s the problem, not at all, it’s 8 hours one week 15 the next repeat indefinitely, no problem. It’s being locked into the days and times. It eats me up, it destroys my ability to relax on any day I have to work and makes me feel rushed, pressured, and stressed. I’m back to 2-3 days per week where I am not home to make dinner and 2 days where I don’t get to eat dinner with my family. And the evening hours are not great for me to be working during. I am not at my best then, I am mostly spent by about 5:30 PM, just biorhythm-wise. My body wants me to recline and relax in the evening, or stroll, maybe. My body communicated this quite clearly to me when I was the master of how my hours were spent. I can get a LOT done in a day if I know that once dinner is done I am “off the clock.” Without work taking me away from my home I was able to use my clothesline much more frequently, I got into a habit of foraging berries and making breakfast smoothies, I started walking again for exercise.

It doesn’t help that no one else in my house is leaving it for work yet. My husband is locked into just brutal hours of work, stressed to the max and completely burned out with his job. I am not saying I envy that, I feel horrible for him, what is expected of him by his job (I.T. Professional) at this point is ridiculous and cruel. He is expected to do it almost completely during work hours but of course he can’t confine all that he has to do to those hours, there is just way, way too much. I need to be more grateful that I have as much lingering self-determination as I do, I am going to work on that. BUT, I think it is insane that most people live by the clock, serve corporate or other masters, and are expected to give SO MUCH for SO LITTLE in return. And, shockingly, people are expected to be grateful for even the worst, crappiest, most slavish, dehumanizing jobs. That isn’t me, but it is a LOT of people. Chained to clocks, having to work through illness, injury, at jobs that actually cause them considerable hardship. That is messed up!

Everyone deserves to work a reasonable number of hours and still make a living, have a life worth living, with a schedule that makes sense. Maybe we can’t have the ideal life where we determine what we do with each hour, but we should all have a good, satisfying, and dignified life. We all deserve time to relax, to seek entertainment & education, to spend time with family and friends creating memories. My husband was set to take a week off in March, instead he’s been working his ass off, straight through, at a very stressful job, since New Years Day. He’s got a good job, one that grants him 3 or 4 weeks “vacation” a year. So far he’s only been able to take a day here or there, I think he’s only taken 1 or maybe 2 off honestly, July 4th, the Friday before it was just off for everyone at his job, that’s the only day. There is no way he can take time off now, everything is a mad scramble getting ready to open the school for the fall, with no actual plan for NOT opening… which will likely be forced upon them at the last minute. It’s insane. And he can’t take time in the fall, of course, or likely anything like a week off until Christmas. He will get a few days at Thanksgiving though. They had damn well better let him save all the vacation time he is unable to take now. Gods, I hope so. He needs to take at least a month straight off just to recover from this.

Dream of a Colorful Life

Cooler weather means baking and more cooking in general. I made chocolate chip coffee cake muffins for breakfast this morning. Muffins for motivation! The boy needs to start getting the computers processed for his dad this morning. My poor husband, he just cannot do it all, there is too much. Thankfully the school agreed to pay our lad to clean them up and process them through. Gives the boy something to do, some structure for his days for a while , and gives him the boost of earning some money. I think I will make the weird bean soup for lunch again. I made it last week and it was a hit so maybe it will be again.

Yesterday I got a fair bit accomplished despite spending the day waiting for the doctor to call which they never did. I did a ton of cooking and prep, did laundry, dishes, got the groceries and such, cleaned the yard and told the lad that I am bloody tired of cleaning up dog droppings in all the places I have repeatedly told him Not to walk her. Basically, anywhere we are likely to walk is not a great spot, especially as we walk in our own yard in the dark sometimes. I picked and dried a ton of roses, made rose powder which is basically dry, pink food coloring with a sweet, floral flavor. I’m hoping for a big crop of mint too, but we’ll see.

Been trying to bolster my husband’s morale. Trying to get him to see that, in my opinion, he doesn’t have to be trapped by his job. He can embrace the idea of “fuck it” and go for what he wants. I know he’s right that we need insurance and that we wouldn’t last long without him having a steady income, I know, it’s 100% practical. But, he shouldn’t hate his life, you know? I’m not saying he just yell; “I QUIT!” and storm off, fun as that would be, I’m saying work on a real escape plan. He’s applying to places and that’s awesome, but if we drop one of our games he could use that time to work on a creative project that could be an outlet for him, that might or might not become anything in the future… but it might, and he will never know if he doesn’t try. What if he kept this job and was able to make a little money on a side project? What if that side project lead to another and another? Even if completely breaking free of regular work doesn’t happen, being able to make some money at fulfilling, creative work would shift the dynamic for him. He might feel freer to pursue a job with less hours, for less pay, maybe we could still get employer insurance until the broken health system gets fixed.

Even though it’s probably a silly dream, I think about us living a smaller, more flexible life. What if we could get our expenses down and our savings up to the point where we could live on a very small income? What if I could sell paintings and handicrafts, work at the library part time. Maybe he could work part time sell some of his creative projects? What if we could grow a lot of our own food? I know there would be a lot to think about, I get how impractical I am. But if we just stay on the well-worn path… where the hell does that get us? I’m tired of being fenced in, stifled, trapped on a crazy hamster wheel of boredom and frustration. I think my husband is WAY more tired of it than I am, I think I’m more tired of watching him deal with it. The craziness of modern life, the hurry, hurry, hurry, the full to bursting schedules, the lack of community, it’s all awful and soul-deadening. There is a way, or there are a million ways, to break free and I am going to find one that works for us.

Reality bites, so I will create a new one. It will be more beautiful and creative and fulfilling. A life worth living, where we make memories and have experiences worth talking about. I want us to both have the time and freedom to learn new skills as we want and need to. I want my sweet, hardworking husband to have enough free time that he isn’t paralyzed by choice anymore. He was working full-time (40-60 hours/week) while going to school 1/2-time (10-20 hours of work/week) for over 6 years. During that time he lost the ability to … know what he wants to do at any given time. He had so little time to call his own, he never made a choice, he’d end up scrolling FB, staring at TV or spending hours on a video game only to regret it later. I think any of those things has their place but he was falling into them by default and feeling like he wasted what little time he had. When school ended he was unable to figure out what to do with his free time for quite a while. We eventually settled into tabletop gaming, a little reading and such, but these are sort of default settings for us. With the extra workload the pandemic has forced on him he’s overwhelmed again. I just want him to have the ability to relax, unwind, let go of the stress and do something that makes him happy. I’d love it if he could be rewarded, get that insane morale boost of having his creativity valued by others.

More & Less

I want to change my life. This isn’t about being fed up with staying home, disinfecting my groceries, never seeing people in person unless I live with them, etc. Hopefully things will get better in those ways if we can all just not make things worse for a while and amazing scientists can create a super good vaccine. I mean I want to change my day to day life, the way I live, the way I spend my time. I also would love to save money, because we have dreams, we want to travel and see the world someday… when people can do that sort of thing again.

See, I don’t think it’s possible to calculate how much time I’ve wasted watching T.V., playing solo video games, screwing around on the computer, and so forth. It’s an unknown quantity, but it’s BIG. Binge watching is my default. If one show is good 8 in a row is better. I’m not saying these activities are utterly without value, not at all, just… when they become too big for their britches, well, what do you end up with? What are you left with in the end? Nothing. And it’s worse than that because, if these activities take over, you’ve LOST something that can never be replaced: Time. Our lives are made of time but we can never make any more of it. I heard this somewhere recently but it’s escaping me now: “We can’t make time, we can only take time.” It is the most finite of resources and we sell it away so we can eat and be warm and safe and, crazily, we “kill” it, whiling away hours on top of hours in mindless or useless pursuits. And then we wonder, sadly, regretfully, why we don’t have time for important things.

Question 1 for myself: What do I want more of in my life?

Experiences
music
baking & cooking
time with my hubby to relax, unwind, and connect
time with the kids w/ real interaction and meaning
sharing of life skills with the kids
reading
art
writing
a neat, restful, peaceful home
better health
time in nature
laughter
time with friends
Connection/Community
fun!
Enthusiasm!
LIFE!!!!

Question 2 for myself: What do I need to cut out to get more of what I want in life?

T.V. (or excessive TV, since a little bit is ok?)
Mindlessly surfing the web, playing online games etc.
video games, maybe can keep a litte? but seriously, fun as they are: what do I have when I’m done?
Less time in my room alone. (Basically accomplished by dropping 1-3)
We can and should drop at least 2 of the 4 streaming services we currently have. (how did this even happen? I mean, all together they cost less than cable would but STILL.)
Clutter/excess stuff
junk food
Take out food/eating out mindlessly.
most alcohol (ie “it’s Tuesday” is not a real reason to open a bottle of wine)
Shopping.

Shopping. Shopping is huge. It’s an activity that is just begging to be abused especially in our consumer culture. I have used shopping as a social activity when I didn’t actually need to buy anything, as a pick-me-up when I ‘m blue, (OOO, look, Bargains!) as a sport, (again, bargains, I am Awesome at it!) as a way to kill time while waiting for someone, something, some event, etc., because I deserve __________, a treat, etc. and from a feeling like I might be missing out if I don’t go. I need to appreciate all that we have and stop adding to what is already too much.

Our worst budget-offense seems to have been take out meals. I don’t know how it got that way aside from me getting burnt out because I am the only one who really knows how to cook and I get wildly sick of doing it sometimes. That and migraines, poor sleep, stress, and how damn easy it was in the days before the sickness came to just order food and go and get it. We justified it way more often than we should have. Between that and my shopping “for bargains” because I know that was more money than I would probably be willing to accept, we must have been spending a ton. Somehow, our savings is actually trending in an upwards direction despite not having the rental income from our little apartment. We are both working from home but our income has dropped by a significant amount with the apartment empty, yet somehow, because we have barely had any take out and I haven’t been shopping as a sport, our savings has grown. And that with an increase in grocery spending.

Note: These revelations are brought to you by; The Year of Less; by Cait Flanders, and time spent in my 30 yards from the house getaway spot: The Airy-Fairy Peace, Love and Granola Hippie Fort & Art Studio. I’ve seen some harsh reviews of Cait’s book and I seriously just don’t get it. My guess is that people bought it wanting/expecting a how-to spend less kind of book, but it is clearly a memoir. The author is super clear that the book is basically all the stuff she went through while on her spend less journey that she didn’t include in her blog. So, it isn’t some step-by-step how-to book, though she does include her shopping ban rules, revised rules and some tips to get people started on their own journeys. What I find in her book is inspiration. Her life is/was very different from mine. She was single, in her 20s, and had a drinking problem and a spending problem that were both dragging her down. She was starting and developing a career and just in a very different place from me. I am a grown woman, well into adulthood, I am married with 3 adult and near adult kids, a house, etc. We don’t have the kind of debt she did. Getting drunk and forgetting things isn’t a thing. (my memory issues are more age or stress than anything else) But this young woman’s memoirs have much of value for me. She figured out some really important things well before I did and I’m so happy she decided to share her story.

So, thanks Cait! I am definitely going to keep working at this.

Windows Open

The sounds of life drifting in through open windows… it has been a long time. There’s birdsong aplenty here by Cold Swamp. So much sweet twittering of finches, the odd, buzzing song of the redwing blackbirds, the piercing call of the hawks, it’s all lovely. The global pandemic is changing the way I look at things, at lots of things, maybe everything. I hear kids out playing with siblings in nearby yards, dogs barking in the distance, traffic going by. I love the sound of the wind in the trees.

I left the windows open all night last night. Our dog was lying on our bed when the coyotes started howling off somewhere. She was all ears for their moonlit concert and so was I. She was alert and tense, focused on her job of defending the borders of our pack’s territory no doubt, but I feel a strange peace hearing their wild calls. The coyote’s song calms and soothes me. I live inside strong walls I am not in danger. I find it comforting that these creatures survive and thrive nearby. It’s nice to live in a place with a semi-functioning ecosystem. Coyotes help keep some kind of balance by hunting deer, rabbits, mice and such and they are needed. Our coyotes are amazing. Around here, before the gray wolves were killed off, the coyotes and gray wolves interbred preserving something of the ancient bloodline of those wolves in their craftier, more fertile cousins. So our coyotes are bigger than some, sturdier, stronger, but they are very much as clever and enduring as any others of their kind. I love them.

But I love almost all animals. I love the little songbirds and the hawks, the turkey vultures and partridges, I love the chipmunks, squirrels and rabbits and even the damn mice that invade my home. I want to live in balance with the world around me. I want there to be space here for all of us. As humans we need to be less greedy about space, we need to find ways to live with the wild creatures around us, they are our kin, they are necessary. I love raccoons, groundhogs, and possums. Bless the tick-eating possums till the end of all! I love the snakes and salamanders, the cute little tree frogs and all their cousins. I love the snapping turtles that wander through my yard and the fierce fisher-cats in the woods. My son and I watched a fisher cat cross our yard a few months back, it was gorgeous, large and fierce, I love it here. We get to see so much wildlife in our own yard. I’ve watched wild turkeys strut up our driveway, deer browsing on the edge of the swamp, hawks and vultures circling overhead, and all manner of birds and rodents flourishing.

So you will never catch me poisoning my yard to deal with pests, you will never see me pulling up the dandelions that feed the bees, what you will see is me planting my feet and arguing strenuously that the only mice or ants that need killing are the ones invading the walls and pantry and that none of the wild things that live outside are doing anything other than what they should. If the rabbits and chipmunks eat everything I plant? Well, that’s on me, besides I am a terrible gardener anyway, at least I’m providing appetizers for someone. If moles and voles and whatever else make a mess of the lawn? I never wanted the lawn anyway. They are terrible ecologically and ours is a crazy mix of grasses, moss and weeds, it’s kind of cool actually. I’m ok with protecting the house and its contents but if a pine marten wants to tunnel around the old stump? Tunnel away little one. Eat mice, grow fat.

I’m listening to a woodpecker rapping away at a hollow tree now. It’s a far lovelier sound that the noise of the cars going by or the power tools in the distance. I think I can hear some ducks out there in the swamp, maybe one day soon I’ll hear the geese returning from their annual vacation. I’ll just be here, quarantining, listening to crazy-quilt symphony of life where the wild things are.

Surreal Still-life

We’re in a holding pattern, caught in suspended animation, life feels like the gods have pressed some cosmic pause button. My family has been stuck at home, like many others around the world, for some time. My husband got ill over 2 weeks ago and hasn’t had any in person contact with anyone outside our little family since. I’ve been inside since shortly after that. Our son had his wisdom teeth out on March 9th and hasn’t been out since then. We asked our daughters, both in their 20s to stay home as of last Thursday. One is a month or 2 away from her degree and the other lost her job of a year and 1/2. Insane, right? With my husband’s severe asthma, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to have corvid19, we felt we had no other choice.

So now were all here counting off the days till we can relax a little if my husband hasn’t become seriously ill. My husband spends most of most days working from home. He’s doing more work than he ever did at the office, tons more. He’s head of IT at a boarding school and is pretty much solely responsible for getting them set up for distance teaching/learning. I’m absolutely amazed at what he’s managing to accomplish. I am also working at home, much, much less than he is, my job is only part time and greatly depends on dealing with the public but I am doing what I can. I am working on getting ready for Summer Reading, with a fairy tale theme this year, in the hopes that there will be a summer reading program at all. There is plenty to do there but it’s all very nebulous and possibly pointless. I’m thinking of making a specific summer reading blog that the teens could access for craft ideas, a virtual book club, maybe a fairy tale movie club… just in case the world isn’t back to normal by July. Our son’s school is figuring out how to manage distance learning so he has some classes, middle daughter is on spring break which is extended to 2 weeks but we’ve no idea what the community college is going to do after that. Eldest is just out of a job and spending time doing chores, hanging out online with out of state friends, etc.

Living in each other’s pockets is stressful. I am finding out that I really am an introvert. I have no time alone and it’s exhausting. I love all the people I live with, thank the gods, so a lot of this togetherness is good and fun. Everyone is pitching in to keep things clean, everyone is cutting everyone else as much slack as possible knowing this confinement could last months. People are binging shows, both solo and in groups, playing video games, reading, painting, playing board games, chatting with friends, playing with pets. I wish we were musical though. I wish we all played instruments. That just seems like such a cool thing to be able to do right now. Regretting my life choices I guess, not too seriously, I mean I own a ukulele and you tube exists so I could theoretically learn to play now.

The future is such a question mark right now I don’t know what to plan for. We’re doing ok at the moment but… when will I get back to work? The last email I had from my boss she said she was preparing for everyone to work from home very soon. The library is closed to the public but everyone else is still working on site. They are helping patrons over the phone with all the virtual stuff they can access, working on projects, handling curbside pick-up of materials, and quarantining and sanitizing all returning items. I guess all that’s expected to end soon. It’s so surreal. Will my daughter get her degree? Will my other daughter be able to find employment any time soon? Will my son’s junior year end remotely? Will his senior year be all distance learning?

At least we’re together. As stressful as it is having so much time together, it’s also good, I know they are all here and as safe as they can be. I can walk a very short distance, don’t even have to put on shoes or change out of my pajamas, and I can look at them, speak to them, and know they are fine at that moment. It’s a great comfort.

I think I am going to try to post more often for a while, see if I can capture what daily life in isolation is like and post some tips for how to manage for anyone who might be struggling more than I am. I have ideas for how to cope after spending many years of my adult life in poverty. Also I have a great imagination and can’t help but think about worst case scenarios, you know, like running out of toilet paper. I’ll think about how to organize my ideas and post again soon. Stay safe and well, everyone, do what you can, and keep breathing.