elainegrey

Things i've done with my vacation:

"Mowed" with Mary Jane, our wheeled string trimmer aka weed whacker. I've mowed the past week with the same line. I've never had it last so long. I guess i haven't gotten it tangled up in branches and grapevines and shrubs. I've done some of the meadow and some of the future shed site, a so-so job around the outside perimeter and a good bit of the mossy glade, as well as the remaining bit of my "the best grass ever"  (Dichanthelium laxiflorum) lawn.

I also mowed a tiny bit of the "orchard" this morning with our new electric mower, up until the rain started. This mower is dedicated to doing tame areas.  Our old mower, with its notched and worn blade (that i sharpen, but there are no replacement blades available) i'll keep using for less tame areas. Unfortunately i hit something metal hidden in the high grass with the new mower. I hope it wasn't too damaging.

Picked berries. Shared lots of blueberries with my sister's family. Got the tall ladder set up at the mulberry tree and ruined a pair of shorts with berry juice from a mesh bag i was wearing to collect picked berries while i was up the ladder. Dehydrated a couple trays of mulberries, and have two trays of mulberries waiting to dehydrate. They are ripening up a little more, plus we're in Chantal's rain bands today. Seems reasonable to wait a day to run the dehydrator. I've got a bag of frozen mulberries, and i am slowly collecting blueberries in the freezer.

The figs are beginning to come in and i am so pleased with my pruning job.  The tree  makes a room, with a clear area underneath, but the branches droop down like an umbrella. And the tallest still can be reached from the shorter ladder.

Egg rolls!  I made a batch of filling with carrots and mung beans i sprouted, and then have fried up a couple batches in the air fryer. Very satisfying. I also rolled up some figs with shaved Parmesan cheese. Yums!

Quick rolls - i used a Pillsbury crescent roll sheet and dabbed with cream cheese pats, blueberries, and pecans. Rolled up and cut into "twirls" and baked.  Also very yum.

There was also laundry. It's almost all caught up.

I went out with my sister on Wednesday night to a high tech restaurant (order on your phone, pull your own beer (and cider) from a wall of taps paying with a special bracelet. Karaoke was happening and was mildly entertaining.  Also went to her house to hang out on the evening of the 4th of July.

I've been playing a little Balatro,  a game Christine's been playing for ... a year? ... mostly to delight her. Exponentile remains very diverting, like a fidget toy, although i am not playing nearly as well as my initial games. Admittedly i am listening to novels as i play. Finished a relisten of yet another of the Mary Russell novels, Locked Rooms. Next is The Language of Bees, which leads into The God of the Hive. I listened to The God of the Hiveearlier this year, randomly picking from the list, and that prompted me to begin the relistening from the beginning.   I also bought a Ilona Andrews book to finish a trilogy since the public library no longer has it, and added the list of all  the Ilona Andrews books i have binged on in the past months to Zotero. And yesterday i started the Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch at OpenLibrary, as that looks like enough to keep me busy while i am in this escapist mental place.

This morning i was pondering how i could set time aside to grieve and emotionally connect with the distress of the past months. (Really, starting with Jan 20.) I think i will try to do sun salutations in the evening, using adaptions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcJvBMYxQl0&t=294s.

I continue in this cycle of feeling crinkly and dissatisfied and frustrated since mid-early June -- essentially from the point when "I'm recovering from surgery" ceased being an explanation for anything. There have been many excuses, and on the whole i lean towards accepting that i was carrying things in emotional and social dimensions that limited my spoons in the take care of self and yard dimensions.

The video game distraction, though, is real. Squee! I admit that, having watched Christine work out how to solve various issues in Jedi Survivor, i have faith in some of the hand-eye coordination passages instead of having the "maybe there's something else i should be doing/have done." I've managed to complete some bits that got her stuck because i know it's just a matter of timing and coordination. I also began by helping her, noticing visual cues and calling them to her attention, including "There's another one behind you."

And i've been reading. Sunday i read three novels -- the Iroshi trilogy by Cary Osborne -- that bother me a bit with something stuck in my metaphorical mental teeth. I like the justification for swords in space: weapons that are going to puncture habitat and ship walls are problematic. The alien cause of telepathy powers is interesting, although the aliens really aren't so very alien. Maybe what bothers me is the narrative omission: once the main character trusts the aliens in the first book, there's a gap between books where the hard work of recruiting others to trust the aliens occurs? And maybe the universe building feels just a little sketchy? Again, a gap between the first and second books takes a "nobody" to a politically significant persona. It doesn't compare favorably to Arkady Martine's A memory called empire.

I had an interaction with Dad today that left me feeling fragile: i was doing my best to accommodate his sense of urgency to get rid of some stuff (by coming over and taking a look). I don't think he really heard my repeat of "earliest possible time" in the spirit it was said. I'm glad we rescheduled, but i'm a little resentful at the pressure (particularly since he had other plans for the evening and was trying to squeeze me in. I called my sister to vent, she reciprocated with frustration over Dad's recalcitrance in handling his hearing issues. I don't know how we're going to get him to deal with his hearing. He doesn't withdraw, nor does he continue as he was with assumptions and not listening, so all that's good. But the way he interrogates about the words he doesn't hear (generally, he wasn't expecting to hear the word and he knows he didn't hear it right) puts the other person as the one with the issue. The other person used a strange or surprising word. Or pronounced it oddly. Or whatever. He's not taking the responsibility still. SIGH.

Christine's elephants have been around off and on. [Here "elephants" derive from "elephant in the room" and refer to issues that are Christine's and not mine to share in a broad way. I stretch the metaphor.] My toes were trampled on once, and then the elephants caused a significant change of her plans to do something nice for herself. She's worked hard on her own, but she's been unhappy with how the ways she's coped constrained her. I've pointed out that maybe there were other solutions someone could help her with for ... a while now. But when the elephants stood on my toes, it reached the point of me saying she should go get help. The way the elephants changed her plans underscored the severity of the issue. She's off for an intake appointment after lots of back and forth about all the paperwork and documents she was asked to fill out before meeting the person. The first person she reached out to wouldn't budge -- although this maybe clinic staff enforcing a practice without asking higher ups about requirements.

One person told her that she had to sign things so they could contact insurance, which - NOT TRUE. HIPAA expressly allows patient information to flow to insurers. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html The second office seemed to be insisting and, after Christine let them know she'd be looking elsewhere, the admin checked with the clinic director who said only the consent to receive treatment was necessary. The director then entered into communication with Christine about the paperwork because they wanted to address any unclear terms. (Including screen grabs of their own documents?) The consent to receive treatment document ended with a sentence fragment.

Does no one but Christine and I read this stuff? Rhetorical. Sigh.

After work on Thursday and Friday i was very sedentary. At some point in there i developed a very painful sore throat. Friday i went to my sister's briefly in the evening for a small gather. Her daughter was off to an end of middle school dance (and left before i arrived), and her son had a school art show. I then returned home to collect Christine, and we drove to the art show and supported W-- in his art.

Christine [5/21/23 12:33]
W--, I enjoyed your art display. You might find some kindred spirits in two of my favorite artists: Gerald Scarfe (The Wall) and Francis Bacon (1909-1992).

W-- [5/21/23 18:58]
Thank you! I haven’t looked into Gerald Scarfe before, so I’ll look into him, but Francis Bacon is one of my favorites! You may enjoy perusing some of Zdzisław Beksiński—he’s who I would call my favorite artist.

While W--'s distorted body parts did not speak to me, his artist's statement put them in a context in which i could see them.

Saturday evaporated.

I did play with paper and made a A6 notebook of art paper separated by what was sold as tracing paper but was cheap tissue paper, and had a couple pages of standard bond paper printed up for a table of content and notes. Adobe's InDesign is ... not so easy to use because it does bizarre things with groups and layers that look like bugs to me. But i have made nifty fiscal year calendars and little weekly notebooks for work that may bring some order compared to the scraps-of-paper or stacks of random 3x5 card notes that i have been scribbling for work. Because the notes are SO transient, i hate using a "nice" notebook for them, but the scraps were somewhat less than useless because the context was completely lost. With a little 16 page pamphlet i have enough white space for the week, plus five pages for the work days, and a "table of contents" front page. The little sketch book is nice enough for pleasure in using, small enough that it's not intimidating, and short enough that i can keep it for one thing.

I have a rather nice blank book that i am using for experimenting with colored pencil color combinations. Saturday i experimented with a warm yellow + cool yellow + lavender grey as the final in my series of warm/cool primary plus similar color (crimson+poppy+process red, true blue + ultramarine + black grape). I'm making little "Interactions of Color" panels à la mode de Joseph Albers and doodles. I'd bought "101 textures in colored pencil" by Denise Howard, and i'm experimenting with that (using my color choices, not hers). I'm hoping with these exercises i can develop a sense of what i can make with colored pencils.

Yesterday afternoon, i did get out and mow a little bit, disturbing some very young bunnies. I left the main patch where they were unmown. I weeded some, disturbing another young bunny. I wonder if bunnies are to blame for the absence of some of the squash seedlings, but it's more likely some combination of old seed and gardener inattention. Just like packets of zinna and cosmos seed seem to have produced one seedling each. Fie.

I'm hoping mowing has helped me get back to the yard.

Meanwhile, i have the worst sore throat i can remember. Are my symptoms due to [contagious condition of your choice] or due to surgery recovery? Fie. My throat doesn't have any tell-tale conditions that scream "strep" or "tonsillitis" compared to Google images, but omg did my sleep get interrupted. I think that when i plugged the heated tube in i didn't remember how to correctly adjust the humidity, so it may be i need more moisture in my night air. It could be due to irritation in the saline rinses for my nose. Nothing seems to help. Christine realized how bad it was when she nudged me to use the throat spray i hate, and i told her i already was.

We now have two game things. Christine has replaced our 18+ year old XBox with the latest Playstation and she bought Stray for me. I'm not sure how well I will do as this is no my usual choice of amusement. She also bought a thing i had seen on Etsy when i went to look for a backgammon board. It's a laser cut triple game board for the Babylonian royal game of Ur, Aseb/Twenty squares, and Senet. The first rules Christine found for Aseb required tossing a 4 with the throwing sticks (that are not thrown) to move your first piece on the board. Christine went a whole game without throwing a 4. I don't think we will use that rule again. It's probably more fun when friends are looking on and gambling on whether you will EVER get a 4.