Greenstorm's Journal

For own reference:

Gyne is always nice to talk to in the rare intervals I can talk to her. Lupron 1month shot starts on 19th with progesterone daily.

Neurologist: as close as can be certain it's not MS. Social worker at his offic and him said hey'll provide suport on CPP appeal.

After those two back to back medical appointments I've been in bed for 4 days, I'd overfed the animals deliberately beforehand but couldn't even make it outside consistently. Significant gut pain, dizzy, passing out, etc. So er, I'm still sick and pacing really really works because when forced not to do it I'm back to this, like I was nearly two years ago when I left work. I have to go into town to the mailbox this week but otherwise rest.

Back to quiet dark room with no more than fifteen minutes of noise/screens/anything per hour.

Not sure if gut pain is just because I have no idea if I'm taking my pills right or not. Trying to be more careful.

It's easy to forget what takes thinking. Right now, with all the snow outside, I don't have a lot of ability to do outside and thoughtlessly wheelbarrow things. Even snowblowing, which I try to do every 6" of snow, requires a fair bit of strategizing about where, exactly, the piles of snow will go and how to get them there (it can throw roughly 15' and obviously not through solid objects). Being in the house, I decided to tidy it a bit, and then the skillcult apple seed sale loomed and some scionwood became available elsewhere so I worked on making some decisions about which of those I wanted for next year.

Tidying the house is A LOT of thinking work. And not just tidying, but "should I get rid of this?" and "what things should go together in an area, which things should go into outside storage, and where should things go while they're waiting to leave the house or go into those areas?"

I made my seed order, made inroads on the house, and yesterday and today can't stay awake or think or follow a book. It's been awhile since I had to repeat audiobook spots four or five times, and I'm back to that.

So I guess I need to take it in smaller bites, though I'm not sure how.

There's about eighteen inches of snow out there right now, most of which fell in the last five days. It's good insulation against the -20.

All would be well except that Solly has realized going in the house keeps her from chasing deer away, which is her reason for existing (see: guardian dog). She's escaped from the house and will only come near me when we're nowhere near the house and I've shown her that my hands are totally empty of collars and leashes (she can get out of a collar in about twelve hours, so there's no grabbing her by a collar). She's sleeping in the chicken coop at the bottom of the garden, which is a nice 6x6' building full of straw, so she's nice and warm and dry. It's right where the deer come over the fence. I've been taking her food& medication out there in a bowl (which she stays away from me, since my hands aren't demonstrably empty, but will eat the food if I step back). I'm not chasing her, since she's not supposed to be walking at all.

I've given some thought to putting her in the small fenced garden & greenhouse with the geese. It's a smaller space, but I'm not sure how they'd all feel about such close proximity. She's allowed to stand and lie down, gentle range of motion is fine, but mostly rest. So we need to come to an accommodation we can both tolerate.

It's funny, Solly is such a ridiculous sweetie I'd forgotten just how intense these dogs can be when something gets into their guardian button. This is a dog who loves to lie on the couch or on my lap on her back with her paws in the air, but she's smart enough to connect the dots between going inside for a bit and being kept there for longer than she wants, and being inside and not being able to chase the deer away, and she's fully willing to deprive herself of all those things PLUS food in order to keep those deer away (she won't even let me feed her near the house in case it's a trap). Plus walking hurts her. The pain meds are making a difference but that just makes her do more mobile stuff.

I should be problem solving that but I snowblew her a path around the chicken coop so she doesn't have to drag her legs through the deep snow and I'm letting her chill until my mind is online again. I could catch her in the chicken coop by closing the door, but after a couple days of walking her to pee and otherwise leaving her in there she'd just have the door off. This afternoon I talk to the vet who might be able to do surgery "locally" (only 2 hours away) and then to possible funding sources.

The tornjaks in the province are all sold, so I don't need to make any immediate decisions on puppies regardless. It looks like there might have been some drama in the (quite small) breed group?

Whiskey is headbutting me for snuggles so I should go. I want my legs to work soon so I can get some water. I'm thirsty and the relative humidity is like 13%.

Someone may be able to fund Solly's surgery. It's not for sure yet by any means, and I haven't spoken to the surgeon yet even to know if it's possible, but. There's maybe a little hope.

The issue is a couple CCL tear, which is to say, both her back knees are shot. The surgery is very expensive. There may be a possibility to do just one knee, which would in effect leave her a tripod but able to get around.

The meds are starting to kick in and she's moving more easily, which is both good and bad of course. Good because it means she has less pain. Bad because it's bad for her knees to move around more.

Bad because I realize just how much heart she has.

Avallu would die for me and will even listen to me most of the time. Thea takes her guardianship of the house and especially the front approach more seriously than I have taken anything in my life, with patient persistence. Both are made of heart, of that kind of huge persistence of spirit which makes them seem larger than life and certainly more than human.

Solly is newer. Not new, but newer. If it takes me several years to fully settle into a relationship with anyone, it's fair to say that I'm still sort of navigating my way with Solly as she grows and now through her injury.

When she first came she took over my personal guardianship from Avallu. He's taken more shifts lately and I thought it was just because his surgery made him feel better, but I know now that she has been in pain. When I'm on the property I'm never out of sight of one of them. When I start the truck Thea barks out the front gate to announce to the neighbourhood that they better be careful and back off when I come through.

I can already feel I'm not going to describe this right. I keep veering into comparison, but Solly is herself. She is a giant white fluffy mass of joy and love. Even in pain. She's a guardian dog, don't get me wrong: we've trained back the growl that was trained out of her and she has very specific feelings about when cats should be near her, for example. She gets the zoomies and plays with Thea, the two of them cantering around. But she especially loves people.

When she first came she thought she was a lapdog and although she's scared of getting up on the couch because it causes so much pain, she still wants to be in physical contact a lot. When I'm outside she'll come up to me -- she's always observing, and learning when I'll have time to stop and pay attention and when I won't -- and put her chin on my hand. She hates her collar and leash, but she could be led almost anywhere by gently rubbing her under the chin, during which time she'll stare up with adoring eyes and follow and follow.

She's extremely smart, to the point where she can learn something from one repetition, but she can also re-learn if what she picked up the first time wasn't right. She's a little less stubborn than the other two, not because she doesn't have her own opinions on things, but because she's better at assessing a situation and integrating both the realities of the situation and her own priorities into one course of action. It means that she's... I almost want to say not trainable because she picks things up so far.

And she just adores human contact. If I bend down when I'm outside with any hint that I'm not super busy or super hauling things she comes up and asks for a snuggle. Avallu bum-leans to snuggle, keeping his face to the world guarding, and Thea rolls onto her back for belly rubs at a moment's notice, but Solly wants as much leaning, snuggling, licking, sniffing contact as possible. It's astonishing to me that I was able to train her not to jump up on folks because what she wants is that full contact so much -- but she's content, even before the injury, to wait until I come down to her since she's learned that not just me, but everyone, would rather a dog who's close to six feet on her hind legs didn't jump up.

Instead, even more than Thea, she has perfected the melted, adoring stare.

And then when something comes she can't handle, like the herd of deer that were charging her (while she was having serious pain walking) she comes into partnership with me or the other dogs seamlessly. She'd hold ground and protect me when I bent to make snowballs, and advance the couple feet each snowball bought us, adjusting to what I was doing. She soon learned that they couldn't charge her through the fence, so she spent more time patrolling at the right times of day to warn them off before they came over.

I don't know. We'll see what happens. She's just... she's a very good girl.

I still really haven't recovered from... all the stuff. Teaching classes, pushing to do one more thing and then one more thing as the fall stretched on long without much snow on the ground, PMDD meds wobble and then medical stuff, and a steady dribble of disability correspondence.

The hope was that, from last full moon to next, I could take a month off and just kind of recover and regroup.

Well, what happened is that I did an impromptu cleaning bee with some folks at the clay studio. We've had a ton of people through there, so it was nice to do some of the project stuff together (sand and kiln wash shelves, turn over some reclaim, organize some things) and load the big kiln full of bisque; the one guy who comes in only on his two-week shifts had a crate full of scuplture, the homeschool group had a lot of stuff, and two of the studio people had taken a wheel class in the next town over so they had more stuff too. It was a fun and varied kiln load. I got someone else to do the next-day check and I left relatively early so it wasn't too bad for me, and my mental health really needed a volume of communication with folks that wasn't authoritarian/disability logistics related.

My vet offered a sale on pet dental work, and so I booked Thea in for next week since she has some tooth stuff she's been waiting on. It isn't uncomfortable but it needs to happen at some point, so a sale seems like the right point. It will mean taking her into town (2 hour drive) in the pre-dawn dark (which is admittedly anything before 8:30am these days) in unknowable road conditions, and sleeping in the truck while her surgery is done.

It was inevitable that a -20 cold snap would be forecast for next week. We've been bobbling around freezing or just slightly below, again, still. It's normal in Fort for cold snaps to alternate with warmer snaps, not really fully above freezing or just a little above, where the snow compacts and there's a reprieve from the brutality of real cold. Our last snap was in the -15Cs and was brief; the next is supposed to be in the -20Cs and not so brief. There's supposed to finally be a lot of snow; we have some but not much right now.

The last couple days were warmish so I went out and sledgehammered some things off the ground (things freeze to the ground and ice gets harder the colder it is, so sometimes on the warm days they can be moved. In this case there was a concrete block that had blown down right where I wanted to snowblow, and some pallets lying on the ground. The yard is clearer now, which is good.

Then last night a big wind came up, gusts up to 80kph, and unsurprisingly the pigpen's metal roof started to peel off. I went out with the power drill and climbed up there. The wind was enough to pull some of the screws through the metal and fold it in half backwards, so I folded it back and screwed some wooden strips overtop, so the screws went through wood, then the metal, then into the structure. While I was doing that the roof was bucking and lifting and very slippery since it was angled and topped with snow. I did not slide off (the drop would only have been 4 feet from the back, so I wasn't so worried) but I did get some bruises. It was holding an hour later but the wind continued all night; I have not yet gone out to check. Suspecting the wind might be ab issue, I'd used hurricane ties on the rafters when I made it, so I'm actually quite pleased with myself. Been a couple years since I made a pigpen fix in the middle of Winter Weather. Of course, it doesn't leave me much energy for today.

It's looking clear and sunny through the window. It's inviting me to come out and totter around a bit in the sun, and of course everyone needs to be fed.

But you can see how I haven't had much rest. I've had the mental fortitude to not do too much pottery at least, crawling into bed around 4pm instead of taking an hour of wheel time at night.

Descent into meds:

Oh! Good news from the gut meds I was given by my doctor: things feel weird in there still but these really help. Things seem to pretty much go in the right direction, with minimal pain comparatively, and at more or less the right speed. I don't worry everything is going to fall out of my stomach if I lean over, and I suspect I'm breathing in a lot less gut contents at night. AND I'm feeling a little less lightheaded, or lightheaded less frequently, which I'm chalking up to keeping liquid in my body better. Interestingly one of them (Accel hyoscine or something?) was prescribed to me for gallbladder stuff but I think has additional IBS use? I'm taking it at half the prescribed amount, since that seems to work best.

Anyhow, there we are.

In the whole PMDD and disability paperwork mess (I got rejected because the gov says their notes suggest that with treatment I should be able to return to work! Nice of them to I guess know what I have without telling me?) I forgot that I'd asked my doctor for stomach meds. One is a proton pump inhibitor, which I'd had before (and felt truly not-nauseous on, which was impressive) and one is a smooth-muscle relaxer. The latter I think she gave me because it's used for galbladder attacks but from what I can tell my gallbladder is normal (they did an ultrasound which I can finally access online) but! it super reduces a lot of my gut pain and other weird stuff in there. Things still *feel* weird but they're just much more livable... if I reduce the dose substantially from what she gave me.

So that's all very interesting and maybe means something. It's funny, having been with Angus for those years, now I feel like I have a weird malevolent thing living in my guts too.

Got my covid/flu/vit B shots all in the same day. Spending a couple days sleeping to recover, and my watch that measures things says I'm using as much energy as if I were ultra stressing and/or standing on one foot bouncing gently the whole time.

STILL dealing with ghosts of PMDD, which flare up with any outside world contact. I really would just like to crawl into a hole for long enough to forget the outside world exists, especially with no garden to distract me. People are impossible. And have my gyne appointment today. Oh well.

Seems like in Canada we can get private hormonal-competent gyne care for $300/appointment plus med costs if we don't want to wait in line for six months to a year. Unsurprisingly, people on fb groups for this stuff rely heavily on chatGPT for medical advice. What a fucking mess.

Finally finally, in this time when I'm alive but might easily not be, when how much longer I have to live is fully uncertain in that it might be a year or it might be fifty, when I'm no longer chained to a hormonal cycle that drives every emotion, when I've learned to observe through every turn of that chaining, when I've withdrawn nearly completely from the constructs of human socialization, when I've come back just far enough to remember that humans abstract things and give them names, I'm learning the names for the things my younger self felt.

I'm learning that terror has been normal for me for so much of my life. I've layered it over with secondary emotions, turning fight-or-flight into drive-or-independence. In love it always manifested as pain. In joy it manifested as grief. I've coaxed it into submission with every tool, dissociation, presence, distraction but it lay underneath still.

And at the same time I'm learning this immense joy and gratitude at being alive. For so much of my life I've thought, I've had such a good life and it's been enough that if I were to die today it would be, well, enough. I'd be grateful for what I'd had. And this is bonus time for me, alive-time I have only because of the direct and unwavering support of many people. And I'm grateful for it and I also want it to continue. I want more days and more. I want to watch the acorns I planted this year come up, to see every year how much they grow. I want the trees I plant to get big enough to hug.

I want to see what happens as my soul unfolds into this world I never expected to exist, into not only the impossibly perfect haven I have here for myself but also into this incomprehensibly raw and complex and shattering world I live in. I want to know how I come to terms with these humans existing as the do, not ascending like those pseudo-narratives of evolution but instead struggling like a storm on the ocean. I Want to understand how I first cope and then accept and then love this piece of the natural world in a moral way, where I believe every piece to be important.

I have confidence in myself that I'll grow and learn and unfurl and densify and somehow both end up so far from myself I wouldn't believe it but also so much myself that gravity pulls my own self in and begins to effect the world around me.

Time is long! What if this is the midpoint of my learning myself? Who would I become?

Will I always be scared? Will I always be grateful? Can I learn to superimpose those, instead of swinging one to the other? What would love look like for me, after more years like these? Could I recognise it?

I could barely move today, too many things happened at once and I can't form them into a narrative. I had counseling and Siri came and laid on my arm, purring, the entire time. Whiskey sat on the other side of me, purring. I talked with my counselor about my need to anchor myself in a narrative and my lack of cognitive ability to do such a thing now, of the way I can only write or talk my way into it anyhow, of how I have no one I can stand to perform reciprocal emotional work of that kind for in my life right now. The cats purred. I talked, disjointedly, careening from significant point to significant point. I didn't manage to web them together as I always used to, but I could revisit them under a listening ear and that was as much as I can get of what I needed right now.

I can't weave all those threads. I can barely hold a single thread. I'll find some way to make meaning and I don't know what it is. Maybe I'll carve porcelain into jagged cliffs that I'll flow with sparkling colour and call it a cup. Maybe I'll run back and forth playing with the dog, forward-back and to-and-fro. Maybe I'll lie on my back on the ground overnight and grow roots into the ground for real.

When I'm here I'm not as scared. That evacuation in 2018 when I'd just moved in and had to leave I was so scared every moment that my soul couldn't live in my body. If it was a movie it would have had red lights and an alarm blaring so loudly everyone would have left the theatre. Since I came back from that I've only left my land through choice, knowing I could come back. Years layering on years create trust that I can be here, can keep being here, and so I am. Right now, tonight, writing all this, I am led to wonder: if I stay here long enough, will I maybe ever stop being scared? Will I lose my terror? And if I have no terror, maybe I'll no longer need a narrative.

Maybe I'll be content as a heart beating, skin leaking sweat or heat, fingertips and pain or pleasure and awareness of variation in sounds and air currents. I get there sometimes.

Too much people in the last little while. I spent a bunch of time at the studio which had a bunch of ambient folks and some time on the phone with disability folks and it's just been too much.

The pill fluctuations are catching up with me too; with PMDD it's the change in hormones that's the problem, not necessarily the levels, so I'm back to steady on the pill to suppress my body's cycles which had started to wake up. I have to remind myself that I lived through this monthly for decades, until it became super constant; I can get through this bit ok until I stabilize. The bubbles of hatred and despair and pain are just very unpleasant.

Being outside makes everything ok, though. Moving around, looking at different things, making garden beds and planting bulbs and splitting firewood-- those settle me and give me peace. I've nearly finished putting in the peonies and have added some grapes and a toka ownroot plum and three manchurian apricots, which may well be hardy here. They're all miniscule plants, of course, 2.5" pots, which take longer to mature but they're what I can afford. I can't spend as much time doing these things as I'd like, of course, or I lose use of my body, but any day that contains them is a better day.

Today the plan is to screw some pallets together to make a winter pig shelter. They can't stay in the back, and since the rescues are full they need to stay here, so I'm going to bring them in closer. We'll see how much of it I get done, but even if all I can do is move the pallets today, pound the t-posts tomorrow, and screw things together the day after then that's how it must be done. Weird to think I used to be able to do something like this in one bite in the dark after work, and work the next day.

The days are getting distinctly shorter. I think we're below 8 hours of sunlight now. I hadn't realized how this would impact my ability to be outside; because I need good long rest periods between pieces of activity I end up running out of daylight even if I'm only spending two hours outside total unless I start very early.

The ground is starting to freeze. I bet I can still get t-posts through the crust, it's not deep yet, but I'm not sure about digging anything and a bunch of stuff is likely frozen to the ground. I may have one hose encased in an ice flow on the north side of my house, which I think may not thaw till spring now, but I got most of the hoses and pallets up. I'd thought to move woodchips later in the winter but had forgotten that the outside of the chip piles, which are wet, freeze. I've moved most-ish of the chips anyhow, making the lasagne chicken-manure-and-green-deciduous-chip beds. I'd left bulbs-and-mulching the orchard until the ground on the way back there froze. It's more work slogging through mud, and anyhow, I just haven't had the ability.

A friend helped me take measurements for the automatic pattern thing (apostrophe patterns) where you feed in your measurements and it spits out a pattern. I just don't have it in me to self-draft leggings, and it's worked well for shirts in the past. Weirdly my arms are symmetrical now, biceps at least. I've lost 3" on my biceps in the last two years, which is not surprising but it makes me sad. I'm so much weaker now, and it's a combination of less physical activity and the illness.

Anyhow, the vast majority of my pants are in rags at this point. I have three pairs of comfortable-enough pants without holes, but none without stains, for winter. I have four additional pairs of pants that will work for winter with long underwear, two without stains, but that won't work for daily life, and of course I don't want to wear the ones without stains for daily life or they will stain. Either way I've been wearing the stuff with holes and trying to eke out the time between laundry, but if I can manage to put together several pairs of warm winter pants it will make a big difference.

Shirts that fit will be lovely too. I have several t-shirts -- they don't need to fit in order to stay on so I can buy them online -- but winter weather shirts that can handle chilliness and body moisture are beyond my price range, so it'll be good to put some more together. I did splurge on socks, as I have done at least every second year since moving north. Luckily I don't go through them as much as I used to when I was putting kilometers on them every day, and I don't need that level of quality, so it's a reasonable splurge.

Money is on my mind a lot. I have maybe eight months at most of the level of friends' support I've been enjoying. It's kept me alive through the worst of disability paperwork and learning to manage this, but it of course couldn't last forever. After that it will be back to survival expenses only.

As I go through the days I'm slowly saying goodbye to the luxuries I've enjoyed: premade food, steak sometimes, fresh veggies and even non-apple-or-banana fruits in the wintertime, fruit juice or pop or fancy tea or any drinks that cost more than a cheap teabag, milk and probably nut milks, gas for popping into town, a truck without check engine lights on, maybe regular membership at the pottery studio instead of saving my work at home to pop in and use the kiln every so many months, new plants, testing fancy clays maybe?, new sheets, electric blankets, keeping my home warm even in the shoulder season, running the dryer in the summer and midwinter (shoulder season is necessary I think), I know there'll be lots of things. In the meantime I need to sort out if there's anything that will substantially make my life cheaper at that time, and get it now. I've been thinking an e-bike, to get to town and back without gas, but that's only good in the summer. Maybe worth it? Maybe I can't maintain it well enough with my cognitive stuff and it's not?

I'm going to try and figure out some way of replacing my upstairs tile at least. Right now I can't wash the kitchen and bathroom floors except on my knees with a nearly dry cloth, because the tiles and grout and the MDF board underneath are so compromised that any moisture swells the MDF and further cracks or pops off the tiles and several are already missing or at an angle. So, I haven't been using my magic vacmop and in fact haven't been washing the upstairs floors at all. That just can't go on for the next 40 years. Even if I can just get it off and put well-sealed plywood in? It doesn't have to look like anything but I need it to function like a floor.

In the midst of all this, the ball I've been letting slip is meds. I've put off my covid shot, which I hear is a demanding one this year, because I haven't had enough recovery time lined up. I'm supposed to have started B vitamin shots a month ago, but again need to take the time to make sure if I have a bad effect I can recover. And I haven't been tracking meds symptoms except noticing the bubbles of intensity creeping back from hormonal fluctuations, and I notice them because they really are incapacitating.

Enough of that. I'll get the pigs tucked in somewhere warm today, or tomorrow, or the next day. I'll get the bluebells under the rest of the woodchips. Cats will snuggle with me when I rest by the woodstove. In a couple weeks I'll get the pottery area tidied so I can head back to my own wheel instead of the studio ones. It's a good life, full of things I love, and I'm very grateful to have it.

Two days back on pills. Really a very surprising amount of pain. Weird to think I'd been used to this only a month ago.

Second snow is happening. This one may stick. The first is pretty much gone. Josh canner up and we made kimchi and sauerkraut, hung shelves in the kitchen, and brought wood in from the satellite piles into the woodgreenhouse. The rebel hen who sleeps there was distressed. I'm still bringing a bit more in.

Seed swaps need to go out today. I also need to handle some fundraiser mugs and call the gov disability people to see if they've got their medical info from the insurance company yet. Also this week need to do a disability update to the insurance company. COVID shot is scheduled toi. This is too much for the week but it all needs doing.

I hurt and I don't want to drive my truck in the heavy snow before the ABS system is fixed but here we are. Maybe a bit more rest first.

Still happy to be alive. It's so improbable, all things considered.

Snow fell the last few days, and a little even stuck. Canada Post is on strike and my bulbs are in it, but I think I planted them about this time last year, and the ground isn't frozen yet. I'm hoping they arrive not too damaged after sitting in a warm spot for over a month.

The provincial public service is on strike too, which I suspect means my disability application won't be accepted or processed until they're done, and after that I imagine a backlog-- no wait, I think this was a federal one? Anyhow, neither they nor insurance has asked me for anything in the last two weeks, which is nice.

The pottery class has one more class. We did glazing yesterday and the glazing area is pretty small, so I peeled people off one at a time and we worked on their stuff while everyone else got free play time, and most ended up scultping. This is excellent, since sculpting is not my strong point, and they got to do a bunch of it without my needing to instruct on more than the principles of attaching things. I like people doing people things, I guess.

It's seed swap season (did I already say that?) and the Canadian seed swap fb groups put up all their stuff and arranged groups -- the way it works is you send in ten of the same variety to a central volunteer, and get back nine different varieties (The tenth one goes to a prize that I guess folks get entered into, or into mutual-aid style packages). So groups of ten people, none of whom have the same variety to send in, get made in all sorts of categories: paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, brassicas & root crops (not sure why those are together), lettuce and herbs, etc. Then the landrace organization, who I believe are now labelling themselves as adaptation gardening people, have asked for seed donations in Canada so I'll send in a bunch of stuff to them; they distribute it free. They'll get some very fun tomatoes.

All this has prompted me to start seeding tomatoes more seriously. I have trays of now-ripe tomatoes on every surface downstairs and I need to get the seeds out of them, and ideally them into a salsa or something and canned or at least to pigs. Josh will be here in a week and it would be nice if there were some surfaces not covered in tomatoes for him.

Meanwhile my sauerkraut has gone from fermenting in the cool pantry to the fridge. It's perfect, crunchy and sour and lightly spicy since I put hot pepper shreds in most of my sauerkrauts. Now there's kimchi fermenting in that spot, I have a couple more gallons to make. I have yet to sample the test batch to know how I should tweak it but was very happy to find diakon at the grocery store here.

I enjoy chattering away about the garden and wish I had the wherewithal to do more. I do want to update that three of the muscovy babies from this spring survived -- two male -- and nine ducklings, and now there are seven chicks feathering out. The muscovies from Shelly's farm are doing well here, competing for my napa cabbage and flying all over to hang out on top of things, like muscovies do. It's like having animate jewels.

I'm not fully sure how to divide the animals for winter. I'd like to get the goosehouse mucked out fully but it's slow going for me; if I do it right I can put aspen chips in it, and they're easier to muck out than straw when they've semi-composted. I'd like to use the actual greenhouse in the spring, so I want whoever is in it to not nest in it, or to have a place to go in February that's snug for nesting and predator-free in that lean time. Right now Solly is somehow getting in to sleep in it and I think she's only letting the chicks in with her. For that matter, I'd like to get the pots of frosted dead tmatoes out of the woodshedgreenhouse and put wood in there. Hopefully Josh can help with that.

This is probably more going on than I should have. My mind feels a little clearer, though I still can't remember students names from one moment to the next and when washing my hands I've been drying them before rinsing them lately. My muscles feel softer. Still off the pill, eating hurts less and is easier, though my muscles really do feel like they're made from sticks and playdough. At some point I expect my hormonal system to notice it's supposed to do things and start up again, at which point I'll rev up the pills and the various eating medications I've been given, but right now I have a little calm space.