Nun geeks out on her own front yard.

Jul. 13th, 2025 10:15 am
sistawendy: me in my suffraget costume raising a finger in front of the Vogue (oh yeah)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I have a tiny little front yard garden. It came with a couple of sourwood trees, half a dozen oakleaf hydrangeas, "Sky Pencil" Japanese holly, and two one species of bush that I haven't identified yet. (Yeah, I know there's an app for that. The Tickler has it, so I can ask them.)

What's interesting, though, is the ecological succession. When I first moved in, I had lots of bare bark mulch and plenty of golden orb weaver spiders. The spiders are no longer quite so prominent, and clover covers most of the bark mulch now. I haven't tried to remove the clover because a) that would be too much work, b) the bees love it, and c) I don't have anywhere near enough capacity in my little yard waste bin for it. Seriously, I fill that bin weekly for months in the spring & summer as it is just pulling up dandelions & thistles. The Tickler says they've never seen clover grow as tall as it does at my place, and I haven't either.

But wait! There's more! Willowherb, with tiny pink flowers, is a native plant that's volunteered in the last couple of years. I'm also leaving it alone because pretty.

And then, over just the last year, the yarrow arrived in grand style. It's now taller than I am, with plenty of inflorescences. Its biomass rivals the clover, so I'm leaving it alone for the same reasons as the clover.

At this point it's all I can do to keep the lavenders I planted from getting choked by clover or shaded by yarrow. I replaced some hydrangeas with lavender because the former don't handle the dry summers nearly as well. Indeed, a common theme here is drought tolerance: lavender and yarrow come through the dry Seattle summer (yes, we have them) without any trouble, the clover and willowherb turn brown but bounce right back in the spring, and the poor hydrangeas & Japanese hollies just burn unless they get lots of shade. I replaced the sun-damaged holly with oregano & thyme back in the spring, to my great satisfaction.

Since clover is a legume, I can't help wonder if the symbiotic nitrogen fixation that happens in legumes (the subject of my dad's Ph.D. thesis!) is preparing the way for species like willowherb and, more dramatically, yarrow.
sistawendy: me in my nun costume with my duster cross, looking hopeful (hopeful nun)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I spent a couple of hours at the Merc last night*. Said hi to A&J. A had some recommendations about having fun in New York City. First, stay in Brooklyn or Queens because the normies have taken Manhattan and all the nighttime fun is in the outer boroughs and even New Jersey. Second, regular club nights aren't really a thing due to the vile economics of NYC real estate. Sure, fun happens, but not, for example, monthly fun.

I also saw [profile] aaminahlefae. If I'm going to think impure thoughts about another woman, it helps that she's a) queer and b) not that much younger than I am. But she, like A, was there with a brand new dude. Between that and the hand-holding femmes, it was an unsubtle reminder that I gotta git me a woman. But first I needed to stop coughing.

Speaking of the vile economics of real estate, Good Sister waited until after 0900 her time to text the other two of us one more thing to sign. I do believe we have gone pending, to close Aug. 11th if all goes atypically well. Do you remember that scene in The Lord of The Rings where Aragorn releases the ghost army after they've disposed of a bunch of orcs? Good Sister is the ghost army.

If that date is when it happens — I'm deathly afraid of jinxing it — it won't be a minute too soon for me either; I have plans for that cash starting with repaying the balance of my 401(k) loan. I was telling [profile] aaminahlefae that I'd like to get more work done on my face if I can afford it. Given the Situation, though, I may end up sitting on it.



*Shallow fashion details: little flowy sleeveless black dress from Blackwood Castle, gladiator sandals, collar with big silver angel wings. Because I'm a Florida girl and I know how to dress for (relatively) warm weather.

Done Since 2025-07-06

Jul. 13th, 2025 11:13 am
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

It's been a week. Starting with my son's fortieth birthday, and ending with the fourth anniversary of Colleen's death. I started writing a "state of the Bear" post last Sunday, and will either finish it today or tomorrow, or give up on it. But productive.

I went out for a walk four days this week -- the longest was about a kilometer, and the shortest was 650m. I practiced every day, which I haven't done for a long time. And, at N's suggestion, I started a work log, to keep track of what I've done for our business. I'll write it up separately, of course, but it's been remarkably effective. See under Monday for the start, but it's all been moved out of Dog/to.do to different file and workspace, which will mostly not find its way into this log, although pieces might.

It also shows how appallingly lazy I've been for the last six months.

Not really surprising -- I've been retired for eight years, and I've allowed myself to get out of shape in a great many ways. It's probably too late to get back to where I was a decade ago, but I'll do what I can.

And of course, the best-laid plans... Friday N and I started putting together a piece of patio furniture, and wore ourselves out completely. And yesterday was Colleen's day and I actually got more done than I expected. Weekends are for catching up.

As for links, AI coding tools make developers slower, study finds • The Register. As I've often said, HTML Is Publishing, Not Code

And this is flat-out amazing: Hundreds of robots move Shanghai city block - YouTube

Notes & links, as usual )

sistawendy: me in my nun costume with my duster cross, looking hopeful (hopeful nun)
[personal profile] sistawendy
That stupid cold — my COVID test came up negative — made up in brevity for what it lacked in manners. Good thing, too, because I'd like to be social this evening without spreading the ick. Maybe Shin Black ramen with fishcake helped me recover quickly.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the offers and counter-offers for Mom's house have been flying. Work was busy yesterday, so between meetings I was sneaking a peek at documents and frantically signing them. If we lost a sale because if I was too slow and Good Sister flew out here and cut me into easy-to-carry sections, no jury would convict her at this point.

(no subject)

Jul. 12th, 2025 04:17 pm
greenstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] greenstorm
Yesterday I filled out the monthly-ish questionnaire needed to keep my benefits, describing symptoms, average day, activity levels, appointments, medications.

I also brought the two black cats in to the in-town clinic for their shots.

I ended up n bed most of the day, couldn't sleep last night, woke up still with ultra weak/borked muscles, don't trust myself to walk as far as the garden, and just have a lingering feeling of deep confusion.

Just because I can do something does not mean I'm better. Until I've sat out the consequences the thing doesn't count as done.

PS I have not finished stacking the trim ends or putting away the feed and it rained on some of the feed. Disability taxes are stupid.
mdlbear: (rose)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Colleen died four years ago, at 04:30 Pacific time, so probably around the time I finish this post. It seems like a long time ago, or maybe just a few days. Or two moves. I'm surrounded by memories. Memorabilia. Every so often I'm struck by how many of my things have stories attached to them; many of them involving Colleen. To be expected -- we were together for half a century.

The world is very different from what it was four years ago, mostly not for the better; there are many things that I miss. And of course people. Too many people.

It's 1pm; we lit a candle for Colleen an hour ago, and toasted her memory, and talked for a bit. N found some purple flowers in the front planter to set in a bowl next to the candle. A candle makes a good focus for giving her a silent update. It's been a nice, quiet remembrance.

I'm going to post this, and sing a couple of songs. See whether I get through Eyes Like the Morning without falling apart.

Colleen, I will always love you.

(no subject)

Jul. 10th, 2025 12:20 pm
greenstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] greenstorm
I just finished my first fiction audiobook that was not a re-read. I'd gone through things I'd read before, and I'd gone through various dinosaur and nature things (the latter needed lots of rewinding to capture, so they're more work to read). I wasn't sure if I'd be able to follow a plot the way I am now.

So this was a popcorn book, Mrs Pollifax, chosen from a list of things I wanted to read because of an older protagonist and bececause they were sorta like Agatha Christie, and because the library had the ebooks. And... I really enjoyed it? The narrator was fantastic, I caught enough of the plot not to sit around being confused, and it was just a nice ride. I had not been able to go on a nice ride outside myself since... well certainly since the accident in 2016. I'm so grateful I get this back, and so grateful for the community of people that helped me figure out how to access ebooks through the library. I would not have been able to do that on my own.

I do need to be a little careful with it -- this is one of two escapisms I know I use that really work for me, and I can't use it to escape from awareness of my health situation or else I'll be stuck in bed again. Like I said the other day to a friend, I always need to keep myself well enough to tend the animals. But that's just something to manage, as anything that brings joy needs to be managed.

There's more to be said there, but it can wait.

It is funny that I spent so much of my time when I was younger connecting with people through writing and screens, and now that's lost to me. Reading is completely utilitarian, whatever happens with my eyes and that brain system of comprehension takes much too much for me to think or categorize or feel at the same time. But I finally am able to get a ghost of elsewho back.

I will add that I scored a truly enormous bundle of 2x4s for $50 from a mill the other day. They're trim ends, and some will be good for building bird shelters and furniture, while others can be burned this winter. It's not a bad price for that much wood even for firewood, though kilned wood burns too fast to use alone if I have a bunch it'll make winter much easier. I also got a case of use-today apricots very cheap and will embark on some water bath canning, and I finally started scouring fabric to test scentless chamomile for dyeing and picked a bunch of flowers. My hope is to test the flowers, then the leaves, and see if there are different colours between the two; then maybe try iron mordanting or indigo overdye. It's just neat to see what colours things make. Sadly this is with cheap t-shirts from the department store sale but I'm hoping to sort myself out more linen to play with.

So that's a lot to do. Luckily the garden is in and growing well and it's been raining enough I haven't even needed to water it. There are lots of weeds -- some are very very tall, but those are in the perennial areas between the plants, so they're not shading things out too badly. Sign of good soil and water, high weeds.

*Sniffle.* *Cough.*

Jul. 10th, 2025 06:38 am
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume with the back of my hand to my forehead (hand staple forehead)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I spent yesterday in bed with mucus, aches, and reading material to keep me company. The irony here is that the only crowds I was around for the whole Fourth of July weekend were at Uwajimaya, and I wasn't there that long. I did go to Lambert House on Monday, and given how stuffy it was in the carriage house at St. Mark's, I'd put my money on that as the source of the ick.

Finished Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Pretty good characters. Action and plot complicated to the point of frenzy. It doesn't have what The Expanse has: the thing that makes me want to buy the next book right away. But I wasn't in the mood to read something challenging; see "sick" above.

Oh yeah: Good Sister texted & called me while I was in bed to give me the play-by-play on all the hot, hot real estate action. (Did I just make a sexual allusion involving real estate agents? That's so not my kink.) It's looking to me as if this might actually happen in the next few weeks, but you know what they say: never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.

Because of course there's a hitch.

Jul. 8th, 2025 12:24 pm
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Good Sister is scrambling to find an electrician to get all the outlets working in Mom's house. One of the contractors ran into an issue, and GS tells me that niece E had found non-functional outlets months ago at least. Oh by the way, since those are (mostly?) the original outlets from 1974, they look unattractively old. GS already had GFIs installed, which weren't there originally: if memory serves, they weren't required until 1975.

My sister has already gone through the informal hiring route — a co-worker of E's, as I recall — and found it wanting. There may be an open house this weekend, so the pressure is on. However, our agent is sanguine, and Good Sister says that interest in the place is robust.

But y'know, it just sort of figures that there'd be one last damn thing having to do with Mom and her house. I'm honestly amazed that GS limited her venting to maybe a minute; she's certainly earned more.

She wanted to know what price ranges I was willing to accept. I'm deeply unwilling to be a hardass because a) I don't feel like gambling with stakes this high, and b) I don't want my poor middle sister to have an aneurysm because I dragged this out too long. I don't know what Evil Sister's feelings are on the subject, but I'm pretty sure there are limits to her evil.

My mom's house is listed online.

Jul. 7th, 2025 02:12 pm
sistawendy: me in my nun costume with my duster cross, looking hopeful (hopeful nun)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Good Sister texted me a few hours ago to tell me that the house I grew up in is back in the online listings. There are an even hundred photos of it, including several shots from a drone. It's a little the worse for wear since the five of us moved in in 1974, but the updates since then are mostly for the better in terms of salability. To quote GS, "Sell, baby, sell."

I haven't lived in that house year round in forty years. I found myself mentally reconstructing what each room looked like in the seventies and eighties. If only the walls could tell what they've seen and heard: my sisters' dramatic teen angst, my furtive gender explorations, my mother's drunkenness, my father swearing as he hurt himself during house and garden projects. But also music echoing off the floors as one of us practiced; the dinner table conversations that so often seemed to degenerate into something, well, degenerate; all the plants that I didn't know were exotic and the Florida critters right outside the doors.

Could it have been better? In that time and place, with my parents and sisters, probably not. And it sure as hell could have been worse.

I hope it becomes a good home again for somebody soon, and not just because of the money.

(no subject)

Jul. 7th, 2025 10:36 am
greenstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] greenstorm
Last night was a bad one. I listened to The Waste Land twice, once with a very good reader from The Great Audiobooks I think, and then the original, Eliot himself reading.

Before that I opened a book I'd loaned on Vavilov but it turned out I'd somehow got the ebook copy instead of the audiobook copy(?) so I returned it and put a hold on the audiobook copy. Then the library said I'd had the audiobook copy out(?) so there's something glitchy somewhere there. It's probably for the best I didn't start reading it last night and instead moved to The Waste Land; on the first page of the actual book there was a picture of quite a young Vavilov in a group with many other young men, all looking fresh and hopeful. That, and the relentless invisibility of anyone who believes in inherent human worth, well. My heart hurts.

And of course when my heart hurts my biometrics get bad, my muscles do the spaghetti thing, my watch complains about my heart rate variability, etc. That's why I mostly stay out of it on the internet. I don't think I ever did fully appreciate how much energy I was spending so flagrantly and unknowingly on emotion, and looking back I feel more sympathy for the folks that chose not to match it.

In hindsight I should have gone in to town to the SCA event or the pride picnic instead of trying to nurse my body back, though maybe driving was an iffy proposition. Today I'll go out and spread mulch even if it hurts my pinkie finger even more I think. It'll be gentler on it than putting up trellises, or maybe I should prune the tomatoes instead.

I need to learn how to grieve within what people are calling "my energy envelope" or maybe I need to set times apart, a week or two, when I have no other energy demands upon my time. If spring is working with gardens above the earth and winter is working with clay and fire below the earth, maybe this long arc of summer-into-fall is the right time for that; the right time for learning how to integrate everything associated with loss. Loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of Tucker too. Loss of a lot of kinds of hope, or maybe just their temporary submergence.

It would feel good to have the clay under my hands again, to put my skin on the same thing people have been doing for millennia. I'm planning to sow rye and winter wheat too, since my experimental winter wheat plot is doing spectacularly. I may try to overwinter some barley, it should be fine if wheat is since wheat is generally less hardy. There's something about immersing myself in these human problems -- is this curve right? How do functionality and aesthetics intersect? If there's perennial crabgrass in this field how thoroughly do I need to get it out before I plant winter grains, since it's very hard to weed out once they're in? It reattaches me to humans, who I know would have many of the same other worries that I do and who also would have the same worries that are so confronting to me in others. Until my finger is better I can't do clay, but it's good to know it's there waiting.

I've written myself into remembering connection. That's very good. It's been a long time that our species has singled other groups out as being unworthy of life. It's part of us. Any true acceptance and love of humans needs to include that fact or else it's pure romanticism. Love what is, or else you're loving an illusion.

Time to go out into the garden with the wheelbarrow.

(no subject)

Jul. 6th, 2025 10:12 am
greenstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] greenstorm
I keep trying to figure out how to write about this. My writing so far has been really dark and I haven't kept it. But very basically I'll jump in from this meme I saw this morning.

"Don't be so happy about people in Texas dying in the flooding because some of the people in Texas who died in the flood didn't vote for Trump" with my emphasis.

What I want to say is this: if we believe that every life is important and should be protected to the best of our ability, then it doesn't matter who someone voted for (or where they live, or their ethnicity, or the political status of their location) because people dying is bad for whatever reason -- I'm kind of on team John Donne for my reasoning, but also have kind of a moral sense and also an ecological sense about it, with a good measure of slippery slopeness and needing hard lines thrown in.

If we don't think that every life is important, and instead rejoice when someone who voted the wrong way, or did a bad political thing or whatever dies and think it's a moral good, then we're being morally derelict by doing so little killing. By not going to rallies and passing out poisoned coffee, buy not going door to door and shooting people with the wrong flag, our duty is being forsaken.

Note I fully and completely do not believe the latter but a lot of people seem to build the foundation for it and then just kind of ignore the ramifications. But this is of course not the time to talk to people about it. This is the time for everyone to rejoice in early and preventable death as long as it's the right people.

Miss Indigo Bike wears me out, etc.

Jul. 6th, 2025 06:09 am
sistawendy: me in C18-inspired makeup looking amused (amused eighteenthcent)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I got around to something that I'd been meaning to for years: I finally rode Miss Indigo Bike across the SR 520 floating bridge*. The current bridge there opened in 2017, complete with a lane for peds & bikes, which the previous bridge there lacked. It took me eight years, but I did it.

How'd it go? Well, getting onto the trail involved a few wrong turns and backtracking. There isn't any signage on the Burke-Gilman Trail** telling you how to even go south, much less get on SR-520. The pedestrian-and-bike overpass that gets you safely across the 6-lane arterial has been there for ten years***, but neau, there's no sign telling you how to find it. This looks like a job for a guerrilla.

How's the actual ride? It's a fantastic way to zen all the way out. Bike traffic was light, with a high proportion of serious cyclists, and the weather and the view were right on. And the high rises at the east & west ends aren't that bad, at least if you're used to Phinney Ridge. I stopped at the east end and took a picture, natch. How long did I take? About two hours, including all the doubling back and the break at the far end.

Thence to brunch on the Hill at Lost Lake with Comfy Lady! Her job, in public health, is under direct threat from Trump's gangsters, which... urgh! But otherwise, it was lovely. Happiness is eating outdoors this time of year.

Went home, read, got groceries too delicate for a messenger bag, made dinner, and crashed hard. Seriously, I lay down at about 1930 thinking I'd nap for a couple of hours. I ended up sleeping over nine hours in my clothes & makeup with the blinds & bedroom door still open. I guess the ride caught up with me. Welp, now I know how to cure my own insomnia. Luckily, I didn't have any firm evening plans.



*That's right, kids, a concrete pontoon bridge. We have three of them here in Washington state: two across Lake Washington, which borders Seattle to the east, and one at Hood Canal on the other side of Puget Sound.
**The Burke-Gilman used to be a railroad right of way that got turned into a paved trail not quite fifty years ago. It hugs the waterfront in Seattle's north end, including the University of Washington, for which it's a commuter artery. It runs up the west side of Lake Washington all the way to its northern end.
***The overpass over Montlake Blvd. was built as part of the project for the University of Washington light rail station, and it was an excellent idea. The station is right next to the sportsball stadia. Across from the station is the bulk of the UW campus, of course, and kitty corner is the enormous UW Medical Center. Just south of there is a drawbridge. So yeah, there's a high density and volume of irritated drivers at that intersection, just what you don't want as a bicyclist.

Done Since 2025-06-29

Jul. 6th, 2025 02:51 pm
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

It doesn't feel like a very productive week, but I have gotten a few things done. Five (short) walks, four (short) guitar practice sessions, some patio furniture assembled (one Adirondack chair fully assembled, the other partly assembled, table unboxed).

The Adirondak chairs each have a curved, removable leg-rest. It's not exactly an ottoman, so I've decided it needs to be called a nottaman -- hence this post's music.

The weather has gone from unpleasantly hot to pleasantly cool (with a reverse or two) over the course of the week; we are now enjoying a light rain. Or at least I am -- I'm the one who sits closest to the sliding door in the living room. It opens to half the width of the house, and fortunately has a screen behind it. Because cats.

Between ADT and anemia, my body's temperature sensing has become very wonky; I feel like I'm freezing at temperatures that the rest of the household thinks are too hot, but if I put on something warm I quickly become overheated. It is not conducive to sleeping well. I don't so much mind having the cats wake me in the middle of the night, because my bladder is also wonky, but it would be nice to be able to get to (or back to) sleep in a reasonable amount of time. On the flip side, if all goes well I won't have to talk to a urologist until November.

Not much to say about what's going on in the US. But One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism · No Kings looks like something you can do.

And go watch The FIRST images from the RUBIN observatory! - YouTube

Notes & links, as usual )

learning by proxy

Jul. 4th, 2025 12:50 pm
sistawendy: me in my Suffragette costume going "Eek!" (eek)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Remember my fellow trans facilitator A-the-lady? Well, she's out of commission for a few weeks due to a horrendous bike accident on the way to Pride involving the accursed streetcar tracks and, of course, vehicular traffic. Unlike me in my two accidents in the last year, she didn't ask for trouble; she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mayunn, cyclists shouldn't need to be braver than the troops just to get around.

post-Pride peripatesis

Jul. 4th, 2025 12:21 pm
sistawendy: a butterfly in the style of a street sign (butterfly)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Four days no update? Well, I didn't have much to say until yesterday evening. LLMs have finally affected my work, and thus far it hasn't been positively. The sooner this bubble deflates the better. I feel completely justified in getting yesterday off, which I largely spent doing house & garden chores.

But! Yesterday I attempted to go to the women's munch, but the Wildrose was closed for the week after Pride. Do they do that every year? Maybe, and I just hadn't noticed. I can hardly blame them given how utterly bananas Pride weekend is for them.

And who should I run into just across the street from the 'Rose but P, whom I met at the Dykes on Bykes fundraiser a few months ago? The 'Rose was closed, but Vermillion wasn't, so I got some culchah with my beer and talked with an honest-to-goodness dyke on a bike. P is from Florida, which I can't believe I'd forgotten. P knows fellow Florida escapee Funny Lady, because Funny Lady knows everybody. The two of them have something in common: charm.

I'm not feeling too patriotic today. Plan for today: hit Uwajimaya with Tacoma Girl for Asian eats, and then probably read books by dadburn ferriners*. Screw all my dumb, butt-kiss-craving countrymen.



*Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart, and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

Thankful Thursday

Jul. 3rd, 2025 05:51 pm
mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

  • Rain, and a change in the weather. Hot weather is part of why I'm glad I left San Jose. But there are still a lot of things I miss.
  • Spreadable blue cheese. Gazpacho in hot weather. A fridge with a working ice maker.
  • Pipes (in the Unix sense), bash, and grep. Honorable mentions to locate, column, and units.
  • Cuddly cats.

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 06:53 am
greenstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] greenstorm
Despite everything, this summer is truly a glorious one.

The last three summers have been drought and wildfire smoke, and before that the heat dome. 2020 I spent in a state of basically complete panic that was probably a combination of PDA and work from home interacting, along with the ambient covid panic. I can't remember 2019's summer offhand but I think I changed jobs at that time; 2018 was a wildfire evacuation. I moved into this house in 2017 at the end of summer and that was the last summer like this, with birds and the smell of clover everywhere. Threshold loved me as much then as it does now, part of my body, a fully enveloping love like finally having real skin or gravity.

This year I've only closed the windows for wildfire smoke a couple days. We've had actual rain, the kind of rain patters I remember from before the drought: little wandering thunderstorms bringing cloudbursts and sometimes thunder as they pirouette across the landscape. There's no heat dome; outside it drops to about 10C at night and when I wake up the house is cool; during the day the sun can be a little hot between rainstorms but long cool mornings and the endless stretch of near-solstice evening give lots of time for moving around.

There are more bugs than I've ever seen and my body feeds noseeums and blackflies as well as mosquitoes when I go out in the evening. I leave the fan running in the bedroom, facing out the window, and a window on the north side of the house open downstairs; it pulls the cool air in but also disrupts the mosquitoes and any who get into the house can't fly against the air current. I picked that trick up from an Ologies bug episode, where the entomologist said the best way to keep mosquitoes off a patio was to put a fan at ankle level. They're bad fliers, he said, and like to be low, so they can't fight the air current enough to bite. I love that kind of elegant solution. When I came in from the garden two days ago in the evening my face was covered in blood, half from swatted mosquitoes and half from blackfly bites.

The garden rolls out like a carpet and then fills in like details on an oil painting. I'm putting in paths and trees and trellises, a little at a time, and yesterday I picked up a bunch of perennial flowers and they're waiting in the wheelbarrow to go up and in. I've put in a kolomikta kiwi trellis. I've put in a strawberry bed with six kinds of strawberries. I've put in baby lindens and silver maples and elms and ash and oak and hazel. In one tomato and pepper bed the hazel, cherries, and haskap are there, no bigger than the other little pepper plants and spaced in between them to line a path that does not yet exist, to a spot that is still weeds but will later be a portal.

I have somehow become a person with elderly animals -- not elderly in the way they act, but at ten years old they start to get yearly bloodwork at their vet visit to make sure everything's ok. Whiskey, Hazard, and Siri fall into that category and today is Avallu's birthday; he's 9. Yesterday Whiskey followed me out to the garden and followed me as I wheelbarrowed woodchips from down here to up in the back garden a couple times, then got the zoomies and ran along the path very fast, bounced off the wheelbarrow I was pushing, and kept going. He does not feel elderly.

Anything could happen during the rest of the summer. It's windier than it has been, with tornadoes surprisingly nearby, and the wind strips moisture quickly. We're only saved by the little wandering rainstorms that come regularly. There is a lot of fire elsewhere and strange heat anomalies and floods. Politically we've lost the idea of human life as important and human well-being and rights are so far out of functional equations as to be laughable. There are many wars, even if we don't call them that anymore, and no one with resources is interested in holding back the tide of disease. Systems infrastructure frays and I suspect one day we will wish we had our current access the things that right now we think of as irritating because they are becoming inconvenient: border access, medical systems, air travel, relatively free telecommunications, year round fresh foods, so many things.

This won't be the last glorious summer like this but it might be mine. Even if it isn't I draw a line here: I love being alive, I love inhabiting my life, I very very very much want to know what happens next, but this summer would be enough.

Cool wind and the scent of overnight rain through the window. Warm covers and a cat sleeping on the bed while others wait for breakfast. Thai black rice, coconut milk, and sugar in the rice cooker with apricots waiting. Aspens rustling outside silkily. A pile of woodchips waiting for their wheelbarrow, steaming slightly as they compost. Wiggly dogs and the sound of roosters in the distance and beyond that robins and sparrows. Nearly clean sheets and parsley, mint, and tomatoes from the garden waiting to be turned into tabouli downstairs. Reading again! by audiobook, the closest I can ever have to revisiting my childhood home. A nephew? Even a few people in the world who really want me alive.

It's very good to be here.

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:25 am
mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Welcome to July, 2025!

It's worth noting that "happy" is a very rare mood tag these days. The last time I used it was in 2019, after Mom's 99th birthday party.

Pride weekend, part 2

Jun. 30th, 2025 11:04 am
sistawendy: a cartoon of me in club clothes (dolly)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Saturday afternoon SFDs: short pink sparkly circle skirt, Camp Beaverton ("I ♥ graphic-of-beaver") tank top, but sensible hippie sandals because I'd trashed my ankles the previous evening. Oh yeah, I wore a whole lot of SPF 50 and packed a picnic lunch as well.

Went to the Broadway street fair as one does. Bought a book from the queer bookstore that is, ironically enough, within walking distance of my house. Spent too much money on a big pendant of a biblically accurate angel in Pride colors. Saw:
  • Fellow Lambert House trans facilitator A-the-dude (A-the-lady is the one I've spent way more time with).
  • vantablack from Mastodon. She doesn't live in Cal Anderson Park, but I've seen her there about half a dozen times.
  • E, a more or less elder goth who lives near Broadway. I'm pretty sure she used to have an LJ, but damned if I can remember her old username.
  • K and L, [personal profile] gement's little sisters! K has a storied history as a Burner and organizer of (ahem) parties to which I often wore latex, whereupon she had to remind me not to hug her because she's severely allergic to it. ("K!" "Noooo!!")
Seriously, Broadway on Pride Saturday is my happy place. So much queerness and peeps.

Went home. Ate leftovers. Turned around twice. Wriggled into my new latex LBD for...

Saturday evening: the Hot Flash Inferno night at Neighbours. As the name suggests, it's aimed at queer ladies of a certain age, two of whom independently invited me to go. I'm not fool enough to fight the universe, so of course I was the first one there by a wide margin. (The other four of us either have ADHD or live way the hell out in the suburbs.) In attendance: [personal profile] cupcake_goth's pal T, looking very dapper; Funny Lady; and the Siberian Siren and her lovely wife! I expressed my relief that the SS has finally found Ms. Right. As badly as I'd like to follow suit, I can't claim to have had breakups anything like the Siren's.

Said a brief howdy to one of the latex gang, who were showing up right after Hot Flash ended. Then Funny Lady suggested that we hit the Merc, which we did. Sometime around midnight we called it a night. I got ramen at Betsutenjin, where the staff have started to recognize me, and caught the last train northbound. Much win.

Pride Sunday: slept until 0900. Wore my customary Pride outfit*. (Mental note: get spirit gum for my reusable pasties. Toupee tape doesn't cut it.) Went to the parade to find Ken Shulman, director of Lambert House, because he had what I thought might be urgent business. He wasn't with the LH parade contingent, at least not at that time, so I headed toward the Seattle Center just in time to see the parade start.

You know what that means: the dykes on bikes. No, I didn't try to join them this year because see above. But the sound of a few dozen motorcyclces revving in the concrete canyons of downtown Seattle is impressive, to say the least, and I find it moving.

So I made it to the Seattle center, wandered around, ate & drank, and eventually ran into Ken. And our IT guy on the board of directors. And two or three of the yoof from Lambert House. I've mentioned here before that there's no such thing as a brief conversation involving Ken Shulman, and luckily, we were in the shade. Plus, Ken & Ray imparted much-needed info to me so I can do my database monkey thing. Oh yeah, lots of excellent queer eye candy in full sunlight.

Went home. Napped. Put stuff away.

It was all too brief. I wish I could do all the things and see all the people, but even when I was half the age I am now with seemingly limitless energy, there simply isn't time.



*Black Stetson, black leather harness from Apatico, Pride stripe nipple pasties, skirt belt from Chrysalis, black leather thong, knee-high Pride socks, white Docs that K in SF gave me, Pride stripe accessories. You know, the usual.
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