Reading

A friend was discussing some bullshit he's dealing with at work (in those terms), and I realized my life is quite low-bullshit at the moment. I guess I expected this, but it's gratifying. The most likely source of bullshit in my life is now probably... me. Me who is definitely going to use every moment of tomorrow in the best possible way, mmhmmm. Me whose hips are definitely going to go forward over my hands, next time I do a straddle jump. Me.

So anyway, the week:

Flora: Went with motyl in the pouring rain to buy native plants on Thursday. The rain persisted and the plants sat by the side of my house getting soaked for a while, but now they are all in the ground, and labeled too! I bought a wide, shallow pot at Pemberton to set on the pipe/drain I found under the dirt, so that we can cover it while not totally losing it again, and one more random (non-native) plant to go in that -- at the plant store I found myself surprised that living things can be so cheap, and then I realized that living things are almost the only self-assembling products out there. So maybe the low prices do make sense.

Fauna: speaking of life in my yard, I had a bit of a Boys Don't Cry moment while feeding my favorite squirrel Wispy. Wispy was eating a nut, sat up while directly facing me, and... Wispy, I don't think you're a girl after all. At least, no squirrel doctor would have said so at your birth. So I've been engaged since then in a slightly creepy quest for firm photographic evidence, but in the meantime I think Wispy is never going to give birth to a litter of adorable black squirrels (sniffle). I will have to wish him well in the mating games if I am to see such babies.

Finished reading, and writing reviews for, The Poppy War and Abundance and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Two of those were audiobooks! Gardening and house projects both help a lot with getting the hours in. As for Abundance: now I am mildly inspired about infrastructure, know more about what "supply-side" economic discussion is about. I also learned that Ronald Reagan shut down a bunch of solar energy programs that had been started in the 1970s (the 70s, ffs!), and we'd probably be way further along now if that hadn't happened. Sigh.

House projects included painting over some chips in the bedroom walls, priming/painting over some knots in the stairwell along with cleaning the stairs and baseboards, taking off even more nasty plastic/tape/adhesive from windows, and installing a new bathroom fan with a lot of care for extra noise & rattles. Now it's quieter and doesn't let weird flakes of gunk fall through from the attic.

One drawing lesson on drawing organic forms. I was supposed to find something mostly based on cylinders, spheres etc but imperfect, and settled on mushrooms, which turn out to be quite fun to draw.

A private lesson with Tiny Coach on Thursday and a group one on Friday just kept blowing my mind.

I didn't know that one can (and maybe should) do the standard upper-back stretch on the wall with... relaxed traps, just leading from the chest. It's hard to be aware enough to get this right, but it feels great when it works.
And I didn't know that one can hypothetically get a good backbendy stretch sitting in a straddle, with pelvis tilted anterior and arms overhead (holding a weight). My body barely goes there, it's so confused, and its confusion is interesting to me because I have all the pieces.

She did a very painful massage thing to my right leg that made a knot deflate almost instantly. After she did it I was able to briefly touch my right elbow to toe for the first time in years, though with a calf twinge.

Overall, I've been having a lovely time of it. My human squirrel has been gone for a long weekend away, but I've been happy and engaged around my home. The bug has a birthday tomorrow and I'm looking forward to celebrating with him, plus there'll be acro practice and a chance to do more house things. But if I want to get there it's time to stop writing, wash the dishes (with the next audiobook) and settle down (with the next paper book).

My house is freshly painted and the painters are gone. I spent most of the week missing and worrying about my favorite backyard squirrel, but she showed up again as soon as we had a morning with no rain and no painters. Good squirrel.

I've been out of Zillian for six weeks now. I finally took the chores from my "Generic Weekend To-Do List" and distributed them into the weekdays as calendared tasks; there's really no reason to spend time on laundry when my friends might be available to hang out. I also notice in myself a slithery bad feeling when I think of my time off as "half a quarter" rather than "six weeks"; is it FOMO? Or -- I think this is more likely -- some residual reflexive concern that maybe I haven't done enough in that span of time, once it's expressed in a corporate way? It's like those jolts of panic I used to get right after the semester ended in college, but slower and more grown-up.

I did a ton of random follow-ups on stuff from my financial advisor, preparing rollovers and the reversal of various money flows and sending more money off to the HYSA. Setting up a shift.

Toured a chocolate factory (Taza) and it's surprising how small it really is.

Got a local library card and set up Libby with it. I'm not loving how I lived a few blocks from a library branch for fourteen years without getting a card -- who even was I, there for a while in corporation-land?

The black swallow-wort is up everywhere and I kind of wish I'd never learned to see it, because now I see it everywhere and its spread seems inexorable. I do feel like a hypocrite as I pull it up -- after all, it's just trying to live, like everyone, and like me -- but it's bad for butterflies and the city has asked people to pull it, so I do.

My bio-kid is probably moving to my city this fall, to get a Master's of Public Health at a college just across the river! Whoa! I like her, and it will hopefully be really cool and special to hang out more often for a couple of years. I'm not sure how final the plan is, but I hope it's finalizing.

I read a five-star book, Julia by Sandra Newman. I've been on a streak of satisfying four-star reads, but this retelling of 1984 with Julia as the main character was AWESOME. Winston is an everyman, while Julia is a well-rounded and specific character. Furthermore, the author sticks so assiduously to the canonical events of 1984, while providing more context for many of them, that the book is endorsed by Orwell's estate. Naturally, by dint of following the main character, it goes deeper into the lives and daily concerns of women in the authoritarian context of that world. And what happens with the rat scene is fucking brilliant! I only wish I hadn't read the other reviews on Goodreads, because there are a lot of one- and two-star reviews, all of which seem to have been written by... men. The reasons are not ones I agree with.

I was going to talk about handstands and acro, and the hilariously on-pause (because difficult!) gardening project that was supposed to be small, and events/updates related to the polycule, but this has gotten long enough for now.

Low bullshit; flora and fauna and house

House paint, six weeks, Julia, Taza, etc