eveiya replied to your photo “Ger sweet ger

via http://ift.tt/2qazSUl:eveiya replied to your photo “Ger sweet ger (yurt), year 3.”

Now that gives me an idea of the size of it. :-D Are there no bears, mountain lions or other scary animals around? Camping in Scotland, the only scary things to worry about are midges and neddy people with their out-of-control dogs.

We’ve got bears; there’s a cabin, a 2-story plywood-sided sturdy thing on a concrete pad out at the edge of the property probably twice as far from me as I am from the house, and the interns who live out there occasionally report hearing bears. (There’s a young woman living out there alone this year, but in a week she’ll have a companion, an even younger man who’ll be living in the pop-up camper parked next to the cabin. They always wind up with one each of a boy and girl, and feel awkward making them room together. Last year they made the girl sleep in the camper, so they’re switching it up for equality.) (This is her second night, and my first, so, I told her if she gets scared to come borrow my baseball bat. I have a child’s wooden Louisville Slugger, but now I also have a reproduction 18th-century hatchet, so. It’s not that I expect trouble, I just like having an argument ready to hand. I was offered a shotgun and turned it down; I don’t need that much of an argument.)

I’ve never heard bears. Last year a fox, I think, growled around a lot, and was very annoying. Also deer are louder than you’d expect.

Also, last year, here’s the thing– we’re not really remote. We’re surrounded by housing developments. You can actually see the intern cabin from the road, if you’re looking for it. And I can see the highway, if the leaves aren’t on the trees– there’s just a ravine between me and it. Last year a murder victim was dumped just down the street from me, killed elsewhere and disposed of by dumbasses who clearly mistook a winding road for a remote countryside; it’s heavily populated here and their victim was discovered almost immediately because he was in someone’s backyard and it was a dry ravine, not a flowing creek.) 

Anyway. 

I have power, this year. I ran a 100-foot extension cord to the greenhouse and was 15 feet short, but I managed to make it work. Check out how fancy I am. And, my companion from last year has rediscovered me, little Whiskey-cat, so I am provided with an alarm bell for coyotes at least. 

(Oh, yes, we have coyotes too, but there are no recorded cases of them being aggressive toward humans, that I know of.)

I’d post photos but my phone isn’t synching them so I can’t at the moment. Forthcoming, eventually. 

90% chance of thunderstorms tonight so we’ll shortly be finding out if this roof is still sound.

Guess it’s really too dim for the camera. Birdso

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A post shared by Bridget Kelly (@bomberqueen17) on May 22, 2017 at 3:12am PDT

Guess it’s really too dim for the camera. Birdsong, raindrops on canvas, wind: sunrise, and the roof didn’t leak after all. #yurtlife

thank you for the two body problem series

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Thank you for reading it!!

I just had some things I had to get out, you know? That was my first foray into a fandom like that, where it was a TV thing and there were a bunch of episodes and they were badly written and I had to fix them. It was so satisfying. I could have gone on forever, but I just don’t think I’ll have time. I should post the spoiler summary ending for the various bits and pieces of it I’d planned out, but I’m just not quite ready to let go of that. 

Also it’s scattered in little pieces all over about fifty incoherent documents so I’d have a real hard time scraping it all together. 

But I’m glad the parts of it as it stands are something people can enjoy too :) 

leia and poe discussing the finalizer after he gets back

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kellymarietran:

leia: can you give me a description?poe: Yes ma’am. this man, see, he had beautiful eyes - you know, the kind you sort of want to lose yourself in because they make you feel safe - I only properly saw him smile once but it was full of hope, almost flooding with light, that was him, he really shone, i so wish i could see him again, i’d tell hleia: i meant of the battlecruiser, commander, but he sounds lovely

Got my yurt set up yesterday! I invited the whole family over for dinner, and then Farmbaby...

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Got my yurt set up yesterday! I invited the whole family over for dinner, and then Farmbaby remembered she was supposed to be rewarded with a cupcake party for successfully pooping on the potty. Did I talk about this? I don’t remember now. Anyway, Mom and Dad and brother-in-law and two sisters, though of course Middle-Little showed up late with beer, that’s her specialty, made short enough work of getting the thing set up– B-I-L is perfect as the center ring holder because he’s both over six feet tall, and quite skinny, so if the rafters pop out they miss him on the way down. A shorter, wider person generally gets clocked pretty good and it’s the worst part of yurt setup. (Especially for a 16-and-up-footer, where you have to support the ring on a pole– that’s a terrifying ordeal.)  

The repairs dad and I did to the wall were for the most part exactly what I wanted, though the door frame is fucked-up now and doesn’t quite work well. The rest is fine, though, and the door frame works, which is what was most important thing. 

Anyway, cupcakes, of Farmbaby’s favorite and coincidentally relevant emoji, and then behind the cut the discussion of whether I have the blacklung or not. 

Farmbaby was sick on Saturday night, but had perked up Sunday and was mostly normal all day. But this morning she was so tired, limp and blank-eyed and exhausted, fell asleep on her father’s shoulder, had trouble waking up to eat breakfast, so they kept her home from school today (she goes to a morning pre-k Montessori program which is expensive but she thrives in it).

Of course she perked up the minute it was too late to go, but she’s too young to be manipulative about it. She spent the morning with her mother, and I spent the morning cleaning out the slaughter area in the barn since the first processing day of the year is tomorrow. This meant a lot of standing patiently while my brother-in-law thought out loud, which is something I don’t mind, but that drives my sister crazy, so it was just as well it was me and not her doing it. But I was so tired, and creaky, and cold, my face hot and my hands cold and my joints achy, and I just had to move really slowly. I got done what I wanted to get done, but I felt so weak the whole time.

I came in for lunch, and immediately after lunch Farmbaby asked me to read to her from my Kindle. I don’t have many kids’ books on my Kindle, but she’s enchanted that it glows in the dark and has so many books on it. So most of the books on it are boring for her– I was trying to find decent ones to put on there, Amazon has some for free with a Prime membership, but I didn’t have a ton of luck. 

She asked me to come snuggle in bed and read to her, and Sister said, well, clearly she wants a nap, so, go for it, and so I did. Now, I felt poorly too; she seemed okay but she hasn’t taken a daily nap for a long time, but she did yesterday, and actually also did on Friday. Clearly, she’s going through some internal process that is taxing– illness, or maybe even just a growth spurt or developmental stage, hard to say. 

So I read her half a page of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but it was too many names, so she picked at random the Cloud Roads, which isn’t really a kids’ book but the first chapter has some engaging descriptions and if you skip judiciously, is pretty pleasant.

Sure enough, she zonked out cold within three pages. And so did I. And we slept for over two hours. I had been shivering, at lunch, in a room that everyone else was comfortable in; I think I have a fever. I have a rotten chest cold or something, it might be trying to turn into bronchitis. I just feel like death. So– my sister said it was perfect, she could go out and do all the rest of the preparations for tomorrow without worrying for even a moment about Farmbaby, since she knew I was with her and would get her if she was needed. It was the most useful way for me to slack off, ever. I even managed to be under a different layer of blankets and not quite facing her, so if I’m sick, she probably won’t get it. Or maybe won’t. Hard to say. 

Farmbaby is perky and happy now, woke up cheerfully which she doesn’t usually– I just hope she sleeps tonight, that was a lot of nap for a child who doesn’t nap anymore. 

Me, I feel pretty wretched, but I gotta be on for tomorrow, so– hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Ugh. 

Meanwhile, I have a little buddy who discovered the yurt: