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Jun. 1st, 2019 09:07 pmI've missed some days here. Yikes. Argh. Anyway. Tonight's big idea was to have a bonfire out by the yurt, and while we were doing that, to lay a fire in my new woodstove to burn it in-- they always say to run a fire hot for a couple hours in a new stove to bake in or burn off the paint.
So we thawed some hot dogs and brats, bought some s'more fixins, made a potato salad, invited my mom and dad-- part of it is that we'd been meaning to have Mom and Dad over some night while MIL was in town, and when we'd asked how long she was staying so we could plan, she'd just shrugged and said "depends on if my son behaves himself", which is like-- bitch, we're all fucking adults, and have to make plans for our lives, right???
anyway. We'd been out to dinner several nights this week and I didn't want to again. (Last night I stayed home alone and ate leftovers while Sister and her husband went on a date and Farmkid and her Nana went to the movies to see a movie Farmkid didn't want to see, which was... well, I mean. I don't know what kind of person insists on making a five year old see a movie she doesn't want to see, but that's just how it went.) It was actually lovely; I practiced banjo on the porch and cleared the fridge partway out and dicked around on the Internet. And then Nana came home with Farmkid, slightly after the kid's bedtime, and they hadn't had supper, so I had to find things to throw at the kid so she could eat them quickly, while Nana disappeared to get stuff out of the car and have a cigarette. So I found things for the kid to eat, and got her going on eating it, and in the midst of this Nana came over with a microwaved plate of pizza and set it down on the table near us, which was odd, but then got odder when she went and microwaved another plate for herself. Kid already had a plate with pizza on it in front of her, and a bowl full of things I'd cut up for her, and somehow Nana had completely failed to notice that I'd already fed the child dinner? It was weird.
Oh yeah the previous night I'd been to a League of Women Voters meeting at an Italian restaurant with my mother, which was edifying. Not enough fantasy novels have boring policy meetings in them, I need to work out a way to combine that weird combination of formality and banality, and the added layer here of it just being a collection of Ladies of a Certain Age making all the moving and shaking happen. Definitely, this is how some of the communities in the solarpunk setting work...
So, anyhow, my idea was, let's just roast some weenies out at the yurt. So we did, and it was fun. BIL had done something and had wound up with the rim of a giant tractor tire, slightly damaged and no longer usable, and thought of saving it to be a fire ring, and so he'd rolled it about halfway out to the yurt, and I found it and rolled it the rest of the way out, and we collected some wood in the back of one of the farm trucks, threw a bunch of chairs in there, drove it out, and set up. Easy-peasy, we got to be outdoors, we weren't too bothered by mosquitoes, and we got to watch a lovely sunset cast golden light across the garden (which is what we call the field where the vast majority of the vegetables are grown for the farmshare, and where most of the flowers are planted too.)
Farmkid spent basically the entire time in the creek next to the yurt, which is great because she's spent this week with Nana in Wal-Mart, Target, the movies, McDonald's, Wal-Mart again, the car-- not much nature, and not much outdoors (there was a playground in there somewhere probably). She ran back to the house by herself to get her bathing suit, and was on the ball enough to bring the bathing suit out to change here so she'd have clean dry clothes in case she got cold. (And her mother said, 'Bring a towel!' and she had the presence of mind to object, 'I can't reach the towels!' and be told to get the one from the bathroom, which was all excellent presence of mind and good communication all around. There's hope yet.)
That water is still pretty cold, but it was 80 today, and she is five and is really motivated by running water, as is not uncommon. (Heck, I could've set this yurt up anywhere and picked this spot because I like being near the creek even despite the skeeters, so.)
BIL did manage to nail down the date of his mom's departure, because my parents need to know which days they'll be required to babysit, since they're going on vacation the week afterward and thus have a lot going on. This is progress! It was nice.
Today was the last day of the plant sale, and I did my personal shopping there, picking out anything I think I can cram into my long-neglected garden. I also took a bunch of stuff and planted it in various spots around the farm where I thought it would fit. I also also got my Japanese indigo planted into a hoop-house, which is awesome, and it's even got irrigation lines on it so it won't die. My camphor basil is with the decorative basils, we'll see what it does. I planted more woad down in the semi-perennial bed, and I think, I *think*, I've finally got all my stuff taken care of.
I also have so many hives. I'm just. Hive city. The undersides of my arms have not gone down one bit since Tuesday-- they're little tiny hives, like prickly heat, only they were clearly not prickly heat. The insides of my elbows are eczema, I think. And the backs of my arms are sun-hives, probably; I've had 100 SPF on them for several days in a row and wore long sleeves every day it was under 80, but I gave up today and went sleeveless because it doesn't seem to matter.
At least they, knock wood, aren't super itchy and don't seem to be welting up like they have in past years.
I also started getting hives on my lower legs, but that might have been contact dermatitis from kneeling in lord-knows-what in the garden while planting. And then every mosquito in the world woke up this afternoon-- they were notably absent this morning while I was working, but around 3pm they very suddenly came out in force. So my lower legs are also a welter of insect bites, which makes it hard to figure out whether there are genuinely hives there or not.
Anyway. I got my stove burned in, and had time to let it cool off and now have dragged it back into the yurt so it's safe from tonight's possible thunderstorms.
And I've just roofied myself with Benadryl, so hopefully that'll make the hives go down, but even if it doesn't, hopefully it'll get me to sleep through the thunderstorms and be well-rested so I can drive back to BUF tomorrow.
Oh, I had made a joke with the across-the-street neighbors that I wanted their wifi password, since I can see their wifi from the yurt, and they came over today to the plant sale and actually did give me their wifi password. They're pretty great, young parents with a daughter exactly Farmkid's age who's starting school the same time at the same school. The mom has dyed blue hair and hand-patched overalls, and the daughter has rainbow unicorn flip-flops and also the same name as both the little old lady who used to live in the house next door, AND the little girl who lives down the street and is Farmkid's best friend. It's one of those suddenly-trendy old names, a lovely botanical name.
I can connect to their wifi but not actually transfer any data, womp-womp, but it was worth a shot and was funny anyway.
I'm well-pleased with the woodstove, it seems easy to use and pretty airtight! It gives off way more heat than I need but probably I can just build up a good fire and then just feed it little sticks to keep it warm enough to ease the chill. Mostly what I want is to drive the damp out, and it seems ideal for that. I also got a water tank thing for it, so I feel like I can burn it long enough to get that hot and then I'll have the thermal mass of that to linger and keep the place a little bit warm, and maybe I'll get better insulation by autumn, but-- again, mostly, it's the damp and mildew I want to drive off, it doesn't really matter whether it makes the yurt warm for long. So now that it's burned-in, I just need to get a stove jack for the roof, and I'll be golden.
Oh I think that Benadryl's uh... Benadryling...
So we thawed some hot dogs and brats, bought some s'more fixins, made a potato salad, invited my mom and dad-- part of it is that we'd been meaning to have Mom and Dad over some night while MIL was in town, and when we'd asked how long she was staying so we could plan, she'd just shrugged and said "depends on if my son behaves himself", which is like-- bitch, we're all fucking adults, and have to make plans for our lives, right???
anyway. We'd been out to dinner several nights this week and I didn't want to again. (Last night I stayed home alone and ate leftovers while Sister and her husband went on a date and Farmkid and her Nana went to the movies to see a movie Farmkid didn't want to see, which was... well, I mean. I don't know what kind of person insists on making a five year old see a movie she doesn't want to see, but that's just how it went.) It was actually lovely; I practiced banjo on the porch and cleared the fridge partway out and dicked around on the Internet. And then Nana came home with Farmkid, slightly after the kid's bedtime, and they hadn't had supper, so I had to find things to throw at the kid so she could eat them quickly, while Nana disappeared to get stuff out of the car and have a cigarette. So I found things for the kid to eat, and got her going on eating it, and in the midst of this Nana came over with a microwaved plate of pizza and set it down on the table near us, which was odd, but then got odder when she went and microwaved another plate for herself. Kid already had a plate with pizza on it in front of her, and a bowl full of things I'd cut up for her, and somehow Nana had completely failed to notice that I'd already fed the child dinner? It was weird.
Oh yeah the previous night I'd been to a League of Women Voters meeting at an Italian restaurant with my mother, which was edifying. Not enough fantasy novels have boring policy meetings in them, I need to work out a way to combine that weird combination of formality and banality, and the added layer here of it just being a collection of Ladies of a Certain Age making all the moving and shaking happen. Definitely, this is how some of the communities in the solarpunk setting work...
So, anyhow, my idea was, let's just roast some weenies out at the yurt. So we did, and it was fun. BIL had done something and had wound up with the rim of a giant tractor tire, slightly damaged and no longer usable, and thought of saving it to be a fire ring, and so he'd rolled it about halfway out to the yurt, and I found it and rolled it the rest of the way out, and we collected some wood in the back of one of the farm trucks, threw a bunch of chairs in there, drove it out, and set up. Easy-peasy, we got to be outdoors, we weren't too bothered by mosquitoes, and we got to watch a lovely sunset cast golden light across the garden (which is what we call the field where the vast majority of the vegetables are grown for the farmshare, and where most of the flowers are planted too.)
Farmkid spent basically the entire time in the creek next to the yurt, which is great because she's spent this week with Nana in Wal-Mart, Target, the movies, McDonald's, Wal-Mart again, the car-- not much nature, and not much outdoors (there was a playground in there somewhere probably). She ran back to the house by herself to get her bathing suit, and was on the ball enough to bring the bathing suit out to change here so she'd have clean dry clothes in case she got cold. (And her mother said, 'Bring a towel!' and she had the presence of mind to object, 'I can't reach the towels!' and be told to get the one from the bathroom, which was all excellent presence of mind and good communication all around. There's hope yet.)
That water is still pretty cold, but it was 80 today, and she is five and is really motivated by running water, as is not uncommon. (Heck, I could've set this yurt up anywhere and picked this spot because I like being near the creek even despite the skeeters, so.)
BIL did manage to nail down the date of his mom's departure, because my parents need to know which days they'll be required to babysit, since they're going on vacation the week afterward and thus have a lot going on. This is progress! It was nice.
Today was the last day of the plant sale, and I did my personal shopping there, picking out anything I think I can cram into my long-neglected garden. I also took a bunch of stuff and planted it in various spots around the farm where I thought it would fit. I also also got my Japanese indigo planted into a hoop-house, which is awesome, and it's even got irrigation lines on it so it won't die. My camphor basil is with the decorative basils, we'll see what it does. I planted more woad down in the semi-perennial bed, and I think, I *think*, I've finally got all my stuff taken care of.
I also have so many hives. I'm just. Hive city. The undersides of my arms have not gone down one bit since Tuesday-- they're little tiny hives, like prickly heat, only they were clearly not prickly heat. The insides of my elbows are eczema, I think. And the backs of my arms are sun-hives, probably; I've had 100 SPF on them for several days in a row and wore long sleeves every day it was under 80, but I gave up today and went sleeveless because it doesn't seem to matter.
At least they, knock wood, aren't super itchy and don't seem to be welting up like they have in past years.
I also started getting hives on my lower legs, but that might have been contact dermatitis from kneeling in lord-knows-what in the garden while planting. And then every mosquito in the world woke up this afternoon-- they were notably absent this morning while I was working, but around 3pm they very suddenly came out in force. So my lower legs are also a welter of insect bites, which makes it hard to figure out whether there are genuinely hives there or not.
Anyway. I got my stove burned in, and had time to let it cool off and now have dragged it back into the yurt so it's safe from tonight's possible thunderstorms.
And I've just roofied myself with Benadryl, so hopefully that'll make the hives go down, but even if it doesn't, hopefully it'll get me to sleep through the thunderstorms and be well-rested so I can drive back to BUF tomorrow.
Oh, I had made a joke with the across-the-street neighbors that I wanted their wifi password, since I can see their wifi from the yurt, and they came over today to the plant sale and actually did give me their wifi password. They're pretty great, young parents with a daughter exactly Farmkid's age who's starting school the same time at the same school. The mom has dyed blue hair and hand-patched overalls, and the daughter has rainbow unicorn flip-flops and also the same name as both the little old lady who used to live in the house next door, AND the little girl who lives down the street and is Farmkid's best friend. It's one of those suddenly-trendy old names, a lovely botanical name.
I can connect to their wifi but not actually transfer any data, womp-womp, but it was worth a shot and was funny anyway.
I'm well-pleased with the woodstove, it seems easy to use and pretty airtight! It gives off way more heat than I need but probably I can just build up a good fire and then just feed it little sticks to keep it warm enough to ease the chill. Mostly what I want is to drive the damp out, and it seems ideal for that. I also got a water tank thing for it, so I feel like I can burn it long enough to get that hot and then I'll have the thermal mass of that to linger and keep the place a little bit warm, and maybe I'll get better insulation by autumn, but-- again, mostly, it's the damp and mildew I want to drive off, it doesn't really matter whether it makes the yurt warm for long. So now that it's burned-in, I just need to get a stove jack for the roof, and I'll be golden.
Oh I think that Benadryl's uh... Benadryling...
