Most Acceptable

[dragonlady7]

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finally i made it to my mother’s house, because it was really truly genuinely saturday. (I cleaned my kitchen before I left, because it is suddenly Ant Season and if I leave them nothing to entice them perhaps the place won’t be overrun when I get back.)

It was late enough that we just went straight to Mom’s, even though we’ll be staying in the guestroom at the farm. At Mom’s, I began my collection of hugs. My older sister was there, with her older son and daughter, and after a while I realized the middle son and the dogs and the husband were not present. The husband had begged to be allowed to join a day later, to take care of some errands; he’d bring the dogs, which would simplify logistics. And then right before leaving, the middle boy had begged to be allowed to come with his dad, so that he’d have a day off from his siblings, and his mother couldn’t deny him that. They’ve done mostly well in this pandemic, but there’s been not a great deal of respite from one another.

And we do acknowledge that we are collectively kind of a lot. We joke about her husband needing to run away from us, but it’s… not an unreasonable thing to want.

It came up in conversation that Middle-Little, who’d had a blowup with Mom and Farmsister over moving furniture and had turned down their help as “too judgy” had then said that I was the “most acceptable” family member to help her, so I decided that was my running joke of the day, and have told everyone who’ll listen that I’m going to get it printed on a t-shirt. It’s not really a funny situation, Mom had to clean out her hoarder brother’s house after he died and is genuinely terrified M-L’s situation is going to degenerate to that point and is not just being judgy she’s genuinely traumatized over all this, but. If I can joke then that’s the thing we talk about, instead of being angry and bitter about the underlying situation.

M-L showed up after that, and then Farmsister and her husband and Farmkid, and we went for a walk and did briefly explore in the barn– part of what we’re doing this week is meant to be more cleaning and sorting of possessions of Dad’s. Farmsister leapt into the barn loft and did some barnshopping– she needs another twin bed frame to house an employee, and a bedframe that happens to have been mine as a small child was available, so we collectively carried that down out of there.

We also went and stood on the bit of the barn roof where the turkey vultures fuck. It was at that moment unoccupied. (There’s a taller and shorter bit of the barn.)

So, anyway– I’ve now made my collection of hugs from all my immediate family, and feel better about life in general.

Also BIL is now committed to the tiny house project– he’s riding high I think on having successfully put an addition onto the apprentice cabin in a very short time frame on a tight budget, so. I have concrete plans to go look at the models from a tiny house company that sells kits, and as he was looking at them he was like “we don’t have to buy the kit though, it wouldn’t save that much time and is really expensive, if we just buy the plans and materials list we could do this cheaper” which is what I’d been planning to do with Dad but hadn’t wanted to ask of him. So, we’ll see.

The farm is fully staffed for this year. The labor market is, uh. People want jobs, it’s easy to find people. “We’re gonna be broke,” BIL pointed out, because they don’t do unpaid internships, but– having more help makes it all work a lot better, and there’s an enormous amount of demand for local-raised food, so hopefully if last season’s precedent kind of continues they’ll be okay with the higher labor expenditure. And, crucially, be able to build me a tiny house.

(No none of these tiny houses include a hot tub, alas, but. maybe we can make something happen eventually. first step toward the bearselkie lifestyle is the cabin in the woods.) (Your picture was not posted)