It is a mystery

Last Sunday, we moved the dishwasher and fridge from my house over to my parents house. This went mostly fine. We have a dolly and a forkable metal platform that freaking rules for moving appliances since you can set it right at the level of the porch and pull the dolly right on. We had to remove both the kitchen door and the doors from the fridge to get theirs out and also we made a nice wet mess unhooking the dishwasher. Oh well. 

In the transfer, my dad accidentally took a part along with the dishwasher that hooked up to the drain pipe that he shouldn't have, we hooked it up at their place, which was a little odd but seemed fine and didn't leak and then pushed the dishwasher in place which was a big pain. Those new floors. But then we came back and tried to hook up my dishwasher and realized we didn't have the right connectors and that one connector end must be under the difficult to remove dishwasher. Oh well I said. No biggie, I probably won't use it much except if I have guests. Plenty of time to get a part. 

Then we moved their fridge over no problem, brought mine in and hooked it up. Now my dad had plugged it in while it was in the pole barn and said it felt cold. And it does. But only to 45-50 degrees. Freezer works fine. But this was Monday morning, I was so tired that I said fuck it and gave up. My dad clearly felt bad and offered to bring the fridge from the church over but that would require getting it up 8 big stairs out of the church basement and then putting it back later after I got a new fridge. No. I just shoved all of my cold stuff into the fridge at the church, baked blueberry bars during crafting to take with me and hit the road tuesday afternoon. 

Except. Part of the reason I felt so tired and like trash is that I had a UTI. Thankfully, my mom offered to cover the register Tuesday morning since my normal employee wasn't available and I took myself to urgent care. She offered so I could get on the road earlier, but I was so grateful that I could make the trip to the nice urgent care and got seen immediately. (weirdest part of the whole visit was the PA came in and asked me if I was male or female right off the bat. weird but fine I guess????)

Got my drugs, finished packing and hit the road for real this time and arrived to the friend's farm just as they were sitting down to eat pizza dinner. B had texted to get my order and they had gluten free pizza, yay. Plus watermelon. Thinking how much watermelon I ate this trip now definitely did well for helping with the UTI. It was so lovely, there was a big group of the farmworkers sitting around and chatting and I got to reconnect with some folks I knew before and met some new and interesting people. Then I set up my tent near B's cabin, we chatted for a bit and then I went to sleep. 

Wed was a day of rest for me. B had work still, so she did her thing, but I laid around, napped, drank water, read books and fanfic and did a lot of nothing. At this point, my appetite was so shot from stress from the last few weeks that I ate a blueberry biscuit for breakfast at 10am which is normally when I eat my second snack of the day and wasn't super interested in it. I did have to check work emails, update picking conditions etc but it was a half hour of work at most. It was so nice to just hang out with people as they came in and out, took breaks, ate slow lunch of two small slices of leftover pizza that I wasnt at all interested in, waved to them in passing, talked shit about farming. B made tacos that night which I sorta helped with and they were delicious. 

Thursday, I was already feeling better, I was eating more, I was more relaxed and more cheerful, most of the day was me laying around more. I went and picked up arepas from town for dinner. We went that night to Tanglewood in Western MA, the drive was easy and not too long and saw the Silksong Ensemble featuring Rhiannon Giddens. It was incredible. The music was freaking amazing and the musicians were incredible. It was very much an ensemble mostly not focused on her even though the advertising said Rhiannon Giddens featuring Silksong Ensemble. I feel this is good marketing to get people to come. I don't even care, it was so good. I'd say music genre was folk music but enhanced by all the different instruments they had in the ensemble. Really really good. Highly recommend if you can see them. Didn't even have to wear earplugs! We were back by 11. 

Friday I hit the road mid morning. I had time to pack all my stuff up including drying my tent out since it had rained a little the night before. I stopped by the co-op to buy fancy cheese as a gift and then went and visited C about an hour west. It was so good to see her again and she fed me tacos. We walked around the farm, chatted all the work things that had changed since I left and I gave some advice on a project that they didn't know how to handle since the person in charge had left but I had done all the work on it. I got to snuggle her little weirdo dogs. She gave me a large quantity of sweet corn that I need to process tomorrow and I hit the road. 

I got home around 6:30pm, helped my parents with a bunch of stuff that night and went to bed early. While I was gone, my parents made a ton of progress on their house and the first of my dad's guests arrived yesterday midday. My mom didn't want to be around their silly nonsense so she's back at my place while they're there. Not that they moved their bedroom over anyway. Sat morning I also helped them do a bunch of stuff to get ready since they needed help.

My house is a fucking disaster zone but I'm much refreshed, all out of fucks to give and browsing facebook marketplace for a nice cheap fridge, of which there are many. I might be able to wrangle things cleaner tomorrow but who's to say. My mom has just piled shit all over the place in here and I don't care. It is so not my problem right now. I've given up and am using paper plates and plastic utensils like I'm in the middle of a move. My trash can is the trash bag tied to a shelf. I do have the brain capacity to start compiling a list of all the things I will need to buy in the next few weeks so things will be happening. 

It was such a good trip though and I super needed it. Next year, I need to do this at the end of July because this was too long to wait for a break. B wanted to pay me back for the tickets to the concert but I asked her to visit this winter instead which she promised to do. It was so nice to see and chat with friends. Ugh, so good. I missed them all so much. 

I got some spraying done in the pumpkins last night, stayed up late so we don't murder the bees. In the middle, one of my eyes got itchy, I had stopped driving the tractor to make sure it wasn't spray drift in my eyes, it didn't seem to be and my eye stopped itching, so I moved on. This morning when I got up, my eye felt fine until I was on register. Then it felt like there was an eyelash in it. Once I got off register, I took a look and my eye had a red spot to the side of my pupil enough that it was right where my eyelids connect. Itching itching itching. So I called an eye doctor and got an appointment. 

That was at 1pm, so right in the middle of the day. I got a lot of computer work done, emailing customers, texting people about fall availability, making up spray sheets. Went to the appointment, the doctor was super nice and super cheerful. She asked all the questions, looked at my eyeball for several minutes and told me there probably had been something stuck in it, but it was out. Hell yeah. I have a full body shiver kind of horror of eye injury or things in my eyes, so this was very good. I now have medicated eye drops and I've got work to do this afternoon.

My laptop keyboard has been failing for a while, first the number keys and last weekend, the s key started failing but erratically, sometimes it would fail to type and sometimes it would type twice. Made it hard to play video games. So I finally caved and got a new bluetooth keyboard which I like quite a bit. I can hold it on my lap and type which I like a lot. It means I can wiggle my chair around while I type. 

I have switched from testosterone injections to a gel that I apply once a day and omg it is so much better. I like it way way better. One of my great strengths is consistency and I love doing something everyday. It's easy to apply and it is a alcohol based gel so it smells intensely but isn't a terrible texture. The injections, I struggled with doing them when I was stressed, I'd skip them instead which is not ideal. So I'm pleased with this. I can't tell if the current ravenous hunger is related or something to do with the weather. In the last few months, I have been bouncing between absolutely starving all the time and fully not hungry at all. There doesn't seem to be a pattern but a smart person would write things down to see. Hmm, no smart people around here. 

My parents have ordered a stove which is coming tomorrow. No clue really what that means for moving order, apparently the kitchen wasn't actually done being painted? I have no idea. But I told them I could help an hour a day with moving stuff so that's the plan there. Getting my bed dug out didn't take that long thankfully and now I have even more space than expected in my bedroom because there was an extra bedframe and mattress under and next to my bed. Apparently my dad was trying to empty the bookshelf in my room because they specifically want the shelf for something. Another "big priority" is digging the ping pong table out of the shed. You know, the shed that still contains a lot of my belongings that are stacked in front of the pingpong table. I'm sure I will need to be involved with that but honestly, this is reaping what we've sown here. I reiterated that I am here to carry heavy things and I will not have any opinions on where things go or anything like that. 

Okay, off I go

I got in at 6:45pm having worked from 7:30am to then with only a quick 30 min break in the house for lunch (to be fair, a big chunk of my day was working the register so it wasn't exactly a strenuous day) and went upstairs to shower to discover that one of my parents had gone into my room and started packing their books that have lived on the shelf in my room for a year and a half now

milk crates of books in my doorway so I couldn't close my door

I did not know this was happening, a couple of my things had to be moved out of the way to access the shelf.

am I pleased they are finally fucking moving? yes. but I told them both: do not go in my room without asking first

because what the fuck. what the fuck! 

my dad has rented a sander for today, so the floors at their house must be sanded today. and then the finish and seal must be applied pretty quickly. 

it might be happening!!!

Friday afternoon, my aunt hosted the 4th party. I'm really unsure why friday at 2pm was the time, but I closed up the register at 1, did some plowing, ran the irrigation pumps, then showered and headed up. The heat was miserable to work in all week and a lot of my time was spent running irrigation. 

The party wasn't any cooler, my aunt and uncle don't have AC, not even window units so their house was pretty warm even with the fans running. Most of us just migrated to their porch because it was just as warm outside as in and there was a decent breeze plus a view of the orchard. A small storm rolled through but it didn't even do a tenth of an inch but it hailed 20 mins away so I'm okay with it. I left around 7 to do tractor setup for the neighbor to help me and went to bed early after my mom decided to have a lot of feelings about the upcoming trip at me. I did not appreciate this, I was so tired. Being cranky back wouldn't do anything, so I just went to sleep. 

Saturday, we were open, I still haven't gotten someone to cover weekends, so I was on register. It was only 85F, positively cool! But I got up early to finish the plowing, wrapping it up just before we opened at 8 and by the time I got off work at 1pm, I was already tired. But I ran the irrigation for an hour, packed, put away all the equipment that shouldn't get wet, then pulled the pumps, showered and hit the road to my brother's. I almost didn't go. I was so hot and tired. 

The drive down sucked. It is becoming clear that my truck AC is not keeping up anymore and I mildly sweated all the way down the turnpike. I stopped and used the bathroom at a rest stop solely to wake myself up. Despite the day, there was basically no traffic and the drive was easy down near Philly. I arrived at my brother's place around 5pm where they reheated food for me and I ate a ton of fruit. My dad and I kept an eye on the weather back home via the weather station app and the radar, which was 0.6 inches of rain in 20 mins plus high winds. I have to go out this afternoon and start cleanup on some of that.

We hung out, watched the thunderstorms that rolled through, I got the tour of their new place which was absolutely beautiful and cool. The younger crowd of us stayed up until 1am playing Bomb Busters which is basically fancy collaborative go fish. It was a lot of fun! 

I slept in until 9am on the couch but was one of the first up anyway. I got lots of dog snuggles, ate brownies for breakfast (absolutely amazing gluten free brownies) and we all slugged around until after lunch. I hit the road, taking the long route and avoiding the turnpike and the traffic snarls on 95 and got home just about in time to get an inch and a half of rain in about 45 minutes. I had checked on the pumps and the creek levels as soon as I got home, then decided to fully pull the pumps and pipes after that rain came through. One of the creeks had risen over a foot due to the storm. It's back down now, but we still have a flood watch. Rain total for the weekend is three inches and we're getting more tonight.

We are hitting the point of desperately behind, the corn maze is not in the ground yet, there is time sensitive spraying to be done and one of my main farm employees just texted that he has a fulltime job starting next week. And my parents are out of town this week. Great. Well, oh well. I'll figure it out. Or not. 

the raspberries are ripe a week or so early. I was hoping for a break between strawberry and raspberry picking but uhh. nope. the early blueberries are just about ready too, I ate the first one today. this is way way early. we have raspberries ready to pick.

this morning first thing (on the tractor and in the field by 6am) I finished the between-plastic-mulch spray that took me three tries because I broke the sprayer twice in two different ways that were easily fixed but if the fix takes more than an hour, I have to delay until the next morning or evening since it needs to be dead calm. my to-spray list is four items long. much to do. my afternoon break has been sending the email newsletter, facebook page, website, answering machine update about the raspberries and figuring out what the schedule for the rest of the summer will look like. we are going to be open part of sunday but I'll be able to get to pride after we close. I have to spray again tonight to finish the 3 acres of pumpkins on mulch if the wind dies down although it's pretty breezy right this minute.

it's fine. my sister was in town visiting for the last few days and what a gosh darn delight to see her again. She took some of the pressure off me by spending time with my mom and helping her around the house and also made us food. 

She also did some lovely support for me as well, by listening to me rant about the parents for 45 mins and also her and her partner came with me to home depot and the grocery store monday to help me not have a mental breakdown in the store which helped so much. there was one point in the grocery where I was covering my face with my hands while they found the stuff they needed for chili but we got out of there pretty quickly after that so it was fine. home depot was fine, I had no issues there. why are grocery stores so terrible. surely someone has done the science on this. they're the worst. actually walmart is the worst but grocery stores are a close second.

apparently Z's support was all I needed to get me through the week because I haven't felt this calm or focused in about two months and I've been tackling my to do list this week and it's going well. support? helping??? wild. I think I haven't been ranting to friends or on the crafting zoom because there's only so many times that I want to complain and I'm sure listening to me complain about the same stuff over and over gets dull. so I type it all in here and you can respond if you want or tell me sister who has heard it before but not for a couple months. 

anyway, I need to go fill the sprayer and put out cones to mark ripe raspberry rows and maybe take a quick nap 

I read a lot this month given I also was inhaling Heated Rivalry fanfics including re-reading a bunch of the longer ones. I've really been enjoying the fics, and contemplating if there's a way to watch the series without having to experience the "wet mouth noises". 

Read

• The Rider, the Ride, the Rich Man's Wife by Premee Mohamed - what a cool story. Very fairy tale vibes. library e-book
• Platform Decay by Martha Wells - Murderbot's no good terrible horrible very bad day. Such big feelings, I laughed so much at this book. I also re-read it immediately. I want to get an omnibus of all the books. Someday when I have more money. library ebook
• The Butcher's Masquerade by Matt Dinnaman - these books are getting longer and more complicated. Thankfully, the author does explain things. library ebook
• Felix Navidad by Nathan Burgoine - I got this out thinking it was a romance novella and it was at best, a short story. It was sad and queer and soft. library ebook
• Real Queer America by Samantha Allen - loved this book. It was definitely aimed at not-queer people but the stories were very good. It was written in 2019 and sitting here in 2026, some of the discussions feel real horrible now. It took me a bit to listen to all of this honestly, sometimes I could only listen for a half hour at a time. But the author did a great job reading her own book and it was nice to think about her and her friend driving all over while I was driving the tractors and things. library audiobook
• A Little Village Blend by Nathan Burgoine - another short story romance. basically the structure is meet cute setup, they decide to start dating, first kiss, small epilogue. Very queer so that was nice. But I'm not going to read more because such short stories don't really do it for me. library e-book
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman - this one was particularly good. On one hand, I know the protag will survive. On the other, shit is going down and even if the protag survives, he might not want to. ~trauma!~ things are getting real epic and I'm really enjoying them. library ebook
• A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters - ye olde murder mystery. enjoyed this a lot, a monk who had a wild adventurous youth starts solving murders. there's apparently a billion of them in the series, so I'll probably work through them. 

DNF

• The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa - I think this book was not for me. Interesting premise, I found the protag vaguely annoying so decided it wasn't my jam. Maybe I'll come back to it someday. library ebook

It's so satisfying to check most things off my work to do list in the time I thought they would take.

Last week's to do list
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It's a scorcher today and tomorrow, 89F both days, so I'm off today and will work early hours tomorrow then go and dunk myself in the creek for a bit to cool off. It worked fantastic last year. Then it will cool right off which is great.

Today has been a day of weird things and it isn't even noon. I laid around in bed for a while which was nice. My mom decided to go and replant strawberries this morning for some baffling reason, they could have waited until wed. She offered her help and I accepted since that's a task that requires thinking about what varieties go where and employees are not so good at that and I've been busy irrigating things. I went and grabbed groceries and picked up food for the cookout friday night. Biggest struggle was finding the graham crackers and hot dog buns which were in the forbidden aisle I never go to since everything has gluten in it. Sent out all the text invites to everyone local for the cookout we are hosting this friday over at the church pavilion. My idea. I was planning for saturday since Jade is away and not able to game but the weather looks gross so I said friday. Should be nice. Realized I was out of cash, so couldn't hit the local place for cheesy kielbasa sticks but I can get those another day. Headed home.

Five minutes from home, I get a frantic series of texts from my mom that the back door won't open and she can't get into the house to cool off. But she figured out there was a whole other house and went and cooled off over there. I came home and had thankfully left the front door unlocked when I moved my plants outside. But it doesn't have a knob on the outside and it is original to the house, so I had to get a pair of pliers to open the door. This door is so old it still uses a skeleton key. Once I was inside, I fiddled with the back door and determined it was broken broken, something in the mechanism wouldn't let the jam move inwards. So I got the picks we use for equipment seal replacements, moved one thing in the mechanism so I could turn the handle and then jammed a second pick into the door jam and forced it to retract enough to open the door.

Then I replaced the doorknob with one from the basement. And then realized how hot it was getting inside already and fetched the rolling AC unit from my mom's shed and set that up. and then my dad texted that he had forgotten to remove one woodchuck trap from the woods line, so I ran down there and picked that up so we wouldn't leave an animal to suffer all week. Made yogurt in the middle of all that and remembered I had bought a new kitchen thermometer so I got that setup.

I think I might take a nap. Jeez.

I'm trying some chocolate milk today to see if all chocolate milk now makes me sick or if it was just that one bottle that was bad. I love chocolate milk. I had vague plans to bake or make pastry cream but honestly, no. I'm done doing stuff for the day. I might do one sidejob plan, but otherwise probably spinning the rest of the day.

My little daily/weekly task list has been excellent, I set a reminder for 7pm because the daily tasks take in total around 30 mins and it's easy to get some stretching in right before bedtime.

ETA: I forgot I had a 1:45pm dentist appointment, so just got that done too. hooray for phone reminders.

Well some things happened and I was so close to finishing the two big projects and didn't do much else so I put off making a roundup post for a bit.

• hang up more art – added some more!
• Weave! - did some weaving, probably half done with the warp
• finish coat? - YES YES YES
• spin - finish the big project? ply and clear some bobbins, I need to free some up for big spin. - not there yet but making progress
• Knit sweater – DONE DONE DONE
• fix blanket that my aunt wants me to fix, big problem is that none of the yarn I can find will color match it and it is 50 years old. - got this done!
• other - I took a pottery class in February, haven't picked up the things yet but I will have pictures soon.
  
  • I also got the nicest email from someone who knitted a sweater from my handspun yarn that she got from the weavers guild show and sale.
  • I carded the combing waste and short bits from my big spinning project fleece
  • Washed some hand woven fabric and fabric for my next sewing project
  • took pictures of coat and sweater and did the Big Post Typing

Coat post here

Sweater post here

Weaving project, I did an experiment with using the previous warp to tie onto the current warp without having to rethread the heddles and dent. This was my first time doing it and it went...okay. I don't think I'll use this technique often, I don't usually have enough yarn in a quantity that it makes sense to do more than one warp with the same yarn which is what this technique is all about. So I cut off the cloth of my previous warp, re-tied the end of the warp onto the cloth beam again, removed the end of the old warp from the warp beam by untying the end rod, beamed on the new warp and then tied each warp thread from the new warp to the old warp. I then very carefully pulled all the yarn and the knots through the heddles and reed. I suspect it would be faster if I was better at it and also if I had more practice at it. My tension is trash but I'm used to that and have ways to fix it well enough. I also ran out of green warp yarn and added two strips in gold on either side. This cloth will be for me, there's enough issues with it that I wouldn't make something to give away or sell from it but I bet I could make something nice for me out of it.


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May goals (almost halfway through may? whatever)

• Start sewing project - make mockup
• crochet shawl
• weave
• finish spinning project?
• ply yarn on spindles
• pick up pottery you goof
• do a minor crafting room reorg?

This sweater was four years in the making. I bought a Romney fleece at the Adirondack Wool and Arts festival in Sept 2021, my first raw fleece. I dropped it at the Battenkill Fiber Mill booth with payment because they took it back to the mill and washed it for me and they said it would be a few weeks. Several months later, I realized that I hadn't heard from them. To be fair, in this time, I packed up most of my belongings and put them in a storage unit to move into an apartment in my friend's barn for several months. I called them and hung out the phone while the person on the other end went searching for the fleece and found it in a storage closet in their office.

( so many photos of the whole process )