Short week, short week~! If nothing else, this week has been good for catching up on some sleep. (It has, admittedly, not been good for much else.)

I keep thinking, ah, this will be the weekend when I can catch up on things. This is when I can reach out to a friend after many months. This is when I will do literally any single task that isn’t marked AAA+ TOP PRIORITY OR DEATH!!1! on my to-do list.

And behold! It is never that weekend.

This fact manages to suck all the joy and satisfaction out of every single other task I complete. Because I’m not any farther ahead. I continue just to tread water.

There’s a villain monologue from something--movie or TV, it’s definitely voiced--wherein the villain is basically going, oh, which poor, defenseless ally are you going to abandon to save the other? Pretty sure there’s a literal cliff one of them will fall off. This is not an uncommon trope, I realize, but I’m definitely thinking of a specific example, if only I could recall which one.

Anyway! That’s how I feel about my to-do list right now! It’s not that the balls I’m dropping aren’t important--they’re just doomed to die because there’s only one of me. Whee!

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 24.5 hours, holiday and getting to leave early (paid!)

Cooking: Thanksgiving dinner via borrowed electric roaster, Instant Pot, toaster oven, and stove top--VICTORY!

Cleaning: scrubbed out the shower and tub, fixed the leaky hot water handle on the bathroom sink, made a dent in removing the calcium buildup from that

Clock Mouse: 852 words

Other: unloaded hay, visited the apple orchard

It feels strange to write this up. On paper, this was just another week. But also, election! Existential dread! Hard to sum that up in a “what I did this week” post.

Shall I count up the hours spent questioning how I will survive? Or shall we take it as read that it was all of the hours?

Made very little progress on NaClYoHo work this week. Things were intense at work, because I’m being pulled in about six different directions. This is because no one ever gets to take off a hat when they change positions here; we just stack the new ones on top of the existing ones. So I’m secretly part of about four different teams currently.

Speaking of work, it is possible that I am going to be tripping and falling over backwards into a career as an electrician. Had my monthly 1:1 meeting with my supervisor, which included discussing the progress being made on selecting training courses for me. I am basically fine with this: wiring is the sort of fiddly work I enjoy, and my misgivings are largely concerns that I lack the knowledge currently to avoid hurting myself or fucking up horribly.

Meanwhile, the oven is non-fuctional. Yes, that’s right, two weeks before Thanksgiving. We’ve got people scheduled to come look at it, though there have already been shenanigans in the timing of that. But past experience suggests that it will be weeks of waiting for the warranty company to approve repairs, ordering parts, and then getting people to come back out to my deadend neck of the woods to actually fix it.

Depending on how awful things are, we might just buy a new range. But in the meantime, mum and I are figuring out how we can cook Thanksgiving foods (my favorite genre of food, I will mention) without an oven. Stovetop, slow cooker, and Instant Pot, assemble!

My current coping strategy for the election aftermath is Lord of the Rings (Andy Serkis audiobook production), Revolutionary Girl Utena (free on YT, which is better than the VHS I had in high school), and T. Kingfisher’s horror novels (The Hollow Places currently). And so, so many cups of tea.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours

Cooking: did end up using the cookies as crumbs for a pudding pie thing, rice crispy treats

Cleaning: winnowed my clothing rack to make room for my uniform shirts

Gardening: pandemic garden club post

Reading: audiobook of Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (probably more hand-wringingly stressful than I needed just now, but very enjoyable all the same)

Listening: She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper (I just needed a bit of fun), And Yet Another Journey Begins by Tales Under The Oak (as always, a solid option for chill-out music, have not yet picked up the audiobook that goes with it)

Other: unloaded hay three times ;__;

So the universe traditionally has this thing it does, where it periodically gifts my family with new animals. We are not necessarily looking for an animal when this happens; if we are, the universe ensures that we will get one in the most ridiculous series of events possible.

After my dog died, mum and I pretty quickly realized that it had been decades (or in my case, never before) since we had been without access to a dog. This did not suit us at all. We hadn’t made specific plans to get one, but it was on the radar. I had started idly looking at the websites of local shelters and rescues.

On Tuesday, I came home to find out that one of my dad’s coworkers had obtained a dog for which she could not adequately care (long story). If she couldn’t find someone to take the dog, she was going to surrender her to a shelter.

“Is dad bringing a dog home right now?” Well, no, not right now, but, uh...would that be okay?

Uh, yeah, obviously. The universe has presented us with a sad and lonely dog. What else are we going to do?

We were supposed to get her Saturday night, but the person had a last-minute scheduling issue. We have rescheduled for Tuesday. Which means I have a few more days to get through in which 95% of my thought processes are just a small, gleeful gremlin chanting “dog dog dog doggie dog” at all hours.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces, plus another bonus piece written (did I lose track of what day it is and post the bonus a day early? How dare you suggest such a thing...)

Day job: 27 hours

Cooking: many Thanksgiving foods, almost all of which ended up being mediocre, albeit acceptable, this year :/

Cleaning: vacuumed the inside of the car, raked up the back yard, cleaned out the dog run over by the horses

Listening: Jenny from Thebes by The Mountain Goats (another preorder, has much the same sound as Bleed Out, which I enjoyed very much)

Aftermarket Parts: finally got back to the voice class by loading up the mp3 versions to listen to in the car, still need to do the exercises when I’m at the computer and can use the virtual keyboard

I have discovered that I will not be cleaning during the week. Probably this is because my big projects this year are ones that either require me to go outside (car) or are best done in a big session because of needing to clear/displace an area (bathroom surfaces). Neither of those are things well-suited to doing after a full day of work.

So after feeling vaguely guilty for a couple of days, I reminded myself that literally nothing matters and I can just do what I please. Which is this case was dedicating much of my Saturday to cleaning in chunks of time, broken up by bouts of playing Stardew Valley to rest my back.

I’m now done with the two big things in the bathroom, leaving some smaller sorting tasks to do next weekend probably. I’m also most of the way done with cleaning the car--I just need to drag the shop vac out there and suck out the small nursery’s worth of soil and top dressing that has accumulated from fallen pots and boot treads over time.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces, plus another bonus piece written

Day job: 43.25 hours

Cleaning: bathroom counter, shower and tub, cleared rubbish from car

Gardening: planted opuntia cuttings, garden club post

Listening: Giver Taker by Anjimile (transmasc singer, a more mellow choice this week, loved “Baby No More” and “Maker”)

Aftermarket Parts: five months <3

Ohhhhh, did I say I was bored at work? Oh, they solved that particular problem. Every single day consisted of "please move all the biggest molds, yes, all of them." Jacked up my arm again. As it turns out, wrestling with several hundred pounds of steel tends not to work out in favor of the soft, squishy creature.

It's getting to be close to autumn, which means it's close to both NaClYoHo month and my Halloween vacation time. So I am once again obsessing over the prospect of redesigning my bedroom. I might need to make a new tag and do some posts about it, as I am turning it into a whole project, complete with painting the walls and a possible mural???

I want a project, yo! Because that's what I need--more time-consuming, high-energy activities! (★ ω ★)

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Gratitude journaling: 35 new entries

Tumblr queue: 28 posts added

Day job: 50.5 hours--the new normal around here

Cleaning: did a big bed linens remake, so now my bed is extra cozy and tidy

Reading: finished listening to the audiobook of Handmaid's Tale, also finished reading Cultish, started audiobook of The Box in the Woods, rereading some of thepartyresponsible's fanfic while I wait for an ebook copy of Devil House to become available again at the library

Work has reduced me to ground meat. If I'm really lucky, only Monday of this coming week will be similarly brutal, and then I get about a month before the whole process gets repeated. Yaaaaay...

The long weekend at least gave me lots of time to do garden stuff. That's likely the only reason I'm not completely unhinged at this point.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written, December bonus drafted

Gratitude journaling: 35 new entries

Tumblr queue: 28 posts added

Day job: 32.75 hours, because I keep staying late in little drips and drabs

Cooking: lemon-blueberry biscotti, which had amazing flavor and an unfortunate tendency to disintegrate to rough crumbs if you so much as looked at them; many Thanksgiving foods

Cleaning: only garden work, no tidying--wait, no, I dusted for about 90 seconds yesterday--cleaning! woo!

Gardening: bought many more bags of topsoil and filled up the castle garden (that's what I'm calling it now that the wall is there), so as soon as the ground gets cold enough, I can plant the bulbs; rearranged the succulents at the front of the house to make use of a new metal rack we got for free; harvested the whole crop of bushel gourds and set them out to start drying

Listening: I mention this more for the irony than anything--I was recovering from my work week and getting caught up on episodes of It Could Happen Here, and I listened to their two-part piece on the anti-work movement, and wow, the bit where they talk about needing to get rid of the mindset that makes you do extra work unprompted was just a really rude way to call me out in my own damn home

I don't know what all I have added in the past year to my worknight routines, but I just can't seem to find any spare time. I haven't managed to do any cleaning chores on those nights at all. This is disappointing, because last year, I found it quite soothing to spend even just ten minutes or so tidying up or dusting between dinner and bed.

Also, I am once again out of bags of cactus soil. I probably should have looked into wholesale options before this point. I've never been particularly good at visual estimating--distance, volume, that sort of thing--and never has it been more true than when trying to figure out how much soil it's going to take to fill a particular space. Relatedly, gaddang, I have too many plants.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Gratitude journaling: 35 new entries

Tumblr queue: 28 posts added

Day job: 50.5 hours, because I am back on my OT bullshit

Cleaning: only managed three days of cleaning--garden work, sorting through some non-Pokemon playing cards that might get framed as well

Gardening: pandemic garden club post, NaClYoHo work--repotted all but one of the planned plants in the west cold frame, started in on the east one

Watching: finished rewatching season 1 of Castle, started in on season 2

Listening: I recently started supporting the Strange Animals Podcast over on Patreon and I just received an extremely generous packet of stickers as my thank-you from the host, Kate, and they are delightful

More repotting today. Moved the sempervivums to a shallow trough pot, since the one they were in was far too deep. Broke off some of them to add to the in-ground area as well--it's becoming the home for wayward and excessive plantlets.

Also repotted Spiny Norman II, a dykia that has been surviving in about a half-inch of soil, so now he has a reasonable amount of soil.

And repotted my lone gasteria, who is always a deep, traumatized red and whose soil somehow instantly turns into bone-dry sand no matter what I repot it in. It's now in a larger pot, with fresh soil, and it even has a little offset coming up that's actually green. So we'll see if it likes this arrangement better.

I also shoveled some soil and compost into the circle garden.

My back has been bothering me for a week, so I wasn't able to tolerate as much activity as I would have liked. Even so, I've made a good start on the pots in the west cold frame. The next few days will be for tidying in the house, so hopefully my back will chill out soon. Also, even though part of NaClYoHo is to listen to podcasts whilst cleaning, I've just been working in silence. I'm outside and the birds are carrying on, and that's been pleasant enough.

Did I say "impressive," because that was overly optimistic of me. Cleaning report! I did nothing!

No, really, I didn't get any cleaning done all week. It just wasn't happening. That's okay. I've been going hard for a while now, and this is going to be a long-term project, so the occasional slow week isn't a bad thing.

Part of the issue has been that I'm not sure what to move on to next. I've got a couple possible areas, but there's a lot of jigsaw puzzling--this depends on that, which can't be moved until this other thing, and so on. That sort of quandary is exactly what makes me stall out--choice paralysis.

There's a small set of shelves in storage, currently housing a bunch of nonfiction books of mine, which would probably work great in the kitchen to organize some of the stuff that's stacked about in more precarious ways. So it looks like I'm going to be tackling the house container (as we call sea container one of two) sooner than I expected. I have clear the way to even get to the shelving, and I have to find a place to store the books I decide to keep from it.

To that end, I did just a tiny bit of work today. I went through a couple areas in my book armoire, focusing on comics collections that I've either read or never will and don't feel inclined to keep forever. All books I decide not to keep are getting moved into my travel trailer for safe storage until the local library is accepting donations again.

I also grabbed some boxes of trading cards from the mess in the house container. I've got a lot of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and .hack trading cards. I used to play Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! in high school, so I have enough cards to make actual, functional decks, which means a lot of repeats. I've also got a bunch of booster packs that have been opened and looked at and picked over, but I don't remember what's in them anymore. The thing is, I'm never going to play the games against anyone, so full decks are unnecessary. But damn, do I love those cards. So I want to go through and pick out the ones I want to keep. I'm going to create some themed sets and frame them to hang in my room. Fancy nerdery!

Going over the cards and sorting them into keep and discard piles will be a lovely thing to do on work nights. I've been missing those fifteen-minute sessions in the evening, but there just isn't anything in the house that needs that treatment at the moment. Reopening all those booster packs will also be like giving myself gifts all over again. That's the fun of being a clutter gremlin--all the stuff I forgot I owned makes for nice surprises.

Cleaning report! This is just going to be a Saturday thing from now on, I guess. At least until the day I finish reorganizing the two sea containers outside, which will happen sometime before the heat death of the universe. Getting there!

In the meantime, I managed to finish off both the office and the bathroom cabinet this week. Switching away from the office was definitely the change of pace I needed. And the bathroom cabinet was full of (pleasant) surprises. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was; there was just a lot of stuff piled in the least efficient ways possible, so it looked very full of junk. I now have all my hair ribbons--the collection remains, though it's been several years since my hair was long enough to really use them, and it will be probably another year yet before it grows out enough to start again--laid out neatly in one of the many plastic totes I freed up with my previous cleaning.

Most excitingly, though, I discovered a cardboard box I didn't recognize. It turned out to be full of the Mad Max-themed bath bombs I bought from another fan several years ago. I had used half of a few of them, leaving the other half in plastic bags for later enjoyment. I guess that time is now? I genuinely didn't remember I owned those, but I was very happy to rediscover them. A treat! A present! Thanks, past!Joyce.

In the office, I had gotten through the antique book stand and started sorting the office supply box before my minor crisis of motivation. When I returned to it, I tackled my desk, which wasn't even really on the list. But doing so freed up a bunch of space for stashing office supplies. I found some stuff I had forgotten existed in there as well. Including some old pictures, which got me all emotional.

Finally, I moved a bunch of stuff out to the sea containers. (Yes, I know I'm just moving work down to a later point when I do that. In a house this small, and with just little ol' me doing this work, sometimes I have to just sort as much as I can and get it out of the way. There's a strategy at work here.) I no longer have boxes of books sitting in my room that I'm keeping but don't need within arm's reach at all times, among other things.

I did have to make some...aggressive choices to find room to store them all. I...I threw out all my old Pokemon guidebooks, except the very first one from when I started playing two decades ago. It's just that, on the off chance I decide to play any of those old cartridges, I can look up the relevant information online. I don't actually need a walkthrough or a pokedex for every generation that's been released in the last twenty years. And they took up a fuckton of real estate in the bookshelves.

I have to keep reminding myself I didn't throw out the cartridges. It's just books. It's not my actual teams, my buddies from past adventures. Because wow, do I feel like a monster as it is right now. I'm so damn weird...

Did 5.5 hours this week, and I actually managed seven days at last! I listened to Hidden Almanac 2018 March 26-April 13, some Yu Yu Hakusho episodes, and a bunch of Youtube videos. I was all over the place. Particularly on the weekend, I forget to put anything in particular on. Once I start thinking about what I want to clean, I get a case of tunnel vision and just start doing the thing without noticing anything else.

At this point, I'm on to areas that aren't technically mine. I...am going to tackle the spice cabinet. Fuck. Watch for distress flares. Be prepared to send rescue teams.