supermouse

So, for the past several years, I have been Outside barely at all, and by barely I mean literally once or twice a year, and by Outside, I mean past the confines of the garden. My main loss with lockdown was other people going Outside and posting about it. Nott'm police posting pictures of empty places was my jam last summer.

Anyway, that's just to set the expectations. I went Outside! I walked around six hundred steps, which is... not much, at all, on Normal scales, but I'm really glad of it.

My feet not so much. I've ordered shoes that should be good for walking and not setting off plantar fasciitis.

One of my oldest, dearest friends has been cheerleading me on and it does make an enormouse difference. Then I got a text reminding me I post about birds, so...update.

The sparrows went away when we cut down the buddleia, but that's shot back up and now gives adequate shelter again. They are not interested, at all, in egg-friendly calcium-enriched pink suet, it gets eaten only when other suet runs out, and they are overall eating a lot less. They went through a phase of eating some pink stuff, and now it's all mealworms all the time, so I assume that was eggs->chicks.

Regarding mealworms, Demanding Great-Tit has also gone with the loss of shelter. By July it will be very bird-friendly again and not destroying the house... There is a lot, a *lot* of shelter all around this area, that's why we have wood pigeons and owls.

The blackbird and magpies are absolutely fine, although the mad singing has settled down and birds aren't strutting their stuff really at all. I assume they're busy being parents, since they are around.

The garden is, in the original sense of the word, retarded, as in all the growth has been very slow and many common plants are actually etoliated, that is, stretched out long and thin to try to reach light. This is how it was in Aquilegia Year up in Leigh, when I managed to grow those flowers, rhubarb and unusually large rampant slugs. Here, now, dry warm weather has arrived and with it a mass of flowers, but a lot of plants are very, very behind, the fuchsia so much so that I had to check it wasn't actually dead. It's really gone green this last week.


Some plants, noteably the shade-tolerant ones, are doing fine, and I will be displaying my enormous peonies later in the year. When I look at my enormous peonies, everything seems okay.

Paperwork wise, my sibling and accountant are handling absolutely everything because I Cannot. I am trying to get at least some income, and to avoid running into trouble later for ignoring things and putting my head in the sand. I did, however, Do The Things (with help) and even, get this, cancelled my Sky subscription! I had an amazingly clear-headed morning, which happens around once a month or so and got all the paperwork done that I could.

Thanks, largely, to daily (and mutual) cheerleading, I'm even somewhat presentable. Definitely less awful than I was.

I am loving the warm weather very, very much.

I still write every day, it's still absolute rubbish, it's still absorbing and engaging and rather like eating lots of biscuits. Writing about people doing normal things, like playing The Sims games, is something of a prompt to do normal things. Of course I always add magic because wish-fulfillment... I haven't written fanfic in a while though. It's as if posting two stories scratched the itch, or I've just thoroughly plumbed every idea I could possibly have and moved on. I'm a Pantser, so the first draft is, usually, several hundred thousand words of a main character or characters stumbling around a new-to-me world doing the most mundane, boring activities until, more by accident than design, they stumble into a badly-sprawling Plot which will cover closer to ninety thousand words than the half-a-million or so it takes for me to deal with not wanting to actually give my characters serious setbacks because it makes me feel bad.

Editing is done by my going through and cutting out every part that makes my eyes glaze over, which is... a lot. I also have lots of sentences which made sense at the time, and sometimes there's actual word salad from migraines where I have to read before and after and entirely rewrite, but I was having fun, so...

Second drafts are slow. Very. Those are actual work. I don't have a full novel in second draft yet. The writing is always moving forward though. I have two complete novels in terrible first-draft set in the near future as I conceived it before the Pandemic was even a series of odd rumours on Twitter about events in Wuhan. I was revising them when lockdown happened and the world changed so much that it was clear I'd have to do a huge rewrite to take all these new events into account.

So, anyway, I'm feeling comfortable now about incorporating the whole thing, since there's much more of a shape to what 'the whole thing' is. Revising isn't happening yet, but the violent distaste for the whole idea has gone and it keeps coming to mind, which is usually the first stage before a real editing binge, it's just this time it's not fanfiction.

Mentally then, I'm in... a much better place. It's light all day, I'm not SAD, although I am sad. Pol and I weren't in one another's lives that much, but it was nearly every single day and I would think he'll like this, he'll like that and occasionally we'd get to chat. I did work out, too late, that a big problem between us was that he liked to fix things and there's no fixing migraines. I feel very, very sad that he was stuck being miserable and waiting until he could come home, it's just a crying shame. He did have a whole different life up in the North Wet, one he was definitely engaged in more than he was with me, but he was always very, very firm about being married and staying married within our very severe limits of mutual tolerance - I literally can't handle being around people for more than a couple of hours at most, and that occasionally. Even Pol. Even talking to one of my closest and dearest friends on the phone... it's good for a little while then it isn't and I just want to go and lay down in the dark and quiet.

Other than feeling very sad sometimes, though, I'm mostly fine, since other people are handling the things that were turning me into a poorly mess. I try to concentrate on one thing at a time, and, moment to moment, I really am fine and okay. So.

Birds! Yay! Tell me about birds where you are!

Plants! Yay! Tell me about plants you have noticed! Even the annoying ones!

Outside! Have you been?

Vaccines, how are those going? I am past my two weeks on the second and much less fearful, still masking around people, mainly delivery people.

Gosh this got long. Hugs to all, you're all lovely, and I truly do hope you have the best possible day.

Expanded form of a Facebook update:

I've just done some very heavy gardening in very heavy rain. Brr. The dead bush that defeated me all year is now finally in pieces, on the patio and in the compost heap. I had to take a saw to it in the end, which worked well. The larger pieces will make good firewood (along with the very large pile of other good firewood still waiting to be cut down to wood-burning-stove size and delivered to friends).


The four new fruit trees are standing in the places they will be planted, tomorrow, when it's dry (2pm according to the forecast). Pol took me out yesterday to get them and it was rather a nice day all in all, if really very cold. He got me a lovely lunch at a Horwich pub, slow roast pork belly. The fruit trees are: Sunburst and Stella cherries, Victoria plum, Golden Delicious apple (the only apple Pol likes and probably the only food he'll ever get out of the garden). They're going against the tall, brick West-facing wall that runs down one side of the garden. They'll be cut down to less than wall height and then fastened in horribly unnatural contortions to nails driven into the brick, because you get lots of fruit that way. I'm thinking of covering their feet in strawberries and pineberries.

I have pork roasting in the oven. There's a bowl of coleslaw inspired by ruthi, ready to go with it. But for now, I'm appreciating the invention of one Slavoljub Eduard Penkala. He invented many things, but I most appreciate the modern form of the rubber hot water bottle. I love him very much. Unfortunately, he's married. Also, dead.

I've got a morning routine in place again. On bad days, I get as much done as I can, and on good days I do all of it. The first thing is putting yesterday's clean pots away, the next thing *currently* is putting yesterday's dirty pots into soak in hot soapy water, as our dishwasher is broken. Then I wipe the kitchen sides and unlock the back door. I empty any bins that need emptying, and sort out the cat tray. I check my seeds in the greenhouse. After that, I feed the birds, then the cats - so the birds get a time to eat while the cats are preoccupied. Meanwhile, I finish the pots, then get myself breakfast. I'll usually then remember to water the plants in the conservatory, although I should be doing those at the same time as I'm checking my other plants.

Today, I also posted a letter to my sibling and nibling, and a parcel to a friend. I love having the post office in easy walking distance, without any busy roads to cross. I can't even see very well today, and I didn't notice until I had to put the parcel on the scales and couldn't at all see where they were until they'd been pointed at. What also makes a nice change from Horwich, is that the children round here don't just randomly spout verbal abuse at adults in passing. It's like a huge weight lifted to have that constant, casual abuse gone.

If I'm going to keep being outside in cold weather, perhaps I should get my head shaved again. It's a real nuisance to get it washed, and I can't get to a hairdresser to get it styled, which it now needs.

I have windows open, airing my room through. Spice loves it when the bathroom window is open, as she can perch on the sill and watch all the little birdies. She caught a sparrow once, and seemed utterly disappointed in the taste, so her eagerness to get after birds in general has faded a lot. She'll watch them, but makes no effort to get outside to get them. I'm glad, as we have an entire flock of long-tailed tits that visit the garden most of the day, and I'd hate either cat to get them. Hatter's more eager, but he's also piebald and easy to see, while Spice is cryptically coloured. Neither like to be outside much or for long during the day, thank goodness.

I like living here.