#at least I think it was yard work

[ohsilverplease]

I vent a lot about C on here but I have really super appreciated him lately and I want to document that too. Earlier this year he tore down my old shed (at my request) and cut down some trees for me, and he is helping me get my yard and garden in order. Which is great bc I am getting the new shed this week! My aunt and uncle and parents are coming up on Tuesday to install it, uncle J has already built all the walls they just have to assemble it. Unfortunately I can’t be there because I’m still required to be in the office for another month, but I should see them in the afternoon before they go home. And I’ll see them at the end of the month bc mom’s family is all getting together.

But C has been good about nudging me when i need to do something, and helping me when something needs doing but I don’t have the physical or mental energy, and I am getting better at communicating my needs to him. I wish I could return the favor and help him get his ducks in a row but I will say I am easy to help bc I admit I know nothing about anything and he is hard to help bc he knows a little about everything. Idk. I am very go-with-the-flow, especially on projects like this, and he is very perfectionist procrastinator, so it tends to be one-sided support.

Anyway because they’ll all be in my house all day Tuesday I’m trying to clean and organize today. Unfortunately the kitchen is one again infested with ants (not koala bears) but I hope it’ll clear up by tomorrow night so I can give everything another good scrub. I’m going to get lunch stuff and snacks for them for them and then I’ll get dinner for everyone Tuesday night. I need to clean both bathrooms (I think I said this last weekend, hm) and vacuum everything and load up all my clothes to donate into the car so at least they are out of the way.

We are off Wednesday and I am maybe gonna go to the pool and get a cookout milkshake as a reward for making it through the next two days.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

You really didn't think that one through huh?

idk if im sobbing, wheezing, or choking on my tea <3

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some (late) holiday photos of the boye~!

[mabelsguidetolife]

oh so i kinda confessed that i feel useless to my family but apparently i’m actually the cheerleader/clown/‘heart’ of the family who helps them get through things emotionally……. they didn’t say or even imply this but i think i’ve been slacking on that front

[im2tired4usernames]

Me: I need some time for myself I need some time to decompress after constant work and high stress and responsibility you guys dump on me with no time for me to think or be by myself to rest and focus on my hobbies since I can't get that from you guys ever during the week I'm taking a day I WOULD get paid and go to my actual for real paying job so I can just rest so I hopefully stop daydreaming about killing myself.

My family: OK BUT WHAT IF THIS LIL "EXTRA FREE TIME WAS MORE UNPAID LABOR FOR THE FAMILY HUH WHAT IF WE JUST TAKE THAT TIME N USE IT TO DUMP MORE WORK ON YOU AND THEN MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING FIVE SECONDS WITH OUT A CHILD SCREAMING IN YOUR FACE OR A SOAPY DISH RAG N YOUR HAND WHAT IF WE DO WHAT THE LORD IS CALLED US AND DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE WITH OUR LIVES WE CANT GET IT DONE BY OURSELVES WE NEED YOU TO TAKE ON THE WORKLOAD OF THREE PEOPLE AND DO IT WITH A SERVANT'S HEART AND A SMILE ON YOUR FACE!

me: do I look forward to dying so I can get some actual rest?

[kakusu-shipping]

I need everyone to see I finally, FINALLY made a decent looking cake, and then proceeded to throw it on the damn floor before anyone got to taste it.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I don't have a lot of energy these days [because of The Horrors] so I'm looking at my day and my priorities and trying to plan how I'm going to spend what energy I have, because I do need to be able to rest and relax but there are also things that need doing and that is a careful balance for me.

I managed to [mostly] clean the kitchen last night so I've kicked it out of the priority list until next weekend. Unfortunately the living room, bathroom, bedroom, and my office all need cleaning too. I think of the priorities, my office and the bedroom are the most important to me, so I'll probably push the living room and bathroom until at least Friday.

There's also the laundry. I don't have any clean clothes and as we're moving into winter I need to be more rigid about getting that done because days where the clothes can be dried on the line will be more limited. So I definitely need to wash an outfit or two and hang them up in the next hour.

That's already a really busy day, so I'll probably cut it there. But it's definitely going to still leave me a lot of work this week. Half my cleaning, at least one more round of laundry, settling dog food for the next couple of weeks, planting the fall/winter greens, doing some set up work on my computer, work on some writing projects, cleaning out the fridge, and patching some worn clothes. My work week isn't insane atm, but it is definitely limiting. Right now I have 6+4+0+4+2+5+5= 25 non work/non-survival needs (sleep, food, shower, etc) hours available each week. I need to figure out a regukar distribution of these that means everything is getting done and I still have an hour a day to myself as often as possible. I think it's probably not realistic to give myself more than an hour a day for free time/fun, which is a bit unfortunate because I've found in the past that my floor tends to be getting 2-3hrs of free time most days because of how I deal with transition and decision-making.

25-7 [1hr per day] is 18 hrs, so I just need to decide where and how to distribute those in order to keep pace with things.

Lets say the garden needs 3hrs per week, the laundry needs 4 hours (specifically 2 sets of 2 morning/early afternoon hours), the cleaning needs an hour a day to get through a maintenance clean of the house, and 3 hours once a week to work down any deep cleaning that's built up. Which is....already three more hours than I actually have each week. So I guess I'll make a plan to work in the garden for 20-40min of 4 of my free hours each week.

It really doesn't leave me any wiggle room. Only about 4 hours a week that isn't explicitly allotted to something that needs doing, which means there will probably me a lot of weeks where I only get an hour or so at best across the whole thing for free time. I guess I've had a hard time accepting that at this point, having actual time for myself or a time-intensive project is only available if I've taken a day off work. I love my job, but it's ... not comfortable to realize that it's the only love in my life I actually have time for anymore.

I think that's probably why I end up here so much. It's this mindless little way of zoning out into my own head, dissociating away from the exhaustion, for a few minutes at a time. I keep thinking I want to use this space differently, make it more if the things I enjoy. But I think what I really want is just to actually have the time and energy to do things I love that take work. I keep crying a few times every day and I couldn't figure out why, but like

I dunno

Why **wouldn't** I cry a little every day? It's the closest I'm getting to actual emotional release or relaxation in my life. We'd probably all cry. Heck. A lot of us probably DO, capitalism being what it is.

I guess I'm starting to wonder why I'm doing what I'm doing. What is there left for me to sacrifice to this life? What is actually serving me about not just letting myself go up like a fireball and take my surroundings with me? What in the ever loving fuck am I fighting this hard for?

All I ever want, all I want now, is to be able to live. To really, actually live. How does wanting to live bring you this close to killing yourself, whether on accident or on purpose? What am I actually doing that is LIVING and what am I doing that is FACILITATION of living? It can't all be facilitation, or I'm not actually facilitating fuck all.

I'm 30 goddamn years old and I need to figure out what it looks like to actually love my life. I fundamentally refuse to zombify myself like this for everyone else around me forever.

[batz]

.

[bitchapalooza]

I'm sorry for my posts today, I guess the stress from the entirety of September was piled too high and is collapsing onto my head. I'm just so tired y'all....

[anipgarden]

Ani Reviews: Hellstrip Gardening

Alrighty homies here's another Informal Book Review. This is the second time I've done a book review, but I hope this is helpful!

[Photo ID: a book, titled "Hellstrip Gardening: Create a paradise between the sidewalk and the curb" by Evelyn J. Hadden (Author of Beautiful No-Mow Yards) With photographs by Joshua McCullough, Foreword by Lauren Springer Ogden]

Out of the seven books I checked out from the library this round, I picked this one second because not only was I looking forward to the read, but so were some friends in my gardening server! Its one of, if not the longest book in the stack--the main contents are 279 pages total--but its definitely well worth the read! You can see where I live blogged it here.

The inspiration and energy in this book is potent! By the time I finished reading the foreword and the introduction, I was already dreaming up new gardening projects to work on next spring, and that energy stayed up all the way until the end! It definitely helps that the photos in this book are absolutely gorgeous! Seriously, even if you aren't wanting to make a front yard garden, I'd recommend this book for cool garden photos alone! This is another one of those books that's way more relevant if you're the home owner, or a landscaper (or just got permission from your parents to do some front yard gardening), but even still so much of the advice in this book is great for just about any kind of gardening as well! Between beautiful photos of front yard gardens others have already done, tons of encouragement and advice on how to handle anything from trees to poor soils to outdated laws and HOA boards, and a deluge of plant recommendations for different grow zones and purposes, it's definitely a valuable resource!

After the introduction, this book is separated into four major sections referred to as Parts. There's Inspirations, Situations, Creation, and Curbside-Worthy Plants. If you're looking for ideas on what a converted yard can look like, Inspirations and Creation is the place to go. If you're unsure how to do so with any specific circumstances you may be facing, Situations is the section for you. So on and so forth. All in all, between the gorgeous photos, and the amazing content, this was a fairly quick read for me!

I will say, this is a book aimed directly for gardeners in the US. While some of the general advice might be good for people abroad, at the end of the day its a book written in an American perspective for gardeners in America. That being said, it focuses on America as a whole--so if you're hoping for a dedicated section on how to do what you want in your state specifically, you might get lucky, you might get unlucky. I know the example garden for my state wasn't anything I'd be excited about, meanwhile there's three sample gardens for Minnesota (two in Minneapolis) and there's only twelve sample gardens in the book! Also, if you're looking for a book to tell you to only ever use native plants in your garden, this isn't the one--the book will eagerly encourage you use native plants, and will implore you to remove any invasive plants that may be on your property, but is also more than welcome to recommending well behaved non-native plants. Let it be known that I don't think this is a problem at all! But if you're picky about that, I'm just letting that be known.

Oh and also one final note. The book is called Hellstrip Gardening, and it does talk about hellstrips, but it doesn't only talk about hellstrips. A good chunk of the example gardens don't even have hellstrips. This book talks plenty about full yard transformation! Which I find fantastic and enlightening! If you're looking for a book that's only about hellstrips, though, this isn't it.

All in all, this is an amazing book with amazing photos, 10/10 could probably show to someone to get them to see the light of front yard gardens.

[countess-of-edessa]

“are the girls going to help you make pierogis?” well no one else is fucking gonna are they? no one else in this house has functional fucking hands apparently

[dontwanderoff]

my coworkers deciding today that we’d moderate our data later this week instead of next week was one thing, but when they then decided tomorrow night bc theres no meeting i ascended to a new plane of horror

[grumpyoldsnake]

…good grief

Crying over a dandelion today I guess

[solradguy]

The weather needs to stop being cold and cloudy and stupid and miserable so my brain gets back out of fart stink hibernation seasonal affective disorder bastard mode. I gotta draw Sol Badguy but my motivation is directly tied to how much the sun's been out like I'm some kinda sunflower solar panel

[boosyboo9206]

IYKYK

[selfnss]

// i wanted to write tonight but im just an eepy guy today.... work was Not fun and i'm not looking forward to tomorrow thanks to my boss' antics recently soooooo im just gonna go to bed and maybe harass some people's inboxes if the mood strikes i think...