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I'm feeling a bit more cheerful today because I have apparently found my brain again. I spent a bit of time discouraged, and then a bit of time on a deliberate writing vacation, and then I had no thoughts whatever in my brain and that was frightening: I was actually empty. It was so weird. Anyway, I just chose a project at random and now I'm back to producing, slower, but a few hundred words a day is okay. The project I ended up working on is the amorous haunted nightstand one. I'm feeling tentatively optimistic on it.
So while I was not making progress on the aspect of my life that actually matters, I was making progress on the homestead. I'm still moving things out of the "library" which is a former bedroom turned into more or less a hallway at the base of the stairs to my room. During the years that my ex-roommate had poossession of my room, she also filled the library with boxes which meant that I had no access or motivation to clean in there, and it is still full of dust (II'm working on it). It really is the room in which I keep most of my books, many of which are actually the nice fellow's military history booka and coimic books. I'll be re-arrranging the room so that his books are all higher up and I can get at my books better. Also I'll be moving in more of the books from other rooms, some of which are in terrible places, because I'm moving all the officey stuff that is not books upstairs. My room has space for all of it, and all the sewing stuff too.
More boring details about that: I've decided that the best possible desk is to take the table my great-grandfather made and give it a new top and paint the base red. So that will move upstairs. I do most of my writing sitting op top of my wonderful bed because sitting in a chair for that long gripes my knees and actually kind of cripples me for a while afterwards, so I'll be using the desk mainly for sewing. The desk that is in the library I am turning into a daybed-- not hard, because it is a door on two lateral files. I have a minimalist steel bedframe I think can be made to fit it, and the lateral files I am emptying bit by bit so they can be got rid of. I have a bit less than a month to accomplish this stuff and prepare the room, because after my surgery I have to be downstairs for a while.
So yesterday I inoculated my oyster mushroom patch in my garden. I did it on straw which had been treated with hydrogen peroxide: we'll see how it goes. Now I think I shjould have used wood chips. I'll add sawdust and coffee grounds as I go along, and when it ends, I'll break it up and re-inoculate a new bed, probably with wood chips this time. I've been doing a lot of garden remediation. I have got my compost heap running again, and a nice start on summer vegetables, and even some flowers. I have been feeding everything with acid lover's fertilizer to try to overcome the alkalinity of my soil, and things are looking good.
Also yesterday I went with my gardener friend Cassandra to Scotts Valley Sprinkler Supply--in Watsonville, of course--and learned more about drip irrigation. I have to take more measurements, of course.
I think I've written about how living at the top of the house has been good for my back and legs. Sometimes it's deeply mortifying how awkward I am: it can take all four limbs to accomplish, especially in the middle of the night.It means that transporting things up and down takes cleverness. Another thing I have been doing is recording the songs I know in a folder on my computer--I don't know why, maybe for the kids to find someday and cry over?
Oh! It's Wednesday. I should talk about what I'm reading. Um, Growing Gournet and Medical Mushrooms by crazy man Paul Stamets. Today I'm picking up another of his books at the library. There's a lot of information in this tome, and it's superficially laid out in a sensible and accessible way, but in reality when you go to read it, the information is scattered around in all of the places you don't expect it and also there are a lot of frankly odd bits of hyperbole and strange claims. But I am figuring out some stuff from reading it, and the occasional blurry black and white photo of his cute kids holding mushrooms as big as themselves is amusing too.
All of my friends who never had dogs are getting them.
So while I was not making progress on the aspect of my life that actually matters, I was making progress on the homestead. I'm still moving things out of the "library" which is a former bedroom turned into more or less a hallway at the base of the stairs to my room. During the years that my ex-roommate had poossession of my room, she also filled the library with boxes which meant that I had no access or motivation to clean in there, and it is still full of dust (II'm working on it). It really is the room in which I keep most of my books, many of which are actually the nice fellow's military history booka and coimic books. I'll be re-arrranging the room so that his books are all higher up and I can get at my books better. Also I'll be moving in more of the books from other rooms, some of which are in terrible places, because I'm moving all the officey stuff that is not books upstairs. My room has space for all of it, and all the sewing stuff too.
More boring details about that: I've decided that the best possible desk is to take the table my great-grandfather made and give it a new top and paint the base red. So that will move upstairs. I do most of my writing sitting op top of my wonderful bed because sitting in a chair for that long gripes my knees and actually kind of cripples me for a while afterwards, so I'll be using the desk mainly for sewing. The desk that is in the library I am turning into a daybed-- not hard, because it is a door on two lateral files. I have a minimalist steel bedframe I think can be made to fit it, and the lateral files I am emptying bit by bit so they can be got rid of. I have a bit less than a month to accomplish this stuff and prepare the room, because after my surgery I have to be downstairs for a while.
So yesterday I inoculated my oyster mushroom patch in my garden. I did it on straw which had been treated with hydrogen peroxide: we'll see how it goes. Now I think I shjould have used wood chips. I'll add sawdust and coffee grounds as I go along, and when it ends, I'll break it up and re-inoculate a new bed, probably with wood chips this time. I've been doing a lot of garden remediation. I have got my compost heap running again, and a nice start on summer vegetables, and even some flowers. I have been feeding everything with acid lover's fertilizer to try to overcome the alkalinity of my soil, and things are looking good.
Also yesterday I went with my gardener friend Cassandra to Scotts Valley Sprinkler Supply--in Watsonville, of course--and learned more about drip irrigation. I have to take more measurements, of course.
I think I've written about how living at the top of the house has been good for my back and legs. Sometimes it's deeply mortifying how awkward I am: it can take all four limbs to accomplish, especially in the middle of the night.It means that transporting things up and down takes cleverness. Another thing I have been doing is recording the songs I know in a folder on my computer--I don't know why, maybe for the kids to find someday and cry over?
Oh! It's Wednesday. I should talk about what I'm reading. Um, Growing Gournet and Medical Mushrooms by crazy man Paul Stamets. Today I'm picking up another of his books at the library. There's a lot of information in this tome, and it's superficially laid out in a sensible and accessible way, but in reality when you go to read it, the information is scattered around in all of the places you don't expect it and also there are a lot of frankly odd bits of hyperbole and strange claims. But I am figuring out some stuff from reading it, and the occasional blurry black and white photo of his cute kids holding mushrooms as big as themselves is amusing too.
All of my friends who never had dogs are getting them.