EXCHANGE INTERFACE

Chook troubles again. I don't want to go into it too much. It's just..tiring. And troubling. Everything is tiring and troubling right now.

The major issue with the chook issues is that B1 is moderately invested in making the chook survive. Not because she's particularly attached to it, but she feels bad about having to tell the vet that she wants the chook put down, and so she goes the medication and the care option. It's the whole "I'm a bad person if other people think I'm a bad person" issue.

We have spent entirely too much on this chicken. She's not even one of our favourites!

--

The independent is going hard, but the local candidate is going harder. Apparently he has ambitions of being Prime Minister someday, which obviously he can't be if he loses his seat. But he didn't need to defend it before, so now he's angry that he's having to work. He has the incumbent advantage, too - it's not a guarantee against the toxicity of the party leader ("Temu Trump") but it is an issue when we're talking about how has access to the resources of the electorate - emails, addresses, a party structure for contacting people.

A particularly significant downer is that the independent's campaign manager has hardly been seen, and apparently is not accustomed to running something on this scale. Nice guy, just maybe not up to the challenge. So we have a few old hands who are running things. A lot of old hands, in fact. Including the wife of the man who was the previous MP of the electorate - from the conservative party, dyed conservative to her toes. I may have mentioned her before, and have come to the conclusion that she's both admirable and terrifying.

But seriously, we're wearing out, and the election was only just called.

I'm doing some doorknocking this afternoon. New section of the electorate that's been rejiggered. We're hopeful of getting these people to think of voting for the indie.

I'm also offering to do some doorknocking in an area that's got a high percentage of East-Asian voters. Finding someone who looks like them on their doorstep might give us those few minutes to ask questions.

I need to put up the corflute for the indie on my driveway. It might deter people from using it as a turning point. But also, if they're going to use it as a turning-around point, we might as well get some use out of it!

--

Work is busy and getting busier. Lots of meetings this week. I hate meetings. I'm going away this weekend with some women from church, but I also have some work to do on the Saturday. Which I can do remotely (although I'm technically not supposed to, we're all turning a bit of a blind eye on that.

--

Still prosecuting the case of card fraud. ARGH.

--

Garden is going well. Did I mention I had a glut of persimmons? Sent a bunch away with a friend this morning for her to dry, return some and keep some. But wow. That was at least 100 persimmons, possibly more.



I also managed a capsicum! Never managed that before, so that's exciting. And the capsicum is pretty tasty, too!

Next year: eggplants!

Actually, before that: BRASSICAS. I have made a good start by starting them growing, and planting them out in beds, and watering them with nutrient rich solutions: seaweed solution, compost tea, biogrow, and cauliflower tea.

The 'cauliflower tea' is interesting: it's basically cauliflower leaves left in water until they've rotted away. Because Australian soil is so low in boron, it makes growing cauliflowers and other brassicas difficult unless you add boron for them to form their heads. At least, that's what I've heard. Any rate, I have an assortment of weed teas and the garden is getting fed micronutrients through them.

Okay, I have a meeting in 15 minutes. Another one. *sigh*

I'm reading through the LJ entries of two decades ago.

Wow, there was a lot of fannish stuff going on back in the day. Also, a lot of personal angst. Interestingy, I spotted a few familiar names from all those years ago - adafrog, I can't believe we've known each other for about 20 years!

--

Got through the 2nd week of work. *breathes* Now just another *counts on fingers and gives up* one, two, many, lots of weeks to go!

One problem: I didn't get paid for last week and the week before. Unfortunately, whoever was supposed to be approving the timesheets didn't get to it before close-of-payroll. So I'll be waiting another fortnight before being paid.

I wonder what the other contractors (contractors need manager approval of their hours in order to get their payroll done) did. I probably should have asked.

Yes, I have savings and I'm not in a dire position. But it's particularly annoying because I haven't been paid since the start of September.

One of the big things (the thing which I was brought on to help deal with) was delayed. Indefinitely so. Upper management is sorting through all the details of it, the lawyers are having a field day. And down in the trenches, we're wondering a little what's going on.

But hey, I'm still employed. (For the moment.)

--

Parentals are going away on a tour of Italy and Greece this Sunday. They'll be gone for 6 weeks.

I had lunch with mum today in the city, and we'll go over and have dinner with them tomomrrow. Then I drive them in to the airport on Sunday morning.

Hm. I wonder if I could go over to visit a friend who recently (in the last 6 months) moved into a new place out that way... I might text her and see if she's up to a visit. Although 8am in the morning is probably waaaay too early for her.

--

I had a night in on Tuesday and Wednesday - I was going to go out to dinner with some of the hockey women, but nobody could make it, so we cancelled for some other time. And next week is when summer competition starts. Which is not going to be conducive to going out to dinner.

Thursday was trivia night with the usual crowd. It feels like I've seen a lot of them lately, although this may also be because we're solving Cryptic puzzles during the day (c/o a whatsapp group) and so I feel like I'm talking to most of them every day...

A couple of weeks back, some of the guys invited another guy from their bible study to come along. Our trivia team is weak in the sports department, and this guy apparently knows sport. He (and his wife and kids and a friend of kid) turned up on Thursday. Another couple have been on the Whatsapp group about trivia for the last six months, but have never turned up... You guess it right - they also turned up on Thursday.

So we had about 22 people in total on the team, and although we checked it was okay (it was), we decided to split, just for fairness.

A couple of the 'regulars' went over to the 'new' team: they ended up with about 15 people, we ended up with 8...

We came 9th out of 12 - we did very badly - and they came...2nd. D'oh!

--

There's a gaming miniatures place across the road from where I come out at the station. I have a bunch of miniatures which I bought a decade ago and then didn't have the time, energy, or space to paint. But there's this shop, and they have painting stations, and the guy I spoke to looked...well, normal in a "could pass in the city without being mentally considered a neckbeard" way, which is not always the case in gaming stores. Or didn't use to be, anyway...

I chatted with the guy, asked about whether there are painting sessions, what the options are, how to go about it. He suggested I drop in one day after work, paint one of the freebie minis (already assembled and undercoated) to get a feel for it, and then I get to take the mini home. It's a thought. I might turn up one Thursday night when I'm not triviating.

--

Today is some gardening, some sewing, possibly some shopping. I'm wondering if I could find a sports bra that doesn't crossover - one that allows my dragon to peek over the top of the bra strap.

I also want to sort out some root bleaching. My hair is black, and I'd like to bleach the roots to blonde, then dye it electric blue. And then let the 'colour band' in my hair grow out in an odd-yet-distinctive manner.

I'd better get out in the garden - it's starting to look like rain...

After TS's endorsement, it occurred to me that I am now a childless cat lady 4eva. I mean, I knew I was one already, but the '4-eva' bit is important.

Yesterday was a very active day. (Where 'active' is relative: I spent it mostly meal-prepping some salad jars.) I decided against bible study, one part 'very annoying stitch', one part respiratory issue that doesn't seem to be going away.

Slightly sore throat. Slightly raspy breath. I got some twinges in the upper lungs, but that might also be the way I'm sitting. Or the medications, which say "don't take if you have asthma" which I don't on a medical grade, but I do have a puffer for when I get respiratory issues (which have been flaring on and off for the last five years).

I didn't go to sleep with painkillers, it's more twinges than discomfort. Anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics, yes, but I wanted to see how I'd go without painkillers. I didn't sleep really well; sort of so-so. So maybe I'll do some lighter painkillers tonight?

Today, with the help of B1, I have sown the lower lawn with clover. She doesn't like clover (because it takes over), I like it because it's hard for the chooks to kill. And it's a legume that pulls nitrogen from the air and puts it in the ground.

The south lawn has been somewhat de-lawned by the roaming of the chooks over the last six months, and I am planting things that might do better at growing and re-growing over the coming years. It's not good for the soil to be bare too long, and clover should do a decent job of covering things over.

--

Not one but two new readers going through and not only reading but commenting on my fic has made me go back through my MCU/Maria Hill stuff over the last dozen years. It's always interesting to see what prompts people to leave comments. Also, interesting to watch the way things shifted over the years.

I'm still bitter; I'll always be bitter. But it was a good run in fandom, and I made plenty of my current swathe of friends out of it. *mwah*

--

Missed out on nominating for ToT exchange, so I won't sign up, even though I never either receive an MCU:Maria Hill fic, or get assigned one, I still feel...out of place? Not quite there? Weird? ...when signing up when I haven't nominated. (Also: dozens of MCU pairings/characters, none that I'm really interested in.)

Need to work out what I want for Yuletide. Even though the last couple of years have been 'only just squeaked my assignment in'. I'll still play; it's still fun and sometimes a challenge.

Goal for writing this year is to finish The Nullifae: Agent of Change (or whatever I've called the first book) and start the first-person rewrite.

--

Smokey cat is about to start bothering me. Oh wait, no, she's settled down. Anyway, it's time to have lunch.

Fucking Bloody Hell. What a day.

*hugs you all*

--

I had nothing on this weekend. That didn't mean I didn't do anything, it just meant that nothing was scheduled.

Saturday, I gardened - planted seeds and rearranged chicken tunnels, and watched ep2 of Bridgerton Season Three. Then I went out to feed a friends' pets while they're away (and their sitter was away for a day), went out to local night markets to get some dinner, came home and went to bed early-ish.

Sunday, I woke to the discovery that I have a new nephew! Yay!

Then I went to feed the friends' pets again, had breakfast in a vegetarian/holistic cafe near the community garden where I was volunteering late last year, and came home and chipped a whole lot of tree prunings. Watched 2 more episodes of Bridgerton S3, taking me to the 'midway' break, then went to church. Now home, trying to write, and feeling distinctly discombobulated.

But also comforted by the people I'm seeing on threads - calling for calm focus, level-headed care, and seeing the endgame. Stay calm and keep fighting.

Frankly, the chipping really helped - something to keep my hands busy and concentrated, and the podcasts I listened to (Australian Christians talking about Australian issues) helped distract my brain. And the chipping definitely needed doing - and is so satisfying! Boxes of woodchips, all those space-occupying branches now chipped into teeny tiny bits that I can use in the chook tunnels or in the chook yards. They'll decompose swift and neat, all good! And getting a local teen who's been doing yard work for me to trim it down to smaller twigs and short branches meant the chipper didn't block as regularly as it usually does. There's still a couple of branches to be dealt with on some of the bigger trees in the backyard- I decded to wait for the lawn guy to come and do those instead of trying to balance on things with a chainsaw (never advisable).

However, after all that, my left arm is aching (again). *sigh*

If it's not one thing, it's another.

But I had some good conversations at church tonight. Those were very much needed, too.

A YTer from Sydney whom I follow posted a vid about what he was planting this year, and how he'd started his planting for September already.

Which got me thinking about what I want to plant this year. Which I have to consider now, becuase otherwise it won't happen and it will get complicated and UGH.

The big question I always have is whether to try to grow melons or not. I say 'try to grow' because that's all I ever seem to manage to do: I "try" to grow melons and am ultimately unsuccessful.

I can get pumpkins to grow late, but the melons never seem to get very far. Maybe the soil isn't right for it, and I really need to set better conditions for them?

And then there is, of course, always the problem of where to grow them. Melons and pumpkins and whatnot take up space, and there is not a lot of space in the garden beds and not enough growing time in the back yard.

I think I should pull out the sweet potato bed now, and start feeding it in prep for the early summer cropness.

Friday night trivia at a new club. Dinner was ordinary. Dessert was quite nice. We came 2nd place. Again. We do that a lot.

--

Early this morning (Saturday) I drove down to pick up an old chaff-cutter for trimming things with less RSI than I currently end up with when pruning trees. I'l still use the electric chipper for the big things, but sometimes I want to just chop small branches without having to hook everything up and periodically dig fragments out of the hidey-hole corners of the chipper.

Since it was down in the city where I used to live, I contacted an old friend there who I'm still in occasional but periodic contact with, and she wanted to meet! So I turned up after picking up the chaff-cutter and we sat and talked...for FIVE HOURS.

It was the best. She's about 6-7 years older than me, and was a spiritual mentor of mine back in my 20s. I'm so glad to see her - she's been through a separation/divorce since I last saw her, and has now met a new man and he seems a sweetheart. (A bit geeky, but a sweetheart; which her ex seemed to be, too. I don't know what happened, I didn't ask, but I think they just grew apart in different ways and couldn't reconcile who'd they'd grown to be.)

Anyway, so nice to see her, and I listened to podcasts on the way down and on the way back which were excellent, so that helped my brain.

--

Came back home, bought dinner on the way (because I didn't want to cook and I didn't like the sound of what the Bs were cooking), got on and read my flist - thank you all for being...IDK...a touchstone for me. I'm feeling weirdly off-the-handle right now, witness my hysterical laugh-sobbing while reading the story of Richard by Allie from Hyperbole & A Half.

I tried to write but my brain is not focusing - it doesn't focus at night anymore. So I'm going to go into my room, turn on the heater, re-read 'The Order of the Air' series again (for a desperate bit of hope in the midst of darkness) and cuddle my cats.

Tomorrow the only thing I have is a hockey game in the middle of the day. Thankfully.

I wish I had real people interacting with me on TwiX and not just bots all the time.

I have bulbs to plant and I am trying to work out where, exactly, to plant them.

Sissi the chook is not getting worse, but neither is she exactly getting better. The run of antibiotics are just about done, but we are giving her old pain meds because she is still flinching when we palpate her.

Every time I intend to go to the gym at lunch, I forget and eat lunch and then remember I intended to go to the gym at lunch.

After the sun sets lately, I just want to go to bed.

I have a friend's quilt which I intended to give him earlier this year, but the backing didn't stretch enough to make it quiltable, so I put it off. Now his birthday is at the end of the month and I'm trying to determine if I can get it quilted before his birthday.

We finally got some pest controllers in to rebait the rat traps. The rats have been getting very bold; casually wandering across the lawn in broad daylight.

This afternoon I harvested some tomatoes and some kumquats. I think we might just end up eating this lot.

Also, I have some ginger in the same planter as the tomatoes; either they got crowded out by the tomatoes, or the soil isn't right for them - while the ginger in the northside, full sunlight planter went off, this one has produced a couple of stalks but no actual root. Conclusion: tomatoes and ginger don't really hit it off.

Ugh. Just got notice that the thing I fixed yesterday is working for one set of parameters, but not for others. Which, not entirely surprising, but not welcome news either.

Connection's been dodgy all day. *sigh*

Just as I was getting some work done, too.

--

Weather's going hot in the next week - late 20s, early 30s (which makes it mid-80s to 90F, I believe) and not much rain. I'm trying to prep beds for winter, but it's a bit tricky when the weather's hot and dry.

Hm. Maybe I need to get a frame made for that double sink that I always intended to use as a rinse-off bay for stuff I picked from the garden...

But there's also the wicking bed I want to set up on the front porch, to shield both the porch and the study from the summer sun. And the permanent run I'd like to make for the chooks. And the annual tree-trim that always ends up being a little too late. I gotta dig out around the apricot, so it has a fighting chance, oh, and spray the backyard trees. I think a borer has gotten the backyard apricot, which is bad news. Then there's digging up the fig in the chicken yard and planting a citrus in there, and maybe planting the lychee or the other apricot in the yard as well...

So many things to do and plan, so little time!

--

Did my nails super-fancy for the first time in months. I think I just have to keep doing it every second week, then cleaning it off and keep going.

--

Cleaners came today and I picked upenough things off the floor that they could vacuum and mop around it and it's so nice and clean!

I love a nice clean house, I just don't have the time/energy to do it myself. It's a lot.

I moved out of 'chapter 2' of my Exceedingly Stuck Sedoretu Fic. Bloody hell that was like pulling teeth. The problem is that I can see the relationship, but it's selling other people on it in the story.

Now we have Awkward Confrontation No 2 in the fic, set to mirror Awkward Confrontation No 1 in which the roles were the other way around.

--

I am still fixing HR-system problems for work, even though I am not HR.

This morning, I got our side of the US Payroll part of the business done so the rep on the US side of things can get her part done and still have the Thanksgiving holiday. (She's Aussie, but she gets the holiday because the office is obvs closed.)

It's nice to be fixing things/closing tickets. Unfortunately, I still don't think they're going to renew my contract in January. It'll be interesting to see, anyway.

Not going to think about it.

--

Pumpkins and Melons are planted out (mostly). I just need to get their root systems properly set before I go away. Which probably means some tank watering today (although it's mist-raining right now).

Wait, going out to take a photo of the plants I have leftover to put up on the local swap group.

Also, a photo of the mushroom minions. (Who I might give away to someone, because I'm not going to be able to look after them while I'm away and B1 doesn't have the energy.)

Mushroom "minions", so named because of their shape.


--

Baked a lot in the last few days - Sunday night, actually: butter mochi, and fruit scrolls. Took both to bible study last night, along with assorted other things I'd made for giving away, and they were well received.

Must remember to put together a package for the two couples who weren't there last night and get it to them. (Sunday, maybe? Or I could drop it by?)

--

Need to follow up with Roof Guy, who I last heard from in September and then not since. I suspect he's a bit dodgy on the callbacks. But I want to set something up for January. If that means texting/emailing him for the next few days, then sobeit.

We're going into a period of rain (in spite of El Nino), I suspect damp issues in the roofspace are getting worse, and I held off because I hoped someone would get back to me. (Stupid stupid stupid: should have assumed that I'd dropped off their radar after a fortnight and just started calling to check in where things were and firm up a time.)

--

Okay, gotta pick up some kids today - a friend is going with her husband to get a scan done, their kids need picking up and the grandparents are off on a holiday, aunt and uncle are unavailable, so I'm the next and nearest carer outside of 'family'.

I did a garden bench!



It's sitting on top of the chicken tunnels, that run around the perimeter of the garden, enabling the chooks to get from their coop all the way to their yard, while also keeping the perimeter of the yard free of weeds, and providing them access to the garden beds, which are also "chicken tractor stations".

We have an indian mynah (imported species I think) who has a vanity issue. Constant love affair with the side mirrors of cars parked on the street. So several cars have lots of scratches and scrapes around that part of the car door, and a great deal of bird poop on the mirror casing and beneath it.

First galah of the season (okay, I don't get a lot of them around here), I spotted him land on the big patch of clover (reminder: must buy more clover) across the road where he grazed, ignoring the neighbour as she walked down her driveway a mere metre or two from him.

The magpies are around. They don't really swoop around here, just sit on the fence and eye you. I'm always mindful of the length and point of those beaks. I like my eyeballs where they are and as they are, thanks.

There was a kookaburra in the jacaranda branch right outside my window. Maybe five metres from me, just sitting there, bouncing a little, occasionally puffing his feathers. Cute bugger.

The lorikeets are NOISY this year - or maybe I'm just particularly attuned to them? Don't see them all that much - for such a bright green and such a colourful undercarriage, they're surprisingly difficult to see! But boy can you hear them all going off!

Speaking of going off, there's the chooks again. The baby (Choquette) is the loudest of the lot of them. And the only one not laying.