I filled the bathtub with iced water and have been cooling* my feet, hands and head on and off all day
And I've been channeling my inner @pawpower by making infinite iced, sun teas and it is such a relief to have the exact perfect flavour, every single time, on repeat
Melting greetings from the deep shade, where we have a cooling breeze in progress and heavy showers with a side of thunder on the menu tonight (please rain please)
We are a roasting 32c outside, 29c inside. All too much and also so much better than folks have it elsewhere (thank you trees!)
Pic of my hammock and deep shade tunnel in the poodle yard, which we will extend out to the needle trees as soon as conditions allow
Not pictured - every single one of us melted and roasting in the heat
And a pic of my favourite lake nook
Some of the bigger lakes have open grass or sandy areas or even built swimming piers and protected zones --
but all of my favourite lakes are like this, with people tucked into the trees, everyone at their own semi private nook and largely invisible unless you look very closely or see somebody swimming.
You can barely even see my backpack and gear and it's right there. And those massive birch trunks are how I orient "home" when I'm a half km out
What a joy to have such a quiet, swimmy lake so close by
I wanted to be able to bike there, even in the heat, so my spouse found his old bike racks and set me up with them and an old pair of bike bags (with new queer stickers from @silhelm ) so I could take myself and my gear and my snacks and etc there. Been doing that in the evenings since I'm not sleeping anyway in the heat 🥲
Pic looking out from my sweet little lake nook over the water last night. I swam to the flag and back; a short km.
The happy swoops of young* barn swallows learning how to fly #birdcallout
Førtidspensionist 😭🩷
--
Permanent disability approved. They're going out of their way to make the very last of it easy for me (the move complicated things in expected ways and they're helping mitigate that)
Feeling grief and relief equally; differently.
60-80% humidity is serious business. I have not had weather conditions this intense since I lived in Varanasi and it was 54c plus humidity which lololololsob
This post brought to you by: my body literally dripping with sweat for the crime of transplanting 10 baby sunflowers into slightly larger compost pots for transplanting later 🥵🥵🥵
Also grateful for all the rain we've had this year. Less than the historical norm; we need it. And it sounds feels smells better from inside a forest, too.
The first house I don't have to escape from. In my life!
What a gift to be here
I'm glad the warm weather is reaching us; spring was wet and cool, and I want my garden to grow.
Glad to have so many shade trees and such swimmy water right here. Glad to touch summer again, safely.
Less glad for the humidity but well, bogs. Bog life.
Currently feeling sleepy and snug inside my hammock, warm and cool in equal measure with the aftertaste of a long swim at my new favourite lake, my belly full of garden salad and homemade bread, resting well
Does anyone here have resources or advice or anything practical for cutting your own hair? I'm ok using the poodle trimmer to maintain my undercut but my top fluff is too long and I want to trim it myself
It's currently long enough to get into my eyes (8-10cm) and to feel it bounce when I move. I would like it to be half as long or less. Importantly, still longer than the parts that I shear off
Thanks! #askfedi
Fucking concussion watch, fucking again, because my fucking history of concussions has fucking fucked my visual spatial processing, which is how I managed, fucking again, to fucking hit my head so fucking hard
Is there anything better than the sound and smell of a heavy rainfall across warm meadows and trees?
Magnificent :ablobcatheartsqueeze:
As usual, an online Feldenkrais ATM class was the antidote (long belly, strong back, essence for experts version)
Sharing the link here in case there are other folks with weird connective tissue and wonky sensory attention that might benefit; I did the free classes for 2-3 years and upgraded to paid this year. So good
Attention sick, whole body vibrating
because the dudes who own the neighbouring forest have been cutting down pines and were close enough to the house that I woke up with their noise
and noise first thing in the morning is the most devastating, the most painful, the most worst
and who knows when they stopped, I cannot hear them now, but my body feels transparent and endless to me (internal sensory data, largely wrecked or inaccessible, wrong), everything feels a vibrating mess and
😭
Linking to a preprint of a paper about ME/CFS, hypermobility, MCAS, POTS and etc. The interesting things are
1. Plausible mechanism for runaway all the things
2. The number of times I have held my hand to my heart and exhaled, because exactly my experience is exactly described
There's no treatment section (sigh) but I feel hugely relieved that there's actual science to back my actual hypothesis (experience) about myself
Sharing in case it helps somebody else, too
Some more of my favourite Kai behaviours
- breakdancing on the couch or on thickly textured rugs
- pushing his head firmly into my chest when he needs a love or reassurance or whatever
- the way he crawls into my lap when he's having a bad day (he requires as much personal space as I do, so it feels extra 🥹💖 when he chooses me like that)
- happy belly crawling on freshly cut grass, sand, mossy grass or anything that's deeply satisfying
- his thought bubble tail
One of my favourite things that Kai does is wag his tail as he's settling down into a really good nap spot.
We often joke that his tail is the window into his soul, and I love that he's having this little thought bubble tail wag to himself about how good it's going to be.
And also that Malu, who did not have this behavior when we adopted him, and who generally has very autistic tail behaviour in comparison, learnt it as a kind of cultural artefact so now they both do it 🥰🥰
The strange croaking harmonies of cranes and storks looking for a place to land #birdcallout
Me in a tree, learning to recognise the particular quiet that means little birds are hiding from hunting (surfing, snorkeling) raptors #birdcallout
Sometimes we’re in service to something
more primal, a voice that says go, go,
keep going, though there’s no race,
no finish line, no prize, no spectators,
nothing but the thrill of becoming
the body’s bright verb. Feel how
the water buoys you, even as your weight
pulls you down, how it shimmers as far as
a woman can swim, how with each
stroke of your dripping arms,
the lake christens you again and again
a child of this very here.
2/2