Horticultural Lessons

A wee little oak tree poked his head up from the ground and looked around. He was in the middle of a row of mighty oak trees planted by the edge of a field of sunflowers.

He saw the other oaks, towering over the sunflowers, and he was awed.
He saw how tall they were, and he resolved to grow that tall. He saw how their bark was thick and brown, and their leaves lush dark green. He stretched as high as he could, and he felt his leaves grow out, in pairs, alternating back and forwards, and then sideways all the way up his trunk. He couldn't wait for his leaves to broaden out like the other oaks. He concentrated and concentrated and grew a great big leaf, even bigger and rounder than the leaves of the adult oak trees, right on the very top of his trunk. And rather than one peak, that huge leaf had points all around it. He laughed and rejoiced in the ease with which he had grown such a mighty leaf.
The wind blew, and the sunflowers swayed too and fro in the field. But the oak trees stood like rocks, monuments above him against the breeze. The little oak tree saw their strength, and the raw power of it took his breath away. He saw that there were little sunflowers around him, and he knew it was his duty to protect them. He stiffened his trunk, and he turned his great enormous leaf on the top of his head away from the wind and he gritted his teeth (it's my parable, I can say whether the damn tree had teeth, k?) and he held his ground. The wind blew with all its might, and he withstood it so well that his leaves barely touched the ground, and his trunk barely swayed compared to the sunflowers that he protected, and only a little more than the adult oak trees. That wind was so strong that some of the oak trees even lost some small branches, but the little oak didn't have any branches yet, so he was unmarred.
His bark began to change, from light green, to dark green, then to dark green with little hairs on it. He was sure, certain, that these were the little fibres that would stiffen his bark, and he checked them every night to be sure that they were turning into bark, which of course he could tell that they were.
And then the birds came! They perched in the trees around him, and on his very peak. Truly his huge leaf, the pride of his little oak existence, seemed very popular, and reached almost halfway up the biggest of the adult oaks. It was the perfect height for the birds, he could tell. Not as tall as an adult oak, and higher than all the sunflowers, but only by just enough that the birds could easily fly down and eat the sunflower seeds from their flowers.
He saw the other trees making acorns, and he tried all different techniques to make his own, without any success. But, he told himself, the effort is part of the learning process, and will make the success all the sweeter. In fact, he was trying harder than any of the other oaks to make acorns, and so it stood to reason that, when he succeeded, his acorns would be the best acorns, and make the best new little oak trees like him.

Picture him, in the peak of his happiness, the birds perched on his top-leaf, the huge round leaf with its dozens of points (when he was covered from root to stem with such leaves, wouldn't the other trees be impressed!) and the leaves up his trunk broadening out and filling him with warmth (he wondered how it would feel to have buds in the spring. Did they tickle?) and his bark beginning to harden (into such tough bark, oh he couldn't wait) and his alternating leaves up his trunk (which was so straight, even straighter than the oak trunks, and almost as thick as a bird's body, at this rate they would be making nests in his branches next spring!). He is the happiest oak tree, and a huge bright smile shines all the way around his top-leaf.

He is the happiest oak tree he could ever imagine.

Isambard update!

Well where are we...

Lessee... the foundation is poured, and the house is ready to go back onto the proper place in... lessee... 4-5 days? This also includes the supports for the front porch and bay window.

The renos inside are firing back up again, the closet is ready to be re-drywalled and the bedroom is almost ready for new insulation. The next step is to finish the bookcase and the linen closet, then re-drywall up there and paint.

The rest of the house is approximately as it was... although the new insulation work has some impact on the ground floor as well.

Whoops, back to work!

Concrete day!

And lo...

Perhaps...

If all the good girls and boys were EXTRA good...

And the stars aligned...

And the right incantations were spoken...



...



...

I might have basement walls today. STAY TUNED!

Communicating

Huh...

Communicating is a two way street, right? The sending, and the receiving. So a good communicator is good at both. In the context of emotional communication, I am good with neither, to be clear.

But I think we tend to think people are effective communicators when they are in fact only good senders.

And I think it's fair to hold people to account when they are not in fact good communicators, they are loud or frequent senders.

That's all that was banging around in my head.

Pod Living

I have been watching SWDNYHABN and I have noticed that she lives kind of like... Google Docs.

You can never be quite sure where anything really IS when you go looking for it, but she maintains a kind of mental inventory of where everything is at any given moment.

She:  Grab my earrings, please.
Me:  (Consults earrings storage place) Where are they?
She:  In the soap dish in the bathroom.
Me:  Of course they are.

This system works as well as mine does, no question, but it go tme thinking about my system of storage and maintenance.

I maintain a series of 'pods' around me at all times. In order of usage throughout the day, they are:

• My office,
• My jacket,
• My knapsack,
• The port side of the bed,
• The right-hand bathroom drawer,
• The kitchen counter,
• Two shelves in the closet, and
• The laundry hamper.

I know what is in each pod at any given time, and can instruct people to find or place things into the correct pod as necessary. Once inside the pod, all order vanishes and it's more or less chaos with some minor nods to comfort or function.

Some pods are 'bus' pods, that serve purposes to transition from pod to pod, and others are purely storage.

Why does all this matter? I think it's because when a pod fills up, I simply move on to another pod, leaving the old one full. Maybe if I said 'ok. this is what this pod holds and that's it' I might be more on top of matters... like my mail.

More on Christmas

STUPID COMEDIANS MAKING THINGS MAKE SENSE!

Ricky Gervais on the celebration of Christmas by people who don't believe in Christ.


I think he wins.

And yes, I'm sure there's a way to embed it, but I'm old.

In case you ever wondered...

...how damn big the Airbus A380 is, here it is in comparison to Bombardier commuter jet.

Notice hereby given!

The following phrase is hereby banned from common usage:

"The Following Program contains Mature Content"

Because it doesn't. Ever. You know what contains mature content? The news. The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.

You know what does NOT contain mature content? Party Mamas, Toddlers and Tiaras, The Real Housewives of Goddamn Anywhere, or anything else of that ilk.

The phrase above will be replaced with:

"The Following Program will Destroy your Faith in Humanity and may cause Suicidal Urges"

Chiropractor, and then it was about bikes.

Well I'll be darned.
Apparently your spine us supposed to bend. Apparently mine doesn't, so much. 76 crunching sounds later, and I'm feeling much better. Now if I could shake this cold, I'd be 100%.

The weather has broken and I'm back in full biking mode. I've had to do some repairs on it, unexpectedly, but that's ok, because I realized I spend less on bike repairs in a year total than most people spend on their cars in a month.

I try not to get preachy about it, but it's an amazing way to travel. It's cheap, it's fast, it's safe, it's good for your brain... and there's the whole environmental side to it.

However I will put this caveat in here: it is impossible to coast on your bike in cold weather, because you will freeze.

Pauses in conversation.

I continue on my trajectory of learning to fight, and it's occurred to me that it's time to deploy the ol' sports metaphor for different kinds of fight.

Lessee...

Golf: the brooding fighter. Makes a mistake, realizes, takes self to task. Personal lessons are absorbed, but not shared as there's no adversary.

Fencing: There are rules. Thrust, parry, riposte. A controlled fight, a mutual agreed series of exchanges.

Wargames: Every ounce of cunning, every flexibility in the rules is exploited, every hit is legal.

That framework complete, I tend to approach fighting like playing pool. I survey the scene, go over every possibly angle, and attempt a very precise shot that will resolve the current situation and move on to the next situation.

My delightful partner approaches it more as a batting cage. After the first hit, fire the same ball, perhaps at a different height, or velocity, or spin and see what happens.

Very useful for me to know to be aware of what's going on when we argue!

You may return to your regular day.