tealin | Entries tagged with life

I've been burnt out for a long time. I am not good at task-switching, and that is practically all I've done since finishing colour on Vol.1 back in November 2021. It's a huge drain of mental energy; I can supplement that with willpower, but that is finite as well. When I'm running low on all my reserves I just want to lie in bed and listen to radio documentaries but things still have to get done. Lots of things. All the time. Some quite urgently. And never anything that gives back.

I may be exhausted but at least I can't argue with the general shape of my life, with which I am still well pleased. But the last few weeks have been a drag: first The Shed, then neighbours having my trees whacked; plus I've been shuttling to Scotland and Norfolk and Lancashire. I enjoy travelling, but it is really the epitome of task-switching, and I've come back from each trip drained rather than recharged.

Last night, for the first time in a while, I experienced that familiar feeling of my brain not being able to shut off. Just chatter, chatter, chatter, all the time. Even my habitual barely-audible-Radio-3 didn't help. I've discovered this as a sleep aid in recent months: turn it down just low enough that you have to concentrate to listen, and it's like someone holding your frantic attention's hand, allowing you that little bit of stability to relax and fall asleep. But no, the chatter was sufficient to drown out the peaceful murmuring.

And what did I dream about? Sheds? Neighbours? Workload? Travel? No, I dreamt I had the chance to go back to McMurdo again. It was different, but the same; the main difference was not Covid precautions but that they were being careful about the food, which for some reason was low. I reflected on the benefit of middle age lowering my appetite to practically nothing. My old supervisor was there too, despite having left the USAP; I didn't see her, though, because she was receiving a new batch of AAWs who were arriving on one of two C-17s that day – someone had written a note on the flight listings: "Wow, two flights, so proud!" as if to suggest there were supposed to be two flights a day but this was rarely achieved.

Whatever my subconscious is doing, it doesn't appear to be pulling its weight ...

Current Mood: bleh
Current Music: The Dead South

A 2023 Mood:

16:53:22 - Yay, Twitter is down! I'm going to be so productive!
16:53:23 - Oh no, where do I make a short pithy post to express my joy about how productive I'm going to be?

Current Location: 1911 (mostly)
Current Music: The Dreadnoughts, "Hej Sokoły"

I cannot multitask.

I know this about myself.

And yet, over and over again, like some sort of mythological figure, I throw a Bake From Frozen pain au chocolat in the oven 'while I answer a few emails.'

I sure hope someone, somewhere, learns an important lesson from this, because I don't seem to be able to.

Update: 8:56p.m.

You'll never guess who just burnt an entire packet of sausages into little meaty cinder logs!

Seriously, just ban me from the oven now.

Current Music: Radio 3

The time has come ... (the walrus said)

I am hard at work putting together the supporting documents for my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain, i.e. permanent residency in the UK. The requirements are pretty straightforward – prove you are stable and self-sufficient financially, that you've had a continuous residence in the UK, that (in my case) you are still related to the people who qualified you for the visa you're on, and that you haven't been out of the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period.

The last couple of days, I've been working on the first: gathering bank statements, contracts, and invoices for the last few years, scanning what was on paper, naming and filing them in what I hope is an organised way. Today I collected and scanned boarding passes from the last few flights I've taken, where I haven't got a physical stamp in my passport, to back up my days of absence.* Since I was then in Travel Zone, I figured I might as well update the UK Absences chart I'd submitted with my 2018 visa extension application. With the pandemic between then and now, this is not an abundantly long document, but it does include my trip to Antarctica, which all told ended up being nearly two months out of the UK.

And that's when I started to get worried.

Because, you see, that was a Big Number. And not very far up the list there was another Big Number, from the first time I went to New Zealand, part of a Christmas voyage in 2017-18. Two big numbers so close to each other, and numbers between were not so big but were big enough to add up in a big way, and what had I done? How could I have miscalculated? I had been so careful not to be away too much but this seemed like a really, really big oversight. Starting to shake, I totted up the days of absence, and got 152. That was good, right? It was 180 days in a 12-month period, not 140 days, right? I checked. It was. Whew. Just under the wire. I should watch these things more closely, don't want another scare like that.

After I caught my breath a little, and looked back at the chart, I saw that I'd left for the first New Zealand trip in December 2017, and didn't leave on the Antarctic trip until October 2019, so the two trips were never in the same 12-month period at all. The 152 days had been over 24 months, not 12.

And this is why being bad with numbers is bad for the health: because basic innumeracy might possibly give one a heart attack someday.

*The e-Gates are supposed to file your entry in some sort of database where they're associated with your passport, but do we trust this database to be accurate and/or fully accessible when the Home Office might use it as grounds to expel us? No we do not. So we try to get a stamp. Border guards are getting increasingly tetchy about stamping one's passport when one is eligible to use the e-Gates, however. I got such a ticking off when I insisted on getting a stamp on my way back from teaching in Denmark this March. By contrast, both Denmark and Switzerland – very organised and technologically advanced countries – insist on stamping one's passport, almost as if they are aware of the fallibility of technology.

Every year I come around to do taxes again, and every year I encounter another surprising way in which one of my American banks flails at basic functionality. Past adventures include Inability To Get Wire Transfer Info Correct Despite My Spelling It Out For Them, ItGWTICDMSIOFT II: Déjà Vu, and Seriously: The Bit You Had Wrong Was Not The Tricksy Address But The Simple 5-Digit Zip Code?

This year, we've so far had the online banking website overload my RAM and crash my browser – two different browsers – and a two-factor authentication code email saying 'We will NEVER ask for this code!' despite only getting the code sent to me because they are literally asking for it.

They're actually not that bad a financial institution for day-to-day banking on their own turf: If I were buying a house, or saving for my kids' college tuition, or whatever else it is normal people do with their banks, the services they offer are competent and comprehensive. They just fall to pieces outside of their comfort zone, especially in the unimaginable circumstance that one of their customers lives abroad.

I would close my account there, except that I need a card with a US address to file my US tax return (despite being officially, legally, an expat) and theirs is the only card in my collection that has a US address (my parents'). Or at least it would, if they had sent me a new card when my last one expired. So I have to chase them up for a replacement, which I can only do by long-distance phone, from 9-5, five hours behind me, or via the chat function, which seems to be staffed by one overworked person on a coffee break ...

Well, I think it's finally happening – after nearly a year of lockdowns and isolation, it might finally be getting to me.

I was supposed to embark on a bikeventure today, to scout out the route to Linton, but I looked at all I had to do before teaching starts on Monday, and went back to sleep instead. My sleep has been undergoing a slow attrition for a couple of weeks now, as I am consistently waking up with the birds and can't seem to get an early night to compensate. I tried to make a go of it this morning but I was shuffling about in a half-doze and could only think about going back to bed, so after breakfast I did, for three whole hours. I can't say I'm good as new but it's slightly better; however it feels like 10:30 and it's already coming up to 3.

In the earliest expeditions to overwinter in the polar regions, there was a phenomenon called 'polar ennui', where people would get listless and disinterested as the winter dragged on. In later expeditions, a rigorous programme of lectures and entertainments was put on through the winter to combat this, and for the most part that seems to have worked, though some people inevitably suffered from SAD and there may have been a dietary component as well. I think I am beginning to understand where that came from, now ... I have a good diet and access to a whole internet's worth of compelling radio and streaming shows, but self-imposed entertainments only go so far when there's no structure to back them up, and self-imposed structure is barely better than no structure at all.

A couple of years ago, I set off to teach, hard on the heels of a demanding animation gig, and was already exhausted at the start of a two-week energy bonanza from which I usually take a week to recover. That wasn't great. This year, I feel like I'm going into it already tired, and I have been doing comparatively nothing. Maybe the stress of packing and catching the plane would have given me a jump start, but no one's allowed off Plague Island or into Denmark unless on 'essential' travel, and not even Steve Bannon could spin an animation dialogue class as essential in any way whatsoever. So I'll be teaching it from the dark little desk in my bedroom where I do pretty much everything else, and not being hammy with a big whiteboard in front of an audience. We'll see if I manage to hold anyone's interest at all ...

I haven't done a recap or reflection in quite a few years; I've blogged enough, and we've all reflected enough, that I don't think one this year would be necessary or appropriate. But I do feel like I have learned a number of important things that maybe sum up 2020 better than anything else, so for what it's worth, here's a collection of them:

Living alone is sometimes inconvenient, always expensive, and surprisingly time-consuming, but compared to previous experiments with it, I seem to have reached a point where not only does it really work but is possibly necessary for me.

An inordinate number of narcissists have passed through my life, and I need to be better at spotting them sooner. (I think I have made some progress on this.) Some are unavoidable, but recognition is the first defence.

Conversely, giving people the chance to be trusted can sometimes pay off. I've wondered whether this test may be the secret to early recognition of the above, but on reflection, narcissists often pass for being genuinely open-hearted people until they get comfortable with you, so maybe not. Sometimes people who first appear not to be able to see past the end of their own nose have hidden capacity for openness, they just have to be prompted.

The vast majority of people are vastly more generous of heart, mind, goods, and spirit than they get credit for. Just because it's taken me a while to find them doesn't mean they didn't exist.

You can't make old friends ... and most of the people I've been in touch with during successive lockdowns are people I've known from past lives. Funny. Having moved a lot, I am well familiar with 'out of sight, out of mind'; it's always interesting (and surprising!) who stays in touch and who doesn't.

I am really, profoundly terrible at multitasking. It's not just a matter of doing one thing well vs a lot of things poorly, it's one thing well or barely anything at all. It shatters my brain into a million useless pieces and it takes a lot of effort and energy to put it back together again. This wasn't so bad when I had a regular job with regular hours, but now that my job often involves doing a lot of little things, and every time I look in the kitchen or outside I see more that needs to be done, it is a very big challenge.

A cold shower is only cold for the first 5 minutes. A lukewarm shower is cold throughout.

Playful metaphysics is the spice of life.

Plants have an emotional life.

Takeaway is worth it.

I have a very low tolerance for traffic noise.

In fact I have a lower tolerance for a lot of things than I used to. This is probably a side effect of not dissociating myself into a deep dark hole. And then despairing at being lost down a deep dark hole. (See no. 1)

Related: I enjoy others' company, but have low social stamina, especially when not among kindred spirits. I never realised how much brainpower a social life entailed until living on my own this summer, when I felt like I was finally operating on all cylinders after years of inefficiency. There is a reason social animals tend to be more intelligent – they need the extra brains to keep track of each other – so wire a social animal's brain not to need it, then take away the social processing load, and dang there's a lot of extra RAM there.

I don't need much to get by, so I can use what I don't need to help others get by.

Energy is a more precious resource than money, and it needs to be watched just as carefully, but sadly you can't check your Energy Balance at your holistic bank.

Having a morning and evening routine makes a substantial difference to one's day (someday this lesson will stick; I swear I've relearned it four times this year alone)

GO FOR A BLOODY WALK/CYCLE. YOU WILL NEVER REGRET IT. (ditto)

Indulging the inner hunter-gatherer is psychologically healthy, but there is such a thing as too many apples.

I'll probably add to this list throughout the day, but here's something to start with, anyway.

I started learning Danish over three years ago, and though there were some dry spells over that time, for the most part I was fairly consistent with it. My facility ebbed and flowed – how easy I found the lessons was a pretty good indication of how heavy my cognitive load was at any given time. For one reason or another, the last couple of weeks has been an absolute grind.

This worsened on Monday: I usually knock off a couple of lessons on my phone before I start my day, as for some reason both my language brain* and my Danish accent are better before I get properly up to speed. When I launched the app, they had made some significant changes to the 'game play' aspect of it. One of Duolingo's great strengths was that the mantra mistakes are how you learn was baked into the structure – you could mess up all you wanted, but you couldn't pass the lesson until you'd delivered all its sentences correctly (with a generous provision for typos) so the only punishment for error was spending more time learning, an ultimately productive policy. Well, that had disappeared, Monday morning, replaced with a sort of 'health' bar that allowed you five mistakes and then you had either to replenish it from the points you'd banked up from successfully completed lessons, or quit the lesson unfinished. Given that I make five mistakes a lesson on a good day – and I was in the home stretch of finishing the top level of lessons, so I was reinforcing what I already 'knew,' not learning – the change in protocol was going to bankrupt me in no time. Worse, though, was that it brought back in one great flood all the anxiety I remembered from trying (and failing) to learn French – as soon as I saw how fast the 'health' depleted and how expensive it was to top up, my brain froze and I made twice as many errors as before. No longer fun, Duolingo!

Luckily the desktop version is at least a year behind the updates in the app, so for the rest of this week I ploughed through to the end in a race against the development team, and last night I finally cleared the last lesson and finished the Danish tree (or, færdigjorde det danske træ, hvis du vil). Given Duolingo's propensity for cutesy animations encouraging you to keep going, and the emotionally manipulative owl mascot, I expected there to be, I dunno, trumpets, or like, a trampolining owl, or something, but there was absolutely nothing to indicate I'd got there, besides a little text thingy when you clicked on the icon at the end saying, in effect, 'Tadaa, you made it.' Meget tak for det, Duo.

It has been a good hobby, in a life mostly absent of hobbies, and while I still can't follow a Danish conversation I can at least function in text, so it was worthwhile. Considering language acquisition is one of two subjects** that have regularly driven me to tears, I actually enjoyed it. It's just a pity the last week had to end on a sour note.

The idea is that I keep revisiting old lessons to keep my skills up, but I bid farewell to Duo this week because I'm about to take on a new cognitive load: learning a new graphics programme. For years, people have been touting the superiority of Clip Studio Paint, especially for making comics; it's on sale this weekend so I'm finally committing to it. I started learning Photoshop twenty years ago, and it's been a very incremental learning curve over all that time – I just learned how to use paths this summer! – and I am unduly daunted by the prospect of learning a whole new programme to production standard in so little time. I used to pick up things without even trying, and have definitely noticed the decline in brain elasticity as I trundle into middle age. Why I should be so intimidated by CSP I don't really know; it's probably fear that my diminishing capabilities will be confirmed, more than a fault of the programme itself, which looks powerful and, objectively, easier to use than labyrinthine and often arcane Photoshop. But there are so many buttons, and they don't look like Photoshop buttons, and I am an old lady and tired of all these new things all the time!

Learning new things is important cognitive work, however, and maintaining brain elasticity is supposed to be a key preventative for dementia, so in that regard I should learn it for my own good regardless of what I do with it. The resistance to applying myself to it, though! For all it demands constant stimulation, the brain is a very lazy organ when it comes to getting off the couch and actually doing something.

*My last California housemate will remember the dreaded 'pre-coffee pun', which I'm sure is part of the same phenomenon
**The other, you will not be surprised to learn, is math

You'll be happy to hear that after yesterday's unproductive productivity, and finally getting the work done in the runup to midnight, I spent all day today faffing about, after an extremely long lie-in. There was one short email I needed to write and I took about an hour to do it.

Tomorrow morning I'm going for a walk, and might not touch a single apple ... except to eat it, because I have a pie in the oven right now. There may be a glass of wine as well. The sole aim for the evening is to get the kitchen tidy, and thanks to the fourth load of dishes in two days, it's nearly there.

Hashtag Sabbath etc. etc. Peace out, yo.

Yesterday I had some coffee after 3pm so was up and fully alert until 1. There was no reason to do anything else so I just worked until I reached a point where I was either going to go for another five hours or stop and try to sleep; I opted for the latter and, much to my surprise, I actually did. I figured I'd get the rest done in half a day, and could have the evening to goof off in whatever way is available to a boring single lady in lockdown.*

Just a few things to do before sitting down to work ...

cook another batch of apples into juice (boil, strain, reduce, bottle)
wash yesterday's dishes
load laundry into washer
pay for book delivery (and write note to sender re: Scott's last letter to Barrie)
pack and send Ko-Fi shop order
wash today's dishes
set laundry atop Aga to dry
register with new GP

I have not spent any time staring into space or dawdling on social media. I have been doing responsible grownup things all day, that absolutely have to be done – in the case of the apples, quite urgently, and as for the GP, well overdue – yet here I am at 4:30pm just sitting down to get started on work.

I cherish my solitude, but there are certainly some times when I resent being one person and having do everything that needs doing in sequence, rather than dividing labour and getting two things done at once. In the shifting definitions and expectations of human partnership over the last century, the word 'helpmeet' has fallen out of use, but personally that's the most attractive part of a relationship, to me – which probably goes some way to explain why I'm still single. 'Seeking teammate for life stuff, not sex' would be a pretty pathetic Tinder profile.

On the other hand, after a summer of pushing various fruits through a sieve with a spoon, today I discovered how a 'vegetable mill' works, and now I have another item on my list of things from this house I hope I get to take with me when the time comes ...

*i.e. watch another episode of The Bridge

Just realised it's been nearly a month since I posted ...

I did not, in the end, die of taxes, but it was pretty close and I'm still pretty pissed off about it. For being one of only two countries in the world that requires its citizens to file even when they live and pay taxes in another country, the US is remarkably clod-headed about considering the possibility someone might be filing from abroad. So in case anyone has stumbled across this blog while trying to file via TurboTax because they can't find an accountant who will touch US tax returns, here is my advice:

When they ask you in the opening questionnaire if you are self-employed, DO NOT say yes.

When they ask you if you have any W-2s to report, DO NOT say yes.

Yes, these are lies. But if you answer truthfully they will funnel you into the default income section, and you will be trapped in a maze of numbers not talking to other numbers when they should, and it will not be nice.

All foreign income – which is all your income, whatever the source, if you are legally resident abroad – needs to be reported in the foreign income section, which is an entirely different section from the 'income' section, for some reason, and you only find it after you've gone through (or skipped) everything else. If you fill out the regular income section it will treat you as though you're in the US no matter what address you give it, and the foreign tax exemption will NOT apply no matter how bona fide you are.

I have left a note in my tax documents so that 2021 Tealin does not waste two weeks and tarnish her soul with hatred the way 2020 Tealin did, and have put them away, and am starting to move on with my life, THANK GOD.

Today, for the first time since March, I am getting on a train. I am only going two stops, and rural ones at that, during a time of day when the trains were usually pretty empty even in the Before Times, and will of course be thoroughly masked and alco-gelled, so hopefully this will not be the start of another dark adventure. I am going for a lovely walk through the lovely countryside with a lovely friend, which will scrub off some of that tarnish, I hope. Will I remember to bring my sketchbook? Who knows! It'll be a good day regardless.

I spent a good hour on the phone with HMRC this morning, drawing the poor WFH tech into my well of confusion. At 10:30 she said she'd call back after noon. I missed the call. She left a message saying she'll call back after 4, which means I have to cancel my afternoon plans, but the opposite party isn't answering their phone and I can't tell if/when they will have got my email.

I'm going through my Observation Hill photos for my Patreon post on Saturday, writing their alt text descriptions for screen readers, and had to look up when the cross was re-mounted after having blown down. 1994, it turns out, and it was quite the effort (p.44).

I have rather a tender spot when it comes to people memorialising the Polar Party. Worst Journey remains one of a very small handful of books that have made me cry actual tears, but it wasn't when the Polar Party died, it was when the search party found their tent. The Secrets of Scott's Hut hit that spot too, to see how much love and care was being poured into the restoration of the Terra Nova hut. And now those photos of the relay team and the helicopter placing the concrete anchor —

The now-unfamiliar feeling of being a disappointment brought about by this morning's events had, doubtless, put me in an awkward place to begin with, but now I've got something in my eye, and down my throat, and in my chest somewhere too.

Current Music: Oh Hellos

I have been working on my taxes. September isn't the usual tax season, but I get a 6-month extension on my US taxes on account of living abroad, which puts the due date in October. (I haven't heard anything about a Covid extension as was offered to domestic tax filers, so am proceeding as usual.) UK taxes aren't due until January, but while I've got the books open and the numbers in my head, it makes sense to do them at the same time and beat the rush.

On one hand, international tax treaties mean I don't actually have to pay taxes in both countries, but the US can't bear the thought of not knowing all the financial details of one of its peons, so I have to file them just the same, and pay for the privilege of doing so.

Usually this process takes three days or so, because I need to do at least one currency conversion on all my income and receipts, and on each month's interest on every one of my international bank accounts, even when they're pennies, according to the exchange rate on the day. It's a lot of sums. Most people in my position would be working for some big firm which has sponsored them to work abroad, and can afford to pay someone else to prepare their taxes. That is very much not the case with me. I couldn't even justify accountants' fees by claiming they get me a higher refund, because I'm self-employed – I don't get a refund! Besides which, the vast majority of accountants in the UK refuse to handle US tax returns. There is a very good reason for this: they are not idiots.

This year has been even more complicated than usual as I have a mountain of receipts from my Antarctic trip, and the various personal and global madnesses of 2020 have kept me from updating my books since this time last year. Consequently, that process has taken a whole week. I sat down to file today, but quickly ended up in a dead end with HMRC, where I needed my calculated tax amount to fill out a supplemental form, but couldn't calculate it until I'd supplied the end result of said supplemental form. So I moved on to filing my US taxes, but everything is different this year: Instead of dropping in my total income and expenses and confirming that I'm still paying taxes abroad, I now have to itemise everything and move up to the higher filing package to do so. 'It's OK!' says the filing company, 'You can pay for it out of your refund!' I don't get a refund.

I have support requests in for both things, but goodness knows if/when any response will come back. I was looking forward to having everything finally squared away today, but it looks like I'll be in Revenue Purgatory for another week at least. I could keep plugging away at my US return, supplying what I know is ultimately irrelevant information because it's all going to total $0 at the end anyway, but frankly, if I have to make the numbers dance for another week I am going to be spending more time Googling 'how to fake your own death' than getting anything done. Meanwhile my email falls more and more atrociously behind, and I haven't done any work on what is, theoretically, my actual job.

So I'm putting the books away. I still have a month until the US taxes are due, and what little I can do on that front I could do just as well when my query gets a response. If there's any comfort to be had, here, it's that next year should be a lot simpler: no research trip, no teaching in a country that docks its own taxes before sending me the cheque (thanks Switzerland), and I've stocked up on the work supplies I need for the foreseeable future. I really wish I could move ahead with the decks clear, but that's obviously not an option this year.

Every time I go through this process I come out hating the world, but planning to be back in Canada soon, I am extra determined to go down to ONE bank and stay in ONE country, and pray my family quits the US so I can finally kick off that ball and chain. I liked paying Canadian taxes, and that's the one country I belong to which doesn't ask me to do it every year!

According to the internet, this is what might be causing my pumpkin plants to turn yellow:

too wet
not enough nitrogen (often caused by above)
not enough iron (ditto)
too dry
too cold
beetles
mildew
infection

Basically, if they are stressed in any way, they throw a canary fit, and leave you to guess which of the mutually contradictory problems it is.

I can't do anything about the cold, or the rain. We haven't been getting excessive amounts of either. I had stopped watering them entirely, but the yellow still advanced. I tried sticking iron tablets in the soil. I have, now, today, fertilised them, but that required watering them. (It's been hot; I hope they needed it.) I have checked for symptoms of various diseases and they don't have any of them beyond the yellow leaves. The most vexing thing is that, aside from the colour, and the yellowest parts eventually dying and crinkling up, they are behaving perfectly fine – blooming up a storm, not wilting, continuing to grow nice and green from the growth ends. In greyscale they would be perfectly happy pumpkin plants. It is a mystery.

I could happily blame the exhausted soil in the pots. I did try to boost it with some potting soil when I planted them, but my supply was limited and I may have stretched it too thin. However, I grew perfectly healthy pumpkin plants in a former sandbox in extremely alkaline Utah, so ... ??

The baked potato squashes are doing OK, though – greener, for some reason, and as of today I have at least three embryonic squashes on the go. They also grow upright, to my surprise, which is something to remember for next year. I have never had a baked potato squash before so this is all an experiment. I hope they make it to adulthood and I get to find out what they're like. Supposedly they taste like potatoes, which is all right by me.

Pretty much as long as I can remember, I've been trying to learn French. There were scattershot lessons from my mum (a native speaker) when I was young; I took three years of it in middle/high school from teachers who couldn't speak it; when in officially bilingual Canada I would have fits of listening to the French-language radio station to try to improve my ear, a practice I'd return to every so often later on, when I found how to stream it online.

Around 2018 I realised that I was visiting Denmark at least once a year, and France not at all, so it was more practical to learn Danish. It ended up being more fun, too – it's similar enough to English that you can see the common roots in a lot of words and the grammar is uncannily like English from 400 years ago, so my familiarity with Shakespeare and the Book of Common Prayer put me in good stead there. ('Sted' means 'place' in Danish. See?) For having a reputation as a very difficult language to learn, I was finding it a breeze compared to French, especially when I finally tuned my ear to the lack of diction. And, weirdly, spending time on Danish was improving my French, I think because it kept the 'not-English' side of my brain awake: when learning new Danish phrases it would usually say 'Oh, I already know how to say this in not-English,' and give me the French.

I had to leave off languages entirely when I was on my Antarctic trip – mostly because my brain was full already, but also on account of McMurdo not having sufficient internet to run Duolingo – which meant a lot of remedial study when I got back; I didn't have much brain for it then either, but I did push to reacquaint myself before I went back to Denmark in March. Then all the lockdown and moving stress occupied my brain again and I fell off. I've got back to it for the last month or so, but haven't really found a groove, and just jump around the lesson board levelling up sections that have fallen behind, rather than utilising the methodical way it's laid out.

I have really enjoyed learning Danish – it's been much more fun than French which, though I was motivated, always felt like a chore – and when I'm not practising it, I miss it. Looking at the endeavour as a whole, though, I have to wonder what the point is. Most people in Denmark speak English, and would prefer to do that than listen to me struggle in Danish. I don't even know if I will be going back, or how often, given pandemic travel precautions. I intend to get back to Canada at some point, and though French is less useful than Mandarin or Punjabi or Farsi on the west coast, Danish is a chocolate kettle by comparison. However, I am within shooting distance of the end of the lessons on Duolingo, and would like the satisfaction of seeing something through. Duo's French lessons aren't nearly as methodical as the Danish ones (lesson in national stereotypes there) so even though I know more French already I find them more frustrating. So, do I push through with something relatively useless but more or less fun, or move my energies over to something ultimately more practical and rewarding?

Well, the start of my workday today was tipping the dead pidgelets out of the nest with a garden hoe. They were too putrid for me to open my office windows and it's getting up to 32°C (90°F) this week so I wasn't willing to wait for them to dry out. I wonder if something has been lost from horror writing in recent decades as the vast majority of the population has no first-hand experience with maggots. You can say 'maggots' and people go 'ew' but it's another thing entirely to see a belly turned to a whole writhing mass of them, the biological equivalent of TV static (another rapidly obsolescing reference). That was a treat. Another dose of protein for the compost bin, though, and a deep, visceral understanding of why burying the dead is one of the first things to come along with sentience in human evolution.

The actual day started (fairly late, as I was up until 2 last night drawing) in a much cheerier way, harvesting the first of the cherries. They are sour, but no less useful; I only got a small bowl full, but with the heat this week, the rest of them should ripen faster than the birds can eat them. I should be able to get a few bottles of compote out of the haul. My pantry-filling grocery order is coming today, and they were out of elderflower cordial so they have substituted sour cherry. I am awash in cherry. How narratively appropriate.

The PM has announced that pubs will be allowed to repoen from 4 July, with certain restrictions in place. I am a little ashamed that going to the pub is one of the very few things I've actually missed in lockdown – I don't like being drunk, and after my honeymoon of exploration upon discovery that Beer is Good* I'm not even that fussed about craft. It's more the atmosphere, and at this time of year, ducking out of the blazing sun into a dark, close interior for a bit of refreshment. It seems every pub I pass in my exploration of this area is very, very promising, and it's bitter not to be able to step in. Of course, it will also be risky, especially around here where people are already rather blasé about social distancing, but we have got one of the lowest incidences in the country so maybe it's not ill-placed. The weekend of the 4th will be absolutely mad, but after that, I look forward to keeping the local in business and eating something fried for the first time in months. And the independent artisan café I pass on the way to groceries has reopened for takeaway, so I can get another species of mind-altering liquid, and – dare I breathe the word – pastries. Corona World is slowly retreating towards the horizon. Soon I'm going to have to talk to people ...

And there's a goldfinch nest on the corner of the house. There's a chorus of tiny squeaks every time a parent comes to visit.

*So Long As It's Not Lager

There has been a woodpigeon nesting under one of my office windows. I think she was alarmed the first time I opened the window and said hello, but that didn't put her off continuing to build the nest and eventually laying her eggs and hatching them. There were two squabs (though I think a much better name is pidgelets) and as I had never seen a baby woodpigeon before they were a continual source of fascination. First they appeared under mum, then they got too big for all three to be in the nest all the time, but she would come back and feed them, and sometimes dad turned up in the morning to coo at them. Happy Families springtime hurrah.

On Saturday I checked in and saw one of the two was breathing heavily and bothered by flies. Not long for this world, I thought, but the other was fine and the flies weren't bothering him. Sunday I was doing some watering, and as the spigot is right under the nest I had a poke around to see if the unfortunate pidgelet had been discarded from the nest, but no sign. It couldn't have recovered, could it?

This morning I am back at my desk so I checked out the window, and found both pidgelets dead. This was not an ideal start to the day. It is the way of the world, and if all woodpigeons made it to adulthood we'd be drowning in them, but they were a delight of the workspace and I was looking forward to seeing them – or at least one of them – fledge. I don't know what went wrong; the one was obviously sick, but was it something it ate? Did mum stop feeding them? (I haven't heard her at the nest for a few days.) Were they weakened by the cold wet spell we've just had? They were more mature than I'd expect for a fatality from just failing to thrive. They were both thriving, and then suddenly were not.

On the other side of the house is The Worst Pigeon Nest Ever, a bare assembly of twigs heaped casually on top of some climbing roses. Someone laid an egg in it and scarpered. Having bloomed and finished, the roses are now trying to eat the house, and as the nest was clearly abandoned I went out there this morning and started cutting back the worst of them with the long pole pruning shears. As I was contemplating animal infanticide and the circle of life, a hearse slowly rolled past on its way to the church, followed by a ragtag procession on foot. Some were nursing cans of lager, some in uncomfortable shoes; a couple of eyes were wiped but it was mostly formal. I hadn't heard if funerals were allowed again but they didn't seem to mind. Not that The Virus seems to be much on the minds of people here generally – if the person in the hearse had died of it, that did not inspire much social distancing amongst their followers. Maybe living out in the countryside makes you more accepting of death as a part of life. Maybe they found the comforting presence of friends and family more valuable. Maybe they just don't care. I didn't ask.

This house has been through at least two plagues, as well as the 1918 flu and the current crisis. I am living here because its previous occupants died. I sleep in their bed and eat off their crockery so every day is a reminder they left the house that way. They are not the first to have done so. In it, I am drawing people who all died before I was born. There is a curious blind spot for death in modern Anglophone culture: it's as if those who survived WWII were so tired of it they didn't want to think about it, so didn't tell subsequent generations about it, and thus it comes as a surprise, like a Victorian bride's wedding night. We've got much better about sex, but made death taboo instead, leaving people grasping when it elbows its way into their life. This needs to change. Hopefully that will be one of many positive effects of this crisis.

And I, at some point, will need to knock down the nest with the two pidgelets, because the parents are too busy making new woodpigeons to do it themselves ...

Since my mysteriously early wake-up this morning:

Made bread
Also roasted 2 kinds of potato, made 2 kinds rice, and sauteed mushrooms: I try to turn the oven on as little as possible, so might as well use the heat while I've got it
Took a shower (hot water, because oven)
Trimmed the grass
Ripped out some more vinca
Mulched the un-mulched pots with said grass
Separated Gift Squash into a plastic pot for when I get to see its intended parents again
Washed dishes from a.m.'s cooking (see: hot water)
Watered the darn acanthus (because dish water)

My gardening has shifted from 'what can I grow?' to 'what can I rot?' because the dirt in the pots is so exhausted and there isn't really any space to put plants directly in the ground. I'm growing what I can – mostly squash and beans because those don't mind poor soil so much – and trying to bank up as much compost as I can for next year. I cast a greedy eye over the bountiful greenery of June looking for what I can next cut back and add to the pile. Luckily there is a lot that needs cutting back in this overgrown garden, it's just a matter of separating soft stuff for the compost and hard stuff into the burn pile, to make ash for the compost. My next project is collecting and burning the fallen twigs under the willow to make room for a third compost heap. All roads lead to compost. This is a compost house now.

Now it is almost 11.30 and I have to sit down and do some WORK ... like I haven't been working all morning.

I have finally started working again. In the way of things, after a hard slog all Tuesday, I hit my stride around 8pm and kept going happily and solidly until 1, without the aid of any stimulants. I turned off my alarm and woke the next morning at 8.30; was coffee'd, dressed, and breakfasted by 9; did a little pottering in the garden and kitchen before sitting down to work at 9.30. Considering that, in order to be at my desk by 9.30. I had been in the habit of setting my first alarm for 6,* this was food for thought.

I have always been a night owl, even when I was a child. This has never been OK. School started early – 7.25 am by the time I got to high school – and, of course, I had to get to the office at a decent time. Starting work on the book could have given me an opportunity to shift my hours, but living in a house with three other women, all of whom had regular jobs, I considered it better all around not to compete for bathroom and kitchen time, so I did all that before the others woke up and then left the house. A couple hours later it would be empty, so I would return then and make use of as many of those empty hours as I could. This also served to give my day some much-needed structure. Now that everyone is working from home, the advice is to give yourself a 'commute' just to trick your brain into thinking you're working. I turns out I've been doing that for years.

So, one way or another, I've been trying to train myself to be a morning person for most of my life. Whether it's age or the delayed payoff of my efforts, this has been easier in recent years. I would frequently wake up before my first alarm, even if I was still half-asleep. But now I have no external factors either pushing or pulling me to get an early start, so why waste my hours of wakefulness being groggy and useless when I could better spend them getting things done late at night?

My alarm has been off since then, and it's been interesting to observe the transition. I am still waking up early, and although this is sliding gradually later it's still with that anxious start and wash of stress. Luckily I don't need much convincing to roll over and get back to sleep, and feel better about getting out of bed when I do eventually do so. And, as described above, going through my morning properly awake is much more efficient. It's made me wonder if the stress of fighting my internal clock and the pressure to hit the ground running at a point when I can barely walk might have been a slow-burning contribution to the flames of anxiety over the years, smouldering away under the big obvious things like a toxic office culture or a hostile housemate. I am curious to find out if ditching the conventional work hours not only improves productivity but improves anxiety as well. Maybe it will boost my immunity, too? We will find out!

*First alarm at 6 to tell me it was time to wake up. There was no way I'd actually get out of bed then, but it gave me half an hour to get my brain up to speed enough to get out of bed at the second alarm, 6.30. Then another hour to crawl through the regular morning things before leaving the house, counting on the fresh air and exercise to wake me up the rest of the way. It didn't feel like I was going slower so much as that time was passing faster – getting dressed usually takes 5 minutes tops, yet somehow before 9am the same actions took 15. Just goes to show how subjective our relationship with time is.

When I was working on the West Coast and listening to Radio 4, my day was shaped by the rhythm of the schedule. Start with PM, some decent news and Eddie Mair's voice part of the daily ritual. Get emails etc done so I could start drawing in time for the 6:30 comedy, which was at 10:30 my time (or be annoyed that a meeting, scheduled or otherwise, intruded, which especially seemed to happen on Fridays). Then at 11:00 The Archers would come on, which was my cue to go for a second coffee and find something to do away from my desk for the longest 15 minutes of the day. Back to work for Front Row, then lunch to the accompaniment of whatever the 8:00 documentary was, and so on. Not only did this give me structure, but it made me really good at doing the time conversion between PST and GMT.

Moving to the UK, I was surprised to discover how well Radio 4 in its home time zone is tailored to the rhythms of the day, almost like it was done so deliberately by people who knew what they were doing. As I work with words a lot more now than I used to, and even when not wording am often doing drawings that take more concentration than I can share with a radio programme, I don't listen as faithfully as I used to. But it's frequently on in the kitchen, and they almost always have good kitcheny listening on when I need it. Clever old things.

As I'm trying to establish a new routine in the new place, I have noticed a funny thing: no matter when I start work in the morning, I get antsy around 11:00. It's too early for lunch but too late for a snack that won't ruin lunch; sometimes I'll get up for a drink but usually I have a teapot on the go next to my desk so it's not much of a trip. Yesterday I realised it's the old Archers Avoidance, which has somehow stuck in my work rhythm despite no longer aligning to The Archers at all. It's like a small personal version of those nonsensical family traditions that are perpetuated simply because 'we've always done it this way.' Today I moved a geranium outside and fertilised it, checked the mildew situation on the acanthus, and came back before I realised I'd got up at 11 again. I suppose I'll just have to work around it ...

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Tealin

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December 2023

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CONTORTED PASTA

~ Random Thoughts and Scribblings ~

Entries tagged with life

Being Boring About Dreams Again

A Paradox

Heal Thyself

Health and Basic Mathematics

Comedic Banking, 2021 Edition

Polar Ennui

2020 In Review

Godaften Duo, Godmorgen Clip Studio Paint

. . . And So

Like Sand

I Aten't Dead

Never Could Get The Hang of Thursdays

Taxes, thus Death

And it was all Yellow

Det Danske Spørgsmål

Moving On

Death Comes to the House

Productivity

Morning People

Old Habits

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December 2023

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