head to toe linen

On fine days, Felix and I harvest seaweed. Just after high tide we go, we run down the steep hill that's covered in burrowing wasps in the summer, and while felix jumps off giant boulders into a soft bed of sand and rotting flotsam, I fill buckets with fresh seaweed, haul it back up the hill into the vw. I bring my camera and we take pictures and I wonder how future generations will store their photographic histories. We see humpbacks and sea lions and load our skin up with sunshine. In the garden, the beds are slowly being put to sleep, seaweed as a thick duvet. The kale and calendula are still going strong, and those amazing giant dahlias. The garlic needs cleaning and sorting and planting. It should have been this full moon, for halloween, I think I am too late. It's hanging from the rafters in the red work shed, swaying above table saw and workbench, clamps and planes and choice pieces of lumber ready to be joined for the tractor shed. All unused as no adult males live here anymore. The gravel pad for the tractor shed is being invaded and annexed by the relentless energy of blackberry thickets, snaking their long tendrils across poured foundations and sand. I haven't eaten garlic in a year now yet keep growing it regardless. I get joy from gifting it, but maybe I am hopefully optimistic, if only I'd find the right healer..., or maybe it's that sadistic and sabotaging thing I do to myself, a make work project to overload myself to the familiar point of almost burnout. A giant enamel bowl of marshmallow seed heads and twigs, covered in fine fuzz, sat by the wood stove for a week, then seperated, rubbed, picked clean while having a video call with my husband, outside. Laptop on a three legged stool hamish had made, on the deck he had made, our kid upstairs allowed some screentime. We were discussing his theoretical return, I kept urging him to take the view of one who has spent years being scared of him. Can two people coming at a problem from opposite angles understand each other? He, the addict, says it'll be different this time, and makes plans accordingly; gymnastics with felix, living in the trailer on the property, using our bathroom, our kitchen, etc. Me, the spouse who still has a go bag packed in the car from those previous times, making plans as if it's not going to be any different at all. Optimistic, pessimistic, idealist, realist. We did well, we didn't get triggered. It may have been the first conversation about us that has not ended badly, in at least 9 months. More. Years? Meanwhile I was tossing the seeds into the air, blowing the chaff away, toss blow catch, getting covered in fine itchy hairs. We're leaning into the season. Candlelight often, the woodstove gets lit at least once a day, soggy clothes from preschool laid out around it to dry. Blackberry infused brandy with star anise, cinnamon, clove and honey in the darkening evenings. A week of raw emotions, crying at the slightest provocation reminded me of sun in a bottle: st johns wort tincture, another act of summer made with my winter self in mind. Chicken soup all the time, slowly simmered for 24 hours. Buckwheat pancakes every sunday, almond butter, honey, apple sauce. There's more music being played, and puzzles being made and there's a purple plaster witch's nose laying around, crooked with a red wart. F wears it everywhere, making halloween a two week event. The raven familiar startles me when I go into the pantry, sitting there next to the aluminum foil. A bear ate one of our pumpkins. We found it mangled on the driveway. i finally trimmed the kitten's claws so he's not acupuncturing me awake when he's hungry twice a night and again to wake in the morning, needle claws in my scalp. The actual acupuncture though is not as effective as I have experienced in the past. The sinuses got worse, I couldn't breathe through my nose for a week, again, nor shit regularily. I am normally a champion pooper. I had bad luck last session, the practitioner had some spice, was distracted, I glimpsed him in the back room before treatment with a grain bag around his shoulders, he didn't remember what he was treating me for. A painful session, hooked a little electrical current up and when I said my hand and foot were rythmically spasming open and shut he asked, it doesn't hurt though does it? The needles in my cheeckbones under my eyes were dug deeper upon the discovery that my sinuses hadn't cleared on first placement and I almost lied when he asked again a few minutes after, in self preservation. He didn't forget any needles in me this time. I've been having random mini asthma attacks lately. Used to be only after vigorous use of diaphragm and vocals. Sobbing, screaming, laughing hard and long. Only since felix's birth. It was a loud one. Put it on the list for that healer I'll find. We're entering the rainy season. The creek is loud, it's a constant backround noise, chattering, swollen. We check the forecast each morning, boots or shoes today, how many layers of goretex? A sunny day today, I spent two hours cleaning robert's gutters along two sides of the big house. I found two inch deep gutter scoby's, congealed composted matter, green fascia boards, dripping. Moved the ladder along, a couple meters at a time, scooped out black dripping goo, wondered at how this grown ass man seems to escape the natural conseqences of neglecting a property and house, of doing just the bare minimum possible in upkeep. He is my opposite and I feel most cliche german around him. I haven't repaired the massively broken garden fence where a bear bulldozed it down, nor the shattered glass greenhouse door, nor all the individual fence pickets where bears have more delicately hauled their bulk over in to the garden. The need-a-man-to-fix-it list is growing... I am half joking, I'm more of a feminist than all that. But it is the list of things that require skill or strength beyond mine, or time and energy I do not have to luxury of.