i hate drones

there's a small tabby kitten darting in and out of shadows in my dimly lit upstairs right now. Our two tuxedo sisters have both disappeared, one after the other and this guy was the least terrified of humans of all the barn cats at the ranch. I've always wanted a tabby. I dote on him. We joke that he is Felix's baby brother. He curls into a tight little ball in my underwear basket under the bed. I find jade leaves in random corners perforated with dozens of sharp tooth marks. I spent more on him today than on myself in the last week - a felted cat bed, I video call my loved ones so that can watch him the way I do. When I look at him, I feel the sound of a B and and R on my tongue, and I'll know his name when it appears, but it hasn't yet. I've been on baby name lists and every time I pet him, I trial a different name out: Bertram, Benjamin, Bentley, Basil, Benedict, Beet Juice, Berlioz, Bolivar, Barnie, or Amos, Emile, Martin, Anthony, Percival, Peach Pit. I pull him out of his hiding spots and snuggle him in the evenings until he purrs like an outboard motor. He is a massager, a kneader. Felix said we should register him. On the morning we left the ranch, I filled a ziploc baggie with sawdust from the barn alley where the horses stand to get harnessed. I sprinkle a bit in his cat litter box on top of the sand and the smell reminds us both of that high up windy horsey beautiful place. I thought the day's chores were done after Felix and I wrapped up moving two truck loads of firewood alone together. I sorted through the entire woodshed sorting out the green wood that had been stacked there this spring by someone who doesn't care about chimney fires, and used the landlord's truck to bring it to the sheep barn, where I restacked the pile there that was cascading over an unsecured pallet. I made 'german corners' - ends of alternate facing layers to bookend the rows, which satisfy me deeply. Felix threw firewood down from the truck, covered his hands with fir pitch and practiced jumping off the tailgate - classic farm childhood activities. The sun came out and felix and I got shirtless. Job done, we popped into the garden for a little unwinding and a black bear surprised us all by coming around the mint honeysuckle trellis on his way to resume activities at the apple tree. There were already six enormous apple-mash piles on the ground as well as half eaten apples. I'm renting a press and gathering friends for juicing all those apples. So while felix video called with his NZ grandparents, I ate a quick power dinner of cashews and dates and went out to build an electric fence in the dusk. Bear spray in my back pocket. Tired, hungry. Not thinking about single parenthood and fairness and victimhood and heroics. Across the yard, another bear, a different one, was pulling up grass in front of hamish's shed. Now there is a three strand white electric fence in a tight white circle around a large loaded apple tree that dominates the center of my garden and it looks like an art installation, like a statement about domesticity and wildness or man's percieved power over nature. It does certainly bring to mind the garden of eden and a particular tree there, at the center of that garden which got a lot of attention. It looks a little silly or just very practical. Either way, I'm proud of how strong the zap is - I got a tingle in my fingers from a whole long dill stem away, thanks to those gruelling days in July setting up fence for the sheep and trouble shooting grouding rods and distances from telephone poles and how to make gates in the fence and use the spool. Proud too of what I get done, on my own, what I manage to keep afloat, while keeping a clean tidy house and mostly good sleep hygiene and a only sometimes sinking into burnout. But bitter too, honestly, that I don't get to tag the other guy in when it's a bit too much for mama, that it's allllll resting on my shoulders, that I don't get to indulge in hobbies or come home to a meal when I've been in town all day and my kid is sick and I'm exhausted and it's already dark out and we're both too hungry to sleep but too tired to make anything. So when H let slip that he bought a drone, while day after day wearing head to toe outfits that I don't recognize, I got a lil triggered.("On sale - super cheap!") I wonder what he thinks Felix and I live off, on my income only. I wonder what supporting and providing for the family means to him. I asked once for money this summer and it felt like begging and he impusively sent me a grand with no thought to affordability or consistency and I won't ask again. He asked me today if we need firewood for the winter ("we") meanwhile I already ordered it last month. He asked me two days ago when Felix starts "big boy school" after we told him how preschool was going this fall - he was expecting kindergarten but never got around to asking. The algorithm suggests non violent communication webinars to me and through them I'm recognizing my need for security when I reach out to my husband and also recognizing his deeply unpredictable, erratic and chaotic nature. He is almost entirely incapable of making me feel secure, like I can rest for a minute. I hate drones. A lot. And at midnight on the fifth day, the feral ranch kitten finally relaxed around me. A lonely inocturnal toddler with sharp claws and hunter instincts. I've had to lift him off the keyboard every minute or so and he just fell of the armchair and onto the globe for the third time. I am fully embracing harvest time and come home with boxes of free apples and plums and pears, I post ISO ads and have slowly ripening fruit three bins deep in my pantry, apple sauce waiting to be strained and the dehydrator humming. Grapes in the freezer and mama's oxhearts waiting for me in town. I send each massage client home with a big bag of fresh kale. Food should be free and local.