Phew, so I suppose this blog has become exactly what i was trying to avoid when i took it down last time, that is, it's become a pool of confusion and self-loathing. and y'know, george-hating. these things happen sometimes. And then they stop for a while, and i really like it when they stop for a while. my brain and heart can take breaks from the crazy, and I like them a lot when they come. I'm back on vacation from my brain trying to hurt itself. it's nice here.

Things are going well, and simply. Pretty focused on Julie's birthday coming up. She doesn't quite understand ages or birthdays or anything (although she knows what presents are, and that gramma's coming to visit, and that bowling is a rad time and all of these things are happening soon and therefore is STOKED.) I asked her what she wanted for the b-day and think i'm going to be able to make ALL THE THINGS that she wanted, i just hope they turn out to be as rad as they are in my head. there is WAY too much sewing involved for my skill set. which in no way includes sewing. sigh.

Spring is here, which means that it only snows for a few days at a time, and sometimes most of it even melts before snowfall and i'm glad for this, because we're getting way more precipitation than we do most years, which, although i won't have much of a garden going this year, that everyone else in this place will have a good run this season, and hopefully there will be chickweed everywhere soon. it's creeping out of the ice blocks in the backyard already and i've been munching on it when i'm on my way to work, but i'd like to get my harvest on and make some things. I definitely overdid the tincture making last season, and still have a shoebox full of 'em... and most of them are ones that i don't use much. I'm still not sure why i went with burdock leaf tincture, i guess just because there was so much lying around when i made the root tincture. this year i think i'll just fry up and eat the leaves. I might try to make up a salve with some chickweed and plantain and burdock leaves for burncare, but i've had really bad luck making salves so we'll just have to see how that goes. the stuff grows everywhere so i'm sure i could just pick some leaves fresh for burns, and hope that i don't mishandle the oven in the winter. (ha!)

Been anarchy-scouts-ing it up all over the place lately. the feral pal is good for having projects together. The homebrew experiments are going well and there seems to be no lack of fruit to make wine with floating around. We have discovered that we need to make a new batch of beer every 2 weeks to keep up with our consumption and distribution, and are contemplating doing a batch every week for a bit so that the distribution can rise. we just need to get a bunch more carboys and we're off. Also stoked on spring because that means that we can get most of the things we need to make the beer from alleyways and abandoned lots in the neighborhood. there are hops growing everywhere and i've still got a 5 gallon pail of barley that fnb didn't want kicking around. well, it's only about half full now, but i'm not cooking any more for food until we get more confident in our skillz and start roasting the barley ourselves to make wort. cause that'll be super fun.

came across the term salvagepunk today, something that maybe rises from the ashes of steampunk/dieselpunk's newfound commerciality.  Not that i expect it to have any different a fate, but i know there's no way i'm going to be selling the shit i make out of the shit i find, so now i guess i'm a cool kid AND can rock the anti-capitalism. until they find me and take both of those away at once when the ashes of salvagepunk blow into something ...marketable.