In May, I want to add more plants to our outdoor
garden, sew some swimwear for A+ and me, and see
about volunteering for Bike Brigade.
I volunteered to help with Bike Brigade's e-mail
newsletter, since they were looking for someone to
take over from another volunteer and it might be a
good way to build real-life community. I like the
cause: volunteer cyclists connecting food banks
with people who need those groceries delivered.
W-'s been volunteering for that for a while, and
A+ and I also did a couple of deliveries, and it's
nice to see her enjoy helping out. I also listened
to a virtual panel about bikes and social justice,
and I shared my sketchnotes afterwards. I'm glad
there are people thinking about these issues, and
I'm also glad that there are small, concrete,
on-the-ground ways that we can help.
We made more progress through the Toronto District
School Board's gifted identification process, but
I think we're going to opt for a regular class in
the public virtual school instead of the gifted
placement in an in-person school. A+ gets bored in
class, but I think she'll enjoy having the extra
opportunities to play with her friends and explore
ideas, and she also appreciates the way she can
read and sing in the middle of class. (Hooray for
the mute button!)
A+ took a pottery painting class and another
pottery wheel class at Clay With Me. This time she
did a 2-hour wheel workshop, and the teacher was
able to help her with a couple of pieces. We've
been using the bowls we made in the previous
class. It's nice to have hand-made things. This
seems to be an ongoing interest, so we're going to
experiment with a pottery-related summer camp. I
found one that lets me register for a week-long
afternoon camp that focuses on the pottery wheel.
We like to keep our time pretty flexible, so this
is our first experiment with a camp. I think it'll
be great to be able to build momentum and learn
from a teacher with more experience, using
equipment that we don't have access to at home.
The camp description says kids will learn how to
add attachments and other decorations to their
work, so that could be pretty cool.
I experimented with bringing a portable butane
stove to the park. We were able to make s'mores on
two separate occasions without setting anyone on
fire, hooray! It was a good experience. The kids
had fun.
On nice days when we didn't have any playdates
planned, we I went on bike adventures. We checked
out the flower event in Yorkville. We also
explored the St. James Park playground, which was
included in the recent Doors Open event. A+ liked
the tall slide there. We also went to the Art
Gallery of Ontario so that she could work on her
Group of 7 art assignment while looking at the
actual paintings. She picked Figure with Rays of
Light by Lauren Harris.
There were quite a few rainy days. We got a lot of
sewing done. A+'s getting better at sewing simple
seams, and she can stop the machine when things
sound weird. We made a fancy skirt with an
embroidered mesh layer over satin, a couple of
skorts made of spandex so that she can wear it
into the splash pad or even the swimming pool, a
swim set, and a few tops.
Rainy days were also good for playing together. A+
was curious about playing a farming game, so we
started playing Stardew Valley, and we all got
into it quite a fair bit. A+ likes collecting
eggs, cooking food, and building friendships. I
enjoy farming and mining. It's a lot of fun,
especially when we play co-op. Even W-'s gotten
into it on his phone. This could be a fun way to
learn more about life and parenting. Having my own
solo farm is also nice, too. It helps me be more
patient when we play in co-op because I know I
have a different space where I can try things out.
It does mean I get tempted to stay up late. I can
definitely see the impact of this new interest on
my time graph and sleep totals, but that's fine.
It's good to ride the wave of our interests,
especially when we can do it together.
In our real-life garden, the radishes have been
very happy, and other seeds have sprouted too. The
mini roses, dahlias, and strawberries have come
back, and so has a dianthus. The
daffodils are done with their blooms. Last year's
compost turned out pretty nicely, and I've started
turning this year's trimmings into compost. I love
letting A+ plant seeds wherever she likes, and
I've been enjoying learning how to identify those
sprouts as well as other ones that turn up in our
garden.
A+'s been enjoying the sourdough rye from the
Dufferin Grove farmers market, so I revived the
sourdough starter we got from a trip many years
ago, which we'd revived in 2020 or so and then
re-dehydrated. I thought I got it to be pretty
active again, but I haven't quite figured out
baking a proper loaf yet. On the other hand, W-
has been on a roll (hah) with all the breads and
bagels he's been baking. I put the starter in the
fridge for a week because we had lots of
potato-rosemary bread in the house, and now I
think the starter needs a few days of waking up
again. Oh well, flour is tuition for learning how
to bake. Fortunately, I've discovered I like
sourdough discard pancakes, so at least there's a
way to deal with the excess.
In June, I'd like to take A+ on a few more
informal field trips during the school week, to
take advantage of places before they get swamped
by everyone else on summer break. Maybe
Centreville, and maybe strawberry-picking like
last year. Her friends will probably be more
available for playdates too, so that'll be a nice
shift in our routines. I'm looking forward to more
cooking and sewing and gardening and pottery. We
like making things together and enjoying them
together. As the days get longer and the weather warms, I
shift: less computer time, more outside time. This
is good. I'm looking forward to exploring
more of the city by bike, now that we know we can
make it out to playgrounds on the other side of
town. It's the season for it!
I started helping Bike Brigade with their e-mail newsletter. I read through their Slack history and a couple of years of newsletters to build up a library of newsletter blocks. I made a collage of the Jane's Walk photos. I didn't get around to editing the photos and posting them on Facebook. Maybe next week. We also did some more deliveries.
We biked to the Stockyards so that we could buy clover seeds, flower seeds, plants, and other gardening supplies from Canadian Tire and Rona. A+ also took the opportunity to have har gow and some quick playtime at the arcade. I moved the strawberries into pots. I potted the dahlias (including the new ones) and scattered many of the flower seeds we bought. I also pruned the mini roses.
We attended an IPRC meeting to confirm A+'s exceptionality.
We went to the dentist. So far so good.
A+ improved the organization of the bathroom by putting away less-used things.
I dropped my phone and damaged the screen protector. Fortunately, the screen was fine. I found the other screen protector and applied it.
“The truth is I still put a lot of pride into being Very Good At Ruby. I
cling to that pride, sometimes. I want to show that I've “still got it”.
In a life drowned in caregiving and homemaking and survival, I often
feel like I'm vanishing. Like I have so much still to offer, if
only—and then there is screaming from another room, and I must defuse
a meltdown, or mediate an argument, or make a belated dinner, or chase
down a meds prescription, or or or…”
This is something I remember struggling with. I
think I've come to terms with it now, mostly by
giving up the idea of being good at stuff. I've
been making peace with the fact that I make
silly errors, and that's okay. I've come to
realize that it's not even entirely due to the
distraction and time constraints of parenting,
and that I like how I'm growing even if it feels
less certain.
‘This morning, as I wrote my morning pages, I felt a little fearful. All
my life I've yearned to be creative. I frequently think, “If I only had
more time, I'd…” All those things I've said I wished I had more time
to do — write, draw, learn French, exercise, meditate — now it's
time to see if I really do want to do them. What if time was just an
excuse? I guess that would be okay. I'd learn what really does matter to
me. Maybe it turns out I like the idea of being creative more than I
actually am creative. Maybe what I really love is long walks and sitting
in the garden reading books.'
This feels like a related thought. I'm glad I
did my experiment with semi-retirement. That
period of having plenty of time autonomy showed
me that I tend to be more of a slacker than a
hustler, and that's also okay.
A+ enjoyed the pottery painting class at Clay
with Me. She painted a small bowl, a tiny dish,
and a rainbow.
I let A+ scoot ahead to her class. I didn't even
see her when I got there, but I did find her
scooter and her helmet neatly put away, so I
assume that she made it there safely. Another
big step towards independence!
We did a few Bike Brigade deliveries as a
family, and I decided to help with their
newsletter.
We visited Popo and helped her with tech.
I wrote some code to visualize a specific day or
set of days, and I added that to my blog post
about time.
I worked on some personal projects. I finally got
around to adding side notes and footnotes to my
blog. I made space by moving the post navigation
to the left sidebar. Along the way, I figured out
how to add scroll-based highlighting for SVGs, so
I can use a drawing as a table of contents. I
added sketches to my On This Day page, and I wrote
some Emacs Lisp to visualize a specific day or set
of days.
The weather's starting to warm up. More of A+'s
friends are emerging from hibernation and having
outdoor playdates. Yay!
We planted more radishes, lettuce, peas, cilantro,
and spinach. We also started marigolds, petunias,
chrysanthemums, jalapeno peppers, cherry tomatoes
(Sweet Million), and mini bell peppers inside. I
tidied my basement desktop and I cleared out some
more of my old yarn and fabric scraps, and I sewed
a cushion for A+'s chair.
I wrote a few long blog posts. It felt good to
take time to explore a thought.
I continued to practise fretting less about
homework, and A+ managed to catch up with all the
things she needed to do mostly on her own. Things
really work out better when I back off and let her
take responsibility for it.
We played a lot of Minecraft. We set up a 1.20.1
world with Create 6.0 and the Create: Ultimate
Selection modpack. We also figured out how to do
port forwarding so that other people could
theoretically join us.
I finished the intermediate courses in Simply
Piano and worked on more songs. I'm at the point
where I need to play through things a couple of
times at slower speeds in order to get the hang of
them. This is good. It means I'm challenging
myself.
A couple of Sundays had pleasant weather, so we
did Bike Brigade as a family. That was a lot of
fun. A+ and I also went to Ripley's Aquarium.
In May, I want to add more plants to our outdoor
garden, sew some swimwear for A+ and me, and see
about volunteering for Bike Brigade.
I had a few client requests I wanted to work on,
so W- helped me get some more focus time. I feel a
little underslept, so I should get better at going
to bed instead of staying up reading.
The weather was often warm and sunny, so we spent
more time biking and walking. We brought bubbles,
sand toys, and popsicles to the playgrounds. That
was nice.
A+ has been practising crossing the street by
herself. She's quite proud of being able to go
ahead of me. She was also proud of making her own
choices at the farmers market, carefully counting
out $5 and a collection of coins that all together
summed up to $12 for a bottle of very dark maple
syrup, and choosing a sourdough loaf after some
discussion with the baker.
A+ enjoyed doing an Easter Monster Math Hunt, as
is apparently now our tradition. I drew lots of
Minecraft mobs on brightly-coloured sticky notes,
labelled the front sides with letters and wrote
equations on the back sides. A+ wanted to practise
solving for variables, so I wrote two-step
equations of the form 2 * n + 3 = 7. As she
found each sticky note, she brought it to me and
figured out the answer in her head, and I wrote
her answer down. When she collected all of them,
she sorted them by number and then figured out the
phrase using the letters in the front (CHOCOLATE
EGGS), whereupon she received the chocolate egg
I'd brought along for snack.
In Minecraft, we switched from Create: Perfect
World to the Create: Ultimate Selection modpack
because A+ wanted to use Create 6.0. Fortunately,
this didn't mean restarting our world from
scratch, since it was an upgrade. After we got
everyone on board, I built a full enchanting table
setup, got myself a Fortune 3 pickaxe, and started
caving. We also experimented with a Minecraft
Create Mod club on Outschool, but it wasn't really
A+'s thing between the lag and the overwhelming
experience of stepping into a world that's already
quite built up. We'll probably just keep playing
ourselves. If A+'s cousins or friends from the
playgroup want to join in, we figured out how to
set up port forwarding, so we can set up a server.
I experimented with analyzing my time. I updated my color scheme a little, cleaned up the graph, and made it responsive.
I added sketches to my On This Day RSS feed.
I did some consulting and managed to get that front-end prototype mostly sorted out.
Wayne and I worked together to figure out how to do port forwarding so we could host a Minecraft Java server at home and possibly share it with A+'s cousins or friends.
We planted more radishes, lettuce, peas, cilantro, and spinach. We also
started marigolds, petunias, chrysanthemums, jalapeno peppers, cherry
tomatoes (Sweet Million), and mini bell peppers inside. (toot)
I planted some more radish and lettuce seeds. (toot)
It was nice getting some reasonably-continuous
thinking time done. There was still one instance
where I hadn't wrapped up properly and therefore
felt a little frustrated when A+ wanted my
attention, but that was on me and something I can
do better next time.
I enjoyed walking in the park this week, and we
started gardening too. Good counterbalance to the
chaos of whatever the US is doing. I also enjoyed
writing more about life.
I added sidenotes duplicated as footnotes to my
blog, inspired by citationneeded.news. The
sidenotes should show up on my blog if you have
Javascript enabled and the window is reasonably
wide. I like the way sidenotes allow me to me add
a little more context than a plain hyperlink.
Unlike the tangents that I've been tucking into
<details> elements, I don't even have to wait
until the end of the paragraph.
W-, A+, and I regularly played Minecraft after
dinner. This week, I set up tunnels going to a
trial chamber in the overworld and to a blaze
spawner in the Nether. A+ wants to get more XP in
a safe way, so I think I'll work on setting up
some XP farms. There's a skeleton spawner not too
far from our base, so that's probably a good
start.
I hadn't realized that there was an #OrgMeetup
[on Wednesday], didn't notice @yantar92's email
on my phone, and I totally missed both
announcing it in Emacs News getting the
BigBlueButton server up. I've now added it as a
recurring entry on my calendar and I've added
cronjobs for the next six months so that
BigBlueButton will probably scale up and down
automatically. I'm so glad Ihor had Jitsi as a
backup. Whoops! Embarrassing… (toot)
The kiddo helped me add composted cow manure to the front garden. We
planted radishes (Scarlet Globe, Easter Egg II Blend) and poppies
(Flemish Antique Peony, Canada Mix, and Purple Peony). (toot)
“BB: I've just finished writing a book, The Final Touchpoint I'd like to
get that out there. There are better and worse ways to handle our aging,
our denial of it, our acceptance, and—as Erik Erikson put it—our
being generative, to produce as much as we can while we can. I'm 98 but
I'm still trying to be generative.”
He died two years after the interview and I don't think The Final
Touchpoint has been published, but it might be interesting to find
similar books.
Time
Category
The other week %
Last week %
Diff %
h/wk
Diff h/wk
Discretionary - Play
1.1
3.8
2.7
6.4
4.5
Discretionary - Productive
21.6
24.2
2.5
40.6
4.3
Sleep
30.6
31.7
1.1
53.3
1.9
Discretionary - Family
0.1
1.0
0.9
1.6
1.5
A+
26.2
26.4
0.3
44.4
0.4
Business
0.6
0.2
-0.4
0.3
-0.7
Unpaid work
3.6
2.1
-1.5
3.5
-2.5
Personal
16.1
10.6
-5.6
17.8
-9.4
More writing and drawing this week, which was
nice. I still haven't gotten around to figuring
out how to squeeze those front-end consulting
requests in, since they take a fair bit of context
and concentration. It's okay.
