Which is awesome. This gives me an excuse to squee about one of my nerd-passions, and have a legitimate reason to do it. Not only is this one of the games that got me into RPGs to begin with, but it remains my favorite Final Fantasy, and in fact one of my all time favorite games. Period.
(Had to make a new version because tumblr messed with the gif on the original and won’t let me edit my own posts…)
As a spoonie witch, using magic to help regain my mental and physical energy has been extremely helpful. I decided to compile some resources to make life easier!
my mental health feels like that one roller coaster that used to be at seaworld in san antonio and it didn’t have any like, trick, it was just a bunch of humps over and over again? it was called the screamin’ eel or something like that, i don’t quite remember. it had one huge drop from like thirty stories or something and then the rest was a bit boring to a coaster fiend like me. where are the loops, the twists, the spirals?
well, actually, my brain coaster has spirals too so maybe i should end this metaphor.
it’s slowly easing back into the season of drear and rain, and with it comes a new sense of urgency to finish my outside projects before i am physically unable to do manual labour. i can’t remember if i’ve mentioned it, but despite loving cold weather, i have some kind of issue where my hands and feet go numb after only a few minutes if it’s below 70F or so, making it very painful to do work in the cooler months and especially in the winter. most gloves or thick socks do not help. heated gloves are a bit better, but they are cumbersome and i am the kind of person who really relies on tactile sensation when working with my hands.
anyway. it’s something i’ve just accepted, but it also means that i have to try and get all my outside projects done in summer before i am quite literally unable to make any meaningful progress on them. combine them with my workaholic nature and well.
i’m burnt out.
i’m not going into it too deeply because the circumstances the boil down to said burnout are for my therapist to know, not my tumblr blog, but it’s affecting me pretty badly lately. i am very tired and frustrated and it’s making it hard to do much of anything, much less farm chores. but they need to get done so i will, but it’s like pulling teeth. good thing i’m more stubborn than a mule.
on the animal front we’re doing well. i’ve got plenty of baby bunnies with more on the way in the next couple of days, and i made a little road trip to pick up a new rex buck that i am very excited out. and yes, i did remember to tell his breeder to give me some transition food. i am done dealing with force feeding rabbits and out of nowhere deaths.
he is a handsome wideband amber who carries e (either tort or harlequin) and he will make some lovely babies with my tri girls :)
on the bird front, everyone is well. my partner is almost done building the second movable coop, and there’s only (checks list) three more left to make (maybe. burnout may change that.) the girls have started slowing down on the eggs and both my fridge and my time management are thankful. i was hoping i’d have a lot more opportunity to sell eggs this year but unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way, and so far i haven’t had a ton of luck trying to sell chicks. or any of the ducklings we have running around still. i’m not sure if i want to raise them up for meat, though, since most of them are muscovies who are NOTORIOUSLY slow growers, so i’m kind of at a loss for what to do.
at least the turkeys are well. the older royal palm is starting to get real feathers now, and the narragansett, blue slate, and chocolate are nearly old enough to leave the brooder as well. i am excited to see them grow and turn into actual turkey-shaped things instead of vaguely hunched over chickens. i have no real opinion of turkeys yet, since i have not experienced them in their adult forms, but so far i do like them. they are cute, and despite the fact that a bag of rocks generates more electricity than their brains do, they are delightfully easy to brood after my duckling fiascos.
well it’s about to rain and i don’t want to have to walk around the pasture and get wet, so i guess i’ll go. here’s to hoping september is a little better than august.
i’m writing this at midnight because i know otherwise i won’t be able to. i haven’t been doing well. at least the animals are getting fed, anyway.
the fourth has been haunting me even to today. while things seemed okay the day of, i have since lost four rabbits to related stress and two more that may or may not be related. two of spooky’s kits, including one of my keepers, another rex kit that i was going to sell as a pelt, my mini rex project doe, and another of my keepers, the dam of which i no longer have. in the middle of all this, rats took an entire litter of five out of the nestbox overnight. this weekend i’ve been having to force-feed one of my himi does, knishes, because she’s not eaten in four days and is starting to bloat. one of my fireworks stress does has finally started eating somewhat regularly again, but she’s incredibly thin and i’m still very worried about her.
i’m…tired.
This is on top of all the other things that weigh on me, like the water lines that have been broken all month but despite ordering more line within a week of the bust i still won’t get them til this week at the earlies, and my hen that is in icu because she was being bullied out of food and is now emaciated. or the five turkeys we had die over the last weekend because they were just too stupid to figure out how to eat.
not to mention my own personal struggles, which…well. quarantine is catching up to me. it’s making it difficult to do things, which isn’t exactly where i wanted to be this year after finally getting my ability to function back after obliterating my knee, but here we are. also, my knee still hurts. like, actually a lot, lately. i guess it’s been humid.
in addition to my neighbours so kindly helping me clear out cages, i’ve sold a couple of rabbits that i no longer need. fiver and one of her buck kits went to a couple of folks down in california who are members of my discord channel, and tuned for lean went to a family to be a housepet and occasional stud for a lady and her girlfriend. jimbo is going to go home with AQF, because i no longer need him, because last sunday i went on a road trip to the eastern side of the state to pick up my new herd sire:
his name is ginko, and if i remember correctly, he’s a beveren x new zealand mix (unfortunately i forgot to ask his parentage and birthday when i picked him up, and his previous owner won’t reply to my email.) jimbo had always been a bit of a ‘he’s as good as i could get’, being a small-ish rex/nz cross with small VM marks, but ginko is extremely VM and already a big boy who will fit better with my meat lines.
AQF also brought me a “replacement” for hackeysack, a nicer, older black otter mini rex for the project. she’s only been here a couple of days, so it’s still unknown if she’ll succumb to bloat like everyone else seems intent on doing.
i can’t even really comment on the birds. they’re fine. other than my orpingon hen, i suppose, though she’s plucky and eating well in her solitary pen. the pigeons are able to enjoy a flight pen now that one of the chicken flocks is in the new mobile coop. the last two turkey poults were taught to eat by dripping cherry juice on their food, so i’m glad that i stopped by the thorp food stand on my way back from the desert. did you know that in eastern washington, they have signs that tell you what crops are growing in the fields along the highways? i didn’t, but they do. it’s honestly a bit delightful. according to a friend who lives near spokane, they have christmas lights on the signs in december.
AQF and her roommate visited on thursday and brought over some bucks (and a doe,) for breeding, and hopefully things go better this time. we redid the breedings for spooky and nova, so hopefully replace the litter that nova killed and the keeper kit that the fireworks killed from spooky’s litter. we also re-bred tatties to AQF’s himi buck, and knishes to my dutch buck, though since she’s not wanting to eat i’m not sure if she’ll take. guess we’ll see in august?
i should probably sleep, it’s late, i’m exhausted. i have a full day of trying not to lose my mind tomorrow, and maybe getting some work done. we’ll see. it might just be another day of me pounding through this 800 page book i’ve somehow found myself halfway through over this weekend…
i’m so tired please give me a break and maybe one iota of energy
okay before i complain i’m gonna say, things aren’t bad, farm-wise. i finally got a very anticipated litter from my harlequin rex doe and a friend’s tri buck, and boy those kits are GORGEOUS.
LOOK AT THEM. UgH. i plan on keeping either one of the harlequins, and possibly the little spotty broken in the back depending on its conformation is decent, since it’s, at least markings-wise, very show quality. i also have my two broken black girls due to a gorgeous black buck next week, too.
additionally, the same friend who owns the sire of all these litters brought me a girl (ok, i paid for her, but still,) in the form of yet another himalayan doe, who i am pretty sure i will name Knishes. so really, the farm is doing well. the babies are growing good and fat, and i am dreading cull day in a couple of months when i have somewhere in the realm of twenty-five rabbits that need going.
oh well, that's’ for future me to worry about.
(she looks huge but in reality my friend is just very small. like five foot nothing small. himis are only max 4lbs :p)
i also have been working on building cage racks for the rabbits, now that my trays have arrived and i can finally get the barn wrangled in. i also additionally received my replacement parts for my water line system, and after some finagling and substituting (i received no instructions or notes on what anything was made of, so we had to get some pvc couplings to weld it together,) i think i may finally be able to set up the water line of my dreams. unfortunately, we’ve been having quite a lot of rain lately, and one side of the barn is flooding and there’s not much i can do about it until the rain stops and the ground drains out a bit. for now, i’m rewatching avatar: the last airbender and putting together a lotof pvc piping.
now for the bad.
i’m stressed. good lord i’m stressed. with my housemate’s help we have reached my working limit on animals i can care for on my own. the birds are so spread out that it’s exhausting to try and handle them without help, and even with him i find that i tire more easily these days. rabbits i can do all day, because they and their equipment are all in one barn. the birds are all over like a good half-acre of land, and my sad little legs just can’t do that anymore, i guess.
anyway, the stress of my daily chores taking ages and being exhausting, trying to build cages, set up a water line, deal with the dogs, entertain my quarantine friends, and trying to start working again is….well, it’s doing a number on me. my body hurts, i’m exhausted to the point of pain, and i have been very short and unable to focus. fortunately, my husband is on vacation this week and his entire life goal seems to be quality of life improvements, so here’s to hoping something is able to change and i can relax again.
one day. maybe. we aren’t sure.
so far we’ve got stairs on the back patio, a fence around the garden (the geese keep eating my corn and smashing my onions!), and the barn leveled and ready to be racked up whenever i have the energy. we have plans to make new, easier to use chicken coops to consolidate some birds so it’s not a nightmare for me every day during chore time, and we’re training the dogs to kennel outside so we can reclaim our kitchen storage. now i just need to get some pelts going so i can pay off my tab with the friend to has provided me with knishes as well as some hides, be able to afford a new pet (stay tuned!), and just generally feel more like i’m contributing again.
well. i need to go eat dinner and take the babies out to mom and get some more cages put together and hope my hips don’t blow up again. ciao for now.
