Butchery and The Daily Breakup: prioritization
The butcher came yesterday. He slaughtered five pigs, one of which was a foundation herd sow Rapunzel, another of which was Friendly, and then three littler ones. When he came originally a couple months ago the pigs were mostly smaller; I hadn't considered that the delay in finishing the job would result in a lot more meat.
Well, it did.
I was running flat out from 6am until 8 or so. Meat comes off the body hot and you can't dump a lot of it right into a freezer that way: it will bring down the temperature of the freezer fast, and it is also super insulative so where it lies against itself it won't cool down. The temperature of the meat needs to be brought down pretty quick after slaughter, though. Long story short, I was slamming a lot of meat through the vacuum sealer -- both vacuum sealers, since my good chamber sealer is too small to take the primals -- and dumping them in the bathtub. First I ran cold well water through them several times to dump a bunch of heat, then Josh arrived and we tossed a ton of ice on it.
Tomorrow (I guess today, I woke up to write this and add ice to the bathtub and will be going back to bed shortly) the goal is to get the stuff in the bathtub cut down further -- basically take out bones and go from primals or subprimals to actual cuts. Once it's in actual cuts it can go into the freezer slowly, a layer at a time so it freezes. Then the primals loosely set into the freezer and wrapped in garbage bags (from the point in the butcher when I didn't have time to cut everything down small enough for even the larger vacuum sealer) can come into coolers, thaw, and be processed.
During this whole time the house smells like a ramen restaurant: lard will be rendering in crock pots, bones will be cooking down into stock.
I traded some layer ducks for part of the butcher fee, and I'm trading some meat away for some laying chickens. It was a solid day. It was really nice to have Josh show up a couple hours after the butcher left and help-- my side was acting up, and the moral/decision support is always huge. There were no big emergencies that has to be handled, it was just a lot of plugging away at the work. I really appreciated that.
The weather has shifted to a gentle rain that was due yesterday. It didn't materialize during the slaughter, which is excellent, and it also is now keeping it nice and cool out so that when the stove and crock pots are running I'll be grateful for their heat.
On the other hand, Tucker offered to chat with me again yesterday and again didn't show. I was reasonably busy, he said it was because he a) didn't realize the wifi had reset and b) got sucked into doing con stuff, either of which sure, it happens, and I kind of just shrugged and kept doing pork stuff. It is a useful data point though and I sent him a note saying, essentially, that I'm using this data as a calibration point for whatever happens in the future. I spend a tremendous amount of effort trying to make sure I show up when I've said I would and I'm not interested in that so much going forward.
Realistically I developed skills around showing up when I said I would because it was hard on my partners when I got swept up in things. It led to a lot less promising my time away, which was hard, but it felt kinder to do it that way than to be optimistic about my capabilities. It's not something I am going to let myself backslide on; I'm not going to unlearn this skill. What I am going to do is stop promising Tucker time; if I'm around them I'm around but I'm damned if I'm wasting my time going out of my way to get stood up again after twice in one week.
It'll be hard because of course I want to spend time with him, but. That's what a breakup is. It's hard because you want the thing and you can't have it. I honestly feel like a bit of an idiot for trusting him the second time. This is a note to myself in the future: Greenie, do not let yourself feel like the bad actor in this one. Sure he has reasons but trust needs to be rebuilt, it can't just be reasoned away. Literally you should expect what you repeatedly see.
But anyhow, some messages back and forth a little bit last night and then I sent the "hey, I'm using this data" message last night after I'd had a chance to think about it. And then...
...this morning I get a "Sarah's metamour is jealous, this may have bad effects on my relationship with her, I'm so distraught, just a heads up so you know if I'm emotionally weird" message. And honestly my first thought isn't "that sounds rough" but is "he doesn't want to make time to hear about my issues and emotions when he's away, but he's happy to do it to her". That's... not great. It's information. And the information is that I'm not getting what I want.
I'm not getting what I want enough that I can't compassionately connect with the suffering of someone. I'm not getting what I want despite the lovely talk we had the other day. I'm running on empty. And that's not sustainable in any way.
I want and deserve a situation where I can be my best self, or at least a decent self, in this. I want a situation where my immediate response is to feel bad for my partners when something goes wrong. I want to be able to wish with all my being that things will go well for them with their other partners. Usually I at least wish that even if there is also some jealousy, or more usually/ideally some information from my feelings on how to better get what I need from that relationship.
With him I'm not that person. I think that's the worst part of this. I can handle my feelings being hurt, I'm pretty good at communicating around issues and setting up ways to handle them. I do not like staying in a situation where I become a bad person, someone I wouldn't be comfortable dating.
It's such a rollercoaster. Things go well and I want to stay. Things go poorly and I want to wash my hands of it. Normally I handle this by cutting off significant contact for awhile once I've made the decision; it gives me time to set new routines, find new folks to rely on, and stop second-guessing myself. I've so far decided not to do that here: we're both living in Fort and honestly I'd like to keep the closeness and physical contact at least as long as we live here together.
So I write this out, so much. I write so I can read it later, so on the upswing I see the downswing and vice versa. I write to anchor myself in the larger context.
And so far the larger context is: he can come through, but he's not reliable. He does what he wants and he's not self-aware around it to let me know; he does what he wants and my emotional well-being is not a throughline in his behaviour. He can be nice or good in chunks, but he can't be consistently considerate or kind. He doesn't have a sense of relationship context. He is reactive rather than proactive in relationship, that's probably the biggest one.
It's not to say he's not helpful. It's not to say you can't have good things with him. But he doesn't think ahead, figure out what he wants, and act consistently to create that thing.
That's a good insight. He's reactive rather than proactive. He responds rather than builds.
I'm a builder.
Oh, Greenie, this is so hard. We've had some anger and now we have that tired, defeated feeling where relationships feel like so much work and just not worth it. We're in the part where we feel like all relationships have to be like this. They do not.
It doesn't have to be like this. Go back to bed, talk to Josh in the morning-morning, talk to your counselor on Wednesday, talk to Nicholas and Kelsey and your other talky people. Make time to hang out with folks in Fort you like but don't normally see next week. You are loved. There are people who make time for you. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now the world is full of wonderful folks. You've never doubted that before, outside of breakup space and the weird plague/facebook only time.
It's gonna be ok. It's just hard right now.
And the time with Josh is already fun. You can make him eggs hollandaise in the morning and talk through butchery strategies. Good call on keeping the Danforth butchery book out of boxes when the chimney got packed up. Also there's some tomato trial-testing, some apple leather making (thanks yarrowkat!), maybe some box flattening, some experimental cooking (dan dan noodles and mapo tofu at least), maybe moving the birdsheds, likely harvesting grain and spreading it to dry, likely pickling.
These things are my world and I like sharing them. I like the dynamic where I know not to expect from him so I can relax into the joy instead of having to protect myself.
Well, it did.
I was running flat out from 6am until 8 or so. Meat comes off the body hot and you can't dump a lot of it right into a freezer that way: it will bring down the temperature of the freezer fast, and it is also super insulative so where it lies against itself it won't cool down. The temperature of the meat needs to be brought down pretty quick after slaughter, though. Long story short, I was slamming a lot of meat through the vacuum sealer -- both vacuum sealers, since my good chamber sealer is too small to take the primals -- and dumping them in the bathtub. First I ran cold well water through them several times to dump a bunch of heat, then Josh arrived and we tossed a ton of ice on it.
Tomorrow (I guess today, I woke up to write this and add ice to the bathtub and will be going back to bed shortly) the goal is to get the stuff in the bathtub cut down further -- basically take out bones and go from primals or subprimals to actual cuts. Once it's in actual cuts it can go into the freezer slowly, a layer at a time so it freezes. Then the primals loosely set into the freezer and wrapped in garbage bags (from the point in the butcher when I didn't have time to cut everything down small enough for even the larger vacuum sealer) can come into coolers, thaw, and be processed.
During this whole time the house smells like a ramen restaurant: lard will be rendering in crock pots, bones will be cooking down into stock.
I traded some layer ducks for part of the butcher fee, and I'm trading some meat away for some laying chickens. It was a solid day. It was really nice to have Josh show up a couple hours after the butcher left and help-- my side was acting up, and the moral/decision support is always huge. There were no big emergencies that has to be handled, it was just a lot of plugging away at the work. I really appreciated that.
The weather has shifted to a gentle rain that was due yesterday. It didn't materialize during the slaughter, which is excellent, and it also is now keeping it nice and cool out so that when the stove and crock pots are running I'll be grateful for their heat.
On the other hand, Tucker offered to chat with me again yesterday and again didn't show. I was reasonably busy, he said it was because he a) didn't realize the wifi had reset and b) got sucked into doing con stuff, either of which sure, it happens, and I kind of just shrugged and kept doing pork stuff. It is a useful data point though and I sent him a note saying, essentially, that I'm using this data as a calibration point for whatever happens in the future. I spend a tremendous amount of effort trying to make sure I show up when I've said I would and I'm not interested in that so much going forward.
Realistically I developed skills around showing up when I said I would because it was hard on my partners when I got swept up in things. It led to a lot less promising my time away, which was hard, but it felt kinder to do it that way than to be optimistic about my capabilities. It's not something I am going to let myself backslide on; I'm not going to unlearn this skill. What I am going to do is stop promising Tucker time; if I'm around them I'm around but I'm damned if I'm wasting my time going out of my way to get stood up again after twice in one week.
It'll be hard because of course I want to spend time with him, but. That's what a breakup is. It's hard because you want the thing and you can't have it. I honestly feel like a bit of an idiot for trusting him the second time. This is a note to myself in the future: Greenie, do not let yourself feel like the bad actor in this one. Sure he has reasons but trust needs to be rebuilt, it can't just be reasoned away. Literally you should expect what you repeatedly see.
But anyhow, some messages back and forth a little bit last night and then I sent the "hey, I'm using this data" message last night after I'd had a chance to think about it. And then...
...this morning I get a "Sarah's metamour is jealous, this may have bad effects on my relationship with her, I'm so distraught, just a heads up so you know if I'm emotionally weird" message. And honestly my first thought isn't "that sounds rough" but is "he doesn't want to make time to hear about my issues and emotions when he's away, but he's happy to do it to her". That's... not great. It's information. And the information is that I'm not getting what I want.
I'm not getting what I want enough that I can't compassionately connect with the suffering of someone. I'm not getting what I want despite the lovely talk we had the other day. I'm running on empty. And that's not sustainable in any way.
I want and deserve a situation where I can be my best self, or at least a decent self, in this. I want a situation where my immediate response is to feel bad for my partners when something goes wrong. I want to be able to wish with all my being that things will go well for them with their other partners. Usually I at least wish that even if there is also some jealousy, or more usually/ideally some information from my feelings on how to better get what I need from that relationship.
With him I'm not that person. I think that's the worst part of this. I can handle my feelings being hurt, I'm pretty good at communicating around issues and setting up ways to handle them. I do not like staying in a situation where I become a bad person, someone I wouldn't be comfortable dating.
It's such a rollercoaster. Things go well and I want to stay. Things go poorly and I want to wash my hands of it. Normally I handle this by cutting off significant contact for awhile once I've made the decision; it gives me time to set new routines, find new folks to rely on, and stop second-guessing myself. I've so far decided not to do that here: we're both living in Fort and honestly I'd like to keep the closeness and physical contact at least as long as we live here together.
So I write this out, so much. I write so I can read it later, so on the upswing I see the downswing and vice versa. I write to anchor myself in the larger context.
And so far the larger context is: he can come through, but he's not reliable. He does what he wants and he's not self-aware around it to let me know; he does what he wants and my emotional well-being is not a throughline in his behaviour. He can be nice or good in chunks, but he can't be consistently considerate or kind. He doesn't have a sense of relationship context. He is reactive rather than proactive in relationship, that's probably the biggest one.
It's not to say he's not helpful. It's not to say you can't have good things with him. But he doesn't think ahead, figure out what he wants, and act consistently to create that thing.
That's a good insight. He's reactive rather than proactive. He responds rather than builds.
I'm a builder.
Oh, Greenie, this is so hard. We've had some anger and now we have that tired, defeated feeling where relationships feel like so much work and just not worth it. We're in the part where we feel like all relationships have to be like this. They do not.
It doesn't have to be like this. Go back to bed, talk to Josh in the morning-morning, talk to your counselor on Wednesday, talk to Nicholas and Kelsey and your other talky people. Make time to hang out with folks in Fort you like but don't normally see next week. You are loved. There are people who make time for you. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now the world is full of wonderful folks. You've never doubted that before, outside of breakup space and the weird plague/facebook only time.
It's gonna be ok. It's just hard right now.
And the time with Josh is already fun. You can make him eggs hollandaise in the morning and talk through butchery strategies. Good call on keeping the Danforth butchery book out of boxes when the chimney got packed up. Also there's some tomato trial-testing, some apple leather making (thanks yarrowkat!), maybe some box flattening, some experimental cooking (dan dan noodles and mapo tofu at least), maybe moving the birdsheds, likely harvesting grain and spreading it to dry, likely pickling.
These things are my world and I like sharing them. I like the dynamic where I know not to expect from him so I can relax into the joy instead of having to protect myself.