Silent in the Face of Panic and Heartbreak

I attended Unitarian Universalist service today for the first time. I rode in early with a choir member so she could attend rehearsal.

Sitting nervously in the corridor-side edge of a pew, unwilling to trap myself in the middle of one of the long benches, I curled quietly. In waves, I felt exposed. As the people gradually filtered in, the edge of panic at the potential for judgement and the eyes of strangers flickered up, threatening, and ebbing down, and rising up again. I tied part of a macrame bracelet, pinned to my backpack, set on my knee, and turned my eyes down and set my fingers working in their fidgeting work when the anxiety rose, as a way to curl in.

Fearing that others may try to ask me questions I felt I would not be able to answer, but only burst into tears at my own inability, I had the forethought to take my pocket notebook out shortly before service ended and write clearly: "I'M SORRY - I'M NOT FEELING ABLE TO TALK RIGHT NOW."

The one person I handed this notebook to as answer to their greeting questions about whether I had enjoyed the service nodded and took a half-step back immediately on comprehending the words. I did have a bit of trouble finding routes to move around people engaged in conversation, scattered here and there in aisles and in the party area downstairs.

Downstairs for tea and coffee, at the table for writing nametags, I wrote my chosen name, and stood for a long indecisive time with a marker of a second color in my hand, trying to find a way to express succinctly enough for a nametag what I wished be known. I settled for "MAY MIGHT NOT SPEAK", which seemed to serve well enough. Those people speaking to me caught sight of it if I just angled a bit, and then spoke without expecting me to answer in words. One kind lady for instance first asked if I was looking for something, and then upon seeing it, told me where the coffee and tea was. Coffee was, indeed, what I had been looking for, and I was at first looking at the wrong table.

I summoned my nerve to speak when the lady who had led most of the service stepped near. I thought I had already missed my opportunity, or perhaps ought to wait and see more of her manner on another visit first. But being brought so close by chance, I attracted her attention, speaking softly and shy, and asked, given her mentioning a love of collecting all sorts of Christmas music, whether she'd added the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society versions to her collection yet. It seems my recommendation was welcomed with some delight. It brings a smile to my face to remember in order to relate it.

Throughout the service, while panic flickered and was soothed in waves like a tide, as my developed instinct to be averse to ritualized group ceremonies (as they strengthen ties that often lead to groupthink) rose and railed as the people chanted their sacrament, rose and sat, sang, held hands to sway together, and made arches with arms for young ones to pass under. I might have wished to join in better, but the rhythm of the service was unfamiliar to me; still deeply associated with traditions that rankle my thoughts; some of the songs unknown; and as well, had I wished to sing, my voice, I feared, would have croaked and shrilled with sobbing.

I joined in singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in a deep register and some softness, though tears streamed from my eyes. I stood to go and light two candles when the time was called to do so, although with a fear in me that this was something meant to be arranged beforehand or paid for. It seems it was not, though.

Sometimes, it was not really fear that insulated me from the warmth and welcome of the friendly people at the chapel, nor perhaps even my old accustomed sense of distance and barrier from people who are being happy, relaxed people together. It was heartbreak, still thick upon me like dust or fiberglass. Heartbreak, which renders its host profoundly alone although they may be in a crowd of recognized friends.

And so I lived for a time on the edge of panic and in the thickness of heartbreak, and sat crying. And I wished I could have told someone, through my silence, through my sense of isolation, and the intent of the assembled congregation, I know. I know and I need, for this time, to live on the edge of panic and in the thick of heartbreak, and to cry and endure and sit with my tears on my breast.

And so I have, and so I do. I will cry until my crying runs out and is not replenished by water and salt and sleep.

I have been struggling with the question of how much to let go.

Grim November

It has been some time, and so I will explain.

Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.

Too much responsibility was placed on me.

There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.

I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.

Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.

But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.

I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.

And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.

Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.

And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.

We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.

Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.

I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.

I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.

And that is how it went.

Claustrophobic Dreams

"Oh." I came into my room, thought to do some gaming, but realized that I would prefer to just lay down and be still for a bit. Contemplate. Let things surface. Perhaps sleep if it happened, but not make a point of it.

When I lay down on my back and put my arms down at my sides, I thought of morgue drawers, and the idea of being put into a CAT scan, in a metal tubular place with no easy way to get out, and a stricture against moving.

I think, if I ever need to have such a scan done to me, I will need to plead with the doctors to give me something to relax me, to draw me down out of or prevent the rising of a panic attack.

And next I remembered a dream. I think it must have been a dream I had last night, but amidst headache and waking I forgot it completely, until I laid back down. A dream of exploring big metal pipes, like a tunnel to a secret place in Morrowind or something. But they were full of water. I was in a place where I could find one small pocket from which to breathe, but it was only a few inches from the surface of the water to the ceiling. Enough room for my mouth and nose to be above water, or my eyes, but not both at once. And I think when I realized I would not be able to take a deep enough breath and then kick off with enough speed to endure the swim back out, for there was nothing really in the gradual curve of the pipe to kick off of, I shook my head violently, hoping to move my body enough to wake me and so dispel the dream, as has become a habit of mine in some claustrophobic dreams, and the cloying grip of sleep paralysis when it has me.

I think perhaps it worked... But then I came aware of my headache, and waking was gradual, and the dream was lost. Lying still in my room feeling terror claw at me gently, I wished to forget it again, and realized I feared sleep, although I was tired. So I rose again, and began typing, and typed this.

I feel helpless and shaky; as I usually do, when it comes to claustrophobic dreams. I am not enough of a lucid dreamer at this point to control what dreams I have, and when I remember how frightening they can be, it becomes a very frightening thing to surrender to the possibility of nightmare.

Growing Pains

I am growing stronger. As documented in I Like Being This Person, I have been slowly healing. Although I am currently looking back at a week of tracked project work with the fewest hours since I started, I know and am capable of remembering that having continued to track my time and make my minimum quotas of time, humble though they are, is still an ongoing success, and a strength.

For two days, yesterday and most of the day before, I was down in a slump and lazy, after a sobbing breakdown Tuesday morning. And here I am awake, thinking about priorities, flitting from one thing to another, getting little things done here and then there, rather than getting trapped like a fly on the deadly adhesive thought of how very much there is to do.

It is strange, growing healthier. It feels strange, from the inside. Occasionally dramatic, but pretty much only in reflection or in my emotional extremes, blazing fury or torrential brightness which I worry will all spend itself out and leave me exhausted... and sometimes it does.

It feels strange that largely my improvement seems to be that I have gotten better at sleeping. It almost feels like magic sometimes how noticing my heaviness and excusing myself from my social contexts and going and laying down, no matter how much it feels like I "shouldn't be tired already", leads to my actually being able to sleep within just a few minutes. I don't exactly wake up feeling highly energized very often. I often wish I had someone to help pull me out of bed because lifting my body on my own feels exhausting in a sort of grim, repetitive persistence sort of way. But much of the tired that had been on my shoulders has gone once I can get moving and doing something, if I do something at all rather than just re-watching old YouTube videos.

Most times, I take my laptop with me, because it would bother me and keep me awake being tempted to go and get it so that if I can't sleep, I have it there to do things with. And I close it up and put it next to my bed, and sleep, comfortable enough in the knowledge that if I were to wake restless it would be there for me.

When I am well-rested, and sleeping more or less consistently during the nights and for long enough periods of time, wakefulness becomes different. It is more than once or twice a month that I feel distinctly capable of getting things done. I cook for myself, and while I am cooking, my mind wanders, and it seizes on ideas and desires and strings them together and insists I must write them down, tell my friends, do something to capture the resulting inspiration before it evaporates.

Sometimes it feels like I can't catch my breath and actually follow through on the ongoing project I've committed to, just because I'm so busy catching and coping with other inspirations and ideas for things I want to get done which are oozing out of my ears and eyes and mouth, burbling over and getting all over my face and in my heart so I can't focus.

It is as though my brain has formed a long, long queue of all the many things I have dreamed about while slogging through my days, half-awake; and so on the rare occasions I wake up, my whole workspace becomes covered in petitions to make them real.

I have learned important strategies from Finish It! for coping. I have been putting those things in writing but then putting them aside. I have learned important strategies for keeping going even when I don't feel like it at all. I have put consequences behind my quotas, and it has been working.

My life may be a heavy and clunking machine, sometimes clumsy and very base, but I have been getting some of its motors to stop coughing and dying so much and run sort of smoothly for a few hours at a time. Well, who'd have thought? It's exhausting work, but it can be done. And there's a bunch of neat stuff among the flies and dust being coughed out of this machine now that it's running well enough to actually disgorge some of the ideas which have been stuck in the pipes almost-formed for months.

How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship With Your Dark Side

I was asked for advice by a friend of mine about how to make peace with and come to accept their own darker aspects. Here is what I told them.

Things that I think might help:

• Taking some time to sit down and have a serious discussion about it. If you know someone you can trust with the information, you can tell them what you know, or suspect, about the experiences that caused whatever misshapen-ness or scarring of social and emotional growth your dark side stems from. Talking about the causes of our problems can help us understand and forgive ourselves and each other.

• Finding safe ways to indulge in dark tastes that suit you. Sometimes I love dark metal music and appreciate watching or reading visceral horror media. Guess why. Drawing, writing poetry or fiction, playing harsh music on an instrument or finding some other way to give it symbolic expression can be a way to let the shadows out without hurting anybody.

• Personally, I love going for long walks in the evening or at night and listening to a variety of music including things that are metal, gloomy, express alienation, doubt, pain or experiences of having inner demons, and/or include sound clips from dark situations.
  
  And just letting my mind roll and wander and visualize. Wear the horns and claws, or wings, or open wounds and showing bones and rotting flesh, or the metal parts and eldritch symbols, as part of my shifting self-image. When no-one is around me to hear, sometimes I let myself snarl aloud. Sometimes I sprint just to feel my muscles moving and feel physically powerful and predatory.
  
  That is a way that I use to "walk with my demons", and it helps me feel whole and in touch with the full range of myself.

I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

Idle Months

It has been idle months since I last wrote here. I have been restlessly resting, waiting. The time has finally come. Tomorrow I leave this house. The next day, I leave this country, and perhaps I will never return.

I have been often dejected. This trip to Ireland has felt like a great big mess. I studied well what was little challenge to me - I allowed myself to be reclusive and stick to the company of a couple closest friends for the most part. I have often felt depressed, and struggled to remember what good I am. I have often felt like a failure. I set a time, though, and decided I would let myself be still until it was time to move again. I have at times utterly hated the stillness... but sometimes I have been able to sit still with some serenity and an ephemeral scrap of patience.

I have set myself to rest so that once it was time to move, I would be ready and eager to, and would appreciate the energy and newness. I worry a little and wonder more whether this bid to control the ebbs and flows of my energy and my stillness will actually work. I have never been good at planning and deliberately choosing these things. But then... once upon a time, in the life I grew out of, I think not being good at it was a necessary excuse for resisting the clamour of oppression which would have insisted I do things their way, not a way I could choose for myself.

Those days... are over. I do not need to be helpless in order to excuse disobedience from an unjust authority the same way I needed to once with mother. I believe I have been learning to let it go.

In that, at least, in those ways, self-searching still, digging deeper in trauma and questions of identity and complexity; in those very particular ways I have not been idle, the time has not been wasted. And indeed my closest, dearest friends have been a great resource to me, in listening and tolerating and sometimes understanding.

And so, the silence is broken, for now.

Ireland is over.

Let the next segment now begin.

Resume Confessionals

I know I'm not alone when I get so nervous about my resumes. What is too long, too short, too corporate, too personal, too weird? How can I expect or presume to know the culture of the places I'm looking to work? Some online articles remind me to focus on what my audience will be excited to hear... And my sense of the limits of my own understanding of other peoples' priorities and expectations closes in again. It's tempting to throw up my hands and declare myself helpless...
But I am not willing to give up now.

Quantity over quality... I will put forward the attempt and make these applications even if they must be flawed in ways I struggle to judge as well as ways that will seem obvious in retrospect. This is not the time to fear my own imperfection. I will make changes and refine my practice attempt by attempt.

I will push myself to remember why it is that my friends, and sometimes, when I hear them, even I, believe that I am awesome and will be a great credit to the company who hires me. My courage. My insight. My perseverance. My vision. I will find ways to put them into words that fit on a resume, and I will keep doing this until opportune offers come to light and enable me to build plans around them by which I will find my way.

It's exhausting getting over the ugh. It takes a lot of strength and will to fire up my confidence into the blaze it can be.

I steer by the Stars, who help me and remind me. I need to steer by myself when clouds and circumstance come between us.

Dear Diary: Time To Make A Plan

I came in to the campus just to write a Financial Accounting test today. And I sat it, and finished it, taking about 98 minutes out of what would have been an available 120 I think, although that may have been stretched out from 90.

I walked away from the testing hall with a bit of niggling frustration over trying to remember whether it was IAS 37, 38 or 39 which dealt with events after the reporting period. I've never been good at remembering arbitrary numbers and codes like that. I let it fade gently from my mind, and my thoughts settle on something else.

I need to stop not having a plan.

This morning I told my dear Stars that over the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that it's important I come around to admitting that coming to Ireland was a mistake. "And so I've said it," I told them. And so I have. It was a mistake to come here. It may have been a mistake I needed to make, in the situation I was in, needed to make and then learn from. But it was a mistake. Which is the English human shorthand way to say, I suppose...

I need to stop trying to justify this and figure out how to recover. Write it off, sell it for what scrap I can get for it.

What now?

It's strange how much difference that makes to my perspective, when none of my options have really changed.

Well... If I'm not assuming I have to stay, I need to have a plan to go. Plane tickets, dates, an address of someone who'll let me stay with them for a while when I arrive back in Canada, either for rent or otherwise. All of it flexible, ideally, so that if I do manage to get a paid internship here with a company that'll put me through my next year and offer me a place with them, I can pivot to that.
Huh. Using the word pivot that way on a personal blog makes me sound like a corporate dickhead. Well, not pivot, then. Switch to it. Adjust to land there.

So. Refundable plane tickets. Those exist, I'm pretty sure. How much time do I want to give myself? Couple months? If I don't have an internship set up by mid-June, I don't think I'm likely to get one, so let's say late June maybe. April, exams are in May, June. Alright. I can work with that.

Today while I was walking to the campus, I listened to some episodes of the ACCA student podcast, including one episode on Clever Job Hunting which I listened to more carefully than the others. One of the things it says is about networking - that it's important to build relationships up before bringing up jobs at all.

Well, there's the kick, isn't it? Don't look desperate, ever, especially when you feel desperate. Don't ask people for awkward things. Smile. Shake hands. Talk small. Make friends.

I've never been good at that. I hate feeling like I'm confined to safe, inoffensive subjects. And I'm quick to get annoyed with people's bad habits. I have to admit, though, I get it. Swooping in and expecting the attention of people who don't know what makes me great looks pretentious, entitled. Because it is. I fly around the world, leaving places and people behind me, looking for a break... And then who's there to help me or vouch for me?

Anyway. Book a ticket to leave in June, then. Get through the rest of my classes and exams. Shift emphasis away from menial work for the summer - it seems even mushroom harvesting positions are looking for people who intend to stay longer than a year. Keep throwing out applications as I can bear to for internships, try to learn about companies that might be a gateway for me, here or in Canada. Maybe look into the US a bit, but since I've no claim there and no degree so far, don't expend too much effort on it.

Wrap up the story of the tabletop campaign. Does everything just go to hell because the death of Isabet Carol was only the first sign of things going very, very wrong, and the PCs didn't actually investigate enough to stop it? Sounds plausible, and may offer them enough closure to satisfy. It would be nice to have a tabletop story actually end in a way that feels like an ending for once.

Continue the conversation with Fanshawe and maybe other colleges in Canada, look at continued study... Maybe. I'm tired of going to school, though. Look for work in Canada, yes. If it's something that can get me starting to do work that aligns with my strengths and studies, great. If something that aligns with EA, even better.

Alright. Go and set it up, then, Serp.

A Simple Story

On my way home on Tuesday evening, the pony at the corner of my block was hanging out by the gate, and I noticed the water bin in the paddock was empty. I stopped and held out my hand to be smelled, and managed to get away with petting and neck-scratching the pony for a good long while. I felt kind of bad about seeing it so thirsty, and said "Sorry" as I walked away.
On the short rest of the way to my house, though, I realized there was something I could do.

I checked the backyard and found an old bucket in a stack of things, with mud caked around the bottom, and when I took off the lid, it had mossy water in it - Good; It's water tight, then, and not being used for anything else. Dumped the dirty water, left it there for the moment, and came inside to use the bathroom. Noticed a bucket in the laundry room too, which was much cleaner. Open it - empty! Alright. This gives me more to work with. So I carried the dirty bucket empty through the house and set it on the front lawn without putting it down anywhere, so as to avoid making a mess. Filled the clean bucket at the sink, filled the dirty bucket with it, and filled it again. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 full, the both of them. Put on my puffy gloves in order to avoid hurting my hands on the thin handles, and carried them to the paddock, taking several breaks to rest and stretch my arms.

But when I got there, a big farm truck was pulled up and a fellow was climbing over the gate. I put down my buckets and looked closer - the water bin and feed area had already been filled. Well. Alright. Pony's master has got things under control.

I said nothing to the man, didn't even wave. I suspect he never saw me, being too busy. I dumped out the buckets and brought them back home.

On net, I got in some 'farmer's walk' exercise and both had and executed on a resourceful idea that turned out to have been completely unnecessary.

I figure I'm quite alright with that.