I am in awe of this. I don't even know what to say: Family lives for over 40 years in seclusion Except, maybe, Doomsday Preppers, eat your heart out?

Anddddd.....my former rival is sitting next to me at the library. I have loathed her for years, because the threat of her returning to the man I was with at the time was the primary factor in the degeneration of that relationship, even though she had zero interest in doing so. Now I have to take an introspective look and ask myself....was it her fault, or my own jealousy and insecurity that ruined all that? What a fucking waste of emotion, energy and happiness.

Look out, world: I'm getting Hemerocallis fever again. Apparently it was only in remission before....lol.

Won four games and lost one at chess club tonight. Does the lost game count if I was coaching a beginner along, helping them to play a good game so they wouldn't get discouraged...and then they beat me? At any rate, have to go model soon. I am so happy for the work- it's about time.

Holy shit. Alpacas are delicious! Better than deer or goat, better than elk or lamb, in fact, possibly better than bison or moose. Oh yes: it is that good. If I lived near a livestock auction, I'd buy these up to eat. The last time I went, llamas could hardly be given away...

I *must* find a place to grow crops for market as well as personal use, and need to find this place ASAP. Why not where I'm at? Because...even if it were sunny enough with reliable water, and it's neither of those things...the place is being foreclosed on. My goal is to sell at the farmer's market this year...but it ain't happening from my current site, I can tell you that. Meanwhile, there's a beautiful farm for sale for a very good price...and I'd love to farm it (don't care about owning it, just want my hands in the dirt!) but cheap as it is, I can't afford it and haven't been able to find anyone who can/wants to buy it and lease the land and barn to me.

If only I had remembered to bring my new medicine, none of this would have happened. I feel so sick in all sorts of ways.

I wish that I knew the right things to say, the right things to do, the right ways to feel and act. This is the hardest part of being aspie; no matter how I may agonize and plan in an attempt to not screw up, I do. Or, I panic with the anxiety of doing or saying the wrong things, melt down, and then I've really fucked things up. I just cannot seem to get it right....

But tell me, friends, not friends, people whose designated category I can't get right either: why are you folks so hard to please, when I'm clearly trying as hard as I can? Why do you make social interactions into a cruel game of riddles and unspoken clues and then shun those of us who fumble at it? Is it so hard to meet someone halfway, when that someone is wearing themself thin trying to speak this difficilt and foreign language?

And how do you manage to be so terribly lovable in spite of acting that way, when I try with all my heart, and am forever the cast off?

I had to sleep in town last night. My phone is dead because I forgot the charger at home (duh). My laptop won't connect to wifi for some reason. All of this is because I am a fool and should have stayed home yesterday instead of trying to go to town. It is my own fault...but it still hurts.

Slippers are done. Going to go to sleep now.

Anyway...I got a lot done today:

• Finished spinning and plying three skeins of yarn for my youngest son. He wants a rainbow colored scarf + hat + mitten set. I didn't have enough roving in those colors to make all that, so what I did was to ply each rainbow single with a strand of natural black. So each of the three skeins goes sequentially from violet to magenta to red to orange to yellow to green to blue (several shades of blue of course!) to blue-violet. If I'm careful, the items made from this yarn will preserve this order.
• Set the twist in all the rainbow/dark yarn, two big skeins of Shetland, and a skein of merino in cool tones.
• This merino is also spun in such a way as to change gradually from one color to the next. I think it goes from purple to blue to teal to brown to olive green (feels like I'm missing a color). I could have Navajo plyed it to preserve the color order, but that would reduce the amount of yarn by a third and make it nearly three times as thick- unacceptable. However, it was thin and kind of fragile as merino fiber tends to be (although very soft) so instead I fulled it, which is almost like felting and gives the yarn a lot more strength. Setting twist involves a single dip into very hot water. Fulling involved a dip into boiling water, a drizzle of soap and vigorous massaging, thwacking the skein of yarn against the snow several times, dipping it back into hot water, thwacking on snow again, etc, until the strands of yarn began to stick to one another. The rapid temperature changes, combined with soap and friction, cause the wool fiber to felt/full.
• Then I did almost all the dishes....and trust me, that's an accomplishment when you have to melt the snow into hot water first. Also- found out that the dishes can be pre-washed with snow and my trusty institutional style dish brush! The snow combines water and abrasion. This really saved on dish water, as the good hot water didn't get so dirty.
• What else....minor moving stuff around, bringing firewood in, splitting kindling, that sort of thing.Seems like I did something else...at any rate, I got caught up on all the handspinning, plying, and twist-setting. Now just have to calculate the length of each skein and figure out whether I have enough to make certain items.
• Oh, that's right- the wool slippers. I finished one and am almost done with the other, They're really ugly so I hope that they're at least warm!!! Because...my feet are still cold.

C-c-c-c-cold!!!! My feet are damp and freezing...hurrying and crocheting some warm slippers out of a nice heavy, warm wool/mohair yarn. Can't get these things done fast enough....brrrrr......

Emotionally exhausted. I am tired of trying so hard. Tired of feeling, of hurting. Tired of mentally struggling with stuff. Just tired, tired of coping, of things not working, of being inadequate, of always saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. I don't know what else to say.

Wrote about it in another post which was subsequently moved back to drafts for another reason....but one of my favorite two alpacas died during a time period in which I was already pretty stressed and upset. When one animal dies, it's probably bad luck, but you still want to know why. So when in the course of this mess, I discovered that his lungs were bloody to the point of looking more like livers than lungs, I asked questions and sought advice and found out it was probably pneumonia. When goats get pneumonia, it's fairly obvious in my experience. Alpacas are entirely different. I watched the rest of the herd for the next couple of weeks, made sure they had warm/hot water to drink, hay, etc. They seemed ok. They got out once (the only time they'd ever escaped anything) and got into the feed room and ate some grain from a bag whose bottom had gone moldy. Maybe that's part of why the second one died. When two animals die, it's not bad luck anymore; something is wrong.

I was still reeling from this when a guy came and asked about the "abandoned" alpacas. He apparently thought they were abandoned because the place they're on is for sale. He asked if they were OK and like a fool, I told him about the dead ones and was open to input on solving the problem. He immediately styled himself as a "rescuer" and took over....called the vet out...who, after a careful and thorough assessment of the situation, determined that the cause of death was one of the remaining alpacas, who has been a thorn in my side since day one. He's been chasing the others relentlessly, trying to breed them (all four alpacas were intact males) day and night. He was smaller than the others so I had hoped that eventually someone would put their foot down, but instead, he ran two of them to death, literally. The vet examined him, said that he is dangerous not only to other animals, but also to people and advised me to get the remaining nice alpaca out of there before he got killed, too. The alpaca rescuers drove off with the nice one, saying they'd find him a good home. He was my favorite, so I hope he is well loved wherever he ends up at. That left only the last one to be put down, which was the vet's recommendation. I thought the nightmare was pretty much over....but no.

The alpaca people have been badmouthing me, making shit up out of thin air...for example, saying that the alpacas were running on the road (that never happened) and that they were so emaciated that they should all be put down. The nice one was thin, but it wasn't because he hadn't been fed, it was because he was being chased and stressed all the time. Besides which, the second one that died was huge and not thin- he was the biggest one in the herd. He must have weighed close to 200 pounds. Also, the mean alpaca was in very good flesh, not underweight. So now I've been branded in the alpaca community. They are going to really hate me when they hear that I butchered the last one for meat! I just couldn't see wasting perfectly edible meat...I wasn't happy about having to do it but since he had to die, why not utilize what's there? These alpaca people.....I don't think I ever want to own another alpaca again.

Just realized that I hardly remember what things used to be like before all this craziness. Huh.

My current reading list includes five books by Gene Logsdon. I liked All Flesh is Grass, which is about raising grassfed livestock so well that I checked out some of his other books. This guy is so funny...he really cracks me up while still having very useful things to say. For example, on the topic of public hysteria regarding certain plants or plant parts being poisonous:

For instance, there is enough nicotine, more than enough, in a pack of cigarettes to kill you if you drank it all at once- which is certainly an excellent argument for not smoking. However, one pack of the awful things is not going to kill you even if you inhale every puff.

Sheepy links:

Ideal sheep breeds for orchards

Annika Michelson's info on northern European short-tailed sheep

The wikipedia entry on the topic of these landrace breeds....

North Shed

Tired, cold. Van got stuck downhill when I managed to slide front end first into the ditch near my parking spot. Shoveled, tried all sorts of things to get unstuck, shoveled more, the Schwan man stopped and helped me and we made progress but was still stuck, and then another guy came and pulled me out. Geez!

Anyway, I found an entire banana box full of stuff I couldn't find and was upset about. What kind of stuff? Shetland wool, Icelandic wool, kid mohair yarn, some Irish roses I'd crocheted up to go with the mohair yarn, lots and lots of fiber! It's a bit silly but this put a positive spin on the day. I was not being very successful in avoiding obsessing about where that stuff had gone; had been bugging me for several weeks as I wanted some of the stuff in there to work on projects.

I need to find something to do; work, a job, school, find a place in town that can function as a studio, a place that I can farm.....something. It has gotten to where my boyfriend is my primary happy spot in life, the main thing I look forward to. This isn't healthy and it's an unfair burden for anyone. Have to find a balance, other areas of happiness and gratification. Also, frankly, it's kind of a waste to not do anything with myself. Hopefully that doesn't sound self-centered... :-/