Murder Hornets

I wrote about the search for a Murder Hornet nest close to Vancouver a while back, and about how they were going about it. They were catching Hornets and attaching tiny tracking devices. Well…the biologists found the nest just outside of Blaine, Washington and right beside the Canadian/U.S. border. Above is a photo of them. As if Covid-19 weren’t enough, we have Murder Hornets.

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I feel like a dog who’s pissed on everything now, marking my territory. I moved into this house and I added the porch to the house, but otherwise I did nothing. I left everything as it was and just loaded in my furniture; I was focused on the landscaping until this painting started. But now my mark is everywhere.

Besides painting, I cleaned and oiled all my furniture. It’s all Mahogany and now it shines. I tidied up drawers and cupboards, vacuumed every square centimeter, re-attached wall trim, decluttered surfaces, fixed things that were broken and replaced missing or damaged switches, handles and pulls.

Now I get to relax and enjoy it all. Actually, I’ll be moving on to finishing the curtains in the studio and tidying up in there.

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Watching the documentary about stuttering on Kanopy had a huge impact upon me. (Old school here; still can’t use “impact” as a verb.)

When I awoke unable to speak and semi-paralyzed from the waist up, I went to the hospital. The diagnosis was C-PTSD. My problem was psychological; only my symptoms were physical. My treatment was psychiatric.

Essentially, I over-respond to stimuli in my environment. That’s why I want to live in silent solitude, away from triggers (noise, too much activity, bright lights, speed, things people say or do; an infinity of things). My treatment involved helping me to adapt to life with the symptoms by understanding their cause, effect and management techniques.

I have been referring to myself as a stutterer for well over four years. I needed a simple clean way to explain my speech. When asked about my speech, I did not want to get into the C-PTSD diagnosis, its cause and effect. Saying I was a pws was easy. In two words, I could answer the question and move on. It was a tool and it worked. 

However, I didn’t really consider myself a pws. I considered myself a person with C-PTSD who had a speech, seizure limbic motor disorders. But then I watched the doc and I had that wonderful, optimistic and uplifting “these are my people” feeling.

I thought pws stuttered all the time; I had a lot of misconceptions about stuttering. And the primary concern of support groups is children who stutter. I’ve been on my own. But no more!

I’m registered for the Annual Conference of the Canadian Stuttering Association that starts on November 6th. I’m really excited! It’s three days long and there’s one stream for children and their families and another for adults.

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Sheba goes in for a haircut this morning, and I’ll do some shopping while she’s being cut, then I’ll come home to finish the painting. And what a way to end it: Painting miles in the air. And just in time for four days of sunshine and mild temperatures. Hooray!

Today’s paint requires shutting down my computer and disconnecting all the wires that lead to my router and phones, alarm and printer etc., so I’ve got little stickers on wires and plugs so that I know how to reassemble everything.