Vacation

vacation

So I took this week off, as I almost always do. I managed to get some sleep. I took a box of stuff to be donated (really need to get more out of here but I got one box and that's better than none). I got someone in to repair water damage in the living room from a storm in 2021 (that was complicated because I had to fight with the worthless roofing company for a while first). I tried to make one long-delayed medical appointment through a form on a website. No response, ever, but I tried. I did make another appointment for something a lot less tense. I got a new rug for the living room and got that in place with a pad (did not expect that to be so much of a pain). And I read a book! A real book, with pages and on paper! Instead of just mindlessly scrolling without interruption! So yeah, I can blame work for the not reading thing, too. Apparently I still will if I have some fucking energy left.

I just really need to list all that off somewhere because it doesn't feel like I did enough or slept enough or rested enough and I do not know how I will make myself go back to work on Monday.

[ID: youtube comment from Hal Sawyer:

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word “the” used in phrases like: “the more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or “the bigger they come, the harder they fall”. This “the” is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English “þā”, pronounced “tha” which means either “when” or “then”. Back in early Middle English the structure “if - then” had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said “þā whatever, þā whatever”, meaning “when such-and- such, then such-and-such”. “þā” sounds almost the same as “the” and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. “the more, the merrier” literally means “when more, then merrier” or “if more, then merrier’; same as centuries ago.

end ID]

this is so cool

Being on tumblr is like being a raccoon. I dig through the garbage for shiny things I like. Sometimes I find good things to share with my friends. Sometimes I find something horrifying, and also share it with my friends.

Exotic bird enjoying the birdbath

flail

Maybe getting off work and sitting in front of a different computer and scrolling mindlessly is the same as when our parents (mine, anyway) came home from work and sat and stared mindlessly at a bunch of nothing and empty noise on the TV. But if it isn't it worries me and makes me think my brain has broken and I can't pay attention to anything any more, and so I decided to start crocheting and to make myself learn to knit.

I don't enjoy either one of these things. I think I particularly don't like crochet, for a number of reasons, but I am sure I can learn to particularly not like knitting, too, if I ever get started with it.

A few years ago I did some needlefelting for somewhat different reasons and quickly discovered that the problem with making things is that you end up with piles of things taking up space unless you can find a way to get rid of them, and not that many people really need cute little needlefelted owls or frogs and I maybe can't bear to let them go very much. (Add making a needlefelted frog to the list of things I want to do to prove I can still *do* something, but that has to come after finishing the needlefelted comics character that I started and left to sit when I didn't know what I would do with it).

I had hoped I would find these things meditative and that they would quiet me and help me sleep at night, but they just bore me. I have found them all much less appealing than sitting in front of the computer scrolling mindlessly.

And it's worse when I have a few days off in a row and start to feel human again and think of things I can do and want to do and maybe even start planning, and then I go back to work and in 24 to 36 hours I am back to a mindless scrolling blob of tired.

I am now about halfway through crocheting a very vivid ugly hat.

There's always a lot of joking around about how Coke used to have actual cocaine in it but I don't feel like anyone pays enough attention to the fact that 7-Up had lithium in it until 1948 and honestly I think we'd do better to put that back.