Random Friday-afternoon stuff:

I am trying to get better at saying "no" to things. It will keep me from wearing out. But why do I feel so guilty when I say "No, I have plans already." or "No, I don't have time." I was asked to do something that, had I had more time, I would have gladly said yes to. But I only got the request this morning for something that needed to be done by noon.

I can tell I'm beginning to get stressed out again. I am wanting to order yarn and I am wanting to start fifteen different new projects. I am trying to prevent myself from doing so.

I had one tomato I was babying along - a perfectly formed, large, pink tomato that was destined (so I thought) to be a broiled tomato in my dinner either tonight or tomorrow night. I went to look at it this morning and it was GONE. Just gone. There were no seeds, there was no pulp, there was no half-eaten tomato lying anywhere. I suppose one of the local opossums or raccoons took it. I'm ticked, but actually not as ticked as I'd've been if I had seen it on the ground with one bite out of it and a trail of ants leading into the bite. But I'm still sad. I'm almost ready to give up on gardening here - I never get more than a few pathetic tomatoes, and they're not worth what I'm putting in to them in the cost of watering.

And when I went home for lunch, I found myself craving one of the most regressive comfort foods I know: a piece of bread, buttered, with sugar on it. Yes, butter, and rather thick, and white sugar at that. It was one of those rare-treat things when I was a kid - something administered after a particularly painful trip to the doctor for vaccinations, or when some kind of major disappointment had been weathered. Or, I remember eating it one time at a restaurant my grandmother took my family out to where there was nothing on the menu I liked, so my mom took a slice of the bread and buttered it and dumped a sachet or two of sugar on it. (And it's funny - I also remember the fancy ceiling in the place, it was one of those where fabric was pleated or ruched or whatever to the central peak - it was like a domed ceiling. But I don't remember much else about the place. I was probably about six.).

So I made myself a piece of bread and butter and sugar. (I know, some of you are probably gagging, and some of you are probably going "I can't believe your parents fed you that - that borders on CHILD ABUSE!!" and some of you are nodding and going "see, that's why you're fat - you were taught, falsely, early on that food eases pain." And you know, you're entitled to those opinions, but I don't want to hear them). It was good. I will say, in my defense, that it was spelt/flaxseed bread and I used that Smart Balance super-de-duper Omega three that supposedly cleanses your arteries margarine thing instead of butter. I also had a peach and some yogurt and a few peanuts for lunch. And a cup of tea, so it was at least a marginally balanced lunch.

And I need to clean my house sometime. Enough paper has accumulated around and about various places, and my long shed hairs are forming dust bunnies in the corners of the bathroom floor. I despair of actually doing it - the thought of starting to clean makes me tired, but once I start it's okay. (One of the perks of living alone, I guess, is that you are the only one who says when the house is too dirty and needs cleaning.). Most of the paper is copies of journal articles that I could file, or could take over to the giant amorphous file that is my office. (You think I'm joking. You have not seen my office. There are amoeba-like stacks of paper everywhere).

And I badly need to go grocery shopping - I think I have one more meal's worth of decent food in the fridge but after that, no. I guess it's an early morning Wal-Mart trip tomorrow (nothing, but nothing, can make me go on a Friday afternoon).

And I'm reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" for my book club. I'm about 120 pages from the end. And I'm thinking, "Come ON, Owen, just die already. This is what the whole damn book has been telegraphing the whole time. Oh, John, shut up. Okay, okay, so you hate the U.S. and you think all of us are stupid. Great, wonderful. And you hate reading newspapers but you still buy them. Just shut up and tell me about Owen dying so I can start reading something by Jane Austen or one of the Mma Ramotswe books."

In other words, I'm cranky and tired. And I'm sort of lonely. I get almost like cabin fever when it's hot out. Reverse cabin fever - I feel trapped in my house because it's too hot to go do anything. And doubly trapped because I balk at driving any more than I absolutely have to with gas as expensive as it is (I know, I know - people in Canada and Europe have been paying way more for gas for years. But lots of people in Europe live in neat charming towns with good public transportation and everything they need within a close distance of them, and I live here out in the not-quite-High Lonesome, where it's a half-hour to anything more than a Wal-Mart or a Sav-A-Lot grocery store [I'm sorry, but a grocery store that uses the fact that it has limited selection as an advertising point just BOTHERS me.]. And a half-hour back.). I'll adapt, eventually. And maybe we'll get something more here, if it keeps being miserably expensive to drive anywhere (and well we should have more: I've been told we used to have a J.C. Penney's, and a Ben Franklin's, and all kinds of haberdashery and dry-goods type stores. But of course, when the mall opened down south and people stopped seeing the point of shopping locally...We do still have a few antiques places and a rather expensive women's boutique, and a Merle Norman I guess, but not a whole lot else.)