The small comforts

Sometimes you take them where you can get them.

(I had 1/3 of a class fail to hand in a paper due today. And then I walked into the office and saw one of my committee members looking at the packet of one of the other people up for promotion this fall and it made me all twitchy again. I really hope that means I'll be getting a good-news letter in the next few days. Or actually, an any-kind-of-news letter. Like sitting in the dentist's chair or being faced with an unexplained travel delay on the train, it's the anticipation that's really more painful for me than any actual reality).

Anyway. The small comforts. For one thing, I'm choosing my clothes this week to be things that I think of as "emotional armor." I think I've mentioned this before: certain outfits that either feel protective in some way, or that I wore before at a time that had good memories attached to it.

Today, I wore a purple jacket that I made...well, back when I had time to sew some of my own clothes (sigh). It was a Palmer/Pletsch design, which may mean something to the people who sew.



(My face in that picture makes me cringe. I decided not to slap a smiley-face sticker over it on the photo, though, but that's the for-real end-of-the-day look, crazy hair and all.)

I think tomorrow I'm going to wear something that I can wear my Bird's Nest Shawl (the one designed to look like Tibetan prayer flags in the lace pattern - or at least I think it does).

Because I feel like I need emotional armor right now. Even with it, I'm still pretty drained at the end of the day.

Another small comfort - I found my sheepy hot water bottle.



I bought this some years back - I think it was from one of the gifty-type shops in Sherman that, in retrospect, may have been close to going out of business (but it wasn't a going-out-of-business sale). It was a "here's a bunch of crazy stuff that we only have one or two left of, anything you can fit in a paper bag you'll get 40% off on." That's how I got my vintage-style printed tabby cat doorstop, and also a bunch of other items, some of which became gifts. I think I originally intended the sheep as a gift, too, but then one day I pulled a muscle and couldn't find my rice bag, and I used it instead. And then it got tucked away and I only found it again this weekend.

And this is one of those cases where a low-tech thing actually is better (IMHO) than a high-tech version. I never quite trusted heating pads - for one thing, the whole electricity thing (I'd be afraid of going to sleep with one on). And there's the electromagnetic radiation heebie jeebies thing (weren't there a spate of scare-stories, a few years ago, about how you'd get cancer from sleeping under electric blankets? Or they rendered people sterile, or something (not that that last would be such a huge concern of mine; I think the biological-baby ship sailed at least five years ago here))

And rice bags, as nice as they can be - they require heating in a microwave. And they're often too hot when they first come out. And they cool down faster than a covered hot water bottle does. (I've used this one twice now this weekend, and it stays warm much longer than a rice bag does).

And yes, I know: hot water bottles can burst or leak. But this one seems to be extremely sturdy, and the plug on it is good and tight.

And there's just something nice about it. Lying there on the sofa with a sheep hot water bottle on your chest or your stomach when you're cold or achy. It almost works as a pet-substitute.

(I keep thinking: it may be time to cat-proof my house and think about getting a cat. Because I really, really need something else alive (other than the plants), something with a life separate from mine, and something that (hopefully) will at least feign happiness when I come home at the end of the day. I'll have to wait until after Christmas if I do do that though, and think on it more, because being gone for 20 days or so at Christmas would not be good shortly after obtaining a cat, and my plans for travel are already made.)