This and that

I'm in my office, procrastinating/picking away at work. (There are things I could work on but nothing urgent).

I tried to get duckweed for a "new lab tryout" today. Couldn't find it where my colleague said he had seen some. Scrambled down over a bunch of steep banks, in the not-so-good part of town, listening nervously to the barking dogs ("Do they sound like they're getting closer, or are they tied up in a yard?") and also expecting someone to confront me because I had no idea if I was on private or city property.

I finally gave up. I do have another lab set up that we can do tomorrow. And now my bad hip (the one I had bursitis in this spring) is hurting again. Ugh.

****

So, in my procrastination, I searched around, based on what I was talking about the other night. Scholastic Books still has book clubs. No idea if they still have the little long rectangular newsprint order forms like they had when I was a kid in the 1970s, but it makes me happy to know they still exist.

Being able to order books at school was a big deal. For one thing, it was books. I always loved getting and having books of my own. (Even though we went to the library weekly). And then there was the aspect of getting something in the "mail" - something I still love to this very day. (Part of the reason I buy so much stuff - a lot of it which I don't really "need*", and I admit that - through mail order is that it's such a cheering thing to come home at the end of the day and find something I ordered waiting for me on the doorstep)

(*for example, I am quite sure I've reached SABLE** but I still keep wanting to order more yarn)

(**Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy, for those unfamiliar with knitter's acronyms)

***
And they still do book fairs.

And RIF still exists.

Good to know.

***

Right now I'm feeling a little sad and Eleanor Rigby. I get this way sometimes. On the one hand: I'm really not that good at the interpersonal-relationship thing. And it's hard for me to reach out - I partly joke (but partly state in bitter earnestness) that I experienced sufficient rejection from my peers between the ages of 6 and 12 to want to avoid ever experiencing it again. And early patterns are hard to break - I know intellectually "There is no good reason for one of your peers to rudely rebuff you, and even if they do, that tells you more about them than it does about you" but emotionally it's surprisingly difficult to break through that.

And you hear horror stories...a friendly acquaintance was broken up with in a very cowardly and lily-livered way (At least he didn't drain a shared bank account or anything dastardly...just packed his stuff and slunk off, leaving a note for her). And even otherwise-happy couples get into arguments, and you're there witnessing it, and if you're like me, you just want to go home and lock the door and never admit another human being again.

And yet, on the other hand...there are times when it would be nice to have someone else to lean on a little bit. It gets to be an awful lot to always be strong, always be capable, always be tough. I saw that last week when the plumbing went wrong - Oh, I managed, but not without completely melting down for about five minutes on the phone with my parents when they called Wednesday night (and at that point I was still facing two nights and at least one day without water, at the best, and I didn't even know how easily it could be restored.)

I don't know. After the fact several people I know said to me, "Oh, you should have called me; I would have let you come over and shower or come over for dinner." But it's so hard for me to call people, because of the combination of having been raised to be fiercely independent, and those ghostly memories of being laughed at on the playground when I tried to make friends with someone who was out of my coolness league. And I'm bad at judging "are they saying yes to me because it's really no trouble and they're happy to help, or are they saying yes because they feel some obligation to."

(There's a great internet post on Metafilter, of all places, about Ask vs. Guess culture (scroll down to 'tangerine's' post.). The upshot is, some of us have the mental programming (whether nature, nurture, or some combo platter of both, I don't know) that tells us, "Don't ask for something unless you are pretty sure the answer will be 'yes,' you don't want to put people out" and there are other people who are programmed to just ask at will, and who are ready to hear a "no." The problem comes in that Guess people, when asked stuff by Ask people, get annoyed and feel put-upon ("How on earth does she think it's OK to ask me that?"). And Guess people are afraid of asking for something that looks like too much. I can't really address the problems that the Ask person faces because I'm so firmly in the Guess camp (I recognized myself right away in her description) that it's actually kind of difficult to visualize a different way of being.

And similarly, I get annoyed by vague statements that I take as "promises" - a couple of my cousins and I went to the same college, but were in different majors (and they were a year ahead of me), so we rarely saw each other. One of them once said to me, when we met on the street, "Oh, let's go get lunch sometime." And he never called to make those plans, and when I brought the issue up he was baffled - "did I really say that?" I think that may also be a part of Guess culture, tending to take people at their word, when in Ask culture, that kind of thing is much more casual. I don't know. (Or maybe he said "Let's do lunch," and it was during that time when that was sort of a slang phrase for "Hey, see you around" but I didn't know it - being the unhip kid I was - and I misinterpreted. But whatever).

***

Maybe I just need to start a new project.

I've been looking at my stockpiled yarn and thinking of all kinds of good new things I want to start...I bought some lovely silk-blend dk weight on my "playdate trip" earlier this summer, for the Hampton Cardigan in New England Knits. And I'm looking at some of my brilliantly-colored sockyarn and thinking that rather than socks, I might get into making more "shawlettes" (small shawls worn mainly as an accessory rather than for warmth).

And also, I keep looking at both Rupert the Fawn and the Teal Deer, and thinking, "I could very easily modify that pattern into a pony."

Yeah...I'm thinking of making my own huggable version of Fluttershy. I can see easily how I could do it....the only tricky things would be getting the wings right (maybe I could look at some dragon patterns and mod the wings, or see if I can find a pattern for a tree-topper angel, and use those) and the hair (the hair will never look like the hair in the cartoon, but then again...the commercially produced "brushable" toys have, IMHO, kind of ugly hair And a lot of them don't really look like the characters in the cartoon that much).

I don't know. I recognize it's totally silly but making toys soothes me in a way...and having the toys sitting in my bedroom also soothes me. (For example: I've tucked my Cheese-Kun up behind my head while I'm reading. He's just the right size for that). Or when I'm feeling especially sad, I tuck Rupert the fawn, or one of the teddy bears I've made over the years, or one of the amigurumi cats up into the crook of my arm. It's not the same as having a pet (and the severity to which my allergies have progressed suggests that a real furry animal is probably not a possibility for me at this point, and things like iguanas aren't exactly cuddly), but it helps a little.

Maybe it's that I need something that I can imagine is happy to see me when I get home. (I have houseplants, but they're annoyingly inscrutable.)

***

I don't know. I hate fall allergies, because they take my already mercuric moods and make them even more changeable, and make the bad moods more severe and harder to snap out of than they otherwise might be. I recognize this fact and can function more or less normally despite it, but I'm not happy about it.

I'm hoping for an early freeze this year but I don't anticipate us getting one.