Not so well

I got up this morning. I kind of ached, and I told myself, "Look at the humidity meter you have set up; if it's over 55%, you can just skip the workout for this morning."

It was at 62%. This is with airconditioning (whole-house) AND a dehumidifier running constantly.

And I made the mistake of turning on the news; then I wanted to go back to bed and not get back up and go out into the world. Some guy shot up a church (White guy, historically Black congregation - it was an AME church) and killed 9 of the members at a prayer meeting.

This kind of thing hits home for me because I think of all the stuff I go and do at my church, and how some day we could maybe welcome in a stranger who would turn very bad on us. But more than that, just the senselessness of it gets to me. I know I tend to be preoccupied with trying to understand why people do stuff, and in some cases, probably, a sane person (or a person like me, who was raised to love others and treat them with care - that is, someone who is not evil) can't understand "Why?"

I did this to myself with the Amy Bishop thing a few years back. I do this with every school shooting. I do this with stuff like the woman who helped those convicts escape.

Part of it, is that one of my MOs of life is: do not make life harder or worse for other people, and if you can, do what you can to make it better.

I'm glad I didn't stay up late enough to see this hit the news. At least I slept last night. (Though the last dream of the night, among other things, involved me upsetting a wasps' nest and having wasps on my arms - not stinging, but I was afraid (in my dream) if I moved they would. (I suspect maybe the fact that I have a few hives, and I can feel them, and they're slightly itchy - that somehow my brain translated that as "wasps on my arms")

I don't know. I think what frustrates me about this is that I try hard to be a good, kind, and decent person. (And sometimes that involves - as lovingly as possible, of course - sometimes telling the hard truths to people, as much as I hate having to do that). And when something like this happens, I feel slightly as if all my efforts to make the world a better place are spitting into the wind, because there's so much evil and hate that it's hard for humans, individual humans doing the best they can, to try to counteract that.

I don't know. The world is an ugly place, and it seems to me like it's getting uglier. Chances are that's not true and it's the 24-hour news cycle bringing us stuff that in 1976 we would never have heard, but I'm tired of the ugliness.

 I knit a bit on the current gift-hat (that's how I'm thinking of the charity knitting: as gifts) last night but wow, this pattern grows slowly, because it's a pattern using slipped stitches. At least it should make a warm hat.

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Today is my Friday. And I managed to do one little helpful thing: an onion was needed for lab this afternoon and instead of having the TA go to the time (and cost: we are between fiscal years right now so any supplies needed until July 1, we have to buy out of our own pockets) to get the onion, I brought one from home. I always have onions on hand but often wind up having to compost them when they go bad, so it's not like I'm taking food out of my own mouth.

I'm thinking tomorrow I might go antiquing (depending on what goes on with the Red; if it goes up VERY much I may not want to drive on the bridge across it) and I have to do some grocery shopping. And I want to get the one skein of "Warm Brown" Red Heart I need to start the Dr. Whooves. (I need to finish Baymax first). Making amigurumi, thinking about making them, having them around, hugging them (Yes, I do hug the critters I make) is one of my escapes from the ugliness of the world.