Friday, September 04, 2015

a little better

Not much.

I do think I can probably get the exams sorted this morning, leaving the afternoon for doing some research work.

Yesterday evening was mostly eaten up by the AAUW salad supper. These things are kind of fraught for me now, there are so many raw fruits and vegetables I have to be so careful about. (There were three raw broccoli salads. I can't do raw broccoli, my digestion just goes "What is this I can't even" and I feel awful for a day or so. Same with raw cauliflower). So I kind of just picked at food.

It ran late. I didn't get home until 9 pm. This is not good when you get up as early as I do.

I also think part of my malaise is looking at what's going on in the larger world - the refugees from Syria, the economic problems so many places, war and rumors of war....and it just makes me feel kind of helpless. I give money to some of the aid organizations that have good reputations for their ability to help, but still, like I said, it feels like spitting into the ocean. It feels like the world's totally falling out of control and the fact that things are unhappy and unsettled locally makes it feel like everything's messed up....

I probably SHOULD go to Sherman this weekend; there's gonna be a time sometime soon when going there will become unattractive - they are going to do more roadwork on 75 and it was such a giant nightmare when they worked on the Loy Lake bridge that I will probably just avoid the area as much as possible once the new construction gets started.

I also have tentative plans to try a new recipe. In one of my British cookbooks, I found a recipe for the British-style baked beans - the tomatoey ones that are often eaten on toast in the morning. It doesn't call for any cured meat (it's vegetarian) and I think leaving out the celery and green pepper (two things I am sensitive to) won't alter the recipe greatly.

I just wish it would get cooler, or there was some hope of rain. It's been about 10 degrees over the typical temperature for the year and I am really feeling it. I'm so sick of all my little cotton dresses, I am so sick of walking out of my building at 4 pm into a wave of heat.

I'm hoping that when it gets cooler (maybe by the end of September?) I'll feel more like knitting again. I miss it but for some reason I can't knit for more than a few minutes at a time. Or maybe I need to say "forget finishing the ongoing projects first" and start an amigurumi or something.

Or maybe I wait for whatever stupid thing is pollinating to stop, and then I'll feel better. I don't know.

****
One thing I did do this week was spend some of my "fire rubies" I earned at Duolingo on a "supplementary" lesson - they had two, one on sayings and proverbs and the other on "flirting."

I should have picked the proverb one.

But the idea of "flirting in German" amused me and I thought maybe there was some really cute phrase that would make me laugh.

Actually, it was mostly disappointing - some of the same stupid lines used in English ("I'm new here, and you?"). I do know now how to ask someone to dance. But there were several rather cheesy lines ("You look like my next girlfriend" which tells me something about the kind of people Duolingo think is taking the lesson - Oh, I could change the genders around but I don't know if Freund "reads" as "boyfriend" or just "friend." And anyway - what an awful cheesy line and I cannot imagine myself EVER saying to anyone, "You know who you look like? My next boyfriend.")

I don't know what I expected, though. I guess I expected it to be more fun and more cute and less bad 1970s SNL sketch....or maybe more idiomatic, I guess I thought, "Maybe people who speak German flirt very differently than how people who speak English do"

Also, I find I am still deeply confounded by the bizarre word order in some German sentences and also by things like noun declension. Duolingo isn't much help there, I need to get my German book back out and study up.

***

One thing I MIGHT do this weekend is make a trip to the restaurant-supply store (they advertise as being "open to the public" so I won't be asked to show a restaurant license or something) in Sherman and see about replacing the four-quart stainless-steel Dutch oven I burned rice in months ago and cannot totally get clean.

Part of me says, no, you should not be spending large sums of money right now, what if something really bad happens in re: your job or what if everyone does take voluntary pay cuts to keep the place afloat? But part of me feels sad that sometimes I have to scrabble around and use the not-quite-right pan. And I'm NOT going to Wal-mart or somewhere for one. I've used cheap discount-store stuff too much of my adult life. I work too hard for things that break or heat unevenly or are just bad to use. And I admit, I feel a little sad and a little jealous: of course if I had married I'd have nice stuff. I've lived more than half my adult life using stuff borrowed from family, or things like the towels I had in college (25 years ago now) but if I want nice stuff, I have to either buy it myself or wait for one of the two occasions in a year when I could possibly expect a gift and ask family for it....and I can't wait until Christmas (or really, after Christmas) for a new Dutch oven. (And anyway. I know it's selfish and childish but it feels kind of sad to me to get just towels for Christmas.)

And yeah, I get that the "I deserve to have nicer than some kind of discount store stuff" comes from a very privileged position and is a First World Problem, but what I see in my day to day life is mostly people who don't deal with the sort of cobbled together or half-worn-out stuff I have. And it does frustrate me.

(Then again: discount store stuff is often made in factories where the working conditions are not good and the workers are not well-paid or treated. The more expensive stuff is often made places where people get a bit better treatment at work.)

(And I admit, I feel some frustration when a couple at the edge of my family unit, or at the edge of my circle of friends, marries, and they both make more money than I do, and yet, tradition dictates I give them a gift....)

3 comments:

Kucki68 said...

Freund is a actually both a male friend or a boyfriend (as is Freundin a female friend or a girlfriend). But I agree that that is a totally ridiculous sentence to teach.

A saying:

Wenn es dem Esel zu wohl wird, geht er aufs Eis.

Ich hoffe, Du lernst trotzdem weiter Deutsch, ich muss wieder anfangen mit Duolingo Spanisch zu lernen und üben.

CGHill said...

My favorite joke based on a cheesy pickup line:

After a couple of minutes, he was sure of it: she was staring at him. So he walked over to her spot at the bar and confronted her with it.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "It's just that ... you made me think of my third husband."

"Third? How many times have you been married?"

"Twice," she said.

Joan said...

Vinegar and bicarbonate won't get the burnt rice off?