Time for self-care

Yes, I still need to finish the next chapter soon. Yes, I want to start the next one - due shortly after classes for the fall start - next week. Yes, I need to start planning my fall research (but have been warned by my Chair that someone hasn't signed off on something somewhere and no one can "encumber" any money, so I have to wait for that person to "pull the lever")

So I think I'm taking the weekend - which for me, includes today, for one last week - off.

I graded my exams and lab books yesterday. Everyone passed, and not just grudging passes, either, so at least no one should be trying to get in touch with me for "extra credit" work. Grades for one class have been submitted; for the other they've been tentatively filed pending someone who had an emergency and has to take the final late taking it Monday (grades are due Tuesday).

And it has been kind of an exhausting week. (2016 has been an exhausting year and I hope there is less bad news in its second half).

So this weekend I'm going to do the stuff that I kept putting off until I had "more time." I'm worn out, there have been more tears this week than there should have been, and I need to take care of myself a little.

A couple things have already happened:

* I changed the sheets on the bed last night. I like to do this weekly because allergies but I admit it got away from me a bit.

* I removed the old, chipped polish ("Angelic," a very pale pink) from my toes and replaced it with a different color (Pacifica's "Rebel's Rose") - Pacifica is a company that makes a "Seven Free" nail polish, and as much as I love Essie, I wonder if it's better for me in the long run to use the one that boasts fewer hazardous solvents. Then again, I suspect Pacifica and Essie are made by the same company: both are made in the US, both have similar bottle shapes, both have the same system of little ball bearings (at least, I could see them in the white glitter Essie polish I have and I can hear them in the others) to mix up the polish.

then again, it's entirely possible I'm exposed to more hazardous stuff on a regular basis when I get stuck driving behind someone's diesel pusher truck.

* I had to replace my much-loved Deva Lifewear pink dress. I wore it so many times the fabric got thin and it shredded under one sleeve (I can't fix it. I looked hard at it but I can't see how). I AM keeping the dress with the hopes of during my NEXT break, reverse-engineering a pattern off of it: I liked how it fit that well.

So I decided to replace it. I actually ordered two dresses from Vermont Country Store: both were ones I had looked at in more than one issue of their catalog and thought, "I should buy that sometime."

The first one is an M Mac dress. Like Deva's, these are made in the US (and yes, that matters to me). It's Fuchsia. I'm hoping it's the more toned-down kind like the photo shows. It also has pockets, which is a nice touch. (MOST women I know prefer clothes with pockets, even as many women's dresses are made without them. Something about "it ruins the line of the dress" but honestly, MOST dresses that are not formal dresses can have pockets engineered into them; I've done it on some I made)

The second one is kind of plain but I can dress it up with jewelry or with a shawl if it ever cools down here. I got the navy blue on this one; navy is a color that looks particularly good on me and I currently don't have a "true" navy colored dress.

I thought about going dress shopping, but, meh - we have  a Kohl's and a Lane Bryant and a couple of teenybopper stores and I don't feel like dragging around on a hot day from shopping center to shopping center and fearing I will have to "settle." And also, I have a strong suspicion that the dresses Vermont Country Store sells will be better made than what I can get from most of the chain stores here.

* And so, even if I have been spending "frivolously" (and yes, my training is such that buying TWO dresses to replace ONE seems frivolous, and of course there was the Judy Hopps bought earlier this week), I am planning on going to Whitesboro today. To the yarn shop and the quilt shop, and then swing back through Sherman for groceries and a stop at the natural-foods store.

I don't NEED more yarn. But I did look at my stash and didn't see anything perfectly ideal for that little vest pattern, so I might look for some. And I do need a short-cable needle (will have to check what needle size) for the sleeves for Raven. I COULD get the needle at JoAnn's but going to the yarn shop, while further, will be more fun.

I have a hard time justifying fun trips to myself....everything is so far away and I, a child of the Energy Crisis, always goes, "You shouldn't spend the gas on that." But I NEED a day out, a day away from town, a day away from the different worries that have plagued me.