Thursday morning things

* Some mornings as I am putting on my make-up, I ask myself questions.

Like, "Am I too old to be wearing pale-pink lip gloss?"

Lately, I find that I think of what's going on geopolitically and then decide that asking myself if I'm too old for pale-pink lip gloss is kind of a pointless question.

* Related, someone posted this on Twitter:

"adulthood is realizing nobody has it together, entire countries are winging it, every perfect thing is just broken w/ a piece of tape on it"

And you know what? I realized some part of me refuses to accept that. I still actually kind of believe that there's a "magic spell" (as I described it on Twitter for brevity) that I will eventually figure out. And when I do, things won't be broken, I will figure my life out, and my hair will actually stay in place.

The thing is, I don't know if it's worse for my psyche to keep hoping that that "magic spell" that makes me figure it all out is out there, or if it's worse to accept that everything is kind of broken.

(I don't want things to be broken. I don't like it when things are broken. I can mend some things but they are never the same again.)

I guess I also kind of want to believe that there are people out there who don't always feel (as I do) that they're having to make it up as they go along.

So maybe that means I never become an adult. Well, since I "failed" to marry and have children there is already a sizable minority of people who believe I'm not an adult, so....*blows raspberry*

* HOWEVER, I did realize yesterday I need to start economizing NOW to be prepared for No Income Next Summer. (I have already declared that I am Not Teaching, because summer teaching is too much work for adjunct pay, and also, there's a whole issue of "don't voluntarily do something you don't want to have to be forced to do" and I fear future budget crunches might lead to the suggestion of, "Well, some of your people taught a summer for adjunct pay so why not just do that for a full semester?"). So that means avoiding looking at smol horses on Etsy (because I want ALL the G1 ponies, or at least ALL the yellow ponies with pink hair) and not visiting Amazon and things like that. And "shopping the stash," which I have already kind of started with doing the Hagrid scarf out of long-stashed yarn.

(It doesn't help that my homeowner's insurance bill comes due early in September. I paid it yesterday and while I won't have to do a transfer-from-savings to cover it, if I want to pay my credit card bill well before its due date I will. The bill is higher this month as I bought my tickets for Thanksgiving on it already...)

* That said....the Native American Seeds catalog came yesterday. It's their "wildflower issue" and they have several gorgeous two-page spreads devoted to "native species to attract pollinators." They also have shade tolerant species, and to my surprise, they list Turk's Cap Hibiscus as one. (Mine gets a lot of late-afternoon sun and does fine.). I confess I am thinking about figuring out some way to totally "nuke" the weeds in the north-facing garden area (as much as I hate using herbicide, maybe this is a case for it, to get rid of all the darned blackberry) and then getting a large volume of soil for the area, and then buying a quantity of the shade-tolerants seed mix and seeding it with that.

Or, alternatively - look into getting a few larger (already grown) shade-tolerant shrub type of things and plant them in there, and kind of work out from those. I do want more pollinator plants around my house because I've realized that one of the things that "keeps me going" is being able to see bumblebees and butterflies and even hummingbirds.

Maybe I also "nuke" most of the area that used to be brushpile, re-soil that area, and get more of the shade-tolerant stuff in. I already have a little stand of inland sea-oats that I planted in an earlier attempt to make the area prettier. I could probably get away with what they call a "dpak" of seed; it is supposedly enough to cover 500 square feet and that area is perhaps about 20' by 10' at the most. A dpak of the shade mix is $19.....Or maybe I buy the shade-loving grasses AND the shade mix, and combine them, and just overseed the area super heavily? I don't know. At any rate, that's an idea for October, when it's cooler - lots of new perennial stuff needs to be done in the fall when it's cooler and stuff will have the winter to settle in. (Also some native species require chilling in order for seed germination to happen)

* I'm currently reading Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton. (This is considerably better than the "A Scream in Soho" from the same collection, which I have totally given up on). I will say with a little pride I figured out one of the plot points before the detectives did. (I don't usually do that). Though I will say it was kind of a Chekov's gun moment....they stumble across something and I was "Yes, that's going to be important, that was going to be partly how the deed was done).

The question of the motive still remains. I'm thinking this story is as much a "why done it?" as a "who done it?" but then again, in most murder mysteries, the "why" doesn't become clear until you have a "who."

And it seems again slightly odd to me that I like (and can read without feeling discomfort) murder mysteries. Because real-world murders are by and large pretty awful. (There's a case a few towns over where apparently the murder was committed about a dispute over beer and a store's gift card. And yes, I get all of the socioeconomic and sociological stuff that's going on, and how sometimes some people who have had a particular kind of life maybe aren't as capable of seeing long-term consequences or things.....but I look at some of the rather violent crimes committed around here that seem to be over really rather silly stuff and I just kind of despair. I mean, I don't drink beer, but by comparison....if I had a housemate who, I don't know, chronically ate all the ice cream probably the MOST I'd do would be to yell at him about it, and maybe put a lock on the freezer that only I had a key to. )

* My state is getting new license plates. This would not be such a big deal (though it seems we just got new ones not very long ago) EXCEPT there was no citizen input I heard of, AND they are jacking up the price by $5. Oh, I get it: the state is in dire financial straits and they have to find another way to get money out of us, but I'd like it better if they were a bit more honest about it. Why not just send everyone an "existence bill"? "You currently exist in the state of Oklahoma and we need money so please remit $10 to us." (Ten dollars, because of course administering something like that would cost money).

Also the new design is not great. A stylized bird that is supposed to be a scissortailed flycatcher, except its tail is too short, and it's just in silhouette so it looks weird.

(And I just thought: if vanity plates didn't cost more, I'd really, really want to request one with some variant of BIRB on mine, or even better SMOLBIRB.)

But yeah. This plus the 1-cent sales tax increase we are most likely getting just makes me feel kind of nickled and dimed, or more, one-dollared and five-dollared. (And the average of that is not quite tree-fitty).

Other people are a little put off by it....the best reaction I've seen is Ginnie Graham's in Tulsa World. She likens the appearance of the bird to the Mockingjay of "The Hunger Games," and considering the fact that state agencies (including higher ed) have kind of been through a version of that this past spring with all the budget cuts, it feels creepily apropos. (WARNING: autoplay video on that site.)

Maybe the new state motto should be, "May the odds ever be in your favor." (Which is also creepily apropos here as I think the only businesses making a profit are the "Indian" casinos)