Year's hottest week

That's what they're predicting, anyway.

My student and I decided to do half the weeding this morning, and the other half tomorrow. Part of this is that she had to get to her other job by 10, but I admit I suggested the idea because I'd rather be out in the heat for less than 2 hours (we started at 7 am and will start tomorrow at 7 am).

I set my alarm - I haven't, much, this summer, and of course I slept badly because of (a) "what if it doesn't go off, or if I have it set in such a way I don't hear it*

(*The CD player on the big old clock radio thing I have is broken - I really need to replace it at some point - and if the alarm gets set to "CD" I MIGHT hear the click of it trying to turn on, but might not)

and (b) "how much longer do I have to sleep?" I woke up many times during the night, many more times on a night when I don't have to get up until 6:30 (the time I normally usually wake without an alarm).

Also, yipes, the dreams I had. I hope that was all the sadness and loneliness and bad-feelings being sent to the recycling center of my mind to be transformed into something better. I don't remember a lot of them other than feelings and in one my mother saying "I didn't want to tell you before, but it's at Stage 3" (meaning: cancer, and the implication was she had it. And yes, my mother has the habit of "I didn't want to tell you before" on difficult/sad things, I think because she wants to spare my feelings, but honestly? I'd rather hear the bad news up front and I have told her that).

Anyway. As far as I know, in the real world, she's perfectly healthy, so either it was vague fear being translated or it was sadness about someone else being translated (Possibly about Margaret. She wasn't exactly a mother figure to me but as a woman about 10 years older than my mom is....it's easy for my subconscious to confound the relationships).

(If they were making Inside Out about an adult, I think there would be something like a "recycling center" in the brain where old memories get changed around, or maybe where feelings that go one way get changed into another kind of feelings. I don't know)

On ITFF we were talking a bit about how often stuff in "kid's" movies makes us cry and someone noted that "in some ways, the emotion is more distilled" and I think there's a truth to that - possibly even could be said the emotion is more "pure." They mentioned Up of course (I think EVERYONE cries, and cries pretty hard, during the first 20 minutes of Up). And I said I still cry at a particular point (well, actually, 2 or 3 points) in Big Hero Six, and I cry at We Are Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy....I think I also mentioned how I had been watching Wreck It-Ralph yesterday and started to cry at the point where Ralph pretty much decided he was going to sacrifice himself for Vanellope. (Of course, there's a Deus Ex Machina in the form of a racecar that saves him, but still). Actually, I think that's what gets me to cry hardest in a movie: not the couple who "should" have been together winding up together, not even things like the end of Old Yeller, but that point where a character decides: I value this other individual's life more than my own, so I will very likely risk the end of my own life to save them. ("Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."). And you know? it seems to me that's a more commonly-shown thing these days in movies aimed at kids than at those aimed at adults. I am not sure what that means. (There are enough "old" movies, like TMC type movies, that have that concept of self-sacrifice in them). 

Someone suggested I would probably like Moana and they are probably right. I don't have Netflix or anything like that but at some point if the dvd isn't too spendy, I might get it.

Though first, I have the (original) Teen Titans series coming at some point - it was an Amazon Prime Day buy, about $40 for all five seasons. This is the early-2000s version, which was more drama and less slapstick and also (IMHO) better animation and more realistic-looking characters. Nothing against Teen Titans Go, but I really prefer the Teen Titans series that was more serious and more about extended storytelling rather than gags.
***

I got more sewing done on the Birb quilt this weekend but it was just "intermediate" steps so I have no additional blocks yet. I have the parts for making 9 more (of the 17 total full blocks) and will get to that at some point, hopefully this week. (There are also 14 "half blocks" so the edges of the quilt come out straight - the blocks are set "on point.")

I also worked more on the Hagrid scarf and am now worried I may run short of yarn. If that happens, I think I'll just leave off one or all of the last repeats of the cabled section ('shaggy beard.") I think it will make more sense to be sure I have enough yarn to do the eight garter stitch rows that finish the thing off.  I think my goal for the rest of the summer though is to try to dig out the buried-in-bags projects (the Hagrid Scarf, the big sweater, the "purple thing" stole, a scarf I started ages ago....) and finish them up.