* I can't tell if I have a very low-grade cold (or other URI) or just bad allergies. I have had a scratchy throat since Sunday, and yesterday my nose ran like a faucet. And I won't swear to it but it looks like maybe the "glands" (really: lymph nodes) on the side of my neck are a little swollen. But I don't have a fever (I checked last night and again this morning) and I don't feel sick otherwise - it does feel like I have bad allergies. (If I had a fever, or any other alarming symptom other than the swollen nodes, I'd be off to the doctor. But my guess is that IF this is something, it's a virus, and I'll I'd get for my time in the waiting room and the $25 co-pay were instructions to drink more water, rest, and eat healthfully, and I already know to do that.)
(My doctor kind of laughed once after she had commented I never seemed to come in for the "little" things that some people do, and I said "95% of the time when I'm sick it's an upper-respiratory virus and I already know all you would do was tell me to drink more water and wait it out")
* Could be allergies, though: it's been very windy here, which means dust and pollen get kicked up (TMI alert but: when I blew my nose after getting home last evening, I could - um - tell my mucus had trapped a bunch of dust/soil that had blown around). And there have been v. bad fires in western Oklahoma and it seems the smoke is drifting here, and while I can't smell it, it might be enough to set off my asthma/allergies.
(Also, apparently some idiot is intentionally setting fires over by Tishomingo. I hope they find who is doing it and, I don't know, exile them to somewhere where there AREN'T regularly wildfire seasons like we have here. Because in cases like this: it can endanger lives in addition to pulling firefighters away from battling OTHER fires, or being ready/rested for the naturally occurring ones that break out. And most of our rural firefighters are volunteers, anyway, which means they're getting pulled away from their ranch or their job or their families)
* A nice story that came across my Twitter stream (Really, if you are careful about whom you follow, and you judiciously use the "mute" button, Twitter is not the hellsite some claim it to be). A woman who works as a chiropodist in the UK (I didn't even know chiropodists still existed) donates time to serving the homeless - she bathes their feet and treats any minor conditions that are going on, trims their nails, etc. She observes that being homeless is very hard on your feet - if you are sleeping rough, you often don't even take your shoes off, and you are on your feet all day, and I suspect that if you're homeless you don't really have money for proper-fitting/new shoes.
(And as someone for whom the first "oh thank goodness I am home for the day" thing is to take off my shoes when I walk in the door - I can imagine how uncomfortable it must be to even have to sleep in your shoes)
The video - it's one of those short Twitter clips, not a YouTube, so I can't embed it here - shows her washing someone's feet. And the imagery of that was not lost on me, not just a couple weeks after Holy Week.
Yes, the service - the hospitality - of washing another's feet still exists today; it's just perhaps different populations that are being served.
There used to be someone in my parents' town who was dubbed The Toenail Lady - her service was she traveled around to people who were elderly or disabled and couldn't reach their own feet, so she trimmed and cleaned their toenails for them. (And also checked up on them, and encouraged them to go to the doctor if she saw anything wrong with their feet. I know for people with diabetes foot problems can become very bad very fast, and the decline in nervous tissue sometimes means the person is not alerted to "hey something is wrong with my feet" as fast as it would be for someone like me)
But yes. It's reassuring to know that, even as the news presents the dumpster-fire side of the world, there are still people going around quietly who are living out the "As you did it unto the least of these, so you did it unto Me" way of life.
(Two thoughts: I was once told - though I've never seen it written down anywhere - that there is an old Jewish (or maybe specifically Yiddish?) proverb that says "Every time God sees someone doing a kind act, He says, "Because of this, I do not destroy the world." And also: I do think it's the people who go around doing things like bathing other people's feet or feeding kids in need or welcoming newcomers to a town or planting flowers in waste places who are going to be the ones who rebuild society after the "let's burn it all down" crew have had their way. Maybe that's what was really meant by "The meek shall inherit the earth" - that it's the people who are calm and quiet and helpers and kind of Mr. Rogers-like, fundamentally, who are going to be the ones left who can rebuild things. I hope.)
* Last night was the final "fix the bells" meeting. I fixed three, which was almost the most anyone did. (I don't know. It didn't seem that hard to me but a lot of people complained it was hard. Maybe I have stronger hands? Or maybe I'm better at the kind of pattern-memory of what steps you do? I know lots of people kept asking me, "Okay, what do I do next" and I could tell them).
And yeah, I've committed to trying to be part of the choir despite my known issue with stage fright when performing music. (It is weird: I can speak in front of a group, regardless of whether it's reading or even speaking off the cuff, but I can't play piano comfortably, and I think I would be uncomfortable singing). The director - who has done this kind of thing before - assures me that as long as I can count I can do it, and that it's easier because a lot of other people are up there too.
But who knows? Maybe I will be good enough at it, and I will find it kind of fun.
* I finished the head of "Heartthrob" last night. Again, I need to be more disciplined about not faffing all evening on the Internet and actually working on my many projects in the evening/on weekends.
Once I finish Heartthrob, sometime I want to make Surprise - a white pegasus and I'm going to do the crocheted spiral curls for her, because some of the fan art shows her with a hairstyle almost like Pinkie Pie's (the original, G1 figures of Surprise just had the typical pony-hair that ponies had. I guess there was originally a bit of a curl to it, but the Baby Surprise I have has straight hair; the curls tend to fall out over time, moreso if their young owners brushed their manes)
I also have yarn tucked away that I bought with half an idea of doing a Rapunzel ("Tangled"-style) themed pony: purple for her body (like Rapunzel's dress) and then yellow for the hair (very, very long hair, of course, and what I might do is make some of it into a braid)
I've also played with the idea of making a stuffed version of Waterfire, my favorite G3 pony, but I'd have to get the right colors of yarn (dark turquoise and an orange for the hair) but I might still do that at some point.
I also have grey yarn and a griffon pattern to make a Gabby some day. Maybe that should be a summer project. (And yes, I still love Gabby, and I wish they'd bring her back for another appearance.). If I were really clever I'd figure out how to make a Silverstream - my favorite of all the "student" characters in the new season, but I don't have a hippogriff pattern and I'm not sure what I'd mod to make one.
(I think it's funny that the hippogriffs I have seen in MLP - at least, the young female ones - seem to be cheerful and excitable, when the hippogriff in Harry Potter was essentially a creature that was sensitive and easily insulted and apparently very hung up on proper protocol. I can't imagine Silverstream, from what I have seen of her, getting upset if someone failed to bow to her)
I dunno. Thinking about future toy projects just makes me happy. (And if Aurora or someone makes a plush Silverstream, I might just buy her. Heck, I might just buy a plush Yona too, if they made one - though she'd be easier to make up a pattern for)
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