Change of plans

Yeah, no Sherman for me because we got dumped on yesterday and today, rainwise. Lots of bad flooding, a number of the roads up around Tishomingo and Ada had to close. So I stayed in town and went to Wal-mart (organic milk, the rye bread I use, more tinned smoked trout, oatmeal, more of the finely shredded cabbage for yet another run of those cabbage pancakes*,eggs....) and later, the Pruett's (hambuger meat, an onion**, some grapes, frozen raspberries)

(*I like them, they're fast, they're reasonably nutritious - pretty much cabbage, eggs, a little flour, some green onion, plus ginger and coconut aminos (which I use in place of the saltier soy sauce) and then the dipping sauces)

(**I keep green onions on hand because I use them a lot but usually only buy regular onions as needed because I sometimes go long stretches without needing them, and few things smell worse than an onion that's gone off)

I did get a surprise in the mail - my friend Anj (Purlewe) sent me a couple of things, including GLOW IN THE DARK NAIL POLISH which is wonderful because in normal light it just looks like a normal clear topcoat but if you expose your nails to some minutes of fairly strong light (for the test I held my hands under my reading lamp) they DO glow in the dark and for some reason I find that very deeply amusing...I may use it at some point as a topcoat on my toes over another color, see how that works. (I am hoping I can get enough light so they will actually look glowy in class when I shut off the lights whenever there's a slide I'm showing that's a dark photograph or a graph that doesn't show up well in the bright)

There was also one of those mini Funko My Little Ponies (I got Princess Cadence, whom I did not have in that form) and some alpaca stickers and some Snoopy erasers and a postcard advertising the Mr. Rogers documentary that says "A Little Kindness Makes a World of Difference" and I think I am going to take it over to my office and put it up somewhere where I can see it when I sit at my desk because (a) It is something I need to be reminded of some times and (b) it will make me think of Anj when I see it (she lives in Philadelphia, where Mr. Rogers worked out of) and it's good to be reminded of your friends.

(My mom's best friend, who still lives back in Ohio, once said she liked the small handmade gifts we had made for her because she would have them around her house and when she would look at one, like something my mom had made, she'd say "Hello, Gail" and think of her...)

And speaking of Mr. Rogers, there is a nice essay in "Christ and Pop Culture" (an online magazine I like) called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and the Fragility of Hope and it references two things - the PSAs he made (not long before his death, actually, he died in 2003) about the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and how he didn't really know what to say or how to say it (I think a lot of us face that problem in the face of great horrors, and Mr. Rogers was one of the more eloquent people, I think, in recent years).

But also, this struck me a lot, and I find it humbling:

Fred’s wife recounts one of the last conversations she had with her husband before he went into a coma. Referring to a passage he’d been reading in Matthew 25, he asked her if she thought he was a “sheep.” Her answer: Fred, if ever there was a sheep, you’re one

Yes, apparently even Mr. Rogers had self-doubt. (And yes, though I tend not to be one of those "I know the chapter and verse" type Christians, I know exactly what passage he had been reading there, and it's one of my favorites, and it's one I try hard to work into my life but don't always succeed at)

I find that humbling because, well, he's Mr. Blessèd Rogers, and if ANYONE on this earth in the past 100 years had a right to feel like what he did helped people, he would be one. And yet, he doubted if he was "enough," if he "did enough." (Honestly, if any mortal person's soul got to hear "Well done, my good and faithful servant" as he entered the afterlife....)

Ironically (because I know I'm not that good and I will never do as much as he did to help so many people), that makes me think, "You know? Maybe I am a little too  hard on myself. Maybe what I am doing is "enough," since I try to do it with a good heart and with love for others"

And the answer to the unspoken question in the essay: yes, for people of faith, there are ways to hold on to hope. And even in one of the darker recent hours (after September 11), Mr. Rogers was able to hang on to that hope....

But other than that - quiet weekend at home, which probably was actually what I needed MORE. (I joked on Twitter that maybe this rain was a bit of God going, "You must think of your budget and not be tempted to spend more money!")

I also caught New Pony and I forgot (or maybe didn't see of all last week's episode) about how Rockhoof wanted Twilight to turn him into a statue and while the implication was "but it wouldn't be forever," still that's frankly a....kinda dark thing for a kid's show, when you think about it. (Luckily, he found a reason to stay un-turned-to-stone before the end of the episode). This week's new episode was the Student Six, and you know? I do kind of like their interactions. This week's episode was them being tested by the Tree of Harmony (? could the alleged "Generation 5" that is coming after this one closes down maybe be something to do with these characters and their journeys? Though that's not really My Little PONIES, very much, is it?) and it involved them confronting their biggest fears in a way - so Yona's was pretty simple (spiders, and she realized that "spiders can be our friends") and Ocellus' was "but what if I still have badness in my heart, what if my Changeling Heritage comes out?" and Gallus is claustrophobic, and Sandbar is....afraid of letting people down, I guess? But the two that struck me were Smolder and Silverstream.

Silverstream's was pretty simple: "What if the evil creature that oppressed my people comes back" (even though - and I've still not taken time to watch the movie, but apparently he could not come back) but what got me was when Gallus told her she needed to "confront" the shadows scaring her and oh, Silverstream getting angry is both cute and funny and touching and she reminded me a little bit of me when I have to work myself up to confront someone over something - the near-tears, the funny facial contortions. (I really wanted to hug Silverstream and tell her it was going to be all right, and please Aurora or someone, make plushies of these guys? I want *at least* a Silverstream and a Yona, and now probably a Smolder too, because....)

Smolder's fear was looking ridiculous or other creatures laughing at her because she secretly likes girly stuff. (her " test" being a tea party where she "had to" put on a dress and make up, but secretly she really enjoyed it, and admitted to....Gallus, was it? Or Sandbar? that she "liked cute silly stuff" and also swore the character to secrecy over it....

(Are all girl dragons in this universe kind of tsundere? I mean, it's a cute character trait and all (and Ember was kind of that way). And yeah, I like Smolder even better now... because I really do like cute and silly stuff, though I am not nearly as secretive as she is about it, I do also kind of fear people laughing at me because I do, and sometimes I wonder when I get that odd student who doesn't seem to respect me if it's that they think I'm too girly or something)

Edited to add: I ganked this .gif (itself a screengrab from apparently the UK showing of the episode? It's on Discovery Family, not Nickelodeon, here). This is Smolder getting into being a girly girl and it's just so cute to me:

Or as I said on Twitter: "My face when I get invited somewhere 'fancy.'"

(One of my dreams some day is to acquire a crew of friends who like fancy teas, and be able to get to go to a real tea at a hotel or somewhere. It would probably have to be female friends; most of the guys I know are decidedly not into that sort of thing)


Right now I am working on the current simple socks, being made of yarn I bought in Shreveport when I visited Laura. It's an odd striping pattern but I kind of like it. I am debating tomorrow starting another sweater that would be simple enough as a "carry along" project for invigilating (or perhaps a simpler shawl - Celestarium, as nice as it is, is not a good carry along project - too much attention and then all the beads, and I'd hate knocking over the bead box and losing all the beads on the classroom floor....). I have a couple sockyarn sweaters that might fit the bill, and possibly Flax would work if I could get the neckband part done before the next big exam...I know I've got a bunch of others and really if I had the time and motivation it would make sense to sort my stash and have containers for sweater yarn (plus the patterns, keep the pattern with the sweater) and one for shawl yarn and one for sock yarn and one for "other" (like the yarns for my amigurumi) but of course that's less fun to do than other things, so I likely won't get to it any time soon...

Ooh, I also have Anaheim and that green yarn the lady in AAUW gave me, and it would be nice to start that some time so I could tell her the next time I saw her that I started a sweater out of the yarn...also Anaheim might be a fast knit as it's a smaller, more fitted sweater, with half-length sleeves....It's a simple lace pattern but probably not too complex for invigilating....

Maybe some in-progress shots tomorrow, of the socks, and Celestarium, and if I start Anaheim...