What a week

* The shaving-on-the-train guy everyone was dunking on? Was homeless, and was trying to get cleaned up to try to get a job. Yeah, nice job, everyone. (I hope he finds work).

* As I said on Twitter:

"2016: that celebrity you liked? They just died.
2017: that celebrity you liked? They're a sex-abuser
2018: that celebrity you like? They have been compared to the pudendum of a world leader"

(If you don't know that last reference, don't google. Just let me say that when a lot of people saw Toad (from Mario Kart) trending, they were.....disappointed? horrified?.....to learn that it wasn't in reference to a new version of the game coming out.)

Things have gotten really weird really fast. Or maybe that weirdness was always there but is more in our faces now.

* Also the revelation that Bert and Ernie were at least coded gay, at least in the minds of some of the writers. And you know? Maybe for little kids who have same-sex parents, they can look at them and go "Oh, here's a family like mine." And for little kids like me who knew nothing of the wider world (maybe it's different now, I don't know, but I was really innocent until I was in middle school or so), they can just see them as two good friends who happen to share an apartment. It seems to me it's some of the adults on social media whose minds are going to salacious places.

I mean, I didn't even know what sex WAS until I was 10, well out of the Sesame Street demographic. If I had seen a same sex couple I likely would have figured "roommates or good friends" but then again I also didn't know how opposite-sex couples made babies, so....

(My belief? From my limited experience with women having babies, it was: "When a couple love each other very much, and they're ready for a kid and want one, somehow God makes it happen." I mean, I had heard of the Virgin Birth, so it didn't seem so weird to me that maybe every baby was somehow ordained by God. I wish it were that way, in fact, that every child born was one that was wanted and would be well cared-for, like the kids of my relatives and family friends when I was growing up....)

(I am also willing to accept the "Best Friends" status of Lyra and BonBon, and probably Trixie and Starlight Glimmer. I don't like the WILD shipping some fans do, and I'd prefer the Mane Six to remain unattached (until maybe the finale, maybe where one or two of them find their Twue Wuv, and kind of go off into the sunset with them - I once said I thought Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich should be a thing, and I still kind of wish Fluttershy and Big Mac could be, but apparently the writers sunk that ship with the privateer Sugar Belle.)

* And yeah, I still kind of love Pony. (Didn't catch last weekend's episode; was in the field). I admit as the series approaches what is probably its conclusion, I find I have greater love for some of the earlier-season episodes, but I always have seasons 1 and 2 on dvd (and I should, once I'm a bit more flush with disposable income, invest in the other seasons).

(Though a later-season episode: "Amending Fences," the Moondancer episode, remains a great favorite of mine, and I'd probably put it in my top 5 "heartfelt" episodes. I think Hurricane Fluttershy would have to go there, too.)

Other cartoon series I love include the new DuckTales (I am hoping for a Season 2? Surely there must be a Season 2 coming) and Bob's Burgers (which in some ways reminds me a bit of early Simpsons, when the show still had more heart - in the best Bob's Burgers episodes there's definitely heart. Maybe a little twisted and odd, but heart nevertheless). And I will still watch The Amazing World of Gumball or We Bare Bears if it happens to be on when I want to watch and there's nothing I prefer on). Some oddball things from the "lesser" channels - will rewatch (even though I've seen every episode - I think there were only 2 seasons - multiple times) Jane and the Dragon on Qubo. And if I happen to be still up when they re-run Scaredy Squirrel (another very-low-numbers-of-episodes series), I'll watch that. And I've off and on been watching the Pokemon series (the one from the island that is code for Hawaii) that Disney is running. Oh, and Bunnicula, which Boomerang has started re-running (even though, again, there seem to be very few episodes of it). Mostly, I just like putting something on that feels "safe" and even if it's an episode I've seen before, it's still kind of nice to revisit the characters and the settings and I still laugh at some of the jokes even though I might know the punchline.

I dunno. More and more cartoons seem to be about my speed. Often police/mystery shows (except maybe for Murder She Wrote, but that re-runs very rarely when I'm able to watch) are too violent these days for me. I've kind of burnt out on that sort of thing, I don't know. And a lot of the other dramas/sitcoms are a little too dumb or venal for my tastes, or they make jokes that I find embarrassing (yes, even though I am watching alone, and even though I joke about being secretly 12 inside)

More and more, I find I need things that feel 'safe' even if it's something repetitive or something I've seen before. I guess I'm just getting a little worn down by life and yeah, these past 2 or more years have been a lot coming at me fast and a lot of having to adjust how I think about things (like: all the changes in higher ed and the possibility - v. unlikely, but not impossible - that I could lose my job through no fault of my own but because of bad budgeting or a crash in enrollment or something). And also having the whole "your parents are mortal" thing brought very explicitly home to me and while I HOPE they have many more years left....well, they're both in their early 80s, so. (It doesn't help reading about people like John McCain and Burt Reynolds, both of whom were born in the same year as my mother, dying).

* A thread I saw on twitter (and will merely paraphrase here, because of language) but Chuck Wendig was writing about making stuff, and he made the comment that when you're making stuff, you're not listening to the haters or the weird news or the world or worrying over what other people are doing, and you're not being part of the "subtraction" but part of the "addition" - in that you're trying to add to the beautiful or cool or good or useful stuff in the world, instead of raining on others' parades.

And yeah, that's true.

And also, when I'm making stuff, I'm spending less time seeking outside validation - not checking my Twitter feed to see if someone replied to something I said or liked something I said, or worrying over "but why don't I get more blog comments?" (I still miss the "early" days of social media, when blogs were about it, and more people seemed to read blogs and comment on them). I'm just....being.

And I need to take more time to just be. Playing the piano and also now bell choir are part of that, though often with piano I worry over why I'm not getting better faster, or worrying about "why can't I do that trill, am I losing some dexterity?" But knitting and sewing - yeah, that's the thing for me, that's what's good.

I added about a round on Celestarium last night. It grows, but slowly. (And I lost some time because I couldn't find the tiny crochet hook I'd been using; it had gotten stuck in the ball of sockyarn for the simple socks but I didn't see it at first, not until after I found my container of crochet hooks and found ANOTHER v. tiny steel hook I could use - I'm really glad I bought that pack of hooks years ago at an antique shop now; it has some of the tiny tiny sizes that are now hard to find.)

* I have Saturday off. It's supposed to rain, and anyway, my student is going to be at a conference that might help her eventual acceptance to dental school. And I probably need to go to Sherman, even though I look with some trepidation at the state of my checking account (My comfort level probably requires more money in it than most people's though - it's not like I'm in danger of overdrawing, even with paying the credit card bill I have sitting on my table). But I'm happier when I get out for a bit and I do need a trip to the natural-foods store, and I'd rather not deal with the reorged-for-booze* WalMart again right away.

(*Well, not booze, in the sense of hard liquor, that still can't be sold, but full-point beer and I guess wine but I'm really wondering what kind of wine my wal-mart, with its manky selection, will choose. And I'm HOPING they eliminate stuff I don't use to make room, though I suspect the pop aisle and the sugared-cereal aisles will be as big as ever, and possibly what will be dropped will be some of the specialty canned/jarred veggies and the little tins of smoked fish I like. I hope not. )