wishing for cozy

The weather finally changed to fall. It's in the 60s here right now and my house has dropped to 73 F, colder than it's been since like April. (No, I am not putting the heat on. If it gets down into the low 60s in here I will but I doubt that happens yet. I can put another blanket on the bed if I need it)

I'm tired. This has been a long week already. Today was my longest day of teaching and my first Gen Ed Council meeting. (I got put on because I got dinged for "not enough service" on my last post-tenure review, and when I pressed, the answer was, "Well, you're only on one campus committee" and apparently the Holy Hand Grenade Number of committees here is 2 (not three, not one) and so I needed to be on another one, AND our person who had been on needed to cycle off, so.... And yes, I expect to be dinged on something else next go-round but that's how this works and while it's not designed as an instrument of torture for perfectionistic people-pleasers, it might as well be).

It was OK. The current head tries to keep the meetings short and with few items, so that's good. I dislike meetings - especially end of the day meetings - where there are 16 different issues AND THEN someone else decides they have other off-agenda issues we must deal with.

But I'm tired. And I had a minor epiphany this morning that makes me sad but will take effort on my part to fix:

I seek other people to praise me or say nice things to me because I'm not good at doing it for myself. A lot of my "notice me, senpai!" craziness is that: I tend to criticize myself (at worst) or not really notice the stuff I do (at best) and it's really only when someone else points it out that I go "hey, yeah, maybe I am kind of good at that."

As I said: it will take a lot of work on my part to fix it but I guess I have to because most people, when you're an adult, expect you to take care of your own "cheerleading" and....I don't know, it's just hard for me. Part of it is that I do seem to expend a lot of effort giving support to other people that when I need it I'm kind of out.

Anyway. I need to finish my piano practice for today and heat up some dinner (going to heat up leftover beans, and I ran to the grocery quickly and found some frozen Sister Schubert rolls that weren't TOO high in sodium, seeing as I am at negative spoons for things like making biscuits right now. (I really want biscuits but the commercial ones are salt-bombs and like I said, I have zero energy for making them from scratch).

But I also need to take a warm bath tonight and curl up in bed with some kind of a diverting book but I also want to knit and I also want to do a little hallowe'en decorating and I want to watch a nice movie (like watching Paddington again) where things end happily and it's cozy and nice and the peril is at most what the children's-tv people call "mild peril" and there are funny cute animals in it. And I need to change the clothes on my Barbie dolls, they've been wearing the same things for AT LEAST a week.

It makes me sad how much of my energy my job soaks up so that when I get home some days pretty much all I can do is force myself through piano practice and then stare at the wall for a while.

I also could just really use a hug, but just like "cheerleading," I don't have anyone around to do that for me.


Edited to add:

Dinner is heating up.  The rolls look good, in fact, they look like the kind a semi-fancy restaurant that used to be near my parents served, so if they're good, I can keep getting them at Pruett's. (They also had wheat ones, but the plain ones appealed more to me). Leftover baked beans for the win; it's so much easier during the week to not have to cook. Especially when I'm dog-tired like now.

(I slept v. badly last night for some reason)

I have also taken to putting those "Ambient Sound Mixer" things on again. I pretty much default to Mr. Tumnus' House (which has a wintry feel to it so I'm using it now) or My Little Pony themed ones (that is just one of them) but they are a little more "intrusive" in sound (the hoofbeats, or the footsteps in Twilight's library, or the singing on the Fluttershy one). You can turn down certain channels and if I were going to use these I would probably turn down the louder/more random sounds, because I often use these when reading, and the hoofbeats and such are a little intrusive

***

and my sister in law and niece just called. My niece is learning to memorize poetry in the school she now attends (a "cottage school" - sort of half small private school, half homeschooling). She recited one about Romulus and Remus (she is learning basic Latin, but the poem was in English) and another one that was about just a nice day where everyone was nice.

I like the idea of encouraging kids to memorize poetry. I think that kind of thing is good for the mind (I remember my grandmother, even after her eyes went too bad for her to be able to read, still being able to recall the poems she memorized as a child) and I think it's actually fun - I can recite a little Shakespeare and a little Robert Frost and a few French poems I learned in high school.

I also think it's good for her specifically to recite poetry because she has some of the same speech challenges my brother had as a child (I know she sees a speech therapist) and maybe this will help her gain more fluency.

(I find kids more interesting once they get to older ages; they have something in common we can talk about. I like the little girl - she is about 9 - at Bell Choir because she is interested in bugs and ecology and I can talk to her about that. Smaller children I don't always know what to say to)

I also got to tell her her birthday present was on its way, and my sister-in-law commented that "She's really excited for her birthday" and I suppose six is about the age where it really starts being a big deal, sometimes littler kids don't get all of the idea as to why it's special.

(Hm. I wonder if part of a Christmas present for her could be a big nice treasury of classic poems for kids? She seems to like memorizing poetry....I liked poetry when I was a kid and had some books of it)

***
Yeah, I think after dinner (which I am eating now) and a bit more piano, I might just take a warm bath and get into bed with a book, and read until I'm too tired to keep reading, and then just sleep.