It's supposed to get very cold here the end of this week so I guess that will be the test. My house reeks of peppermint oil and cedar oil and I confess it gives me a slight headache but mice are worse.
* I did spend maybe 2 1/2 hours cleaning yesterday. Most of that focused on decluttering the guest room but also deep-cleaning the laundry room (where I saw most evidence of mice) and a lesser clean of the kitchen floor (I saw one running along the baseboard one evening; no evidence they've been up on the counters but it's likely they've been in the under-sink cabinet, in fact, they may have come up the pipe chase so when I feel a little stronger maybe I pull everything out of there and clean it with
I hate how so much of adult life is pointless side-quests you really don't want to do, but must do.
* I did get all the bits knitted for the little cat, and got the head made up and attached, and also the tail, but just didn't have the energy to do the feet. I'm not going to do all the detailed foot-embroidery that the pattern suggests; I think for a toy it won't be sturdy enough and frankly I don't feel like doing it. I'm not sure I'd even do it on one for myself, that would mostly be used as an ornament.
* I also got the Not Okay Bot mostly finished; I still have to do the antenna and I might also go a bit off-pattern and dig around for my box of vintage buttons and sew a few to the front of it like a control panel of sorts, so it looks less blank, I don't know.
* I just....I just want to stop hearing about politics, and worrying about mice, and dealing with people "needing" stuff from me, and shift over to putting up my Christmas decorations and thinking about holiday things and being able to relax a little. I still have to figure out when I am traveling for Christmas and make those reservations...
* Made my reservations. Am traveling as early as I reasonably could - with the thought that maybe my mom could get the cataract surgery done before Christmas - though I don't want it too close to Christmas because the thought of maybe having to cook Christmas dinner for several people again this year kind of breaks me. Am coming back early (shortly after New Year's), on the grounds that (a) I have stuff here I need to do and (b) if the weather turns bad it leaves me wiggle room to change my tickets.
I still don't know what to ask for for Christmas. If my family were different I would ask for things like the Calico Critters dollhouse but my parents are v. practical (and have been becoming more so in recent year) so I don't feel comfortable asking for frivolous things. I am asking for some clothes to replace stuff I have that's wearing out; maybe the idea is that if I get boring practical things as gifts, maybe in January I have the funds to spend on something totally frivolous. I don't know.
* Watched (what was a re-run of, it was the "guy poisoned with hemlock" episode) of Father Brown last night. These always run "short" on PBS (I guess they were made to be run with commercials elsewhere, so are about 45 minutes)? Often OETA runs some short educational thing afterward.
Last night, it was about the upcoming election and I was like "WHHHHYYY OETA?" I mean, does it have to invade EVERY corner of our lives? Especially jarring after a program set in a never-never land of a northern English town in the 1950s...
I also think of a Twitter thread I saw, about someone talking about how they strove to find common ground with a relative who was their diametrical political opposite, because, well, that's what people USED to do. None of this "Let me lecture at you at the Thanksgiving table because I am Good and you are Bad" thing.
And honestly? If I had a family member like that, who took it on themselves to lecture the nonbelievers of whatever stripe? I'd skip the holidays. Yup, just stay home (in my own home) and come up with some kind of reason I could not travel. It would make me sad and yes it's probably not good to avoid seeing the other loved-ones, but that kind of stuff is stuff with which I just cannot cope; the endless insertion of one's particular issue into everything. (I would feel the same way if someone were on the keto diet or something, and talked endlessly about it. Yes, if I had a close relative who was vegetarian I would make every effort to have good vegetarian food, maybe even have a couple meals that were completely so so they could eat *everything,* but in return I'd ask them not to lecture the meat-eaters about the errors of their ways. Personally, I find vegetarianism easier to accommodate than the extreme "no carbs, minimal vegetables" type diet that the keto people do....)
But I wonder if one of the things about the increasing individualization/"personalization" in our culture - where there are tv shows I've never even HEARD of because they're on a network I don't watch, and where there's not really as much of a common culture* is also contributing to the idea that My Way Is The Only Right Way and the sense that it's perfectly fine to lecture someone who eats differently, or reads different types of literature, or whatever, to try to convert them.
I don't know. I find it exhausting. I know what I like, and while I am really excited and find it very cool when I mention some obscure mystery writer or something and someone goes "Oh, I love them! I thought I was the only person who knew about them!" because that might mean a new friendship, I also wouldn't tell someone who read mainly sci-fi that their choices were bad and they should read mysteries instead....
There seems to be less of an effort to find common ground and that's worrying to me.
(*Not that, maybe, there ever was, across the nation, given ethnic and class differences, but I think you used to be able to assume more that most members of a single family were at least familiar with the same type of music)
No comments:
Post a Comment