Ugh, this week

Still no thoughts on when I will arrange for a new dishwasher. It will be after Easter at this point, maybe even not until Finals Week. I have to clean up the kitchen first and move a thing or two to make an extra-clear path for the new dishwasher to be brought in.

(Confession: if I could get one of those little countertop ones that existed in the 1960s - there was one called something like "Mi-Maid" - that just hook temporarily onto the hot water tap, and have the old dishwasher space rebuilt to cabinets, I'd do that. But I suspect that someday if I sell the house, or my heirs to, that would hurt its value. And also in the rare times when I do a LOT of cooking, it helps to have a big dishwasher)

(Edited to add: I looked up the modern descendents of Mi-Maid online and the readily available ones are ALMOST as much as a full-sized dishwasher. Made for tiny houses not tiny budgets I guess. So I guess I go back to my original plan of buying whatever Whirlpool model is the successor of the one I have now. It looks like I can get one for less than $450, and I think Lowe's does free installation. I
can afford that right now so I might as well do it)

I did also get my Amtrak tickets for my May visit to my parents (which also includes my annual gyn appointment as I still like to see the gynecologist who has cared for me for YEARS and kind of guided me verbally through the ins and outs of "the change"). I had enough points left (still!) to get it for free (even with roomettes) so that's a $600 or so I don't spend.

(I figure I better use up the points I can. I've been accumulating them for 20 years and who knows how much longer Amtrak will exist; every year they talk about defunding it)


I don't feel well. Part of it is that my anxiety is bugging me again. Some of that may be chemical-exposure induced: where we are doing the interviews, it is in a very new "tight" building where everything is carpeted, and you can just walk in there and smell the outgassing chemicals, and I can feel myself feeling unwell and having my heart beat too fast when I'm in there. (Also, it is an utterly windowless building, so you feel trapped. Or at least I do). Part of it is the whole dishwasher thing and a few other things that are low-level bothering my attention. Part of it is knowing I have those scholarship forms I MUST look at at some point but not knowing when.

part of it is just really long days. Getting home after 6 pm is for the birds, when you go to work at 7 am.  Oh, I know, some people have long commutes that keep them away from home longer than that, but I feel like I didn't move to a small city with few things to do on the weekend so I was close to work just to be at work all the time.

I remember the last search we did, five years ago. Put in three, fourteen-hour days in one week. I was younger then. And also those were phone interviews. Online interviews are somehow worse because you also have to have your "public" face on and you get self-conscious if your head itches or something. And I'm gonna look like heck this afternoon anyway after having been out in the field.

I also have low-level bad feelings about what's going on in the world. April is a difficult month anyway, as I mentioned, a lot of sad anniversaries in this month. And now there's news reports that some woman, who apparently is "obsessed" with the shootings at Columbine, and has turned up in Colorado, and they've shut down the schools today "out of an excess of caution" and I guess this is our life now. And there are the various people yammering on the Internet about the modern-day version of "But that ointment could have been sold, and the money been given to the poor!" in re: the rebuilding of Notre Dame Cathedral.

And, yes, I admit, it's a little frustrating to see some of the extremely-rich very publicly step up and pledge to this when they could be giving to hunger relief all along (though for all we know, they already do, at least some of 'em). But again, I use the "bread and roses" argument: that if we decide to go in the direction of "necessities only" we will lose something of our humanity. I don't know. There's also the predictable "It's a place White People Like and that's why people care" and similar takes and I don't know. Can't we just be allowed to be sad about it and to want to fix it without being told how our feelings are somehow wrong?

One thing I get very tired about the internet about is how people seem to love to engage in one-upmanship: that their problems are worse than yours so you are not allowed to feel bad, or that they are more socially-conscious than you are, or doing the whole "milkshake duck" (look it up if you don't know) thing to some new thing that seems just nice and fun.

I think I particularly get my hackles up at that because of a lifetime of being told by Others that I am 'too sensitive' or "why are you upset about THAT" or "I can't believe you care about THAT" and I get tired of having my opinions invalidated.

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday. I hope I make it through the service okay. This year feels hard. Every year feels harder than the last; it seems that the older I get the more I understand human sin/awfulness and the whole sacrifice involved.