some little comforts.

Taking them where I can get them these days.

While up here, I watched a lot of Food Network. For one thing, some of the shows (though not as many as there once were) are ones that feature people making stuff. And I just like watching people make stuff. (There also used to be more craft/home dec DIY shows on HGTV; now it's more house-hunting or actual renovation, which is less interesting to me). For example, I watched a lot of "Barefoot Contessa" because frankly it is just soothing and quiet and Ina Garten does kind of have a dream life, with a nice house and apparently enough money and interesting friends and skill in cooking.

And I watched a lot of "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." I know a lot of people snark on Guy Fieri but I honestly like the guy, or at least the persona he presents (and some of the things he's done off-camera, like feeding people burned out in the California wildfires, suggest to me that he's a good guy). The shows are pretty predictable but sometimes you want predictable: Guy shows up at some restaurant, he banters with the chef/cook, the chef or cook makes his or her specialty, Guy enthuses about it, he eats it, then he interviews happy customers who talk about what they like about the place, and then he goes to another restaurant. It's a very *positive* show and sometimes you need that. Or at least I do.

I've been crocheting on a ripple blanket - just simply done out of those "cake" yarns where the color changes gradually, so you get wide stripes with minimal ends to weave in, and it seems a good use for those cake yarns. And really, the ripple crochet is very soothing - I chose a simple pattern (two increases, four double crochets, two decreases, four more double crochets; the ends are a little different). It's an easily memorized pattern and it's fast, so you feel like you make progress. I may not keep the hat I started in the immediate moments of bereavement (or the socks, I have two pairs of socks on the needles now, one of which my mom commented that the yarn was pretty, and so I might give both pairs to her for Christmas). But the afghan, I am keeping it. I might even work on it on the train; it is easier than knitting is.

We also went several times to a small tea/coffeeshop near campus. They do bubble tea and I like bubble tea. The place is so stereotypically "hipster" though, with those press-in-letter signboards and a ukulele evening once a month and they play that sort-of-folkie twee music. And yet, I love it. I love it unironically, even. It just....so many things about it fit together and feel aesthetically right to me and it makes me happy to be there.

(I should get myself one of those signboards just to have; I kind of like them and you can have fun with them.)

Also, again, stuffed animals. I dragged along the new-ish squishy "Yeast-ken" (a shiba-type dog shaped like a loaf of bread, yes, it's Japanese) as an emergency pillow but also being able to squish him to my chest when I was sad or woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep helped. I *almost* pawed through the Ty rack at the Michael's when my mom and I went, thinking of just buying myself another stuffed animal, but I did not.

(I might consider it if I see something I like when I'm out and about in the next days, and I'm also considering still buying myself another pair of the Hot Chocolates shoes that I like. I was planning on those as a consolation present for having to have the colonoscopy, but maybe it's still OK)

And books. I read "The Book of Three" by Lloyd Alexander coming up. I have the next two in the series with me but didn't start them because frankly, the ending of "The Book of Three" (where everyone got back home safely, and Gurgi got all the "munchings and crunchings" he could want) was so nice and so satisfying I felt like I could leave the characters there for now....I will pick up the others later on.

(I started "The Lighthouse Stevensons" - about relatives of RL Stevenson who were involved with lighthouses on the Scottish coast - after that. I'm not very far it but I might read more of it on the train back home).