* Went out this morning and collected the soil. It was very difficult, I found out later our air quality status was "unhealthy for sensitive groups" (hello, person with asthma here). Cause was particulate matter and I don't know if that's pollen or if pollution has just got trapped under our "high pressure dome" but it was very distressing; I kept having to take a knee and at one point I wound up sitting full on the ground and wondering: at what point is it bad enough to call 911 for help? (No one would be in at my building today and the people who MIGHT be available, most of them are old enough or ill enough themselves that they wouldn't be able to help me).
A big part of the problem was that I had between 40 and 50 pounds of soil on my back after the sampling, and that just made it harder. Also, I had to climb UP a small slope (note to self: next sampling, even though it will be cooler, do the "flooded area" sample collection FIRST so you are less tired when you have to climb back up. And also carrying less stuff)
I made it, though, but with a lot of stopping to take a knee as I moved so I could catch my breath. At first I was worried - of course the whole "your dad died of congestive heart failure and could you be getting it" thing comes up every time I don't breathe as easily as I think I might BUT I did a workout yesterday and didn't notice any distress during that and I felt better later when I found out about the AQI being bad.
* Trying to decide whether to run out to the store for a "proper" onion (I have green onions, but not enough for the recipe) and bacon and make the honey-baked lentils I've been wanting to do for a while. The "activation energy" to get over for that would be: having to put "acceptable" clothes back on (I showered after getting home and just put what I had been wearing as pajamas on - and no bra, and no makeup) and get my car out and go. I still might because some real food would go down well; I have been doing all too many grab-and-go meals lately.
* Through some discussion on Twitter about the Largo portion of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony - which has long been a favorite of mine. A lot of people thought he used African American spirituals for the inspiration but apparently not
HOWEVER words that mimic the style of a spiritual (though not....it seems to me....totally authentically) have been "retconned" on to it. There's a famous Paul Robeson version:
Another version, with a lighter, higher voice (Irish tenor? I guess. I sometimes find higher men's voices a bit easier to understand, Robeson's is so deep that I miss some of the words, and also it's an older recording)
And I made the "mistake" (though maybe not) of listening to that in full....and yeah, I cried. The reference to parents waiting on the person (of course, my dad's parents pre-deceased him; his father was born in 1895 and his mother in 1906) but also the "friends" - his friend Art, and Bill Butler from church, and George....and yeah, it made me cry. But maybe it's okay to still cry about it, maybe the tears are a necessary thing, I don't know.
I do know I'm able to pick up and move on after I cry, so I guess I'm mostly OK.
* I contemplated reading more of the chapters today but....maybe I do that tomorrow; my exam is written for Friday and I'm at the point where I can't do anything more with the current research for several days, so maybe that becomes the priority for my off-hours during the week. I do know I'm tired after the fieldwork, and I really would like some time just to relax.
I do have the CPA appointment tomorrow as well, but I can work in and around that. Or even work on reading the chapters in the evening, I don't know.
*And if I am gonna run out and get those two ingredients, I better do it now, so I'll have time to actually cook them in time for dinner...
****
Added, later:
* Onion and bacon have been acquired; the sauce to go on top of them when they bake has been mixed up, the lentils are simmering (pre-bake) right now. This will be the first "real" cooking (more complex than the bean-burgers, which really are so simple they might as well be a mix, or mix-cooking) since I got home from my mom's.
I really do think now, looking back on it, I was plunged into a short-term depression after my dad's death. A lot of things I used to do just felt extremely....taxing....and I admit a lot of days I ate fruit cups and toast because I couldn't deal with making more complicated food, and some of the cleaning in the house went by the wayside, and I certainly didn't knit much. That's probably pretty typical when someone is grieving, though. I do feel like I'm pulling out of it a bit now, and that's a relief.
(I did cook up at my mom's; I took over the making of dinner a couple nights and several times made lunch for the both of us. But somehow, having someone to cook for made it feel like it was worth doing, whereas for just me, not so much).
Oh, I'm still SAD. I still miss him and I recognize that the holidays this year will be very different (I am bracing, if my mom doesn't feel like putting up a tree or having a full Christmas dinner, to be okay with that and maybe doing the Christmas cooking if she's not up to it - I suspect she will be, in some ways she seems to be adjusting better than my brother and I are - but I'm just preparing. Or if she wants to do a small tree, or, if she floats the idea of getting a smallish fake one, I would be fine with that).
* I also am starting to feel like sewing again. I went into my back closet (where I keep my t-shirts and slacks) to get clothes to put on to run out to the Green Spray and I saw my partly-done Vigenere Cipher quilt and felt a desire to sew on it again, and also to put the binding on the quilt that I had quilted most recently (picked up in mid-july, before everything happened).
And I want to get back to the socks; if I CAN, I want to make four pair for my mother for Christmas - the Weasley Homestead ones I photographed yesterday, and a pair that are bright rainbowy, and the Sweet Potato colored pair, and then I got some jeweltoned Lion Brand yarn (called "Mani Pedi" - I've never seen it in stores but when I ordered letters for my signboard I ordered some from JoAnn's). It is exactly colors she likes and wears and I think it "wants" to be socks for her.
Not sure what I will do for my brother and his family; I may have to ask what they want (they are not usually so big on handmade gifts, though I bet my niece would like something). I do have her birthday gift already - a big stuffed clownfish that came in a Doki Doki crate (she loves "Finding Nemo" and they have a saltwater aquarium) and a funny little building toy called "Plus Plus"
I also want to get back to my various other projects, and sometime start the Storm shawl (That *might* be simple enough for a project while invigilating exams...). I bought yarn special for it - it is from a line called something like "Leading Men" and the colorway is "Country Roads." It is blue and brown and I've sort of headcanoned that it's inspired by John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (which I have rediscovered a love for....)
* When I was a kid, my parents were kind of into John Denver, and that sort of soft-rock folkie stuff. And a little while back, thinking about it again - I listened to some John Denver again and realized....I really like his music. There's a gentleness to a lot of it, and a lot of it is about what I think of as the Good Stuff in life - some of the songs are about family, some are about the love of a special person, some are about home ("Country Roads," of course, is about West Virginia. I was born there and I admit as a kid I was embarrassed about that fact because the stupid snobby kids at my school found it out and used it as another way to tease me, calling me "hillbilly" and the like. And my parents would very gently tease me, calling me their "little Mountaineer" and of course as an adult I realize now it was 100% affectionate and it probably made them happy because maybe I reminded them of their time there.....but as a kid I wanted to fit in, and being a "Mountaineer" meant I didn't, and so I hated it. Now, as a grown up, I realize it's part of who I am and what's so wrong about it? A lot of good people came from West Virginia....in fact, Don Knotts came from the same town as where I was born).
So anyway. I made a channel on Pandora based on "Country Roads" and it's been giving me mostly that bluegrass-influenced 1970s country/country-rock/folk-rock stuff and....I like it. I used to say I hated country music but I think what I dislike is the insipid pop-influenced stuff, because I like a lot of Johnny Cash's stuff, and Dolly Parton's, and Willie Nelson's....and they had a very different mode than what I think of as "modern" pop-country.
(And again: a lot of the songs are about Good Stuff, rather than simply being about sex/attraction or big cars or the slight jingoism that some songs now have.)
Like: I love "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." I love it 100% unironically, it makes me happy to hear it. I often sing along even if I am NOT a Country Boy. (I'm not even, really, a Country Girl, but I think I could easily *learn* to be one, given access to a farm and maybe a nice farmer who wanted to spend his life with me). And yeah, maybe it's hokey, maybe Denver didn't *actually* believe in what the song was about....but I don't care. The whole idea of "the love of a good person, having good meaningful work to do, having time to do something you enjoy (the fiddling), and having good food ("'cakes on the griddle")" are....well, those are the Good Things, aren't they? Those are really the four things I would want most in life: interesting, enjoyable, meaningful work; hobbies that give joy; my needs being met (food, etc.); the love of another person.
Well, I have three of those, and maybe four if you consider the love-of-friends-and-family to be able to take the place of a romantic partner.
But you know? IT IS FUNDAMENTALLY A SONG ABOUT GRATITUDE. How often now do we see those in pop culture? (Maybe I just don't listen to the right music, I could be wrong). And it does my heart good to hear that song and to be reminded that, yeah, I do have it pretty good. And it's just a fun, fun song.
And anyway. I like the Pandora channel, it's also been feeding me some CCR, and a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (especially from "May the Circle Be Unbroken," which is a good album and one I have on CD). But also I get the occasional Johnny Cash piece or even some old Carter Family country-gospel stuff....and I like it. It's something different and a lot of it does remind me of my childhood and in a way that's a good thing....to come back to an appreciation of something like that as an adult, even if maybe I didn't so much as a child. (I do remember rolling my eyes a bit over John Denver as a tween some times...)
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