Or "Thursday random" I guess
*it's gotten hot and humid here all of a sudden and I am not sleeping well because of it. And I'm having the sort of unpleasant jumbled dreams that happen when I'm a little too isolated and not really doing much. The other night I had one that was hard to shake - I was the age I am now, but my mom was living back in Ohio in the house I grew up in. I was driving there one afternoon and as I came over the slight hill that allowed you to see down the street and to the house, I saw a fire truck and one of those EMS vehicles in the drive. And with that sense of dread that makes you drive faster, I got there. And a fireman was coming out of the house and he saw me and started to say "Ma'am I'm sorry but" and then the rational part of my brain that stays on like a pilot light in my head sometimes went "nope, you are not having any of that" and I woke up.
I talked to my mom last night so I know she's okay but I don't like dreams where someone I care about has died.
* Also someone I know from church (she has not attended in a few years though - health issues put her in a nursing home and she's now 101) is nearing the end of her life and while I know it's not sad in the same way that a 20 year old dying in a car crash is sad, it's still sad to me. And it will probably mean the whole round of a funeral lunch and other activities. (And I'm also bracing to maybe have to fill the pulpit on short notice when the minister's daughter-in-law passes, if he needs to go over a weekend for a funeral). I'm just tired and frankly the Uvalde news has left me....with some theodicy questions, and frankly a little angry that such a thing was "allowed" to happen (in a cosmic sense) and I'm almost afraid any sermon I write now might be a little angry or despairing.
I also feel like I've just lost so many people in recent years, and I have met very very few "new" people, largely because of the pandemic. I'm lonesome and all my old fears of abandonment are cropping up now.
* My mom DOES have her driving test today. Illinois makes everyone over - 75, maybe? - take an annual driving test and while I guess that's good (we don't seem to have it here and there have been a few people I've encountered who probably should have hung up their keys), I know she's nervous about it and it's a hassle. (They do give second and third chances if you get nervous and flub it. My mom's a good driver but I also know there are some driving examiners who try to fail people - when I was in high school it was widely known there were a couple driving test people at the facility in my county who just failed anyone who looked like they were under 25). I hope it goes well. She's supposed to call me this evening to let me know.
* I think I'm also just tired about the stress of the tree thing (the guy is supposed to come today and call me when he's done so I can pay him; so far no call) and also the possum. I've all but decided the only way it could have gotten in (after LOOKING for holes in the walls or floorboards) is by pushing up the board that covers the attic access and crawling down, and then the board fell back after it. There was a bit of the insulation tracked into the closet where the access point is and there is something that looks suspiciously like an opossum poo (luckily on some old paperwork that's going to go into the trash as soon as I can glove up and mask up again to clean in that area). So I guess when I DO get a carpenter I see if I can get them to close off that area better. (Maybe that's even where the packrat I once caught got in? Possibly)
But it is stressful. I want every bit of unwanted stuff gone out of the house, I want all my yarn and fabric organized and in the storage unit until I get the repairs done/new shelves built. But it's also on me to do it - I don't want to ask anyone to help because I'm ashamed how messy a couple areas are, and also I'm the only one who can do the sort-and-pitch. And it's also hard because I'm kind of in a low-motivation space at the moment. What I need to do is just set a goal of either filling x garbage bags or packing x boxes in a day, and not resting until I've done that.
* Still, I think I REALLY need "fun" right now, and I also need to make a Target run, so I might try braving the construction in downtown Denison to go to a couple of the shops there and look around, and then go and get the supplies I need, and maybe even consider getting lunch out? I don't know.
* I also admit childishly I'm unhappy that apparently the vast majority of channels (and all the regular broadcast channels) are showing the hearings this evening/week. Yes, I absolutely understand it's important that people get to see it, and I suspect a lot is going to come out we didn't know. But I'm also so tired of having all the awfulness of the world and humans on full firehose strength all the time. I've had to stop watching most news (I grab a few minutes of local news in the morning, mainly for the weather) because I've heard the gruesome details of the terrible things that happened in Uvalde too many times - and there comes a point where, you can't change it, you can't make anything better, and just hearing it again immiserates you further, and for me, I find that kind of thing, that feeling that "there are awful people in the world who would do awful things" just saps my motivation to try to do anything - I have sat at my desk this week trying to analyze the prairie data I have from last year and just feel an absolute futility to it; what I am doing is not going to make anyone's life any better; it doesn't HELP; it's just a thing I must do to play the game of keeping my job (feeding the maw of post-tenure review) until such point as I can retire. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still like teaching and on good days I feel like maybe my teaching improves things a tiny bit in the world. But right now it's just hard.
I mean I might watch a few minutes of the hearings because they are Historic, but....I'm not sure how much I can take. I really need something light and fluffy now. I was looking forward to maybe catching a re-run of "Ghosts" I hadn't seen (I missed a number of the episodes) but maybe that's not on now because of this?
Anyway: worst reality show ever. (so called reality shows became a thing because it meant you didn't have to pay so many writers, and generally didn't have to pay actors, so they were CHEAP even though a lot of us hated them, they proliferated)
* Finding joy right now is just difficult. I think the pandemic has changed me forever; certainly the past several years have really made me feel less-good about humanity in general.
*honestly if I were handed a couple hundred thousand dollars today I'd just find a house in town for sale, bigger than the one I have now, buy it, move the stuff I care about to the house and then sell my existing house to one of those ugly-house places to tear down (because I'm beginning to wonder if it's even fixable, even IF I can find people to hire to do the work on it - the roofers I called last week have never even called back to try to schedule an appointment for an estimate). But that's not gonna happen so I guess I have to go on living in a messy house that possums can find their way into and I feel like I've utterly failed this adulthood thing. I need to go back and be a child again and try again and not screw it up this time :(
*(And I shouldn't go to Denison tomorrow even though I feel like I need it; I should stay home and box up and bag up crap instead, or try to do useful work here.)
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