leaving this here

 this is for me, so I can find it again: possible book for my niece's birthday

 Someone recommended it to me - she loves gardening and nature, and since she's turning 11 and I don't always know whether that age still wants toys or wants to be seen as more grown-up, my plan was to get her a good book on gardening and also a gift certificate to a seed merchant so she can have a really nice garden next year. 

 (I still have not received the birthday present - from February! - my brother says he bought. I presume that means I'm not a priority, because he just needs to mail it out, but that's okay, I am not going to "punish" my niece for that. But I admit the whole thing does wear on me a little.

 It was also just generally a wearing day. Very, very humid, though not unusually hot, and I had to do some on-campus errands and deal with a misunderstanding and didn't get enough of my own work done and was also witness to an argument elsewhere and it just made me sad because it's the typical old "someone has to prove they're smarter and better than everyone else" and frankly these days I don't feel smart at all so I'm not even dipping a toe into the argument. 

And part of it is, I never had much appetite for argument; I always wanted to try to find connection instead, but it really feels like a lot of people now want to have arguments as their mode of interacting with people. And I am just not made for what our world is becoming, all the casual insults, all the sniping, all the belittling. I don't know. More and more I feel like there's really no place for me in what society is now; that I've been squeezed out and I"m just too weird to exist.

In a few minutes I need to do the rest of my piano practice and I made a little room and got boxes out to start moving my craft books out of the sewing room, with the idea of painting it this weekend. I have a color chosen; I just have to move the stuff from the walls and wash them, and then go get the paint and the painter's tape and the little foam brushes and a new roller set-up. Yes, it'll be expensive but cheaper than hiring someone to paint. I admit I also REALLY would like to go somewhere and buy maybe three more of those folding bookcases - another one for in my room, for novels, and one or two more for the sewing room, because I have that many craft books.

Once I paint the room I have to start thinking about moving all my junk from the storage unit BACK into the house and I admit the idea doesn't enthuse me greatly; I've gotten used to having less crap all around and while a lot of that "crap" is yarn and fabric I plan to use, still....I wish I could just take a couple big rolling laundry bins and put the stuff I don't want in it and have someone else take it as a donation)