Yeah, maybe I do put All Clear in time out for a bit, because this came today:
From the blurb it looks like the plot may be similar, but that's okay. Maybe I need a comforting book right now, where nothing very bad happens to anyone and you know going in the protagonists will have a happily ever after.
(The more and more I learn that real humans don't really get a happily ever after, the more I want stories that have that)
(*she broke a rule and was turned into a statue)
It's really funny - ten years ago I would never have considered a true romance novel, nor would I have considered fantasy. (I don't know what kind of fantasy this is. It's not HIGH fantasy in the sense of swords and dragons; rather more a world with magic and some sort of fantasy creatures (cats with wings!) and it's in some ways a gentler world then ours. I think of "high fantasy" as being a wilder and potentially more violent world than ours....)
I also broke down and ordered the Folio Society version of Piranesi. I want to read this again, and I want a "permanent" copy (And, to be fair: I want to see how they did the treatment of the illustrations of The House in it). When it comes, if I can quickly find where I tucked away the original copy I had (one of the early runs of the hardback), I'll offer it up to anyone (stateside, shipping has gotten high) who wants to read it. I enjoyed it a lot when I read it in 2021 or 2022.
Other than that, today was a frustrating day. It was too hot to go to Fort Washita (after spending an hour or so in a hot kitchen helping cook up taco meat for a kids' camp activity), so instead I decided to try a "discount grocery with Amish products too" I had read about.
It wound up being not the best choice, and unlocked some unhappy childhood memories.
It was about a 40 minute drive, which even for here, even for me, is kind of a lot. I can get to Denison in just over 30 minutes, and they have a lot more things. I can get almost to Ardmore in 40 minutes.
They had Amish products, but not really any more than the place about five miles from me does (and they also have cheese; this place didn't have much cheese).
There were some weird things about the store - for one thing, there weren't chiller cases; there was a "cold room" (though I DOUBT it was the requisite 40 F for refrigerator safe temperatures) that also had freezers in it - but the milk and stuff was just out on shelves (and they didn't have the kind I preferred, so I will have to take a run out tomorrow to get more).
The "staple" groceries were ....discount. Things close to their expiration dates, and things with damaged packaging. The candy, for example, a lot of it was from Christmas or Valentine's day. And while I guess it's fine and it's not wasting food, I think that's where the unpleasantness came up for me, and it just turned me off.
I remember, very vaguely, when I was a kid, my family sometimes shopping places like this. Where you didn't go in with a list because you didn't know what they'd have (so you can't plan your meals and get everything one place, and that always irritates me) and it was also.....just kind of sad and dim. It was not well lit, it was a big cavernous space. It felt uncomfortable and sad to me and I'm SURE that's half remembered childhood experiences.
I can't remember WHY we went that. My dad did tend to be the kind of guy who never met a bargain he didn't like, but I also wonder if there were times in the early to mid 70s when they were being very frugal (maybe to buy a car? my dad really hated going into debt for anything other than a house) or maybe the house they had the mortgage on was really a little more expensive than we could afford, or maybe there were genuinely times when we were in financial difficulty?
This also bled over into things like clothes; I had "cheap" (inexpensive and not name brand) clothes, and I got ostracized and made fun of at my school for it. I mean, now I know that was the kids in that stupid stuck up town being stuck up and mirroring the attitudes of their snob parents, but at the time it was incredibly isolating and made me feel like no matter what, I would never fit in, and I DESPERATELY wanted to fit in.
And we didn't get much allowance, so buying my own clothes was out of the question; it would take me a year to save up enough for a pair or two of "the right kind" of jeans and a popular top.
So in that store, that kind of came rushing back, and it crashed my mood. I did buy a loaf of Amish-made bread and a jar of jam, but I don't think I'll be back; I get get the same at the little "Amish store" here without the reminders of how we lived in a town "too rich" for us when I was a kid.
I came back and had to pick up a prescription, and on the way home thought to run to Pruett's for milk and eggs (the only things I really needed) but they had NONE of the kinds of milk I would buy (but lots of Lactaid*) so I just didn't bother getting anything and I will have to run to Walmart tomorrow morning and hope THEY have what I want.
I realized though, maybe why our shelves are often low in stock: we are literally the only grocery-having town (other than things like C-stores) for maybe a 25 or so mile radius, and so EVERYONE comes here to do their shopping and so, like on paydays, every place gets hit hard.
(*I tried it during the pandemic because it was all I could get. It tasted weirdly sweet and gross to me; maybe I can pick up on the lactose having been split into its component sugars (uhhhh....glucose and galactose, I think, if I remember my basic biology) . Anyway, I was in no mood to spend a premium for something I didn't really want.)
THEN when I got home I had to call the pharmacy because one of the tablets looked different from my previous prescriptions of it, and looking it up on line got some weird results (AI has destroyed websearch these days). It turns out they're the same but I'm annoyed that they don't put a description on the label (I guess some places do) and that online search of what should be a dead simple thing gives such contradictory results (one of the sites was claiming it was an amphetamine, like is used for narcolepsy, instead of a blood pressure medicine).
And I really have to mow the lawn tomorrow morning before it becomes too hot for it to be safe to do that, so it's going to be hard to decide how to juggle "get to wal mart before it's stupid busy" and "mow the lawn before the heat and humidity turn deadly" and it's just a lot.
So all those things conspired to put me in a bad mood.
but at least I have my new book.
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