Tuesday morning random

* Still adjusting to a different schedule. (Doing workouts in the afternoon to try to reduce the chances of GI tract issues brought on by working out on a totally empty stomach - I think it was causing something like acid reflux). I need to get more project photos taken and up - two pairs of socks, a hat, a headband, two other small toys - but that will require coordinating having time and having decent light.

* This does seem to be the darkest time of year. It's still dark when I leave the house just before 7 am and it's getting dark shortly after I get home. I get that Solstice happened and we should see a bit of daylight lengthening, but it just seems dark. I suppose part of it is it's January.

(There was a v. funny episode of The Amazing World of Gumball - called "The Lie" - where the kids decided January was too depressing, so they invented, out of whole cloth, a holiday, called Sluzzle Tag, that was somewhat of an imitation of Christmas. Except, you decorated your toilet (this is a show aimed at under-12s, after all) and the gift-bringer was Sluzzle Dude, who was like a heavy-metal version of Santa, and the food was "the worst junk food you could imagine." The funny thing was, the residents of the town totally bought the idea, and suddenly Anais and Gumball realized they would actually have to arrange, somehow, for there to be presents from "Sluzzle Dude." So they went out and repurposed all the thrown-away bad presents from Christmas.....)

It's supposed to be crummy this weekend (heavy rain here, ice to the north of me) but I'm somehow hoping Saturday won't be too bad because I want to get out to the natural-foods store and maybe the Target (to look for some kind of early-spring or Valentine's decorations to put up; I feel like I need it right now)

* First soils lecture of the new year this year. Smaller class and it seems a critical mass of more-serious people, so hopefully won't be a repeat of my annoying giggler class of a couple years ago.

And this is a relevant quote, perhaps, that came across my Twitter feed (from Simpsons QOTD; said by Moe Szyzlak:)

""I'm better than dirt. Well most kinds of dirt. Not that fancy store bought dirt, that stuff's loaded with nutrients.""

If I were redoing my little blogger header yet again, I might replace the "I'm not a hipster" line with "I'm better than dirt." Except it's not dirt, it's soil, and maybe I'm not better than soil, because I can't grow food.

* I started the second sleeve for Hagrid. I'm still just on the ribbing but at least the sleeve is STARTED. I think once this (and maybe Raven, too) is finished, I'm going to start Harvest, which is a worsted-weight sweater. I am so far serious about the "work the stash down" plan; haven't even looked at yarn online. 

* I gave the lesson at CWF last night. Topic was "Joy gives you strength" (specifically, God's joy, of course - we are using a book for this, I think the Women of Faith series?). Interesting idea, though - I likened it to resilience, that being a joyful person gives you that fund of resilience that allows you to bounce back after a setback, or to keep digging in the manure-filled room believing that there must be a pony in there (I didn't say that one).

I did reference "When Books went to War" because I think laughing in difficult situations is part of it, and apparently one of the draws of many of the ASEs were that they were humorous books (e.g., Chicken Every Sunday).

I DIDN'T reference Pinkie Pie, however, though I was thinking of her - that her joy gives her a certain resilience and it really does take a great deal to steal that from her (but when it is - when her mane goes flat - look out).

I don't know. Another thing someone brought up was the idea of looking for little joys or little sources of happiness in life and I think I need to get better at that again - one of the things I let happen to me in 2016 was to let my entire outlook be colored by things like the bad budget numbers and in the past I was much better at thinking "Well, today was a crummy day....but oh look, I just found a quarter in the parking lot!" and being able to pivot my mood that way.

And I wonder if some of my growing distress over (more than) the past year is that I'm somehow losing that, that ability to, as a friend of mine says, "look for the ice cream." Maybe a person can get that back by working on it. Maybe I need to work on that.

Though I will say, I can't even remember what it was now - probably some dumb old family in-joke - but something happened that made me laugh a lot when I was up at my parents, even in the middle of my mom's back issues, and it felt really good just to be able to laugh for a few minutes over something.