* Slow progress on knitting, but progress: I got up through the sleeve increases on the first sleeve of Augusta last night. I have a few more inches of plain knitting and then I decrease for the sleeve cap.
I really want to finish a few things that are on the needles but I also have yarn set aside for future projects - more fingerless mitts, and the Incunabula sweater, and I bought yarn from Simply Sock Yarn's fall sale for one of the shawls in that same book (and this time made sure to buy more than enough! The yarn I don't have quite enough of for one of those shawls will become a smaller, more-traditionally-patterned lace shawl). And I bought a skein of a West Yorkshire Spinners' yarn - this is a fairly new yarn to me but it is very reasonably priced. It's sockyarn, and they have a line of British Bird Colors.
I bought the one called "blue tit." Yes, partly because I am secretly 12 inside but also the colors in it are pretty (blue and gold and kind of a green) but also because one of the big studies I talk about in ecology is the Wytham Woods study where a researcher (Pettifor, maybe?) took eggs from some nests and placed them in other nests, to increase clutch size. They were looking to see if the parents could successfully fledge more young - there's a concept called Lack's Hypothesis that fundamentally says birds are adapted to only lay as many eggs as the environment they are in could traditionally support (usually parent foraging time is the limiting factor) and so there was another hook there for me in the yarn. I think they will be my next "simple socks" after the pair I am currently doing.
* Walking out this morning to my car, I had to stop and go get the hoe (I couldn't reach my shovel without getting the car out first). Someone in my neighborhood lets their dogs run (or: the dogs get loose) and one had left droppings RIGHT in the path I walk to get to my car. Luckily I was paying attention and not thinking about what I had to do today (my usual state first thing in the morning) and I saw it.
So I got the hoe (as I said, I couldn't reach the shovel easily; my garage is small) and managed to move it far enough that I'm unlikely to step in it. And it should be a while before I have to mow again.
I know the dogs don't know any better but I wish their owners did. I don't like the random loose dogs in my neighborhood; I don't know if they're dangerous or not (a colleague in another department was low-level attacked when out walking in his neighborhood) and I am just leery of unfamiliar dogs. And I don't like having to look out for dog poop; not having a dog, it's not something I think about.
* Driving in, they were playing (on the Sirius channel I always listen to) the overture to von Suppé's "The Beautiful Galatea" and sat in my car for a few minutes once I got in the lot just to hear it to the end because I like it. I know I've said this many times before but yeah: I wish "real life" were more like an operetta or a comedy musical. Because for one thing, evil is defeated in the end (and in many of those things, there isn't REAL evil; there's more just "naughtiness"- it's more like Discord at his selfish-but-not-malevolent state more than Tirek.) And the people who are "supposed" to fall in love with each other, do. And it usually ends with a big party and it's implied that everyone pretty much lives happily ever after.
And yeah, maybe this makes me deeply unsophisticated or even childish but I really do prefer the "happily ever after" ending to the tragic ending. (I even prefer the ambiguous ending to the tragic one). I don't know why there's a strain in our culture that says wanting things to be happy is dumb, but there is, and it annoys me. (Maybe I grew up on too many Disney movies and too many fairy tales, I don't know. But it does annoy me when people think that everyone dying miserably at the end of something automatically makes it better "art" than one where people survive and come through adversity and are happy on the other side of it. I've said before I'm a sucker for redemption stories, and I stand by that)
Also if life were more like a musical or an operetta, there would be random outbreaks of song and dance. And people would be good at it. (I'm a mediocre-at-best singer, and I really can't dance, but I wish I were good at both). And things would just in general be a little more brightly-colored and a little more flatteringly-lit, and problems would seem less insurmountable....
* Tentative plan for this afternoon is to run to Sherman (My tomorrow is taken up with finding the transect locations again with my research student). I want to go to the JoAnn's because I kind of want to see if they still have that Wonder Woman flannel print and if so, get another yard and a half (and more elastic, cannot forget that) and make myself another pair of the sleep shorts because I really love how the My Little Pony ones turned out. (Or if there's some other fun flannel I like *better*)
I might also pick up a little grey yarn and some small lockwasher eyes for the Not Okay Bot pattern from Tiny Robots. Tiny Robots is a thing on twitter; an artist who makes line drawings of tiny robots that don't exist but should. This one is one that goes and finds someone when you're not (emotionally) okay and gets them.
Well, I'm gonna make the one with the "sympathetic" face variation because that's what I need when I'm Not Okay, and also there's no one it could go and get for me anyway, so it needs to be the thing absorbing my Not Okayness.
I also just need to get out of town. This has been a long week, lots of just-tiring interpersonal interactions and it will be nice to go places where I can be out of town but also the only talking to people I do will be that sort of neutral talk you do with cashiers and the like. (And I won't be expected to serve other people. I think that's what wears on me, sometimes: so much of the interpersonal interactions I have is me doing stuff for other people and then when I need stuff done for me, I have to turn around and do that myself)
* My dad is doing still better; it is likely today he will get moved to a rehab place that is actually within walking distance of their home (so: better for my mom). The plan is to get him built back up (both lungs and ability to stand/walk) so he can go back home and hopefully not be so dependent on my mom. I really hope if they give him breathing exercises he keeps up with them; it seems not breathing sufficiently deeply on a regular basis is what precipitated this whole thing - he sits kind of hunched up a lot of the time and I know - from my experiences at my desk - that affects your breathing.
It also tells me to keep being aggressive with myself about exercise, and that if my asthma seems to deteriorate, to go to my doctor and just learn to deal with having to do an inhaler or whatever, because I don't want to have those same problems. (Currently, it is under control with a daily pill and with getting regular exercise, but I've been warned if it worsens I might have to have an inhaler at some point)
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