wishing for fall

Still 25 days until the official start, and even with that, accuweather.com (with their ridiculous long-range forecasts, and I wonder how accurate those are) don't show a proper cool-down until MID OCTOBER.

I am really over the heat. I do not think I will mow the lawn tonight: I stepped out of the house a few minutes before seven this morning and it was like walking into a sauna and I just can't any more.

I really want to dig in my stash and start some big projects and also dig out a lot of the really old yarn I have and use it up. I want to do things like make shawls and big heavy sweaters and stuff. Sympathetic magic, maybe, to call down fall and get some cooler weather (and some rain. We haven't had rain in a long time and too many days of unrelentingly same weather wears on me).

I'm still also just frustrated with humanity. I think part of it is the cognitive dissonance: I like the individual people I know, and on balance, they are good people (Oh, some of them complain a lot, some of them have some very specific ways in which they are petty, some of them have - IMHO - inflated ideas of their own importance). But then I look at the news and while I know I'm seeing the worst 10-15% of human behavior, I just despair. (As I said, once again, the other day: "It's a good thing I'm not God as humanity would have been a smoking crater long before now")

But yes. The biggest things I want right now are:

- Time to work on the stuff I want to work on
- More-temperate weather, and some rain, even if that means I have to take time to mow
- Some better news where I don't come away from it muttering darkly about humanity having hit the "irredeemable" point
- And a much longer shot, and wanted less than the other things, but: time to just be around yarn and/or fabric or other craft supplies and to just kind of float through them and think about all the stuff I COULD make.

Part of the reason craft stores (and book stores, and oddly enough now, the Ulta) are dangerous for me is that to me they represent a promise to myself - that if I buy this yarn or this fabric, I will have time to make what I want with it, I will make the time to enjoy sewing or knitting or crocheting it up. And I rarely do have that time, or, once I get it home, I lose interest in the project (what I need to do, perhaps, is start the project the very day I get the stuff, even if it's just casting on or just pre-washing the fabric and cutting it out...)

Bookstores are similarly dangerous. I have piles of books EVERYWHERE - three, seven-foot by three-foot wide bookcases full in my living room, a smaller bookcase, two bookcases in my home office, four in my bedroom plus large large piles everywhere, and books stored back in my closet. I really need to go through again and aggressively cull and make a big donation to the public library (their used book sale is in a bit over a month, so this is the ideal time). I have to recognize that I don't have the time and attention I think I have for reading, and that in some cases my interests have changed. (And I'm not going to re-read as much as I think I will, even if I think the new-ish paperback editions of the Poirot books are stylish and cute, I should get rid of the ones I've read).

(Part of it is, I think, a scarcity mindset: what will I do if Amazon were to somehow shut down (or be shut down, or I lose internet connectivity, or the USPS goes away....) There are no bookstores in town and often libraries don't have what I want most to read. Even though now I very likely have more books than what I can read in what remains of my life - and I come from long-lived stock. I should pare down and, for example, focus on reading the costly Folio editions I've acquired instead)

Wait a second. I'm sure this has been done elsewhere but quicker to make my own:

But yeah.

And now Ulta has joined the pantheon of places I go to make myself feel better. I'm not a BIG makeup wearer (though I can usually talk myself into a new lipstick, because "It's a slightly different shade of red than the ones I already have" but all of the skin and hair care stuff - "Oh, I really should deal with the calluses on my feet, here's a cream and also here are socks with aloe in them" or "I love warm baths and I love epsom salts and also things that are pretty and smell good, so I should buy these bath fizzies" even though it's been way too hot of late to consider warm baths....Or the idea that of course I need a new shade of nail polish, or some other fancy hairclips even though my "Starlight Glimmer Swoop" is now long enough I can tuck it behind an ear and I usually do.

But also the thing is, I think that stuff represents a promise to me that I will sometime take time to enjoy it. But also, in the weird dysfunctional relationship with myself - well, it's like the boyfriend bringing home flowers to the girlfriend to make up for staying at work late and not telling her, that kind of thing.

But yeah. I am really up for some stash-diving and new projects even though I know I should finish the ongoing ones.

(here's another one, equal time!)

But yeah.