Saturday afternoon catchup

 I went to Sherman yesterday. I needed a few things, and I had about $12 on that Target rewards thing left to spend. 

So I got more of the pouches of sweet potato and bluberry puree (they're sold for kids but are also good for adults in a hurry to pack an easy lunch in the mornings) and some more of the fancy shampoo and new toothbrushes (WHITENING! they advertised, which made me nervous at first - whitening chemicals can sometimes weaken enamel, or if you're prone to sensitive teeth they can make it worse. But lol, it turns out they "whiten" because they remove stains when you brush)

I also went to JoAnn's. And there, found a 100% recycled yarn (it's polyester, but it doesn't feel gross? I think they've made big strides lately in synthetic yarns). It's a bulky weight, and I just kind of loved the colors - there was a light loden green (called Olive Branch) and a darker loden (I forget the color name). 

As is typical of craft-stores-selling-yarn, they don't have *many* balls of any one color or dyelot (fullfledged yarn stores recognize that for an adult sweater, in some cases, you might need 2000 yards, if you're big and it's a complex thing with cables or twisted stitches). I bought four skeins of the light color (so: not quite 900 yards) and two of the darker color (or roughly 450 yards). I figured maybe I could make a striped sweater, either a pullover or cardigan with that. After getting home I hunted around a little online and found the Oxford Boyfriend Cardigan (that's the designer's page; I bought the pattern off Ravelry because it's easy and then stored in my library over there). I will reverse the colors so the light color will be the main color and the dark will be the contrast. 

yes, yes, I have I think four sweaters on the needles right now, and yarn ahead for many more, but I just liked the colors and I had a coupon and I don't have a lot of really big bulky sweaters and anyway maybe it will knit up fast.

I also went to books a million, and - sigh. They've redone the store. Taken out the little coffee counter, which makes it seem sadder and cheaper. And the large wall of magazines that used to be across the back of the store is now a small, sad selection wedged in where the cafe used to be - it's less than half, maybe even less than a quarter of what they had. A big reason I went there was for some of the British craft magazines which they may now no longer carry!

I also got the sense that there were more tchotchkes and things like that, and way more "workbook' type things for children - and I just glanced at the cookbook and craft categories, but they had really been reduced down, and only had either very trendy things (lots and lots of those jokey "The Unofficial (some popculture property) Cookbook" and while those can be fun, they made up at least 3/4 of what was there, along with "AS SEEN ON TIK TOK" and yeah I kind of hate what TikTok and "influencers" in general have done). 

I mean, I never really shopped there much for fiction; they tend to lean heavily towards the newly-published/borderline pulp stuff. I did buy mystery novels there occasionally. (And I checked just quickly in SFF - only one T. Kingfisher title, and I think it was the most recent one. I know space is limited but I've found BaM to be very bad at carrying any kind of backlist).

But yeah, it made me sad. This is the only large bookstore within like a 2 hour drive - there's "Sundrop Books" in town but they're pretty small and don't really have a crafts or cooking section. And I think there's still one in Ardmore but the last few times I was in there there was nothing I saw that I wanted.
I do mail-order a lot of books (and, well, I just HAVE a lot of books) but sometimes it is just nice to go and browse around for books.

And the other thing - the going to the very-trendy, or the "these are for helping teach your children at home" or "we're only going to carry what the bestseller lists say is popular" just reminds me again that I'm weird, I'm not like other people, and again I feel a little....excluded? Like I don't fit in and never did. 

And yes, I can order from Bookshop and other sources online but it's NOT THE SAME. One thing the pandemic really taught me is I HAVE to periodically go out and be somewhere that is not my house or not my workplace, and I need to be able to see physical objects.

(And it doesn't help that Twitter, today, is imploding. yes, yes, yes I know the owner is awful and there are a lot of awful people on there but there are also a lot of awful people out in real life and you still go out and live life, no? And I still have friends there that haven't migrated elsewhere I hang out - and there are a few I'll probably lose when it dies. I'm on blue sky - acerbicotter is my handle - but it is now groaning under the strain of new users and I also expect they'll HAVE to do something soon to "monetize" it and I wonder what that will be. But it does make me sad; it feels like a lot of things that were important to me are dying - several small businesses in town, not ones I had frequently used, but still - they're now empty storefronts. And a "restaurant incubator" in the next city over, where I had eaten a couple times, closed down - just as there's an increased push for more food trucks. (Food trucks are okay, but: I don't like eating outside in our midsummer when it's over 100 degrees, and wasps are an issue when you have a bunch of people with food around). So yeah, feeling a little....something....today)

I also went to Brookshires, which was a mistake: Friday before a big holiday and that's the grocery store the lake-house people (think: mostly upper middle class and slightly above Dallasites, though Brookshire's selection doesn't exactly reflect that). Crowds, a group of what were probably 20-someting kids/ kids' BFs and GFs of a lake house owner pushing their way through the aisles and yelling at each other). A couple older men stopped DEAD right inside the front door as I was going in, blocking the space, and so it took longer for me to get in from the hot parking lot to the cooler store than it should have. I do think people have largely forgotten other people exist, as a side effect of them being home so much in the pandemic - I have seen more rude behavior and bad driving these past couple years.

I will say that as always, the people WORKING at Brookshires are lovely, and that's partly why I go back. But I also had another shopper nearly run into my car with their pickup as I was backing out because apparently it was too onerous for them to wait the 20 seconds for me to pull out of my spot and they just barreled past me and expected me to stop for them. 

At any rate: mowed the lawn this morning and cut a bit of brush, I have a little reading to do over here (at work) and then I'm going to go home. Maybe tonight I finally watch "Knives Out," which I bought the dvd of ages ago when I realized it was probably cheaper to do that than to subscribe to a streaming service that had it. (I also have "Everything Everywhere All at Once" but a friend warned me to be sure I was in a good headspace because apparently the first 5/6 or so will make you cry if you're someone like me)