a little self-care

 Not a great day for a couple reasons:

- the hive on my foot still hurts terribly, and it looks like the skin split right next to my fourth toe (what would be the ring finger if the ring finger were a toe). I had to take my shoes off while sitting at my desk to give it some relief.

- I found out that Quilt Asylum - the largest nicest quilt store anywhere near me - is shutting down. Their landlords are tripling their rent and telling them they must pay property taxes as well, and they can't do that. So the owner is retiring. And now I'm wondering: if all the landlords (Or if it's a case, as in some towns here, "the city is the landlord") are doing this, they're going to KILL their downtown. And then I lose one more place to go for fun

our downtown is almost dead. There's the gourmet shop and a fancy women's clothing place I generally can't afford, and an antique shop open irregular hours, but that's about it for shopping. The bookstore moved to Denison (I don't even know if they re-opened). Sherman has pretty much nothing but big-box stores. And then everything else is largely empty land around me for hours and hours of driving. So I am sad. 

- I also found out a student blatantly lied to me. In short: they did not show up to make up an exam. First they claimed they couldn't find my office. I sent an e-mail explaining. I sat there for an hour and a half after my office hours ended and the student never showed. Then this morning they claimed they STILL couldn't find it even with help. So I said "okay fine, if you can take it after class, I'll see if the secretary is willing to proctor it." And so, when I walked them into the faculty part of the building - through a set of double doors designed as fire doors and kept closed but always, always unlocked, the student said "oh, these doors were locked yesterday"

O RLY? At 2 pm? when people were going back and forth from their offices to the labs they were teaching? Really? REALLY?

In fact - I didn't even know if they HAD locks, and went back after I got back to campus to check. They do, but I have never seen them used, and I don't know if any of our keys work in them even. 

I didn't confront, I just said archly, "In the more than 20 years I've worked in this building, I have never known the doors to be locked" (And I have been up here late in some evenings, and on weekends)

NOW I wonder if "I couldn't find your office" was a lie, and now I wonder if "I was out sick and such and such office was supposed to e-mail you, but I guess they didn't" was a lie. 

Doesn't REALLY matter, I guess, given how things worked out, but I'm FURIOUS they thought I was that dumb and naive that I would accept two absolutely contradictory stories. 

And yeah, that kind of thing leaves me feeling very small. Maybe I need to become the kind of person who yells, and go to the student "NO this door is NEVER locked, don't LIE to my face, get out of here, you can't take the exam" but frankly, there is occasionally that Connected student who then brings down the wrath of an administrator on your head and it's Not. Worth. It. 

So once again in a way the liars and the dirty dirty cheats win (though not really in this case)

But it frustrates me to try to be an honest person with a code of ethics, and live in a world where people will blatantly lie, assuming I'm too dumb or too naive or too kind to do anything. And cheaters prosper; just look at the government. It sucks and it's discouraging and I'm about burned out on doing anything to "help" society but that puts me out, because I feel like I'd never have people do for me in the same way. 

So I was tired and sad and angry when I got home (after 5 pm again, because when I ran home for a quick lunch I forgot to take the bucket to collect the soil for tomorrow's lab, so I had to do it AFTER I got done with the grading and research-work I did up on campus after lunch). 

At first I was just going to eat some cottage cheese and fruit but thought "No. You need to cook something"

Fortunately, I have a quick black bean soup (it uses a can of the beans, plus a cup or so of chicken broth, and whatever seasonings you want - I used a sauteed shallot and some of Spice and Tea Exchange's carne asada seasoning). I let it simmer a while because I also mixed up dough for tortillas - the first use of my new tortilla press (well, "new," bought over a month ago). I make flour tortillas mostly. 

I was able to do some of my piano practice while that was sitting and resting, and then after dinner got the rest in.

The soup was a good choice; I felt better after eating it. Not sure if it was "nutritious food" or whether it was "you took the time to do something for yourself" or both. 

okay that's in the wrong orientation but it's 9:30 pm and I'm tired and I can't get blogger to rotate it even though I rotated the image when I converted it to .jpg from the dumb HEIC file that works with literally nothing. 

After all that I wanted to knit a bit

Earlier in the day I thought "maybe starting a new project would help my mood" but at nearly 8 pm I decide that wasn't a good idea, so I dug around and found a long-stalled project, maybe I work on these things until I finish a few

it's that Turkish-stitch purple thing. It looks wrinkled or misshapen here but that's just because it's a quick photo and was hanging a little folded. It's a simple stitch (k1 (yo, skp), end k1) and you do that every row so you don't need a row counter or to worry about the right side or wrong side. The downside is it grows really slowly, especially in this fine yarn (it's like a light fingering weight). But maybe some day I will finish it.

anyway. I hope soon there is some actual good news that comes - not more losses or closings or bad things. (I wonder some days: are all the "making stuff" hobbies contracting down to nothing because (a) people have no time and energy for anything but work (b) everyone stares at screens now for their free time activities (c) no one can afford to run a craft supplies store any more other than the gigantic chains or (d) some other nefarious thing. But it does feel like my town has almost nothing to offer me, personally, for fun, and now it seems like Denison may be losing that. And I CAN'T drive 90 plus minutes one way through horrific aggressive traffic to go to Dallas, which is what I guess NORMAL people here do for fun)

Anyway: I guess I take the old joke about "yarn and fabric will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no yarn and no fabric" to heart and just use my stash forever more now. (I have enough to last me the rest of my life, most likely). But it's lonely and it's sad never having face-to-face discussions with people who care about the same things as you do; it again makes me feel like I don't matter and I'm "weird" in a bad way because I don't like what "normal" people like and they don't like what I like.