Buying books makes me feel good, and owning books makes me feel good. Every new book brings the hope of new information to be learned, new worlds to be discovered, new characters to fall in love with, and new authors to stan. Every old book is like an old friend. Books are wonderful that way, and they are hard to resist.
They are also hard to store, though, which was why I started the GLP (Great Library Purge) all those years ago. And it’s why I began to grade the books that I read, so that I’d have a means of determining which books to keep and which ones to donate. The problem is, of course, that over time, even the A-grade books begin to take up too much space. I once again have way more books than I have room.
During the early part of the pandemic, buying books was the only way for us to get new reading material. Livia was particularly in need of new reading material, and I was particularly in need of hope. Between the two of us, I had plenty of justification for buying box after box of new books.
Now the library is back to business as usual, and I have started to borrow books again more regularly. In fact, I’m reading a library book right now. That is good, and it is necessary. There are times when buying books is reasonable, but borrowing is usually better. So I’m going to try to switch back to that mentality. I’m also going to try to give away more books. Though an A-grade book is arguably worth keeping, that doesn’t mean there’s any point to keeping it. I should consider how likely it is that I or my family will read the book in the future. If the odds are low, the book’s gotta go.
Many of the plants in my yard are aggressive spreaders, and I often characterize them as battling one another for dominance, especially as new plants arrive and join the fray. But there don’t seem to be any major losers in this battle so far. Most of the existing plants have either held their ground or moved themselves to less contested areas. I wouldn’t have thought plants could move themselves, but they do. The small white violets, for example, have shifted themselves from the back yard to the side yard.
Over time, some of the weedier plants have won me over somewhat. Ground ivy, for example, is aggressive and non-native, but it’s also attractively colored and bee-friendly. And, because ground ivy grew in my parents’ yard, it reminds me of home, especially when it is freshly mown (it has its own distinctive, earthy smell). I realized quickly the futility of trying to eradicate it, and perhaps the inevitability of its presence here helped me to get over any dismay I felt over its invasive tendencies.
Ground ivy is as weedy as they come, but it’s one of the earliest bloomers (picture from mid-April), and its cheerful purple-blue flowers and green-to-purple foliage bring much appreciated color in the spring.
But there are also some plants that I’ve come to like less over time. Dwarf cinquefoil is a native plant, said to be popular with the insects, and it grows in poor soil. It also has cheerful yellow flowers. Those are definite pluses, and I can’t really find anything negative about it online, but I don’t find it to be a good yard plant. Every year it expands its range, butting out some of the other plants, and leaving the soil poorly protected with its low and patchy growth.
Dwarf cinquefoil may be popular with the insects, but I don’t like its low and patchy growth.
One particularly worrisome plant is hairy bittercress, an invasive import. Had I realized what it was when I first saw it, I might have managed to limit its spread, but it’s well established now. Its leaves are so low and its flower stalks so skinny that it blends into the grass, making it nearly invisible and hard to assess quantity-wise, but I would guess that it exists in every square foot of the front yard, and it’s rapidly spreading into the side yard. Every year I pull some of it out, but never enough. One day this spring I pulled a whole grocery-bag’s worth. Some of it was already seeding, and it blasted me as I pulled it (OMG, how those seeds fly!), but most of it was on the cusp, and I got to it just in time. I know it was an exercise in futility, but it made me feel better. Hairy bittercress is said to be edible, so I suppose it would be a good plant to have around during the Apocalypse. That’s about the only nice thing I have to say about it.
Hairy Bittercress (picture from mid-April 2019) Here is hairy bittercress shown in its absolute best light: growing in a clump near an old stump. It looks nice, right? But, in a lawn, it’s virtually invisible and spreads unnoticed until it’s everywhere. Those things at the top that look sort of like wild rice are its seed capsules (known as “siliques”). Later they will launch the seeds like miniature cannonballs, a dispersal method known as “explosive dehiscence.” It’s really impressive, even if it’s not a good thing.
I am also troubled by the way a few of our inherited garden plants are spreading (more on that to come in a future post). I think that some of them will ultimately need to be removed. Right now I’m working on a landscaping plan for the yard. It’s a complicated task made harder by the fact that I have little gardening experience. I would like to finish the plan this year, after keeping a close eye on how the native plants behave in various parts of the yard, and begin implementing it next year. We have some beautiful native plants that would be even more beautiful if they could be convinced to grow in the right places and the right density. Perhaps it’s just a pipe dream, but it’s a good dream.
For now, I continued to be fascinated by the arrival of new plants, and I enjoy watching them try to make homes for themselves here. However troubled I may be by the aggressiveness of some, it’s heartening to see so many success stories. I don’t keep an inventory, but I think it’s likely that every type of plant that I’ve ever identified in the yard is still growing around here somewhere. They’re all survivors.
When the kids complain about not getting exactly what they want, I say, ” You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” I learned this handy saying from a Pinkalicious book. Occasionally I use it in the past tense (“You got what you got and you don’t get upsot”). It doesn’t quite work, but I think it’s amusing, so I use it anyway. And then there’s Marshall’s version of it, which goes, “You get what you get, and you get upset, and then you cry until you get what you want.” It’s a little lippy, but he doesn’t push it too far. Mostly he’s just trying to be funny, and usually he succeeds.
I finally finished The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks, which is a great relief, because how ironic the title would have been if the book had turned out to be an unfinished one! The short stories in this collection are not plot-driven, which is perhaps a weakness (for some readers), but they are beautiful, disturbing, haunting. I’m not sure what to do with the book. It’s a good one, worth keeping simply because the author has such a gift with words. But, I don’t expect that I’ll read it again. So, though it pains me, I think I will donate it. I have to keep reminding myself that books can be reacquired in a number of ways and that letting go of a book doesn’t mean that I will never see it again. Perhaps before donating it I will browse through it to find a few quotes to keep as mementos.
I am close now to having read all of Barbara Michaels’s novels and Agatha Christie’s major works (defined by me as “all of the Marples and Poirots plus the acclaimed standalone mysteries”). This gives me both a feeling of accomplishment and one of terror as I contemplate life with no new stories by these two favorite authors. To alleviate that terror, I started looking for new mysteries to read. The first one that I picked up was Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. It’s a quick read, and I’m almost done with it. At this point in the story, I would say that the book is flawed in its structure (it has a weak intro and a huge flashback in the middle), but I absolutely love Maisie Dobbs’s approach to life and to detective work, and I suspect that all will be forgiven by the end.
I know from experience that when the number of posts in my drafts folder exceeds 20, it means that my mental state is poor. The higher the number, the worse the mental state. Currently I am at 31. That’s bad. Today I did some editing and posting, but the drafts number refused to go down. There are so many things on my mind that, for every one post I published, another thought bubbled to the surface and became a new draft. I hope that I will be able to get this under control soon.
On a related topic, let me first say that I don’t like pandemic, and I certainly don’t want Covid to come roaring back. That said, the pandemic had an upside in that it forced me to be mindful of my mental and physical states. I could not afford any kind of breakdown while we were in the thick of things, so I made sure that I didn’t have one. My only goal was to get through the pandemic, and now it seems that I may have, so that onus is no longer upon me. I feel myself slipping, and I’m not sure how to counter it. The Daily Minimum isn’t quite cutting it anymore.
Also related to the subject of pandemic, I’ve noticed that people are wearing their masks less and less. I always wear mine when I go out, but I’m usually in the minority. In some places, this really bothers me. The library, for example, is a place that draws a lot of children, and I wish everyone would wear masks there. There are a handful of places where mask-wearing is still mandatory, though. When I went in for my annual doctor’s visit, I was given a disposable mask and instructed to swap it out with or place it over the mask I was already wearing. At the hairdresser’s, I offered to remove my mask to make washing my hair easier. The hairdresser replied that masks were still required by state law and that she’d happily give me a disposable one if I was worried about mine getting wet. At the dentist’s office, signs stated that masks were still required in the sitting room.
My hubby took advantage of some Amazon Prime deals and got us a few extra channels to watch on the cheap. Among the shows that looked interesting was the 2020 version of The Stand. I had already read the original book by Stephen King and seen the 1994 miniseries, both of which I liked. Though 2021 did not strike me as the best time to be watching a series about pandemic, I decided to go for it. In a way, it was a positive experience to watch such a nasty pandemic unfold, because it made our pandemic look so mild by comparison. Sadly, though, the series is bad. The casting is bad. The narrative order is stupid bad. Everything about it is off to some degree. What a shame. Meanwhile, I was leery of A Discovery of Witches, because I thought that the last thing anyone needed was another show featuring the secret lives of vampires, witches, and demons, but I’m four episodes in and utterly hooked. Surprise!
My eyes are dry and gummy today. That’s because I wore makeup yesterday. No matter how carefully I remove my eye makeup before going to sleep, some of it stays there and works its way into my eyes overnight. I hadn’t worn makeup in over a year, because I’d had no reason to (don’t worry–I threw all my old makeup away. The stuff I wore yesterday was brand-new, straight out of the package). As with many things that we abandoned during the year-plus of pandemic, I have mixed feelings about its return. On one hand, I had forgotten how nice it is to be complimented on my appearance. On the other, I’d forgotten the bleary next-day eyes.
I was slightly concerned that I might have touched a poison ivy plant while taking pictures of flowers one day this week. So, afterward I washed my hands extra carefully and cleaned off my camera with a disposable wipe, just to be safe. My husband asked me, “Why were you so deep in the foliage that you even got close to the poison ivy?” I was shocked that he even had to ask. It was for the sake of science, obviously!
When it comes to hobbies, there are, I think, roughly three types of people in this world:
Those who have no hobbies and depend on other people and mass media to amuse themselves.
Those who have one or two hobbies that they obsess over.
Those who have more hobbies than time and who could keep themselves busy indefinitely with their many interests.
The reason I’ve been thinking about this is that the kids and I talked about hobbies today. I explained to them that their dad and I fall into the third category. There is no end to the things that he and I interested in, and if we didn’t have jobs and other responsibilities, we’d happily while away our hours on our many hobbies. Then I pointed out that they each had several hobbies of their own. Livia likes reading, art, and bike riding, for example. Marshall likes reading, Minecraft, and photography.
They agreed with me on my assessment of their hobbies, but they told me that they each had one other notable hobby: making life difficult for their sibling. Livia called that hobby “Marshall,” and Marshall called it “Livia.” I told them that that was not a legit hobby. They assured me that it was. Ugh. Kids!
Today turned into an active day. I had intended to stay home, like usual, but my hubby talked me into going to the library. Not only did we have three boxes plus a bag of books to donate, but we also had some overdue library books. So I hauled all the books there, then renewed my library card. I bought and borrowed some new books, too, because the Universal River of Books flows both ways. (BTW, one of the books I donated was a big, gaudy Bible that had come into our possession. I heard one of the people at the bookstore ooh-and-ah over that Bible, and I had to laugh–everybody has their own taste in books and religion, that’s for sure!)
Later, Livia’s swimsuit arrived in the mail. She tried it on, and of course it did not fit. So I went to the store and bought another one (which mostly fits her, and she adores it). While I was there, I got a haircut. My hair is so much shorter and healthier, but OMG, when did a wash/cut/dry reach $50 in suburbia? I’m out of touch, I guess. I liked the hairdresser, so I might go back to her, but only if I can come to terms with the price tag.
There are few things more difficult than finding an appropriate swimsuit for a girl who has grown out of children’s and tween clothing sizes but is not yet a teenager. I have shopped both in-store and online. Shopping online is particularly annoying, because every time I find a juniors’ or misses’ suit that looks appropriate, it turns out to be either a girls’ suit that they threw in to trip me up or unavailable in her size. Last week I ordered the one suit I found that looked like it would fit without being too “cheeky,” too big or revealing in the bust, or too much like something a middle-aged woman would wear. When it arrived, the straps turned out to be too long. I am disheartened. She needs the suit for Father’s Day weekend. I ordered one more online today in hopes that it will arrive in time and fit, and I may attempt one more in-store trip. If neither of those endeavors pans out, I will have to attempt to shorten the straps on the suit that we have. I’d really rather not, though. Sewing is not my forte.
