Blue-Footed Musings

I pulled more than a half dozen books off my bookshelf tonight and put them in the donation pile. Most of the books on my shelves are old favorites, so it’s impressive that I managed to find any that I could part with. But this sacrifice, as big as it felt, was not enough to make room for all my new books, which are currently stacked on the floor.

The stacked books aren’t in the way (yet), but I’m trying to organize my office, and I don’t see how I can possibly consider it organized as long as there are books on the floor. I could box them, but I don’t want to. I’ve got at least four boxes of books stashed elsewhere in the house, and that’s already too many. What I really need to do is either give more of them away or stop buying books, but neither option sounds appealing, so I guess I’ll just have to give my office up to the books and work somewhere else in the house 😉

• I walked the driveway 8 times, or roughly .5 miles.
• I finished my 13th book of the year (Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia, A+).
• I received 6 packages today. One was presumably a mini trampoline, though I’m not sure, because I haven’t opened it yet (it’s in quarantine). One package was a box containing 6 books (I seem to have developed a book-buying addiction). One of the books was a large print edition (oops). I don’t like large print, but I’ll read it anyway. The other four packages were curtain panels for my office. I’m not sure I like the color. Oops on that, too. I will probably have to return them.
• Marshall returned 5 books to my library, and he took 5 new books away with him.
• I have at least 8 mosquito bites and they ITCH.

I’m glad that I long ago established a set of things to do each day as a bare minimum. And I’m glad I made a habit out of meeting that minimum. Had I not, I doubt I would have even bothered to get out of bed this week.

Thanks to Wordsmith.org’s A.Word.A.Day, I now know that there is such a thing as a “homophene,” which is any word or phrase that looks the same when pronounced (i.e., words that look the same to lip readers). For example, the words “mat,” “pat” and “bat” are homophenes. The phrases “elephant juice” and “I love you” are also homophenes, which I think is hysterical.

There are quite a few sounds that create homophenes (f and v, s and z, etc.). This is something that I have begun to notice myself, as I get older and lose more of my hearing. It is fortuitous that I’ve learned this word now, so that I’ll be able to use the correct terminology for complaining about the phenomenon in the future. 😉

I woke up late today. Really late. I have allowed my schedule to drift too much. My kids may not be physically going to school during the week, and I may not be physically going to work, but we still have to do our schooling and work during the day, like everyone else. We are not vampires. I don’t know how I will motivate myself to get back to a normalish schedule, but I must.

This morning, it got suddenly very bright in the bedroom, then dark again. Half-asleep, in a state of near dreaming, I thought to myself that the sun had just gone nova and that the world was about to end.

The thought of death didn’t scare me. Instead it was a relief. After the nova, everything would be quiet and peaceful, and there’s nothing more appealing right now than quiet and peace. It’s not the protests that bother me as much as the reasons behind the protests, and all the other horrible things going on in the world, not the least of which is the festering boil in the White House.

I am awake now. The sun has not gone nova. We’re not all about to be wiped off the face of the earth. I don’t want myself or anyone else to die. But I do want quiet and peace. I want orderliness and cooperation. I want equality and fairness. I want a better world, one that not only isn’t on fire but doesn’t deserve to be.

At least the kids make the most of riding their bikes on the driveway.

And I take my walks back and forth.

And my hubby does woodwork.

We each have our own little outdoor escape, and what a blessing that is.

Today we all left the house! Shocking, I know. My hubby’s truck was due for inspection, so he had to drop it off, which meant I had to take the kids with me in the car to pick him up. It was the first time the kids had been out since March, and the first time I’d been out since early April. It was a short trip, and we never left the car, but it was still liberating.

In other news, the kids and I tried out our new bikes today. Livia struggled a little with shifting, but she’ll get the hang of it soon, no doubt. We are still waiting for my hubby’s bike and some assorted gear to arrive. Then we will be ready to go bicycling in earnest, and I sure hope we will. Otherwise, we just wasted a ton of money.

I stayed up way too late last night trying to finish the mystery I was reading (The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah). I didn’t quite make it to the end. There comes a point at which the eyelids develop a mind of their own and close whether you want them to or not. So I had no choice to put the book down and go to sleep. I will finish it tonight, though. And after that, what will I read? I have no idea, but at least I have a lot of choices, thanks to all my recent book buying.

So many things have changed in my life since COVID-19 came to town. I’ve talked about many of them already, and I’m sure I’ll keep talking about them. In fact, I’m going to talk about some of them right now.

• My credit card is on my desk, near my computer, instead of in my purse, because the only shopping I do anymore is online. I’m not 100% sure where my purse is, now that I think of it.
• I have no idea where my keys are. I haven’t used them since early April, when I went to the doctor’s that one time.
• Even if I knew where my car keys were, they wouldn’t do me much good, because my husband keeps parking me in. But I don’t care, because I have no plans to go anywhere.
• Overall I’m feeling more depressed than usual, because the situation in the outside world is so bad, but I’m less anxious, because sheltering in place has freed me from so many of the things that were making me anxious.
• We still haven’t gone through that roll of kitchen paper towels.