Day 1: King Lear

On Twitter today, people are pointing out the Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” while he was quarantined. Apparently we’re supposed to find inspiration in this and each pen our own masterpiece while we isolate ourselves. Does a blog post count? If it does, then I also wrote “King Lear” while in quarantine.

Other random thoughts and reportings:

  • Regarding my work deadline, I handed in my issue a little late, but not so late as to get myself in trouble. Plus, my boss is the one who physically hands in the materials when I’m done with them. She was unexpectedly late that day, which made my lateness irrelevant. Whew!
  • I often feel like screaming these days, but usually in the metaphorical sense only. Yesterday all the rage and frustration hit me so hard that I damn near yelled for real. A feeling of impending doom is bad enough, but having an inept and corrupt government just makes the whole thing worse. But then we got word that school would be cancelled for next week. We had already decided not to send the kids to school for a while, but it was a relief to get the news. It meant the local government, at least, was acting, and it meant we wouldn’t have to explain ourselves to the school. The governor has framed this action as moving April vacation up. It’s a smart move that will give them time to work out a plan without too much additional hardship on workers. People were going to have to arrange for care of their children during the vacation week anyway. I feel less like screaming now.
  • I made grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches for lunch today. Livia railed about the tomatoes, but she ate them. That’s progress.
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Bad Managers

Today I am trying not to worry too much over the government’s bad management of the coronavirus pandemic as I struggle with the near impossibility of meeting a work deadline due to my own poor time management.

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Nature Report

The crocuses have been blooming for several days, and the daffodils are budding. No sign of violets in the yard yet, but I found tiny telltale leaves of dandelions, chickweed, clover, cinquefoil, and ground ivy. And the peepers have started to sing!

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Absentminded Antiprocrastination

Being a mom has eroded my procrastinating tendencies. I still look at unpleasant chores, such as the dishes, and say to myself, “I can’t handle this right now.” But then ten minutes later, the work is done. I’ve gotten so used to the inevitability of chores that I do them absentmindedly, even after having given myself permission not to.

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Cross-Stitch Pattern #2

Pattern #2 Successfully Test-Stitched
(pattern based on a Calamityware design)
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Awkward and Weird

Heard around the house:

Awkward turtles make weird babies.

From “The Llama Song
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Cute Mistakes

“Orson Scoot Card” is a cute typo. I found it on one of my own blog pages. Why can’t all my mistakes be so cute? If they were, maybe I wouldn’t mind them so much.

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Thoughts on Shopping

  • I’m beginning to think that there are four sizes of bra: the size you need, the size you think you are, the size that is too big, and the size that is too small. No matter what size I think I am, the bras of that size are always too big or too small. No bra is ever the size I need.
  • I am sick of ridiculous pricing. Why would any store price an item at $56 and then sell it to me for $8? But they do it. Over and over again. So I never buy anything when I first see it. I wait for prices to drop, for big sales, and for coupons. But it would be so much simpler for everyone if the stores just priced things appropriately.
  • I used to think that, when I felt like I was burning up and dying of thirst in the store, it was because they’d turned the heat up too high by accident. Now that every store has a display of pricey bottled water at the register, I’m beginning to suspect it’s not an accident.
  • What is the point of limiting the number of items that I can take into the dressing room with me? I mean, how many sweaters do they really think I can hide in my purse or shove down my pants? Dressing room limits (e.g., 6 items or less) are extremely inconvenient. Women’s clothing sizes never run true, so I have to bring at least two sizes of any item I’m interested in buying, and if it comes in multiple colors, I want to compare how they look on me. I don’t want to have to keep going back and forth, in and out of the dressing room, getting dressed and undressed, all day long. So, unless they’re willing to station someone outside the dressing room to fetch things for me, they should let me bring in everything I want to try on. Seriously!
  • And what ever happened to all the mirrors? It used to be that there were mirrors all over the place in the clothing department so that you could hold a garment up in front of you or try it on over your clothes to see how the color looked on you. Now, in many stores, there aren’t any mirrors, forcing us to bring more items to the dressing room, where they limit how many we can bring with us. Bring back the mirrors!
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Don’t Be Cool

When it comes to music, there are two types of cool. There is a brand of cool that is naturally lofty and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. People with that kind of cool know what’s good, they seek it out, and they point the way for everyone else. That kind of cool is to be admired. It is also rare.

For everyone else who aspires to be cool, there’s only one way to do it: at everyone else’s expense. These people elevate their own tastes by trampling all over everyone else’s. They tell you what you should like and punish you if you don’t. They do it well enough that other people buy into it and perpetuate a cycle of meanness that we’d all do better without.

When you hear anyone trashing someone else’s tastes in music, you can be sure that those people are that shitty, manufactured brand of cool. They’re not the real deal. If they really loved music and knew what was good, they wouldn’t need to tear other people’s music down.

I’m not saying that I’ve never trashed anyone’s music. I’ve been alive long enough to make some mistakes. But the older I get, the more I realize that what you like depends on your background, your mood, where you are in life, and who you’re with. Your likes change over time. That’s as it should be, so you don’t owe explanations or apologies to anyone for the music that you like. Ever.

So don’t try to be cool. Either you already are, or your attempts to be cool will only hurt you and/or other people. And anyway, being cool is a lot less important than listening to and enjoying whatever type of music you naturally like.

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Norse Stuff

We should all be more like the dwarves in Rick Riordan’s fictional worlds.

Dwarves are craftsmen . . . . We’re serious about the things we make. You humans–you make a thousand crappy chairs that all look alike and all break within a year. When we make a chair, we make one chair to last a lifetime, a chair unlike any other in the world. Cups, furniture, weapons . . . every crafted item has a soul and a name. You can’t appreciate something unless it’s good enough for a name.

Blitzen, answering the question of why dwarves name their goblets
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