Audience of Strangers

I am putting this here at least in part because otherwise the last thing here is the post about Angus's passing and I just cannot. I am doing better, but I still miss him so much, and seeing those pictures makes me remeber how okay it was to sit in the shair and have him fall asleep on my lap.

Well, it's 2025. I just drove to and from the US to pick up a package which turned out not to be there yet. It was a very nice road trip--Chelle came along, f'd if I can remember how to tag people on here--but I do wish it had also resulted in picking up the things I wanted to pick up.

The US inauguration thing is happening today. (Dear future historians: I have not forgotten, I am not oblivious, I am just limiting the amount of mental real estate it gets.) It's weird how you can hit a point of both profound not-surprise and exhausted disgust at the same time.

Other stuff... Mhm. Apparently work screwed up the filing of the start date of my medical leave, so I'm trying to get that straightened out. I have clutter and too-much-to-do. I also have very nice things that are holding me together. (The LOML has cooked dinners for the last three nights straight, they have been amazing.)

I'm on Bluesky, and it's so much less awful than Twitter had become. I haven't imported or exported or however you do everything yet, and I should get to that, but (imagine me waving tiredly at my to-do list here).

Oh. The World Gone Wrong podcast is helping a lot. (So are some others, but I got to share this one on a bunch of the drive back.) Highly recommended. Very funny. Very sweet.

(yes I also have horror recs but not today.)

I hope you have a better tomorrow soon.

I am not-quite-bored, so here are dates. Mostly I am curious to see who will recognize which ones; partly I am curious to see if anyone has any others to add.

(For the record, 26 May, 1988[1]

August 29, 1997 (suspect this one will tip several people off... got sunblock?)

12 June, 2070

October 23, 2077 (my favourite)
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[1] Arguable! But it's Thursday, 26th of May, which I believe makes 1988 the most likely guess.

I am feeling odd tonight,
and cold. It was a warm night;
they liked my hair
--cold purple, warm purple, amethyst and plum--
better than I thought,
and it was good to listen,
and Sarah left me a spindle and a bag of fiber
I don't even know the name of.
Top?
It's not-white and faintly scratchy. A princess
would spin it into diamonds. Gold only comes from straw.

But I have
so many things to do, so many nearly done
and books begun
and cleaning undertaken
and rooms and jobs and plans and good intent
that I can feel them teetering above me
just one more
just one more and they will come down and paralyze me in a pile.
The word is tsundoku. I think of time in terms of books.

and so tonight I will finish one step. Just one.
And go to sleep, and waken lighter in the morning
and feel the sillier for writing all this down
with line breaks studding it like beads
in an enthusiast's first clumsily assembled earrings.

Starting to make noticeable progress on clearing physical living space.

Inbox is up to 450 e-mails.

*sighs and rolls up sleeves*

Waking up at noon, I find, completely screws my plans for the day. It does this even if I don't actually have any plans for the day, which seems sort of unfair. Crushed plans I could articulate my complaints about, you see. Crushed vague-aspirations-to-productivity are like an itch in the middle of your back that you can't reach to scratch. A bloody bruising blistered itch.

That said, I actually got some things done (some cleaning, escaped the house by daylight[1], picked up small!groceries, somehow managed to beat the erratic eating which goes with an erratic wake time), and am very glad I live in a household with individuals who are inclined to be forgiving of my flail.
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[1] A day on which I do not do this always feels disorientingly weird.

Up far too late last night. My own damn fault. Does not bode well for the coming day.

At least it's rainy.

I hate the way that one little thing can go wrong and it ends up cascading through two days, so you play catch-up for two more days, and start the week low on sleep and feeling late for everything.

This too shall pass.

I mean, I get it, okay? I like dogs. Dogs are smart, and undemanding, and on average more sweet-natured that humans, and generally if I can politely and non-pushily catch the owner's attention (which I do not try to do with service dogs) I will ask if I can pet their dog.

That said, this article on how to behave vis-a-vis a service dog you may encounter was enlightening, in terms of concretely articulating certain concerns.

And the shoe analogy is brilliant. Definitely worth reading down to it. Seriously.

I've cleared three books off my to-read list (two by turfing them, one by starting it), gotten four boxes of stuff downstairs and labelled for CDA pickup (unfortunately they're actually coming tomorrow, not today, but better to be ready early than late), worked on a little knitting that is reminiscent of if perhaps not strictly inspired by the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum, and dug up, seeded, and watered perhaps two square feet of back yard, juggled laundry and dishwasher a little, and finally gotten my New York pictures... well, not up. But up for vetting. I may put up a small photo post tomorrow.

Weirdly, the thing I'm happiest about is the book extraction. Second-happiest goes to the back yard. I'm hoping to do a more there tomorrow, as well as running around picking up assorted kinds of cat food (possibly over multiple trips).

Lucy, my poor dear suffercat, would like to make it clear that it is incredibly hard to sleep on my socks when I persist in doing all this "cleaning" and "putting away" around her. But there is now more space on the floor than there's been in a while, and I am starting to very much appreciate the UfYH (content is worksafe, though page title contains NSFW vulgarity) tenet that "putting things away" is a critical part of laundry and dishes.

On the plus side, I have (somewhat?) corralled the pile(s) of books, and have found a ton of bookmarks. Also liberated a previously-in-use laundry basket.

I really need to figure a better magazine storage solution, too.

Also, although unrelated to tidying, we were given a pair of theatre tickets for Friday and couldn't use them, so John gave them away to a coworker who went to the play with his wife. Apparently they had a lovely time, plan to visit the theatre again, and sent over some of her chocolates (she's a professional chef/caterer) as a thankyou.

You just keep doing what you're doing, and I'll just keep going through these bottles and jars of moisturizer, ok? We'll see who runs out of steam first. (Hint: I have a mailbox at the end of the block and the URLs of some very helpful companies.)

Three months. I can make it three more months.

In other news, not much; been kind of a relaxing day.