Lack of memes, Somerset Maugham

Why I'm not doing recent memes:

1. I know the music from everyone else's high school graduation year much better than the music from my own. I keep getting the most awful songs earwormed from your graduation years, but even the ones I know from mine are no trouble at all. Whereas you all have me mumbling along to the worst hits of my birth year, my sixth grade year, even my freshman year of high school. Sir Mix-A-Lot and Petula Clark will live together in my head for the next week. Thanks, folks. ("I like downtown and I cannot lie....")

2. The random questions meme? Ohhhh, that really, really didn't go well for me. It kept asking questions like, "Will [friend who is feeling really insecure right now] ever make anything of him/herself?" Gosh, that's a trigger-point we all need; thanks, randomizer! (For the record, I think everyone on my friendslist is already something. Some of you are quite something, but never mind that now.)

It was even worse when I did the version where I wrote down the answers and then randomized a new set of questions for those answers, because it would come out something like, "What is the sexiest thing about markgritter?" "Absolutely nothing. I cannot imagine anything. It's just inconceivable." Which is not true and also not particualrly fun/funny. Over and over again, the cringe-worthy responses mingled with the dull. So I gave up.

3. My icons are all of me. So the pairings of my icons are "me and me." We don't actually get along all that well some days, but we muddle through.

It's too bad, too, because I've been feeling like being randomly entertained by memeage.

Anyway, a couple of people have asked about ( Wednesday night's play,  )

It's raining and thundering like mad here this morning. Pitchforks and hammerhandles, as they say. I hope it eases off in the next half hour or so, because missista will need to go outside when she wakes up, and while she deals all right with rain, muddy puppy can be a fair mess.

I'm about 1/4 through this draft of Sampo, and I'm beginning to suspect it will be okay eventually. Not this week, but eventually. And I've got Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb down to read for revision inspiration, and until then I'm reading River of Gods (no opinion yet -- just started). Also I keep picking at bits of The Collected Jorkens: Volume One when I'm upstairs. And so we keep going.

Food and making do

One of the things I've noticed about being so tired all the time is that I've lost track of the fridge. In my usual state, I know what's in the fridge: what needs using quick before it goes south, what's around to serve as lunches, what's coming up fresh soon and what's at the end of its season. Right now, I'm pretty lost. We ran out of cucumber, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries at dinner today. We're in need of a dozen more things. I've written them on the grocery list, but I didn't know in advance -- I had to see what we had to put on the table and go from there. I haven't been to the farmstand by the bagel place. I haven't been to a farmer's market. Sometimes I have to scramble.

I love cooking big complicated meals, and I love cooking with fresh fruits and vegetables, but for me this is a hobby. It's extra. I've read some things about the slow food movement, and my anti-movementarian biases come out pretty strongly: it's good to cook healthy, fresh foods for my family (and, when possible, friends), but I get skittish at the idea of making it a movement. (I don't think this is because I'm too young to know what a movement is.) Especially when "fresh and healthy" is not always all that well correlated with "slow." I see the anti-"fast food" parallelism, but I don't really agree with it. Taking a lot of time to cook can pay off, but some of the best things are fast and easy, too. It's just not that simple a dichotomy.

Add that to the life mantras list, right under "total orderings suck."

markgritter grilled steaks and chicken tonight. I threw fruit and veggies on the table and made lemon masala mushrooms. I suppressed a dozen ideas for things I could do if only I ran to the store and picked up this and julienned that and spent another hour in the kitchen, but I think we were all glad that I didn't. I took a nap this afternoon. Ista went in her crate so that I could lie down on the couch unmolested, so that we could all do grown-up stuff. And she was fine -- she had a nice walk in the evening and people to play with her and so on, and she did not suffer by having her nap in her crate instead of in the household location of her choice. She needs a bit more practice at being alone, and I need a bit more sleep, apparently, or I wouldn't have been able to nap. Generally I can't.

I don't know that there's a coherent message here, except that I'm dealing with some more limitations than usual, either temporarily or permanently. We don't know yet. We hope to get feedback on it soon. It was not a good day to be a Mrissa in some regards, but in others it was a quite fine one. I think drinking more water again and not trying to drag myself into optimism will be good things to add to the list. Sometimes I'm allowed not to be the optimist for awhile, and it's not the same as wallowing in pessimism. Sometimes I'm allowed to have a sucky time and just let it be a sucky time and not have an 18-point contingency plan for how it will cease sucking within the next 57 minutes flat. Nobody is coming around to check my contingency plans. Right? I mean, you're not, are you? Because I'm going to bed, so we'll just have to deal with that in the morning if you are.