usedtobeljs

Oh my god I'm so tired and it's only Tuesday.

Let's move on, for we persevere.

1) My TBR pile totters unsafely near my desk (or rather, my main TBR pile, with a secondary TBR pile in a spare room), and it's really out of control.
2) So what do I want to read now? I want to order some random Margery Allingham non-Campion mystery from the 30s. Why am I like this. Why.
3) My five months of not buying clothes is underway -- one month successfully down! But because I have excepted scarves and shoes from my no-buy policy, have I been scoping out potential purchases to replace or fill in gaps? OF COURSE I HAVE.
4) Miss Adventure has been going to a doggie daycare once (or sometimes twice) a week for three+ years, and it is the bright spot in her week. Alas, however, it is closing, and the only alternative will be less boutique and more of a hassle to get to and from. Still, she needs her socializing.
5) And the good thing about the alternative daycare is that there is an actual proper pool, and from April to October she can swim in the afternoons. She LOVES swimming.
6) The azaleas and camellias are out, here in the subtropics, and they are brave in pinks from pale to fuchsia. I do love a bright, bright pink.

Wishing you a happy week!

It's Monday, la la la.

Miss Adventure and I have had our morning walk in the subtropical steam. She still barks at the world, but she managed to make it around the park without lunging at any passing car. Perhaps this is the side-effect of her walk Downtown yesterday; we can only go there on weekend mornings very early, because she gets over-stimulated easily, but she actually managed two blocks on the main street without serious incident. Whee!

Am writing, am working, am trying not to stress-eat. This is going less well than I hoped.

Otherwise, I've had a frustrating summer with online clothing purchases. I bought a Victoria Beckham limited-edition repurposed T-shirt; after a week, the customer-service folk said the T-shirt was actually out of stock and refunded my money. A few weeks later, I bought a cute shirtdress from Hobbs; after a week, same thing happened. So now I'm waiting on a TRULY INSANE shoe purchase from Carel Paris; the shoes have been sitting in France, ready to be shipped, for five days now.

Perhaps I'm cursed. Who knows.

Let's look at the amazing icon of TH in the mirror, made by Misbegotten, instead. :) Hugs and a happy week!

Before I actually go off to do a workout and then work --

Happy Monday! Let's have three positive things to start a new week:

1) Miss Adventure did not lunge at any passing cars on our walk today, (She wanted to, but for once I kept a firm hand on the leash and the appropriate deployment of "Stay." Baby steps.)

2) Episode 2 of Loki was DELIGHTFUL, with banter and surprise Latin and amazing Hiddleston hair. The cliffhanger makes me nervous, but it'll be fine. I'm just along for the ride. (We'll see if I write any fic for it.)

3) I had two great Pilates classes last week. The Thursday class in particular was somehow soothingly familiar and challenging at the same time, going through the Essentials and Intermediate moves but without pausing between exercises.

All hugs and good thoughts for your week.

This morning when I got up at 6 (which is when the alarm goes off every day), the pre-dawn world was a soft, drizzly grey. Upon checking the weather.com app, I was told that it was dry outside.

Just finished my walk with Miss Adventure. It is still softly drizzling, grey skies over the green and flowering landscape. All of this tells me that the weather.com app lies. If I weren't so sleepy I'd be irritated.

It's not just the misty morning that's making me sleepy, I think -- it's probably a little bit the aftermath of the first Covid-19 vaccine shot, which I had on Friday afternoon. The shot itself was utterly uneventful, as I got the jab at a pleasantly efficient large-scale Health Department site, and my second shot is scheduled for four weeks from now.

Or, as I think of it, six weeks til I'm back at Pilates! \O/

Workout is very necessary, after a month or so of stress-eating. Time to buckle down so my summer clothes fit, alas.

But before I go off, here's an I&A drabble, set now, on the theme of the vaccine:

( Anya has never been a good patient )

Happy week to everyone.

After two days so hot that I had to turn on the air-conditioner, a cool front has brought us closer to normal. My windows are open to the cooler air (and pollen, oh well), and the scent of my neighbor's orangeblossoms is wafting inside.

Miss Adventure is also reclining on the sofa barking at the birds, which is less pleasant but utterly characteristic.

5 Things?

1) Looking forward to reading the new Veronica Speedwell mystery by Deanna Raybourn, which should be in my Kindle as we speak. No time to read it now, but it's here.

2) Ordered new glasses, which may arrive at some point this week. I know how much my glasses cost, and I still winced.

3) The way I socialize with In-Town Best Friend these days is a brisk nature walk, and on Sunday morning we went out to a local wildlife refuge to walk on the berms around the pools. Even at 8:30 it was far too hot, but we did our 2.5-mile hike anyway, with light wind ruffling the blue water and the tall swampgrasses, with anhingas and cranes and various ducks all around.

We didn't see any gators, but I am FINE WITH THAT.

4) Enjoyed Victoria Beckham's autumn/winter 21 show/video. The sheer dresses don't work for me, but the suits, oh my god. Alas, my eye loves the high-heeled knee boots, but yesterday I wore proper heels for the first time in a couple of months and I've lost my skill in managing them.

5) Writing on my own stuff, which means I haven't ficced at all. I keep wanting to, but I keep not having ideas, so...

Have a wonderful middle of your week!

I have no words for the attempted coup d'etat on...was it Wednesday? Was Trump's phone call to try to bully the Georgia Secretary of State into fabricating votes only on Sunday? Time has no meaning any more.

So, because I seriously am dizzy these days with the speed of...stuff -- let's think about more cheerful things.

1) I have the proper replacement for the back fence at last, at last! It changes my backyard in terms of perception of space, etc. Miss Adventure can now go play in the backyard but only while supervised, as she indicated she might enjoy tunneling under the fence to freedom. (Sigh.)

2) Today's tea: F&M Green Tea with Ginger. Yesterday's stress-baking: oatmeal cookies with cranberries and crystallized ginger. I sense a theme.

3) At the beginning of January, I reset my clothing budget. Also at the beginning of January: mega-sales on items which the various social media algorithms had been taunting me with for months. So anyway, thanks to Paul Smith and Ann Mashburn for your shops' sales. (The Paul Smith item arrived already and I'm in love.)

4)In related news, after "knitting" (badly) for a couple of years, I have now actually mastered the purl stitch. Wheee! Too late for my birthday scarf, but the yarn for that was so pretty that it mattered not that the stitches weren't varied.

5) Because of unchecked community spread of Covid-19 in my town, I have been persuaded to stop attending Pilates classes until vaccine or a plunge in the community cases. Making Barre and matwork a home-workout priority means that Miss Adventure gets a treat to keep her from jumping on me during the hundreds or similar. La la la.

And lastly, 6) For those who enjoyed Bridgerton Series One, the inimitable Red Scharlach has drawn Simon and Daphne. Precious!

Hugs and a good weekend to all.

Just a few bits and bobs:

1) The Big End-of-Year Push at work has eased, and once I make it to Friday, I'm off until New Year's. But it's been so hellish that I... actually didn't celebrate my birthday because I had deadlines and Stuff to Do.

2) This past weekend, however, I could feel my stress level sinking (even as my allergies made life complicated). This morning I woke up and thought casually, "Oh, I have these things to do," as opposed to "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO DO THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER THING WHAT I FORGOT THIS TOO OMG WHAT IS JUST POPPING UP IN MY EMAIL."

3) The exception to my dropping stress level is Miss Adventure, who has been deep in the throes of adolescent Corgi rebellion. We went to obedience class yesterday, during which our instructor watched Miss Adventure be super-stubborn at multiple times before she just refused to work. "That one has the attitude of ten Corgis," our instructor said.

4) I did manage to mail off Christmas packages to my brothers, so that's good.

5) To report: I did not buy the Victoria Beckham Reebok trainers I was yearning for, because they sold out in the first few days (in my size, anyway). I am now yearning for different trainers, because I am ridiculous.

I will try to do a ficlet or two this month, but as for now... sigh.

Hugs and a good week to all.

Theoretically this is the first of November, but this year, time is so horribly elastic that it's possibly September 62. I don't even know any more.

Miss Adventure and I just took a 1.25-mile walk in the slightly steamy morning (yesterday it was cool and dry, today it is warm and potentially rainy, tomorrow it's cooler and drier). She is now panting happily at my feet, trying to cool off. I still have another thirty minutes of workout, and then some writing, and then an afternoon of work...

But I am also tempted to make blueberry muffins, and might yet do so.

Anything good to report in this hell-year, wherein my Thanksgiving plans have been (rightly!) canceled and Christmas too appears to be canceled, wherein an unbelievably consequential election looms before us, wherein the pandemic swells...

Okay, enough of that. Five good things:
*Mark Gatiss and Adrian Scarborough reading ghost stories, live-streamed from Nottingham. SPOOKY.
*Mark Gatiss's new beard. HANDSOME.
*I bought a Betrayal mug from Redbubble user Red Scharlach. CUTE.
*Thinking about booking for a livestream of the upcoming show at the Almeida, Nine Lessons and Carols: stories for a long winter. THEATRICAL.
*Kamala Harris striding off planes. CHIC. FIERCE.

Hugs to all. If you would like a drabble or three-sentence fic, drop a suggestion in the comments. :)

Hiya, it's a big ball of crazy in the world, is it not? All of it is exhausting, near and far.

(So. Much. Work. To. Do. And. New. Tech. To Learn.)

But I will give 6 things that are working relatively okay:

*I am loving my Barre Plus Pilates classes. Tuesday we did a series of arabesques and I almost felt graceful for a minute. (False alarm. I am v. bad with balance.)

*Miss Adventure has now settled into the morning walks I'd grown accustomed to with Master Danger. And once it's not as hot as the surface of the sun, we'll take LONG walks.

*Ice-water in the late afternoons. Also, because my work schedule has changed, three days a week I don't eat lunch until after 1, and that's completely stopped my late afternoon snacking. \O/

*I am polishing my boots in readiness for "fall." And I'm wearing my ankle boots now, even though it's hotter than the surface of the sun.

*Almost finished a knitting project that's taken forever, so I can move to something more fun.

*New Lucifer! And soon I will have time to watch it! Maybe.

Hugs to all and a lovely slide into the weekend.

Yesterday was a day in which Miss Adventure caught a lizard, brought the lizard into the house for killing, and then peed on the kitchen floor in celebration.

So, you know, 2020.

This week I also found out that a key work-piece I need right away had not been ordered, although I'd placed the order four months ago.

So, you know, 2020.

Otherwise, though, I am reasonably well, apart from anxiety & allergies & the occasional raging insomnia, and thus I shouldn't grumble.

Three (mostly) cheery-making things:

1) Yesterday I took Miss Adventure for a brief walk around the park, where I had a lovely chat with a neighbor and a regular walker who'd always seen me with the Dangerous Dog went past me, did a double-take, and then said, "You have a new dog!"

2) Doing laundry today and ironing later, so that all my clothes are ready to be worn on a whim. :)

3) Hurricane Isaias didn't hit the subtropics, but I send hugs for those whom it affected.

Cheers and hugs to all, in fact.