« Garden, chickens, puppy. | Main | closing up shop »

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

daily tweets 9/29/09

• Contemplating a social-network moratorium for a while. Something has GOT to give; there's just not enough time & nothing else is optional. about 12 hours ago from web

I don't think I'll eliminate Facebook and Twitter completely but I am thinking of ways to cut back on my time involvement at those two places. (I don't even do the applications!) I'm too tired to elaborate much on this (why is it that this kind of phrase is always followed by a long rambly paragraph?) but the short version is this: This fall, since the semester started and especially since the kids' school started, I feel like I am always chasing my tail. I never feel caught up, ever. I'm not doing all the school stuff with the kids that I wanted to (no need to call CPS; either the stuff we're leaving out is optional or we're doing it but not every day). I don't feel like I'm doing an adequate job preparing for my own exams and things, although so far they've come out OK. And of course the laundry is never caught up and my room is a total sty and there are some medium-sized projects (framing pictures, painting the bathroom) that I need to do, that I want to do, for which I have all the supplies just sitting there looking at me, and I'm not getting to them because I'm just too busy. I bought an elliptical machine from the classifieds at the beginning of the month and when I bought it I thought I'd have, you know, muscle tone by now, or something, and I've been on the thing once. This situation in general wears on my nerves and stresses me out. I like myself so much better when I'm more relaxed and less stressed out, and yet what can I cut out to make things work better? Two solutions: I have to get up earlier, and I have to not spend so much time staring at this screen. Because I can't just stop doing laundry, much as I would like to.

• Positively giddy at the thought of putting on a sweatshirt. Also, I'm feeling a delicious urge to knit. This is what 72º does to me.
  about 16 hours ago from web

It is cold in here right now. COLD. And it's even way colder outside, to the point where I feel a little sorry for the chickens even though everybody says they can handle cold just fine. It's refreshing, this cool weather, but I find myself wondering why I wanted it so badly when I remember that we haven't gathered a single stick of wood yet, and all we have in the woodshed is last spring's dregs. Goodbye, weekends.

• I want. this room. SO MUCH. http://www.lileks.com/30s/kitchens/10.html via @Lileks 11:13 PM Sep 28th from web

James Lileks is one of my favorite Internet strangers. You know how some celebrities feel like friends*? I've been reading Lileks' Internet stuff since my very early days on the Internet, and I feel very chummy with him even though he doesn't know me at all and we've never met (but he did once reply to one of my replies to one of his Twitter posts, which is the 21st-century equivalent to getting a one-line reply to a fan letter, right?). We like the same things. He makes me laugh. Anyway. Mr. Lileks frequently posts material from vintage catalogs and things, either for purposes of nostalgia or humor (the first thing I saw of his was his "Gallery of Regrettable Food", a collection of food photographs from the 1960's which was so hilariously atrocious that it made my ribs sore for days), and just yesterday he put up pictures from this flooring catalog from the 1930's that filled me with covetous desire in a way that modern interior-design stuff could never dream of doing. I have now decided that I need at least one, preferably several, glass-block walls in my house. Click the link, you'll see what I mean. (The sewing cabinet with the thread rack! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!) Another room from that same catalog that I like a lot is this one, except I would leave out the chickens.

PS My grandmother's house has an exhaust fan EXACTLY like the one in the chicken kitchen. It's not over the stove, though; it's there to circulate warm air from the kitchen into the bedrooms. Because the only heat source for that house is the woodstove, in the kitchen, in one corner of the house. On cold winter nights, I could count on being able to see my breath in my bedroom. I had a huge heap of blankets and slept like a log. Even now I sleep best if there's cold air on my face and warm blankets everywhere else.

*Other celebrity pseudo-pals of mine include Weird Al Yankovic and Brandi Carlile. Who are yours?
*This happens to me with book characters too. Most vivid case ever: the Tillerman family from Cynthia Voigt's books.

Comments

Posted by: thicket dweller at September 30, 2009 04:37 PM

Posted by: Anonymous at September 30, 2009 08:58 PM

Post a comment