Well. I took a spring and summer off from almost everything unintentionally. The contract I wanted to do this spring either didn’t happen or wasn’t available in my region this year for whatever reason. I’m trying to shift into a career I can better tolerate. I’m doing an online certification course, and I might be able to afford to get a few more certifications from a brick and mortar school soon depending on how the supposed proposed loan forgiveness program shakes out come next year.
We’re moving in a few months. We’ve been needing and wanting to move for so long. The pandemic really slowed our search, as well as some odd offers from family members on both sides that ultimately didn’t pan out. We’re packing, cleaning, planning, and sorting. We’re technically moving into a larger unit, but we’ll have less space overall because there won’t be basement space, a porch, or a garage. The space we will have will be more functional because of the layout, though. So, we’re donating things and putting other items out on the curb. A lot of our possessions are second/third/nth hand things we paid little to nothing for, which makes it easier to part with for free out of convenience. Do other regions and countries have a “put items you don’t want on the boulevard for people to take for free” culture? Do your states or countries consider that littering or are there express rules about dumping that include “curbing” things? (I’ve never had a situation where the things we put out aren’t taken by someone that needs them, to be clear. If they weren’t taken, we would take them to the proper place for donation/disposal.)
There are junk scrappers that take the bulky metal items from curbs to sell for scrap often. I end up identifying the local scrappers after a while of living in the same place. Sometimes I see the same scrappers across the city or in other nearby cities. It’s a strange subculture I’ve found myself in and out of a few times in my life. My parents are thrifty each in their own ways. We ended up with a lot of “curb” items over the years when I lived with them. I have a tendency to quickly assess if a curb item is worth stopping to consider while we are out and about.
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My job starts again soon and I’m having a sort of panicked regret about not having found something else to do instead—besides the certification course I’m taking while I’m going to be working. I don’t want to try to mesh back into the social ecosystem there, or find weird ways to avoid engaging. I don’t want to meet new people. I don’t want to have to explain my personhood to others again. I don’t want to have to pretend I understand why people are talking about particular things again.
I’ve grown too comfortable with taking care of the chores and not much else, and admittedly not to the full extent I could have been. What would it mean to be a “house husband”? I can’t actually be a full-fledged homemaker. I have to bring in a fair amount of money to help do my part to pay our bills and save for when we’re old. Even lowering my quality of life expectations doesn’t make much of a difference because we’re living simply and a little close to the edge as it is. The inflation on food alone has adjusted how we eat for us.
Anyhow, what’s been different for the past 1/3 of a year since I posted last? Uhhhh. I got really into knitting? I finished that sweater I’ve been talking about for awhile and made another one, and an ascot, and I’m working on some socks. I published the first chapter to a fanfic I’m writing on AO3 today. I’m editing the chapters I have done already and will probably post them on a regular schedule as I finalize them? I’m not sure.
I’ve been a fanfic lurker since I was a wee thing, but I never wrote my own, just daydreamed about things a lot. I decided I wanted to actively participate finally. There are a lot of internet niches that I think I would have participated in pretty heavily when they were first popularized if I had been perhaps five years older and hadn’t been coached never to post anything on the internet, even under a pseudonym. Maybe it’s better that I’m not participating until now. I think I’m much less likely to fall for scams, and I have a better concept of how to keep myself “safe” online from things I don’t want to see (to an extent). I worry about how much access nefarious older folks have to younger, more impressionable people now.
I’ve gotten much better at cooking over the past year. I don’t have to think about what I’m doing as much as I follow recipes now, and I can “freestyle” things as we receive our CSA relatively well. I think being on top of doing the dishes and preparing all of the ingredients before starting any of the active tasks helps a lot. I know I’ve already written about that in the past, but it continues to help me the stronger of a habit I make it. Something I’ve made twice now that I would recommend if you have some way of blending things is this twist on Italian pea pasta. It uses miso paste to mimic the heaviness of cheese. It doesn’t look like much in my bowl, but it has fresh, bright flavors and a richness I didn’t expect.
Recently, I’ve discovered that I have a reaction to aged cheese, so I’ve stopped eating it entirely. My throat closes up a bit, I get excess mucus, and my stomach distends painfully pretty soon after consuming it. I haven’t gotten a test to confirm, and I don’t know that I will ever bother. It’s easy enough to avoid, and I can just use nutritional yeast for the flavor if/when I get a craving. Sometimes, I make a pot of popcorn on the stove top, then put 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika, and 1 teaspoon of garlic powder in a spice grinder to make a powder to shake over it (sometimes I make it more complicated or more spiced, but this is the base “recipe”). It has a vaguely “cheesy” savory flavor and satisfies the craving every time.
It’s a real joy to have a cat around. I hadn’t been able to have one since my family’s cat finally had to be put down at the age of 21 a few years ago. Our cat has a big personality for being undersized, and she’s kind of a polite brat, which usually makes my days more interesting. She likes to cuddle in the evenings, and will sit on my knitting if I don’t move it for her. In the mornings, she’ll stalk me until I look away and then she’ll run up and kind of “tag” me by slapping my leg with her paws a few times without her claws out before running away for me to chase her. She sleeps on me when I’m sick, depressed, sad, hiding under the covers when I’m overstimulated. It’s comforting to not have to explain the feeling? Just having her there makes me feel loved.
I love fall, but the end of summer always feels like a deep loss to me somehow. Perhaps it’s because it’s the season that I had to go back to school every year as a child. School was complex for me in a lot of ways and I both loved and hated going back.
Ah, I’m exhausted with writing for today. I hope you’re doing well and getting enough to eat. Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon (sooner than 4 months from now, hopefully).