Grumbly & Dissatisfied

Eating a caramel apple ^ at an orchard, October 2013

I am mad at myself. I LOVED that cashmere sweater from a dozen years ago, but I wore it so much it got stained, and I recycled it.
I'd never liked the camel color, but even so, I should have kept it! I could at least wear it at home.

Besides the color, I almost hadn't bought it because of its high price of $25 at a thrift store (not mine). Got it home looked it up and saw that was a steal--it sold for ten times that, new. (More, now.)

Anyway... this sort of carelessness is typical of me, and sometimes it catches up with me.
______________

The heat came on this morning. 
It was 39ºF (4º C) overnight--the coldest overnight yet. 

I love the cool weather, but I'd better bring the Boston fern inside.
I put off re-potting it all summer, so I need to do it now, though this is not ideal since it's its dormant season... But it's in a too-large pot, and its roots are exposed. I must do something, or let it die.

I'm a little bit mad at myself for not doing it sooner. 
The issue was (is) that I need to buy a 30 lb. bag of dirt to repot the fern, and I didn't want to carry the load 7 blocks from the hardware store, and I didn't want to ask someone with a car to help me, and I was too lazy to load in on my bike.
And this week someone stole my bike seat & post, so now it'd be more awkward...

But really, those are all minor problems, easily solved.
 I could make three trips with 10-lb bags.
The real problem is my laziness about PHYSICAL ACTION, which has always been one of my top "could try harder" spots.

So. NOT TOO LATE.
Today is the day.
I will do that--go get dirt.

Sometimes a tiny crisis is just the thing to shove me into action. 
And sometimes I miss it, or ignore it, and the fern dies, or whatever.
______________________

I'm feeling disgruntled with myself just lately.
Taking the summer off was good, but I'm looking at a lot of nothing right now, and that's uncomfortable.

Last night I looked at blog posts I'd marked "favorite posts" 
and was reminded that I do like (love!) many things I've done.

A lot of favorites fall into the "Things Look Like Other Things" line.
This is one of my all-time favorites:
The Girlettes re-creation of Manet's "Bundle of Asparagus". 

It's genius, I declare, and I can hardly believe I put this together.
Why did I?
I don't even recall my thought process.

(Oh, wait. No, now I do:
Something came wrapped in that red rubber band, and since I was doing Manet's painting of the bar at the Folies-Bergeres, I'd been looking at his other paintings, and the association came to mind--this rubber band is like the binding around the asparagus.)

Those Manet toy re-creations are some of my best work ever.

Only 22 out of more than 5,000 posts are "favorites", with no posts tagged after fall 2022, three years ago?
 That can't be right...

I guess I rarely look at these, but I like knowing they're collected... So, here, I will at least add this one that was important for me when I wrote it in 2024, about the death of Ramon, a regular at the thrift store: 
"Rainbow Jesus".

Hm. That post used to have some good comments, but they are lost.
When I exported a year of posts from the old url (gugeo) to this one (noodletoon), their comments dropped off.
That's a real shame---
and an unexpected cost of my neurosis about comments!

I'd wanted to shake off comments that I was irretractably annoyed by, and in the process I lost some good exchanges with people in the comments section.

Well, we have to work with/around  our neuroses... I remember clearly I didn't feel I could even keep blogging if I couldn't get clear of either my reactions or the comments.

Turned out it was easier to change the comments/url than to change me.
______________________

I was encouraged to read that Ram Dass said he never lost any of his neuroses after a lifetime of spiritual practice. Christopher Isherwood seems the same.

It's like I wrote in a favorite post on walking Camino, "I Never Slept with Charlamagne":
THIS (life) IS NOT a SELF-IMPROVEMENT Project.

(I reread that post every so often and think, This is pretty smart. I wish I'd remember it more often.)

Self-improvement... such an American idea. Everything should get bigger, better, faster.

How 'bout instead, Being Here Now?

For me, just lately, that means being okay with being grumbly and dissatisfied.

I think it's like the pins and needles you feel when a limb that's fallen asleep starts to wake up.
Some waking up is going on.

Don't know what that means.
_____________________

I'm going to a friend's house this evening for a meet-and-greet with a mayoral candidate.
I am not motivated to go by politics but by curiosity about the role of faith in the candidate's politics: 
this guy is a pastor, a Black man from Mississippi who is married to another man, and he has been involved in the Poor People’s Campaign, (started by the Rev. MLK and was rekindled by pastors William Barber and Liz Theoharis).
So, this whole story interests me.

Pay attention to what gets you off the couch. 
I am lazy, and I certainly wouldn't go out for a politician, but religion has always fascinated me. 

I will go out for dirt! TODAY.

And... for a grilled cheese sandwich, the last one of the season. 
I hope the lakefront commissary is still open--they were going to stay open until Oct. 13, but perhaps last night's cold made them shut early...
I will walk over and see. 

Grumble, grumble...
I hope you all have a nice day. Or, nice enough.