(no subject)

Yesterday was a mental health day. I feel bad about staying home from work when I'm not physically sick, but when my idea of a perfect day is curling up into a ball on the spare blankets we keep in the back of one of the upstairs closets, it might not be a good day for interacting with humanity in general. But more on that later. First, the good stuff.


Friday and Saturday were wonderful. Andrea and I had a wonderful time on our all-day road trip down to Oregon. We wandered leisurely through the crafts fair that was the centerpiece of Oregon's Autumn festival and it really made me think of the sort of harvest festivals that I imagine were once so prevalent and that are increasingly being subsumed by the growth of impersonal sprawl. The whole experience was wonderfully peaceful and subdued.

There was a metal artist who made fantastic sunflowers from various scrap, anywhere from a couple feet to tall to one that towered over my head. It made me want even more to learn how to weld. I've never thought of myself as particularly artistic, but I did find some inspiration there. Doing business with local merchants, the people who actually harvest and produce the items they are selling, made me feel so connected and a part of life in a way that retail store shopping never does. Seeing the individuality, the uniqueness, and the craftsmanship of the various items was really special. Another equally unusual, though much older, thing comes to mind from Oregon too. There was a fantastic fountain that I took several pictures of. It had a streaming nozzle at the top for humans to drive from which flowed down into a bowl that hung perhaps a foot out over the road next to it at convenient height for horses to drink from, and then flowed down to a ground level bowl for dogs to to quench their thirst at. The cast iron based was marked with the words "Humane Society". I took a bunch of pictures of it; it just really made me smile!

I stood for ten minutes or so and listened to the very attractive Native American man playing a flute with recorded accompaniment and selling CD's of his work. If I had had the money, I would have bought one; it was such beautiful music. After I'd stood there watching him play through two or three songs, changing from flute to flute with the impressive ease that come from long practice, I think he smiled and nodded at me. That made me happy to a silly degree.

In fact, a number of really good things of that nature happened through the course of Saturday. Apart from the flutist, there were a couple instances of long hair camaraderie. Perhaps other long haired men have experienced that too. Another guy with long hair notices me, I notice him, we both nod in some sort of acknowledgment. It's a fun ego-boost. That happened with one of the proprietors of the soap booth who was, by the way, so cute. I was too shy to talk to him while Andrea and I looked around and picked out some soaps, but we had that moment of acknowledgment of the sort that's really enjoyable..

Even prior to that, on the way down through Illinois, the woman who took our toll money called out, as we drove away from the plaza, that I had pretty hair. Even if no other boosts like that had occurred, that would have made my day all by itself.

Then there was the fun we had visiting some of the antique malls and candy shops that Andrea knows from her previous visits; it was so very good to see her happy and bouncy. A big part of what made the day so good for me was Andrea being so happy. Any day that elicits so many smiles from my mate is a good one.

Then there was our time spent out at Stronghold with the Chicago lot. Stronghold isn't a huge fair so we exhausted the possibilities there fairly quickly, but time spent with friends is always good. There isn't enough of that in our lives.

This seems like a good stopping place. More on Monday/Tuesday coming next.

(no subject)

I said I was going to say something about the rest of the weekend (and the beginning of the week), so here goes.

It was pretty bad.

Well, let me revise that. Saturday night through Monday morning was pretty bad. wooisme and I were worried about trouble some of our friends are having and were a bit tense to begin with as we set out to visit Seven Mile Fair early Sunday morning. I did manage to find some bargains on good tools so that made me happy, but the excursion ended up in a pointless fight. I was being too needy and my love wasn't up to dealing with me (I'm lucky she likes me so much!) and we ended up just sort of staying out of each other's way the rest of the evening. The back of one of our west bedroom closet is a wonderful place for doing just that, I might add.

As I noted, I just wasn't feeling up to going in to work on Monday morning. I feel really bad about taking sick days and, in fact, I get really paranoid about doing so. I'm really scared of the idea of losing my job and terribly thoughts of the sort of reprimands I might receive for being late occupied my thoughts as I somnolently stumbled about the house looking for work clothes and shoes to wear. Finally, it being ten minutes past my usual departure time of seven o' clock, I decided that the day was not meant to be. I followed that up by twenty minutes of agonizing over the phone call I would have to make (My phone phobia, though much reduced from past years, is still alive and kicking), and then crawled back into bed.

Snoozing 'till noon did wonders for my disposition. Feeling better, I used the time I had that day to do very little of any worth, which was good. Admittedly, I did try to fix the leaking washing machine (which I may have accomplished; I'll have to ask Andrea since she used it today) and to install the gas connection to the dryer, which task was stymied by a too-short gas line. Beyond that, I read a bit and toyed with the idea of buying a membership to Librarything, which I do believe I will do. A combination of anal-retentively organizing things with playing with books? Try and keep my away!!

The best stuff that happened though was sitting down to watch a movie with my beloved. We watched Comic Book Villians, which was interesting, but not relevant to my next observation.

There has sometimes been an imbalance between my wanting to snuggle up with wooisme and her just wanting to watch the movie. Though we've had trouble striking a balance on some not infrequent past occasions, Monday evening was perfect. She sat and watched the movie while I, my eyes mostly on the screen, laid down on the couch, my legs angled up and over the pile of cushions in the corner of it, and put my head up against her thigh. She rested her hand on my hair and together we watched. As I said, the movie was good, but the elation of having finally found something that, I hope, really works for movie watching for the both of us was the real magic of the night.

I will admit that I am far from the most secure person in the world. A lot of my reassurance relys on touch, so I'm sure I can be a real pain to my love when she's stressed and not feeling cuddly. So, when we sat down to watch a movie on Monday evening and we again got ourselves into place, my head resting on my beloved, her hand scritching my fur, it was wonderful. *murrrs*

Oh, the movie? It was The Graduate. *grins* There are so many classic movies I haven't seen yet: that was a very good start on them.