I hit a bit of a wall yesterday. I was so tired, I came downstairs at 5 a.m., sat on the couch, put my head down, and fell asleep ’til 9:30.
If you don’t give your body rest, eventually, your body will just slug you and take the rest it needs, will ye, nil ye.
When I woke up, I took the rest of the day off, even though I had kazillion tasks waiting, some of them urgent. At least one of them I really should’ve done yesterday — but eh. We are not machines for work.
Instead, I snuggled and watched TV with Kavi, who was home sick — she’s watching Once Upon a Time for the second time through, and it really is very long and very convoluted. I’m only catching occasional episodes with her, and even though I’ve seen the series, I need her to remind me what’s going on at any particular moment, because there are so many changes and reversals as it goes.
If ever there was a show where you asked, “Were the writers high when they wrote this?,” this might be the one. (I think it’s written by Disney folks, so probably not, in actuality. Would mess with the brand image…)
After that, I straightened up the kitchen a bit, and went out to the garden to cut some wildflowers / natives / weeds (depending on your definition and mood) for the house. I don’t remember the name of this one, sorry, but I do love how dramatic it looks springing up out of this tall vase.
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It was heading towards 3:30, so I ran a quick errand, picking up some shock for the pool before the store closed at 4 — I thought pool season was done, but we’re getting one more wave of heat, so I figured I’d take a shot at clearing the algae (which I’d gotten a bit lackadaisical about in all the busy-ness and lack of time to exercise post-ChiCon) so hopefully Anand and I can have one last monster water fight tomorrow, before summer ends.
I’m super-waffly about whether to keep the pool another year or not; it eats up a ton of the backyard, some weeks we barely use it, Anand is now tall enough that he, like me, can only do three strokes before he hits the other end of the pool, so it’s not ideal for lap-swimming, it takes a few hundred dollars each season to keep it chemically balanced, it’s a pain to take down and put up again (or I have to budget more to pay someone to do it).
And yet, pool.
I dunno; will likely waffle another week or so. (If you are a local friend (or friendly acquaintance) who is dying for an Intex 15′ diameter pool with all the trimmings and are willing to come and clean it out and take it away, talk to me. No charge. The pool liner is new this year, and it’s all in good condition.)
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Came home just as Anand was arriving, so cut some apple and cheddar for him and Kavi, then read Pratchett for a while — I’m re-reading the Death sequence now, which I haven’t read in a few decades, I think, so it’s got lots of fun bits I’d forgotten.
Then came down to make dinner — I was trying to use up some leftovers, including a frozen pie shell, so we had breakfast-for-dinner — broccoli-cheddar quiche (which the kids hadn’t had before, and liked, so that’s GREAT news on the parenting front — it’s a good option for getting in some veggies at breakfast time) + bacon and biscuits. Don’t know why I haven’t tried quiche with them before! I like quiche! I make great quiche! Eat my quiche!
Pretty easy cooking, because it was mostly sticking things in the oven — first the quiche, then while that cooled, the bacon and the biscuits (I tried these frozen biscuits, and they’re not bad; a little dense, but buttery and tasty: https://smile.amazon.com/…/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_fresh_asin…)
I had enough energy left that I ended up not just cutting up some strawberries for the kids, but also slicing a few fresh figs we had on hand and making little appetizer bites for me and Kevin. (The kids, as I expected, were dubious and didn’t try them.) Cracker + herb goat cheese spread + ripe fig + bacon + drizzle of honey. So yummy, so indulgent. I should’ve taken a picture, alas. You’ll just have to trust me.
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And I think that was most of the day — after dinner, Kev and I took to our bed and oh, right, we redid the headboard first, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and changed out the bedding to autumn. But THEN we took to our bed and watched episodes 3 and 4 of House of the Dragon.
I’m enjoying it well enough, though the pacing does feel slow. It’s pretty enough that I don’t mind that too much. It also feels claustrophobic, in a way, compared to GoT — instead of a bunch of different families, this is so focused on the Targaryens. Which I suppose is appropriate, that it’s claustrophobic / incestuous in feel, given where this is going. But I hope we do get to spend some time soon with some of the other families and individuals that have been introduced.
I also don’t have a lot of patience with the king. I want to pick him up and shake him sometimes.
Episode 4 had quite a lot of sex in it, with a brothel scene among other things, but it feels restrained, compared to GoT in some ways. Maybe because there’s a woman showrunner, I’m not seeing as much graphic sexual violence against women (although certainly coercion is very much implied in some cases). Interesting.
*****
Overall, good day, with almost no computer work.
I needed the break.