Satisfied

I don't want to jinx this, but I'm in a good mood tonight. For one thing, the weather isn't completely awful. It's still in the 70s, but the heat index isn't reading any higher than the temp, so it isn't awful.

Second of all, I finished my little tunic for the cousin. It's cute. I did it in a lighter weight yarn so it feels lighter. I debated about putting sleaves on it, but when I took pics of it, I realized it worked better the way it is.

Third, some experiments I've been doing are starting to pay off. The lip balm experiment is going well. My lips aren't as jacked up as they usually are. I'm really hoping this works in the dead of winter as well. I have another, more grand scale experiment happening that I'm not ready to discuss just yet, but it's going well too.

So for, once, in so many ways, I'm ending my evening satisfied with life. Yay.

Sticky

It's too late in the year for it to be this sticky, and yet, it is. Checked out the forecast and we're in the 90s for several days this week and then in the high 80s. In fact, we're not out of the 80s for the rest of the month. This is insane.

I mean, if we were talking about the low 80s or 80s without high humidity, that would be one thing. But no. I could honestly cry about this. We're not okay.

Sigh

I didn't blog last night because I was just too damned hot and uncomfortable to do so. My mental state is shot. Everything is shot. This lingering heat is killing us. I'm paranoid from the lack of sleep and just worn down.

Anyway, surely as the weeks move closer to October we'll get something close to cooler weather. Maybe? Please?

Not the End

This heat keeps dragging on and it's sucking the life out of everyone and everything. My roommate is flat out sick because of the heat and the ragweed combined. The cats look ready to fall over. I'm shocked I haven't fallen over.....though some dead mint tried really hard to make that happen yesterday.

The head NEEDS to end. The AC has been on more during September than it was during July. No one has gotten a decent night's sleep in weeks. No one has been dry for weeks. This just has to stop.

Not on Tonight

Two things were happening at once to me tonight that were taking my mind and heart in different directions. One was a kind of nasty truth about my physical situation. The other was an article about how the key to self-love is accepting even your most nasty truths and choosing to love yourself anyway. And yes, that is how unconditional love works. To be honest, probably the healthiest way to love yourself is unconditional. It's just hard.

Because in my case, that is a LOT of self-acceptance. That's saying 'well, okay' to a LOT of stuff. But what choice is there really? It's either accept your lot or spend all your days miserable and then die mad.

There is this rumor that once you really love yourself, you actually start to fix a lot of the issues you were struggling to love yourself about in the first place. That's the theory anyway. Any truth to it? Does anyone really know?

I guess I can give it a shot. I'm tired of this constant state of self-loathing I've been in. It's doing me no good and it's keeping me frightened, broken, and hopeless. I've made other changes in my life. Maybe I can make this one. 

Not in the Cards

There is this pattern going around in my crochet group for a very cute tunic. You have to buy the pattern, but the price is reasonable. And, honestly, that's only for the adult sizes. All of the kid sizes are offered for free.

Even if I bought it, I was going to have to make adjustments and do math before I could make it for myself. One of my cousins is expecting a baby and as the little patterns are free, I thought I'd test the infant one out to see if I could even do this. That way she gets a gift, I get to try the pattern out.

I watched the video over making it a couple of nights ago. It seemed straight forward enough. Last night I practiced on some old yarn to see how it would go. I thought I had the concept down. Today we put my test tunic on the cat (she was not amused) and I thought I knew what I was doing. I pulled out some of the 'good yarn' and thought to myself how great it would be to have this little tunic ready in a couple of days.

Ha.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Okay, first of all, the 'good yarn' turned into a knotted up mess that took me the better part of the evening to unravel. After that, I was kind of over the whole process for a while, so I played Sims until 10.

I thought things were going great until I realized my second row in that I'd somehow twisted the chain and my work was folding in on itself. I just.....I CHECKED THAT CHAIN THREE TIMES. But no.

So I'm kind of over it again. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Or maybe not. Right now I'm just annoyed and think the 'good yarn' is ugly and kind of hate everything.

Not on the Pulse

I was watching some analysis of season 7 of RPDR today, a season often criticized for being boring and rigged. Most of this is due to the confirmed theory that the producers wanted to appeal to a younger demographic, as the last several winners had been older, seasoned queens and there was worry the show would fade into cancelation.

During season 7, it was decided ahead of time the winner would be a younger, more fashionable queen who connected with the younger population. Various rules and outcomes were bent to achieve this outcome. And in a way, it worked. If you ask most young people who their favorite queens are, two that will always be mentioned DID come from that season. These two queens have an extremely popular Youtube show. One has a podcast that has been nominated for several awards. The other has best selling albums, a documentary, and a makeup line. Both have soldout one-woman shows.

And in another more profound way, the plan of the producers did NOT work, because I am not talking about the queen who won the season or the young queen who was standing next to her when she was crowned. I'm talking about Trixie and Katya, neither of whom even placed in the top 4.

The problem is, when you're older, you look at things from your perspective and can only make educated guesses about what will appeal to younger people. You've not lived their lives or grown up in their culture. As much as you want to put yourself in their shows, you really can't.

I will never deny the skills of the 'beautiful young queens' on season 7. Some of them are aesthetically the best in the business. But that isn't what struck a chord with people. Turns out, what younger people (and even a lot of us older people) took away from that season and loved about it was Katya's dark humor, intelligence, and crushing self-doubt. We also loved how Trixie wore outlandish makeup, an illusion of awful skills done with superb skills, quick wit, and unwillingness to accept loserdom. Most of all, we love their honesty and weirdness.

Do I have a point here? Actually, yes. It's good to have an outcome in mind. Goals are nice. However, you do everyone, including yourself, a disservice if you stick so strictly to what you think you want that you miss the amazing things you have right in front of you. Oh and of course, never assume you know what someone else will love about a situation. That whole 'making an ass of you and me' thing is always true.