A week when nothing bad happened (to me)

I feel like I'm tempting fate with that post title, but it's really been a pretty calm week, no disasters. I might even call it a pleasant week. Of course, that's totally ignoring the impeachment trial in Washington, which has really depressed me. I've tried to watch some of it, but overall it just makes me ill. The fact that the Dems felt they had to make their case over and over, the fact that the Repubs are just ignoring it all -- how did we get to this state? And who are the millions and millions of people who voted for that creep in the White House, and why do they continue to support him? Is it all due to the distortions of Fox News?

On a not entirely unrelated subject, I've chosen my books for the Classics Challenge and many of them have something to do with the Civil War and its aftermath, since I'm also going to be reading presidential biographies of Lincoln and probably Johnson and Grant this year. I'm somewhat daunted by the list of books I'm planning to read -- I think so many of them will be really depressing. But I also feel as though I need to have a better understanding of the Civil War, since it -- and slavery -- had and continue to have such an enormous effect on our country. So I am going to do my best to plow through all these unhappy volumes. Meanwhile, to kick off the biographies, I'm trying to read volume one of Michael Burlingame's MASSIVE bio of Abraham Lincoln and I'm actually having a lot of trouble, partly because it's a catalogue of every single thing Lincoln ever did, but mainly because the book is too big for me to read in bed. My arms aren't strong enough to hold it up, and it hurts my stomach. So I have to read it at the kitchen counter, and that's not a place where I normally read anything except the newspaper. This is why I'm only on page 86 out of 759 pages of text (and they're very long pages, since the book is so large). The book should have been due this Wednesday, but I got an email from the library today saying it had been automatically renewed. So I have three more weeks to read 674 more pages.

The book is impossible, and yet Lincoln comes across as such a wonderful person. And he's only 25 (so far). The contrast with the current incumbent COULD NOT be greater.

On a somewhat lighter note, another plan I have this year is to read a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin. I think I've only read The Left Hand of Darkness, her most popular novel, and Lavinia, her last novel. I've decided to start by reading the rest of her Hainish Cycle novels and stories, and just picked up Rocannon's World from the library. Later on I might read the EarthSea books with the twins. As a break from anything remotely serious, I'm also starting to work my way through the Merrily Watkins supernatural mysteries by Phil Rickman, which are sooooo fun to read that I have to ration them. I also have to buy them (used, from stupid Amazon) because they're not available in libraries here. Too British, apparently. I think they must be popular in Canada too, because the ones I've gotten so far have Canadian price tags stuck on them. I've read the bottom two in this stack and am planning to save A Crown of Lights for after I read some serious Civil War stuff. It will be my reward.

Calm weeks provide less to blog about -- but that's OK. Not complaining, universe! My book group met -- and I wish I had a photograph of the wonderful "rotting log" (like a Bûche de Noel) our hostess made to celebrate the book we read, The Overstory. I had wondered what she would serve, because how can you serve a tree? Silly me. She also had several nut-based snacks. In retrospect, it was quite an easy book to cook for. Some of the members of the group don't try to match the food to the book, but this member excels at it. She sent me home with a box of cheddar-flavored mealworms, I passed them on to the boys, they took them to school, and a friend of theirs downed them all.

I also had coffee with a (non book group) friend at Barnes & Noble this week, and it upsets me to think about how seldom I do that anymore. I used to have coffee with friends constantly, multiple times per week! I suppose dinner with my children has replaced coffee with friends, but hmm. It seems as though I could manage to arrange this at least once a month. I might need more friends, though. Anyway, this particular friend is someone I used to work with. She's 10 years older than I am and has done a lot of interesting "good works" through the years, like foster care and helping refugees in Africa. She's also very funny. We talked nonstop for two hours and I came away from our meeting feeling energized and full of ideas.

Once a month, seriously. Totally doable. Think about it.

In between all the usual domestic tasks -- doing them and avoiding them, I should perhaps say -- I managed to complete a sewing project, which also hasn't happened in a while. I made a tablecloth! Our coffee table is a flagstone, and it's very rough and heavy. I suppose that's its charm, but charm can get tiresome. So I usually put a cloth on it, and when I was removing the red cloth I put on it for Christmas, I thought, "Couldn't I have other seasonal tablecloths?" I thought about buying them, and then I thought, "Couldn't I make a seasonal tablecloth?" So I paid a visit to JoAnn's Fabrics and found this nice cloth, on sale because it's a Christmas pattern -- but it really isn't, it's just evergreen trees and cones. I washed it, ironed it, and then pressed under a half-inch hem all around, and then pressed that under another half-inch, and then I sewed the hem down, and voila -- a tablecloth. I did manage to screw up the corners, because I was trying to make lovely mitred corners, but I didn't read the directions closely... but it doesn't matter, because nobody's ever going to look at the corners anyway. I'm looking forward to making a springtime tablecloth in a few months.

Also this week I took three walks in the neighborhood. One of my New Year's resolutions was to get back into walking, but unfortunately, I currently have really painful plantar fasciitis in my right foot, agonizingly painful even if I walk around Target. But Rocket Boy found me some MBT shoes on eBay and had them sent here. They arrived Friday and my heel already feels so much better. Today's walk was completely pain-free. MBT shoes take some getting used to, but they are wonderful for plantar fasciitis. I used to have a pair, but I stopped wearing them after my feet got better, and Rocket Boy took them over and wore them out. So that's why he bought me these. I was so happy when I put them on! Now I have to wear them a lot while the weather's so mild, because this sandal style won't be great when it starts snowing again.

One other thing I did this week -- today, actually -- was get the boys' hair cut. You'd think this wouldn't be so hard for me, but it's one of Rocket Boy's jobs that I've resisted taking over. He got Kid A's hair cut on one visit, and my niece Risa got Kid B's hair cut when she visited in September. But the time had come for ME to do something about their shagginess. We planned to go to the same barber Risa went to, but for some reason they weren't open (maybe their hours have changed). So we walked across the street and looked in the window of another barbershop (an open one) and someone inside waved at me. "Let's try this one," I said, and we went in. It turned out to be a very male, very collegiate sort of place -- three tattooed older men cutting three college-aged men's hair while loud rap music played. My first impulse was to leave immediately, but instead we sat down and waited. After about 20 minutes a chair opened up and Kid A took it. His haircut turned out well (he likes his hair short), so Kid B took his place -- and the guy just butchered him. It's like a crewcut. Kid B is now deeply unhappy (won't even face the camera, poor boo), and all I can tell him is that it will grow back. So we probably won't go back to that place! But their hair is cut and I can forget about that problem for another three months or so.

And now onto another week, with some serenity saved up to deal with whatever happens next.