Wednesday, October 14

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A decent day, weather-wise.

My trainwreck sister called, and apparently someone wants to take her goldfish, which would be good, because if she does need to move in a hurry, it's better not to have to worry about an aquarium in the middle of winter.

A talk with my sister N, via Messenger about our Facebook interactions. This sister has a lot of health issues, and is very isolated, so I really understand her going out of her way to make big comments on Facebook. That said, they can be frustrating for me. There are times when she writes essays basically, about various social justice issues in the comments of various posts, and she doesn't seem happy unless I'm validating her. Then she'll literally ask me in the comments of some other post (something totally unrelated to sewage treatment), if I know if distillation is a viable means to recycle grey water for Northern communities for use in greenhouses, and if such and such community uses chemical treatments and on and on. I tried to tell her that VOLUMES of material exists about sustainable treatment, and that the best way to find out about what communities are doing is to contact them. She will also ask me questions in the comments about an article without just reading the article. She will post something like "Paul Bernardo gets a parole hearing soon" and go just ballistic in the comments about how he should never get a parole hearing, how hard it is for the family, and on and on, and when I try to make her feel better by saying that he is very unlikely to get set free, that the parole hearing is more of a formality, she literally almost re-writes everything she's already said as an argument. It's exhausting, because it's almost like she's designated me as a tool to validate her feelings, back up everything she says, to find out things for her that she could look up on her own but doesn't, and to ALWAYS RESPOND to her comments. So, I told her that she needs to do more of her own research, to not expect me to feel the same way she does about things, and to not expect me to answer huge, sweeping research topics for her.

I made a giant grocery run. I didn't think it was going to be a big one until I got in the store, and I realized that we were low on a lot of things.

I also got a few more DVDs. It's so weird. There aren't any good new releases anymore, so I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel. I do buy some of their "two dollar bin" movies, because I don't really care if they're old movies. I'm trying to support this store somehow, because I want them to still be there when this is all over.

I finished reading "The Dog Stars" by Peter Heller. It's a scarily appropriate/uncomfortable book to read right now, because it's a post apocalypse book about life after a flu pandemic. It's sad, and yet there are moments of great beauty in it too. Very lyrical and well-written.