Sunday, February 21

Today I am grateful for:

More beautiful weather for this time of year.

Enjoying the warmth, and just being able to sit outside with the goats, ponies, and horses without freezing my face off.

My little goat Brownie is so affectionate. She comes up to me and rubs on my legs, almost like a cat would, for affection. She's not very big, she comes up to my knees. It's nice to be able to spend some time outside with her.

Going to town for groceries. I'm grateful that the food supply has held together.

Not ripping someone's face off today. It always seems like a good idea at the time, but later there's consequences, right? There was a woman in the grocery store walking around without a mask. I don't mean wearing one badly or something, I mean none at all. I talked to some of the employees, and NONE of them were willing to take responsibility and confront her, even though right now, the store legally must enforce the mask wearing. LEGALLY MUST ENFORCE THE WEARING OF MASKS IN THE STORE. She wouldn't talk to me when I confronted her, so I took her picture, and went to Customer Service by the entrance. Which was right by the table full of free masks with a person standing there handing them to anyone not wearing one. Apparently Customer Service was going to get a manager to do something. Right.

The pure selfish entitlement of this woman sent me into a white rage. I've been wearing a mask in stores for a goddamn YEAR now. I barely go anywhere anymore. I don't DO anything anymore. I haven't had a meal with my friends or my family for a year now. I think constantly about being safe when I go to town. I wear a mask if there's even one other person in the riding barn. This woman walks around without a mask, and I bet she thinks she's special. Like...."no one can tell me what to do with my body". Well, we aren't telling you what to do with your body. We're telling you to wear a mask. Much like you also wear a shirt in public, or pants. Or shoes. Health codes mean you can't go into a store without shoes, so what can't she understand about wearing a mask for public health? Except that a mask might actually save someone's life.

If she "can't breathe" or some stupid bullshit, then she should stay home. That store will deliver groceries, or will meet you in the parking lot. There are ways around going into a store if you "can't" wear a mask.

We really aren't improving our numbers in Alberta. Every time you turn around, some other entitled jerk has a little party, or a hockey team all gets sick because they didn't want to give up their practices, or whatever.

I just want this to be over, and to get my life back, and to me, this woman represented every piece of shit that's too entitled to comply. Her needs are worth more than mine, and every one else's. She likely just wants her life back too, but by pretending she doesn't have to wear a mask. By pretending that "if we just go back to living our normal lives, it'll just go back to being normal, because this is all just a plot by the government to take away our freedoms".

Right now, ALL of us have to do our best. Not some of us. Not some of the time. That woman was totally telling all of us to go fuck ourselves, because she is more important.

I am very grateful that I got an AWESOME check out person. He was likely aware of me storming past him to talk to customer service, and might have been expecting me to be angry with him too. No, it's not his fault. I dug deep and made small talk with him, and we ended up joking about dancing to kill time when it's slow, and we did dance in place a bit, to the amusement of the person next in line. THIS is the kind of commitment to each other that will get us through this mess.

I came home and re-watched "Iron Man 3", and it is truly remarkable how much better most of the other Marvel movies are, compared to the three Avengers movies, the ones about the Infinity stones. For anyone who cares, anyhow.

I may have felt anger over the woman in the store, but really my day overall was pretty good. Nice weather, time with the animals, a good movie, and general comfort and good health.

Just venting about stuff.

I'm pretty sure I'm somewhere on the spectrum for hoarding. Yes, I can get rid of things if I'm sure I can't use it, or it's damaged too much to repair. I've done okay with getting rid of clothes that don't fit. We routinely box up books that we're done with, and trade them in or donate them. Any DVDs that weren't worth watching again also get donated or given away.

I don't hang onto garbage. I've been pretty adamant about moving along things we salvaged from the trailer we tore down that my husband said were usable materials. We gave away some windows, some appliances, a pile of usable lumber, sold the trusses, and donated some doors to Habitat for Humanity. I did NOT want piles of that stuff in the yard, and in a year or so it all would have been garbage anyhow.

When our ride on lawnmower died last summer, I would not allow my husband to keep it for parts. A friend of ours took it, which is fine.

I've sold two rubber maid tubs of various horse equipment I wasn't using two years ago.

I recently gave away a beautiful table cloth to a friend of ours, because it was simply too big for our table, even though I loved the material.

I tossed quite a lot of stuff in the move from the trailer to our house on the same property. Crappy old shoes. Lots went to the thrift store as I went through things.

I wouldn't have even thought I was buying a lot of stuff right now, because Covid has slowed me down. I've been buying more movies than usual, and books. For a while I bought a bunch of clothes because I lost a lot of weight. I haven't really gotten around to going through all my clothes and getting rid of everything that's too big. I did give a garbage bag full of jeans away.

I just get overwhelmed. My craft room is a disaster. My "wardrobe" room isn't bad, but I need some shelving in there because there are boxes sitting on the floor with toiletries etc. that don't fit in the bathroom because the bathroom doesn't have any storage space.

Our kitchen is actually pretty tidy. That's nice.

Truly, I need to get rid of about half of my clothes, half of our blankets and linens, most of the drapes I have from the trailer because I just don't see us putting up drapes in this house (isn't that weird?) and most of the weird shit that doesn't belong anywhere and just keeps filling boxes.

Things like old clothes pins that theoretically are useful, pens (I keep getting rid of pens, and we still have so many), paper with things written on them, string, old pennies, stray beads, small nails (we have jars and jars of odd nails and screws), just stuff I can't even explain. It ends up in boxes, and I keep hanging onto it.

The thing is, I'm sentimental, and creative. I can see value in almost anything either in the form of a memory, or a potential use.

How do you guys deal with greeting cards? I'm fortunate in that I have quite a few people that send us cards, lots with letters in them. I hate to toss those, because some of those people have passed away and I treasure their words.

Yet, I love buying new things. Don't we all!

The thing is, I can't properly put everything away in a "place" because too many things don't have a place. So it just sits in boxes on the floor upstairs, or in piles. I try to organize it, but some of it defies category. It's just crap that I can't throw away. it makes it very hard to have a clean house when you literally keep things like plastic drug bottles and paper clips because they are potentially useful.