Pollen Daze

 These days are massively pollen filled. I have been walking around like a zombie for weeks and now is when it will start to get worse. Right now, I'm nothing but a ball of physical complaints. My allergies are the least of it, though they make me feel horrible pretty much all the time. My sciatica (a phrase I never thought I'd utter in the entirety of my life) is screaming at me and has been for the last several days, ever since I twisted my back after I fell asleep on my side. So there's that. And I'm not sleeping very well anyway. I've been getting between two and six hours of sleep a day, almost none of it between the hours of one a.m. and nine a.m. Yesterday, I slept on and off all day though, which puts me out of sorts. And I'm tired. I'm--ugh--so tired. All of the time.

I've been reading a bit, though, in between bouts watching Netflix. I re-started a book about a young pioneer-era girl which you would think would be a poor imitation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, but no. This is a strange book about a strange little girl and her three older brothers and her widowed mother. I didn't make it very far last time I tried to read it (a small handful of years ago) and this time I restarted it and haven't made it to the point where I put it aside last time.

I put it aside in favor of reading a short ghost story by Edith Wharton. A chance remark by Fran Leibowitz (in the Martin Scorcese film "Pretend It's a City") about Wharton led me to a not very good documentary about her (Edith Wharton: The Sense of Harmony) which introduced me to Wharton's ghost stories. Yes, Edith Wharton wrote ghost stories, which kind of blew my mind considering the only thing I had ever read of hers was The Buccaneers. (I'm not a huge fan of ghost stories, but also I love Shirley Jackson.) So I read Kerfol, Wharton's ghost dog story. And I started reading Ethan Fromme (but I read the summary and I may put it aside because it sounds depressing as hell and I'm not up to that right now). Anyway, Edith Wharton. Who knew?

Dave and I are still watching Kim's Convenience at dinner. (I've seen all the available episode, of course, but Dave and I are just starting season two and I'm enjoying it even more the second time around. Such a good show. Can't believe they're not going past season five.) And yes, we are still eating almost all our meals at home. (Though a few days ago I got ribs from a local place and a few days before that we had Chinese.) I'm so bored of cooking that day before yesterday, I just made a big pot of vegetable soup and we have been having bowls of that with various things for lunch and dinner ever since. (I add chicken and nonfat sour cream and Dave adds Quorn nuggets and has it with a side of buttered toast.)

We did get a grocery order this past weekend, which starts the clock on all the vegetables we have to eat before they go bad. Vegetable soup is one solution, but I'm going to need to make a big salad for us to graze on for the next few days as well. During our co-op "big shop" we also bought a host of things like vegetarian sausages and paneer that we'll have to devise a few meals around.

All I want to do is order pizza and watch more Kim's Convenience.

I haven't been sewing much as sitting makes my sciatica worse and there's no way to sew lying down. Dave has a standing desk that I could use, but the cord to my sewing machine's foot petal is too short to reach the ground. So instead I look at fabric online and sometimes order some. (I got a small order of some very beautiful fabrics from Japan yesterday as well as two palm thimbles, which are amazingly useful but which I have only ever seen Japanese sewists use.) I did promise a strap for my brother to use on one of his bags, though, so I will do some machine sewing tonight or tomorrow as I want to get it to him by Thursday. (I'm still off hand sewing, as my hands are only slowly getting better despite using paraffin wax treatments several times a week and daily stretches and massages with CBD cream.)

Anyway, I have a list of other things I want to sew when all the wrong things are feeling righter. For sure I want to work more on my grandmother quilt and I want to make some doll clothes for one of my dolls.

What else?

I postponed therapy yesterday, which is a big deal, as I couldn't sit for a full hour. I hated to skip because  I've got some crap I'm dealing with right now and I need help with it. My therapist is fairly amazing with that stuff. I feel like I need to keep pushing through, despite the exhaustion and all the rest.

Just have to take the pizza delivery places off speed dial.