Productive

Yesterday:

I'm a bit fragmented today because I'm not sleeping and I just had pasta for lunch. (It was garbanzo bean pasta and a sauce of vegetables and TVP, but it's still carb heavier than I've been eating, so I feel like a bear looking for a spot to hybernate.) 

My computer did not charge last night so I only have a bit of battery power left before I have to move across the room and plug in.

It's been strange weather recently. Not as hot as before, which is nice, but it's been windy and sometimes spits rain for awhile. We went out a bit to the mailbox yesterday and there were packages. Oh, here's something funny about the mail: I had a subscription to The New Yorker four or so years ago. I let it drop because they come weekly and it's hard to keep up with them. I let the subscription drop, but they decided they weren't finished with me, so I have continued to receive copies of The New Yorker weekly. Before we moved, I recycled stacks and stacks of them and then I moved and thought that they wouldn't have my new address so it would stop. Nope. They found me and now I have a huge stack of them here, on the coffee table. 

Our packages were a pair of sandals that need to be returned because they don't fit, a subscription box of Japanese snacks, and white t-shirts for David. 

I finished the second season of Heartstopper, watched a Meryl Streep/Alec Baldwin/Steve Martin movie called It's Complicated (it was terrible) and just started watching The Wife with Glenn Close and Johnathan Price, which is about the experiences of the wife of a self-centered author who wins the Nobel Price for Literature. It seems good so far, but serious. I gave up on the Korean high school drama, Moment to Eighteen because it just kept getting strange with no payoff for the strangeness of it.

I am back to not sleeping and have felt weepy all day. Is this what perimenopause is now? I'm so tired it feels like someone built a brick wall in my head. (Maybe it was me.)

Last night, around two a.m., the internet went out. I could have done something mad like read a book, but I didn't. I tried to get some sleep. When that failed, I went and checked again, a couple of times, until the internet came back on. Then I went back to watching YouTube videos and reading Buzzfeed.

Today:

I managed to get some sleep last night by moving back out to the couch. I don't know what it is about a change of venue that gets The Brain to settle down and sleep. I was up in the night, but I did not stay awake.

I also finished watching The Wife, and it was okay but not great. The story was good but there was a lot of acting in it. So much acting. I really feel like there might have been a bit too much acting, if you know what I mean. It was nice to see Christian Slater in something though.

Today so far, I've had a shower and made a quick lunch of leftovers for me and Dave. I also started a grocery order for tomorrow's grocery pickup. And I ordered some new shirts for Dave and a few other things we need around the house.

Dave is taking a break from his workday to make oatmeal cookies as we have a Zoom coffee date with our friends Kathleen and Glenn this afternoon. We haven't talked to them for awhile and we usually use our online coffee dates with them to treat ourselves to something good to eat, like, chocolate brownies or scones. Oatmeal cookies came out of my suggestion that we just buy rather than make something. (We thought of going to Crumbl cookies, but I refuse to pay $4 per "gourmet" cookie from a chain bakery when I would be just as happy with a packet of Chips Ahoy cookies or the like). Dave said he would bake cookies and we had all the stuff to make oatmeal cookies. If they don't turn out well (they're based on a vegan recipe, so you never know), we can always resort to cinnamon toast.

It's a beautiful day, still in the 90s though, and there are supposed to be thunderstorms later in the afternoon. I don't mind thunderstorms, but as I've mentioned before they turn the dog into a basket case. He sticks close to me or Dave when the wind starts to pick up.

The other thing I watched on Netflix last night was the end of a documentary called Missing: The Lucie Blackman case about a young British woman who went missing in Tokyo while working as a bar hostess. Her father went to Japan and kept her story in the media and put pressure on the police to not drop the case and eventually a very wealthy Japanese man in his 50s was arrested and charged with her murder. During the investigation of this man, police found tapes that he made of  himself raping over 400 different women, both Western and Japanese and evidence that he had killed at least two Western women. He ended up being acquitted of the Blackman murder but convicted of the rape and murder of an Australian woman and the rape of eight other women.

I don't know what compelled me to watch this horrible documentary, but it brought up several points about the Japanese and Japan that a lot of people don't realize or are unfamiliar with. Japan has the reputation for being a safe place and the Japanese as being very polite and mild mannered. This is not a bad international reputation to have of course, but it's just a veneer. Once you dip down into reality, you see that there is violence and crime in Japan. You're not likely to get your pocket picked as a tourist, but there are worse things, you know.

Anyway, it's a good documentary and includes interviews with several of the police officers who investigated the case, which was interesting.

I've got a bit of time before we're meeting up with Glenn and Kathleen. I should do something productive.