In Which Our Heroine Lacks for a Few Things, But Not Much

12 November 2003

I feel much better this morning. Still a little tired, but not so wiped out as yesterday. (Yesterday at dinner I picked up my bowl of corn to eat it, because it felt like too far to take the spoon all the way down to the table and all the way up again. I ate a fruit-juice-bar rather than ice cream because I realized that I would have to do the spoon thing with the ice cream, too. I was tired. It was a lovely fruit-juice-bar, anyway.)

Columbine's latest entry says, "In other words, that 'I feel too tired' reaction is false. It is the APATHY that causes the tired. It is not genuine tiredness. If I actually work on something, I feel awake and alert and energy comes back immediately. I learned this last year with respect to physical activity - that sometimes 'I am tired' actually means 'I have been sitting in this chair too long, I need a walk outdoors' and when I hit the sidewalk I suddenly find I am not tired, but hyperactive, with energy that needs to be burned off. So 'I am too tired to do that' is no longer to be trusted."

Heh. See, I ran into people saying things like this a couple years ago, and it was bad bad bad for me. And I'll tell you why, though maybe you can figure it out: it almost never happens to me like that, but I behave as though it does. "Maybe I'm just not getting enough activity in!" I really should evaluate what I've done that day before I make the decision that that's the problem. Because otherwise I just run around and run around, physically or metaphorically, and then I fall over from exhaustion, because, oops, I already ran around that day, and that's why I was tired to begin with.

I've finished several of the articles I have to do, though that leaves me with many more. But I think I can do a chunk of them today. I've got enough information to just go straight through on several. And then, up to the U, I guess, or a Hennepin Co. library, or somewhere else, if I have to. And if not, all for the best. Writing and writing and writing. La la.

I've gotten out of the essay section of Step Across This Line and into the column section. I have to say, as interesting as newspaper columns can be on a daily basis, having an entire collection of them is not my favorite thing, and I may skim the titles and return this book unfinished. I did finish Talking to Dragons, and I liked it and want more Pat Wrede stuff. Eventually. Right now I have grown-up books from the library and my very own stack of books to read, including the new-old Pamela Dean. And since there's a reading for Pamela in St. Paul on Friday night, and I intend to go, that might be a good one to read next. Also, I have a few poor periodicals sitting languishing. And the Seton-Watson book about Russia. And The Porcelain Dove. Oh, goodness. I'd better not think too much about this, or I'll dive into my pleasure reading pile and not emerge for weeks.

Mark's business trip hotel does not have the promised DSL, so I'm feeling particularly deprived this week. It's one of those times in my adult life when I wish throwing a tantrum was effective. "But I waaaaant him to have DSL! Now! Now now now now now!" Stupid adulthood.

It is raining here pretty hard, and when I looked out the bathroom window, I could see the drops plunking in and flowing through our lovely screened gutters. Real rain. The soil here is so dark, compared to Nebraska or California, and it looks like real fall with all the bare trees and the rain. Which is now turning to melting snow. Really hard melting snow. Home home home home. With the snow and tea and books and work, what more do I really need here? Well, tortillas and my Waterman and Mark home. But other than that.

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