- I was bored. I'm not often bored, but I was this weekend.
- My new family tree program has lots of great features -- but it's significantly slower than my old program. (Or maybe my 8-year-old laptop is too slow to handle it properly?) Anyway, I was trying to work on my genealogy research, and it was incredibly frustrating.
- The winter seems like it's never going to end. This weekend was mostly grey & chilly. (Which, granted, is better than the big dump of snow I know so many people elsewhere got over the last few days. But it still sucked.) I am so incredibly tired of having to bundle up in a winter coat, gloves, etc., every time we walk out the door.
- Donald Trump is still president of the U.S. (Enough said?)
- And we are not immune to bad political choices here north of the border. The provincial conservative party has been a mess for the last while now... to explain everything that's happened over the past few weeks would take too long (and it's one of those "you can't make this stuff up" sort of situations...)(if you're interested, here's a timeline, & you can follow the links to related stories). Anyway, the party held a leadership convention this past weekend, using a complicated new voting system, which turned into a complete fiasco. It was a very close race, the results were challenged, and they delayed announcing the winner for so long they eventually had to boot people out of the venue, because they'd only booked it for the afternoon & the staff had to get ready for a wedding. (Seriously??!) The icing on the crapcake: by an extremely narrow margin, they gave the shaft to the competent, experienced woman candidate and elected a loudmouthed bully businessman who's prone to announcing grandiose schemes that never quite pan out. Where have we heard this before, right? (What could go wrong??) He's not premier (yet -- election coming up in June), but it's still utterly depressing.
- It was Mother's Day in the U.K., and the posts & tweets from my friends across the pond reminded me of what's to come in about a month & a half's time.
- We were talking about train travel on a (non-ALI) online group I'm on... I was telling the others about how my mother used to take the train to come visit me, and how she loved to chat to all the people she'd meet along the way. Then I had a flashback 20 years (this time of year, too, late March): she came to visit me about a week after I'd called to tell her I was pregnant. Dh & I went to meet her train, and I think every person getting off with her came over to congratulate me while we waited to collect her luggage. I hadn't thought about that in a long time. The memory made me smile, and wince at the same time.
- Not one but TWO fertility clinics in the U.S. lost several thousand frozen embryos & eggs over the past few days. My heart goes out to those poor would-be parents whose hopes for a family may have been permanently dashed -- and who just saw the thousands of dollars they spent retrieving those eggs and keeping them frozen for potential future use, going straight down the drain. :(
- We switched back to Daylight Saving Time this weekend. I don't care which way the clock goes, spring or fall, even when I'm not working and don't have to get up early -- it's an adjustment, and I'm really not sure why we're still doing it. :p
- And... it's spring break this week here! (Just when you were relieved that Family Day was over...) Which means hordes of parents & kids will be roaming the malls, the aisles of local stores, and the streets this coming week. (Family Day times 9, 10 if you count all the parents who took their kids out of school on Friday -- apparently it's the busiest day of the year at the airport...) I'd love to hide out indefinitely, but I don't think I can do it for a whole week. We have groceries to buy and errands to run -- and I have cabin fever bad enough as it is...
(What do you do when you get the blues? How do you chase them away?)
(On the bright side, we did get to see Older Nephew's puppy on Friday night, which never failes to put a smile on my face. The sun did shine for a while on Sunday. And we had crock pot roast beef, potatos & carrots for dinner on Sunday. Yum!)
(ETA: Feeling much better since I drafted this last night... but since I have nothing else ready for #MM, this is what's getting posted...! lol)
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
I was feeling a bit bluesy today. School has me down and I've also been a little bored lately. Since I wasn't feeling that great today, I made myself run a couple of errands I didn't feel like doing and then I did a couple loads of laundry. It didn't infuse my day with joy, but I'm hoping that getting stuff done today will set me up for better days later this week. I also exercised a little. That always helps me too. Even if I TOTALLY don't feel like exercising, I never regret it afterwards. Whenever I feel this way, I remind myself it's temporary, some days are just boring and blah, and I try to go easy on myself.
ReplyDeleteI've never "enjoyed" doing the laundry, but getting it done does give me a sense of accomplishment, lol. ;) Also, I like doing it a whole lot better since we moved into our condo... the washer & dryer are front-loaders, stacked in their own little closet. No running up & down stairs to a dark, dingy basement with baskets of laundry -- & when the load is done & dry, it's about three steps over to the kitchen counter where I can stand & fold while I watch the TV in the living room area. And when it's all done, I just close the door on the closet. I love it! :)
DeleteI forgot to say that I'm glad you already felt better when you went to post this than when you wrote it. I'm also glad you got to see the puppy!! :)
ReplyDeleteOMG, at the fertility clinic story.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea for this post - why today/the weekend/this year etc sucks. I'm going to steal it. (You have good list-blogging ideas!)
Now I'm curious about your train travel discussion. I adore trains - including one we took from Quebec City overnight to New Brunswick. (And yes - a nice memory for you, but an ouch too.)
I've been travelling, so have had the opposite of cabin fever. It will come soon enough, I'm sure.
Clinic story: :( https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/health/embryo-lawsuits-grieving-parents/index.html
DeleteIt was the weekend all the snow started to melt: which is great but has also caused problems like leaking roofs for people (including my mom who lives alone). And the back alley is a mess and I question my sanity about driving through it at all. But other than that, pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThat’s a loaded memory of your mom getting off the train. Déjà vu moments like that often overwhelm me: even the happy ones. They remind me my past keeps getting longer!
Oh the PC leadership race. I.can't.even. I'm so scared about what's going to happen in June given how many people just want change and don't care what form it comes in.
ReplyDeleteI find your posts complaining about the length of the winter endearing given it's still only mid-March. :) I don't start optimistically washing and putting away the winter gear until at least April and I nearly always have to get it back out again.
Glad you are feeling better already.I am ready to have some less grey, less damp weather for sure!
Oh, I know anything can happen, weatherwise, right through April (although you do get the odd March when spring comes early). We put my mother on the train to Winnipeg in early April 1997 after an ice storm here... she & I held hands & slid down the ice on the front lawn to the car...! And they got into Winnipeg & the city was practically shut down because it was snowing so hard... my dad couldn't get into the city to get her and my sister couldn't come get her either. She walked across the street to the Hotel Fort Garry -- they told her they didn't have any rooms, but she begged and voila, they found one for her. ;) And then all that snow melted & turned into the biggest Red River flood in more than 100 years...!
DeleteThe year I was in Grade 12, I won a trip to Ottawa and my mother & I went into the city (Winnipeg) to buy me some new clothes... I remember it was May 7th & it was snowing -- heavily! -- as we drove home!
I'm so sorry it was such a sucky weekend. I'm real late to the party, but I will pfffft it with you. Yes, the snow is just neverending. I feel like it is just never going to melt, even if we get no more (and it keeps doing these weird squalls that put us in temporary whiteout conditions, yuck). Politics make me want to move to a remote island right now. I'm sorry you're seeing echoes of what we've got down here. Blurg. And Mother's Day... nooooo. I realized it's coming when I got Bryce's birthday card and saw a HUGE blank section with people unpacking boxes of cards... MOTHER'S DAY. Noooo. I'm sorry for that bittersweet memory, too. The good part is lovely, but unfortunately tinged with the grief of what followed.
ReplyDeleteI would say that for me, I give the blues their due and then I try to get out of the house -- take a walk, work out, meet people, keep my plans (unless I'm real blue). I also love coloring, and my favorite is Jenny Lawson's You Are Here, which is also sort of kind of self help and has many glorious swear words. I will send you a copy if you email me your address...or you could send me your email address in a comment separately and I won't publish it so it will stay SECRET. Sneaky, sneaky. :) I'm sorry it was a rough weekend. The good thing is that the rough times may feel awful, but they don't last forever. What a pile of badness though. May this weekend be better!