tinea:any of a number of infectious diseases

�what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux

"i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes

interact

note
email
random entry
image credit

credits

design by : ilazarn ikmal
powered by : diaryland

some more things that i like.

2018-10-25 @ 11:38 p.m.

i hate the act of shopping in general, not philosophically or anything, just because it is usually sensory overload for me and not particularly fun unless the place i'm shopping in is not busy.

so when i moved here, i started grocery shopping at night after work and doing my other errands (going to the bank, dollar tree, getting gas, etc). the store is literally at the end of the road from work and my home, and everything else i need is within 10 minutes in any direction. so i have no excuse to put these things off, like i used to always do.

i used to put these errands off because i usually had no money and had to pick and choose what i could get on each trip, which meant that a lot of things weren't affordable for another week, or another two weeks. it was so stressful. (boy and little A consumed an inhuman amount of food and didn't really think anything was wrong with it, so we could never just "keep stuff around," you know? now, i cook a recipe that usually feeds 4-6 people and i portion it out and eat it throughout the week. with them, i often doubled recipes and there STILL wouldn't be leftovers. an entire brand new pack of oreos would be gone the same night we bought it. you never got to have anything unless you put your name on it and announced to everyone that it was yours. it was so absurd. sorry, that was a long aside.)

i also used to put these errands off because sometimes i'm just fucking lazy (we all are) and i'd let the toilet paper get to a dangerous level. i'd keep telling myself i'd stop to get cream for my coffee (or worse yet, coffee itself!) day after day and then the next thing i knew, i would have to suffer with milk, or worse yet, black (nooooo), or total disaster: no coffee at all.

anyway, tonight, i went and did all of my errands like a responsible person who is no longer going to fuck her future self over. it felt so good to get almost everything on my list and not worry about if i had enough money. i've found that i really enjoy finding the best deals at various places. the dollar tree has some stuff that is just as good as - or better than - name brand items. i like trying different things out and finding which of my staple items i can reliably score for just a dollar. (my favorite items, by the way? allergy pills (they have generic sudafed and benadryl), hand soap, kitchen sponges, kitchen gloves, paper towels, those cone air fresheners, toothbrushes, white out tape.)

then, i went grocery shopping, and went a little crazy there, but i feel that this is self-care for me. i'm making a commitment to myself to stop eating out so much, stop eating so much fast food (both of these are hard because boss eats out every day, 80% of the time i have to go get it for him, and if i want whatever he is eating, he will pay for me too), and to get as close to zero food waste as i can.

i have also found that i really enjoy the strategy involved in this - long term meal planning, choosing ingredients that roll over well into the next recipe, accurately estimating how much actual food i need to have on hand as a single person living alone, planning nutritionally balanced meals and snacks, portioning and storing things, discovering which recipes freeze well for long-term storage, etc.

i keep saying that i feel safe now, which has reduced a lot of my anxiety, but i also feel so much more in control of my life, which has reduced it even more. there is no pressure on my life coming from any direction except from within. and i know where i'm headed in the short term, which is enough for me right now.

almost as if he had read my mind, as we were driving this evening, boss asked me when i moved in and if i had experienced a winter in my new home. and he was like, "aren't you so excited you won't have to worry about driving anymore? and you won't have to shovel your driveway?" and i said wow, it's so weird that you said that because i just wrote about it last night. and yes, the answer is yes. i'm so excited about everything. everything is good.

i have so many pleasant interactions now. probably a combination of me being in a great mood all the time and me feeling less socially anxious. and less afraid to speak. boy was a mixed bag on how public interactions would go. sometimes he was over the top, cartoon character jovial and chipper and friendly to people, other times he was really mean and snide and rude. sometimes he would barely acknowledge people speaking to him, sometimes he would completely ignore them. you never knew what you were going to get. when he ignored people was always particularly awkward for me, because he always made it clear that he knew he was doing it. i so often felt compelled to nervously jump in and say something nice because the cashier or the waitress or chatty stranger was like, wtf is this guy's problem. even better, after we left the place or walked away or whatever, he'd make fun of what i said to the person, or something about my voice, or whatever just to make me feel like a jackass.

why do that to people? like who the fuck are you? we're all just a bunch of people trying to get through our days. why take your problems out on someone who's just trying to do their job, just trying to be polite?

why take your problems out on someone you claim you love?

ah, but i digress.

so anyway, now i delight in being as friendly and pleasant to people as i can, all the time. i always say please and thank you and smile because why not? what does it cost me? it makes me smile to make small talk with the old lady at the cash register, and it makes her smile too. and no longer do i have to worry about someone snidely remarking as we walk to the car, "you know, that old lady doesn't give a shit about your cat."