Better

New hair feels so much better. 

It's Been A Bit

It is surprisingly difficult to take a photo of the back of your own head.

It is time to cut my hair. Haven't done so since Before The Plague. There is too much of it. It needs to be less, and needs shape, and needs care.

Soon. 

Strip It Down

 Today's earworm: Strip It Down (Luke Bryan). 

The video is a wee bit cheesy, but the sentiment is sweet. I'd take it.

Kitty Companions

 Herself speaks.

I have enjoyed finding the kitties lounging about the house when I get home from work in the evenings. (They fill a bit of the gap that has been left by the passing of the small dogs.) I will miss them when they go back to school with Offspring the Third in a few weeks. I am glad that he has them for company -- they are good companions.

Explain Thyself

 Herself speaks.

Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to explain myself. 

A lot of the time, it is explaining myself to myself: what emotion was I experiencing just then? And why? Was there a previous historical event that is coloring/influencing how was feeling and if so, what? What would I like (would have liked) in this moment? What would (have been) helpful? 

Do other people do this in the moment? In retrospect? It's exhausting. 

On occasion I try to explain myself to other people, in particular, Beloved Husband or Cherished Friend. It seems important to me sometimes that they understand what is happening inside my head -- I want them to know. Sometimes I worry that they don't actually want to know, or that it's too much information, or that it's just plain weird to use so many words to describe an internal state of mind. 

What is this need to explain?

Perhaps it is a longing to be understood. 

“To understand and be understood is to be at peace.” ― Kamand Kojouri

Photo Copyright 2020, 2021, Mediocria Firma.

All rights reserved. Used with gratitude.

Indian

 Herself speaks.

Back in the early 1970s when I was a youngster, we were taught about "Indians" in the most vague and benign of terms. We learned very little: snippets of how their villages were ostensibly constructed, what their clothing and jewelry looked like, what they ate. Virtually nothing about where or how they lived, their culture, their myths or creation stories or history, development of medicine or knowledge about nature or the world around us. 

I had an Indian "costume" lovingly sewn by my grandmother, depicting what we, as very white people, saw in the media; I had jewelry obtained during some travels somewhere at a roadside stand. I loved that outfit. I refused to wear tights with it, even though it was chilly, because in my mind, "real Indians wouldn't wear tights".  I had a poster of a cartoon map of an Indian village, and I spent hours wondering and imagining how people might live there, and whether they would accept me living there as well, even though I was clearly Not An Indian.

-----

Those were days when when we were not taught about the multiple, varied peoples native to this continent before settlers arrived; when we did not learn about the cultures destroyed, slowly or all at once; about the ways of life forever changed, the peoples slaughtered, the land stolen. The Trail of Tears. The schools where children were sent to be stripped of their culture, where many died. Unimaginable, yet true. It is hard to process the level of horror that exists in this part of our nation's history.

And yet, we have people griping about changing the name of a sports team from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians. Really, people? Really? Let's watch a few minutes of footage of tiny coffins being returned to survivors of decimated tribes, and then let's re-think our priorities. All of them. Take your time. Think long and hard. What is important here? 

Young me, so happy in my Indian costume, would have been stuck on the Magnitude of Terrible, if she had encountered a molecule of knowledge of this history. How could it have happened?

It did. 

Let us acknowledge the harm. Heal what we can. And resolve to do better. 

Before I knew better.

Visitor

Look, it's Mr. Dad-Bun!

The Trio's father bun is visiting for a bit. We are facilitating his neuter; we live far closer and more conveniently-located to the vet than his people do, and so the simplest thing to avoid Additional Sibling Buns and still give him the freedom to eventually spend time with his Bun Wife is to move forward with his getting 'fixed'.

He's a quiet and congenial fellow. We've enjoyed watching him.

He likes to play with a few things: a little box, the cups. 

A hay ball.

I've installed the Buncam so I can keep an eye and make sure he's safe and sound. He hung out in the tube for a bit.

Mostly, though, he likes to rest in the corner by the camera, so we get a lovely view of his butt.

Good boy.