#29.20 - Working it

Purdy

Yesterday I spent most of it working on the promo material for Elements.  It was very satisfying except that I don't have REAL DTP software which is annoying. But I hear that hardcopy is no longer where it is at. So...hopefully when we get set up with Wordpress, etc, it will be great.

Break in the writing... in between made Ghin breakfast and did some messaging with Joan and Julie in OZ. It is hard to believe that we can now communicate immediately across the distance. It is mental. It is a grey wet day. Today will be mostly housework FIRST and then Forest School and then Class Prep.

It is a beautiful day. I have learnt to see the beauty in everything. I can say this easily, but yesterday was awful. Well the entirety of last week was awful. I posted that I felt terrible and Julie and Ruth replied they were the same with the menopause brain fog. It was better after I IDed it and then set about doing stuff. I think in lieu of running today I will do housework. It makes me feel better.

It greyness of the weather is something else. It has been a long time since I remember it so bleak. Usually February is hard going, always. It is coldest in February even though the light is now returning properly. Thee is a material difference in the daylight and you aren't leaving or returning in the dark. Spring is coming - or starting - and you feel like anything you have been planning needs to be completed because the time to begin things is starting soon.

I'll start housework at 9.30 after I've blogged enough. So here it is: housework, lunch, elements, dinner, class prep. I love that feeling after a house has been cleaned and hoovered. So I'm looking forward to that. I am now also feeling hungry, I realise.

Gary is starting out the window longingly. He is lost in contemplation - I wonder what Gary thinks about? What do cats think about? Hmmmm.... it is clear he is thinking. I suppose in the way I would think about feelings...

I was also thinking about the pointlessness of the things that people make. Nothing must be pointless is my motto. I was telling my mother about what my two pet peeves are. They are, I have narrowed it down to the following...

1. People who show off - especially about things like the holidays they go on and the expensive food they have eaten... the price of watches, pens... stupid things like that.

2. People who have 'ideas' - the word in peranakan is kewat. I think it is 'think you know better'. And they are kewat and fussy on things like food, hygiene, etc.

The people who are MOST guilty of this, I have noticed are people who used to be close to dirt poor but are now nouveau riche. Sometimes you get people are have gone through this process and are still simple. They wear glasses which have been mended using rubberbands, they drive really simple cars which are quite old, they wear shirts which are threadbare. They tend to give away their money to charitable causes. But by and large the people who fall into this category have no idea how to manage money or have it with grace. Usually you find them boasting about some stupidly expensive thing they have eaten or some blindingly obvious cultural activity they have undertaken, like gone to the Louvre, or flown some idiot's private jet. Or gone for a private island party. But this all pales into comparison to the thing they are BEST AT. WASTE. The WASTE. They will throw away food, make messes, replace consumer goods which are in perfect working order for the latest shitty fad which has come their way. Or they saw something inane thing in a friend's house and because their friend whom they think is cooler than they has this, so now they have to have this too.

This is the other annoying this about this class of people. They literally haven't an original thought in their heads. They have gotten rich through doing menial things and now they have loads of money but no substance. So they will borrow things and go to things, but these things ever really affect them. They might as well just stay home and not bother. Maybe I'm being harsh, but when I encounter these people, and it is quite seldom, there is a strange churning because then a game of one upmanship begins. And I can't tell them, please don't bother. You look so stupid, but I can't. I just can't.

So that is my rant.

I did this rant with my mom today too. I was telling her that I never wasted food. I hated doing that because I think that one day, should I have no food, I don't ever want to think of the food that I threw away because I could. I have seen children go, eeewwww I don't like that... and then push away a whole plate of food. It makes me so annoyed - not that they have done that, but the voice in which they do it with. The entitled, spoilt voice which comes straight from the mouth of the evil stepsister in a fairy tale. I can't bear it. And it is usually accompanied by the FACE. The FACE is almost harder to take than the voice. It is twisted, sneering and beneath it, underlying it all, it the knowledge that they can do this because they have privilege. It is something which they didn't lick off the stone as they say - but which they have learnt. It is appalling. The WORST thing you can do for your child is not teach them gratitude. To say thank you and be gracious. I currently am in close contact with someone who does come from a very impoverished materially background who has no gratitude at all and behaves like only he has made himself who he is. It is ok, I think. The world knows the truth. The other thing about this person as well is that they are not only very wasteful, but they have no respect for other people's time.

OK, HOUSEWORK TIME.

Dear Elementals, please help me to make my home a cheery one.
I am grateful that I have a home which takes care of me. Which keeps me warm and protects me from the rain and wind and cold.
I am grateful that I have made so many wonderful memories here and that my sons have grown up here. Thank you this home. Thank you for looking after us.
I promise to look after you.