I am reading about 5 books right now all at once. I don't have a good track record about finishing every book I start, but I've been making great progress on them. Too bad none of them is my book for class that I'm supposed to be reading. Instead Sookie Stackhouse in large print to make me feel like I read faaaaasssst.
No more progress on Walden. It increases my dissatisfaction-with-the-world level quite a bit. I fell into reading a poem by William Stafford the other day about Daniel Boone while helping my brother write an essay (and I hhaaaaaaaaaate poetry, so you gotta know it was short). One line was, "Children, we live in a barbwire time."
That line really struck me--not just that pretty much all land in this country is owned by someone, but also that there are so many petty restrictions on everything. I was at Ross yesterday lounging around by the fitting rooms waiting for Ollie to come back out and observed this scene: a woman with about five dresses was attempting to enter the fitting room with a pair of Ross shoes in hand. The fitting room lady stopped her and told her it was against regulations for shoes to be brought into the fitting room. The lady started arguing, "but how will I know whether these heels are too tall for the dresses?! I need to see a manager!" Yeah, the lady was a bit unruly but I could see her point. I could also see the point of the fitting room attendant, because she doesn't make up the policies but she could damn sure get in trouble for not following regardless of her personal feelings for the matter. I was a little pissed off that 1) there has to be a policy regarding this mundane unimportant issue, and 2) I live in a time period in which Corporation is King and people have been relegated to useless drones with no power to use their own discretion in even the smallest circumstance. Everything has to be by the books, by the books.
And I was under the impression that people and the needs of the individual or customer matter more than bureaucratic horse shit.
I give people freebies at the library all the time. Free prints if the person really needs something but can't find $0.25, free use of my staff computer if someone need something printed out really quickly and there is a long line for the 15 min computer, additional time with books checked out if they exceeded the max # of times a certain item could be renewed. I feel fortunate that I work in an environment in which I am not closely monitored and I can use my best judgment to help people. I also keep my mouth shut because I am not sure whether or not I would get in trouble for not following the arbitrary rules that have been set down.
Alrighty--enough of my Barbwire Time rant.
I really had a lovely morning. And I don't use the word "lovely" lightly because I'm not British or an aristocrat. I sat out on my porch with my dog and cat in the shade listening to the light notes of the wind chimes I hung up yesterday while reading my Sookie.
I love seeing my cat experience what he can of the outdoors because our last apartment didn't have a balcony and he couldn't go outside ever. Our current apt. has a balcony, but it isn't separate from the walkway to get to the door, so we have to put up a baby gate when our furry babies are out. Gatsby loves it. He gets to look at birds, kill insects, feel his hair ruffled by a natural breeze, lie in sun patches (otherwise known as cat traps), hear and smell new things, stick his head through the rails and look down on poor mortals below with that particular regal attitude that all cats possess in mass quantities.
Yesterday I hung a hummingbird feeder in our tree. A bird checked it out this morning, but we must not have the sugar water ratio correct because it flew away. One more thing to do today.
Domestic bliss at its finest.
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