(no subject)
Thursday, January 7th, 2021 09:40 pmAwake early again, this time because of garbage trucks picking up Christmas trees. Can no longer tell if bangs are coming from the street or from next door rummaging through the clothes closet on the other side of my bedroom wall. I think it's mostly the street, though, because Thursdays are rife with the rumbling of garbage wheelies from those early bird people who are actually up early enough to put the bin out in the a.m. rather than the night before like (ahem) almost everyone else.
Have the quiet cough and sudden violent sneezes of allergy time. I put this down to our above-zero temps, but I know I get them even when there's a polar vortex happening. The cook from work came round to pick up a bag of winter clothing for a drive happening at the local gay community centre. 'Farewell my old coat,' the one I wore in the mid-90s, still respectable because it's a heavy duffle coat I traded for something lighter the minute I could. Also a set of long johns I won't wear, and some jogging pants that swim on me now, and such like. Cook no longer has a kitchen to cook in because when they opened up after five months closed, the kitchen cabinets were covered in mould, so everything had to be ripped out, and then the laundry room as well for the same reason. No wonder she and I both suffered from sinus problems; and after that there's the vents that have never been cleaned in 15 years. But there you have half the reason last year's allergy seasons were a stroll in the park. (Of course, there's the matter of the dust in my own house, but that comes through the windows as much as the vents.)
Other consolation was discovering that Period Piece, Gwen Raverat's memoir of her Cambridge childhood as a granddaughter of Charles Darwin, is up on Gutenberg. Am reading it now, but had forgotten how very English it is in its felt need to start by introducing her ancestors in detail before telling about her personal experiences. Not quite 'My great-grandfather was Josiah Blenkinsop who married a Miss Kitty Fisher, the daughter of a Suffolk gentleman farmer. The Fishers had inhabited the village of Worpington-on-the-Slough since the time of Richard the first, while the Blenkinsops were yeoman farmers from Little Uppity in neighbouring Essex...' but close.
Have the quiet cough and sudden violent sneezes of allergy time. I put this down to our above-zero temps, but I know I get them even when there's a polar vortex happening. The cook from work came round to pick up a bag of winter clothing for a drive happening at the local gay community centre. 'Farewell my old coat,' the one I wore in the mid-90s, still respectable because it's a heavy duffle coat I traded for something lighter the minute I could. Also a set of long johns I won't wear, and some jogging pants that swim on me now, and such like. Cook no longer has a kitchen to cook in because when they opened up after five months closed, the kitchen cabinets were covered in mould, so everything had to be ripped out, and then the laundry room as well for the same reason. No wonder she and I both suffered from sinus problems; and after that there's the vents that have never been cleaned in 15 years. But there you have half the reason last year's allergy seasons were a stroll in the park. (Of course, there's the matter of the dust in my own house, but that comes through the windows as much as the vents.)
Other consolation was discovering that Period Piece, Gwen Raverat's memoir of her Cambridge childhood as a granddaughter of Charles Darwin, is up on Gutenberg. Am reading it now, but had forgotten how very English it is in its felt need to start by introducing her ancestors in detail before telling about her personal experiences. Not quite 'My great-grandfather was Josiah Blenkinsop who married a Miss Kitty Fisher, the daughter of a Suffolk gentleman farmer. The Fishers had inhabited the village of Worpington-on-the-Slough since the time of Richard the first, while the Blenkinsops were yeoman farmers from Little Uppity in neighbouring Essex...' but close.
