Out of Trouble

The weekend was spent in an orgy of housecleaning (frankly the only manner of orgy I have any patience for nowadays) and errand-running, since I’ve been scrambling to catch up with a bunch of stuff and have let both slip. The furious activity means that things are relatively clean and the Yule tree is up–the kids put the ornaments not his year, without me even needing to hand the delicate ones over. Not a single fight, eyeroll, pinch, or flutter of sarcasm was had.

I have marvelous children.

The dogs are also jingling festively–Odd is freshly washed–but not because I’m tormenting them. They have new ID tags on their collars, nice ones, just in case. Both are microchipped as well, but belt and suspenders (plus a third means of pants-holding) are always good. The old tags were getting a bit difficult to read.

Today I mail off proof pages, make a list of stuff to do next, record some pronunciations for an audiobook, squeeze a short run in between everything, maybe even get my hair trimmed. It irks me to trim it when it’s still so short, but I do want it to grow in nicely, and since C is in remission (oh, heavens, thank you) I can let it. I have AMAZING bedhead, even though I have nowhere to stick spare pencils when I’m proofing. This means I don’t go to bed with pencils and pens festooning my head–a bright lining to every dark cloud, I guess?

Piano practice proceeds apace. I’m working through a Junior Hanon book–the regular Hanon was too frustrating for my skill level, and the Princess talked me into using the Junior one like she does. She’s discovered she likes playing ragtime best, her teacher is surprised and pleased. I’m still chugging away at a Bach polonaise, and have finished my review of the first lesson-book, which means I’m back in the second lesson-book and plonking ahead with grim determination. There are things I want to get good enough to play, but that won’t happen without a lot of consistent practice. I suppose it keeps me out of trouble.

And, incidentally, out of video games. I got bored with the latest WoW extension–not precisely bored, I guess, but when you’re in-garrison trade chat is on, and it’s wearying to have that unmoderated sewer sitting on your screen while you’re trying to upgrade your barn, for God’s sake. So I deleted the whole thing off my hard drive and have turned off any subscription. I just don’t have the patience for some aspects of multiplayer anymore, though I loved the idea of customizing one’s own garrison and fighting off invasions, and I like the auction functions. I did try Guild Wars, but since I can’t window it and it takes forever to get anything crafted, I lost interest.

I’m hoping this is just a phase, because I do like gaming, but all the stuff that comes with multiplayer is just too toxic, and the dopamine hits just aren’t enough to justify the time sink, the expenditure, or the putting up with trade chat. It’s like all Barrens all the time, with a healthy dose of GG dudebro, and none of that is appealing. It makes me wonder how much money game companies are missing out on by not moderating chat a little more. Of course, given how awful chat is and how much they’d have to pay someone to mod it, they probably break even.

So instead of gaming, it’s practicing piano and reading. I’m working my way through stuff in my collection I don’t remember reading, and planning on making a dent in the towering TBR pile. It might end up giving my brain more to chew on in the long run, but I miss rep grinding or dungeon clearing with a good group.

Oh well.

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hillary the mammal