On a lighter note: Summer!
Jun. 21st, 2016 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeSorry about the feelings-vomit in the previous post. I will try to be more upbeat about things, as much as I can.
I was out and about a bit today, for the first time during my vacation (other than the jaunt to Montreal to see Captain America). I got up at a relatively decent hour, but then kind of procrastinated during the morning on getting anything done. Still, I saw that my basil plants were threatening to bolt again, so this time I went at them viciously with a pair of scissors. I'm hoping I was fast enough, but a few of the stems have turned woody, which tells me I may not get more leaves from them. I took some cuttings the other day in order to try to propagate the basil, but they are looking pretty wilted, so I'm not optimistic. I seem to have the darnedest time getting basil to keep growing. I don't suppose any of my gardening people have tips or tricks for me?
Anyway, the good news for today was that my basil rampage resulted in homemade pesto!
I am going back to Montreal on Thursday to visit my parents (and to go to my friend Lu's birthday party the next day), so I will be bringing my pesto with me then to share with them. We will have a yummy pasta dinner (or lunch, or whatever). I am pretty excited about the summer's first pesto.
I also went to the Vanier Community garden today, after shamefully neglecting it for over a week. Luckily, everything appears to have survived the hot weather and last night's thunderstorm. I even have teeny-tiny cucumbers starting! You can't see them in this photo due to the angle, but those flowers are the start of the actual cucumbers. They are the size of my fingernail right now. Teensy and adorable!
Sergent had a great time today, too. He came with me, since dogs are allowed on the Community Centre grounds, and he roamed around and made friends with all the other dogs who were out for walks or chasing balls with their humans. I had a nice chat with a few of them, and then made sure to fill all the water barrels in the community garden. I am a little put out by the fact that they don't have in-ground water, but it's a moderate inconvenience at worst for someone who's able-bodied, so I don't honestly mind walking the long hose from the community centre to the garden. Mostly it just takes a long time for the barrels to fill, and my 8x4 plot doesn't take much time for water and maintain, so I do a lot of waiting around while the water flows. At least the lids make for great improvised water dishes when you're silly enough to have forgotten yours at home.
It's been quite hot here for the past few days, but a thunderstorm last night did wonders to lower the temperature today. It was beautiful out, warm but also windy. Just the perfect temperature to be out for a quiet walk. Sergent agreed with my assessment, although he finds any temperature above 15 degrees Celsius to be way too hot.
I've been re-reading one of my favourite series, the Deverry novels by Katharine Kerr. I have declared this to be the Summer of Re-Reading, as I kind of want to do a bit of a purge of my books. Some of the books that need to go are a no-brainer, but there are others that I feel more conflicted about. So I'm giving myself some criteria to go by: any book that I own that I look at and say "Yes, I definitely want to re-read that this summer!" is going to stay. This is specifically for fiction and paperbacks, which I always feel weird about letting go. After that, well, I guess I'll have to come up with different criteria, supposing I haven't gotten rid of "enough" books.
I was sort of spurred onto this by several friends' discussion of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier. I may have, but my memory is crap and I don't feel like going back to check my previous entries. I heard good things about it from my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ai731, who used it along with her husband to completely re-organise her house. I was impressed by everything they accomplished, so I acquired a copy of the book, to see if it sparked anything in me. I liked what I had heard: that the approach was by category, rather than by room, and that there was a lot of emphasis on only keeping things that "spark joy." Granted, the latter part needs a bit of interpretation, because I can't say that, say, my kitchen blender sparks joy in me, but I do derive a great deal of enjoyment from what I can make with said blender. So, I figured the book might have some valuable insights to offer me.
I read the book, and it turns out it's not my cup of tea. It's part self-help book, with very prescriptive instructions on how to go about the "konmarie" system, part autobiographical memoir, and part... spiritual mish-mash full of what felt like pretty toxic woo. Let's go in order.
The tidying instructions themselves aren't bad. You're supposed to round up everything in your house by category. The author defines the following categories: clothes, books/papers, komono (miscellany), and finally stuff with sentimental value. That right there was a bit of a stumbling block. The thing is, this book is aimed at young Japanese women who, for the most part, still live with their parents, and have a single room to clear, not a house. So yes, the komono category makes sense for them. For someone like me, with an entire house? It's not so simple. My komono include linens, my entire kitchen, the pantry, all my tools, gardening supplies, arts & craft stuff, DVDs, you name it. I have acquired a lot of stuff over the years. I think streamlining and putting less emphasis on having stuff is great, but I can't lump my entire house into an "other" category and do it in one fell swoop, the way she insists.
The author also insists on doing things in the order she specifies, which seems overly prescriptive to me. Her reasoning is that the categories go from easiest to most difficult to get rid of, which is not necessarily true for a bibliophile such as myself. She also adorably thinks that my books should all fit into a single bookshelf that I should then fit into my closet. Yes, in my closet. Bookshelves are apparently horrible and unsightly and clutter up your room. As for me, I adhere more to the "A room without books is like a body without a soul" philosophy, although admittedly, not all my rooms have books in them.
The memoir aspect of the book seems to have been overlooked by a lot of people. I know this book has taken North America by storm, but people are focussing entirely on the instructions, and not at all on what the author says about herself. She's still quite young, from what I can tell. The internet has just informed me she's 30, so not quite as young as I thought, but still pretty young. I'd like to know what she has to say about her supposedly fool-proof method 20 years from now. I'm not saying it doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have the weight of time behind it yet. Mostly what I took away from the memoir parts of the book is that she comes off as a desperately unhappy woman coming out of a lonely, isolated, and anxiety ridden childhood and adolescence. She describes herself as a middle child, ignored by her parents in favour of her other two siblings, with no friends at school. She took solace in tidying, and began obsessing over keeping things in order from a very young age (about four or five, if memory serves), to the point of snatching up her mother's magazines on the subject when they came in the mail, and poring over them for hours and days at a time. Keeping things clean and organised was the only thing she could control, and with it also came the desperate desire to please her parents and get their approval and attention.
She interacted only with objects, the stuff she owned, and in turn that became an exaggerated animistic approach to everything in her life. She worries about her socks' feelings about being rolled into balls (they work super hard to keep your feet protected all day, and need to relax in your sock drawer, not be balled up!), and feels as though her t-shirts can't breathe unless they are folded in a specific way, etc. While I myself tend to have slightly animistic tendencies with my stuff (I don't like to bang things around or treat them roughly, and I talk to some of my things on occasion), I honestly have never once worried about the spiritual or emotional well-being of my clothes in their drawers. That's... a little psychotic, frankly.
That she turned this childhood obsession into a best-selling novel is great for her, at least on a financial level, but mostly I just want someone to give her a hug and the number of a really good psychotherapist.
Where she really lost me, though, was when she dove right into the deep end of "woo." Here's a sample:
"When we discard everything in one go [...] our bodies may respond in a way that resembles a short fast. We may get a bout of diarrhea or break out in pimples. There is nothing wrong with this. Our bodies are just getting rid of toxins that have built up over the years, and they will be back to normal, or in fact in even better shape, within a day or two."
I just. No. NO. This whole "healing crisis" after a "detox" is complete and utter bullshit, no matter what form your "detox" takes. Toxins are basically a made-up thing by the alternative medecine community to convince people to spend money on useless homeopathic remedies, and it ranges from defrauding people by giving them the medicinal equivalent of sugar water, to outright dangerous when people ingest some of these supposed "natural" remedies. You know what? Arsenic is also natural. Doesn't mean you should be consuming it. Our bodies are marvelous things, they have organs that do all the detoxing for us (like our liver and kidneys).
She also, in what feels like the most patronising tone, assures her readers that they'll end up thinner and healthier and more beautiful! Because who doesn't want that?
"From observing my clients, I have noticed when they part with excess clothing, their tummies tend to slim down (blogger's note: "tummies?" are we five years old?), when they discard books and documents, their minds tend to become clearer, when they reduce the number of cosmetics and tidy up the area around the sink and bath, their complexion tends to become clear and their skin smooth. Although I have no scientific basis for this theory (blogger's note: No shit!), it is very interesting to see that the part of the body responding corresponds to the area that is put in order."
And then there was this little gem, which made me roll my eyes so hard that I feared they might get stuck that way:
"When a woman is in love, the change in her is apparent to everyone around her. The love she receives from her partner, the confidence that love gives her, and her desire to make the effort to look beautiful for him all give her energy. Her skin glows, her eyes shine, and she becomes even more beautiful."
Also, I may have yelled at the book a LOT about that. I mean, clearly being beautiful should be a woman's main goal in life, right? Not only that but it should be a goal to be achieved in order to please the man she's involved with. Heaven forfend a woman not be beautiful, or elect to modify her appearance to please herself. To quote Erin McKean:
"You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'."
That will conclude my rant about Marie Kondo. At best, it's a cute little book with some interesting ideas about how to go about clearing out stuff you no longer need out of your life. At worst, it's pretty useless woo, combined with some antiquated and rather toxic notions of femininity. I can't recommend it, overall.
I was out and about a bit today, for the first time during my vacation (other than the jaunt to Montreal to see Captain America). I got up at a relatively decent hour, but then kind of procrastinated during the morning on getting anything done. Still, I saw that my basil plants were threatening to bolt again, so this time I went at them viciously with a pair of scissors. I'm hoping I was fast enough, but a few of the stems have turned woody, which tells me I may not get more leaves from them. I took some cuttings the other day in order to try to propagate the basil, but they are looking pretty wilted, so I'm not optimistic. I seem to have the darnedest time getting basil to keep growing. I don't suppose any of my gardening people have tips or tricks for me?
Anyway, the good news for today was that my basil rampage resulted in homemade pesto!
I am going back to Montreal on Thursday to visit my parents (and to go to my friend Lu's birthday party the next day), so I will be bringing my pesto with me then to share with them. We will have a yummy pasta dinner (or lunch, or whatever). I am pretty excited about the summer's first pesto.
I also went to the Vanier Community garden today, after shamefully neglecting it for over a week. Luckily, everything appears to have survived the hot weather and last night's thunderstorm. I even have teeny-tiny cucumbers starting! You can't see them in this photo due to the angle, but those flowers are the start of the actual cucumbers. They are the size of my fingernail right now. Teensy and adorable!
Sergent had a great time today, too. He came with me, since dogs are allowed on the Community Centre grounds, and he roamed around and made friends with all the other dogs who were out for walks or chasing balls with their humans. I had a nice chat with a few of them, and then made sure to fill all the water barrels in the community garden. I am a little put out by the fact that they don't have in-ground water, but it's a moderate inconvenience at worst for someone who's able-bodied, so I don't honestly mind walking the long hose from the community centre to the garden. Mostly it just takes a long time for the barrels to fill, and my 8x4 plot doesn't take much time for water and maintain, so I do a lot of waiting around while the water flows. At least the lids make for great improvised water dishes when you're silly enough to have forgotten yours at home.
It's been quite hot here for the past few days, but a thunderstorm last night did wonders to lower the temperature today. It was beautiful out, warm but also windy. Just the perfect temperature to be out for a quiet walk. Sergent agreed with my assessment, although he finds any temperature above 15 degrees Celsius to be way too hot.
I've been re-reading one of my favourite series, the Deverry novels by Katharine Kerr. I have declared this to be the Summer of Re-Reading, as I kind of want to do a bit of a purge of my books. Some of the books that need to go are a no-brainer, but there are others that I feel more conflicted about. So I'm giving myself some criteria to go by: any book that I own that I look at and say "Yes, I definitely want to re-read that this summer!" is going to stay. This is specifically for fiction and paperbacks, which I always feel weird about letting go. After that, well, I guess I'll have to come up with different criteria, supposing I haven't gotten rid of "enough" books.
I was sort of spurred onto this by several friends' discussion of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier. I may have, but my memory is crap and I don't feel like going back to check my previous entries. I heard good things about it from my friend
ai731, who used it along with her husband to completely re-organise her house. I was impressed by everything they accomplished, so I acquired a copy of the book, to see if it sparked anything in me. I liked what I had heard: that the approach was by category, rather than by room, and that there was a lot of emphasis on only keeping things that "spark joy." Granted, the latter part needs a bit of interpretation, because I can't say that, say, my kitchen blender sparks joy in me, but I do derive a great deal of enjoyment from what I can make with said blender. So, I figured the book might have some valuable insights to offer me.I read the book, and it turns out it's not my cup of tea. It's part self-help book, with very prescriptive instructions on how to go about the "konmarie" system, part autobiographical memoir, and part... spiritual mish-mash full of what felt like pretty toxic woo. Let's go in order.
The tidying instructions themselves aren't bad. You're supposed to round up everything in your house by category. The author defines the following categories: clothes, books/papers, komono (miscellany), and finally stuff with sentimental value. That right there was a bit of a stumbling block. The thing is, this book is aimed at young Japanese women who, for the most part, still live with their parents, and have a single room to clear, not a house. So yes, the komono category makes sense for them. For someone like me, with an entire house? It's not so simple. My komono include linens, my entire kitchen, the pantry, all my tools, gardening supplies, arts & craft stuff, DVDs, you name it. I have acquired a lot of stuff over the years. I think streamlining and putting less emphasis on having stuff is great, but I can't lump my entire house into an "other" category and do it in one fell swoop, the way she insists.
The author also insists on doing things in the order she specifies, which seems overly prescriptive to me. Her reasoning is that the categories go from easiest to most difficult to get rid of, which is not necessarily true for a bibliophile such as myself. She also adorably thinks that my books should all fit into a single bookshelf that I should then fit into my closet. Yes, in my closet. Bookshelves are apparently horrible and unsightly and clutter up your room. As for me, I adhere more to the "A room without books is like a body without a soul" philosophy, although admittedly, not all my rooms have books in them.
The memoir aspect of the book seems to have been overlooked by a lot of people. I know this book has taken North America by storm, but people are focussing entirely on the instructions, and not at all on what the author says about herself. She's still quite young, from what I can tell. The internet has just informed me she's 30, so not quite as young as I thought, but still pretty young. I'd like to know what she has to say about her supposedly fool-proof method 20 years from now. I'm not saying it doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have the weight of time behind it yet. Mostly what I took away from the memoir parts of the book is that she comes off as a desperately unhappy woman coming out of a lonely, isolated, and anxiety ridden childhood and adolescence. She describes herself as a middle child, ignored by her parents in favour of her other two siblings, with no friends at school. She took solace in tidying, and began obsessing over keeping things in order from a very young age (about four or five, if memory serves), to the point of snatching up her mother's magazines on the subject when they came in the mail, and poring over them for hours and days at a time. Keeping things clean and organised was the only thing she could control, and with it also came the desperate desire to please her parents and get their approval and attention.
She interacted only with objects, the stuff she owned, and in turn that became an exaggerated animistic approach to everything in her life. She worries about her socks' feelings about being rolled into balls (they work super hard to keep your feet protected all day, and need to relax in your sock drawer, not be balled up!), and feels as though her t-shirts can't breathe unless they are folded in a specific way, etc. While I myself tend to have slightly animistic tendencies with my stuff (I don't like to bang things around or treat them roughly, and I talk to some of my things on occasion), I honestly have never once worried about the spiritual or emotional well-being of my clothes in their drawers. That's... a little psychotic, frankly.
That she turned this childhood obsession into a best-selling novel is great for her, at least on a financial level, but mostly I just want someone to give her a hug and the number of a really good psychotherapist.
Where she really lost me, though, was when she dove right into the deep end of "woo." Here's a sample:
"When we discard everything in one go [...] our bodies may respond in a way that resembles a short fast. We may get a bout of diarrhea or break out in pimples. There is nothing wrong with this. Our bodies are just getting rid of toxins that have built up over the years, and they will be back to normal, or in fact in even better shape, within a day or two."
I just. No. NO. This whole "healing crisis" after a "detox" is complete and utter bullshit, no matter what form your "detox" takes. Toxins are basically a made-up thing by the alternative medecine community to convince people to spend money on useless homeopathic remedies, and it ranges from defrauding people by giving them the medicinal equivalent of sugar water, to outright dangerous when people ingest some of these supposed "natural" remedies. You know what? Arsenic is also natural. Doesn't mean you should be consuming it. Our bodies are marvelous things, they have organs that do all the detoxing for us (like our liver and kidneys).
She also, in what feels like the most patronising tone, assures her readers that they'll end up thinner and healthier and more beautiful! Because who doesn't want that?
"From observing my clients, I have noticed when they part with excess clothing, their tummies tend to slim down (blogger's note: "tummies?" are we five years old?), when they discard books and documents, their minds tend to become clearer, when they reduce the number of cosmetics and tidy up the area around the sink and bath, their complexion tends to become clear and their skin smooth. Although I have no scientific basis for this theory (blogger's note: No shit!), it is very interesting to see that the part of the body responding corresponds to the area that is put in order."
And then there was this little gem, which made me roll my eyes so hard that I feared they might get stuck that way:
"When a woman is in love, the change in her is apparent to everyone around her. The love she receives from her partner, the confidence that love gives her, and her desire to make the effort to look beautiful for him all give her energy. Her skin glows, her eyes shine, and she becomes even more beautiful."
Also, I may have yelled at the book a LOT about that. I mean, clearly being beautiful should be a woman's main goal in life, right? Not only that but it should be a goal to be achieved in order to please the man she's involved with. Heaven forfend a woman not be beautiful, or elect to modify her appearance to please herself. To quote Erin McKean:
"You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'."
That will conclude my rant about Marie Kondo. At best, it's a cute little book with some interesting ideas about how to go about clearing out stuff you no longer need out of your life. At worst, it's pretty useless woo, combined with some antiquated and rather toxic notions of femininity. I can't recommend it, overall.
