Just some disconnected thoughts

My recycling box is gone. Woe! Another thing I have to put on my to-do list. Poor recycling box, sacrificed to the gods of snow removal. It figures that something like this would happen just as I'm trying to be more environmentally responsible.

Had to get up stupidly early to move the car yesterday, only to have them *not* remove the snow. Got up stupidly early today for the same reason, but they appear to be following through on the snow removal thing now, which makes me feel better. I know they're overworked, but that doesn't make me any less tired for it.

At some point, when my energy comes back (hah!) I am going to start researching all my local government-type folk (municipal, provincial and federal) and start writing stern letters about environmentalism, social development, and all that sort of good stuff. I just have to figure out who to write to.

Just got happy election stuff in the mail. I am officially registered to vote in the upcoming provincial election. Too bad none of the candidates is one I feel comfortable voting for. Theoretically there's a green candidate in my riding, but he/she/it hasn't seen fit to even send out leaflets, so I have no idea who they are. Bah. I should go poke them, but I don't know when I'll have time to do that. Gotta make time, I suppose.

I have made cream of wheat this morning, and added apples and cinnamon. I think it ought to taste quite good. *tests* Yep. Excellent. Can't think why this didn't occur to me before.

I've noticed a trend among the more modern sci fi shows to have other humans as the worst kind of enemy. Been watching Battlestar Galactica right on the heels of Babylon 5, and thus can't help but see parallels between Clark and Cain. Part of me is glad that it's not just the aliens that are the bad guys (or the Cylons, who are alien by extension), and another part of me is thinking "Oh God, not again!" I think it's just because the kind of shows I watch tend to pose the larger questions, and so the same motifs return. I doubt very much that most of mainstream American television would make it very clear that torturing prisoners is a bad thing. I'm thinking, in this case, of 24, in which our heroes routinely turn to torture as a means of extracting information because they "don't have time for this."

I don't know where I'm going with that. I was just struck by it.

That's it for now, I think.

Forgetful Jones and the Extra Post About Nesting

It occurs to me that I may have to find myself a "Forgetful Jones" icon from Sesame Street. So many icons, so little space and time. *sigh*


I am not sure whether I should be writing about this. It seems, well, kind of premature. Not to mention it feels a little bit like I'm exposing part of myself that I've always kept a little sheltered from the cold wide world. But then again, I think that may just be my paranoia talking.

I had a little bit of a crisis in May of 2005, directly after coming back from the Rural Wastelands, better known as the home of prolixfootle (*waves* Miss you, sweetie! Start posting again!), and detouring by the Godforsaken Howling Wilderness to visit with wultabat and looking4wings. It wasn't a bad crisis. Nothing crazy-making or anything like that. Just a... I don't know. A panicky realization that I was 26 years old and was nowhere near doing anything with my life that made sense.

While I was out there, I remembered quite suddenly a whole lot of things that were important to me: my friends, my family, and being out in nature. It's not that I didn't know any of these things before, it's just that I had let all of my priorities get out of whack for, oh, three or four years while I sorted out the crazy in my head. Once that was sorted out, everything else came swooshing back in with a vengeance.

I have to admit to wanting to be involved in social and ecological activism for purely selfish reasons. I've always, since I was a little girl, wanted to live in the country. The city, for all that I love it in its own way, makes me feel trapped and claustrophobic after a while. So I want the whole world to collaborate so that I can live my little dream in a small house, unencumbered by pollution and socio-political wank.

In essence, for the past two years, I've been fighting off an ever-growing nesting instinct. I want to have a house, and I want to fill it with pets and children. Two years ago I had no money. I was in debt, in a dead-end job with no prospects of anything ever getting better. Things have changed since then, obviously. I'm still not well off, but I'm better off than I was. Still, at best I will have to be content with delayed gratification when it comes to having a house. At worst, and this is what I see on bad days, I will be stuck renting a three-room apartment for the rest of my life.

I know things could be much, much worse. I am grateful for what I do have. But occasionally I do feel the lack of a home filled with family and friends, quite keenly. It's a gnawing, aching void, and there are moments when I wonder if it isn't going to tear me apart.