Usufruct

CWs: food, drink, alcohol, errands, finances, ponderings

These days I feel like I mostly know what I’m doing in life. It’s not perfect by any means, but things are mostly OK, at least on a personal level. I’m in my 40s now and things are finally starting to mostly make sense. I feel like I know what’s important and what to shrug off. I wish it didn’t take this long to figure it out, because if I am lucky, I’m about halfway through the trip. Oh well. I am hoping the second half is an improvement, and just trying to enjoy every moment, howsoever I can.

We’re starting to see the first signs of autumn here. A few leaves are changing on trees in the neighborhood; our ash tree out back is showing some changing leaves too. I can’t wait, because it means cooler temps and mystery and warm drinks and blankets and, eventually, snow. My sister is visiting us in about a month and I am really excited to see her and hang out for a few days. I definitely want to show her the car, take her around town, hang out with the kitties. Our good friends in town also very kindly invited us to do pumpkin carving, which is a pretty much annual occurrence, and they said it was cool if my sister comes along (the more the merrier!). So that will be really lovely. My parents are hopefully going to visit sometime in the next couple of months, too, which will also be very nice.

I was contemplating mowing the lawn this morning (it needs to be done, for sure), but I decided against it, since we planned on errands and such today. Some fun errands, some boring errands; the usual mix. So we’ll do a grocery pickup first thing tomorrow, mow the lawn, take clippings to recycling center, &c. We have some other errands tomorrow, but nothing major.

We went to the farmers’ market up north today. There’s a place there that makes hand-pies (basically exactly what’s on the tin; a little “pie” you can hold and eat!). I got a green chile & egg (last time we went, they were out, and I just had to get egg & cheese) and it was so good. My spouse got a Denver quiche (basically a Denver omelette in quiche form!). So we had a nice breakfast. My spouse got some salad greens and cherry tomatoes from a local farm. We also got some stuff from our local dairy (cheese curds and a chocolate milk quart!); we get delivery from them, but saw cool stuff and thought why not. We also got some truffles from a local truffle shop (not the mushrooms, but chocolates). It was a nice little spin around the farmers market.

We went to a few other places; we get our spices from a local spice shop and they always have great stuff! We went to a local chocolate shop, got more truffles, and I also got cacao nibs (they are delightful in yogurt!). We then went to our favorite local indie bookstore and I found a cool book on the staff picks shelf, my spouse found a cool one, and they also picked up their special “subscription box” which has a couple of books and fun goodies in it. We sat down for some iced tea after that, then went to a cosmetic/body wash shop and got body wash refills and other stuff. It was a lot of shopping, to be sure, but oh well. We don’t do this very often, but my spouse said they always love our farmers’ market dates. Had to take stuff home, put perishable stuff away, then went out again. I picked up a library book that was on hold, we got some alcohol at the liquor store, then a few little groceries. Along the way we also got sodas for tonight.

It was kind of a whirlwind of errands today, but oh well. It was fun. After that we just kinda hung out in the living room with the kitties and talked for awhile. We opened the living room blinds; it was very gloomy out, but then late-afternoon sun broke through the clouds. There was occasional thunder and there was even a nice little rainstorm! It was cool. Lyra enjoyed looking out the window.

At the hand-pie place we had gotten pretzel bites (jalapeno-cheddar!). We were gonna have them with burgers or something tonight, but decided to just have them and other snacks for “dinner.” Heated them up in the oven for a bit and they were delicious. Watched some TV. Try Guys had a ridiculous episode where they tried ghost hunting. They were fine, but some of their guests were really broey and terrible and that was not so great. Watched some Disney videos otherwise, always fun. I had a couple of beers and my spouse had some wine. Eventually at 9, per usual, I fed the girls their wet food. Their favorite time of day.

Now I am in my office and the fan is on and I’m a little hot. We opened the windows in the bedroom and bathroom, since it’s 76F in the house but in the 60s F outside, but it doesn’t seem to have 100% helped. Hopefully it does overnight. I wanted to write a little something about our day and I was really trying not to make it like Fabius Pictor or something, an exhaustive annal, but somehow it still is. I’m trying to do more sketches instead of minutiae, but it’s kinda in my nature. I’ll find a balance somehow. I just can’t go back to the bad old days of Xanga where I’d spend a couple of hours chronicling every second of a day or multiple days. No one wants to read that; it would be a curiosity to myself alone. I know that because I had reread some of those blogs, and it was interesting to see my thought processes, but I don’t think that is of interest to anyone else. I am not Samuel Pepys or Proust, and that’s OK.

Last night I paid bills. I think basically everything for the month is paid now. Electric, gas, car payment, my own credit card. Student loans are coming back; supposedly I’ll be back in repayment next month, but I haven’t seen a bill yet and they’re taking their sweet time. I’ve reconfigured my paychecks and deposits to provide for it, but it’s going to be a rather large payment, and I am not thrilled about it. But I need to get back into repayment so I can work towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF); I am about 3 years of payments away from finishing that up. After the dust clears from today I’ll have to see how things look for my personal finances, but I think it’ll be OK. I don’t get out much. I work from home 4 days/week, and am in-office for 1. We do fun stuff on weekends, but during the week is a lot of home time and hanging out with the cats. I was in-office 5 days/week, as is normal, pre-2020, after which I went fully remote, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that we went back to the 1 day/week in-office. Totally fine with that. So I don’t get out much; we have a total of about 2 close friends (a couple) in town, and that’s fine with me. Otherwise I talk with my spouse, family, and friends, mostly elsewhere (online, and/or via text/&c. with friends in other states). I’m okay with my life being like this, but with student loan repayment restarting, things will get quite a bit tighter for my disposable income at least. I like contributing to mutual aid as much as I can, but that is definitely going to have to change, which is unfortunate, but it won’t be forever.

As usual I’m not sure where I am going with all this. Life is weird (look at everything going on in the world!), but at least in my little kosmos here (or oikos, I guess!), things are good and calm. City and state are generally pretty fine. Doing the best I can to make whatever difference I can, howsoever small it may be. Trying to enjoy life and help others’ enjoy their lives as much as they can. I’d like to contribute to happiness rather than detract from it for others. It took me awhile, but I realized you can’t “make” anyone happy. You can add/subtract to/from their happiness, but can’t create it ex nihilo. People have to find that happiness themselves; others will either reinforce it or diminish it, but it has come from within. I wish there were no need for alliances, for strife, for competition (the bad kind, at least; ἔρις (Eris) can be negative or positive); I wish there were no borders, no countries, just people, hurtling through the boundless void and trying to love each other as much as possible. Thanks for reading, friends <3