seasonal stuff and social anxiety

It's October so that means the confederate roses are blooming. Confederate rose is a not a rose but a mallow, part of the hibiscus family or, I guess, hibiscus is part of the mallow family.

There are two times a year, spring and fall, when two things happen. The first thing is that I have to wear a cap in the morning sitting at my desktop because I face east and the sun is rising later and has moved so that it shines in my face when it breaks through the leaves of the photinia. The second thing is the chair in the bedroom. You know, the chair where clothes go that have been worn enough not to be folded and put away and too clean to go in the wash. These two times every year the chair sports not one season's garments but two, warm weather and cool weather. Wake up, check the weather app, select the appropriate clothing off the chair for the day, get dressed. Tomorrow it may be the other set of clothes. My yoga clothes also live on the chair Monday through Thursday. I usually wear the same clothes for a week unless they get really dirty or smelly. I don't go anywhere except the grocery store, an occasional errand, and SHARE (I do wear fresh clothes to SHARE) so I see no need to put on fresh clean clothes every day and it cuts down on the laundry.

Monday was a good day. I got rid of a lot of the give away stuff. Rocky took all the fishing gear, the two footlockers, and a National Geographic telescope that was given to my grandson at some point and everyone thought it was a great idea to leave it at Granny's house out in the country. All well and good but we could never figure out how to make it work. Rocky knows a guy into that stuff so he took it to give to him. The other stuff was the box of games and puzzles, the box of yarn and crochet hooks, and the box of memories from the kids growing up. I took those over to where my son in law works for him to take home to Robin and Sarah. After Sarah goes through the box of memories she can take it to her brother for him to sort through.

It was pretty breezy Tuesday and the pecans are really starting to fall. Up until then, for the past three weeks or so, I've been picking up a handful or pocketful or two a day. Tuesday I picked up two gallons worth and I could hear them falling now and then when I was out there,

filled this bucket twice

was still a little breezy Wednesday, overcast and humid, 50% to 91% chance of rain starting today and for the next seven days. Walking the yard at midday picking up pecans and fallen trees branches I was hot and sweaty enough to change my mind about going over to the shop and doing more clearing out and reorganizing. That's going to change on Sunday when a front comes through. Instead of dropping 50 degrees from high to low as previously predicted, it's only going to drop 40 degrees.

I've stopped buying lunch meat because we are sick and tired of all the choices and too processed for our preference anyway but just so convenient so we've been making do with leftovers and tuna and the like, grilled cheese. I decided I wanted to make tostadas from the leftover refried beans in the fridge so I looked for already crisp tostada shells (not really a shell, just crisp corn tortillas) and I could buy them if I wanted 32! So I got a small package of corn tortillas (10) and I'm going to crisp them up myself. So that was a success and they were really good.

Tonight, Friday, is a little social gathering and dinner at the home of one of the couples that volunteer at SHARE. I have RSVPed my attendance but I'd be lying if I said I was really looking forward to it because I'm basically anti-social. I told Marc he did not have to go since he doesn't know any of the people besides our two neighbors that volunteer so he's staying home. I wouldn't want to go either if the situation was reversed. I get along with everyone and we joke and kid around but we're there to do a job so it's easy. Plus, you know, I've had weeks and months to get comfortable with everyone. But a purely social situation is different. I'm very different from the rest in many ways, I don't do religion, not conservative and in fact am an unapologetic liberal, I smoke pot and drink, I'm fluent in profanity, I'm an old hippie fer cryin' out loud. Anyway, my anxiety surfaced in my dream last night. I dreamed that I was having this party and I had waited til the last minute to clean house or prepare food and get in drinks so I was frantically running around making beds and picking up personal belongings, searching every closet for the dress I wanted to wear and couldn't find it and people were starting to arrive and somehow there was some drinks and some sort of hors 'doeuvres made out of graham crackers while I was still trying to find the dress but not the promised dinner. Then the whole group moved out to the park where some sort of competitions were planned and one of the women was a little pissed about either not winning or not being chosen, something. Anyway, I woke up.