fun times

I’m finding it hard to focus these days.

The cold weather — such a glorious reprieve — makes me itchy in my skin. I want to do EVERYTHING. At the SAME TIME. Right NOW.

But then I end up doing just one small thing, like watering the plants or hosting a writing group, and then I collapse on the couch, tired and out-of-sorts because I can’t decide whether or not to make the peach pie filling for the bakery pies or make another batch of cottage cheese or bake a cake. So I do none of that and instead scroll facebook and check Instagram (on my computer only) and then get pissy at myself for being so undisciplined and pathetic. 

Pull yourself together, I say to myself, though not in those words, exactly. My get-with-it pep talk is more like a long, drawn-out internal moan: angsty and self-pitying and supremely uninspired.

Sorry. This is boring.

About Instagram: I hate it. I’ve recently been introduced to some fabulous cheesemaking instagrammers but I keep getting mad because the platform is so dang impossible to navigate. There’s no way to quick find the recipe/information I want, and then, once I do, there’s no time to dwell on it because the damn slides zip by faster than I can read them and I have to keep pausing and unpausing. And if there’s sound to contend with? Oh good lord!

To make things worse, IF YOU CAN IMAGINE, everything is video which takes a crazy amount of time to work through, and don’t even get me started on the disappearing stories which only heightens the gotta-click-on-this-before-it’s-gone addiction factor. (Unless the person saves them but I can’t know that at the time if they’ll be saved, gr.) And then there’s the whole “subscribe to be an insider” thing, and I know people gotta make a living but I HATE specials and deals and sign-up-here-now-or-else stuff. Just give me the information or stop talking, please.

At first I thought me struggling with the Insta was just a result of me being too inflexible and uncool to catch on to the media platform’s wiley ways but then I asked my older son to please enlighten me and he was like, “You’re not doing anything wrong. Instagram sucks.” HA.

So why do I persist if I hate it so much? Because, in spite of myself, it’s kinda fun (wiley social media sorcerers, indeed!), but mostly because there’s some good stuff out there that’s helping me up my cheesemaking game AND because it’s how certain people/businesses I know and care about communicate and, well, here I am.

On the couch.

Fussing.

But hey! I bought a new cheesemaking book the other day. It holds really still and doesn’t make noise and the pages only turn when I make them.

I like it.

P.S. My older son and his friend went to a medieval-themed party. They asked me to take photos. We had fun.

This same time, years previous: a fantastic week, fried, knife in the eye, the end, gingerbread, damn good blackberry pie, dimply plum cake.