Tag: boring as hell

Glancing through the notes on this, I can’t help but be kind of glad again that I do seem to have missed out on most of the more recent hair straightening pressure in the US.

A while back, I watched one video that showed up recommended on YouTube out of curiosity, with a younger black American guy talking about some of the things he noticed while visiting the UK. (Don’t have the spoons to try to find that now, and most of it isn’t relevant anyway.)

One thing that did unexpectedly jump out at him, though? Seeing a lot more variety of hair textures on women. Not just a decent bit of natural hair on black women, but also much more curly/wavy hair in general that other women were not routinely wearing straightened.

I mean, I don’t know much about that guy’s frame of reference at home, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had a point there. Some people do straighten their hair here, but it really doesn’t seem to be a base expectation to look even vaguely put-together in anything like the same way.

(And I am suspicious of some of the racial not even undertones with it sometimes. Non-straight hair just doesn’t seem to be racialized in the same ways here, longer term. Coming from a pretty mixed background, I may have noticed even more.)

From what I’ve kept gathering from some discussions, that pressure really seems to have picked up over the past 10 years or so, since I last spent any time back in the US. And it does keep surprising me.

This time, I was particularly struck by more than one person in notes mentioning unsolicited advice to straighten toddler girls’ hair so it would look neater 😵 I mean, I grew up with a (very badly managed out of ignorance) snarly mop of hair that stuck out all over the place, and some adults got just plain abusive about it. But, some expectations seem to have gotten more rigid since then, and applied much earlier.

(Toddlers? Really?! Their hair is just starting to really grow in, and basically never looks neat. Beyond the issue of treating curly/wavy as inherently messy. Why anyone would expect it to be Under Control, I have no idea. Much less think it’s reasonable to use hot appliances and/or chemicals on a squirmy toddler head. Talk about some messed up priorities.)

As for persimmons in this climate:

Much of the fruit on trees in a relatively sunny position at Kew after a relatively warm summer in 1996 was still not fully ripe, though it was very nearly so and ripened well off the tree

And that was a noteworthy performance 😅

It’s also very unlikely to get frosted at the appropriate time. Which, in my estimation, makes parsnips and rutabagas/swedes just about edible without the weird sweet tones (though a lot of people do want that)–but is kinda the opposite of what you need to get persimmons worth eating.

Even if we had the space, that would have to be a nope. Pretty as the trees are.

(You can find Asian persimmons here, but the flavor/texture are very different. The North American kind don’t ship worth a damn either, like pawpaws, which is why they’re not really grown commercially.)

Still not too pleased about getting woken up by pain (again) a couple of hours ago.

But, it was probably just as well that I didn’t manage to get back to sleep again when I tried, since Parcelforce just showed up with those shoes I ordered over an hour before the time window the tracking page was estimating.

Not going to complain about that unusual behavior, because ST Chucks. Glad I was conscious for it, though.

Now it may be time to finish my coffee, and try to get down for a nap soon 🙄 Way more concerned about the original problem which woke me up than caffeine maybe interfering.

I did just go ahead and order those shoes, before they ran completely out. A lot of the rest of that line apparently did sell out pretty quickly.

Belated gifts to 14-year-old me. Though that’s what Sharpies are for 😅

A bit of extra fun, though. The 7.5 was showing up as in stock, and the site let me add it to the basket (as seen here).
Only to inform me that it was really out of stock when I went to check out maybe 2 minutes later!

Either their system was really messed up, or I should have tried to buy that 5 minutes earlier.

The 8 should work, assuming the info I was finding is right and their UK sizes are exactly the same as US men’s. It’s been long enough since I bought any UK-sized Converse (trying them on) that I honestly don’t remember. Overall, it’s a crapshoot. And I don’t have any old shoe boxes around to check. We’ll see soon enough.

I was initially pretty glad to see the 7.5, though, since that’s what always worked best for me in Chucks. Assuming it was really the same as what they’re selling as a men’s 7.5 in the US.

Not looking forward to it, but I had better go ahead soon and try to retrieve some packages from a neighbor I don’t know that I’ve every talked to before 😕

Amazon not only split an order up into multiple packages for no obvious reason, they came while I was asleep and left them all at a neighbor’s. Glad they found somebody home at that time, but still. Wish the delivery person had just put them over the back gate again, since it hasn’t been rainy today or anything.

OK, make that delivery time “probably after 10 p.m.” Which is fine by me.

The e-mail notification must have gone our at the same time I got a robocall with exact same message.

Mostly sharing, though, because the way their system stated the adjusted time window struck me as funny. Yes, I imagine the delivery will show up at some point after 6 p.m., considering it was already a couple of hours after that when the message went out 🙄

Cool, I managed to get a technically same-day delivery slot again 🤗

(Which should be 9-10 p.m., since that was the only 1-hr slot still showing as open. Saved £3 booking the rough 4-hr window, instead of specifying the hour. Doubt they’ll show up before 9:00, considering, but I should be home the whole evening anyway.)

Anyway, I’d been meaning to put in another grocery order for bulkier items plus some I can’t get within walking distance now. Even better, that should save me from having to go out tomorrow, and try to lug home more cat litter and wet cat food 😵 I can also get larger sizes of both if someone else will bring it to the door.

With Mr. C gone for several days still, the litter is what finally prompted me to go ahead and schedule a delivery. Was expecting Friday at the earliest, but a pleasant surprise this time.

I made some buttery popcorn, and turned part of that into cheesy popcorn. Now the house smells entirely too appetizing.

Mr. C went and collapsed just as I was getting ready to pop some earlier, but made a point of saying that he’d be very happy to clean up any that’s left after he gets up. So, I decided to go ahead and pop some anyway, several hours later.

The cold leftover stuff usually tastes stale to me, even if it’s been sealed up well. He’ll buy the questionable bags out of the chip aisle. So, might as well make some to snack on myself–but primarily to bag up after it finishes cooling 🍿

Maybe the best thing about the weather change today: It’s been not just cooler, but pretty windy. Enough to get some decent ventilation through the silly little top-opening portion of the bedroom window!

(With no cross-ventilation in there at all. A few times I actually resorted to opening the front door and rigging up a fan to try to force some cooler night air through the sweatbox, but nope. Not much luck.)

The wind has gotten it cooled down enough in there, just today, that sleeping should be so much easier. The bedroom was hovering just over 30C/86F for at least the past week, but right now it’s down to 22C/72F 😃😪

Without the wind, that could have taken a week. From past experience. Even if it heats right up again later into the week, I’m definitely relieved to get some better sleeping conditions at all after weeks.

Yay, thunderstorms! ⛈

It was actually 34C/93F here again until a little while ago. Definitely starting to feel a little relief outside now that some rain has started up. (Not so much inside the house yet, but hey.)

If the forecast holds, tomorrow will probably feel just plain chilly by comparison to the past month or so. But, not about to complain.