Tenacious Burrs

This photo I took of wild cactus reminds me of the piranha plants in Mario, lol. I also think about the plant Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, though it doesn’t look like Audrey. Now I’m laughing about burr plants. I love how they cling to your clothing, hitching a ride. They’re so tenacious. One time I planted some of the burrs in a pot and they grew into healthy burr plants. I had it on my front porch and would giggle in delight every time I passed them.

It’s been a relaxing week. I’ve let go of trying to go fast because since I’ve done that my health is finally improving, I’m being careful not to push myself too hard as I usually do and it’s working. Or maybe this is just how long it took my body to get better? I’m thankful whatever the reasons may be, I don’t want to do anything to send me backsliding. The air quality being poor has helped me from overdoing it, I’ve had to stay indoors.

I watched two movies this week, The Half of It and Before Midnight. Both were enjoyable, The Half of It was a touching, sweet, introspective, coming of age story, and Before Midnight was the last in a trilogy of movies, which explore romance, the complexities of human relationships, the power struggles, and the search for meaning. I could totally relate to the relationship dynamics in Before Midnight, it was so real and at times infuriating, lol.

If you like a lot of dialogue in movies then you’ll love the Before trilogy. I’d watched the first two when they came out, the first one was in 1995, the next in 2004, and the last in 2013. Now I want to watch the first two again while the third is still fresh in my mind. I remember I was blown away when I watched the first one, I’d never seen a movie that had so much stimulating dialogue.

I’m trying to find a lighthearted series after finishing Never Have I Ever. I watched one episode of Kim’s Convenience Store, but that wasn’t it. Then I skimmed through watching a few minutes of the first episodes of various series on Netflix and nothing stuck. Today I watched High Maintenance and that held my attention, so that’s what I’ll be watching.

We tried watching Schitt’s Creek after finishing Community but Chris Elliott is too annoying lol. I’d like to find something absurd and fun like Community to watch during couple TV time. We’re watching The Boys in the interim which is extremely graphic with a perverse sense of humor.

There’s so much entertainment to choose from, a huge smorgasbord, it’s coming in handy during this pandemic. That reminds me, I haven’t played Animal Crossing yet this week. I’ve been enjoying long stretches of quiet and activities that require low bandwidth like listening to books, reading, and trying new recipes. Today I made some vegan Mississippi Mud Pie, except half was vanilla pudding, the other half the usual chocolate, nom.

I still haven’t written my thank you notes, but I looked up addresses and wrote them down, now I need to verify that they’re correct. I’m procrastinating because it’s gonna have me emotional and I want to be in the right frame of mind to do it justice. I’m building up to it though.

My simple routine of dancing, playing guitar, drawing, and blogging has been refreshing. I laugh at myself when watching the video of me dancing afterward, it’s fun to be so silly. I need to learn some dance moves though, I don’t know how to dance and I just do random movements. I like to jump up and down a lot when I dance, but I can’t do that being on the second floor above somebody so I half jump, it’s not as satisfying as full out jumping though. I feel restrained.

That’s how this whole year has felt, constrained and restrained, limited from within due to health issues and from without due to the pandemic and wildfires with resulting poor air quality, plus the heightened hostility towards me due to my race a fallout issue resulting from the pandemic and politics. Again people view me as an outsider, an immigrant even though I’m not. I feel like I’ve been hiding out waiting for my body to heal and the outside danger to pass. It’s taking a long time, are we there yet? Heh.

But you know what, I’m hanging in there like one of those cute, tenacious burrs as best I can and that’ll do. We’ve all been persevering as best we can and we all deserve huge pats on the back and ginormous hugs too. I feel like a humble, yet mighty burr, lol.