Things I could do with myself instead of worrying about how I have no internet or cable

It's been a few days since poorness required me to take time off from my close and loving relationship with the internet on my computer, and it's hard. Me and the internet were made for each other, and it's still weeks before I can upgrade / properly replace my phone to one that almost works like a computer, and get back online more easily and naturally through my data plan. In the meantime, here's a pep-talk-list for myself--and for you, if you're in a similar situation:

1. Meditate on the ways the world likes to block my dependence on dumb things, and see if there's some deep and meaningful epiphany hiding in there.
2. Read the rest of those three books I've started and not finished this week, and then move on to other books.
3. Figure out how to bake a gluten free cake, because a situation like this sort of requires cake.
4. Sleep more.
5. Spend some time outside.*
6. Write more. Because, yeah, I need to anyway, and now there should be more time and less distraction, right?
7. Watch through the DVDs that I own but mostly ignore because we have Netflix and On Demand and Hulu and cable, most of the time.
8. Depend on phone-app-Tumblr to tell me everything I need to know about my shows, if we're still without, when everything starts coming back.
9. Cry some. And make myself cry by composing terrible fanfic to fill the void.
10. Focus on the garden until it's super-flourishing, because there's nothing else to distract me, and also because plants will start going on late-season sales soonish.

I don't like this at all. I joke, but it's only partially because of my love of TV; it's mostly about how I hate being so poor that I have to sacrifice basic parts of culture (basic cable) and the literal most basic needs of my online business (internet) just to keep feeding myself. Which, really, is another point in favor of #10; I can focus on building up a garden so impressive that I can cut a large chunk of the food bill, and maybe free up cash? Even if I can't right now, halfway through summer, I can tell myself I'm doing that and maybe feel better about being so damned poor, right?

NOTES:

*This one is a possibility, but not likely, as it's about a million degrees outside all day long, and full of biting insects, and also smotheringly humid.

Sami's top ten rules for life

1. Be nice. Read as Wil Wheaton's "Don't be a dick". When faced with any situation where you can be nice or be a dick, pick nice.
1. Note that 'nice' does not mean 'be a pushover' or 'be a victim'; it means 'don't needlessly be hurtful or rude'.
2. Pay attention. Learn to know when people are tying to pull one over on you, but also learn when you should see the wonderfulness around you.
3. Ask questions and get answers. Don't take things at face value just because someone said them with a strong voice; ask why, ask when, ask 'how does that even start to make sense'. Learn how to find the answers, and teach others how to.
4. Do you. Aside from being a psychopath or something, you know what you want to do, so do it. Build the life you want. Live in accordance to your own beliefs. Don't be damaging to society, but also don't excuse the badness of society just because it's your culture.
5. Aim for healthy. For yourself, but also for the world, for your community, for your house and your kids and your pets and your garden. For conflict-resolution. For mental state.
6. Lessen your footprint. There's always a cleaner, kinder way to live. You don't have to turn eco-terrorist overnight, but think about these things--choose to be better. Pick farm-raised over battery-raised. Pick gas-saving over gas-guzzling. Pick walking over driving less than a mile. Pick up your trash. Recycle. Buy local.
7. Remember your lessons. Life is made of lessons, and if you aren't learning them--and the lessons your culture should have learned, you aren't doing your best to improve and avoid past mistakes, big and small.
8. Share. Knowledge, funds, food, stories, art, your talents, your gifts, your experience, this article you just read, this beautiful thing you just saw, this terrible news we can do something about. Share it all. Be open and ambitious with your sharing.
1. Don't ruin yourself, though; remember "Aim for healthy".
9. Build family. Not hate. Find the people you would have in your family if you got to choose, and keep those people around you.
10. Love. It's harder than hate, but it's so much better. Fight against the piles of bullshit that make people keep being mean and hurtful and scared and crazy, and replace them with love.

Ten reasons why summer ISN'T my favorite season, and five reasons why I love it anyway

1. I don't handle heat very well - I got heat-exaustion once when I was 16, and sun-poisoning when I was 14, and ever since then it's been a battle between fear of being that sick again and avoiding being that sick again. I like a brisk snow day so much more. I'm not built for heat, with my pasty skin and predominantly Irish and Welsh heritage. I did NOT inherit a love of heat or a constitution to handle it from my Cuban grandmother.
2. Mosquitoes - I'm apparently super-tasty to them, and no matter how much garlic I eat or bug spray I use or citronella I burn, the biters still get me. All of the biters, if we get down to it--mosquitoes, fleas, ants, anything that likes to chomp a person.
3. Sunburn - The afore-mentioned pasty skin. I freckle, but I don't tan, which means I burn SO EASILY IT'S SCARY. Like, I have a thing on my phone that warns me when the sun index goes over 8 because I know if it does, I burn in about five minutes and I need to find shade. I also have a family history of skin cancer and I hate the feel of sunscreen on my everything, so basically staying out of the sun is the best bet.
4. All my show are off the air - I'm sure I've mentioned before that I watch A Lot Of TV, and that I Don't Do Well With Cliffhangers. It means that the summer basically lacks the schedule of shows I watch, so I gradually stop knowing what day of the week it is, AND I spend whole weeks and months worrying about what will happen to characters I like. It's silly, but it's A Thing, and it's not something I like.
5. Bright sunlight gives me headaches and eye-wrinkles - I'm really blind. Like, without my glasses, I can see somewhere between four and six inches before it's all just colored blobs and no sense of distance or depth. This means I can't wear sunglasses unless they're prescription, which I can almost never afford, AND which are usually really poor examples of shading. Non-prescription glasses can go way dark and make it a feasible thing for super-bright southern days, but you add some actual lensing to the glass and all of a sudden it has to be just barely brown? Lame. If I have to choose seeing things and squinting or not squinting and being blind anyway, I usually choose squinting...which gives me headaches all summer long.
6. Humidity - Bad for my skin, my hair, my lungs, my patience...basically just bad.
7. Tourists - There's a difference between 'people who travel somewhere new' and 'tourists', and it has to do with obnoxiousness levels. I try to be the first, and all the people who drive poorly, tip poorly, talk too loud, don't allow for things like this is not your home, and so on, are the second.
8. Extra work hours - Only a narrow range of humans get summers off, and I've never been in that range since I started working. I've also never been in that range of people who work because it's their life; my life is what I'm working to support, and I never thought work should take up a bigger portion of my waking hours than life. Previously, I worked in retail and food service, and that is entirely dependent on people coming in, so hours doubled or tripled over summer months. Now, I'm a babysitter, and when the kids are out of school, the work doubles or triples in the same amount of hours. I love those kids, but man, they're a handful.
9. Everyone talking about how much they love it - It's fine if you love summer--most people do, it seems--but by about now each year, mid-June or so, I've seen so many articles and spots on TV and segments on talk show and bits on the news all about how wonderful summer is if you have skin that tans, that I just get sick of it. It's like it's accepted that when it's summer you talk about how wonderful summer is, and you aren't allowed to mention how awful extreme heat can be.
10. I look really awful in hats and shorts - I can pull off a flapper cloche, but that's not a summer hat. I also prefer to wear my hair in high messy buns, which get in the way of all but the worst visor-caps. And my legs are too jiggly and round for shorts unless I don't mind them creeping up on me, which I do.

But...

1. Fresh corn - Lord and Lady, I love a fresh corn cob. I wait all spring for them to come in at the start of summer. Fresh all sorts of things, actually--strawberries, watermelon, peaches and nectarines and cherries, avocados and mangoes that don't cost $4 each...
2. The beach - How terrible is it that I hate extreme and prolonged exposure to sunlight, but I love the beach? I love it so much that I'll willingly go outside in a swimsuit, wearing SPF5000, and sit under that glowing day-ball for hours just to splash in the water and pick up shells.
3. The garden - This is the best time of year for the garden. The time when the most stuff is leafing, flowering, AND fruiting, and you can start eating the stuff you've put in a whole spring's worth of work for! It's also a time when it's pretty easy, because rain and sunlight and the plants themselves are doing most of the work.
4. Travel-time - Summer is when holiday packages are cheapest, and when most people seem to catch up to my standard level of let's go somewhere. It's also when the weather is most amenable to travel, and when (because of the extra work) money seems to be easiest, so it's the time to Go Places.
5. More time to read - The flip side of the lack of shows I watch is that there are whole evening hours that don't have claims on them, and I always get so many more books read over the summer than during the seasons.

What are your favorite and least-favorite things about Summer?

Things money CAN buy that contribute to happiness

1. An upgrade that gets you out of coach on any airplane

2. Higher quality food that aligns with your morals and better nourishes your bodies

3. Healthcare so you don't have to fear getting g sick or hurt

4. Vacations and other sorts of time off so you do t burn out from over work

5. A nicer house in a nicer area, where people better suit the life you'd like to have, rather than the one you're forced to endure

6. Education, for personal enrichment and job advancement

7. Body upkeep--aesthetic as well as medical or fitness

8. Freedom to move somewhere with better air, water, jobs, schools, land, whatever

9. Time to seek personal expression and fulfillment

10. Tea