domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew

I was originally going to do hot or not Tuesday, and then I realized that I didn’t want to think about the not-hot things, because it was depressing. Instead, it’s just stuff that’s awesome.

• 25% off sales at my local yarn shop. Their website’s dated in areas, but it’s a really nice shop, and about twice a year they have 25% off sales. I love this, because I feel totally justified in buying very pretty yarn. I’ve been in sort of a rut lately–nothing I’ve been knitting has been keeping my interest–and I’m hoping that the new yarn will jolt me out of that. Also, weird though it may be, yarn makes me happy. I just love it.

• My Diva Cup. I bought mine seven years ago, and it’s still going strong. Also, it means that instead of thinking about my period every goddamn time I have to pee, I can just think about it twice a day and ignore it the rest of the time. Awesome.
• Connie Willis has a new book coming out today, and the magical gods of Amazon will have it to my house either today or tomorrow. I am so excited. I have two must-buy authors–Connie Willis and Margaret Atwood–and I’m not joking when I say that if someone released a phone book to which one of them wrote a preface, I would quite happily plunk down my thirty bucks for that phone book, and then I’d probably buy several more to give away as gifts. That they’ve both released a book within a year of each other is cause for great, great rejoicing.
• Cats that sleep on my feet. Totally awesome. We keep our house pretty cold, and the cats are fantastic footwarmers. Without them, we’d have to do that thing where you heat bricks and put them at the foot of the bed.
• Malley’s Pretzel Crunch bar. Holy crap, do I love these. We were out visiting relatives on the weekend, and I realized that there’s a Malley’s right by their house. We stopped on the way home and bought, no joke, about fifteen of these. They’re probably my favorite candy bar.
• Leaving work in the daylight. I love winter, but man, it’s really hard to do things when you leave work at five and it’s dark before you get home. The days have gotten longer by just enough that we get home while it’s still light.
• Paint. I’m starting to think seriously about painting some of the house. We’ve been here a year and a half, and the walls are still the boring beige and scuffed white they were when we moved in. I keep building up painting as a Big Deal Thing, but really, it’s a wall. I’m going to put paint on it. If it sucks, I’ll paint it again. It’s not that hard, and I should just do it. (Please feel free to leave painting tips in the comments.)
• Blue Ginger’s Black Sesame and Sea Salt Rice Crisps. Holy crap are these delicious. I bought a giant bag of them at BJ’s, and we ate it within about a week. Which matters not at all, because in addition to being delicious, a giant serving of them is only about 100 calories. Of course, when I went back to BJ’s to buy more, they were gone. I’m going to phone tomorrow and see if they’ll order them. Fingers crossed.

That’s about all I’ve got, but really, that’s pretty good for a Tuesday.