ajacs

Back in the early pandemic I acquired a whole bunch of books from friends who were cycling a lot of books very quickly, since, hey, why not, more options for things to read. In fact has become clear that I'm never going to read most of them since I would prefer to spend my reading time reading a) ebooks from b) my own to-read list. But I still struggle with the sense of lost opportunity in getting rid of them, so I keep culling them in small passes rather than one giant abandonment. Partial disadvent credit today because I picked out a bag of ten to donate to the library booksale or whatever, but haven't actually gotten them out of the house yet.

Cans to recycling, a semi-routine task I still like to give myself credit for actually doing. :)

Went through a stack of catalogs and magazines and recycled most of them. In a perfect world I suppose I would keep the catalogs to try to get off their mailing lists but Disadvent is a time to embrace imperfection and get shit done, so, no.

It's the most wonderful time of the year - Disadvent, a 24-day festival (or 36 counting the twelve bonus days of Disepiphany) of removal and donation! I think for me, the heart of Disadvent is that it's an indulgence festival where the urge to get rid of stuff is not merely allowed but actively encouraged to outweigh the normal obligations of making sure things get used and maximum preparedness is maintained.

I started my Disadvent in the pantry and found things like 5/6th of a six-pack of individual cartons of almond milk (best by 2022) and 3/6 of a box of bars (best by 2020). Not entirely sure how these things had survived the previous two Disadvent seasons but the second-best time to Disadvent something is today. Also a lot of small miscellany like open bags of ancient jellybeans, one piece of Hanukkah gelt, the last two dried apricots, an open thing of honey-roasted peanuts that weren't that old but smelled funny, an open bag of crunchy lentil snacks of uncertain age.

Expired food is an easy place to start for me because I don't have internal conflict over whether we deserve to eat food that is safe and tasty, or magical thinking guilt over, like, can I not get rid of this because there are people in famines. I know sometimes people do and it's harder. (Also of course if I had actually still-good food I was definitely not going to use I'd drop it in a food drive but this is not that.) I do have guilt over food gifts - people like my parents often bring us exotic treats from their travels that, because they are not part of our normal food routines, we then fail to ever use - but at least with food, unlike other gifts, the passage of time does eventually make it clear that the window to use that matcha powder (or whatever) has passed, and our failure has at least now definitively happened rather than being ongoing. And in general I accept that some food waste is the cost of other priorities like trying new foods, trying new food systems (like, what quantity/format is most useful), and preparedness, so, enh, maybe it's sometimes a cost of generosity/food as a social tool too.

If anyone is playing along, good luck in your pantry!

Motheater, Linda H. Codega, 2025 fantasy novel. Some neat stuff here but it could have been half the length, the emotional throughline was a muddle, and sometimes the language got so figurative as to feel more like word salad, like, just did not seem to actually mean anything. And while generally I would say lesbians make everything better I thought the ship felt forced. But I would have forgiven that for less repetitiveness and stuff like describing magical lights as like "a swarm of living lightning bugs". (Um, bugs *are* living.) Some good moments though and I liked all the words I had to look up. Might have been pretty good in the hands of a much more aggressive editor. (Some interesting resonance with Metal From Heaven re sapphic women in veins of ore and giant stompy endings... coincidence or part of some larger trend/trope?)