some adventures

Sunday, day of mayhem: in the morning, rushing off to church, I forgot my guitar. Not only that: I also utterly forgot that Jonathan and I were doing worship at all. (I'm starting to be mildly concerned about my increased absentmindedness: I've always been rather scatterbrained, but having fairly large events slip straight out of my head twice in recent weeks does not seem normal. Have an appointment with my physician to check up on medication again tomorrow morning; should mention it, if I ruddy remember...) Called Mum, still at home with the second car, but got no answer, so Jonathan, bless him, began working out piano arrangements, which went extremely well for having about ten minutes preparation: hurrah Jonathan! (Also he put up with my absurdity, which is commendable in anyone.) Mum showed up with my guitar after all, however, so the last song didn't have to be re-arranged. After church we left, had lunch, proceeded onwards to cabin, got stuck in ice and mud at the bottom of hill a few feet away from aforementioned shelter. It took some time to un-stick our massive van, but at least we could carry everything up to the cabin without much trouble. Later in the evening, while watching a film, the left stem of my spectacles suddenly snapped off. We fixed it with tape, all was (mostly) well. Then the door to the room I was sharing with two-year-old sister somehow locked itself when shut, with baby sister sleeping inside; we spent several hours attempting to open it again, with varying degrees of contained panic. Even taking off the doorknob didn't help: at last the cabin owner was made available, the door was opened, no lasting harm was sustained. Fortunately all of these events were taken in stride and no-one panicked overmuch, and now we can laugh about them.

Mostly the holiday didn't do much for me, I'm afraid: neither good nor bad, which is better than if it had depressed me, as has happened before -- I read a lot, and we watched films and had good food, but nothing I wouldn't have enjoyed equally at home, with more windows and privacy. But last night I was tossing and turning with a wretched pulsing headache -- and then I happened to look up at my tiny window and caught a brief bright glimpse of the stars. And I had to go out to them. I was hungry for it. I love stars terribly, and in the winter I rarely see them, because I am rarely outside if I can help it, being so sensitive to cold: sometimes I've seen them riding home from work, but it's been cloudy the last several times, and most of my road is through well-lit areas of town. Stars are meant to make one feel terribly insignificant, or so everyone says, but like Madeleine L'Engle, I feel tremendously right when I can look up at a full bright star-strewn sky: there's an aloneness and a silence that is somehow more than solitude and silence, a sort of humming in the world as though the connections between everything and everyone are immediate and visible and tangible. I look out at the stars and I know that God is real and loving and magnificent and I can feel Him reaching a hand towards the world. And I feel closer to myself, somehow: less divided between multiple, inconsistent selves and more wholly, really myself. So I slipped very quietly out the back door onto the porch into the cold, wrapped in my quilt, and stood out under the stars, and it was beautiful: and after that I could sleep.

* * *

I feel very claustrophobic at this laptop on the table, dear me. And I've been wonky all day: this morning I felt a little sick, and the rest of the afternoon it was sort of a nausea of the brain? I don't know: my usual thick, soupy fogginess, but weirder, and more listless and unhappy -- but it wasn't emotional. It wasn't exactly physical, either. I felt a lot better after a hot shower, though, and some caffeine, and a little bit of drifty nappishness, but I still feel a bit wobbly now, if mentally sharper. Perhaps I've got a very small virus: half a virus, even.

And I have a doctor appointment and work tomorrow, which makes me happy -- I really, really like going to the doctor's, and I don't really know why: and work, of course, is always fun in its own way. Every day I work, I feel less terrified and nervous and silly and young! If only I had more hours...