my heart is a glorious machine;

Sigh. It's a bad week for my brain. Bad bad bad bad. I guess the minor panic attack level of Off My Meds wore off and gave way to the more subtle insidious low-level not-sane-ness*, and then there's this stupid cold, and for the last couple of days it's been this fun party game of Which Part Of My Body Is Going To Stop Working Right Next? Yesterday was miserable -- my sinuses hurt, I can't breathe, my own voice comes out wrong, my throat hurts, I'm cramping mysteriously and can't find the ibuprofen, my eyes hurt, there's an edge of nausea, and also my face hurts a lot, because apparently I am never going to stop breaking out like a thirteen-year-old and gorram it, acne can hurt like the dickens. Today and yesterday, of course, the skin on my lower face was so dry it was flaking off my face and I looked like I had milk crusted all over my mouth, and it hurt, and finally I just scrubbed my face raw with a pumice stone and slathered it in Eucerin about eighty times until most of the dead skin was gone, and hey, my face almost feels like a face again!

I am well aware of, er, the word insanity -- but there's a line between actual insanity and simply... not being very sane. Which is what I am when depressed. I find myself speaking and acting and reacting in ways that don't make any sense, even to me... and they're all ugly. Dear people who think my depression rehabilitation should consist of stabilising on drugs and then slowly weaning off them: shut up.

On the brighter side, my appointment with the free clinic is somehow tomorrow (I know the lady at the desk told me October, more than once, so I'm choosing to believe miraculous forces intervened to preserve my well-being), and today I picked up some sample other medication from my doctor's office, so we'll see how that goes. I also have two more job leads -- a new coffee shop (!!!) just opened up, and the newspaper's advertising for someone to write obituaries and police blotter stuff and possibly the occasional article, which sounds like a pretty excellent deal, actually, especially for resumes in the future, although as an application I have to write an essay letter to the managing editor on Why I Would Be Good For This Job and... I don't know what to write. Although considering that I am clever, eager to learn, and know my way around a semi-colon, I might actually qualify for this job more than quite a lot of applicants, living as I do in a very uneducated area. Not even bragging here, it's the most depressing thing about this corner of North-western Pennsylvania -- nobody's curious about anything. (Also they mention in their advertisement that they're looking for accuracy and attention to detail... except they mysteriously capitalise Accuracy all of the five or so times it appears. GAH. Here's attention to detail for you!)

And: we bought a new car. It's a bright blue Ford Focus and the first twenty-first century car we have ever owned. Um... and all that that implies? Anyway, it's a lovely car, feels as though it's rather fun to drive, has a CD player and a working cigarette lighter (look, this is a big deal, considering the technology levels of our previous cars) and the sound system is fantastic, omg. Seriously. I want to go on a road trip or learn to drive this very minute so I can soar down the highway blaring things. Irritatingly it is also a better sound system than anything we've got in the house... Ought to be running off to fetch my learner's permit in the near future, although schedules still have to be finangled to make room for that. (Could have gone today, but the DMV is closed on Mondays. Well... thanks.) 

While we're still on the subject of Things Which Do Not Suck (...it's been a bad, bad, awful week), a package from lady_moriel arrived for me this morning! Now, Kyra has a habit of sending ridiculously awesome packages, although these smorgasbords of win usually appear around Christmas and my birthday. She mentioned she'd picked me up a copy of Ender's Game at a yard sale, and also -- hello, this is an example of how Kyra is made of win -- she remembered me wistfully admiring some stunning but expensive silk scarves at Woolies (is Woolies an Alaska-only place? because I can't find them on Google -- just references to Woolworths, which does not sell lovely organic hippie folk festival clothes for sadly exorbitant prices -- and a few directory references to stores in Alaska) and had her sister pick one up for me when she was on a school trip to Turkey, because they are very cheap there. And it is so gorgeous I cannot even deal. Photographs do not do it justice, but they can try.


But Kyra, being also sneaky and awesome, did not mention that the package headed my way also contained an Iron & Wine postcard and pin and the Goblet of Fire DVD (in widescreen, even!). Sneaky sneaky.

And now I've nearly managed to make myself feel a mite better, although I still feel as though almost the entire day has been wasted, and my novel is still stalling on the sixty-fourth page, and my head doesn't quite belong to me, and there are an awful lot of failures and things left undone and things I can't do looming in my future... sigh. Fie upon thee.

Autumn is coming; I can smell it and taste it. Today is fey and wet and windy, and the tree I can see from my window is half orange already. The apple tree is heavy with fruit (and occasionally with cats, as Willow loves to settle on one of the top branches and smirk down at the world), the geese are flying, and I am lighting more candles than is usual even for me, enjoying the urge to pull my gothiest clothes out of the closet (to church yesterday I wore an ankle-length black lace skirt, and a very Edwardian black-with-cream-pattern blouse with black pearl buttons and lace edges, and my black and white stockings, of course), and craving even more psych folk than usual, which is pretty startling, but, you know. Last year the band that defined my autumn was Dark Dark Dark (also Nancy Elizabeth!); this year I suspect The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree might be important, rather. (Don't let the name fool you -- while they are very odd-sounding psych folk, they are also quite straightforward and gloriously listenable and accessible; no rambling lyrics that even T.S. Eliot would have trouble figuring out, weird droning melodies that take a lot of getting used to, or anything of that sort. Also, even their record label doesn't seem to know anything about them. I'm posting them on musicyardsale tomorrow.)

And with autumn, my folklore loving self roars to full strength; I am listening to Tam-Lin on repeat and realising tenfold how and why I love it so very much. It's got one of the best narratives of any ballad, I think -- the story is weird, but clear, and the characters are awfully well-defined for only occupying a few verses. (Okay, a lot of verses. It's a pretty long ballad.) And Janet. I love Janet so much. I love Janet so much that I think I've got to write a full Tam-Lin retelling someday, about Janet, and not Evangeline-in-the-Janet-role. Janet is the precedent for centuries of Awesome Women In Literature. She's like the godmother to girls like Robin McKinley's Harry Crewe and Sherwood Smith's Meliara and Emma Bull's Eddi McCandry -- fierce girls who fight for the people they love without losing their lovingness. One of my favourite things is that Janet saves Tam-Lin, not by grabbing a sword of iron and driving it through the Faerie Queen's heart, but by loving, by not letting the Faerie Queen's illusions fool her, by stubbornly loving Tam-Lin and holding onto him until he's become himself again. Considering that he turned into a snake and a lion and, in some versions, red-hot iron, that takes some hardcore fierceness. (Huh. When I'm doing the Novel climax, I wonder if I could attempt to represent the various aspects of Mr Caruthers' present and former personality as the traditional things Tam-Lin was transformed into in the ballad.) And I love that it takes place on Halloween, and I love the faeries, and the atmosphere of it, no matter the version.

Now, of course, I am no longer terribly irritated with my subconscious for insisting upon turning the Novel into a Tam-Lin retelling, among other things of course. It puts the pieces together ever so much more neatly. It helps to form the circumstances of Mr Caruthers' captivity amongst the vampires, and also leads me to understand that his in-thrall-ness isn't really finished just because the government got him away from the vampires and he's a librarian now. There's something that's keeping him in thrall until he or Evangeline figures out how to break it. That also explains how and why he's the tithe, whatever that means. The vampire woman who originally led him into this mess must be the Faerie Queen role, and maybe she isn't dead (in a manner of speaking... you know what I mean), I don't know. (Related note: what would you lot think of Reynardine as a taken-name by a female vampire?) I am also pursuing the idea that after his several years of dealing with the vampires and messing in dark things far beyond his ken, Mr Caruthers, like Sunshine* -- like Tam-Lin -- is no longer quite human. Maybe he gained some extra senses when he was learning magics from the vampires. He's probably a little harder to kill, anyway. I'm not giving him Sunshine's night-vision because it always made me sad when she has trouble reading and stuff, like Giles' nightmare-come-to-life when he can't read anymore that makes me really, really sad (and unleashes a flood of OMG GILES YOU ARE SO ADORABLE AND I LOVE YOU), but maybe some vampire-like ability similar to that? Not the urge to eat incredibly raw steaks though, ew. I suppose he could have a little of that ability to appear and disappear suddenly and quietly, cos I've always loved that. Maybe some enhanced hearing/smelling/seeing? ("Didn't anybody ever tell you the whole smelling people thing's a little gross?") I don't know, but that explains why the government really wants him on hand.

* Blimey, every time I read that top blurb I shake my head in consternation. If they described Con as "Dracula's hunky Byronic cousin" they clearly did not actually read the book. What part of "skin the colour of rotting mushrooms" and the bit where his laugh is still spine-unhinging terrifying even when he and Sunshine are friends do you not understand? And Sunshine's narration is bloody well not in "the idiom of Britney, J.Lo, and the Spice Girls", for heaven's sake. (Actually, after having read Robin McKinley's blog, I'd say Sunshine sounds an awful lot like a younger, less British McKinley -- biting and clever and well-read and not just intelligent but interested.) Sorry, I get awfully defensive on the subject of one of my favourite novels.

I don't know; looks like I've got to keep writing. Blah, this is hard. But... I've never got so deep into a novel before. I understand the story far better than I have any of my previous tries, and I have fifty pages of in-order story, and an actual half-idea of where it's going to end up. And the research, oh joy, what I swore would never happen to me.

I've just been out on the lawn, basking in the sun like some sort of cat or reptile or what have you; I have never been so ravenous for sunlight. My skin grows impatient when the sun ducks behind a cloud for a few moments. (I am wearing this, which is very apt for daydreaming in the sun on a day full of breezes, not to mention listening to acres of New Weird America and freak folk. Speaking of which, Daddy got me Steeleye Span for my birthday, "for old times' sake". ♥) Lying in the sun gets the brain to wandering over all sorts of odd paths, and I have just realised several things about my poor messy Evangeline story, which I shall set down because a) for some reason some of you lot seem to miss hearing about it, and b) someone might even have an idea which I will gladly take for a test run.

Let me see -- when I was discussing the story with Kyra last month, she helped me to realise that the library is protected -- I've been running with the vampires-can't-cross-threshold-unless-invited myth and working out how the magics would work mechanically, so to speak, and you can't make them, they have to be -- a psychic barrier of lived-inness protects a house from undead intruders; a house that's just been moved into would be less protected, the older a house is the more difficult it is for vampires to get in, temporary lodgings might be susceptible; it is entirely possible that vampires could get into Mr Caruthers' rooms without much trouble as he is hardly ever there and has no attachment to the place, nor has he really lived there. Anyway, the library is loved and lived-in by so many people -- especially Evangeline and Mr Caruthers -- that it does have that threshold protection, but it becomes significantly weaker when Mr Caruthers is absent. I'm not quite certain why he is so strongly tied to the building; perhaps it has something to do with the reservoir-of-magic/ley lines/something important that is built into/under/around/something the library, and probably Mr Caruthers having mucked about with unpleasant and too-powerful magics in his youth. Because the library is so tied to Mr Caruthers, at this point Evangeline's strong attachment to it does not affect the barrier much. He goes off on some Mysterious Plot-Important Errand at the beginning of the story, vampires break in, plot happens, people die, yay.

And then! While lying in the sun I realised that the vampires were looking for Evangeline when they broke into the library: and they got Lottie instead, because of some sort of misinformation, I don't know. I don't want to make this obvious on the outset, either. (They may have been interested in Mr Caruthers as well, I don't know, but understood they couldn't breach the library if he was there -- and Evangeline has something that they Need.) I think what they want Evy for is her story-sensing -- there's some kind of unrest, quite possibly related to the slow-building unrest which will only need the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in less than two years to ignite the tinder for war, which may or may not involve governments trying to figure out how they can use vampires for things. (Rubbish, this is getting too complicated! I want a smaller story! Stoppit!) I am beginning to think that there is no useful future-seeing amongst the vampires because their unlife puts them out of time in a way -- so while some of them may get glimpses of the future it's not necessarily distinguishable from past or present or hallucination and is usually very random and unlikely to be at all connected to anything that the vampire could find useful -- since they absorb memories from the people they drink, they may be getting a glimpse of one of those lives, or perhaps the future of someone known by those people, and memories may tangle together as there is so much mixed blood. (There's a running idea of memory existing in the blood, and I must commend cherise for setting me on that path. ♥) Anyway, Evy has the ability to see storylines, or something like that, and the vampires either want to turn her or consume her with the idea that by one of them drawing all of her blood into themselves they will acquire her ability. I don't know, this is the first stage of that idea.

But then Mr Caruthers is also very very important and in some way key, and I'm beginning to understand that part of the end everything is leading to is the vampires wanting him or Mr Caruthers offering himself up as a tithe for some ritual/ceremony/use of magics -- a la Tam Lin. It is entirely possible that he would offer himself up out of sheer guilt -- he has this dangerous more-than-a-residue of the black magics that he toyed with irresponsibly as a youth and they could very well explode and do terrible things and he can't really control it, but willingly sacrficing himself in a situation in which a great explosion of magic would actually be a solution, well... And self-sacrifice would also cleanse the magics of their destructiveness. However, I have no plans nor desire to kill him, so that end will have to be worked through somehow.

There's also something about the trees of London coming to the aid of the city, in a way -- shadowempress suggested something having to with the essence of London that led to this idea. That fits with my idea that trees, as representations of life, are why stakes of wood can kill vampires, though I'd like a better understanding of why certain plants ward better than others (holly, for example, and, hey, garlic?). if wood is dangerous, imagine how well the trees could overcome the vampires. That's the germ of the germ of an idea, though.

Oh dear. 

I have missed bicycling! Last night, coming home from work, the sky was very strange and beautiful, with pale low clouds like smoke with the thinnest promise of flame. To look up from the road and see that -- ! 

Recent job adventures include: running a little bit late and taking the wrong short-cut, which made me very very late, and cross; having a customer come in to reserve the newest Dresden Files, which is out on the seventh of April (we kind of squee'd at each other... or I squee'd, and he was manly and reserved); having a forty-percent-off coupon, which means that I now own all three of the Eva Ibbotson novels that have appeared at the store (and Jim told me that the coupon could also be used for a boxed set -- we have this freakishly expensive Twilight boxed set that he was trying to get people to buy -- and I am so sad that we no longer have the Time Quartet boxed set with the lovely new watercolour covers and Madeleine L'Engle's Newbury acceptance speech, which is beautiful); and finding out that I am scheduled for three days this week, rather than the two I;ve been working for a while. Hurrah!

Yesterday I attended one of Heidi's basketball games, but the games before hers were taking so long, and I was extremely bored and sore from the wooden bleachers, so Leandra and I went to the playground behind the school, and she went down the slides, and I pushed her on the swings, and she climed everything in sight (I think her favourite thing about the playground might very well be that she can climb anything she sees and no-one is going to yell at her), and then we listened to Benny Goodman (she turns to me sometimes and says, "Nini, BENNY," in pleading yet forceful tones) and the Rupa and the April Fishes song she refers to as "La-laine". And then it was time for Heidi's game, so we went inside. I must confess I had quite a lot of fun. (And Heidi's team won. It was a good afternoon.) 

(And then Mum dropped me off at Goodwill, because they were having a fifty-percent-off sale, and Heidi tagged along, and I acquired two pretty dresses, a lovely soft white summer blouse, a striped hat, blue pinstriped trousers, and the first pair of shorts I have owned in a decade. They are knee-length -- I think what Stacy and Clinton refer to as 'walking shorts'? -- and quite sophisticaed, unlike most shorts.)

And this evening I am riding over to Sarah and Hannah's to spend the night and watch films and see NEW TINY KITTENS and things. But first this cake has to finish baking.

I think that exercise does a great deal of good for a person. Despite how cross I get when forced out into the bitter cold to bicycle my way to work, the ride tends to be rather bracing -- in a nice way, like a cold shower if you're the sort of person who likes cold showers, which I am not. (Even in the summer my showers are lukewarm at least.) 

Work today was hectic, and I loved it. For ten or fifteen minutes I was so swamped with customers that I hadn't even a moment to take off my jacket! The rhythm of the register is glorious, and when you get into the track of it it's a bit like dancing, or perhaps something like being in a musical. I did quite a lot of things that I hadn't done before today (such as conduct a return exchange). The hours flew past, which, after Thursday night, when there was an ice storm and I stood about for four hours and only had three customers (not to mention two shifts in a row -- just as I was gearing up to close down my register and go home, the assistant manager appeared looking very harried to ask if I could possibly cover for the girl meant to take over for me who had called and said she wasn't going to try to drive through the storm). And my family showed up, at the mall to get printer ink and other things, and Mum bought me a cinnamon roll, although I never ended up eating it till after I got home.

I was very pleased at how I managed today -- apparently I do work well when there is a lot going on, and it doesn't frustrate me much, and either I didn't have many impolite customers or I simply didn't notice them. (I try my best not to be irritating, so as not to irritate them, and get us all into an uncomfortable situation, and I suppose that helps a bit.) I did get some change wrong, and forgot a few receipts -- the sight of me chasing down the hall after an elderly bloke whose receipt I'd forgotten to give must have been epic -- but we came up only a few dollars short at the end of my shift, and that was after me having more money passing through my hands today than I have ever seen in one place in my life, so I count it as a good.

(And then I went into Rue21 and they had trousers on sale and I really very much need those, so sixteen dollars bought me a pair of plum-coloured skinny jeans and -- I think they call them sailor pants? They are high-waisted and would be double breasted if they were a shirt. Anyway they are narrow-legged too, and dress pants, and black, and very becoming, as well as high waisted which is very useful seeing as I am not interested in showing off my knickers. This is sort of relieving because my blue-grey skinny jeans were beginning to complain about being worn every day -- you can tell it's my day off when I wear a dress or a skirt. Bicycling in the cold in a skirt is no good at all, even if one has got one's thickest, cosiest stockings on.)

It isn't a glory day. But I'm all right.

(I still don't like my days being so centred around things which are bought and sold, and commerce and things. I want to be outside under the stars -- or I would, were it not bitterly cold -- or getting lost in a city somewhere, and price tags and Wanting Things and Making A Profit are beginning to wear on me like a sweater with too high a wool content. I raise my hands. What can I do? Besides work in a library.)

Cross and tired and want to go to bed with a cosy book. Yesterday was (mostly) quite good; today was, predominately, not nearly so much.

We spent quite a lot of yesterday out shopping, because I have been desperately in need of some respectable-looking jeans for a very long time and pay-day had just happened for people who are not me and are still in charge of my pants. There was some Goodwillage, at which, exactly as I predicted, I found nothing -- trousers are the only things I have never had any really good luck with at thrift shops. Ever. I have never found that serendipitiously perfect pair, and certainly not the ones which fit me like a (pleasantly corduroy) dream. All of their jeans are what I would call "grunge jeans" -- very blue lighter washes, and the only ones that ever look as though one could dress them up with a nice blouse and a pair of heels are, inevitably, about a size .5. I did find a very nice warm nightgown, however, which was another thing I am in some need of.

I haven't mentioned my old jeans, have I? They've gotten to be quite the disaster. Finding trousers that fit me attractively is so accursedly difficult that we only undergo the process about once a year, especially as we are nearly always forced to buy them new. These are, of course, last year's pair -- and they have somehow grown since December -- grown quite a lot. I am sure I can't have lost nearly that much weight. They are always in danger of falling off, they are scuffed and drab and limp-looking, the bottoms are terribly frayed, a hole's started on the side of one leg, and, strangest of all, they smell peculiar. It isn't exactly a bad smell -- not a body-sweat smell, nor a these-pants-haven't-been-washed-for-months smell, but -- strange. Sort of like detergent, like trousers you wash in the machine and then leave them to dry on their own. Except musty. I would keep washing them and washing them, trying to get the scent out, but it wouldn't come out. And anyway they had stopped looking respectable long ago, traitorous things.

Anyway, we went to Ross Dress For Less, which has lots of very nice new quality clothing for less mind-boggling prices. I bypassed the regular trouser section and went straight for the clearance rack and managed to pull off about six pair of trousers to try on. Heh. Look, I haven't had a good pair in a while.

So, the first thing I discovered: skinny jeans? Kind of look fabulous on me. Who knew? Certainly not me. I sort of liked the idea of them -- I have a lot of very -- fluffy is the wrong word -- blouses, babydoll tops and peasant tops and the like, which would certainly benefit from a narrower jean, but I am naturally quite pear shaped, and I thought a narrower jean would only make me look ridiculously more so. But hey, contrary to popular belief I do look out for trends if they are pleasing to my aesthetics. I can't help it. I'm very silly. So I tried on a pair and discovered that they are bizarrely slimming and besides which compliment flats very nicely. So I have a lovely new pair of skinny jeans -- I think the official colour term is charcoal, but they have the tiniest hint of purple to them, which pleases me -- and another pair of regular dark wash jeans (which came to about twenty dollars, total). It is the first time in several years that I have had two pairs of presentable trousers to alternate between.

Also, Claire's was having a sale with quite a lot of fabulous items, including button earrings, apple jewellery, and turquoise lace not-gloves, for a dollar apiece. My new paycheck was very happy to accomodate.

Then we ran into a friend of Mum's and ended up talking for a very long time. And then I ran to the library, absurdly admiring my jean-clad reflection in the shop windows along the way, and returned and collected books in the seven minutes before it closed.

Today, around two-thirty, I called my job to find out my hours: I had realised that I didn't have any on record for this week and didn't really know who to ask. It was the beginning of the week, you know? So it ought to be a good time. I ended up being on hold (I don't even know; I think the manager was out and they had to go find her?) for -- ten minutes, at least? -- and finally a woman came onto the other end and said, "Um, actually, you're working today, and you were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago."

Says I: "ULP."

(Truly, Reader, I was mortified.) 

Mum rushed me over, and I was very cross and unhappy, because I wanted a ruddy nap so very badly, after having got to bed very late previously, and I want to impress my new employers, not make stupid embarrassing mistakes that force a lot of people to shuffle things around and accomodate me. (Mum and Jonathan tried to console me a bit -- I was, thankfully, not in the hysterics I likely would have had a year ago -- and it did make me feel a bit calmer, but still. I am still quite ashamed. Certainly, no-one told me anything about how I was to find out my hours, although I should have asked, and certainly should have asked Saturday, or even Friday night, leaving.) So my shift was only about two hours this time, and I made exactly two sales (drat you people! come on, let me use the cash register with its wonderful clicks and dings and whooshes!), and then I got to learn how to close up again -- I do enjoy putting up the curtains, with their hooks and zippers and padlocks on the zippers, and counting out the money is horrible in a mathematical way, but nice in a texture way, although when one realises exactly how much cash one is casually flipping through it can sometimes be faintly overwhelming.

However: Person In Charge who was showing me yet again how to close up was exactly the sort of person who puts me most on edge -- one of those perpetually negative, abrasive people who makes you feel that no matter what it is that you are doing, you are most certainly doing it wrong. And I know that's just how her personality displays itself, and she doesn't really think I am the scum of the earth -- she even admitted some of her own mistakes on things like counting out the cash and such, presumably to make me feel more confident -- but I still felt -- squashed, and insignificant, and very very young, and after such a ridiculously collossal mistake, too. And of course when I am nervous I make still more mistakes. At least I didn't knock anything over, but by the time I was picked up I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. Only we went to BiLo instead, so Jonathan (who never ended up getting dropped off -- he rides with us to church and usually stays the afternoon -- and instead went with my mother to Wal-Mart?) could fetch milk, and Mum tortillas and parmesan and (at my begging) chocolate mint ice cream; and then there was a Goodwill sale, and then we came home and I holed up and read a book and it was marvellous. (I am, by the way, madly in love with Eva Ibbotson. Why has no-one ever forced me to read her before? A Countess Below Stairs was one of those marvellous, good-hearted books, with such fantastic writing and characterisation and Britishness -- the sort of warm, bright book you wrap around yourself as a shawl. I started reading it over again right away -- it was exactly the sort of book I needed after feeling so desperately out of sorts.) 

And then I wrote a thousand words. And now I want very much to go to bed.

I have been enjoying Good Days lately -- a whole string of them, which is lovely, and un-looked for. The air is brimming with October and possibility, and when it isn't, I have been trying my best to keep myself busy.

Sunday: Jonathan's parents and younger sister came to dinner. This I think was a resounding success. The dinner itself went well, the food was fantastic, my cake turned out even better than I'd anticipated (though next time I think there will be more icing), cider was very seasonal & delicious. The company was much enjoyed as well -- the McKeens are pleasant and comfortable and everyone got on very well. Jonathan & Allison & I had Fun With Cameras in the backyard before heading back to Jonathan's apartment for commisseration with Sarah, Hannah, and Victoria, who has just returned from three weeks in Williamsburg, and I have missed her quite a lot, so it was more than usually good to see her. I made a lot of cookies (snickerdoodles & chocolate buttermilk chocolate chip) and they were all eaten, and Taboo was played, and much cheer and goodwill was exchanged.

Monday began with...well, laziness, and me feeling a bit sloshy and thick, but by afternoon Mum & the little girls & I had headed off on an ultimately profitable Goodwill trip, whereupon I acquired the first pair of sandals that I have actually owned and liked in the past five years or so. I loathe flip-flops and anything resembling them with all of my being and most other practical sandals I have come upon would not co-ordinate with anything in my (extremely varied!) wardrobe. But Mum found the splendidest leather t-strap almost-flat sandals, with beading, which I later discovered on the internet retail for around forty-five dollars. I wore them all the rest of the afternoon; they are extremely comfortable and bohemian and will suit next summer's festival-going very well. There were also intruiging black flats with bows & silver buckles, brown & black striped stockings, and a charcoal-coloured hat that looks like a bit like a bucket hat by way of Jane Austen. There was also a Wal-Mart trip, full of kitcheny things and general housekeeping-ness. Almost immediately after we arrived home, Jonathan showed up for a planned photography walk. This was really some of the splendidest fun & glory I've had in ages, I think. The weather was warm and gentle with just a little coldness of breath in the wind, and we explored all sorts of bits and pieces of my town I've hardly or never looked at before, and took pictures of all sorts of odd things. Some of the results from my end will show up on balladrie before long; I am still sorting them out. There is some lovely magic about finding hidden things in a place you know.

Also I bought some really awesome jewellery involving buttons & owls, and stripey warm fingerless gloves. I mention this partially because I am very happy with my purchase, and partially so that I can tell you about how I bicycled to the mall in the near-dark, and the moon came out, and she was full and pale sheeny gold, an old-lace moon netted in lavender clouds, which darkened on the way home to skeins of navy silk.

Tuesday I woke early to see Dad off: he has gone for a quiet sabbatical in a cabin in the woods, where he has been hiking every day, and reading and writing quite a lot, he told me on the phone this evening. The rest of the day involved watching a lot of Firefly (I first fell in love with Firefly last October and now it has become one of my Autumn Things, like Sunshine and Abigail Washburn and certain sorts of baked goods and combinations of colours in my clothing and the onset of me wearing more eyeliner than usual), and an excursion, which was sort of a walk, and sort of a going to Hockman's for some chocolate caramels and then taking the long way back to the park, where I curled up on the far edge, away from the playgrounds and the city pool and the ball-fields, under several trees, between the picnicking pavillion and the stream. I lay on the grass under the gathering clouds and read The Secret History of Moscow, which along with The Graveyard Book is probably going to be one of this year's most memorable Autumn Books. I missed having one last year, and since Autumn is practically a holiday to me, this was very unfortunate. I had Winter Books that could have done just as well for Autumn but they came too late. The year before that I discovered Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and the year before that it was Sunshine, which it is now tradition for me to read at the end of October -- I am chomping at the bit to re-read it now, but I make myself wait! -- and bake cinnamon rolls to coincide. Anyway, it started to drizzle (which is a very ugly word; I don't like it; it has very little resemblance to the delicate little scatter-rains I love so much), and my poor library book was getting damp, so I went into the pavillion and got a bit chilly and watched Firefly a bit more, with my chocolates.

I think it was also yesterday when I had the candelabra on my trunk burning so long that the left-most candle is nearly flat, and there is a great mass of picturesque wax dripping down.

Today I have watched more Firefly, read, and gone to Hockman's with Heidi and Leandra, where Leandra got a free chocolate for being ridiculously adorable and grinning her little seven-toothed grin. It's been softly rainy most of this day, too, what Mum called "Seattle rain", my favourite sort of October weather -- it makes one want to be cosy, but also to be outside, and alive. The streets finally smell absolutely of autumn -- wet leaves and far-away woodsmoke and rain and things decaying quietly and willingly, and that undefinable autumnery that must be its very own scent, independent of all material causes. I took a little barefoot not-on-purpose walk down the sidewalk a bit, loving the trees, and in the luxury of dusk stood on the ledge overlooking the road in all the wet. Our house is on a hill, but the hill is only a hill from the back, where it drops steeply down to a patch of grass and the road that feeds into the main through-town one. There's a long sort of curb of wood keeping the yard a little safer, and some odd, thin trees jumbled up together. I love standing on the ledge and just watching things. Mostly cars, but the park is just a little ways from the other side of the road, and the Medicine Shoppe is exactly across, so often there is someone walking by.

We have been making our home more homey by getting all of the decorations out of boxes and putting them on walls where they belong. The living room is almost finished; the bedrooms are pretty well set also. I indeed take pictures when things are more in order and there are fewer boxes everywhere. My bedroom needs more posters -- I will buy them with my paycheck!! -- and I am thinking of copying lady_moriel and making a collage for my door. I spent a few hours today listening to Lisa Hannigan and NPR, and pulling everything from where it was crammed into my dresser drawers, sorting it out, folding it, and putting it back in, except I hung a lot of things in the Main Clothing Closet (Jonathan was right; I do need to name my four closets), so there is much more room now, and everything is considerably more organised, and my bedroom feels a little bit more settled.

Also I cut myself shaving -- BAH, I HATE RAZORS -- and knocked a shadowbox off the wall, shattering glass everywhere, one bit of which I stepped on. The cut was small, but there was an inconvenient amount of blood. One of these days I will grow out of this? 

Today was largely of the good. (Since it is one in the morning I suppose it really counts as yesterday, but the point stands.) Lead worship with Jonathan this morning, and I enjoyed it immensely even though we (mostly me, or by fault of me) messed up a lot. Jonathan played piano, which was fantastic, and I played a hymn I had mostly learnt the evening before, and I was not always where I ought to have been, nor did I know the lyrics nearly as well as I should have, nor did I remember my music stand, so the lyrics and chords were carefully arranged on my lap and I had to keep glancing down as I played, only if I glanced down too much I got too far from the microphone -- well, yes. More practising is in order. Anyway I liked doing it, and the congregation seemed to enjoy it as well, which is really the point of it all. I also did not fall asleep once during the sermon, hurrah hurrah. (This had a little to do with caffeine-laced headache medication, but it is still a worthy accomplishment!)

Lunch was very tasty, Jonathan and I hobnobbed and watched several episodes of Death Note (which is another thing I am liking quite a lot), and bicycled to the Meadows for ice cream and working on our (mostly his) tabletop RPG and not liking the radio station much at all, after which we parted ways.

When I arrived home, Mum announced that she had just been informed that we got the house we wanted. I was so excited that I hugged her. I don't hug people very often. Now I can be legitimately excited about the deacon's bench and the laundry chute and the attic loft over the garage and the apple tree and the yellow-painted living room and the fireplace and the kitchen and my bedroom with four closets and funny little cupboards and being right in town. Right, and you lot were probably going, "did the Presbyterians not meet on Tuesday? this is Sunday, isn't it?" YES. YES IT IS. We have been waiting to hear something all week and it has been very agonising and also more than a little annoying. Church committees are far from my favourite things. (Actually, committees in general don't tend to make the top one hundred list.) We plan to move in over the weekend. (Frivolous: Mum said she would not call our hairdresser and set appointments for us girls to get our hair cut until we had a moving date. My hair has not been cut since I had it bobbed in December and I am not entirely thrilled with the way it has currently grown out. I want to get it cut and re-shaped. I also will not dye it until it is cut, and I have very exciting dyeing plans.)

Other frivolous good thing: when I was hobnobbing with Jonathan yesterday, we stopped in at Goodwill, and I lost my heart to several items, even though I was trying not to look at very much of anything at all (although I ended up buying a fifty-cent record of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, despite my lack of record player). I mentioned these to Mum, and she sort of went out and bought them for me this afternoon when she happened to be at the supermarket next door. They are: one: a black double-breasted trenchoat, which is quite possibly the only thing I have wanted longer than these boots. (I see lady_moriel being jealous way over there in England, ha ha.) Two: a Firefly-tastic cotton dress, black with silver pinstripes and vivid Chinese flower patterns and beadwork. Three: very retro (but brand-new) bright orange heels, with wide ankle straps and buckles. I may have pictures soon, because, ♥. I didn't really even ask Mum to buy them for me, I just mentioned that I sort of wanted to go to Goodwill soon. 

And now I am going to do the dishes and watch SPN (FINALLY) and go to sleep, because I have a physical tomorrow afternoon, which I am looking forward to, for some odd reason. I don't know, I always half-consciously look forward to new experiences; at least they're interesting, if nothing else. That makes me sound awfully more of an optimist than I've ever considered myself: it is probably misleading.

So, I've been having some really rather fantastic Goodwill luck lately (and maybe someday there will be pictures; I do, after all, finally have a tripod, only there's a bit missing so I sort of have to balance the camera on it, meaning that weird angles are out, except the...constant, unintentional ones, argh). I found a splendid floor-length formal dress to wear to Alessandra's wedding for five dollars, and it fits me like a dream. (It requires fire-engine red pumps, however, which I have yet to find. Also a lace shawl of similar shade would be nice, as I have an annoying and strangely shaped tanned patch near my left shoulder-blade on account of not getting my sunblock on properly the last day of Grey Fox when I was wearing a blouse with a keyhole cutaway in the back. WOE.)

Anyway, on Thursday there was a fifty percent off sale, and among the various & sundry items I collected was a truly superlative turquoise brocade blazer, which I took at first glance to be about five to ten years vintage, due to its pleasantly softened appearance -- you know how clothing gets sort of especially cosy after a few years, but not necessarily shabby. After I had brought it home and was hanging it up in the closet I caught sight of the tag. The brand? Mary-Kate and Ashley. Verily, I am ashamed. ASHAMED, I TELL YOU. But it is a truly fantastic blazer nonetheless (TURQUOISE. BROCADE. -- Since when do they make things this niftily quirky, anyway? The stuff at Wal-Mart is never of this calibre!) so I shall simply keep mum about it, and perhaps surreptitiously remove the tag? (Of course now I've told the entire internet about it...)

There was also a book-sale at the location of the old Goodwill (they got a new, significantly larger building in which they've combined the downtown Goodwill and the one that was at the mall until it was shut down), wherein I spent about half an hour trying to find some worthy literature amongst the seemingly endless dross of romance novels (and the occasional potboiler or self-help book). Eventually I came away with new-old copies of some of our staple cookbooks to take with me when I no longer live here, Chamber of Secrets, an E.L. Konigsberg, another book on psychology by Oliver Sacks, who wrote the fabulous Musicophilia, and -- Strunk & White's Elements of Style! I was delighted at that find, which...no-one else understood. Alack.

Tomorrow, our little church is having a sort of fair, with live music and free pony rides and food and craft vendors, which ought to be great fun. I am singing, which ought to be Very Scary. (There will probably be a fair amount of people, oh dear. I mean, hurrah. So far our previous community outreach attempts have fallen somewhat flatly.) Something will be a capella and other somethings will be Songs I Can Already Play With My Eyes Shut, to lower the terror factor and give me less a chance of fumbling haplessly as I often sometimes do on Sunday mornings when leading worship or playing after the sermon. Any of you local lot who take a notion to come are certainly welcome (Jonathan's already signed on). Remember, food! And -- pony rides! (And -- me! Ulp.)

I'd never heard of steampunk before today (or, rather, I'd heard the term bandied about and didn't pay a great deal of attention), but reading some of the discussion over the really nifty thing that Neil Gaiman linked to in his Journal of Awesome piqued my interest, and off to trusty Wikipedia went I. Now, I am rather deleriously enthralled, and I must find some to read, or watch. Alternate history--I include in this alternate explanations of historical events--is also something that fascinates me endlessly (one of the reasons that Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was so enchanting--did I never talk about that book? I didn't, and I ought to), as does speculative fiction, and, you know, that Victorian gothic aesthetic. 

The prospect more interesting than reading steampunk fiction is, of course, writing some, but the last thing I need is another novel to wrestle with, and I haven't got any ideas, anyway. It's really a pity that the Evangeline project can't be manipulated into a steampunk sort of universe, but, despite the plot being very vague, only one character having a name--I did settle on the surname Nox, by the by, for what it's worth--and the rest of the lot being twice as vague as the plot, it's settled its universe and aesthetics rather solidly already. I'm beginning to think of it in terms of, well, Anne Rice with a great splash of L.M. Montgomery. (You know, if Anne Rice wrote well.) Probably a few dashes of Gaiman and L'Engle for good measure, and hopefully a great deal of me, as it's my book and all and also all of these writers excepting Anne Rice are far, far more fantastic than I can ever dream of being anyway.


And. Um. Kind of odd specific-yet-very-vague music request, actually. Has anyone got moody, melancholy, atmospheric music that references the ocean, lost love, and preferrably both? I need a song about drowning, too. I'm particularly looking for music that sounds oceany, and a bit old, you know--not necessarily lacking in electronic instrumentation, but not screaming 'MODERN DAY!' at you in two-foot capitals, either. Currently I've got things like Dido's 'My Lover's Gone', Vienna Teng's 'Between', and some very awesome Solas songs that none of you except for lady_moriel is likely ever to have heard (and I don't think she's even got one of them). It's, er, for a mix. Which sprang out of nowhere because 'Between' was kind of perfect. It also happens to be a mix for an obscure branch of an obscure branch of the Tolkienverse (any 'The Mariner's Wife' fans out there? Hiiii...), and, um, yeah. I really do need a drowning song especially. 

Also, I made angelfood cake yesterday, and it was v. good.