my heart is a glorious machine;

I have discovered a marvellous thing. It is called morning coffee.

(Picture here, if you will, my parents laughing uproariously at me, as they have been trying to get me to drink coffee most of my life, it seems.)

Somehow in the last few weeks it has gone from a bitter, unfriendly, if glorious-smelling, concoction to the epitome of deliciousness. I think I must have gone for it again out of sheer desperation on one of the mornings I was trying to turn back into a person who sleeps normally by not fumbling through sleeping and awake-but-dizzy until four in the afternoon or so, and dumped loads of milk and sugar in it, and lo! It was very nearly palatable. Very nearly. (On New Year's Day, when I downed a cup to get me through an afternoon of work at the deathly boring kiosk after staying up very very late with the usual lot, I spent the entire cup stalking through the house, gulping it down and shouting bleah!) And then I tried it again the next morning. Before I knew what had happened to my unsuspecting tastebuds, I was in love.

It helps that I have my own very pretty Art Nouveau mug in which to drink it every morning. But aside from the fetching mug, the flavour! It is so wonderful and cosy! The caffeine! It is so fantastic and day-starting and inspiration-bringing! 

I do not have a morning newspaper, and I prefer to read novels on my stomach, so what I am trying out now, after the ten minutes it usually takes me to read my email and all of the Twitter that happened during the night, is writing. By "trying", I mean "I've done it a couple of times this week", but it is working out rather all right. And the jump of caffeine has my brain all energised and ready to think of interesting things. I am on my forty-second page! It took me three months once to write a nine-page short story! I am improving! (Meanwhile, Catherynne M. Valente Twitters that she has finished writing her splendiferous online serial novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, which she started a mere couple of months ago. I flush emerald.) 

And my last gulp of coffee has gone cold, Evangeline needs to finish being unconscious, and a large black cat has made himself comfortable in my lap. It's a fey, misty morning -- you can smell Autumn coming, even when you don't hear it in the farewell calls of nightflying geese and the wuthering of the wind, or glimpse it in the brief glimmer of red and gold hidden in the furthest branches of the trees.

I really love my job.

Now, not every day is the giddy glory that the eight hours last Saturday were, but going to work and doing my work continuously makes me happy. Borders may not get a ringing endorsement from me as companies go, and certainly I have to wade through a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, and sell a lot of rubbish books (and even rubbisher things which are not books and sometimes not even remotely book-related), but the real part of my job, the centre of it, is taking care of books and interacting with customers and I love it.

I've had some really lovely customers lately. On Wednesday this dignified woman in, I think, her sixties, in a long coat and an elegant scarf and glasses and possessing an accent somewhat suggestive of upper class New England came in looking for a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she said was an old, old favourite that she hadn't read in years. We had a very companionable conversation and I think I will have to put her in a story someday. Today an attractive bearded young bloke (in a Death Note t-shirt with 'L' on the back, n'aww) bought a copy of the sole Dresden Files graphic novel, and we enthused about the series together. (I am currently on book six -- begun this very evening -- and am utterly addicted; it is marvellous.) 

And although I have to reschedule my library-and-Hockman's day, I really love working Saturdays, because the bookstore is very, very busy and full of book-loving people (in varying degrees) looking for something to fall in love with, and I have the best interactions and am happily occupied all day. We didn't have anything to shelve or repair today, so I was told to concentrate mainly on customer service -- hurrah!

Now, a question for the f-list. What books would you suggest for a) reluctant readers (of both sexes), and b) girls who like Twilight and are primed for introduction to better things (or the friends and relations of girls who like Twilight, trying to find them new things to read)? I can suggest plenty of books for women and older teens who enjoyed Twilight (or hated it!) -- Robin McKinley's Sunshine, of course, for proper vampires and a heroine who is not a dishcloth, and Emma Bull's War for the Oaks for a much better supernatural romance (inside a plot that is actually awesome, and more importantly, there!) -- but younger girls? I am at a loss. There are plenty of other rubbish teen vampire pop romances (they litter the YA section lately), but I feel the need to somehow instil a love for actual literature. As for reluctant readers, I was in no way one and find their minds difficult to comprehend. ;) What sorts of books would hook a boy or girl without the ravenous lust for literature I seem to have been born with? I want to recommend favourites of my own, but I don't know which of them would be the most apt (though I imagine Gail Carson Levine is a good place to begin with girls), especially since I was reading things like Dickens and Alcott and L'Engle at the age of nine, and Tolkien by twelve, and T.S. Eliot by fourteen (not counting the Practical Cats, which I think I must have been in love with all of my life, because I have no memory of being introduced to them but every memory of being familiar with them). A lot of people come in with, especially, ten- to fourteen-year-olds looking for something, anything that they'll read, usually because their schools require them to read some fiction, and I try my best to help them, but am floundering rather a lot.

I made brownies to bring to work, because... look, I'm not a suck-up, really! Uhhh. Heh. Anyway, this time I didn't forget to bring them, as I forgot the cookies I made a week and a half ago (and then I forgot them again when I meant to bring them to Jonathan's...). I also bought a baguette on the way to work and brought cheese from home for a lunch of bread and cheese; very old-fashioned and delightful.

And I'm bicycling again! I've missed being Bicycle Girl! The weather today is marvellous -- rainy and warm and windy and alive, and there is little like strenuous excercise in pleasing weather to lift one's spirits. Of course on the way to work it was very wet, and while the rain was mostly drizzle and not much trouble, the streets were full of puddles and I had to sponge mud from my entire person upon arriving at work. Siiiigh. But the way home was dry and absolutely perfect, and there was wind in my hair, and I may have sung a lot.

(Also I may have kind of wandered into Rue21? And they were maybe sort of full of their usual clearance racks of awesome and win? And I may have purchased one (1) grey and black striped shirt with a bow, two (2) elegant waistcoats in different styles, and one (1) very lovely summer dress consisting of a white ruffled blouse and polka-dotted skirt -- for two dollars apiece. However, dear readers, it is highly unlikely, for I only ever spend my money on extremely important and serious things.) 

Tomorrow, Dad and I are going to see Slumdog Millionaire (which has somehow made its way, very late, into our cinema, probably on sole virtue of having won many Academy Awards, because indie films are about as common in my cinema as capital letters in an e.e. cummings poem). I'm kind of enjoying my life right now; and that feels good.

NaNo, day three. My head asplode.

I'm just over four thousand words, which is fairly good, I suppose. It's quite a lot more than I have written in some time, so that is encouraging. The story, however, is a complete mess, and I am trying to remember why I was in love with it in the beginning. Perhaps when one of the pertinent plot points actually crops up -- so far there has been no vampire slaying, though vampires have been mentioned (somewhat abruptly), and no vampire culture, and no underground city, and nothing is really in proper order, some of it doesn't make any sense, the character introductions are hazy (and I still have no idea where Mrs Nox is! she hasn't been mentioned, even by the gossipy neighbours!), the story wavers from third to first person, and worst of all, is terribly boring. I am also thoroughly winging it at this point, having little idea of what I'm about to write next. Also my usual problems of being unable to understand the physical world are cropping up -- I have immense difficulty visualising buildings, having houses make sense, having cities make sense, and my London is very non-specific and has no flavour at all.

Some interesting surprises, however: Evangeline seems to have some sort of supernatural ability to sense stories, and I have no idea what that means. It might be connected to how vampires acquire memories when they drink, but having Evy acquire vampire-like abilities doesn't make sense either -- there is no interbreeding, I think that sort of thing is ridiculous, vampires are dead. Also a Miss Lottie McKenzie also works at the library, apparently. She just cropped up today, name, cheery clumsiness, and all.

I find myself now in non-novel typing and also in speech unconsciously attempting to use as many words as possible. Heh.

BAHHHH. Please tell me that very wonderful books have had truly abysmal first drafts.

In other news, I start work tomorrow. At seven forty-five in the morning, eep. Which is why I am going to bed any minute now. Despite the hideously early hour, I am quite excited. Perhaps the change of scenery will set my gears to turning again. I have frequently been told that there are long stretches of boredom at the calendar kiosk, so perhaps I can do some scribbling now and then. Also, I made chocolate chip cookies (with a dash of peppermint). They are very cosy.

The moving goes on. Jonathan was a great help yesterday, and we should have more help over the weekend, and a truck. On Friday we get a key. I am already scheming to be on the trip to go to get said key, as I have not been inside the house yet (just been outside, and on top of things, and in the yard examining the apple tree and the garden potential, and Mum took many many pictures when she had the tour...). I am Not Down with boxes and my books and jewellery going away inside of them. I have also been excessively sleepy, which is a great bother and is probably related to underlying depressive symptoms, drat them. I spent so much of today falling asleep (after sleeping in) that it bordered on insane. And now I am sleepy again, but not enough to crawl under my fleece blanket and two quilts and shut my eyes and get down to the business of slumber.

in other news, it is autumn! And it is finally beginning to feel a bit more like it, although the humidity that persistently crops up is getting on my last nerve. Fortunately we have very chilly nights to make up for it -- and when I am sitting on my bed reading or outside on my bicycle I can hear geese honking as they fly over me for warmer skies. Mum made baked beans and delicious cornbread with Italian sausage for dinner -- autumn is my favourite time of year for food. Cocoa and cider and apples, cinnamon rolls, spice cookies, gingerbread, my father's stew with massive savoury chunks of beef and potatoes seasoned with pumpkin ale, hot satisfying dinners, oatmeal and very very cold milk, all sorts of bread. Naturally, having a new oven with new quirks, I will be forced to bake a lot of things to ascertain what the quirks are and how to work with them, yes? I foresee much bread in my future. And spice cookies. And things which require cream cheese icing. Also: very pleased friends and family. (Aha, and it is nearly time for my yearly reading of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, and that means that I shall have to make cinnamon rolls. AND HIDE THEM IN MY LOFT.)

I am also nearly finished with the autumn mix I promise every year -- for real this time! Having a new et cetera journal is really doing strange wonders for my productivity. I wrote a short story (when does that happen?), posted a poem that's been lying in a notebook for three months, got back to attempting to write the last section of a fic, and nearly finished a mix. How very odd. I hope this productivity streak continues. Also: does anyone know how to save a song file edited in Windows Movie Maker? I was clipping several minutes of applause and talking off a live track I want to use in a mix, and for the life of me I cannot manage to save it as an mp3 file -- it's all "Windows Movie Maker Project" rubbish, which kind of won't play in iTunes, thanks. (Yes, I realise that there are far better programms for clipping the ends off of songs. Somewhere. Only I haven't got any of them.) 

Well, I have been trying to write a fairly gloomy entry about how I do not feel fantastic and circumstances not to mention hormones seem to be conspiring against me and huddling in dark corners with lots of mysterious maps and papers and whispering in code, but today has not been the sort of day that inspires great moaning from me. (Here I could likely talk about how I am nearly as good at suppressing emotions as Ten is, and it would be completely and utterly true. When I have a good day, it is mostly on the surface; there is always some horrid beastie lurking beneath, waiting to spring the very moment it becomes most irrational to do so. Which makes me feel horrid and unstable, but when I have a good day I can mostly ignore it. Which is probably not terribly good for the brain, but I do like moments of sanity here and there.)

Honestly, now that I'm here, I have no idea what to go on about. I haven't posted in a very long time -- anywhere -- and this would make me feel tremendously guilty if not for this strange business of stuffing emotions into convenient drawers bursting with stray socks and things. Mostly I have been reading the f-list rather dimly with that wretched feeling I get where my head feels as though it is sloshing with thick, nasty corn syrup.

(Shut up, self, nobody wants to read about you been unhappy and unpleasant.)

Today I cleaned the bedroom, which looked like a miniature war zone and has looked this way since, er, July. It needs a mighty vacuuming, but I've got muffins to bake for breakfast tomorrow and anyway I have been in that dratted room cleaning things half the day and I want to read a book, gorram it. I also made cookies, because the gingerbread was gone and I was not capable of waiting until tomorrow for desserty things to show up in my refrigerator and cupboards (and anyway you've got to be careful about pies; the nice thing about cookies is that you can eat lots of them without anyone noticing, at least at the beginning when the container is full -- pies in their neat slices do not lend themselves nearly so well to compulsive comfort eaters unless said people live alone). Oh dear, commas, I'm sorry. You can come out to play now, I promise.

Also I have nearly finished all of the library books I got out on Saturday and it is only Wednesday. This is worrying. I might be forced to, er, re-read something. Which would be dreadful. Even if there are bookmarks in at least two books on my shelves that I started to re-read and got distracted by Library Books Which Must Be Consumed In A Week's Time. Also also I would like to make an entry someday about Really Fantastic Films I Have Seen Recently but now that I've mentioned it I will probably never get to it. Anyway it would probably get all geeky and technical in the end, or just odd ("how can he be so worked up about nobody taking him seriously enough and yet flaunt a moustache like that? that is not a Serious Moustache!" -- "he's working on it! he's got a government grant!"). Also to the third power: Time Crash = unintelligable syllables of fangirly glee and Steven Moffat needs the universe on a shiny, shiny platter already, HULLO BBC.

Other thing I keep not posting: philosophical, grammatical, and anthropological musings on Firefly. Because, yes, I actually do spent great amounts of time thinking about these things. (Especially the linguistic aspects! Honestly some of the slang is so right on I wonder if Joss Whedon did a crash course in linguistics or just has an ear for things. I KNOW I KNOW NOBODY ELSE EVER CONSIDERS HOW FICTIONAL SLANG DEVELOPS IN A FICTIONAL UNIVERSE OVER SEVERAL CENTURIES SHUT UP.)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and the thing about Thanksgiving is that it always seems to arrive when I am absolutely the least ready for it. I seem to always be at my most despondent and lonely and frustrated in November. But holidays are beautiful, and that little sequestering of magic -- well, it's nice. The thing I like about Thanksgiving is that it's very, almost reverently, quiet. I suppose it isn't nearly this way for lots of people, but my family has almost always spent Thanksgiving alone, and there's something very intimate and beautiful about it.

I haven't any idea what I'm even saying anymore; time to fix up some muffins and go to bed.

Right-o! Have got relatives visiting, am rather busy, ergo I won't be very much around for a bit. Also am attempting to make cinnamon rolls which have been TURNED AGAINST ME, I swear; this is ridiculous. (The brown sugar, it is like rock.) See you lot about! ♥

I had something witty and brilliant and intelligent that I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was. (I did make biscuits today--American ones with buttermilk that turned out a bit less fluffy than I think they ought to have but which will taste very good with a bit of sausage and cheese later--but that doesn't make for much of an anecdote as nothing went interestingly wrong. Things often go interestingly wrong when I am baking. I managed to burn a batch of brownies so magnificently once that even the little chocolate chips on top were scorched through, which was really tragic.)

Bartholomew-the-kitten, who is not actually a kitten anymore but an adolescent cat who has apparently discovered girls for the first time, ran off two days ago, not even coming back for dinner, which was a bit worrying as he is not the sort of cat to miss a good dinner, but he finally turned up at the door this morning, noisy and hungry. We think he was chasing the female felines of the neighbourhood. He has been very repentant and purry and cuddly today, but also very noisy. And he keeps crawling into laps when the laps are sitting at tables and the people the laps belong to are having a plate of turkey.

I totally didn't squee publically enough about "The Shakespeare Code", which may or may not have been the best Doctor Who episode ever, and also may or may not have been the best bit of television I've seen in a long time. (I think I might have even liked it better than "Girl in the Fireplace", which means a lot. NEIL GAIMAN LIKED THAT EPISODE.) I mean, it had Shakespearian London. Which was very pretty. The historical episodes are usually magnificently pretty. And it had Harry Potter references and the Doctor quoted Dylan Thomas, which had me wibbling like the fangirl I am. (By the by, that couplet--'do not go gentle into that good night / rage, rage agains the dying of the light'--is tremendously Doctorish, innit?) And Martha, who kept on being pretty awesome. Also, briefly, Ten in an Elizabethan collar, which was nothing short of wonderful. (Wonder if people ever got those caught on doors and things? I mean, I'm always catching my cape on doorknobs and railings because they are in direct alignment with the arm-holes, and often I am innocently going up the stairs when I am yanked back by my renegade cape which has got itself curled round the end of the railing.) I ran around in circles in my bedroom for a while after I finished watching and jumped over stuff for a while.

One of these days I am going to stun all of you with my brilliance and structure and presence of mind. Today is not that day.

I feel like catching up on the memes that have been floating about under my nose for the last eon or so. I always want to do them and never get 'round to it (mainly because I have a sneaking suspicious that I am, indeed, a lazy git--and forgetful). I have to dig up the five questions that avendya asked me--oh, back in April, I think. I did them in a Notepad document and lost them, and then I found them again, and now I have to re-find-them-again. 

Anyway, mermaidrain tagged me for the five-odd-things-about-you meme not too long ago, and while I'm thinking of it, I ought to have a go at it, yeah? It's been a while since I've done it, and there are lots of people reading this journal that weren't then. (I don't remember when this was, incidentally. Back when I had three or four friends, more likely than not.) 


In other news, I got a package from lexiedohtoday, containing the belated Christmas present of this very fantastic shirt (!!!). I wore it to my lesson today and my guitar teacher loved it (as do I, naturally). It is utterly perfect!!