my heart is a glorious machine;

Bah. Have come to least favourite part of writing: when the gaps in the plot catch up with me. I've been writing wonderfully over the last week! Three pages two days in a row! Some of what came out was a bit awful, but it got the story where it needed to go and can always be helped later. And I've got three chapters written now, which is lovely. But alack alack, after five or six pages of Chapter IV, I no longer know what I am doing. Evy's dealt with post-traumatic stress, avoided the press, talked to the Ministry, had Mr Caruthers over for dinner, furtively admired his coat, bantered, had weird dreams, helped to repair things at the library, and now... I need MOAR PLOT. I need 1. Mr Caruthers to do something rather startlingly badass and hastily pass it off as, er, good reflexes? (um, can you kill a vampire with an umbrella? especially if that umbrella is tipped with oak or iron?), and 2. for the Ministry to come back and say, by the way, we want you now. Trouble is, so far she's only accidentally killed a lot of vampires with some sunlight, and while sunlight isn't exactly commonly conjured, I'm also not seeing anything that would scream to the Ministry "LOOK LOOK HERE IS A TOOL YOU CAN SHAPE". Also cos I don't really know what the vampires are up to and maybe it's not even the government that pulls Evy into all of this, it's the vampires themselves, because Something Is Going On, and all I know is that it probably involves the Germans?

WRITING A NOVEL IS HARD.

I'm also not exactly sure how the pre-WWI vampires-and-politics plotline ties in with the Tam-Lin plotline, except that Mr Caruthers is somehow in the middle of both of them. And has a coat. Of awesomeness.

Today I was attacked by my own bedroom.

Sometimes I have these really stupid impulsive ideas. At about eleven thirty tonight, the stupid idea was: My glasses have been missing for a couple of weeks. I am sure they slipped into the terrible jungle that is under-the-bed and I will find them in two minutes if I actually look instead of shoving my hand down there and waggling it back and forth for a few seconds.

Learned Thing I: Under The Bed is a very, very terrifying place, far more terrifying than I had previously imagined. It is a place of death and I am never going down there again if I can help it. I am afraid to clean under there now because I think it might eat me. 

Learned Thing II: When I was eleven, I fit rather comfortably under the bed. I am nineteen now, have a slightly different bedframe setup, and, more importantly, have acquired copious amounts of bosom. I can no longer get more than my head and shoulders under the bed. At all.

Learned Thing III: Mattresses are really heavy. Boxsprings are even heavier and they hurt when they fall on you. You should not attempt to move them off the bedframe on a whim in the middle of the night, especially when you wear contacts and have done just fine without your glasses for weeks now. (I mostly wear my glasses when I am very headachey, when I am very lazy, when I am in between sets of contacts because I never remember to order them on time, or at night when I am reading in bed, because slipping off glasses is easy and slipping off contacts is not when you are sleepy.)

Learned Thing IV: I have more muscles in more places than I even knew. I do not feel so bad now about not having exercised today.

Learned Thing V: I should listen to my mother sometimes. Here is a conversation that probably happened more than once.

ME: "All of the plastic cups have mysteriously vanished! This is very irritating. Where could they have gone?"
MY MOTHER: "...Are they in your bedroom again?"
ME: "I HAVE NOT DONE THAT IN MONTHS WHY DO YOU DOUBT ME also I can't find any cereal bowls."
MY MOTHER: "Didn't I see one on your desk?"
ME: "YOU ARE SO SUSPICIOUS AND ACCUSING"

Under my bed, nested amongst the mangled remains of many newspapers, magazines, guitar chord printouts, candy wrappers, and scribbled-on pages, were approximately two hundred plastic cups. Fortunately none of them had rotting milk in them. There were also some cereal bowls. I am duly ashamed. But I also blame my bed. It was probably hungry.

Learned Thing VI: It is very hot under the bed. Also, it is far easier to get under than it is to extract oneself. I don't even know how that works. At one point, when I was mostly stuck, the radio went on (whenever it gets unplugged, the alarm resets itself to go off at midnight) and Ominious Monk-like Chanting followed me beneath the mattresses. It was a little disturbing. (It was actually a sort of New Age music programme public radio has on late at night -- and it happened to be mostly the very, very nice, relaxing, and musically interesting sort, not the really lame elevator music sort. And then BBC News came on. Yay!)

Learned Thing VII: Somehow, lifting up the mattress and the boxspring makes the entire room explode. My bedroom was reasonably neat. I spent half an hour or longer trying to make it look mostly the way it had before I pulled up the mattress.

Learned Thing VIII: My glasses were behind the dresser.

I am going to get an ice cream bar out of the freezer downstairs. It is nearly two in the morning. I do not care. I need it.

The last handful of days have been somewhat odd (she says matter-of-factly, because somehow she has forgotten how to panic?). There was much driving, and the car nearly broke down -- not the rental, ours -- and yesterday morning I learnt via a phonecall from my bank that my account has been overdrawn by about three hundred dollars. Approximately fifty of that I spent in Nova Scotia, on souvenirs (Stanfest t-shirt; inexpensive seashells; A Present; a vintage necklace) and snacks (Canadian sweets, which are frequently awesomer than ours, but expensive!; bread; pastries and cocoa at the coffeeshop). The rest is all fees. Fees from originally overdrawing my gorram account, which since I had no way of knowing I'd done so -- and I'm a little ashamed of myself, but I thought I had more money in my account than that; I should have checked -- and then those triggered more fees and still more and now I am three hundred dollars in the red. Mum owes me thirty-two, Dad owes me four, and I have three dollars in my wallet and some change, God help me. I might be able to get the bank to waive the fees considering that half the reason they built up so much was because I was out of the country, and this is my first bank account, and Mum suggested I look as close to tears as possible... if I can do that, fifty dollars shouldn't be terrifically impossible. Except that I have no job. No, I haven't been fired; I just haven't worked in a month. I really ought not to tell my boss that I'm going on holiday, because every time I ask for a week or two off, he just stops putting me on the schedule from then on until some time after I get back. I have no work next week, and no leftover paychecks. My manager said, almost reprovingly, "you can't get paid unless you're here," at which I suddenly wanted very much to hit or smash something. I asked for two weeks off. You didn't schedule me for the rest; it's hardly that I'm bloody unwilling.

My first inclination as I walked out was to burst into tears and crumple onto a bench somewhere, but I gulped it down and channelled it into determined rage, which wave I rode on for the next hour, stalking into half the stores in the mall and telling them that I needed a job. I picked up about seven applications, have a couple to look up online, and, oddly enough, have an interview with Claire's on Monday. The woman behind the register told me, "We're still accepting applications, and probably hiring in a week," and as I folded my application to put in my bag, she said, "When you bring that back -- are you available for an interview on Monday at 3:30?" "Absolutely," I said. I hope this is an encouraging sign.

Rode around town, didn't find much, came back sick from the humidity. Mum provided emergency chocolate, I curled up with a comfort book. Sometime today I'll go talk to the bank -- the little one across the street gave me a printout, but I have to talk to the bigger one a few blocks away. Ugh. Time fades courage, rather.

The weather is so spectacular that I've brought Yvaine outside while I work on my immense new collection of photographs and pretend that Kyra is still within speaking distance. Ah, yes: I left Alaska on Monday night and arrived in my home... well, on Wednesday morning. It was one of my more interesting journeys, and that is the way I say it to keep my mildly optimistic outlook. The flight itself was perfectly all right; I mostly fell asleep, and the only irritation was when I discovered that my earbuds had stopped working (well, and the bit where I didn't actually have any food and mostly subsisted on tiny tiny packets of peanuts and spice cookies and complimentary orange juice, which I ordered instead of water every time on account of it having actual nutrients).

Um, wait, also there was the bit at the beginning where my suitcase had somehow gained fifteen pounds over the week, which meant it was over the weight limit, and I either had to pay ninety dollars for overweight baggage, twenty-five to spilt it into two bags (they provide plastic ones), or see if I could cram enough things into my carry-ons to bring the weight down to regulation. So there Kyra and I were, on the floor, pulling, uh, mostly books and shoes out of my suitcase and fitting them into my bags like puzzle pieces (where is Hermione's bigger-on-the-inside bag when you need it?) and we actually did it and I am still kind of impressed. Of course I had been priding myself on how light and easy-access I'd gotten my main carry-on before then... 

And then Kyra and I took a really really really long time to say goodbye, and it was sad.

There was a long layover in Minneapolis that I don't actually remember much -- I wandered around, and I bought a five-dollar McDonalds breakfast and called some bus stations and my mother and slept. See, nobody was available to fetch me from the Pittsburgh airport, so I was meant to get bus tickets, except I procrastinated a lot and it was Very Bad, and then every. single. person. I talked to gave me different information. One website said there was no way to get to a bus station from the airport; another said there was a train leaving but you had to have booked a ticket beforehand; someone at the company told me that it didn't matter, I could just pay the driver or pay when I got to my destination; and when I finally arrived at the Pittsburgh airport and had fetched my suitcase and gone out to the bus waiting point, none of these options actually seemed to correspond with reality, and buses to anywhere in particular did not seem to actually exist. Long, ugly, pacing-round-the-airport-phoning-home-panicking-and-crying story short, I did something crazy and hopped an airport bus going to the nearest Greyhound station (borrowing forty cents from a kindly man with a Slavic accent; I had plenty of money but no cash!). My mood went through so many dramatic shifts in that forty-five minutes -- immature hysteria, end-of-my-rope stubborn determination, then elation at the atmosphere of the bus, all the people in it, and the city rushing by the windows, and joy at walking around Pittsburgh myself.

And then I got to the Greyhound station and the first bus leaving for my town was... at five in the morning.

At this point I was still kind of on a high from Having Crazy Plans and Pittsburgh (I love this city so! I'd hardly choose it over Boston, but it's fascinating -- trees trees trees! and industry!), so... if I panicked I didn't pay much attention? I don't know. It would have still been incredibly difficult for my family to pick me up -- my mother's car can't make that kind of distance, and Dad was on a Mobile Crisis call, and anyway it's a two hour drive, two hours out of anyone's way to fix a problem that was pretty much entirely my fault for not being prepared. After phoning my mother and talking it out, I eventually decided just to spend the night at the bus station.

Well. No terrible traumatic event occured, but I will never do that again. It is best not spoken of. Bus stations are some of the most soul-killing places on earth, and I have this irrational oversensitivity to environment -- it was so ugly, and all of the people in it seemed... aimless and depressing and fairly ghetto (Mum was worried about my safety -- uh, I kind of was too, actually, but there were security guards everywhere) and I just plunged into the most awful depression... it took me several hours after I got home to get it out of my system. Waited for hours and hours, sleeping fitfully and then not sleeping at all, and finally my bus left and Mum picked me up when I arrived in town and we went home THE END.

I spent much of Wednesday and yesterday trying to get my sleeping habits back in shape and mostly failing.

So, yes. Missing my Kyra kind of a lot. It's nice to be home, and the weather's spectacular, but the whole world is better when your best friend is around.

Despite being barraged by sun and humidity, aching all over, somehow managing to catch a cold in eighty-degree weather, having to choose between four different bands in one time-slot, and finding my face has been sunburned dreadfully, I have had a marvellous weekend. Marvellous. To begin with, at least one festival a year tends to be my father's and my special togetherness, that thing that just we share, and as people in general go, I can be alone with him better than I can be with most people. (It helps that we kind of know each other really well, but also we're similar kinds of introverts and know when to let each other be, generally speaking. And he's one of the few people I know -- especially offline -- who listens to music in the same way I do; drinking it in, living inside of it.) And, as seems to be tradition these days, I discovered some really fantastic bands -- Scythian, who I mentioned before I left, are brilliant, especially late at night on a dance floor. Especially as the band is made up of four extremely, um, attractive young men who were wearing waistcoats the first night. And they're amazing instrumentalists. That violin almost broke my heart... except when it was going too fast to think, and I was dancing so hard I was losing my kerchief. At one point near the end of the set, all of the boys except the drummer leapt off the stage and played while dancing with us, and the main fiddler and I were dancing -- more at than with each other, but either way it was magnificent. Definitely a memory to fold up and keep, like Kristen Andreassen telling me that my then-pink hair was awesome, or Abigail Washburn turning to Bela Fleck and saying, "Don't you remember her? She was dancing to us at Merlefest...", or star-watching after Nickel Creek's two-and-a-half-hour set two years ago.

My other new favourite band is the Belleville Outfit, who play old-timey string-band swing music. SO GOOD. Their violinist and female lead vocalist has an extraordinary voice -- very 1920s, and unique. They also played the dance tent. The best things seem to happen there! (I also went to see the Duhks at their dance stage session, which was just as amazing as the other two I mentioned. Also the "new" -- as of two years ago -- lead vocalist can sing, my oh my. I've known this, but it kind of comes home to you when you're two feet away. Also it's very fascinating to me how different Cajun French sounds from European French -- Cajun French has swagger. Somehow it manages to sound like a completely different language.) -- Oh, and there were the Farewell Drifters, who sounded a little like an American Mumford & Sons -- they had the roots influences and the string-band thing going on, but with indie singer-songwriter sorts of melodies and lyrics and arrangements. And then there's the legendary Doc Watson himself, who may be eighty-six, but he's still a very compelling musician and showman.

So much to discuss! So little energy! We got in late last night (and then poor Dad only had time to snatch a few hours of sleep before driving to Ohio for a confernence with our church's denomination), and all day today it has taken much, much willpower to do much besides lie on the bed. Or sometimes on the couch. My legs ache -- in a good way, but still in a don't-want-to-move way; and the cold has drained any remaining energy out of me, except for the tiny reserve I dug up in order to run errands by bicycle this afternoon. (AUUUGH. But I had to fetch my new glasses, and my Ritalin except it still isn't here.) Even turned down an offer of ice cream from Jonathan, because... food. Ack. And bicycling again. I might fall off on the way. plkhsglkhsdf.

In other news, four days from now I will be flying to stay with lady_moriel. (She somehow manages to say calmly and off-handedly. AKJSGHG.) 

You know those stories that musicians sometimes tell you at concerts, about how they wrote and composed this or that song fifteen or twenty minutes before they performed it on stage or recorded it? Well, um, that kind of happened today. It was interesting. Now, It wasn't so much writing a new song whole cloth as writing new lyrics to a traditional song and taking it from sing-song children's church song to something with a little actual depth inside the same repetitive field-spiritual sort of format. And I'd had bits of it in my head for a while. But I kind of made up the set list in the car on the way to church, and added another song in the middle of the performance before mine (my father's friend Jim), and then everything went astonishingly well, considering. Except for the rather discouraging and depressing fact that almost no-one was even listening to me and most of them were talking fairly loudly. (And when there are only about eight people in the room, having most of them talk loudly through your performance tends to make one feel a bit... well, not terrifically valued, anyway.) I kind of had to curb my rising frustration before it boiled over into actual fury, which mostly meant concentrating more on the music than on the people not listening to it. And it did feel nice, to be sitting up on a stage, albeit a very little one, and hearing one's voice stretching out through the sound system and filling up a room, albeit also a very little room.

After my set I lay down and went to sleep on a pew, at least half by accident.

Last night was not of the good. I lay in bed for hours not sleeping and not knowing why I couldn't fall asleep, seeing as I was so exhausted that my eyes were stinging. By the time I was woken in the early morning to go to the church, I may have attained about four hours of sleep. So, you know, things have been... weird. (Am going to sleep any minute now. Honest. If I shut my eyes right now, I probably would.)

Morning was mixed; I was cross and physically miserable (and hideously unwell-feeling in the early morning; don't even know if I had some tiny bug that goes away with standing up for more than two minutes or if I was so sleepy that it actually caused a more than usually bizarre sort of nausea), and we didn't get nearly the crowd we'd hoped, and oh how I wanted to go home and sleep. But... I found some parts of the celebration/service fulfilling. I'd rather not have another go at it, though...

As the more astute among you have likely noticed, I have not been especially present lately. (Which is probably an understatement.) I've been scanning the f-list and ranting a lot on Twitter, and trying to keep up with comments... sort of... mostly... but the current state of computer affairs is rather a mess. The laptop screen not only must be propped up at all times, but it's gone terrifically dark and won't be brightened unless the screen is shut to about an inch above the keyboard. And the wireless stopped working, so it's tethered to an ethernet cord in the living room, and since the computer has no battery power to speak of and is fragile as all get out (it's sort of like one of those elderly ladies who takes great joy in telling you about all of her arcane medical woes in great detail, except the computer's stories go more like, "one time I had a stroke, which led to amnesia, and a coma, so this guy who used to actually pay attention to me took me back and replaced my old brain with Ubuntu and then I was sort of better in a wheelchair-bound sort of way") -- anyway, it's not very safe or comfortable to move it to, say, the dining room table. So it's been on top of a short bookshelf for nearly a month now. I pull up a folding chair, and it's... well, it's really uncomfortable and the shelves dig into my legs and the keyboard is just slightly too high, and... It's doing the best it can. Poor thing. But you can see why this might completely unravel my ability to concentrate on things, or do anything remotely approaching a project. (Such as posts I mean to post, and pictures I mean to post especially, only I can't see them properly....) 

So that's that. Just so as you don't feel abandoned or shutnted off to the side or some such -- there's the State of the Laptop Address. I guess I could probably say that I'm on a half-hiatus until Monday.

Why Monday? Why, Monday is the day that UPS tells me that my shiny new laptop of my very very own will be arriving at my doorstep! (It's a Dell and very pretty with plenty of RAM and hard drive space and a 15.4" screen and a DVD burner, hurrah!) Yes indeed! My debit card finally showed up in the post, and I went off to activate it at the nearest ATM straightaway, and a few hours later I bought a computer, and this afternoon I recieved a shipping notification and a scheduled arrival date. I am possibly daydreaming about this constantly. Um. Yes. It will have to be named, of course, when it -- she, rather -- arrives. It's a she, I know it is, because it looks like a she, and all of my inanimate objects have been male thus far. I have a name in mind, but will have to see if it suits when I see her. (I didn't think of the name, either; it thought of itself. Harrumph. I said no fandom references!) 

And when the computer and I are united, I shall become re-acquainted with the internet (and Roller Coaster Tycoon) with a vengeance! 

I find that I am rather enjoying the mentally energised feeling that comes with one's fever breaking; although I am not entirely certain that it makes up for being in bed all day and missing five good hours of work, much less the first vomiting I have done in three years. And it was a Friday afternoon shift, too! Very busy! I love being busy with customers! Harrumph. 

So yes: yesterday everyone was sick but me, until suddenly around ten at night I began to feel the first curls of nausea, which steadily got worse; I took Pepto-Bismol and went to bed, and promptly woke up an hour later to vomit. This I wasn't expecting,  because I can remember the last time I vomited, and it was, as mentioned, a very long time ago. It was not pleasant. I really wished I hadn't eaten all of that rice for dinner, now that it was coming up in maggoty litttle lumps. Then I took more Pepto-Bismol and went back to bed, until about four in the morning, when I woke up to vomit again, thus terrifying the cat. And I missed the bathroom by a foot or so, which was awkward. And then I went back to bed (after soundly brushing my teeth), and the cat eventually rejoined me, which was very cosy of him.

This morning much of the nausea had abated, and I was stubborn enough to want to try to go to work. This involved me trying several times to get out of bed and failing. Half an hour before I had to be at work, I finally stood up, went over to the closet, and blacked out. I came to on the other side of the room, sitting, with a sharp pain in my thigh. It was very strange -- I had this -- sensation? hallucination? vision? -- in which I was crashing down something, very loudly, and it hurt, which imaginings don't usually do. In retrospect, both the imagery and the physical sensation afterwards heavily resembled Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. (Brain, I don't even know.) And I know I must have crashed into a few things if I -- stumbled backwards across the room? Whatever it was I did when I blacked out that got me to the other side of the room. I may have hit my music stand and a bowl on the way, but they certainly didn't make all of the noise that I heard in my -- hallucination? And I asked if anyone had heard a crashing noise, and they hadn't. It was very strange, and sort of fascinating. I kind of want to know if it fits into a specific psychological something-or-other, and why I envisioned so much falling and crashing, or amplified the little that might have really happened...

Except then I was still saying I was going to go to work, because I am stupid. Only I couldn't stand up for more than a minute at a time without feeling horrible. Or sit up comfortably. ...Look, I really like my job. I finally decided in favour of actual sense (and also in favour of not infecting my poor co-workers) and called in sick, and spent the rest of the day lying in bed, occasionally listening to music or NPR, and falling asleep rather frequently. Oddly, some of my senses seemed amplified, which was sort of enjoyable, where music was concerned -- I felt sound very intensely, and listening to Ashtar Command's "In Dust" and Conjure One's "Center of the Sun" was very fascinating.

Leandra, age two, came charging in around sevenish to give me my wallet: she found my iPod on the bed, put the earbuds on, and demanded, "Lai-lai, please?", referring to this song by Rupa and the April Fishes, which for some reason is her very favourite song ever. Her whole face lights up whenever she hears it playing, and she starts dancing round in little circles, which is adorable. After Lai-lai, we listened and danced to Benny Goodman, the Beatles, Abigail Washburn, and Crooked Still. Hee.

And then I dressed in my softest, cosiest cotton dress, just in time for sunset. I think I can go to work tomorrow evening -- and I'll need my strength tomorrow, because Heidi's having a birthday party, which means there will be a horde of little girls from about seven to twelve shrieking through my house, oh help.

I've been accepted as a trial poster at musicyardsale and I'm really quite excited about it! All of you who aren't members already should go join. *nods* It's a very lovely friendly community with excitingly varied music recommendations -- and, you know, there will be me.

On the subject of music, the assign-a-letter meme was flittering around the f-list a while ago, and I was tagged and never got round to posting mine. (Part of this is because Mediafire and this laptop do not like each other. I can only upload files if I don't plan to use the computer for the duration, because Mediafire's upload process will freeze everything up. As soon as the upload is finished, everything's fine -- and I haven't had any trouble on any other computers. Sigh.)

burningstarsxeassigned me the letter K. So here you are -- five songs which begin with K. (I seem to have very few. And all of the good ones are by female singer-songwriters. Huh.)

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...