Yesterday started off so well, and gradually went further and further downhill as I overextended myself, thinking that this second spring cold was beaten. It didn’t help that we had a very high-energy hands-on class on making oils and incenses on Sunday afternoon, which resulted in trying to rein in eight excited adults, and ended with someone saying, “Well, this was a great class, except…”. I’m really tired of back-handed compliments. What’s wrong with saying, “I had a lot of fun. Thanks! By the way, next time could you give us a bit more warning? I really had to scramble to assemble the supplies for this.” I uncharacteristically physically turned around and walked away from the back-handed compliment because (a) it wasn’t my fault, and (b) I’d spent the past two hours repeating myself because not everyone was listening when I imparted the original information. I lost my patience. Passive-aggressive feedback does absolutely no good at all, and I wish more people understood that. It’s patronising and manipulative, and I see right through it. Coming from a student, no matter how they might think their five more years of age gives them an edge over their teacher, it’s even more insulting, both to me and to the student. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to realise that it damages them.

I missed a game last night because the afternoon’s class wore me out. I took an over-the-counter sleeping pill, stuck my earplugs in to counter the thumping bass from upstairs, and woke up eleven hours later. I have even less of a voice than I did when I went to bed, which is making me grumpy. I also discovered that the two hour TV program t! asked me to tape for him taped the wrong channel. I am not in a particularly great mood.

This weekend did have good bits, though: for example, we had a terrific dinner with Tal on Saturday night, where we made Ceri’s fabulous and eeeeeevil pudding. The second half of the Saturday class was fun to watch, after my whispered lecture on the very basic highlights of Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian religion. (Note to self: your customary dynamism is completely sabotaged when you are forced to whisper, rendering the class lifeless and dull.) And I must say that the eleven hours of sleep last night were high up on the List of Good Things, considering my recent sleep scores, even if those eleven hours were drug-induced.

I have a Reiki workshop to attend tonight, to which I’m very much looking forward. And I think I’ll spend the day researching and making notes for this Brid project, which seems to be evolving into a dialogue between contemporary views of the Neo-Pagan goddess and the attributions found in achaeological and literary work.

At least, that was the plan until the manuscript for the second book in this ongoing series just fell into my inbox with the request to write a foreword attached. I work tomorrow, and they want it by Wednesday, so it looks like I’m working for the publisher again today, as I did every single day last week. (I know I swore that I was taking Friday off – I lied. I worked on checking the first half of the other manuscript that was sent back to me by the first author.)

I just keep telling myself that this book is atypical, and by the end of this week when I’ve checked the second half of those rewrites and sent it back to the publisher, it will all be over until I do a final galley read-through somewhere down the line.

All I want to do is curl up with a cat under an afghan, have someone bring me soup for lunch, and read books with my sticky tabs, a notebook, and a highlighter by my side. That’s all.