I don’t know if it’s the weather, the new to-the-penny financial stress (one wonders what the point of trying is, really) or scheduling hassles that are getting me down, but I’m down today. Actually, I think it may have begun sometime yesterday afternoon in a pale lilac shade, has slowly deepened more towards a violet, and now is well and truly blue. Part of it is the post-concert blues, of course. These are always especially bad after a concert as excellent as this past one, because there’s more of a high from which to tumble down. There will be a concert recap later today. Part of it is also the ongoing stress of waiting for paycheques that don’t come. Every day I think, Hey, today could be the day when there might actually be a cheque in the mailbox! and every day I’m disappointed.
I had a good day with the boy yesterday. We didn’t do the caregiver thing as is customary on Wednesdays because we knew he’d be up late on Tuesday and that he’d be off on Wednesday as a result. We paid the car registration (while we waited, the boy entertained himself by bringing me leaflets and saying, “Let’s read this book, Mama!” Sure, kid. How about I skip the words in the one entitled ‘In the Event of a Hit and Run’ and we just play the ‘identify this road sign’ game?), chased butterflies on the way back to the car, then went to the big book store to pick up a book I’ve been waiting for for months and months. (I now have my very own copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Ink & Steel, having finally tracked down a staff member in order to ask her to check in the back, because despite the computer insisting that there were two in stock there were none on the shelf. She returned reading the back cover copy and said, “Wow, this looks really good!” so I cheerfully did a reverse hand-sell of all Bear’s work to her. Nothing like selling to a book store employee. Good times.) The boy actually agreed to only look at the trains and not play with them, and he was very nearly true to his word. He very transparently steered me down an aisle and affected surprise when it opened up into the play area, saying, “Oh, look, Mama, the train table!” I let him put his train on it and run it around a bend before reminding him about our deal to go to the pet store to see the animals instead of playing with the trains, and he came quite willingly. So to the pet store we went and saw many many animals, including a very sweet Senegal parrot who quietly leaned its head against the bars and gazed into my eyes until I reached a fingertip in and scratched its head gently for a few minutes. It never took its eyes from mine. It broke my heart to eventually walk away.
After a lunch the boy went down for a nap (three hours! well, he didn’t get to bed until ten after the concert, so it wasn’t unusual, just very welcome). I fully intended to read Ink & Steel all afternoon but I’d only read the first couple of chapters when I realised I wasn’t in the right mood to do Bear’s work justice, and as I’d been waiting for The Stratford Man duology for so damn long I didn’t want to ruin the reading of it. I picked up Frank Conroy’s Body & Soul instead and read it cover to cover by bedtime. I somehow also managed to read all of Charlie Bone and the Hidden King. Go me; three books read this month by July 3.
I wish I didn’t feel so melancholy. My throat is swollen and my eyes are stinging for no particular reason. I should go light a whole bunch of candles. They’ll help take some of the water out of the air, too.
Rosindust by Cornelia Watkins
The day spiralled from “coping” to “ohmygods I’m officially dead of bad migraine” on the way home from picking up kitty litter yesterday afternoon, complete with a vertiginous incident coming up to a traffic light where I got the prickly sensation in my hands and feet that is my body’s warning signal for “you’re about to throw up, and probably a lot”. I rolled down the windows and turned the vents on for as much fresh air as possible, breathed deeply with great focus (the mantra being “cannot throw up in new car, cannot throw up in new car, especially not with small child aboard”) and we got home without disaster striking. Once home, however, that was it; I was toast. I did end up having to cancel my evening out because I couldn’t stand up without falling over (and pleaded for a rain check, preferable for next Tuesday) but despite doing the lying in bed in a darkened room with all sound shut out thing that usually helps migraines, I couldn’t fall asleep. So I took more pain-relief tablets and actually kept them down this time (not that they helped much) and kind of wandered around the house squinting and wincing at sudden sharp sounds. I tried to read but I couldn’t follow the style of Larklight, so I stared at my bookcases for fifteen minutes before I remembered that 
Storytime at the library for small child (for the first and last time this season — we joined late, and though next week is the last session before September we have a doctor’s appointment already scheduled): Success.
I cannot for the life of me settle down to work on something today. Part of my problem is that I’m not immediately in the middle of a project. And since there’s nothing I have to work in, I get to choose what I’d like to work on, and despite the list of in-progress-at-various-stages novels/novellas and so forth, none of them are calling me. I also can’t pick music to listen to, so I’ve just set my whole collection of MP3s on shuffle. Except now I’m hearing things I don’t recognise and hovering my cursor over the icon of the player to see what it is.