Friday morning: government refund cheque on overpaid student loan insurance. Small, but enough to put gas in the tank and food in the cooler. Thank you, money fairies! We can go to the godforsaken howling wilderness on Saturday after all!

And so we enjoyed a lovely afternoon, evening, and morning chez Fearsclave and his lovely wife, along with t! and Jan, new local house-owners (though not local dwellers till the end of summer), and Mousme. Those twenty hours away did us a world of good. The boy stayed home with his local grandparents and didn’t miss us at all. There were shandies (or straight beer if you were pretty much everyone other than myself), burgers and sausage dogs, a bonfire and roasted marshmallows, blessedly deep sleep, then a lovely clear morning. We have now partaken of t!’s justifiably famous french toast (made with bread specially developed for this purpose by Jan), served with lashings of thick bacon and beer-boiled sausages. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate.

Yes, that was the weekend: food, relaxing, sun, friends, nothing much else. Cats, yes. Also Jack the dog. And several uninvited mosquitoes.

I slept horribly last night here at home.

This morning the boy and I cruised the local pet store for fun, then visited the Melange Magique for incense and to poke around at nifty other stuff. The boy went Tequila-hunting (smart cat hid from him a lot), played in the ‘tents’ (AKA the reader’s corners), and practised going down the stairs headfirst in a controlled fashion. Nightdemons even gave him a little coloured onyx egg of his very own. He would have chosen a blue one if he hadn’t discovered that one of the six year old girls he idolises would choose purple. Naturally, he instantly chose a purple one himself. I came home with light floral incenses to cheer me up in general and put a research book aside for later purchase. Lo and behold, upon our arrival back home, there in the mailbox was my first cheque from the freelance gig I began at the end of May, so huzzah! All the work I’ve been doing to get the damn money moving seems to be paying off (literally). Also not a huge cheque, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Last night I finished reading Ink & Steel, the first part of The Stratford Man duology by Elizabeth Bear. I’ve already geeked out on her journal about how excellent it was. I direct you to her website to read the available excerpted material and get yourself hooked. No, you don’t have to read Blood & Iron and Whiskey & Water to read Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth; they’re all part of the same universe but not in a serial fashion (beyond the loose duology of the first pair, and the definite duology of the second pair). Very, very worth reading. Bear continually astonishes me with her versatility and her ability to handle any genre at which she tries her hand. The heart of her success is most likely related to the fact that she writes a good story, about real characters with flaws and irrationalities as well as strengths, and makes it happen in a setting that has enough detail to create an entire atmosphere without going overboard. Also Elizabethan England, vile playwrights, and Faerie pretty much covers all the stuff I squee about, so when tied together, huzzah!

I have no idea what I’ll read next. The beginning of July was pretty much centred on Ink & Steel. Kind of like how my life in general can’t be planned beyond the Canada Day concert because I’m so focused on it during the months leading up to it, I hadn’t thought about what I’d read once I’d consumed Ink & Steel. Non-reading-schedule-wise, there’s a wedding to perform on Thursday, and I have a birthday coming up for which I’d like to do something but I’m so exhausted right now I can’t think of what I’d actually enjoy. Maybe just a Hurley’s thing, despite how crowded and loud it can get; if it’s my birthday I can leave whenever I like, after all. Except that necessitates babysitting, which I can’t afford. And I don’t want to have people over because that’s also exhausting on several levels, and although we all tend to forget it (including myself until I do something stupid) I do live with a chronic fatigue and pain syndrome. I just got off the phone with my mother, and she suggested a picnic in one of the local parks, an idea which has mountains of merit. I think I’ll talk that through with HRH tonight.