It occurred to me as I pulled into the driveway last night that I should assign myself lines to write. Something along the idea of, I will not listen to ‘Jack Sparrow’ with volume set at 22 while driving through construction zones at night on the way home from orchestra. A hundred times or so.

Slept horribly again, and Liam is fractious. So naturally, HRH was called in to replace someone at work today. We made pancakes together after he left; Liam stirred. There is currently a movie playing, because I am weak of will this morning and can’t keep up with him, and I have things to do.

There are a pile of things to do before Sunday. Like figure out what people are eating, find a good cake recipe, find a good frosting recipe (which is even more important, and no, I’ve never found one I’m completely happy with)… appropriate wrapping paper would be good, too. Ingredients for whatever I decide to make need to be purchased. I still haven’t found a cake board, and I don’t particularly feel like cutting up one of our good strong moving boxes to make one. I did find a new cake pan, but not as big as I was hoping for. I’ll double the cake batter and make cupcakes as well to be sure to have enough. I had intended to send some over to daycare on Monday on the actual birthday anyhow, along with streamers and balloons and such; might as well be a full batch instead of the half I was thinking of making.

Today I learned how to make my printer print much much faster (yes, it took me a year to find the fast draft mode). I thought I’d figured out how to do manual duplex printing too, but the printer out-thought me. It seems I have to select the option both in the Word print options and the ‘advanced’ printer options for it actually work. Now I have a two-hundred page document to edit that I was hoping would only use one hundred pages, and of course I forgot to paginate it. Yesterday I bought a photo ink cartridge, and discovered only after I’d gotten home that it replaces the black cartridge, not the dangerously-low-on-ink colour cartridge, so I only got another half-dozen photos printed before the regular colour ink gave out entirely.

On the other hand, I picked up an excellent selection of summer tops and two skirts yesterday as well, so I can throw out all the t-shirts that have somehow developed microscopic holes in them. I still don’t own a pair of shorts, which is fine with me.

I wrote eight hundred and something words yesterday. Granted, they were slightly expanded transcription from handwritten notes in a notebook, but it counts. My record sheet tells me that I haven’t put a single word into Swan Sister since early February, which sounds about right. That would be when I had to stop because there was a huge gap between everything I’d plotted and the outlined ending, a gap I didn’t think was as big as it was until I got there and couldn’t see the other side, as I’d expected to.

All right. Into the living room to keep the boy company. I will read with sticky notes and a pencil while he watches Buzz Lightyear, his favourite movie character these days.