strings of lights above the bed
Today I put fairy lights up all around my bedroom. I have had no end up trouble getting them to stay up there -- the sticky bits on the backs of the hooks keep coming loose and then strings of lights go tumbling down -- but they look very magical, twinkling up there, especially earlier, in the dusk-light, looking out the window and seeing shadowy clouds behind the one great leafless tree that spreads over the panorama out my window. I love the view out my window: it seems so beautifully arranged, like a picture, the way the tree is positioned, and the Presbyterian church across the street, and the pumpkin patch at the preschool next door. Once I woke to find a brightly coloured bird sitting very visibly in the tree, the tree I want to call my tree although it isn't even in our yard and isn't really all that close to the window, just visible from it from all angles.
Speaking of the view outside, and the pumpkin patch -- Bartholomew, our black cat, has become the pumpkin patch's mascot. Because he is a cat, and a particularly vain one even by cat standards, he has been going over there every day, lurking amidst the pumpkins and curling up by the sign and generally looking as though he's a purposeful part of the display. The preschoolers are apparently in love with him. I was told by the lady selling pumpkins that Bartholomew had caught a mouse in the backyard several days ago and was playing with it, tossing it in the air, as he will do (he is a great scourge of wildlife wherever he lives) -- and a whole flock of wee kidlets were pressed up against the preschool window, watching him with delight. Morbid creatures! This afternoon a little five-year-old girl came running up to me as I was getting the last of Mum's groceries out of the car, her curls bouncing, and presented me with a pumpkin: the lady behind the table, who I believe was the little girl's mother, had painted up a pumpkin for us, beautifully, with Bartholomew licking his paws, and the pumpkin patch, and it said BARTHOLOMEW, THE PUMPKIN PATCH CAT. Which may be the sweetest thing ever, and it is now sitting in a place of honour on the front porch. Of course now the ridiculous cat will only get all the more vain. (I have some pictures of him which I will have to put up soon, once I get one of the pumpkin.)
Anyway, my bedroom is nearly set to rights -- and also nearly ready to be photographed for you eager lot. My very pretty Victorian-wallpaper message board is on the wall, and while it was bare for quite some time, it is now full of postcards. I got one from barefoottomboy two days ago, and this morning two from England -- one from lady_moriel and another from midenianscholar. So I look cheery and cultured and suchlike, and I love having Reminders of People where I can see them. (I have also stuck up the business card my Future Employer gave me, so that just the half shows that says Waldenbooks on it, because I am silly & sentimental. My job training is in three days!!)
Today was actually Not A Good Day, mentally. I keep feeling restless and sort of wretched and have to keep making myself busy so I don't feel so listless and wrong-headed. And I have this low feeling of dread or nagging worry or something; the sort of awful feeling you get when there is a Very Bad Thing you cannot change, or something that is about to happen that will be a Very Bad Thing, or something very important you have left undone, not a thing that will be Inconvenient, but a thing that will Hurt. Only I can't find the cause, so I keep trying to be busy instead, because that helps a little. I've been trying to work out causes from all the tangle of messy, barely rational emotion lately -- I am beginning to get a little better at, instead of brooding endlessly about something, or brooding endlessly about nothing, trying to find the reason for the bad-feeling instead, and trying to rationalise it away, or do the thing I left undone that is bothering me so. It works sometimes, anyway. So that is why I put up the lights, and finished my closet organising, and did some straightening about the house, and things.
I do need more posters and things however. Must get to work on that collage for the door, only I haven't actually found any magazines yet. Perhaps I can see if the library will give me any for free.
Oh, also, I have a Thing tomorrow -- a church that our church is sort of affiliated with is having a Halloween Alternative (...yes. two weeks before Halloween. sigh.), and I am singing at it, because this one bloke who does music there was at My First Gig and...kind of likes me a lot, I suppose. So he invited me. I think there may be food, and possibly a bonfire? I am sort of looking forward to it -- celebration of autumnery! -- but also it is one of those things that my brain only barely registers until it is actually happening. Odd how that works. Perhaps it is only my brain. Then again it has only been me recently in the last year or two that has been so botheringly disconnected from nearly everything.
Speaking of the view outside, and the pumpkin patch -- Bartholomew, our black cat, has become the pumpkin patch's mascot. Because he is a cat, and a particularly vain one even by cat standards, he has been going over there every day, lurking amidst the pumpkins and curling up by the sign and generally looking as though he's a purposeful part of the display. The preschoolers are apparently in love with him. I was told by the lady selling pumpkins that Bartholomew had caught a mouse in the backyard several days ago and was playing with it, tossing it in the air, as he will do (he is a great scourge of wildlife wherever he lives) -- and a whole flock of wee kidlets were pressed up against the preschool window, watching him with delight. Morbid creatures! This afternoon a little five-year-old girl came running up to me as I was getting the last of Mum's groceries out of the car, her curls bouncing, and presented me with a pumpkin: the lady behind the table, who I believe was the little girl's mother, had painted up a pumpkin for us, beautifully, with Bartholomew licking his paws, and the pumpkin patch, and it said BARTHOLOMEW, THE PUMPKIN PATCH CAT. Which may be the sweetest thing ever, and it is now sitting in a place of honour on the front porch. Of course now the ridiculous cat will only get all the more vain. (I have some pictures of him which I will have to put up soon, once I get one of the pumpkin.)
Anyway, my bedroom is nearly set to rights -- and also nearly ready to be photographed for you eager lot. My very pretty Victorian-wallpaper message board is on the wall, and while it was bare for quite some time, it is now full of postcards. I got one from barefoottomboy two days ago, and this morning two from England -- one from lady_moriel and another from midenianscholar. So I look cheery and cultured and suchlike, and I love having Reminders of People where I can see them. (I have also stuck up the business card my Future Employer gave me, so that just the half shows that says Waldenbooks on it, because I am silly & sentimental. My job training is in three days!!)
Today was actually Not A Good Day, mentally. I keep feeling restless and sort of wretched and have to keep making myself busy so I don't feel so listless and wrong-headed. And I have this low feeling of dread or nagging worry or something; the sort of awful feeling you get when there is a Very Bad Thing you cannot change, or something that is about to happen that will be a Very Bad Thing, or something very important you have left undone, not a thing that will be Inconvenient, but a thing that will Hurt. Only I can't find the cause, so I keep trying to be busy instead, because that helps a little. I've been trying to work out causes from all the tangle of messy, barely rational emotion lately -- I am beginning to get a little better at, instead of brooding endlessly about something, or brooding endlessly about nothing, trying to find the reason for the bad-feeling instead, and trying to rationalise it away, or do the thing I left undone that is bothering me so. It works sometimes, anyway. So that is why I put up the lights, and finished my closet organising, and did some straightening about the house, and things.
I do need more posters and things however. Must get to work on that collage for the door, only I haven't actually found any magazines yet. Perhaps I can see if the library will give me any for free.
Oh, also, I have a Thing tomorrow -- a church that our church is sort of affiliated with is having a Halloween Alternative (...yes. two weeks before Halloween. sigh.), and I am singing at it, because this one bloke who does music there was at My First Gig and...kind of likes me a lot, I suppose. So he invited me. I think there may be food, and possibly a bonfire? I am sort of looking forward to it -- celebration of autumnery! -- but also it is one of those things that my brain only barely registers until it is actually happening. Odd how that works. Perhaps it is only my brain. Then again it has only been me recently in the last year or two that has been so botheringly disconnected from nearly everything.