Trainless knitting, orange blossoms, and owls.

My bizarrely relaxing day.

So I get to the train station, still massively down, though not as bad as last night, and the train doesn't come, and the train doesn't come, and finally, after forty minutes, an incoherent message about a bus that won't come for another forty minutes comes up on the LED screen and I say screw it, it's cold and I'm tired, and call up Mum for a ride, and take the day off.

Last night, in between angsts, I went downstairs because I wanted to be near my mother, so she started me knitting again--for the first time in ages--on a square for an aphgan she and her knitting circle is making for charity. So I finished that this morning, and then, on a whim, and with my mother's enthusiastic help in picking yarn and colors and telling me what to do for edging and rambling about English schoolwear, started a Ravenclaw house scarf. Movie-style--palish blue and white, since it was darn hard to find bronze-looking yarn--wool, and slightly muted colors. I had forgotten how much I like knitting, and it came back very, very quickly.

Then Mum took me to the botanic garden a few towns over for lunch, in this elegant, expensive little cafe, and then we sat in the orangerie and knitted some more. Gorgeous place, a greenhouse in the middle of two feet of snow, filled with all sorts of plants jammed together more for beauty than botanic coherence, smelling of green growing things and orange blossoms. There was a screw pine, which was a fantastic spiraling palm-like plant with brilliant red edging (spiked, too) on its not-quite-leaves, and an absolutely gorgeous orange tree in full fruit--dark green leaves, and the whole tree was covered with tiny little oranges, a little more than an inch around, very colorful, very striking. Many, many pretty plants.

We mooched around in the gift shop a bit, and while Mum puttered in the books section, I surveyed their plushies. They had a fair selection of owls, and I found this adorable little barn owl, and wandered over to Mum holding him so he looked like he was perched on my hand--and I was wearing my long gray cloak (actually hers, but I borrow it in weather this bad because my other cloak isn't too heavy, only half-length, and doesn't have a hood--I need better cloakage). And she liked said owl so much she got him for me!

So when I finish my it, I'll probably spam LJ with pics of me with scarf and owl and cloak. Whee!

Got home and slept for two blessed hours. Woke up, ate dinner, knit some more while Mum attempted to introduce me to calculus (I'm taking a physics-for-poets sort of course next term, on relativity, and since I never got calculus, she wants me to have the theories before I start that), practiced piano some, with great successes if I dare say so myself.

I wonder if Mum's trying to cheer me up--she knows I'm angsting, she doesn't fully know about what (I don't think), and she tends to dismiss such things as pointless. We never talked about that, just about other things, pleasant things, and yarns, and what such-and-such a plant was. But I think she was, and I think she succeeded. I still want to cry, but in a peaceful sort of way, not out of desperation, just because.

They had this plaster bust in a hallway in the central building of the garden, and a little box of markers, and they'd told everybody to write their pet peeves on it. Somebody had written "not living in the moment." I think sometimes that I do live in the moment, most of the time. It's a concept I've cherished ever since I read Elfquest, and that was when I was what, ten? And I live so much in the moment that I get myself into serious trouble sometimes, failing to do things, forgetting things, putting them off because something is calling to me.

Right now, I'm not worrying about the time. I am planning to sleep soon, but I'm not worrying, and I should poke the kinky DE sex. DarkRose, you will get it--maybe tomorrow, maybe the next night. And awaiting me when I got home was the reply to my help request concerning my delayed fics: Slither and So Sayeth Death have been uploaded. You know what I want you to do. ;-)

I wonder how I'll hold up by tomorrow night, after another day of work. I'll probably be kicking myself come the last week or so of FWT, for having a day off and spending it doing nothing that I was supposed to do, and none of my personal projects; but if I can stay in this mood for the next few weeks, I will achieve mollusk-like levels of happiness. I'm still worried about the rest of FWT, and next term, and the summer, and my entire chance at surviving past college, but I don't have to worry about it right now.

I wish Mum would talk to me, but I don't even know where to begin anymore. Maybe I should try.

Last but most certainly not least: things I should have posted yesterday:

Happy Birthday, darkrosetiger!

(and many moooooooooooooore)

Welcome to LJ, fersevis!

(Stranger to most of the fiends: another Myst person--often reluctantly known as Achysan--who's reaping the benefits of my paid account.)