Climbing the Third Stair

It's been hard for me to keep up with online things because I still haven't had a chance to get my computer fixed. (I know, I know, first world problems, I'm not supposed to complain about things because I don't live in a war zone.)

I'm behind in all of my crochet projects, mostly because I've been dividing my at-home time between catching up on housework and laboring ineffectually at various writing projects. I'm doubly grumpy about the writing thing today because I've been reminded that I'm Not A Real Writer because I'm not interested in staying up way past my bedtime to get my writing in. I'm sorry, but I don't have a cushy desk job were I can sit in front of a computer the next day and pretend like I'm working. I'm either doing physical production or dealing with Being A Manager Who Has to Supervise People and both of these things require me getting sleep the previous night. Also I do not have now and never have had a muse.

At least I'm still crawling ahead on Latin; I finished chapter 4 (finally!) yesterday and will be moving on to chapter 5, which apparently will introduce plurals. I think that when I get through this textbook (the Cambridge Latin Course is divided between 4 books) I should reward myself with some more ink. I haven't decided now many bottles a Latin textbook is worth, but I still have 7 chapters to go so I have time to make up my mind.

Work would be fine except that I am suffering from a Problem which is so stressful it's eating away at me even when I'm at home trying to relax and has me fantasizing about calling in sick so that I don't have to deal with it. The situation is not going to go away and I suspect it is going to get worse before it gets better--I'm just hoping I'm not the person who makes it worse.

Valentine's Day is coming, so I get to spend the next week being reminded that I'm fat, unattractive, middle-aged, and alone. Thank you, greeting card and floral industries, for all you have done to improve my life. I would be tempted to buy myself something to cheer myself up (which of course is the entire point of Valentine's Day) but I went ahead and ordered myself some Dragon's Eye last week, which takes care of my discretionary spending for the month. I do still need to order some seeds, but it's hard to make growing vegetables feel like a splurge.

I got an amazing number of packages in the mail this week. It wasn't due to any organized plan on my part, that's just the way things happened. A few weeks ago I had placed an order for some perfume from BPAL and then made myself forget about it, because hand-blended perfume oils take time and there's no sense being anxious about it. Then Helen's book showed up on Amazon about the time I started lusting over the Devil May Cry anime set and hey, free shipping! What's a fan girl to do? Finally there were the Latin books I bought from a friend in the L5R community--if it's a book written in a dead language, it can't be considered a frivolous purchase, right?

I've watched some of the anime, heroically resisted sitting down and rereading FANG GIRL, and tried on one of the free imps included in my perfume order. (Seance, see below.) I haven't done anything with the Latin books yet, but it will be awhile before I am up to reading a book written entirely in Latin, even if it is just Winnie the Pooh. I really want to reread FANG GIRL, but that needs to wait for the weekend, when I have time. It will be a reward for getting the kitchen clean.

Seance: A mysterious, enigmatic blend of dry, mellow rosewood, crushed rose leaf and the slightest touch of warm hazel. I could smell a bit of the hazel in the bottle, but thankfully it pretty much went away on drydown. I don't mind nut-scents the way I mind fruit-scents, but I really prefer to not have them getting in the way of my florals. On my skin it was a really nice, subdued rose scent. For about two hours, after which it pretty much disappeared. I was most disappointed, because I was wondering if this was going to be a rival to London for a non-LE rose scent but with a short lifespan it won't be of much use to me.

First, some BPAL notes from the weekend:
Yggdrasil: smelled nice and piney in vitro, but on me it was somewhere between being lost in a forest and being drenched with Pinesol. Alas.
Nero: Love this stuff! Something resinous--rosemary or pine, I can't tell--with some citrus and other things I can't tease out. I tried to look up the scent notes on the BPAL site and discovered it appears to have been discontinued. Sob! I'll have to track down the scent notes somewhere and figure out if it has a reasonable substitute somewhere.
Maiden: a confused floral with a subdued carnation note. I am depressed that this one didn't work on me, because I really need (ok, want) a good carnation perfume and this one, with notes of white tea, carnation and Damask rose, sounded perfect on paper.

Meanwhile, today I managed to be even lazier than I was yesterday. Given how little I did yesterday I'm not sure how I managed this and still had a pulse, but whatever. My high point was cracking open my Latin textbook and restarting my study of that dead and noble language. When I started translating one of the reading passages I was cheered at how much I remembered of the vocabulary of the previous stages. I think I still need to be doing daily rounds of my flashcards, however. And as the stages roll on, I need to figure out a criteria for deciding when I know a word well enough that I can take its card out of the rotation. (Because honestly, pater, mater and canis are not difficult to remember.)

It was cloudy on and off all day without raining. I am very bitter about this. The only good thing coming out of my garden this year is a crop of volunteer sunflowers, which I left in place earlier when it became apparent that I wasn't going to be planting anything in their place. They are pretty and the birds are loving the seeds, so at least someone is getting food out of that land. I need to dig out my bird identification book to figure out what that cute little yellow-and-olive green bird I've been seeing is. Some kind of finch, I imagine, but after that I'm ignorant.