Last night was the first real paint-the-ground-white snow.  I always forget how the sky turns lavender on these nights.  The little flakes settle on my tongue when I step outside, clusters dance in the wash of streetlamps, everything gets hushed, even the sirens, even the dogs barking, even the noisy neighbors upstairs who seem to know precisely the moment I begin to fall asleep and start slamming drawers shut.  But not on the night of first snow.

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Have a slight aching. Today is a day full of rain and wild wind; the weekend seems to be going too fast, yet the time, the time is going too slow; how can this be? I like to think of this time as my penance for being happy; yet I know I only think of it this way because I want things to have balance and for there to be some kind of perverse, but forgiving, justice in the world. Still it is comfort enough, on a cold day, to look outside at the brown leaves crumbling from the tree, to shiver and sink deeper into the duvet, to ponder not getting up at all, this day—and then to bring one’s mind back to the great happiness harbored in one’s heart. It thaws the body out, a bit.

It is always on days like this that you run out of milk. The day when the only thing you can do, if you’ve got any sense, is stay inside close to the heater and listen to jazz (cheery jazz—of the 1930s big band variety, primarily, though Brett Dennen does me well too, if I feel like having a voice in the house.) with cup after cup of tea.

Thesis presentation next week. I’ve completely neglected my thesis, to be honest. Now I feel the weight of it bearing down on my shoulders—I spent all summer using it as an excuse to do nothing else, but read and write and be merry in the evenings, but my accomplishments to date seem meager compared with what I still have left to do. I MUST get something done today. On that note, (a spark of inspiration??) I shall away to try to remember what it was I meant to explore in the first place, and then, with any luck, get things done.

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My figurative cup of tea was better than I could have hoped. So good, in fact, that I forwent the second actual cup of tea, got my butt out of the house, and enjoyed the day (which was a really very fine one, though a bit warm—a warmth, in fact, that smacked confusingly of spring). Am feeling muchly restored.

Have also been informed that googling “creature of perpetual worrying” brings me (well, my blog, anyhow) to the top of the results. Appropriate, isn’t it?

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Two cups of figurative AND literal tea. I don’t know when this started, but it’s my cure-all. What is it, do you think? Is it as simple as the fact that it’s hot? I’m inclined to think it’s more the ritual of it: the motions, listening to the kettle bubble, splashing milk, dipping fingers into the cup to get the teabag, sitting down and smelling the liquid, sipping idly. Soothing, and wonderfully banal. So today I want at least two cups of tea, for stomach and soul, before I venture out into the world.

I’m feeling, you see, really, frightfully self-indulgent today. And in fact quite miserable. Not in an unfixable down-in-the-dumps kind of way so much as in an existential-crisis sort of way, which is better, because it stems, I know, from thinking too much, so if I know what’s good for me I’ll do things that keep me from thinking too much, like running and reading and the like. The only problem with reading is that every two pages or so I look up and apply what I’ve just read to my own life, with the result that I think doubly as hard as I would if I wasn’t reading (just imagine trying to apply Gaudy Night to your own ultra-modern life, and your head will boggle, I promise).

Have finished cup #1 now. So must go off to make #2. Sadly it’s a beautiful day outside, so I must go and enjoy it. If it was raining hard, or better yet, snowing (yes, stranger things have happened in Boston than snow in October, I’m sure), I could justify staying inside all day, steeling myself against the world, having, say, four or even five cups of tea, reading my entire book, and taking a long nap. As it is I think I shall have to put on dark glasses and face what looks, from my window, like a perfectly gorgeous fall day. Poor little me, eh?

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It’s a strange day here. Hot, raining, raining, raining. The air is so thick with rain that it’s hard to breathe. Even when it stopped pouring for a few hours earlier I could feel the moisture gathering in my lungs. It’s a relief to step inside, where it’s dry, and cool, and the air feels fresh (ish).

Have discovered that the best thing to do when I start feeling really, deeply mopey is to get myself up off the floor (quite literally: this has become my favorite curl-up-and-read/feel-sorry-for-myself spot…a patch of rug near the wall where I’ve set up a few blankets), do some dishes, and cook myself some food. It’s a struggle, but it helps. I very nearly crawled straight upstairs to bed at about 8 PM, but something in me said: no, that’s not going to help, and you know, it wouldn’t have. Soup and asparagus, however, and all my spoons and forks drying in the rack, have cheered me greatly.

I love hearing the rain beating down outside. Especially when I can sit and read with a cup of tea. Which I shall be making forthwith.

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