Feeling blue

I don’t know about other people but when I am feeling blue I make myself work. For me it’s usually the quickest way to feeling more cheerful. When I was a child burying myself in a book always helped when I was miserable. I think I read my way through several libraries’ worth of books whenever I went back to boarding school. Now, I still love to read, but I feel guilty when I let myself disappear into a book. Guilt compounded with misery with a dash of grumpiness is not a good combination.

Yesterday I ended up writing myself cheerful although I could hear the voice of one of my high school English teachers at the back of my head. “You write very well, but there’s something just a bit too slick about your work.” I squashed that voice back into the miasma of teenage angst where it belonged and managed to work out how the Jaeckels first hear about Queensland and start thinking about the idea of going there themselves. It wasn’t a long section of the book, but it was a significant one. More importantly to me I was moving forward on the book and that always cheers me up.

The other thing that brightened my week was that the stumpers finally finished up today. After arriving on Monday and promising to be done that day, they have been here for part of every day this week. When I left this morning to take the children to school and then get groceries, they were under the house welding the cross-struts to the steel stumps. When I returned, they had left with the work finished. Although the site is awash in mud and littered with bits of steel, cigarette butts, pieces of wood and wire, these are all things that can be taken care of. Monday and Tuesday next week the roofer is meant to be here finishing off the gutters and roof tiedowns then it’s up to us and the builder. And that as they say, is a story for another day.