Freckles & Doubt

Curse that Friendly Psychologist's Internet Romance. He does this thing to pork spare ribs where they're rubbed, smoked, baked, basted and braaied, and the meat falls off the bone in incredibly flavourful shards, and then I eat way too much of them, in the company of slightly too much gin, giggling and DIY crème brulée, and can't sleep properly. I must have lain awake for about four hours last night, while random thoughts chased through my head and the cat chased a cockroach round and round the room, dear little psycho that she is. (She left the corpse in my slipper this morning, although it was only playing dead and when I tipped it out, scuttled off to dig in under an unidentified piece of furniture, presumably with machine-gun nests and a concrete bunker. Joy).

Of course, the insomnia could also be knock-on effect from having been dosed to the nines on painkillers the previous night, which leads my system to expect soothing sleep-enablers and get all petulant when they don't materialise. (And that, my chickabiddies, is why I don't do drugs. My nastily dependent little system can get its habit-forming kicks from Earl Grey, Lindt 70% and occasional codeine on a strict ration, and damned well like it. They're all quite expensive enough).

Anyway, a bit out of it today on account of sleep-deprivation, tending to drift around vaguely and bump into things. I've also spent all afternoon sitting at home waiting for the delivery of new cupboards for my bedroom, which of course failed to materialise, hiss spit, but nonetheless lent the whole afternoon a curiously provisional status. This is particularly annoying as I really needed to sally forth this afternoon in search of one of those nifty IPod belt clips, as currently the beastly thing tends to leap madly out of my tracksuit pocket when I'm rowing and slither frantically across the carpet, bound for parts unknown, and followed by a faint, tinny trail of Belle & Sebastian.

B5 has also failed to arrive today, putting us at T-2 and far from sanguine. On the upside, the Telkom gremlins have actually reconnected the phone, so it's once more safe to essay the landline. Just don't expect actual conversation.

Bunny Threat Level: no actual change, on account of vagueness, curriculum advice and thing. However, wolverine_nun handed in her PhD thesis today. Huzzahs! and I consider myself Challenged, TM. *glares threateningly at bunny*

I honestly cannot seem to get my subconscious out of Zimbabwe, and I still can't work out what these dreams are trying to tell me. Most recently it was a particularly surreal post-apocalyptic dream-Zimbabwe, with a pitiful remnant of survivors picking through the massive, brooding ruins of the city while mist wreathed their ankles and strange things threatened from the dark. Once again I was in my grandmother's house, although this time with half the furniture missing. The apocalyptic bit is clearly a straightforward reflection of the country's current disaster state, but why the preoccupation with the grandparents' house? Too odd.

Not enjoying this weather. I'm always slow and stupid in the heat, which is not helping this chapter much, although I think some kind of new, improved version is slowly emerging from the mass of verbiage and cobbled-over logic holes. In a vague, hopeless attempt to dilute this endless sunshine, here's a cloud. A metatextual word cloud, thus encapsulating several obsessions. Note the importance of tea, cats, moles and chocolate consumption.

Atishoo! Much sneezing caused by a sudden cleaning frenzy, as I attempted to rearrange my study so that a portion, at least, of my desk is visible. This is not so much work avoidance as the result of spending two days updating my online course outlines and bibliographies, which entails much nit-picky chasing down of thrice-dratted misplaced HTML codes. I am forced to erupt into mindless energy after discovering, having coded for five hours straight, that my tea levels are dangerously low, my brain is a soft, cheesy substance, and all the blood in my veins has congealed.

L-space management strategy has been applied as follows. An hour's frenzied activity with one ladder, two cats, a chair, several cups of Earl Grey and great tottering piles of books, has relocated all my seldom-consulted medieval history to the top shelf where they are only accessible by a ladder or levitation. (Since either entails the expenditure of much effort and energy, I think I shall have to invest in a small crossbow and a bunch of bolts with suckers and twine, so I can shoot desired volumes and pull them down. A miniature catapult on my desk will return them to place. Bookshelf crises are always avertable by being creative. Alternative suggestions welcome, however. I've already thought of the Elastigirl one of extending a rubber neck to grab them in my teeth, and my neck is stiff and ain't co-operating.)

At any rate, this has freed up enough shelf space to actually shelve the (count them) 22 volumes that were piled on my desk (mostly film genre studies, fan culture and postmodernism), and has incidentally revealed the following:

• I apparently own a complete three-volume set of the Paston letters. I have no recollection of acquiring this at any point.
• My little skinny book on filet crochet is not, in fact, lost, although upon discovering it I was conscious of the feeling that I rather wish it were.
• Undisturbed shelves of books pick up completely ridiculous quantities of dust, not to mention small wriggly fish-moth thingies, paperclips, random bits of paper from other people's lives, and miniature alternate dimensions.
• My collection of post-1700 fairy tales is 1.67m long, or approximately as tall as I am.

Tomorrow will be frenetic and, like today, marked by the complete absence of progress on the Tolkien paper. I have to see starmadeshadow off at the airport, choose books for the bookclub and cook supper for 8 people. I have also incautiously signed up for a seminar on blogging and African development on Friday, possibly in the same approximate spirit as a hairshirt-wearing monk, which will nicely complement choosing South African novels with wolverine_nun in the afternoon. After the staff meeting. *runs screaming into the night*.