I woke up today feeling overwhelmingly sad, due to various converging, contributing factors. An emotional crash.
So I decided to take myself off to my favourite coffee house in Norwich, Expresso's, and take my laptop and books and get back to work.
It absolutely did the trick. I soon felt re-set and relieved to be able to work again.
Hagos left me his camera to use while he is away on this bit of his tour and I took a few photos in Expresso's, including the one above of the wallpaper. I don't like cows at all, but I like the colour of the wallpaper and I like designer wallpaper very much. 
I love this grainy black and white photo.
So, for the rest of the day I plan to: cycle, read, and write.
I've been missing Meg's company very much the last couple of weeks. Straight after breakfast she goes into my shed and sleeps on my swivel chair all day long. Yesterday I bought her a new bed for downstairs, and also a matching igloo bed for upstairs. She totally ignored both of them, until I set the igloo bed right in front of her as she was miaowing to be let out the top window last night. She climbed straight into it, lay down, and purred very deeply! I was really pleased. Today again she's shown no interest in either, and she ran away from me when I tried to take her back to bed with me this morning after the postman had been. I hope she's okay.
Due to one thing, and another, (and another), I've been thinking lately about life and death and the scan of an entire life, and genetics, inheritance, and conditioning, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
ANYWAY, after a week and a half of living life in bite-size chunks today I decided to look forward to things I am looking forward to :)
I loved The Time Traveler's Wife, and I used to live overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London, so I'm looking forward to reading Audrey Niffenegger's new book Her Fearful Symmetry (about twins who inherit a flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery).
And to Sadie Jones's new book Small Wars. (I do hate when publishers refer to previous titles on the cover of new titles though. I think book covers should be conceived and designed totally around themselves.)
And closer in time, I'm looking forward to sewing together my dress, made from material I bought at IKEA. I think the material was £3.50 a metre, which will make the dress about £5 in total :)
And every day I look forward to seeing how my tubs of potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, beetroot, and carrots are developing.
I'm fairly confident no one else in the world will have a Sat Nav case quite like mine.
I refused to pay £20 for a shop bought one, when I can make one myself!
And what better time to make it but 11 o'clock at night, at the end of a long day and a long week, with a challenging few days ahead. No wonder my imagined case was slightly different to the real one. No matter, I just top-stitched up the sides to sew it together (I'd forgotten that tiny detail when doing all my inside-out wonders).
The material is Amy Butler, the design is kind of based on SouleMama's Gratitude Wrap (sorry, too late at night to attempt a link), and the ribbon is antique pink silk.
Not sure if it's quite what my husband had in mind when he suggested I make one.
I went to the garden centre today, and was struck by how beautiful these flowers were every time I walked past. I was pleased to discover they are dahlias, and they reminded me of one of my favourite TV series, Jeeves and Wooster. Wooster has an aunt Dahlia, and at one point they are scheming together to get Dahlia's husband Tom to give her more money for the ladies magazine she publishes. Wooster: "He'll say, 'Dahlia darling.'
He does call you Dahlia, doesn't he?"
So, along with the dahlia I bought some jalapeno peppers.
My tomato plants are bursting forth with tomatoes!!!
And today I also bought carrot seeds and beetroot seeds! I feel very out of my depth planting these. I really have no idea if I've done them correctly or not. I guess we'll see!
I've known for years that when I feel stressed or un-grounded I turn to knitting. It steadies and comforts me. And now I think I've found another steadying and comforting thing to do: gardening. I'm very small scale (a courgette plant, a potato plant and a tomato pot until today) but I really love looking after my plants, watching them grow and flower and bear fruit. And then, where appropriate, eating them!
Talking of knitting, I have a couple of things to show, but I'll leave that for another day.
It's been a hectic few days. I can barely keep up with my own, and Hagos's, schedule.
Today I got up at 7am, washed, cleaned the car, had breakfast, drove to Stansted, then sat for a few delicious moments at International Arrivals with some easy knitting and a MOCHA, waiting for Hagos and Roger to appear.
After dropping Roger in Norwich, we drove home via Halfords and picked up a proper TomTom :) and a BICYCLE BASKET!
This is me taking my basket for a test drive early this evening. I picked up the first things that came to hand to put in it: two love heart ice cube trays and my winter hat and scarf.
The next week and a half will be even more hectic for me. I'm hoping to drive to Scotland from Thursday to Sunday, and to London Monday to Tuesday, and then life should hopefully return to a more peaceful pace after that.
There are certain things I look forward to every year. In May the bush outside our kitchen window is taken over with gorgeous bees for the whole month. They hum and buzz all day long and I love watching them through the window as they go from tiny flower to tiny flower, wiggling their bums, covered in pollen.
And then there are the hollyhocks, which are giant flowers and take over the whole town. I love the range of colours, particularly one smoky tobacco clump that grows in the centre of town.
We mainly have varying shades of pink, but we have this one clump of yellow too.
I'm feeling much more energetic again. I think I had a bug last weekend. I slept for six hours on the couch on both Saturday and Sunday.
When I got home from work last night (after dropping Hagos at the airport) I heavily pruned the bee bush in front of the kitchen window (I always wait until the bees are finished with it for the year, of course) as the bush was beginning to come inside the house every time we opened the door. And when it had been raining you would be showered with raindrops, leaves and spiders. So, that is finally tidy and we can see out of the windows again. And I also, after speaking with my sister about electrical goods that go faulty (washing machines, fridge freezers etc) managed to take out and CLEAN the drawer in my washing machine where the liquids go. It was totally bunged up and took a good fifteen minutes to clean, but now it's working beautifully.
Today I watched the women's Wimbledon final - all a bit disappointing after Murray was knocked out last night. I SO wanted him to be in the final tomorrow. I really thought he would have a chance against Federer. Anyway, the Williams sisters playing each other doesn't hold any suspense for me at all. Now I'm planning to continue putting the house to rights, go for a bike ride and then settle down to watch a bit of telly later on tonight.
Meg has been a bit more sociable today. She has been almost entirely living in my shed for the past week. I open the door for her in the morning and she either sleeps on my swivel chair, or on a blanket on my desk. It makes working in there a wee bit difficult because if I make a noise or move around too much she lifts her head and LOOKS at me. And I get the full meaning of the look. Wee gorgeous.
I woke up today feeling overwhelmingly sad, due to various converging, contributing factors. An emotional crash.
Hagos left me his camera to use while he is away on this bit of his tour and I took a few photos in Expresso's, including the one above of the wallpaper. I don't like cows at all, but I like the colour of the wallpaper and I like designer wallpaper very much. 
I love this grainy black and white photo.
