I have an over abundance of guilt. I make myself do things I don’t feel like doing because I feel like I ought to do them. Then after I’ve done them, I get to feel smug. I hate feeling smug, I can’t do anything with it.

Anyway, yesterday, I got up, relaxed and had breakfast while watching Gilmore Girls, lazed some more. Decided I’d best get a move on, so I cleaned the dressing room. In the process, I found a very thick layer of dust under the clothes rack and decided that if I had to move it to vacuum, I might as well move it somewhere else. So I swapped the dresser and the rack over and now the room feels much bigger and not half as cluttered. I tidied away all sorts of things, wiped everything down and even washed the window. Felt 10x better after that since I’d missed cleaning the room on Wednesday. Enter smug.

So then as I’d earned it, I spent the rest of the day watching Gilmore Girls. I meant to do some gardening, but Weasel went out, it was quiet, I didn’t feel like doing anything else really, so I decided to do what I wanted to do.

Of course this then made me feel guilty today, so I again had leisurely breakfast over Gilmore Girls, then just before noon I headed out to the garden. I worked until my hands hated me [aka 2:15]. The bits I did look great, the problem now is that it looks like its parents hated it. If our garden had to go to school with other gardens, it would be the one that gets beaten up for the crappy haircut and pushed in the mud because it has two mommies. Evidence:

The poor thing. I figure the rest of the garden will take me another 10-15 hours. After I’ve removed the weeds, I’m putting down wood chips. This in theory will help reduce the weeds and help keep the ground moist. Having a garden is hard work. Also need to mow the lawn.Tomorrow we’re off to the market at St Ives [seven cats], it’ll be fun. I’ve only been once before, but I enjoyed it. Hoping to find a replacement adjustable measuring spoon. This is good because then I won’t be tempted to watch yet more Gilmore Girls. Doodle lent me the boxsets and I’ve been working through them at a very mad pace. I’m just starting season five. They’re showing six on TV in the States at the moment, so hopefully I can get a drip feed from there once I’ve caught up. I always want to know what’s going to happen next. I get impatient. Other good TV news is that Alias season five is finally back! And sweet jesus, they’ve done some amazing things so far, very excited for the conclusion!

Horatio is visiting this weekend. He arrives on Thursday night so we get three days together this time. I’m really excited for this one. Our last two visits had huge events in the middle [his Dad's wedding, my birthday party], so I miss him like crazy. His birthday is on 11th May so I’m using this weekend to spoil him suitably.

Oh, band practice, we had a chat and thankfully the more structure please talk went over really well. We actually made a lot of progress. In fact, one song went from having words and a guitar part only to having a different guitar part and a bass and vocal line. It was one of the best song moments we’ve had in ages. We also realised that I have to figure out how to sing in a sleazy manner. Weasel says my sound is ‘pure, probably from the choral training’ but I think she’s just being nice, my voice is very samey and everything is pronounced properly. So I’ve been trying to find examples of women singing in a sleazy way so I can mimic them to see how it should feel, but the sleaze is few and far between amongst my CDs. I’ve got a few leads, but if anyone has any suggestions please send them through.

Finally, I took the, ‘How are you in bed?‘ quiz. The results weren’t that surprising.

You scored as Sex God. You are a master at sex. You make your partner weak in the knees, and you know it. You’ve had the practice, and you’ve read the books, but don’t get too cocky (pun intended) or you’ll get put into place.

Sex God	90%
A Slave To BDSM	90%
A Romantic	60%
Virgin	25%

Yesterday Weasel’s Dad and I went to a super fancy garden to see the hyacinths. They’re so lovely, and they smell like heaven. And this garden has a whole formal thing dedicated to them. I’ve been bothering people for weeks to please get me to them. Stoat & Mal have a membership with the National Trust, says clearly on it Mr & Mrs. Anyway, Stoat and I got there, and he showed them the card and they let us both in. So this means:

1. I’m clearly suitable trophy wife material
2. I look a lot older than I think I do
3. Stoat looks a lot younger than we think he does
4. The ticket guy just didn’t care

I’m not sure which one I’m rooting for… number two is my least favourite. Anyway, some great photos: panoramic shot of most of the garden, up close and sooo pretty and loads of them together.

The smell was amazing, we could smell them from the path before you hit the garden. I wish all my air always smelled of hyacinths. So excellent.

This of course ate up two hours of my day, and the gym plus this walk and a trip to Budgens with Weasel meant I was exhausted. So I lazed around and didn’t clean the dressing room. The two batches of laundry I did didn’t help the mess. I still have a suitcase on the floor from my trip to Horatio’s Dad’s wedding [March 24th]. This is beyond me. So my goal is to sort it tomorrow.

Doodle’s coming over for band practice, so tomorrow I have to make sure I make the what’s-left-to-do-on-each-song list. We need to get some focus. We usually just follow our moods and end up skipping around a lot without accomplishing anything. I haven’t said anything because this was supposed to be a fun thing for us to do since Doodle and I are gloomy sorts who don’t really have much fun. Unfortunately, by having no structure, the fun is leaving for me and I frequently feel bored. So hopefully we’ll read the list and come up with a shiny compromise. Weasel said she’d appreciate more structure too so hopefully this means she’ll come play with us more.

You know how I realised that the reason I was tired/lacking energy/generally grumpy was because I wasn’t getting enough sleep? Well, it also turns out that my sluggishness in the morning was because I wasn’t getting enough sleep too. In my work times spreadsheet, I consistently started around 8:50/9:00 instead of my target time of 8:30. This week, I’ve managed 8:30 twice.

Hoping this whole getting-the-sleep-I-need will continue to have pleasant knock on effects.

Weasel and I like to watch various TV shows, animes, movies and sometimes gigs while eating our dinner of an evening. Recently, we started in on Bleach, a much hyped anime that I knew next to nothing about, but I’m pretty easy going when it comes to these things.

We’re eight episodes in and the cheese has increased to an almost unbearable level. The dialogue is predictable with me saying lines mere seconds before the characters. The opening theme is frightening and the closing theme makes me want to set my ears on fire.

I’ve decided if it doesn’t improve rapidly in the next few episodes I’m out.

I actually had time to play some Sims the other day, so I fired it up and went to my usual neighbourhood, spent about 30 minutes moving between regular town/college town/down town and the other part trying to find a couple that I’d misplaced. I never found them and then I was all sad cause my little family was gone. So I decided to move to another town and start again, got there, it asked me to attach a down town area to it and then it crashed. All told the whole exercise probably took an hour, after that I decided I’d rather watch more Gilmore Girls so I gave up.

Suspect then that we have moved away from a lack of time issue to more of a lack of interest with a pinch of lack of time. I probably play weirdly or something, I want to have an attachment of some sort with the family so I tend to make my own from scratch and in Sims2 there are so many options it takes ages to pick the right one. Then I have to pick the right house, and very often that means moving in somewhere, saving, money cheat, moving out and then moving into the right house. Then I have to re-decorate because the default floors and walls rarely match, then comes the buying of furniture, replacing doors and windows to make the best of the room etc. etc. etc. But once I’m all set up, I like it.

Perhaps on Wednesday after the gym and cleaning the dressing room. I’ve decided rather than beating myself up over the state of the house, I’d focus my beating energies on one section of the house. This time it is the dressing room. If I’m more systematic about the whole thing, I won’t become apathetic and give up.

I love watching the London Marathon on TV. I’m not a huge sports fan, but the Marathon is something else. I just turned it on and the women have just started, and the BBC switched to helicopter cam. Then I remembered how much I love the BBC for things like that. And now I have a warm fluffy glow.

I think I might have finally figured out what’s ‘wrong’ with me, why I’ve been so tired, why I have no energy, I was simply sleep deprived. I’ve managed to get eight or more hours of sleep for the last three nights and I feel more like me today than I have in months. I’m going to have to figure out how to rearrange my schedule so I can be asleep by 10:30.

Today was actually pretty good.

• I finished proofreading Horatio’s dissertation finally and sent it over to him.
• I had very yummy breakfast of blueberry pancakes with Weasel and Doodle. He spent the night last night after band practice.
• While I was cleaning on Friday I realised how much I wanted to move the bed but the only other wall I could put it against has the radiator on so we need to find a headboard. I found one I really loved, unfortunately it costs £200, so I kept looking and I lucked out and found it for £130. I might be able to order it in June.
• We went to see Tristan & Isolde at 12:30, I didn’t really care for it. I don’t know the historical story behind it, but sweet jesus they were nubs. If you’re having a secret affair, at least wait a day after you’re crowned queen to continue your affair.
• On the way home, we were delighted to see that a Mexican restaurant has opened in the leisure centre, Weasel and I are going for lunch tomorrow.
• Then proceeded to chill for a while over lunch/Gilmore Girls/colouring book, very nice.
• Finally, with the lovely light evenings we have now, I asked Weasel to help me mow the lawn. We worked for about an hour and a half and got everything tidied up.

And tonight, I finally decided about the forum and I went back. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be, thankfully no one seemed to notice I was gone. While I was gone, I realised that I have a great potential to be alone, I’m not a very social creature [see crippling back pain] so if I have a place online where I can see a group of people I generally like I should hold on to it. Additionally, I’m removing the pressure I created for myself about it. I’m not going to visit every single day, I shall go when I have time or when I feel so inclined. Then when I am there, it won’t feel like a chore, but a pleasure.

Perhaps some part of me was lacking drama so decided to knock everything I know and love out of focus for the last two months, just to keep me on my toes. God, I hope it is settling back down now.

Happy things coming up: Horatio and I get four days and three nights together in May, nice timing so we can celebrate his 22nd birthday in style [May 11th]. Horatio’s Mum is going on holiday for two weeks in June so I’ll get to go see him for five days and four nights. This is a very nice change since we normally get two nights and days [i.e. Friday pm to Sunday pm].

Overall, guess I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I like having things I can do to solve problems, I hate just waiting and thinking.