Yesterday morning, Maya woke us up by jumping on the bed at 6am. We kicked her off the bed, waited for a decent interval, then got up, sighing but resigned.

This morning, she jumped up at 5am. I think she may have learned the wrong lesson.

Today I am ohhhh, so tired, and my brain doesn't want to move - except when I lie down to try to nap, when it suddenly gets manically inspired and starts plotting all sorts of activities until I finally get up again. Bah. Luckily, Melissa Marr's YA fantasy novel Wicked lovely finally arrived at my house today, and I'm devouring it. So luscious and fun! I love the magic and the creepiness of the fairies, but I'm also just loving all the different POV characters. There are some novels with multiple POVs where you like one or two of the POVs and wish the others would go away to make more space for your favorites...and then there are novels like this one where, 60 pages into the novel, I'm genuinely interested in and compelled by every single POV character. So it's a wonderful, relaxing read that also has absolutely lovely writing throughout. Yummy.

In search of comfort for my exhausted, aching head, I made macaroni 'n cheese today, using the same extra-mature Irish cheddar that Patrick used when he made it for me last week. Unfortunately, although it wasn't a complete failure, it was just nowhere near as tasty. I'm very lucky but very baffled by the fact that my vegan husband makes far, far better lattes, omelettes and macaroni 'n cheese for me than I can make myself! Thank goodness he's willing to do it so often...

And I've spent all day listening to a new-to-me singer, Hannah Fury, who I discovered via Elizabeth Bear. Fury's posted 8 of her songs as free MP3's, and I've been listening to all 8 of them on endless loop for the past few hours, liking them more and more every time I hear them. She sounds a bit like Kate Bush; a bit like Laurie Anderson; a little bit gothier than either... So far, my favorites are "Scars" (a wonderfully strange version of "Scarborough Fair") and "Girls that Glitter Love the Dark".