I started trying to write yesterday, since I didn't get anything done on Friday. I wasn't getting very far -- I kept stopping to read mail for the 7th Sea game, or chat online, or do actual work, or work on the grocery list for the cookout this weekend, or...

Progress was slow, is what I'm saying. By 3 or so, it felt like I'd only done maybe a couple hundred words. I grumbled and checked the statistics, and almost fell out of my chair: I'd done close to a thousand.

I'd even managed to include a couple turns of phrase that impressed Karen, when she read it later.

So it just goes to show that sometimes it's worth it to just keep plugging away, even when you think you're not doing so well.

But I'm glad the writing went well, because most of my evening was kind of... blah.

I'm not even sure how to describe it.

Matt brought me a slightly belated Mother's Day gift from Penny via daycare -- a little plant in a plastic cup. We have no idea what the plant is; it's a sprout barely as long as my pinky. Penny was furious that I took it away -- as far as she was concerned it was hers.

I burned the underside of my arm on the inside of the stove making dinner -- not bad enough to blister, but there's a red patch now that's a little sensitive, the way burns are. It is, naturally, right where my arm rests on the edge of my desk.

Matt took a picture of me sitting on the couch with my arm around Penny, snuggling while she watched Sesame Street. Aww, cute. Except when he showed it to me, the image that popped into my head was Jabba the Hutt, tail curled around slave-Leia.

Penny wanted to sit on Matt's lap but snuggle with me before bed, and after giving her what seemed like a dozen hugs and kisses, I finally forced myself to just say good night and walk out, and she cried and cried and cried until finally Matt had to give up and put her to bed still crying.

Which had him in a foul mood. And it didn't improve mine any that he lost his temper over it.

And it didn't improve it any more that he brushed me off when I wanted to talk about the party plans. (Which, honestly, shouldn't have been a surprise. It wasn't his party to start with, he doesn't care how the house or food looks, and barbeque menus are all pretty much the same. I don't know why I bothered, except that I thought he might be interested in the dessert.)

Cramps. The less said, the better.

Blown diet. Heh. The less said about that, the better, too. I need a flipping willpower transplant.

Going to blow my scrapbooking budget, too, when I pay for the last batch of stuff I've ordered. It's not like I can't afford it; but it kind of defeats the purpose of having the budget in the first place if I'm not going to stick to it. Also, I "earn" money for my scrapbook budget by sticking to the diet. See the previous paragraph.

I realized that when my camera's memory card blew out, it took with it all the full-sized pictures I've taken in May, because I hadn't downloaded them to my home computer yet, and I only keep cropped and resized pictures in the photo album. The good news is that there were no pictures there that I was dying to blow up to an 8x10 or anything; the bad news is that there were quite a few that I want to print for my scrapbook, and the 800x600 resolution that's all I've got left is going to result in sort of grainy prints.

None of this stuff was a killer. None of it would have killed my good mood. But all of it together was... depressing, really. I spent the whole evening in a brown sulk.

Here's hoping today is better.

--Liz