So yesterday afternoon I thought I would act on all your suggestions and pick out a really mindless book at the library and retire to bed early with a cup of tea, or possibly a glass of wine, depending on how the spirit moved me.

Only I didn't remember - till I'd got there - that the local library is closed on Wednesdays.

You can imagine what that did for my mood.

However, as of this morning I have an emergency Feeling Crappy stash : a detective story (there's something very soothing about murders, I find), some chocolate, and a note to me from me, giving myself permission to opt out for a while next time it all seems too much.

No opting out right now though; poor Emily is sick on the couch. Flu, I think. She has a roaring temperature and feels shivery and miserable. I have soup cooking and I'm about to get some bread dough rising before I fetch Sophie.

It's still raining, but my mood has been a lot better today than it was yesterday, so today's been quite productive. The cruel thing about feeling blah is that it saps one of motivation, so one doesn't get any of the good feelings that accomplishing tasks creates. Today, for instance, before Ems got sick and had to be collected from school, I'd already sorted out our council tax (discovered, to my delight, that we've actually paid more than we needed to, so we're a month ahead), caught up on the laundry, done the ironing (which I secretly quite enjoy these days, now that I've found out about scented ironing water), returned a couple of phone calls that had been hanging over me for the last few days, and applied for another job.

I also finally have an appointment to get a national insurance number (all that misery a couple of weeks ago paid off), and I have a job interview on Monday. So things are looking up.