for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room

Ever since I stopped taking my pills, I've had an incredibly weird symptom that I can only describe as a momentary brain holiday. It's like my frontal lobes grow wings, flutter around the room, send me a couple of postcards and return, within the space of a few seconds. It's quite... interesting. I was pondering it this morning, having grabbed a mug out of the cupboad for my coffee, and noticed all at once that it was actually a Prozac mug, with the chemical details of fluoxetine on the side, courtesy of Eli Lilly. It amused me.

The meme says you should post eight things that make you happy, day by day. I'm too impatient for that. So I give you seven things, disparate and random, that have made me happy recently.

1. The latter end of the week in general, and Thursday in particular. In the afternoon, I wrote the following. Happiness is: a cafe, replete with fairy lights, discarded Guardians and very good chai, almost close enough to home to see your own wireless network, sitting with contract law feeling very grown-up and postgraduate, with your beloved, who has just bought you a fruitcake. Having discovered what happiness is, and next term being the one where I ought to start with the writing of the baby-dissertation, I think I shall bear this in mind.

2. I am home, up north with my parents. The one thing that never changes is how much I love this house; last night, I couldn't sleep, and was curled up nicely under my covers listening to the rain beating against the eaves, and was reminded anew of how much I do love this place. This house, which is eleven years old (and my family have lived in it for ten of those), is not charming. It's not elegant, or rustic, or old. It's all open space and white and glass, and, mostly, minimalist. With the notable exception of my - well, I say mine, no one uses it but me - bathroom, which is a relic of the somewhat nutty (okay, seriously nutty) previous owner, whose taste was... questionable. As a result, I have spent a decade nursing a passion for baths in a bathroom which resembles a gothic boudoir circa 1890. It's extravagantly maroon and gold, has a sunken bathtub and looks out onto a forest of swaying conifers. (My room has the same view, but is a much more sensible white and red.) I'd call it a monstrosity, but I kind of love it. I've been taking lots of baths. They make me happy.

3. I am undoubtedly going to be scribbling my yuletide right until the deadline, but at least it's no longer a blank page. 300 600 1495 words for the win. (In fact! If anyone feels like looking it over in the next couple of days, I would appreciate it. Not even a proper beta - just someone who knows my style telling me when I've been an eejit would be good.)

4. Books. I have started reading, as though I've just learned how, and it's astonishing, how great it is. Yesterday I even bought a book. I can't actually put this one in words, but during my degree I did not read, and didn't particularly want to. But I keep reading and reading - I finished off the books about yetis-in-Kathmandu, and the chick-lit-in-style-of-Unity-Mitford (The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets - it turned out to be a lot better than expected), and am halfway through Kitchen, and keep dipping into Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman, getting annoyed and putting it down again. And it's great. I'm not sure what to make of this, actually. I still don't like English literature (and the study thereof), and I think I am finally at the age where I will not grow into it, I can just tell everyone I loathe Jane Eyre and Middlemarch and Pride and Prejudice and other books about dead white people and read what I want. It's enormously liberating. (This week: probably Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, which I have read before, but do rather love. And Neuromancer, which bizarrely I have never read, and ought to find a copy of.)

5. Einstein and Eddington. I showed this to my father last night - predictably, he loved it - and I sort of fell in love with it some more. It's so gorgeous, so beautifully filmed and so very human. I do love it. And David Tennant, and his poignant, queer, sad little love story, is a joy. (My only complaint about it is that it aired after yuletide sign-ups closed.)

6. Racism is over. I love this - my favourite so far is "Holidays", closely followed by "Dating".

(The other thing I've seen people talking about is Stuff Desis(/Brown People) Like, which I have to say is funny and occasionally deadly accurate. But... I'm not sure that I quite like it. I'm not sure why. I think it might just be the thought that, well, I'm allowed to make those jokes, so are other people of a desi/brown persuasion, but I don't want them linked around the primarily-white blogosphere. Does that make sense? I have no idea.)

7. Waffles. With maple syrup. And gin, but not together.

Now, maybe doing some work. And defrosting my fingers under the hot tap.