I went back to my Andre Norton stash and read The Magic Books, three juvenile books in one volume. Fur Magic is based on Native American legends and was sort of interesting. Steel Magic, in which three kids are transported to the world of King Arthur, was the one I liked least. The last of the three, Octagon Magic was my favorite. I really wish I had found this book when I was the age of the girl in the story (11) She is unpopular and picked on by some of the other kids. One day, trying to escape a group of taunting boys, she goes into the overgrown yard of a mysterious old, octagon shaped house. The ladies who live there invite her in and they tell her she can wander about the house and go in any room where the door will open for her. She finds one room with a magical doll house and rocking horse that transport her into the past where she meets other people who have found shelter in Octagon House. I wasn’t really happy with the way the story ended but it was a logical ending.

After finishing that I was really in the mood for some grown up reading and suddenly had a strong urge to re-read Perdido Street Station but I couldn’t find it. After some fairly desperate searching I gave up and decided to download some more books on my Kindle. While I was downloading stuff from Project Gutenberg my Kindle locked up! I tried turning it off and back on again and the screen went completely blank. (The screen on a Kindle is never blank even when it’s off.) I plugged it in for a while and tried again and it still didn’t do anything. So I emailed Amazon via their contact form. Then, since I couldn’t find Perdido Street Station, I started reading another China Mieville book that I have, The Scar, and almost immediately decided that it wasn’t what I wanted.

Amazon responded to my email, saying to call them, so this morning I was going to call and grabbed the Kindle in case they wanted me to try doing stuff with it while I talked to them on the phone; I pulled it out of its case and the screen wasn’t blank anymore. It had one of the pictures it displays when it’s off so I turned it on and it was fine. Everything works like it’s supposed to. So I don’t know what happened and I’m sort of uncomfortable with stuff mysteriously fixing itself like that because I’m always afraid it’s not really fixed and any minute it’s going to quit again.

But that’s not all. This morning I got up and, as usual, was going to put a CD in the stereo and every time I push the button that opens the CD tray it turns itself off. Right now I’m listening to one of the music channels on DirecTV.

It seems like in the last week or two it’s just one thing after another – mostly just lots of little things going wrong – and I’m feeling like, “What next?!” I didn’t mention it when I was talking about the dresses the other day but on the one dress I sewed the bodice on backwards and had to take it apart. After I finally finished that I decided to go back to quilting for a while and I kept having trouble tying off – like the thread had a mind of its own and just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do.

And I can’t say anything about any of this because on one ever understands what’s needed when I have days like that. It’s either I’m complaining too much or else they want to make too big of a deal of it. Sometimes you just need a good, old-fashioned, lighthearted bitching session – not to be ignored or dismissed and not to have someone try to play therapist but just plain old sharing and understanding.