Well, it looks like Blogger's back. That's a relief. I always expect when a free service goes down, that maybe it's gone DARK - in the sense of throwing in the towel, running out of money, etc., etc.

Didn't get much done last night; it was one of those thankless monthly meetings I go to.

I HAVE been reading (even if I've not been knitting/crocheting on much other than Bloom). I'm enjoying (guardedly, it still may "break bad") the first volume of "A Dance to the Music of Time." This is one of those big sprawling multigenerational epic things. Right now, being on the first book, the protagonist isn't any more than 20 and is still finding his way in the world. The British, between-the-world-wars world, where there are people with money who apparently do NOTHING with their lives (I don't know but I'd find that dreadfully boring; if I were an Edwardian heiress I think I'd have to get interested in archaeology and go off to Egypt with Agatha Christie Malloran or take up landscape painting or SOMETHING. Not working for a living sounds like rather a waste compared to actually working. [and by "working" I include raising your own kids and/or tending your own house - most of those Edwardian gadabouts still had a cadre of servants to do any of the real work] Apparently what the gentry did was sleep till noon, play tennis till three, drink till eight, and then dance till two. As exhausting as I find my career sometimes, I would definitely not trade it for THAT life.)

It's funny but the more I read of the aristocratic class (both this book and "The Reason Why," which I'm nearly done with - and dear God were there a lot of really idiotic - criminally idiotic - screwups in the Crimea that led to the unnecessary deaths of a lot of men), the more I realize I would NEVER fit in with that group.

Oh, I suppose I knew it all along, growing up in a wealthy "bedroom" community where I was among what were probably the 1970s American counterparts of very minor aristocracy, but these books just bring home to me how stifling some of the societal conventions were, and how BORING things must have been.

I'd probably - had I lived in that era - been better off throwing my lot in with the Bohemians and being some kind of artist, or maybe living like the spinster schoolteachers like in the Miss Read books, or become an authoress like Christie or like Beatrix Potter. Because I can't see not "pulling my weight," somehow, in the world.