don't fear the sun.

No word from my doctor, so I assume the lithium levels looked fine. That's a relief, at least.



Yesterday was some day. The trip downtown to get everything took its toll on me and I was completely worn out for the rest of the day, went to bed early, after we'd watched the final episode of the first season of Our Flag Means Death. But I got the gift card for my friend for her birthday on Saturday, I got new tea (caramel-flavoured!), supplies for the DIY decoupage project and a covid self-test because my friend's girlfriend is sensitive to vira and infections, so all the guests at the party have to self-test before showing up, just in case. And I picked up research material at the library. Sooooooo... many... books! I think there were eleven titles waiting for me, and I had to drag them home in public transport. My arms were hurting, some of them were really quite heavy, thick tomes. There are still five left on my reservations list, so they should be available within the next couple of weeks, too.



The plans for today are very, very sparse. I have to preserve a lot of energy for Saturday and I have my social workeer coming by tomorrow, so the other days need to be kept even more lowkey to compensate. Today I will be doing a lot of reading, I hope. I have a biography of the great Danish stage actress, Johanne Luise Heiberg - who lived and worked first half of the 19th century - to read in part and some non-fiction books to skim through, mainly one on the development of the Royal Theatre over the past four hundred years (though, I only need the articles on the 1880's), but also a very interesting introduction to the historical Copenhagen of Herman Bang's (Danish author who came to prominence in the 1880's, known queer) day and age. Besides that, I have some non-fiction books on the labour movement led by the maids of the bigger Danish cities in the late 19th century, 19th century general views on food and drink and similar topics. I also picked up two books for K. whose character is a businessman, so I found a biography on Tietgen, a business mogul at that point in time, as well as some non-fiction analyses of Danish involvement in the World Fairs of the late 19th century which should tie into her character's work and interests, too.



When I'm not going to be reading, I'll be doing the shopping (dinner for tonight and tomorrow), and take out trash (we've accumulated a lot of cardboard, paper and plastic waste) and generally keeping it nice and clean at home. I also need to call my mom.



My aspiration over the coming days is to write a story, in Danish, about Margrethe - my character's introduction to her career at the theatre. It is very dramatic and character developmentally interesting, and I would love to delve into it in depth.

A bit of a chaotic day, to say the least.

I went to the library, the library was nice. I managed to finish my two chapter editing there, though I was still feeling self-conscious from the Facebook incident yesterday and didn't do my best. I've reread the seventh chapter this afternoon and done more work, hoping to do chapter eight tonight before bed.

While there, I forgot to take my morning pills, so my mood was slightly shot all day as a result. It's evening out now, since I took my night pills early at dinner. Might also help my editing process some.



Bought all the stuff I needed to do the birthday present for my friend, who's turning 30 in January (yes, I like to buy and make pressies ahead of time, if possible). It's a lovely gilded picture frame with a collage I've made in it. All greens, plants and feminism, since those are things she likes. It's come out quite nice.

After doing that bit of shopping, I bought another tea (third this month, but it's peak tea drinking time of the year), a black tea which is unusual for me, I usually stick to white and, if all else fails, green tea. But this was a cream tea and it smelled amazing and wasn't expensive, so I bought a small bag of it. It's not the best cream tea I've ever had, but far from the worst, too, and very comforting with its soft, rounded flavour.



Girlfriend came home late from work, due to a project she's working on, and I had dinner ready when she got there. It was rye bread day, so we just had some tuna mousse and salmon spread on bread, basically, but it's quick and simple, so on these kinds of days, that's just how we get by.



I slept for a couple of hours after I got home from town, so I might have to stay up a little bit longer tonight to be able to fall asleep comfortably.

Also, LOL, my parents are coming by for tea on Saturday, a fact I'd apparently forgotten to tell K. about, hahaha, says something about how busy December has been. We had a long talk over dinner about what to do about it, what prepwork we needed to do. We have cleaning day Friday, so that's perfect, but some shopping must also be done. We have something in Denmark, a traditional Christmas pastry, called "æbleskiver" which translates to "slices of apple", because back in the day, they were fried balls of dough with slices of apples in them. However, these days, it's just fried dough in a small ball-shape that you eat with jam and sugar on the side. They're quite yummy. Anyway, we were talking about making some of those and serve them with the tea/coffee they're getting. It's just a couple of hours my parents are staying, so it's not like a lunch appointment or anything, but something sweet and warm would be nice.



After I settled on Lest They Leave, I've completely stopped my search for titles. It just feels like the perfect title for this project and it's so me, tbh. So I think that's my sign, this is it.



The plan for tomorrow is chapter 9 + 10 editing, then tidying up in the apartment a bit, wrap S's present and probably some shopping for dinner, unless we take something out of the freezer tonight. We have a lot of soup that we should get working on.



I guess that's the update. That was the day.