There are good days and bad days - and the way you feel can change quickly.  Wednesday morning, I woke up grumpy and that descended into something more akin to a Black Dog depression after Joey had been a brat on the way to school and I had lost my temper with him.  Which, of course, makes me feel tremendously guilty afterwards.  More so in the light of hearing what Philip Schulz had to say about his experience with dyslexia only hours before-hand.

So I want home and laid it all out on the table;  I had no job and not much prospects, no role, no mates closer than a few thousand miles, a dyslexic son who is able to drive me nuts, another son thousands of miles way who is monosyllabic, rarely answers the phone and who has a nightmare for a mother, a daughter who is doing fine but who I know will drive me to distraction when she is a teenager, and so on and sop forth.  You get the picture.

Just getting it off my chest helped and the nAnne and I were able to spend some quality time together, which also helped.

Thursday morning.  Woke up feeling good.  Joey was in brilliant form; funny, affectionate, cheerful, energetic, bright as a button.  Had really good chat on way to school, and he went in without any problems - which is not always the case.  One of his teachers was there (young one with really nice, all-American smile - Briana I think) and Joey immediately told her that a) it was our anniversary that day (it was, 9 years and maybe another reason for first feeling a bit down and then feeling very good?) and b) we had squashed a squirrel on the way to school.  Wasn't my fault, silly thing got half-way across and then decided to turn back into my path at the last moment.

Then I spent 3 hrs at the St Michael's Preserve as a volunteer, weeding and hoeing. Killed my back but fresh air and exercise did mer good, as no doubt did the feeling of doing something concrete amongst some good folk.  Bill Flemer, the site manager then invited us for coffee/tea at the excellent Boro Bean on Main Street, with pretty servers and Barry's Irish Tea.

Finally, went up to Princeton for meeting with Professor Rob Socolow.  I had asked for the meeting to discuss possible collaboration with Imperial College on the Bioeconomy Platform, details of which I will not bore you with.   Suffice to say that we had a very productive and enjoyable hour-long meeting, by the end of which I had been invited to an important conference next week at the Uni and Rob had intimated that he saw the potential for a role for me with some of the work that they are doing and that we should get to know each other better, I needed to meet more people etc and see where that takes us.  Couldn't really have asked for more.

So ended up feeling much better by close of play Thursday!