I'm scared.

Our fiddler has quit the morris team. This leaves us with exactly six dancers and no musician. We've been in trouble before but never this badly. We've still got enough for a side, but how will we rehearse with no music? Recordings? Even the smallest teams have got a musician.

I really don't want this to be the end of More or Less. I've finally gotten to where I can dance as well as almost everyone on the team. I feel more grounded and more myself at an ale, even surrounded by strangers, than I do anywhere else. I've been dancing literally since before I was born (my mother was on the Bluemont team when she was pregnant with me) and I don't want to give it up. I almost wish I were a boy so I could join Albemarle if More or Less disintegrates. But I suppose there will be plenty of time to talk about all that at the meeting tonight. And I'll be completely miserable until then if I keep thinking about it, so I'll try to think about the rest of the day.

I've been reading Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille. It's basically her account of her life living in the cabin she built herself in the Adirondacks. Her writing isn't so good, but I'm still enjoying what she has to say. It's nice to hear an account of a woman who isn't defined by her gender and who accomplishes her goals without making a lot of fuss. True wilderness has never really appealed to me, but I admire her love of it and her strength in living in it.

I've been feeling...I don't know...sort of domestic these past few days. I was washing our big earthenware bread bowl last night and I really wanted it. I want wool sweaters and potted plants on a kitchen windowsill and petticoats and pots and pans and an ice cream maker and cups and saucers and pinnafores and dishtowels and a colander. Of course, we've already got most of those in the house, but I want my own. My own house. It's not so much the desire to be a 1950's housewife as an 1870's farm wife. And I'd make a really good one, too. I can weave and cook and and bake and garden and sew and quilt and I can make candles and jam and decisions. I find myself drawn to wood stoves and tea kettles and rocking chairs and bread pans and lavender-scented soap and brooms and spinning wheels. I love spinning wheels in particular. I don't know why. If Bridget were here she would laugh and say "You're nuts, girl." Caelia would smile and pat my head and call me Nature. Christine would just smile.

April 22
April 27