shadows of echoes of memories of songs

I've decided to make the last few posts (but not this one obviously) friends-only, because they're largely about Img and nursery and stuff and I suspect I probably should be a bit more circumspect about who reads them (though obviously the NSA is still reading them anyway, and Google is probably projecting them on to the moon as we speak). To be honest I should probably make this whole journal friends-only since I have other public blogs for stuff I actively want to make public (as opposed to stuff I'm not too worried about people seeing). It used to be a point of principle that my LJ was entirely public except for very occasional admin posts about change of address, but I'm not really sure what that principle is any more, and I suspect it doesn't apply when I'm posting about someone who doesn't get a say in it. I also suspect that having points of principle about LJ is like having strong opinions about daguerrotypes or something.

(Is there a way to make only posts after a certain date friends-only? Or only posts with a certain tag? There are a few posts I want to keep public. Maybe I should just put them somewhere else. And then I think oh really who cares, only 12 people read this anyway. 12 people and Google and the NSA.)

It's been fun to watch people unfriending me as I post stuff though (I'm guessing it's not so much the content as "oh I forgot she was on my friends list but now she's started posting again, can't remember who she is anyway"). Ah, the drama llamas of yesteryear. To be honest the friendslist angst all seems pretty trivial now compared with the real feeling that my actual friends (some of whom are also my LJ friends, of course) are slipping further and further away from me in time and place and connectedness and it's not some kind of big drama, it's just that people sort of softly and suddenly vanish away. I am very bad at taking people off 'friends lists' but it's starting to feel like the people-I-sorta-like-but-basically-never-see-or-talk-to are diluting the actual friendships (though this is more of a problem on Facebook where I'm 'friends' with loads of people I haven't seen or significantly thought about for a quarter of a century. Need to do something about that.) Maybe that's silly and maybe it doesn't make any difference and maybe the real problem is that I'm a dreadful correspondent or that the people I want to stay friends with just aren't that into me. Not fishing for compliments here, just musing on the way friendships change and the way everything seems to get stretched thinner as I get older.

So tired.

addedentry and I had a party, and it was great! It was lovely to see all the people who were there, & we were sad not to see the people who couldn't make it. I'm not going to try to list you all, or list all the lovely presents we got (though I hope I thanked everybody at the time!) but fivemack gets a special vote of thanks for bringing us lots of fab wedding photos and making fried breakfast for seven people (without the aid of forks) on Sunday morning. :-)

I would also like to apologise to khalinche and timeplease for failing to wake up in time to say goodbye (but I hope they slept well on our sofabed), and to juggzy for failing to be awake when she returned to fetch some things she'd left here (but I hope she found everything in the end without too much trauma). I am not very good at mornings, sorry.

I was pleased with the way this year's cake decoration turned out, though I'm afraid the actual cake was a bit on the 'meh' side -- too dry, not enough jam.

Late on Saturday night my ridiculous 15" boots got an impromptu airing, so that I could prove that they existed (that's the first time I've taken them out of the box since moving to Oxford -- I had to cut the packing-tape to get them out). If anybody took a decent photo of them I'd love to see it: a flickr link would allow me to prove the existence of the boots without risking breaking my legs. :-} On the other hand a flickr link would not have given me the rather fun experience of being nearly as tall as htfb.

I hope "a good time was had by all", but I can only really speak for myself; I spent most of last week feeling fairly fail-ish and not at all partyish but was much cheered by conversation and silliness and singing and cake and port, so thank you again to all our guests for making an old-ish woman very happy. :-)

[More posts to follow on Oxbridge limericks, singing, decluttering, and running... watch this space, tonight is LJ-catchup night!]