and all your weight, it falls on me, it brings me down

The endless rain outside definitely made it easier to stay holed up and productive today. While I did venture outside to meet Katrina at a cafe, I generally spent most of the day writing. However, I wasn't significantly more productive than I was yesterday -- I wrote 5529 words, which is about 1300 words more than yesterday, bringing me to a grand total of 32,511 words / 146 pages.

I was on a roll and should have kept going tonight, but I made the mistake of second-guessing whether I want Madeleine's dead French parents to be a comte/comtesse, a marquis/marquise, or a duc/duchesse. The first draft is currently full of notes to go back to research the actual facts later -- as I've mentioned before, if I start looking for answers to what types of gloves Madeleine would have worn in spring of 1812, or what the order of precedence would have been at the duke of Harwich's dining room table, I can waste all my writing time. But the question of Madeleine's title is really bothering me -- so far, I've had everyone call her "Miss Vaillant," and I like the idea that Ferguson is the only person outside her foster family who calls her Madeleine, but if she's the daughter of a French comte/marquis/duc, she would theoretically be called Lady Madeleine anyway. Except I can't find a damned website with French forms of address anywhere -- I'm working off the assumption that the English would have given her similar precedence as daughters of English earls/marquesses/dukes, but I can't be 100% sure. Damn.

So, I wasted an hour in search of that information, and failed yet again to find it. By the time I emerged on the other end of Wikipedia, dazed and surly, I decided that the moment for getting back into my book had passed -- I'll go to bed and pick it up again tomorrow.

But, Madeleine and Ferguson shared their first kiss today! In the story, they were in a cool, moonlit garden behind a London ballroom; in real life, I was at Leland Tea Company with Katrina, who read a line over my shoulder that mentioned moaning and expressed mild shock (ha). Katrina and I had a good time, although I ultimately had to abandon her so that I could do my ritual Sunday call with my parents. Ironically, I interrupted their enjoyment of the first episode of the new season of "The Amazing Race" to force them to talk about my various vacation options. As expected, my father was a bit more excited about this than my mother was, since he's been to many of the places I'm considering. Hawaii is winning right now, likely because it's rained here for two days and I'm in the mood for some sun and sand -- but we'll see if I can get the days off before I commit to anything.

Okay, no more blogging; after all, it's a bit ridiculous that I'm exhausted from writing and so turned around to write a ~500-page blog post about that fact. So, goodnight, and happy presidents' day!