So I’m a few days late.  So?  I’m late for everything, including writing books.*  & today is Peter’s & my thirty-third wedding anniversary, & that counts.**

. . . Ugh.  It’s after fracking midnight, I forgot about the way other people, including whoever invented the blog machinery, count time.  I haven’t gone to bed yet so never mind what the clock, & the date at the top of this blog post, says, I’m writing this on the third of January, & I’m talking about the third of January.  Okay?  Thanks.  Yes, I really am this much of an airhead, & my relationship with time . . . Don’t get me started.

So what have I been doing with all that not-to-be-mentioned life fourth dimensional thing since the beginning of November when the world as I thought I knew it ended?***  Besides writing story-in-progress, that is, & bless it for existing, even if how that manifests is it knocking me around relentlessly & shouting, not like that, you overcookedpastabrain†, do it again, & this time remember the . . . ††  Very bruising, a story in progress can be, although the bruises are usually invisible beyond the wild staring look in the victim’s eyes.  The other major player on my life team††† however is the great galumphing hound, the Mongol Horde, the terror of millions, & the particularly acute terror of the little old lady whimpering in his wake when there is snow on the ground, which at present there is.  Genghis-originated bruises tend to be highly visible, although lately the only really purple ones have been caused by tripping over him indoors, where there is very little snow, except what we track in. I’ve mentioned that THIS TOWN DOES NOT PLOUGH OR SAND???  I remember‡ back in Maine that you’d know it was snowing if you didn’t know it already‡‡ because you could hear the snow ploughs.  It’s a very nice comforting noise, snow ploughs, even if it had never yet occurred to you in your short innocent life that there might not be snow ploughs when it’s snowing. 

& of course I’m reading.  Books, magazines, buckwheat flour boxes‡‡‡.  I’ve been thinking, now that I stay home all the time & my idea of an adventure is starting a new jigsaw puzzle or knitting a new pair of wrist warmers, maybe I’ll finally start talking about books on this blog.  I know I didn’t on the old blog, but I had something more resembling a life as other people know it back then, & it seems illicit somehow to talk about books when you write them too.  The life I’ve got now suits me surprisingly well§, but one of the reasons why is that I let myself spend so much time reading, & if I’m trying to restart the blog§§, I need something to put in it . . .

I’m thinking about it.  Happy Birthday, Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon & Merton Professor of English Language & Literature.

Happy Anniversary, Peter.  Sigh.

* * *

*Arrgh.  The current one continues to go well, but I’m pretty sure it’s too long, & it just goes on getting longer.  Which means writing it is taking longer, plus cutting it down will take longer yet.  More arrgh.  HOWEVER.  The important thing is that it’s going.^

^ Of course the end of PEGASUS isn’t the end of the story, but no, current story-in-progress is nothing to do with Sylvi & Ebon’s future adventures, & I’m being hinky about the title only because I’m like that.  I realise it’s taking me so long to write PEG II as to cause consternation on the part of increasingly anxious expectant readers, but anyone who has ever read anything else by me has got to know I wouldn’t leave it there??!?  There’s a mea culpa about this on the web site, but the web site is so unfinished+ I don’t think the ‘search’ works properly.++ 

+ My fault.  Blogdad would fill in any blanks I gave him reasonable filler for.

++ You’re not expecting me to provide a link, are you?!?  ::hysterical laughter::  As soon as I’ve got over this ‘new year’ nonsense a little more I promise to talk to Blogdad/Young Beowulf/Gleaming Tech Wizard about various things, but I really need to write a little more for the poor lame web site before I pester him any more about its shortcomings.

** It’s also, for you sharp-eyed Tolkien nutters out there, of whom I am proud to count myself one, JRR’s birthday.^  I’ve missed the raising the glass at 9 pm local time ‘to the Professor’ but it’s not like I’m going to forget what day it is.  I’m sure I told this story on the old blog:  I moved over here the end of 1991^^, & my fiancée’s^^^ visa was only good for six months.  So Peter had to marry me promptly or the Home Office would boot me out.^^^^  We were looking for a date that looked like it might enjoy being significant, you know?  Peter is the one who found the 3rd of January, & I can’t remember how, except that this was 1991 & the internet hadn’t been invented yet^^^^^, so there would have been books involved, & it happened at home, so not the library or interesting posters on the train station walls or anything.  Peter said, Hey, want to get married on Tolkien’s birthday?  Peter was not a rabid Tolkien fan, but he knew I was.  It’s hard to have more than about fifteen minutes’ conversation with me not to know, & we’d been, erm, going steady for four months or so by then.^^^^^^ 

I said, hey, cool, yes.  Duh.

^ Anyone who thinks LOTR is a film series is hereby banned from this blog forever. 

^^ Hands up anyone who wasn’t born yet

^^^ MISOGYNY ALERT.   YO.  MICROSOFT.  WHY DO YOU AUTO-ADD THE ACCENT FOR FIANCE BUT NOT FIANCEE?  & neither in caps I presently note.  I’ve actually got a short cut insert for most of the French language twiddles, but those particular post-its seem to have fallen off my lampshade+, & heaven, or one of the lesser saints, preferably one who has experience of clothes moths & the way your latest favourite jeans wear through almost before you’ve got them broken in to perfect softness,++ help me if said post-its have fallen into the large heaps of knitting & mending that end of the table.  And therefore at this point I briskly murmur, Life is short,+++ & pass on.

+ What?  You don’t stick post-its to your lampshade?  How do you manage?#

# Of course I clearly don’t manage very well, but I assure you I would manage a lot worse if I didn’t have post-its all over my lamp & lamp shade. 

++ They Don’t Make Denim Like They Used To. 

+++ Ie no I am not going to go tangle with MS Windows ‘insert’ again.  It’s possessed by demons, like pretty much everything else in Windows any more, & meanwhile, upgrade ninety six kajillion is demanding to be downloaded, & I think they’ve stopped supporting the one I’ve got, which is already way too stupidly complicated for me.  I don’t want a three-wheeled Maserati, I want a tricycle that works.  The stupid is not all mine.

^^^^ I will retell stories of getting the visa my marriage license sanctioned at some other time & post.  Suffice that the HO scrutinized me & felt that I was not adhering to the spirit of British law & order as they might wish.  Good thing they didn’t try to make me pledge allegiance to the queen.+

+ Not that crossing the national border in the opposite direction is any better.#  There’s a law common to all human societies that border crossing is a kind of labyrinthine game of chicken.  Except that this explains the warring-tribes thing that is busy burning up the planet, I feel it should give grounds for acknowledgement of congruity.  Hey!  We’re all different!  I’m Other!  You’re Other!  We’re all Other!  Let’s drink to that, especially those of us who missed the 9 pm toast to the Professor!

# & once the Chump is back in office, I’m sure he’ll pass a law that says that fantasy writers~ who have lived overseas for more than thirty years are prohibited from crossing the national borders that now all belong to him.

~ especially female fantasy writers.  Apologies for not embodying any interesting minorities in my list of disqualifying characteristics.=

= Oh, well, um, wait.  ::Long pause::  No, some other blog post. 

^^^^^ Yes, I know, 1983, I just looked it up ON THE INTERNET.+  But it hadn’t been invented for nontechies yet.

+ I don’t use Google.  Just sayin’.

^^^^^^ Yes, all our friends & family were going, They’re doing WHAT????

*** I’ve mostly thought cautiously & caveat-edly pretty well of Joe, but I’ve just stopped, when he let it leak out that he’s sorry he stood down from running a second time, that he would have won.  Bulltiddly, Joe.  Kamala was our chance.  I still don’t know how it got blown out from under us.  I can’t believe . . . no, no, no, no, no, I’m not going there.

† This is a very serious insult in my world, because I don’t eat pasta.  I don’t eat cereal grains, full stop.^

^ Last time I mentioned this here I had a very nice email from someone who said she doesn’t either, & maybe we should exchange recipes.+

+ I just wrote ‘remedies’.  Well, that too, for those of us who’ve found out that our metabolisms are grateful for . . . um, a restraint that makes us impossible to feed by normal human standards.

†† I’m not going to tell you, am I?

††† There are so many blasted self-help books out there I pick up the language even though I wouldn’t read one if the only other thing available was a cereal box, which it wouldn’t be, because see previous footnote, right?  But just reading through this month’s Audible releases it’s like every other title is BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE!  BE BETTER THAN THE BEST YOU CAN BE!!  TEACH YOUR LIFE TEAM TO RAH RAH YOU!!!  EAT DECAYING VEGETABLE MATTER & DIE IN A DITCH!!!!  No, no, oops, I made that last one up.  I’m feeling cranky for some reason.+

+Probably because I’m Robin McKinley.  Goes with the territory.

‡  I remember, quavered the little old lady.  Over thirty years ago . . .

‡‡ If, for example, you’re lying in bed, & the window is at least three feet away, & without your contact lenses^ you can’t see that far

^ I was younger then.  I still can’t see three feet away, but my glasses lie to hand by my bed.

‡‡‡ You are keeping up with the footnotes, aren’t you?  Buckwheat, teff, quinoa, amaranth, doodah doodah doodah, I’ll bore you more about this some other post too.

§ I don’t really do things that suit me.  It took me seventy-plus years to decide to let things that suit me, suit me, if you follow—?

§§ Or re-re-restart the blog, depending on how you’re counting