Status Updates From The Privilege of the Happy ...

'New clothes in a dream signifies new love. Why are you having this dream? You have your spouse; you have already made all these compromises. Maybe it only means that you are sick of those jeans with the coffee stain on the thigh that has never quite gone away. Surely, that's at least equally likely.'

'They had exhausted their discussion of all the benefits attendant on a Christmas spent with friends, instead of (for instance) returning to one's childhood home to be judged by one set of relatives whilst sleeping on the narrow bunk beds from which another set had been ousted...'

Creative writing 101 : woman as animal, goddess and more.
Expect nothing as you enter these pages but prepare to be
amazed.

"A collection of speculative and experimental fiction exploring
animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories."
Multi-award winning Kij Johnson's short fiction from the last 10 years.
Her previously collected short fantasy fiction was published under
the title AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER OF BEES. One of my all time
favorite books.

I got a little distracted by a line about how the toad was wearing a sealskin parka, given that he is a talking animal and all of his friends are also talking animals. It feels a little like if you saw a person wearing a human skin parka.

Reading a Kij Johnson book is a bit like wading through knee-deep sour cherry syrup. It’s dark and viscous, slow at times and persistently melancholy, but if you reach down, dip your fingers in, and taste, it’s really quite good.