Robin McKinley's Blog, page 35

Christmas Eve 2013

 

Peter is BETTER.  He is better enough that (eeep) I’m going back to the cottage as usual tonight*—and there isn’t anyone else staying with Peter any more.  We had three physios here on Monday** including the one who did the assessing last Friday, and he was very impressed with the progress Peter has made.  We’re all impressed—Nina was here again, bless her;  I can’t remember if I’ve said that Georgiana is hors de combat with a particularly nasty virus—but it’s nice to have professional confirmation.  The thing that made me fall down laughing—in a slightly hysterical way, possibly—is that about half the exercises the speech therapist gave him are very similar to the exercises Nadia gives me to make my enunciation clearer.

Meanwhile . . . we have a turkey and a bottle of champagne and I don’t care a lot about the rest of the standard trimmings.  I did come all over wistful when I remembered that I’d forgotten the chestnuts for the Brussels sprouts . . . but my excellent husband, who doesn’t even like chestnuts in his Brussels sprouts, had remembered them several weeks back and laid in supplies.  Yaaay.

Now all I have to do is wrap Peter’s presents.  The one that I’m hoping will be an extravagant success arrived beautifully on time*** and there is enough other little stuff to make a heap.  Peter got Nina to wrap mine!!!!  But I think we’re going to pass on the tree this year.  I may hang a few baubles on Peter.

Happy Christmas, everyone.  I’m planning to check in tomorrow long enough to say, Yep, the champagne is fantastic and oh, Jesus is born.

* * *

* Possibly not quite as usual.  If I think I can still drive that far by then, I’m going to make a bolt for midnight mass.  I got some sleep last night and hardly know how to behave.

** All right, Peter’s better, TIME FOR A CRANKY ATTACK.  Thing one:  people are frelling amazing, not in a good way.  I’ve told you that the mews parking is a jigsaw—also not in a good way.  The old stable courtyard was made for carriages and horses, not cars, and especially not people who are willing to live in tiny little cottages—there are a surprising number of these crammed into the old mews buildings^—but still have two cars.  Everyone has an absolutely set area where they’re allowed to wedge in as many vehicles as they can^^ and while us regulars get used to the drill, ordinary visitors don’t have the opportunity, and the occasional visitor goes off in the screaming meemies and has to be removed blindfolded in a Bath chair, and the abandoned double-width SUV is chainsawed into manageable lengths and hauled away to be transformed into window boxes for corporate high rises.

Anyway.  Yesterday for about an hour we had three cars infesting what was indubitably more than our allotted space—Wolfgang and two therapists’.  And one of Peter’s neighbours knocked on the door to have a meltdown about it.  WTF, you decomposing dog turd?  What’s up with you, you slime from the bottom of the Black Lagoon?  —It’s not as though this person didn’t know about Peter:  the entire courtyard population knows, and probably most of the people in the Big Pink Blot as well, especially the ones who remain glued to their windows in the hopes of something exciting happening like a late-night ambulance.^^^  But Peter—or Peter’s don’t-know-their-place therapists—are not obeying the rules.  It’s a good thing Nina answered the door;  I’d probably have clocked the b*st*rd.  And we can’t afford a lawsuit.#

Thing two is not in the same category of beneath contempt-itude, but it’s still on the list.  I hate UPS.  Most of the private carriers are getting a trifle more civilised about deliveries to residential areas, and if you’re not there they’ll spend the necessary ten seconds to find a neighbour at home to leave your parcel with.  I’m surrounded by people who either don’t work, work from home, or are retired, and any frelling delivery driver who doesn’t leave a parcel with a neighbour hasn’t bothered trying.  And the regular drivers will mostly stretch a point and leave something tucked behind a plant pot or a dustbin because they know someone is always around and we feed each other’s cats (when there are cats) and take in other people’s parcels as appropriate.

Not UPS.  UPS requires you to BE THERE and to SIGN FOR IT.  I don’t care if it’s a packet of chocolate biscuits—or the zero-worth copyedited pages of your last novel##—YOU HAVE TO BE THERE AND YOU HAVE TO SIGN FOR IT.  After my last argybargy with them—which is an ongoing argybargy because Writers House, unfortunately, still uses them—they had the frelling temerity to put a sheet through my door requesting me to indicate my preference for alternative delivery behaviour if I’m not there.  I ticked everything.  Leave it with a neighbour, behind the bins, behind the potted triffid, behind the gate, with some other neighbour, hanging from the railing, with any of the shops on the main street all of which know me, even the ones I don’t frelling use like the beauty parlour, I admit I would prefer not lobbed through glass of the greenhouse, but JUST LEAVE THE FRELLER.

That was about ten days ago.  Today I got home to a pissy little slip from UPS saying they’d try to deliver again on Friday. . . .

^ One of the reasons Peter’s guest room gives me claustrophobia is because of all the ducking under grooms’-garret beams you have to do.  I wonder how many of the old stable staff had brain damage from not ducking often/fast enough.

^^ Although Peter’s neighbours are a fairly conservative group.  The All Stars and the hellpack are probably pushing the envelope;  I think there would be trouble if I started parking a Harley custom chopper in Peter’s space, or a leftover Ben Hur chariot.

^^^ Which makes a change from the sheep, foxes and owls.  Myself I prefer sheep, foxes and owls.

# Although no jury would convict me.  A proper jury, indeed, would help me pelt the getaway car with rotten tomatoes and dead rats.

## Those of us still distressingly addicted to hard copy.

*** And the delivery driver LEFT IT BEHIND THE BINS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Placeholder

 

We’re having seriously gruesome weather, pummelling rain and gales—hellhounds and I were nearly swept off to Oz or the Land of Green Ginger out hurtling this afternoon*—and I can’t stay on line long enough to edit and post a more-than-six-lines entry.

This is just to tell you that there are no new melodramas in the McKinley-Dickinson ménage.  IT’S ONLY THE WEATHER.

See you tomorrow, I hope.

* * *

* Pav is too low-slung to be in danger.  In this weather you want to be built like a brick.

Medals for gallantry

 

MY HUSBAND WENT TO THE CAROL SERVICE WITH ME TONIGHT.  HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ANYTHING SO FRELLING GALLANT IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE?  Just as an update:  he did have a stroke less than a week ago.  A stroke.  Less.  Than.  A week ago.  He only got home from hospital the day before yesterday.

You wouldn’t like to go to the carol service tonight? I said, mainly just going through the motions, although . . . one of the things about getting old and frail is not getting isolated, what’s the point of having a quarter-century-younger spouse if she doesn’t stir you with a stick occasionally, we aren’t mad-social-whirl people, and Peter likes Christmas carol services.  It was worth a try.

Okay, said Peter.

Gleep, I said, and went into Adrenaline Overdrive.

We did do a certain amount of tottering, but we shared the honours there:  I could say that he’s so much bigger than I am* that suggesting he lean on me is a perilous proposition, but the truth is I haven’t slept in so long** that ‘which way is up’ is a question I have to keep asking.  Bemusedly.  I also spent the entire service thinking Oh oh oh I shouldn’t have suggested it, I am sure this is too much stress on his system*** and it will put back his recovery and EVERYONE WILL HATE ME.

I did park in the road so no one could block us in, I did get a trifle bossy about how we went up the steps to the door, I was more than happy to let a few of the Christian community door greeters help us, and to demand seats on the aisle of the back row so we could lurch out early, to our unblocked-in car, if necessary.  And we did leave early.  BUT WE WENT.  AND WE SANG.

The thing is that these first few days, Peter can’t be left alone, he’s too vulnerable.  We had the physiotherapist assessor here on Friday afternoon, we’d barely got back here first ourselves—Nina had come for the afternoon too and I was very glad to have someone else listening and asking questions;  I am seriously over the line into Broken Reed territory.  And the assessor (who looks about seventeen) explained that Peter is high risk because it’s not just the obvious effects of the stroke but that Peter hasn’t had time to learn to adapt to his lop-sidedness.  The official physio starts on Monday and long term prognosis is (cautiously) good;  short term . . . well.

I slept at the mews Friday night, and since Peter’s guest room gives me claustrophobia I slept downstairs on what the hellhounds consider to be their sofa and my inability to sleep was much enhanced by the fact of hellhounds wishing to join me.  Dorothea and Swanhilde came overnight last night—and I bolted off to my monks, including a long conversation with Alfrick before the service, about the frelling interface between God and mortal responsibility and feeling God’s presence in those situations where you feel he could just have had something else happen.  And came home feeling a lot calmer . . . but I still didn’t sleep.  Tonight I’m back to the sofa.  And the hellhounds.  And the poor hellterror, who doesn’t understand why hurling herself on Peter is no longer welcome.

And now, I think, is when I really do cut back on the blog.  I don’t yet know how this will manifest itself, but time will tell, as it always does, the ratbag, while it’s wounding your heel and doing you out of itself.

Librarykat

AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! The cliffhangers!

 But don’t you dare stop! Oh my!

Catlady

I don’t mind cliffhangers because they mean it’s going to keep going.

Yep.  You don’t have to worry about KES.  At the moment I’ve still got a good handful of already-written eps—but she’s still in a big fat heaving mess where I’ve been obliged to leave her.  I will certainly go on.  I want to know what happens.

* * *

* He was 6’2” when he could still stand up straight and his wrists are about the size of a Shire horse’s ankles.

** I am to sleep what the hellhounds are to food.  Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

*** I also feel increasingly sorry for the people in front of us at carol services as, over the years, I get louder, and Peter’s relationship with anything resembling the melody is unique and possibly hostile.  I was gaily singing descants tonight and I’m pretty sure I saw several of the people in front of us flinch.

KES, 110

 

ONE HUNDRED TEN

“My preparations have been hasty and incomplete,” Watermelon Shoulders began again, as if discussing plans for a cocktail party.  The caterers are late, the marquee has a hole in it, and one of the guests is so allergic to nuts the toasted cashews with tamari have been banned.  Given my attitude toward cocktail parties the fact that I’d rather he were discussing plans for one meant I was really out of my comfort zone.  One dead guy or a cocktail party . . . okay, I might go for the dead guy.  But ‘he is only the first’?  No.  The cocktail party wins.  Even someone going off in anaphylactic shock if someone says ‘cashew’ in their hearing, you call an ambulance while (you hope) they’re reaching for their EpiPen.  But the bottom line is that there are no swords involved.

I wiggled my fingers on the sword hilt.

“In greatest part because I believed I had no other choice.  We did not see thee”—

Why did I hear a capital S on ‘see’?

“—till thy hound found thee, and shewed us what we had been too short-sighted to descry.”-

Shooed?  Oh.  Shewed.  Archaic English is alive and well and living in Cold Valley.  The priest at my mother’s Episcopal church, who had always been a trifle volatile, had once nearly come to blows with a visiting academic on the question of the pronunciation of shew.  I couldn’t remember now which of them had been willing to punch someone out over shoe or show although at the time seventh-grade me had thought it was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened in church.

“Thou’rt not what the omen had led us to envisage.”

Also this we he kept referring to.  Who was we?  Another question I wasn’t going to ask.  I wasn’t asking questions.  Also because I was sure the answer would involve more swords.

Wait.  Omen?

I had turned my head to look at him.  He was smiling at me.  It was a surprisingly nice smile.  He was actually kind of gorgeous.  Circumstances had conspired to prevent me from noticing this before.  I felt myself smiling back.  Forget it, MacFarquhar.  He’s at least ten years younger than you are.  Maybe fifteen.  As well as imaginary.  Or something.  Like five of the six rose bushes on the window seat were imaginary.  Like the dead guy and the blood were imaginary.  I hoped if any of the blood was oozing dreadfully near any of the books scattered over the floor that it was particularly imaginary.

Also this young gorgeous smiling guy was carrying a sword.  In the last few minutes I had taken strongly against the presence of swords.  If the dead guy hadn’t had a sword he probably wouldn’t be dead.  I wondered what had happened to his sword.  No I didn’t.  And I wasn’t really holding the hilt of a—one of those things—myself.

I could almost wish something would happen so I didn’t have to hear any more of what Watermelon Shoulders was saying.  I was sure he wasn’t done ruining my day/night/life.  The spiky shadow in the corner of the window seat (the spiky shadow which was definitely also on my list of imaginary) seemed to unbend a limb and refold it around the nearest rose bush.  I rolled the pebble with my left forefinger a little more.  I might have liked to hum an insouciant little tune but that was beyond me.

There was a breathless hush.  I didn’t at all like the waiting quality of it.  Even the snaky air seemed to be coiling and recoiling more slowly.  Nasty waits I have known:  Waiting for your father to tell you that yes he has left you and your mother and no he’s not coming back.  Waiting to hear if you flunked Algebra II and will have to go to summer school.  Waiting to find out if the scuttlebutt is true that your editor (who isn’t answering either her phone calls or her emails) has been fired and your publishing house is planning to renege on all her outstanding contracts, including the one for the first three books of your new series.  Waiting to hear that your own divorce has gone through because you still can’t quite believe it. . . . This particular braced-for-the-worst waiting had one thing going for it though:  Watermelon Shoulders had stopped speaking.

Then he had to go and wreck it.  “Silverheart knows her business,” said Watermelon Shoulders softly, as if he thought he was being reassuring.  “I have not known the wristlet as long, but she comes with a fine pedigree.”

Pedigree?  I thought wildly. You don’t mean CV?  My eyes were stretched so wide the lids hurt, staring at the spiky shadow which, curled round the rose-bush the way it now was, could merely be more rose-bush.  A lot more rose-bush.  Like another one of the climbers on the back porch which ate Chihuahuas and small children.

There was something about the way the spiky shadow had paused—as if it were listening.  Sid had raised her head off the table and was standing stiffly at attention.  Watermelon Shoulders looming at my shoulder went suddenly still in a way I had no trouble at all deciding was bad news. . . .

 

HE’S HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME*

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* * *

 

* Although I’m the one left the griddle on high and smoked the house out . . .

Chirp-free

 

Peter’s still in hospital.  The second lot of tests finally found what the doctors were looking for and yes, it was a small stroke.  Which tells them what they need to be doing . . . which appears to be a whole new round of tests.  And adjusting the physio they’d already started him on.  They’ve also set him up with various new meds. . . .

But they still won’t tell me when I can bring him home.  The doctor was so relentlessly noncommittal when I spoke to her this morning I’m kind of guessing it won’t be tomorrow either.  Meanwhile they’ve shut visiting hours down to one hour in the evening because there’s too much flu around.*  When I went in tonight—assuming that Arkham Sanatorium Car Park would be a bloodbath from everyone trying to visit in the same tiny time slot—I parked midtown and walked up.  It’s only nineteen miles.  Straight up hill.  With tigers.**  And you have to bring your own supplementary oxygen.  Oh, and did I mention the gales?  Yes.  We’d had a sunny, hurtling-friendly day and I’d taken hellhounds, who do not find caroming off the walls indoors amusing, out into the countryside.  LITERALLY THE MOMENT I was putting my shoes on and checking my knapsack for books and knitting this evening . . . the gales with lashing rain returned.  Frelling frelling frelling.  That walk uphill didn’t need tigers.  And in fact they all stayed home in their nice dry caves with the fitted carpet and satellite TV.

But Peter is still in hospital. ***  I hate hospitals.  I know they’re a lot better than not having hospitals . . . but I still hate hospitals.

I’m pretty chirp-free tonight.

But thank you for all the good thoughts and prayers.  They really do make a difference.

* * *

* I don’t follow the logic.  Isn’t exposure the critical factor?  Or are you that much likelier to catch/spread it if you’re sharing air/doorknobs for three or six hours instead of only one?

** Midtown parking does, however, become free at 6 pm, which solves the pitiless exact and sufficient change problem^.  The hospital car park charges 24/7.  I think it charges more on Sundays and holidays and there’s a surcharge for every pushchair.  If you have infant triplets you’re going to need a bank loan.  As well as a donkey to carry the large jingling panniers of change.

^ And a good thing too since I’d managed to forget to get any more.  There is no longer anywhere in this frelling town that I can buy a newspaper—ie Peter’s GUARDIAN—that will let me bring a dog or dogs inside.  By the time I’ve finished two shifts of hurtling I’ve forgotten that I have errands.  So a big FAIL on this one.

*** It’s funny the things that don’t happen by magic when he’s not here.  Taking the garbage out, for example.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to find the CORRECT replacement white plastic liner for the basic kitchen dustbin.  Apparently Peter has a Drastically Various Sizes of Dustbin Fetish—I never knew—with a roll of white plastic bags for each.

Peter, continued. Also me and stormy weather.

 

Peter’s still in hospital.  The test results are ambiguous so they’re keeping him in both for observation and also to do the high res version of some of the tests they’ve done once already.  Everyone (including Peter himself, me and the medical members of the family) is working on the hypothesis that he’s had a mild stroke.  I am hoping they’ll let me bring him home tomorrow;  I want him home anyway—he wants to be home—and I also want to get him OFF that awful hospital swill and put him back on real food.  No one ever got better on hospital food as rapidly or thoroughly as they might have on something that hadn’t been through forty-eight factory processes and the worst a ginormous institutional kitchen can do.*

And I’m so tired that if I didn’t have a hellpack waiting for me at home I might have crawled under** Peter’s bed and . . . stayed there.  I doubt that I’d sleep, exactly, but even sliding into that hallucinatory coma that happens when I’m this tired and can’t sleep would be a break from, you know, reality, which is not my favourite place at the moment.

I got about three hours of sleep last night.  I’d missed supper so I had to eat something, and I know food is supposed to make you sleepy but all it does is refuel my brain for more spectacular worry-arcs.  Tried going to bed a couple of times and was propelled upright again almost as if on springs.  Finally gave up at about eight o’clock, decided it was too early to ring the hospital—you want to wait till after the consultant has made his/her rounds—and that I could sweep the floor and fold the laundry while I was waiting.  That’s could, as in was able.  But was so tired decided to lie down for a minute. . . . And the next thing I knew the phone was ringing and it was Georgiana wanting to know what news since it was now 10:30 and I hadn’t rung her with an update yet.  Which I was supposed to have done.

Despite the fact that Georgiana and Saxon have to come down from London and I’m already in Hampshire they beat me to the hospital.  Well, I had hellcritter problems:  Pav wouldn’t crap—very reasonably because by her lights it was early—but I didn’t want to leave her for hours uncrapped;  and then the hellhounds completely blew me away by finishing their lunch.  I’m still having to force-feed them two meals out of three, and the one they’re least likely to finish is lunch.  I’d already shoved the requisite two wodges down each of their throats and was preparing to leave when there were EATING NOISES*** and I had to wait and give them titbits and make a fuss.  And then I got CAUGHT IN CHRISTMAS TRAFFIC and when I finally arrived at the hospital the car park was full.  Of course.  It’s always full.†

And have I mentioned the weather?  Torrential rain and gales.  That’s TORRENTIAL.  It’s got worse over the course of the day.  Tonight when I left Peter behind again—the monsoon soaked me to the skin and tried to yank my hair out by handfuls on the walk back to the car park—I climbed hastily into Wolfgang, peeled out of my wet coat and tried to compose myself for driving, and Wolfgang was literally rocking where he stood from the strength of the wind.††  I drove home at 40 mph on the 70 mph dual carriageway:  at 40 mph you have a split second to recognise deep-water-black from ordinary-shadow-black and behave accordingly.  I know all the standard places where you get serious water on the road, but today’s rain has been drastic enough that there were a few exciting extras for variety.

I’ve eaten dinner.†††  I should probably make another mad attempt to sleep.

You’re all still praying/sending positive thoughts, right?  Thank you.  I want to bring him home, and I want him to get as much physiotherapy as he needs, not that the NHS feels like giving him (or not).‡  Although I have every intention of employing my secret weapon toward this end, which is to say siccing a few formidable Dickinsons on the problem. . . .

* * *

* Peter’s green beans were dark brown and his sausages were as smooth and homogenous as cardboard loo-roll tubes.^

^ It also makes me crazy that someone who is seriously ill is allowed to skip dinner—even hospital-food dinner is better than no dinner—eat two mouthfuls of ghastly fake sugar-and-chemical-laden ‘ice cream’ and finish off with a large mug of black coffee.  This happened at the next bed.

** Definitely no room on top.  Hospital beds tend to give the impression of being large because of all the hardware but the actual square footage of mattress is weeny.  Square inchage.

*** Pav had already eaten hers of course.  SCARF.  I may need lessons in Making the Kong More Difficult.

† And then there’s the Finding a Parking Machine That Works.  WHY THE FRELL don’t hospital car parks, or at least this one, have parking time-ticket machines THAT TAKE CREDIT CARDS?  Do you know how much change you can run through in half a day in a hospital car park?  The machines don’t take notes either.  Just coins.  And it’s £36.16 an hour.^  People need back surgery after hoicking their change to the third-nearest machine, which is the first one that works.  The hospital doesn’t need the extra patients.  The car park doesn’t need the extra visitors.

^ And they don’t give change and they don’t take any coin smaller than 5 pence.

†† It might have been my mood.

††† I broke out one of my few remaining Old Green & Black’s Peppermint Fondant Filled Chocolate Bars.  I felt the situation demanded a radical response.  And I’m trying not to buy books/music/yarn to cheer myself up.

‡ To a very large extent, not the NHS’ fault.  If passing governments stopped jerking it around and cutting its funding, it would be a much nobler beast than it is.

Peter

 

Peter had a Funny Turn and is in hospital.  It’s getting on for 2 a.m. as I write this and I’m just back.  And exhausted and lonely and worried.

They’re running tests tomorrow.

Anyone who does that sort of thing, please pray.

Peppermint tea, the universal panacea

 

It’s PETER’S BIRTHDAY and I am sloshed.  I’m such a frelling cheap date:  two glasses of champagne and the taxi driver has to lasso me off the chandelier.*

Peter’s birthday is a problem every year.  In the first place he is IMPOSSIBLE TO BUY PRESENTS FOR.  There has been some conversation on the forum about this:  I am not alone in my Significant Other Gift Despair.  In the second place his birthday is ten frelling days before CHRISTMAS so I get to be intensively traumatised . . . every year.  Which I gather from forum remarks is not unique either.  Okay, what happens in April that so many hard-to-buy-for people are conceived, and are then born in DECEMBER for maximum moral disintegration by those self-destructive enough to be involved with them?  I tend to like April.  You get bluebells in April.  But it’s a bad month to get knocked up.  Make a note.

HOWEVER I DID RATHER WELL THIS YEAR.  I think.**  There were some very posh slippers and a hideous mathematical puzzle that I thought should be right up Peter’s street shudder*** and BOOKS† and . . . an upmarket toy that is a pocket watch and a compass and a magnifying glass and ten lords a-leaping and a tarsier in a giant fig tree.

Presents! And some rather good sofa cushions! (Fallout from Third House. Sigh.)

Man opening presents. No, no, none of them bite. I promise.

And then we went out to dinner and . . . and I am now pouring peppermint tea through the system as rapidly as possible.  I have to get up, out of bed, and work tomorrow.  And hurtle a lot of critters. . . . ††

* * *

* And after he deposited me at the bottom of my front stairs^ I took my velvet skirt and lacy cardigan off and put my jeans and (hairy) jumper back on and took a series of hellcritters out for a hurtle.  It seems to me that most of the stories of my life begin, middle and end with ‘and then I took the hellpack out for a hurtle.’  Because I’ve cut back slightly on how much hurtling the hellhounds get—they’re middle aged after all—and the hellterror is just as happy sprinting up the walls indoors^^—I’m not spending that many more hours on the end of a lead than I did before the advent of the hellterror.  It just feels like it.^^^  Especially on nights when I’ve just eaten and drunk for England and my medal is in the post.

^ glug glug glug splat

^^ She is a funny creature+.  Most dogs, in my experience, you need to have thumped the recall into their distractible little heads for YEARS++ before you want to risk letting them out the back/front door and into the great mad world without the full paraphernalia of restraint, even if all you want from the excursion is that they have a pee.+++  And it did happen once or twice during moments when getting her OUTDOORS RAPIDLY seemed worth the risk that Pav took off down the drive because there was sure to be something interesting down there.  But jingle a handful of kibble or offer her a scrap of dried venison# or sea jerky ## and she’s your slave for life, or at least as long as it takes to lure her back to you again.  And since she is totally stomach motivated and she has learnt that indoors means the really BEST, most SUCCULENT food###, not to mention infinitely tormentable hellhounds and a nice besotted gentleman who will probably play with her~, I pretty much have to force her to do her business before she’s throwing herself at the door to get back inside.  At night she throws herself at Wolfgang, because there will be fooooood in her travelling crate.

+ Bullies come with a guarantee:  they make you laugh or your money back.

++ I do specialise in the very easily distractible ones

+++ And you may also have some vague awareness that I’m a bit cracked on the subject of badly behaved off lead dogs.

^^^ Also of course I no longer have a dog minder.  On a day to day basis this is fine.  Excellent even.  But I am a little wistful about those operas I’m not going to because the timing is hellcritter digestion unfriendly.

# http://www.billyandmargot.com/shop/venison-treats/

## http://www.fish4dogs.com/products/sea-jerky-squares.aspx

### Not that the occasional Redolent Dead Thing or similar is to be scorned, but all the hysterical shouting slightly takes the edge off her enjoyment.

~ I’m the evil mean hellgoddess who does things like stop her tormenting the hellhounds, enforcing the Long Down, and clawing the Redolent Dead Thing away from her.

** And I think I may have something EXCITING coming for Christmas.  If it arrives.  If it’s still exciting after it arrives.  IF it arrives.  IF if if if if if.

*** This is the man who spent about ten minutes staring into space last night and then scribbled a few numbers on a piece of paper and said to me triumphantly, I have been alive . . . AAAAAAAAUGH!  I’VE LOST THE PIECE OF PAPER!!!  Peter figured out how many days he’s been alive.  AND I’VE LOST THE PIECE OF PAPER.  Well he’ll do it again if I ask him politely . . . but today is his birthday.^

^ Okay, was.  We’re heavily into the small hours here.  I’m also too sloshed to type, let alone think in complete sentences to type.

† Including GHOST BRIGADES, the first sequel to OLD MAN’S WAR although my informant tells me we need at least LAST COLONY and ZOE’S TALE as well.  Good.  Next year.

†† And SING.  Nadia gave me LOTS of stuff to get into trouble with over the holiday break.

And beginning the next lot of lovely forum KES comments

 

Katinseattle

But will all that blood just disappear at dawn the way things just appeared after dark?

Did I ever answer this?  It’s from an earlier page in the thread.  —No.  That’s not to say it might not be altered somehow.  ::standard hellgoddess cackle::

Julia

I went back to ep. 1 and started rereading, only stopping when my laptop battery (so very inconsiderately) decided to run out of power. Of course, all I had to do was go downstairs and plug in my computer, but how I wished for a hard-copy! (The obvious problem with this, of course, is that things would probably have to be finished-ish for a printed version to be made, and I don’t want the story to stop anytime soon!) 

Um.  Well, not as most people would count finished-ish.   I’m STILL bearing down—or attempting to bear down—on the end of Part/Volume One.  At which point I will further attempt to bundle the whole thrashing, yelling—vellicating—thing into a single file (keeping the episodic structure intact:  if I’d been writing it straight through it would have a significantly different rhythm and story arc(s), speaking of vellicating) and ship it off to Merrilee.  I will then take several deep breaths and possibly a few weeks off* and . . . start Part Two.

I think I can safely promise that the end of Part One will not tidy things up beautifully.  It won’t be a cliffhanger like the end of PEGASUS is a cliffhanger—or that several of the KES eps are cliffhangers.  But there will be, I hope, a certain sense of WHAT?!  WHAT??? I admit however that when I started the Final Dash to the End—which from my point of view started at around ep 105—I thought I knew where I was going and I . . . was wrong.  The goal posts haven’t merely moved, they’ve done a frelling cotillion.  I’m still assuming the Story Daimons will be kind and not get me into the sort of trouble I can’t get out of:  and the story itself—Kes’ story—is still running hot and strong.  This should be a good sign;  it always has been a good sign with other stories.  But I can’t help feeling a little anxious. . . .

Trishhenry

What I keep worrying about is I thought when Kes asks the Hob for help with the pipes, she offers to make chocolate brownies. And then the pipes very dramatically get in line and work. Now, she has provided milk and some eggs, but no brownies yet. I worry about this. Like, the Hob may be hopefully and patiently waiting for brownies that have not yet come.

I’m sure the hob is hopefully and patiently waiting for brownies, but hobs are realists,** and, furthermore, a hob’s purpose is to protect its home.  Rose Manor has been sitting empty for a long time for . . . er . . . a variety of reasons.  The poor hob has got very lonely and hungry.  And now someone is moving in—and chances are the hob already knows the modern world has been taught not to believe in hobs—and she not only remembers the milk, she provides scrambled eggs?  And peppermint tea?  I think the hob is thrilled.  And will do its earnest and magnificent*** best to aid and protect this sympathetic person who will certainly make chocolate brownies at the first viable opportunity.

I also think this particular hob . . . um.  Well, let’s say I suspect that it’s at Rose Manor because it has certain talents and affinities.

EMoon

Now that pebble…is clearly not a pebble in the garden-variety-found-in-parking-lot-pebble mode. It is a capital P Pebble. I think.

Yep.  The funny thing is that I DIDN’T KNOW THAT when Kes took it away from Sid back at the Friendly Campfire parking lot.  Indeed I almost cut that bit out because I thought I was wasting time.  Find another bridge from point A to point B, McKinley!  But the pebble seemed to want to stay.  And since I have three gravel-chewing dogs that this happens wasn’t a problem.  And since I couldn’t think of another bridge I let it stand.  This is the kind of thing that makes a writer JUST A TRIFLE JITTERY about this live thing—about posting episodes only half a dozen or ten eps from where I am, frelling writing them.  As I just said, the end of part one has taken a gigantic lurch into parts I thought were going to stay semi-unknown for a while longer, but the story is so vigorous I’m not too worried.  But I’m a little worried.

Fiery flashes sound like Caedmon’s armamentarium.

Yes.  But fire is also fighting fire.  We’ve got fire on both sides of this dispute.

Spiky-limbs….the hob? Saluting Kes, of course: she’s the new Lady of the House, and she didn’t (quite) faint away. Or is spiky-limbs another ally, or even an enemy saluting an enemy at the end of an engagement. “You win this time, but it’s not over.” I hope it’s the hob. I really, really hope it’s the hob because a hob can take care of that corpse and any blood that’s soaked into the floor before the next evening’s guest arrives for dinner. (And I’m suddenly worrying about that dinner. After all this…surely something will not fail to happen during that dinner, if we all survive that long.

::Hums a little tune::

Think about something else, E. Quickly.)

OH GLEEP AND GLORY THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.  I DON’T WANT ANOTHER POWERFUL PROFESSIONAL IMAGINATION ACCIDENTALLY STIRRING UP ALREADY TROUBLED WATERS.  ROGUE MENTAL RESONANCES IN THE STORY PLANE ARE DANGEROUS.

Sid, bless you! Seriously, Sid. GOOD dog. Wonderful dog. Whatever you did, however you did it, great dog, you. If I had a chunk of beef handy, you’d get it.

Good thing you said that ‘if’.  Or I wouldn’t put it past her to show up on your doorstep.  I’m getting very nervous about the whole ‘reality’ thing, with what’s happening to Kes.  She WRITES FANTASY, you know?  She’s been under the impression that most of what she writes stories about stays in BOOKS.  Oops.  ::Looks around uneasily::

Midget

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! These cliff-hangers!

Thank you, thank you.  A writer likes being appreciated.†

I just finished rereading Pegasus and I feel much the same way about the ending there (no wait, I lied, I feel much more like sobbing in a corner about that particular cliffhanger).

Well . . . yes.  It’s a little like what happens in OUTLAWS with Guy of Gisbourne.  I didn’t like it either.  It stressed me out lots.  It made me miserable.  And ending PEG there frelling hurt.  Not least because I know IT’S A LONG TIME before Sylvi and Ebon get back together.  And that’s not a spoiler, this is another of those moments when I say, This is a McKinley story.  There’s a limit to what a reteller can do with, say, Robin Hood, but do you REALLY THINK I’m going to send Sylvi and Ebon to opposite ends of the universe forever?††  But it makes the beginning of PEG II very hard going for me, because Sylvi is very, very wretched.  Oh, you’ll get glimpses of Ebon too, but . . .

But still. I too will be buying this when it comes out in bound-book form.

Oh good.  Oh excellent.†††

And then I might not have to scream about the cliff-hangers so much. I hope…..

Well, see above.  I don’t think the end of KES Part One is going to have anything on the end of PEG Part One, but it’s not going to be exactly an end, with pink ribbons and champagne and so on.

Greenturtle3

All I could do after reading tonight’s episode of Kes was chuckle maniacally for several minutes.

Oh splendid.  A reader after my own heart.  Nothing better than a story that makes you chuckle maniacally.

Calamity

Kes is the last thing I’m reading tonight before I go back to try to sleep in my chair on night nine of Horrible Epic Virus #3 Since the Beginning of November. Oddly, I’m pretty sure she is going to help. I am going to imagine that lovely, shadowy crew fighting off my own personal viral monsters. THANK YOU.

Oh, poor you.  Vitamin C?  More green vegetables?  Less stress?  Sorry I can’t offer to provide you extra-strength KES episodes.  I hope you are totally recovered and have stabbed multiple metaphorical poltroons with your vorpal blade by now.

It is that season, winter solstice, the birth of the Son of God if you’re a Christian . . . and Horrible Epic Viral Season.  I am having more rheumatic whatsit than usual or than I am enjoying even the least little bit but I remain mostly clear of the standard flu things.  So far.  ::Makes placatory gestures::  But last night at the monks’‡ I COUGHED.  I never cough at the monks’.  I WAS ALSO THE ONLY ONE IN THE CONGREGATION.  It’s not unusual for there only to be two or three of us‡‡ but it’s rarely only me.  It was only me last night.  AND I COUGHED.  I briefly expected them all to rise in a body and throw me out . . . but of course they’re too holy.

I also considered putting on my invisibility cloak and creeping up on their dais thing—whatever you call it:  they do their chanting antiphonally, so there are two rows of monk-seats facing each other and at right angles to the congregation seats—and crouching in front of one of the ELECTRIC FIRES.‡‡‡  But the prior might have tripped over me carrying the goldburst contemplative item back to the tabernacle or what-have-you§.  And I suspect an insubstantiation cloak would make me even colder. . . .

I think I’m raving.  Maybe I’d better go to bed.§§

* * *

* Please don’t hit me

** Okay, it varies with who you read.  But this is the McKinley version

*** And perhaps slightly whimsical.  It is, after all, a hob.

† A writer adores being appreciated.  It’s very nearly as good as having enough money to go on eating.  I’m not having one of those moments right now when eating is under threat but I have had them.

†† Besides, if I did that, it would probably be even LONGER than a trilogy.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

††† See:  keep eating.

‡ Where it was SOOOOOO COOOOOOLD.  But this week I was wearing not only my Street Pastors’ battery-operated heated socks, but my fleece lined sheepskin boots.  They don’t fit well enough for serious walking—which is why they will never come Street Pastoring with me—but they are great for sitting at your computer hour after frelling hour where the only activity is mental and fingery^ and the rest of you risks slowly congealing into an ice floe.

^ I know.  Apparently the only adjectival form of ‘finger’ is ‘digital’, but unless you can nail your antecedents to the mast ‘digital’ has been a trifle overtaken by technology.  You don’t nail stuff to masts any more either.

‡‡ Most people, like, you know, go out on Saturday nights.  Even Christians.

‡‡‡ Maybe next week I’ll wear my battery-operated heated waistcoat as well.

§ This actually worries me.  It is a very beautiful gold starburst thing and I would be sad if it’s shut up in a dark cupboard all its life except an hour every Saturday night when it’s dark outside too.

§§ Where, just by the way, it’s warm.