But SHADOWS is still still going*

 

I still feel like stagnant pond scum and the water in vases where the flowers have all died.  I wrote something today when Maggie has a very large purring cat in her lap and she says that it makes her eyeballs buzz.  Yeah.  Only I'm like that just sitting here. **

            The day did not begin well when I woke too early and lay there thinking about an intractable bit of plot machinery while my thriving young cough gleefully explored its rapidly expanding capacities.  Eventually I decided there was more rustling*** going on than could be explained by my cough-driven blood pressure thudding in my ears, put on a dressing-gown, stumbled downstairs, let hellhounds out . . . and Chaos bolted out into the courtyard and began erupting in both directions.  OH JOY.  We've already been having hellhound follies the last few days which I haven't told you about because they wind me up and I can't afford to snap and run off into the blue, I have a novel to finish.†  I do know what started this particular too-many-ringed circus:  Darkness heard a monster at the cottage the other night while he was behaving in a reckless manner—which is to say eating—and isn't going to make that mistake again any time soon.  Chaos missed the monster†† and initially attempted to carry on with the eating . . . but you can't just lie about eating when your brother and life partner is crammed into the back of the crate becoming one with the, um, darkness.  You could see the Dawning Horror creeping over him, although Chaos isn't so much a back of the crate hellhound as a floormat with large beseeching eyes hellhound.  NOOOOOOO.  NOT THE BOWL OF FOOD.  NOOOOOOOOO.  Anyway.  Things have progressed.  Not in a good way.  Today we appear to have added reality to the mess.

            As I was hosing down the hellhound courtyard there was one of those chirpy knocks on the door, you know the one:  tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap, tap.  GO AWAY.  YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT I'M DOING.  I answered the door.†††  It was the postperson, who handed me a Large Wodge of Stuff.  I staggered under the weight, being weak and infirm from coughing.  Will you be here in half an hour? he said in a voice to match the knock on the door.  I stared at him through puffy red-rimmed eyes, a large pile of post and a bad attitude.  I couldn't think of a way out of it.  Yes, I said.  Oh good, he said, I have some packets for you as well.  EVERYTHING I HAVE ORDERED OR ANYONE HAS SENT ME IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS ARRIVED TODAY.‡

            And then Raphael showed up‡‡ to (a) take the shiny new laptop away and make its possessed-by-evil battery spin 360° and spew green bile‡‡‡ so we can demand a new one and (b) tell frelling Outlook to stop playing silly buggers and function again.  I mean, again Raphael told it.  It giggles feebly while there's an archangel in the house and instantly goes off the rails again as soon as he leaves.§  ARRRRGH.§§  Since I'm presently trapped at home with SHADOWS, two mentally- and digestively-challenged hellhounds and a cough, I've spent some time trying to sort out my dreadful email inboxes.  I spent a good two hours doing this this morning while I was waiting hopefully for the fifth or sixth mug of tea to penetrate so I could get on with SHADOWS.  And when we went back to the cottage this afternoon and I turned on the desktop—and the knapsack laptop just to doublecheck—NONE OF WHAT I'D DONE ON THE MEWS LAPTOP UPDATED.

             SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM.§§§ 

* * *

* The end is actually in sight.  It's just nowhere near enough.  I want to be able to see it without the assistance of the Hubble telescope. 

** So maybe the ending is near enough.  I just can't make my eyes focus.  

*** Nothing to do with brown paper. 

Jabenami:

And, um, on the subject of bad physics jokes…

Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving down the highway when they are pulled over by a police officer.

"Do you have any idea how fast you're going?" the officer demands.

"No," says Heisenberg, "but I know exactly where I am."

"I'm going to need to take a look in your car," says the officer and goes around to the back of the car.

"Did you know that you have a dead cat in your trunk?" the officer exclaims.

"Well NOW I do," says Schrodinger. 

And from xkcd, that incomparable fount of scientific wisdom:

http://xkcd.com/967/ 

And, while we're at it:

http://xkcd.com/32/

Yeah.  This is the kind of thing I think about at 5 a.m. when I can't sleep and Mr Military Man is going to start crunching gravel soon.  Does xkcd's little brother write fantasy?   Has his little brother recently started reading brain-exploding quantum physics which is having no discernable effect (he thinks) on his actual story-writing, but is making him feel like his own doppelganger?  

† In twenty-three days.  In case anyone else is counting. 

†† We were having a typhoon.^  Wind, rain, banshees.  The banshees have never bothered the hellhounds, but there is, I am assuming, a sub- or supra-banshee who has infiltrated the area recently, to the dismay of some sensitive hellhounds.  

^ And I am so tired of resetting my phone machine, and the alien-invasion-klaxon back-up battery that protects the desktop from berserkers and boiling oil and is worse than the banshees.  The typhoon went on for several days.  I can go for weeks without getting any messages on my phone machine+ except from people like the dentist++ but over the three days of typhoon I think everybody I've ever met tried to phone me and have subsequently been variously waspish or petulant about my yet-again-un-re-set phone machine.+++ 

+ Probably because I never answer them 

++ And I'm certainly not going to answer him.  The nice young receptionist is leaving me increasingly forlorn-sounding reminders about my check-up however.~  Go away.  I have a novel to finish.  You don't want me till I've finished my novel, and got paid.  And I don't want you at all, but . . . 

~ There's a special module in Dental Receptionist School about sounding forlorn. 

+++ It's not like I ever, you know, answer the phone.  

http://www.quotegarden.com/telephones.html : 

The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875.  In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone.  Bill DeWitt, 1972

Middle age:  When you're sitting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you. Ogden Nash 

The situation is made additionally complex in my case because the phone that works doesn't ring.  The phone that doesn't work does ring, but it's the one in my office which is to say next to my bedroom and I certainly don't want it ringing at me at an unsuitable hour, like any time before noon.  So I leave it unplugged.  Why should I plug in a phone that doesn't work?  Which means I don't hear phone calls.  Every now and then I'll hear some clicking and muttering noises but by the time I figure out it's someone leaving a message, they've rung off, and I didn't want to answer the phone anyway, did I?  No.  I'll listen to the message later.  If I remember.  If the banshees don't wipe it first.~  

~ I have a perfectly good email address.  It's not like people can't get hold of me.  Of course I don't always answer emails either, but I do read them. 

††† I have to draw the line somewhere.  I already don't answer the phone.  

‡ Okay, I don't know that it's everything.  Everything I know to worry about the non-arrival of.  I'm well aware that anything that doesn't arrive at its destination by Christmas enters an interdimensional time warp that laughs at both Heisenberg and Schrodinger, and re-emerges at an undivinable wave/particle node which generally involves being gnawed by dragons during the detranslocation and is most often rendered as March.  But some of today's haul was ordered/sent in November.  

‡‡ I backed up politely, explaining that I had the lurgy.  So do I, said Raphael cheerfully.  I've had it since the beginning of December.  And through two courses of antibiotics.

            Moan. 

‡‡‡ All right, I'm a little obsessed with undesirable effluvia at the moment. 

§ It hasn't tried undesirable effluvia yet.  Small mercies.  Or no, medium-sized mercies at least. 

§§ So, arguably, I don't have a perfectly good email address. 

§§§ Don't do this when you have a sore throat and a cough.