It's a rough job but someone's got to do it

 

Hellkitten duty.  Yep.  Still adorable.  Never mind his personality, I'm glad he's ginger because it makes him (relatively) easy to photograph.  I have twice as many good photos of Chaos than I do Darkness, simply because the camera boggles at . . . darkness. 

            Meanwhile, speaking of hellhounds, this week is the anniversary of bringing them home.   I probably would remember their birthday because I'm like that, but I might very well forget the 12th of October if I weren't reminded every year by the return of this frelling street fair:  the kind with rides.  Large noisy rides.*  The beginning of October, posters are plastered all over the south of England, I think, and I had been ignoring them, lo these many years in this area, but four years ago I was driving back and forth twice a week to East Persnickety to visit my puppies and the imminent arrival of the juggernaut not only impressed itself on my jangling, puppy-hyped little mind, but it was going on the day I brought them home so we had to drive through LOTSA THROBBING MUSIC AND CLANGING MACHINERY AND SCREAMING TEENAGERS.  That's probably when they threw up.  The puppies, I mean, not the teenagers.  I don't want to know about the teenagers.

            Meanwhile meanwhile, I may conceivably find myself being SHORT the next couple of days on the blog.  I know, I know, I've said this before.**  But due to a whole series of circumstances mostly beyond my control and/or rude and preposterous scheduling I find that the next two days are going to be unpleasantly packed with incident.  Not to mention getting up early THREE DAYS IN A ROW.  Tomorrow I am attending a HOMEOPATHIC SEMINAR IN MAUNCESTER YAAAAAAAY.  I have assumed for some years now that all homeopaths who dare attempt to cross the border into Hampshire are immediately transformed, by some fell sorcery, into aggressive out of control dogs which would explain a lot.  I believed I had avoided this destiny by leading with the fantasy-writing thing and the goblins in charge overlooked me.  So tomorrow I will discover how other people maintain human integrity upon the dangerous ground of Hampshire.  Either that or there's going to be a lot of barking.

              The seminar runs from ten a.m. to 5:00.  This means getting up early enough to get hounds half-hurtled before I go.  There's an hour and a half for lunch, which means I've just about got enough time to come screaming home, race hellhounds around the block, slap their lunch down, and scream back to Mauncester.  I'm not sure when I eat.  I will get home just about in time to have a cup of tea, re-hurtle some by that time seriously disaffected hellhounds and go to our frelling once-a-month tower practise at Old Eden.

            Tuesday morning a Computer Man arrives at the crack of dawn to take Gotterdammerung away and contend with it.  At a slightly more sensible hour Fiona is coming to rescue me from myself again*** . . . we having intelligently chosen this Tuesday rather than some other day because we're going to a concert that night.†  Fiona cheerfully informed me that I should be home by midnight which ordinarily is the mere shank of my evening but . . . . ††

            I've just had a brilliant idea.  I'm going to save most of the hellkitten photos for tomorrow.  And possibly Tuesday.  By Wednesday it may all be Gotterdammerung.

* * *

* And food that smells disgusting.  But I haven't eaten any real junk food in so long^ I don't react to those chemical enhancers the way you're supposed to.  Baking Bread Smell in the supermarket that's supposed to make you buy more tends to smell like Air Wick to me.  Ewww.

^ This isn't purity of thought and deed, you know.  If I ate a hot dog or a billow of cotton candy my stomach would say YOU MUST BE UNGLEBLARGING JOKING and then I'd probably explode.

** I say this regularly.  Indeed I should be making another of my turning-over-a-new-shorter-leaf announcements any time now.

*** Note that this means that all the various things I've promised various people will finally get sent out tomorrow.  Brave Fiona, for whom aggressive, out of control postmistresses are nothing. 

† At least while Fiona is rescuing I can hurtle and attempt to get back in hellhounds' good graces.

†† Mind you, she has another hour to go to get home after she drops me off.   But I hope she won't have been up at the crack of dawn for Gotterdammerung.