Candle request
Reading Angel emailed me today to say that SSSHunt is going in for surgery on her leg tomorrow (Friday) morning at 8 am USA mountain time, and all candles and positive thoughts would be welcome.
Noises off
As you may recall, I have not been feeling my brightest and perkiest best the last few days.* So I went to bed early last night. I went to bed early for two reasons: first, not brightest, etc, and second, because I had the Rescheduled House Alarm Man** coming at the crack of dawn this morning, which is to say 8 am, which for someone who regularly doesn’t get to bed till after 2, is way earlier than I want to be dressed and coherent for.*** So I had the lights out by 1:30† and even more unusually went to sleep†† immediately.
I often turn the washing machine on just before I go to bed. I’ve probably been trying to remember to get it loaded and turned on††† for at least a day and last thing at night while I’m waiting for hellhounds to check every micromillimetre of their little courtyard for the ideal, the pinnacle of ideal places to pee, is often a good time to do it‡.
Last night was the first time it woke me up an hour later going bambambambambambambam. I still don’t know what was doing it; sure, I wash my All Stars in the machine, but I do not wash All Stars while I’m trying to sleep.‡‡ So I staggered downstairs, turned it off, groped around inside for the brick or fossilised dinosaur bone I had unaccountably missed when I loaded it, failed to find said brick or bone‡‡‡, muttered to myself about the Conspiracy of Made Objects§, turned it back on again, and went back to bed.
Silence.
UNTIL THE ALARM WENT OFF AT 6 AM.
Wha’? Huh? Whafahunh?
I staggered downstairs again§§ and discovered my little windowsill weather station thingy going BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. I adore my little windowsill weather station thingy (except when it beeps at 6 am) and wasted a lot of time, a year or so ago, choosing The Right One. The digital animations had to be not stupid, it had to have the moon phases (which most of them don’t), and it had to be itself small, plain and simple rather than a prize-winning 21st century functional art design, which is to say gets in your face and does not work.§§§ This one is all the desirable things. Except for the alarm clock. I did not want an alarm clock but they bundle alarm clocks with everything these days. You want a radio? Here, have an alarm clock. Computer? Alarm clock. Toaster? Alarm clock. New pair of shoes? Alarm clock.¤ I couldn’t get a weather station without an alarm clock. I’ve never learnt how to use it. It just sits there, stoically digitalling away. Unless, of course, you brush carelessly across its surface with a dustcloth, and turn something on.
Teach me to do housework.
But I was awake and dressed by 8. I won’t say coherent but I’ll say pinned like socks on a clothesline to the hot brown caffeine wire.
* * *
* I’m about two-thirds better. I think. It kind of varies.
** I’ve told you this before. I have a house alarm because I didn’t want to be the only person on the street who didn’t. I can still be embarrassed.
*** And the bed made, since the Occult Alarm Box^ is in the bedroom.
^ Containing a few of the magic voles that assist the magic hamsters in running the universe. The voles take over the little stuff that isn’t worth the hamsters’ time.
† Yessssssss! Believe it!
†† Hey! It’s only 1:30! Turn the light back on! We^ want to keep reading! And if you don’t let us we’ll lie here and keep you awake by sulking!
^Whoever we are, but as Peter says, ‘I’ is a committee
††† Preferably having also remembered the soap
‡ Better, anyway, than going out there with them and saying in a loud, carrying voice: Will you be (*&^%$£”!!!! getting on with it then, please, any time soon? When vets and do-gooders and so on are leaning on you about having your male dogs fixed^ they just keep going on about sex, and miss out entirely telling you that your entire/intact/balled dogs’ peeing habits will drive you mental. I’m pretty sure I remember telling you (smugly) that the hellhounds will pee on command. It took me a while to work out that what they were doing was marking on command. Oh, she wants a tag here? How very odd. Well, whatever the Hellgoddess wants. And they obliging lift a leg. And then return to their own imperatives.
^ No. There are many good reasons to have your dog neutered, but the life my hellhounds lead, it’s not necessary, and I’m a strong believer in ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.
‡‡ They don’t actually go bambambambam anyway. It’s more of a thumpetythumpetythumpetythumpety.
‡‡‡ I can, in fact, imagine throwing a laptop that had annoyed me one time too many into a washing machine just before I turned it (the washing machine) on, but you would think that memory would flood back on contact. If there were contact. Which in this case there was not. Nor am I missing any laptops at present (I think).
§ Creations always rebel against their creators.^ Look at children. Fortunately the magic hamsters are on our side.
^ In all the modern feminist+ what-happened-after stories, I haven’t seen a good one for Pygmalion and Galatea.
+ Just so we’re clear about this, men are feminists too: Sondheim’s INTO THE WOODS, for example.
§§ Clinging like mad to the railing. The cottage stairs, which are not delightful even at midday and with both your eyes open at the same time, become vortices of eleven-dimensional horror after midnight.
§§§ My very first electric typewriter is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as an example of the admirable union of beauty and function in 20th century design. It may be pretty to look at but I burned the beggar out in about four months.
¤ Okay, maybe I made that last one up. Unless it’s one of those battery operated ones with flashing lights to annoy people at Christmas. In which case I’m sure there’s an alarm clock involved.
Klub of the Klutzim
Reading Angel said: I concur about klutzim–it’s just better.
And Judy-in-NY said: Klutzim, for sure. If used enough, then it has to wind up in the dictionary since modern dictionaries reflect usage.*
Oh now hey. So, I’m about to start larding** my conversation*** with klutzim. Given the tenor† of this blog this should not be difficult. –You come too, as Robert Frost said.
OH FOR GODSSAKE. AS I SIT HERE WRITING THIS, EATING MY SUPPER AND MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS††, I BIT DOWN ON A HARMLESS-APPEARING BIT OF HADDOCK . . . AND JAMMED A QUARTER INCH OF FISHBONE INTO THE ROOF OF MY MOUTH. At an angle, quite a sharp angle in fact, and this with the natural slope of the roof of a human mouth meant that it was not at all easy to get hold of the wretched thing to yank it back out again. OWWW. Furthermore it’s more of a miniature shingle than the standard needly fishbone, and it was very well wedged. OWWWWWW. Feh. Arrrrgh. Etc. Good grief.††† Somehow the flavour of haddock is not enhanced by fresh blood.‡
. . . I was just going to tell you about membership card follies. Two bits of minor business: first: when you send me your street address, please mention your user name. I’m trying to keep a very, very, very vague sort of half-watch on this, partly because, second: I seem to be getting more addresses than I am getting posts. This may be the Dreaded WordPress Monster eating especially fresh and juicy posts, as it is inclined to do, and life is too short and I’m not going to not send someone a membership card because I can’t match the address with a klutz komment; and it also may be my known negative nontalent for basic addition. But just in case there are a few people out there who decided to omit the posting funny story part of the deal, this is skanky behaviour, okay? And maybe you’re sitting there smiling in a superior fashion, because the membership card is really very pretty and why should you not have one just because you are a perfect human being and never stepped on a cat in your life? Well, I’m telling you that the moment the unearned membership card passes your threshold, you’re going to start breaking your favourites vases and caroming off cupboard doors mysteriously left open and stepping on cats. Never mind that you don’t have a cat: a cat will find you. A cat specially programmed to get under human feet, to yowl shatteringly when stepped on, thus facilitating a supernumerary lurch backward into another of those mysteriously open cupboard doors, and to sink teeth and claws into the offending limb.
But you will be primed and ready to involve yourself when, some day, the klutzim klub is offered a new challenge.
Meanwhile . . . it will surprise none of you that I managed to buy defective envelopes for the sending out of the membership cards.‡‡ Sigh. I decided that the self-stick kind would be easier and more efficient for a bulk mailing. Well, it would be, if that’s what I got. But what I got is self stick that don’t stick. Arrrrrrgh. And sticking them all down with scotch tape is a lot less efficient than the old-fashioned kind that you have to lick (yuuuuuuuuuck) or use a sponge on would have been. Every now and then I’ll come to a little group of them that do stick but my nerve is shot, so I twitchily put a bit of tape over them too. However despite all hindrances, with and without teeth and/or glue, the first bundle is ready to go: now all I have to do is remember to take them to the Post Office. And not meet any alligators on the way.‡‡‡
* * *
* I should perhaps add that in the same post she said: I dreamed last night that I had fallen down, and hellhound puppies were licking my face. -Obviously a woman with a dangerous mind.
** Perhaps not an ideal verb to apply to a Jewish noun. Smear thickly, then. Trowel on.
*** And my entries
† I personally am more of a contralto when I’ve just fallen down/fallen over/tripped over/run into/been bashed by some malign obstacle^, but tenor is the commoner usage
^ including the random dust motes several of you have mentioned
†† This blog is my business. You had better believe it.
††† My mouth has enough problems already. They’re called teeth.
‡ If it turns out that chocolate stings, I’m going to be cranky.
‡‡ It might amuse you to know where I’m sending them to? Vastly, vastly, vastly overwhelmingly to the United States.^ Vastly. Overwhelmingly. But Oz is second, not the UK–and the majority of Australian fantasy readers furthermore live in Victoria. Canada is third. The UK finally totters in as a poor fourth. A very poor fourth. I think my English readers–and I now know there are a few of you out there–are all suffering from Stiff Upper Lipitis.^^ Hey! It’s okay to be a member of the klutzim! We make great brownies! We have excellent taste in books! And our membership cards are really pretty!
And then there is one klutz each in Ireland, Sweden, and South Africa. They must be very lonely.
^ The only towns to appear twice are Madison, WI, and Kansas City.
^^ Which I feel should be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, and all three i’s are short.
‡‡‡ By the taste in my mouth the bleeding seems to have stopped, thank you for asking, although it’s a bit mushy and swollen up there. My stomach has sufficiently improved today that I’m about to try a little leftover wedding cake. They’ll have given me the corner with the rusty nail in it.
Blehhhhhrrrrg. . . .
So, what I haven’t been telling you, because it’s so boring.
I have stomach flu. Or whatever. * Felt a little curious during the wedding on Saturday** and got home and . . . here we draw the veil of discretion . . . and I got up the next morning pretending to be better, and I did manage to ring service. The rest of Sunday I don’t even want to think about although I did derive some intense private humour out of the idea of posting a recipe that night.***
Yesterday was definitely better. Oh, whew, I thought.
Today I sprang out of bed smartish because I had to get hellhounds walked so I could go ride Connie. . . .
I cancelled riding Connie.
Despair.
Plus all those other stomach flu symptoms. Blehhhhhrrrrg. Also the ME has come back for a cosy little visit, of course, because that’s what it does. Illness attracts its attention, like rotting meat attracts flies. Silly of me to think I might get away with it. Did tiptoeing past the neighbourhood bully’s house ever work either?
I did get the hellhounds walked, more or less. My heroic deed for the day. On days like these I’m grateful for my Techno Trousers,† although I do have to wear mine, the supplementary gizmo that takes ‘em out by themselves is faulty in my edition. But I crank ‘em up, set ‘em on walk, tie the leads to my nerveless fingers and zone out for about an hour. When I find myself standing in front of the door to the cottage again I assume we’re all walked, and then I prop the Trousers in a corner of the sitting room till we have to do it all over again in the afternoon.
Most of the rest of the day I have spent on the sofa, with hellhounds, reading.†† This is an activity not without enjoyment, although I only ever seem to do it when I’m sick, which is kind of discouraging. I have told you that hellhounds are so much bigger than the previous generation that when we all want to get on the sofa together we need a camp bed for overages. Also Chaos always nails the best spot††† which leaves Darkness to circle the perimeter, looking put upon. He will usually eventually insinuate himself between me and the back of the sofa . . . and today he chose to lie at right angles to the back of said sofa. Whereupon Chaos said, oh, what a good idea, and rearranged himself so that we were a kind of cross of Lorraine . . . with me lying in the gap between the sofa and the bed, in the gap and on the metal tubing of the bedframe. Which furthermore is a good inch or two lower than the edge of the sofa. Ow. I’m the invalid, damn it, be nice to me.
* * *
* Visible symptoms very like the hellhounds’. And I have to say that if they feel like this all the time I’m not at all surprised they don’t want to eat anything. Torture By Food. No! No! Take It Awaaaaaaay!
** And the actual ringing was way more exciting than it should have been. At the time I thought I was just nervous because I was ringing for people I knew and would have to face when I climbed back down out of the tower again.
*** Especially, as it happens, a deep-fried doughnut recipe. Possibly the most memorable stomach flu of my life commenced shortly after the ingestion of an excellent cruller–heavy with frying and frosting–and as a result I couldn’t face it or any of its relatives for years. Just walking past a doughnut shop would make me queasy. I got over this. . . . And I’d already decided that glazed doughnuts was the first honey recipe I wanted to post and I felt too weak to change my mind . . . and recipe entries generally are a trifle less labour intensive and therefore a good plan in the circs.
† We are all Wallace and Gromit fans here, aren’t we?
†† Another book I want to blog about, when I’m finished. There’s getting to be quite a queue. Except I only seem to think of it when I’m at the mews and the books are in their (growing) pile at the cottage.^
^ Oh good! Something new to trip over!
‡‡‡ Between my legs. A hellhound is way too large and heavy to be a proper lap dog, although Holly, who was the Sofa Lap Area Dog, also preferred between to on. Hazel, however, was the Sofa Chest Area Dog, and got away with it, except when I had to shove some piece of her out of the way so I could see the TV screen. I think Hazel had hollow bones. Rowan was the Sofa Foot Area Dog. Rowan spent fifteen years in a bad mood, but she was an excellent foot warmer.
Klutzes* of the world, uni–WHAM**
I know that a lot of blog readers don’t bother with the comments, but you really should have a scan through the Klutz Klub posts, which are mostly rather–ahem!–agonisingly amusing, as well as demonstrating that there is a vast comedic talent out there that the producers of TV sitcoms should try harder to lure or grapple into their dominion.
I am also reminded that my daily life is fraught with klutzeries, and as only one example, I have no idea why or how the hellhounds and I are surviving each other, but we all seem mostly fairly happy and content DESPITE, for example, Chaos’ favourite game of not merely biting all the usually somewhat out of reach bits of me that he can chomp on easily if he comes down the stairs behind me, but getting between my legs to do it.*** I’ve tried to point out to him that he can actually reach more bits if he stays behind me and that getting between my legs is counterproductive but I think he gets carried away in the heat of the moment.† And these are the cottage’s steep narrow 260° stairs where you want to be hanging onto the railing anyway because most of them are triangular.†† Darkness will sometimes join in this frolic, but his more usual ploy is to go downstairs in front and then stop suddenly just when the havoc behind him is reaching its crescendo. One of the problems with the Hellgoddess persona is that since I’ve never (yet) failed to stop them when they do their rocket-launcher trick††† they think I’m proof against their wildest hurtles and caroms–a false assumption I’m at some pains‡ to prevent them finding out is false.
Then there is the going up the stairs with hellhounds ritual, which involves their tearing up in front of me so they can meet me at the top and investigate anything I may be carrying before it rises out of reach. I have the uneasy feeling that they’d drink tea if they had the chance; I’m usually preoccupied with keeping it off the carpet.
But hellhounds are far from the only regular hazard of my existence. Take, for example, the cottage attic. It’s an old house, and what brace the roof are two large crossbeams. None of this wussy overhead arch stuff. No, we have here a piece of living, functioning, splintery history . . . and I have the dented skull to prove it. They move around, you know: the crossbeams. Wherever you are, they stealthily follow you, the better to be directly overhead when you straighten up. Because of course while you’re in the attic you stay in your protective crouch, and scuttle around with your eyes on the floor because human necks aren’t long enough for the double curve that would allow you to watch overhead and catch sight of the beams nefariously gliding toward you. And you will at some point forget that you’re supposed to stay bent over, or perhaps you lose track of precisely how bent, or unbent, you are, because you have your arms full of boxes–this is an attic, after all–and FWHACK.
Still on the attic theme . . . there are the attic stairs. I believe I have discussed the daily adventure of the attic stairs before. They are actually deeply clever and one of my favourite things about my miniaturised (and crowded) life . . . but they do occupy about half the space of a hall so small it doesn’t have halves.‡‡ And furthermore it’s sort of the centre half. Entry into the attic is by the standard hatch arrangement‡‡‡ and the stairs are a kind of half-ladder half-stair that hook below the hatch–or can be removed and hung on the wall, except I never do because I’m in the attic way too often.§ So instead I’m tripping over the bottom of the stair . . . when I’m not tripping over a hellhound.§§ This is particularly acute in the middle of the night when I’m reeling toward the bathroom for a pee . . . because that bottom stair sticks out beyond the edge of the doorway into the bathroom§§§.
And, speaking of the bedroom, it’s a rare occasion that I manage to change the sheets on the bed without cracking myself smartly on one of the bedposts. Four-posters are glorious and romantic¤ and all that kind of thing but they’re also dangerous. The posts don’t even have to move around, like the attic crossbeams: there are just so many of them, there’s always one handy if you want to brain yourself. Sigh.
. . . Some other day I’ll tell you about not quite pulling the tallboy over on myself. That was back at the old house, however, when I didn’t have bottles of champagne, cider and perry as well as my old glass cake stand¤¤ and the vase containing my wedding bouquet ¤¤¤ standing on it. What a good thing I learned how easy it would be to pull over before I kept large heavy breakable things on top of it. . . .
* * *
* I want this to be klutzim, but according to Encarta the plural is klutzes. Yes, well, how full of clueless goyim is Encarta?
** Everyone knows the best of these, yes?: Dyslexics of the world, untie! This still makes me giggle after decades of seeing it written on a variety of public walls.
*** As I recall, I posted about this more extensively on one of the earlier occasions when klutzhood was brought up. Klutzhood, I feel, includes having hellhounds as a defining characteristic. There are other means to this ignoble end, but Possession of Hellhounds is a more or less instant entrée. They exist to make you look ridiculous. Some of us didn’t really need the help.
† Also, the insides of thighs are good for biting–the sound effects are superb.^ I knew they’re–ahem!–good for biting in other contexts, but dog between legs coming down stairs was a new one.
^ My great drawback as a responsible dog owner is that I find all this funny.
†† Very good practise for climbing up and down ancient bell tower stairs however.
††† Which is not the same thing as saying they’ve never had me over. I just go over still frantically holding on to their leads. What is that scene in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when Harrison Ford is being dragged along behind a truck on his belly? Like that only less photogenic.
‡ sic
‡‡ I have a somewhat liberal approach to the laws of space and matter.
‡‡‡ Further great scope for klutzing
§ Hey, my All Stars live in the attic.
§§ It’s amazing the upstairs hall carpet isn’t dappled with tea-stains. I must spill down my black jeans or over the hellhounds more often than I realise. Or maybe terra cotta/burnt orange carpet was a good choice for hiding tea stains. It’s not as though I don’t get down on my hands and knees and blot frenziedly.
§§§ It’s also amazing I have any feet left.
¤ As well as being high enough off the floor–as previously blogged, book space being kind of a central obsession–to shove boxes of books and a vacuum cleaner under. The vacuum cleaner hose also tends to kind of snake out and have a go at ankles passing by.
¤¤ Ahem. It now lives in the kitchen. It still has clothes in it, but it lives in the kitchen.
¤¤¤ Yup. Sic.