Zero
I feel like death and taxes.* No, worse than that.** Er . . . I can’t think of anything worse than that. Except how I feel, of course. This is way old and boring, and I don’t think it has much, if anything, to do with the lingering aftershocks of dental anaesthesia. I think it’s just Evil Stomach Spirits in joyous partnership with my abiding evil spirit, the ME. Ah, the ME headache, there’s nothing like it. Fortunately there’s nothing like it. My jaw, where the dentist was plying his trade*** yesterday, is fine.†
I have, because my nobleness of soul is vast and incredible††, managed to get hellhounds mostly hurtled as usual today. Hellhounds are funny creatures. ††† They can’t quite decide if there’s something actually wrong with me today or if I’m just messing with their heads. They’re pretty used to the ME Slant, when I find a less-prickly piece of hedgerow or a friendly tree to lean on for a minute or two‡ but they seemed to feel there was an additional quality to the stomping and the snarls‡‡ today. All dogs do the cold wet nose in your hand‡‡‡ thing to say, yo, I’m here, for better or worse, command me master, throw this ball, I said throw this ball, etc. Hellhounds, however, also do the whack-with-the-skull thing. Is this a common dog trait? I haven’t, er, experienced it before these guys. They started doing it when I was first teaching them to heel, Chaos on the left and Darkness on the right: they’d whack the backs of my legs with their heads. Huh? I originally assumed it was each of them checking that the other one was, yes, right there, being forced into this unnatural behaviour also, and later I used to tease whichever one it was when he came up behind me solo and off- or long-lead and thwacked his skull into the back of my thigh. Hey, dummy, I’d say, he’s not here, he’s over there. It took me kind of a while to figure out that this was some kind of reassurance thing: oh great hellgoddess I am your tiny adoring slave§, please be kind to me.§§ It took me even longer to figure out that sometimes they’re trying to reassure me. There was a lot of skull-whacking today. Very unsettling when you’re already a bit tottery, but I appreciate the sentiment. I think.§§§
It was probably a good day for Computer Men to be here for three hours, since I wasn’t doing much anyway, and go away again . . . except it’s never a good day for Computer Men to go away again leaving me with a still wonked-up computer.# It runs a lot cooler and quieter and its desktop is way tidy—not at all like my desktops either real or virtual—but it still grunts and gargles and acts like all its memory is on holiday, or fell out and was inadvertently turned into soup##. And Finale still doesn’t work. I’d started and been scrabbling at something on paper long enough to be really eager to get it on the computer### . . . and said computer sounds like something in the final stages of being strangled to death. Maybe it and I can come up with an engaging duet version of AAAAAAAAAAUGH.
Peter looked at me when I finally staggered into the mews late this afternoon post-Computer-Men and said, champagne is clearly called for. Yes. And chocolate.% And going to bed early. And I hope any/all of it does me more good than it did last night.
* * *
* Taxes are a trifle on my mind since I received a Sharp Letter from my accountants today informing me that I owe them £984,361.42 for services rendered and in fact have so owed them for some time. What did they do with my last cheque for £984,361.42 which I swear was only about three weeks ago? Line the cat box with it? ARRRRGH.
** Although the sinking-stomach sensation upon receipt of the above is pretty frelling dramatic.
*** Which included, on this occasion, drawworks, blocks, hooks, swivels, crown hooks, elevator bails, power tongs, mud pumps, and blowout preventers (BOPs).
† Which makes it kind of lonely in this anatomical crowd today.
†† As is the pathologicalness^ of my guilt and the slippery litheness of my paranoia. Unwalked dogs—and especially unhurtled hellhounds—are not only prone to misbehaviours such as gnawing off all the legs on your tables and unstuffing all your sofas, but to losing interest in their food. But that is still only the beginning. Unwalked dogs cause milk to sour, hens to grow broody, global warming, and that the person sitting in front of you at the theatre always has big hair. And there is increasing scientific evidence that the presence of unwalked dogs causes pinprick holes to open in the fabric of our universe so that the contents of other, antithetical universes start leaking in. Which probably explains everything, even George W. Bush.
So walk your dogs, okay? The universe thanks you.
^ Which is nothing like the same thing as pathology
††† I may have made some reference to this fact before. Once or twice.
‡ Generally speaking I try to avoid sitting down, unless there’s a nice fence or tree stump or similar to sit on. If you need to sit down, getting up again is going to be way too hard. Leaning is good.
‡‡ ‘Come on, you wretched dog, you do not have to pee every five feet’
‡‡‡ It’s your hand if you’re lucky
§ Now will you throw the blasted ball?
§§ Do I have to say it again? THROW THE FRELLING BALL.
§§§ I even more appreciate that they ate both lunch and dinner.
# They’re threatening to take it away! To take it to their shop and do diagnostic voodoo on it! Leaving me . . . WHAT? Working on Pooka?
##Uh, what is this funny little square thing? Looks like something that fell out of a computer. —Nah. Probably a Shiitake mushroom. Which may be fabulously good for you, but are a lot like eating plastic.
### Mozart didn’t have a computer! Beethoven didn’t have a computer! Verdi didn’t have a computer!
% http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1787
Thank you, Black Bear.
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