Stuffed
It has not been a good day.* The Fluey Thing is gaining again—today I can still hope it’s anaesthesia hangover: tomorrow I will have to face facts, if there are facts that need facing**—the weather has been ‘start raining when she gets outdoors with hellhounds; stop the minute she goes indoors again, but if she decides to tough it out, rain harder’—my two main computers, the mews laptop and the cottage desktop, are increasingly possessed by demons*** and there has been no official sighting yet of the Additional Memory† that is going to solve the laptop’s problems††, or at least enable it to run Finale again (I hope).†††
And I got back to the cottage this afternoon to a message on my phone machine from my occasional hellhound minder saying that she can’t do any of the dates I’d rung her up about. I am stuffed.
I actually go somewhere once a month in a good month. The next six weeks, for some reason, I have a whole series of little cautious half-day excursions‡, hopefully planned not to aggravate the ME but to bring new forms of thrillingness into my three-dimensionally somewhat circumscribed life. ‡‡ But the hellhounds have their own problems, aside from merely being accustomed to having me underfoot all the time, and if I’m going to be gone more than a few hours, I prefer to have someone at least look in and make sure no one has his legs tightly crossed and is panting anxiously. An actual minder means I can have them hurtled ‡‡‡ so I don’t have to do quite so much of it on a day that presents other challenges. Hellhound minders are not, however, easily come by. Finding this one involved four trackless deserts, three goblin kings, two bottomless abysses, and answering some really weird riddles from a woman with a very unsettling smile and lion’s claws. I’m no good at riddles. I don’t want to go through this again. Did I say stuffed? Let me say it again: stuffed.§
All right. I’ll go round to the pet shop tomorrow and ask for the lowdown on local canine mobility-enhancement consultants. Early bed again is clearly the only possible answer tonight.§§ And last night I started what looks like it’s going to be a really good book. I hope to be telling you about it shortly.
* * *
* Barring the answering note from Phineas through my door this morning. Kitten duty again this weekend. Is it only Tuesday? But I must have used up the entire week’s good luck in inspiring Phineas to go away again. The price one pays to revel in dastardly cuteness.
** One of the frellers about getting older is how many more aches and pains there are when you’re (probably) coming down with something and you get to the aches-and-pains stage. I had a long mutual moan with Hannah today about matters related to this: that our various bodywork people, my osteopath-plus^ and her physiotherapist/personal trainer start talking tactfully about ‘wear and tear’ when we go limping in for our appointments. At our age(s)^^ we’re not looking to return to the top of our game, we’re just trying to stay on the road. Gah. And it’s hard not to look around occasionally at some of our contemporaries who may not have such good low resting heart rates but who creak less.
^ A lot of alternative-healthcare people use more than one methodology, which I see as a good sign: I feel that one of the things that goes wrong with established systems is The Only One Perfect Way and It’s My Way attitude. It’s a big ugly problem in orthodox medicine, where way too many blind specialists think their view of the elephant is the only important view. But it depresses the flibbleflabble out of me that humans tend to create systems that sooner or later solidify into this sort of expression. I see it in my beloved homeopathy, for example. Hey, guys, there is no one answer. There is no one perfect guru. Make a note.
^^ Hannah’s a little younger than I am, I feel honour-bound to mention
*** Important questions must be asked: are demons infectious? Contagious? And will they cross species lines? Can you take communicable demons home on your clothing after ringing demon-possessed bells and infect your computers? Oh, gods, how transmissible are they? Have I caught a case of demons?
† Sigh. There are so many potential bad jokes here about wetware and upgrades and that—due to that inconvenient dampness—the plug in the back of your neck needs replacing kind of often. I will say here at the end of the first decade of the 21st century and neck-plug-free that with menopause and ME brain and a case of sore throat and demons, if it weren’t for my thesaurus I would be communicating in grunts.
†† Memory as a vorpal blade. I like it. Under suitable magnification the featureless bit of plastic and wire will prove to possess a name, like all good swords should: Demon Whacker.
††† I’ve also got stuck again with Angry Birds on Apocalypse. GAAAAH.
‡ Including going up to London to meet my new British editor. Yaay. Well, yaay if I manage it.
‡‡ And dare I mention . . . fed.
‡‡‡ Including a homeopathic seminar, speaking of seeking not the answer but an answer. I’ve never found a single useful reference to demons, however, and must therefore extrapolate.
§ And no, I don’t think I can ask Phineas to learn to hurtle.^ He might do as a back up looker-in however.
^ Snork. Er. Spluttering noises. Snooork.
§§ It may not be the One Perfect Answer, but it will do for tonight. I could do with a Demon Whacker though.
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