Young Beowulf has given me a tappable icon on the task bar at the top of the Word screen so I can get the frell out of the—whatever it is—I think it’s web view? I want DRAFT VIEW. I am old & I like the illusion of a piece of paper, or anyway something more nearly resembling a blank screen. The point is, why do I need a blasted icon?? Why can’t I* find some drop down menu where I can choose to open in frelling draft as default? But nooooooo. So every time I open a new document the first thing that happens is that my eyes turn red & I yell imprecations at Microsquelch. Then I hit the ‘draft’ button & start, having just wasted an ME-expensive energy spike on technological helplessness. Unless I need to make myself a fresh cup of tea to calm down first. Yes, I do.
The main reason I’m still only posting occasionally** is because I’m an absent-minded*** twit with too much to do, including an insane number of time-suck, what anyone who wasn’t an obsessive would call optionalactivities,† but a not insignificant portion of my reluctance continues to be the Nightmare that is Microstupidjerk. It’s like the general go-blooie level rocketed out of human comprehension†† with the forced update after my email server went into meltdown however many weeks ago now, it feels like an EON. Including stuff that shouldn’t have anything to do with Microloathsome, like random on line freezing & crashing, although I suppose if MicroBorg has sufficiently frelled up my computer, my computer may well be having dizzy spells & panic attacks. ARRRRRRRRRRGH.†††
* * *
* or rather Young Beowulf. Let’s get real here.
** I’ve already said, LOUDLY, that I am not that’s NOT going to post daily again.^ In terms of hammering it into my (absent minded) life, daily works really well, I don’t forget to eat or walk dog or dogs either, which is why I fell into daily blogging the first time. There Must Be a Better Way. Perhaps I’ll find it.
^ I’m talking to myself here. I’m very well aware that some readers of the old blog thought I should shut up occasionally. My skill set about most things is patchy, including blogging. Eh. I can feel a blog about ‘one can only do what on can do’ coming on, but not tonight.
*** when you’re young & absent-minded it’s cute^ & funny & after all you’re a creative, fully-engaged person in whatever it is you’re creative & fully engaged about^^ so losing a few stupid details is not a big deal. When you get old . . . well, it’s no longer early onset dementia, you know?
^ except for the part about worrying that it’s early-onset dementia
^^ note that in my hierarchy almost anything honestly & positively engaged with is ipso facto creative+. So this includes accountancy & bicycle repair & grocery store shelf restocking, although I admit the last is probably more inspirational than hands-on creative.++ I never restocked store shelves when I was young & had no income, but that’s because I could TYPE, which was a very marketable skill in those distant days. But I want to believe you can get a lot of plotting or personal equivalent done while you’re restocking shelves.
+ the ‘honestly & positively’ therefore eliminates serial murder, cutting down rainforests, fracking etc.
++ Also, generally speaking, one doesn’t want one’s accountants to be too creative. Unless you’re an ex president with orange hair.
† This is indeed one of the drawbacks of a big house.^ You have too much space to leave unfinished projects around. Since it’s not a truly big house, however^^, there’s not actually enough space to accommodate all the unfinished projects & the kit that goes with them. It’s true, for example, that almost every wool-related item I own has moth holes in it^^^. & let’s not discuss how many of my jeans need patching, since I don’t go for the torn-jeans look, possibly because I’m too old to be cool (true) but also because the tears in my jeans are clearly not fashion, they’re the result of being pulled over by a German Wire Haired Pointer or similar. Similar tends to be that I’m walking as fast as I can which means I’m way too likely to hit one of my big feet on a pavement protuberance, of which there are many in this town.~ But I have enough yarn, fabric, thread, embroidery floss & many, many assorted extras & accessories to last me to Methuselahian lengths. Except that the minute I have chosen something to mend, I don’t have the colours I need. Of course.
^ I keep saying! It’s not a BIG house, but it’s big for one person! The one person in question just happens to have a HOARDING problem!+
+ The past weekend’s visitor, who appears to have escaped with life & sanity intact#, said that when she thinks of HOARDING she thinks of tottering piles of old dusty disintegrating newspapers, possibly adorned by a few desiccated mouse corpses. Okay, I don’t have the tottering piles of newspapers.## & I regularly refresh my mouse traps. Also I have a German Wire Haired Pointer with a strong prey drive. & yeah. He points.
# Maybe the deleterious effects of visiting me take a little while to manifest?
## Um. But magazines . . .
^^ See previous footnote
^^^ I’ve been struggling with moths since I went down with ME & was no longer willing to use fierce chemicals, plus questions of contributing to poisoning the planet. The nine months all my gear was in storage in Hampshire while I moved up here+ gave the moths the opportunity to go for broke & didn’t they just. Glory glory not hallelujah. I’m gaining ground on them again but I will be surrounded by baskets of things-to-be-mended for the rest of my life, even if I outlast Methuselah.
Cedar oil, which, yeah, is a poison, but it comes out of a tree, & I’m NOT willing to sit here & be a moth buffet, works pretty well to discourage the little ratbags, but you have to keep reapplying it & have I mentioned that I’m absent-minded? Not to mention having a lot of stuff made out of wool, because I tend (a) to be cold blooded & (b) to like living in places where winter takes itself seriously. OH FRELLING FRELL I FORGOT ABOUT THAT BOX ON THAT SHELF. OH, & THAT BOX IN THAT CORNER. AND . . .
+ This house wasn’t even close to being habitable at that point. The builders had to move a lot of boxes around.# I daresay this may be partly why the price of renovations was a gazillion per cent over what I was expecting. Yes, there will be stories. I think the local work force—& yes I try very hard to hire local—is honest enough, but I sometimes think they are maybe not great at warning you what may go wrong. Maybe it’s just that the list is 1,000,000,000 items long, & where does a builder who wants to be hired begin? & you’d be paying about forty-seven hours for the explanation.
Still. There will probably be stories about that too.
# The arrival & unloading of sixty-seven lorry loads of crucial possessions to this hilltop house is where the name of the new blog comes from. Yes, there will be photos. Some day.
~Although the day the vet told me Pav’s lab results, which were that she was going to die young & soon, I went out wildly for a walk because I didn’t know what else to do with myself, ran pretty much full-tilt into a kerb, achieved liftoff, & when I returned to earth WHAM ripped the CRAP out of an almost new pair of jeans. Also a few elbows as I recall. Sigh.
†† All right, this human comprehension, which is about .0005% of Young Beowulf’s, but even he acknowledges that the Borg seem to have stepped up their malign activities. Although he doesn’t express it in quite those terms.^
^ He may also be humouring me. No, wait, he absolutely is humouring me.
††† & just by the way I WILL BE VERY VERY VERY VERY GLAD when I sign on to amazon, which I am embarrassed to admit I do rather a lot^, & no longer have to look at Prince Harry’s sulky clueless entitled face at the bottom of every single page, usually several times because for this ONE already-best-ever-selling-book-in-the-history-of-the-world^^, we have to be REMINDED that we have a CHOICE of publication medium, on the cover of what I have no doubt is a sulky clueless entitled book.^^^ Not all of us give a flaming doodah, & I wouldn’t buy the thing if it were the only book on offer. I’d rather read cereal packets. & I don’t eat cereal.
^ Yes. I belong to Kindle Daily Deal & First Reads. How often do I find something I actually want to read? On the monthly first reads, almost freaking never. On the Daily Deals . . . well. . . . +
+ & no it’s not usually the occasional piece of Great Literature that I buy. Ahem.
^^ Gutenberg, you purblind idiot
^^^ I find it easy to believe that the Buckingham Palace crew have treated Harry & his wife with a gaping lack of human tact & understanding. That doesn’t make me like any of them any better.