Rosemary for Remembrance

Dear Yulegoat

2022-12-25T21:37:31Z

I can tell from the first paragraph that I am going to adore this. I'm heads-down making Christmas dinner and I may be away some time. You will hear from me, I promise!

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Dear Yulegoat

2022-10-22T02:22:16Z

To begin with, I love things that are big and gaudy and outrageous. This year I've requested three poems that are wildly overblown. What depths do you see in them? Would they make more sense if all the characters were amoebas? Would they make much less sense if all the characters were platypuses, but in a good way?

Please write the story you've always wanted to read. Write the story you've never dared to post. Write a sonnet sequence, or a detective story, or an acrostic. Experiment. Have an adventure. I will delight in your daring. I have absolute faith in you, because you love these poems, too. Do with them what you will.

The Eve of St. Agnes. The story in this poem is complete, as far as it goes. Something mysterious and bad is happening in Madeline's family (implications of forced marriage, maybe). Madeline performs a ritual to see the future and lies down to sleep. Porphyro finagles his way into the castle and awakens Madeline, and they escape together. In the original draft, which is not binding on you, they have The Sex; Keats's editors made him take that part out. Courtesy of lnhammer, the original manuscript, if you're curious.

Anyway! What's going on in the rest of the castle, at the implied wild party? Who is dwarfish Hildebrand? What evils was Lord Maurice up to? Expand the backstory, or tell us of the wild chase after Madeline and Porphyro, or something even better that just occurred to you.

Kubla Khan, Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

What a fragment it is! Glorious words spangled as far as the eye can see. Hints at interesting places, at things that were about to happen, at things that had happened.

But they didn't. Whether or not you believe in the Person from Porlock (I don't), what we have is part of a magnificent introduction. I'd like you to do some worldbuilding. In the fragment we have, build your own castle or hovel or underwater cavern; people it with your own characters, or tell a legend, or tell us what the damsel with the dulcimer was saying about Mount Abora, or, again, write something I haven't conceived of but you have.

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
Browning sure did personify emotion. There's an evil river that is petty and spiteful! There's evil farm equipment! There's an evil horse! (Poor horse.)

In short, Childe Roland is in a Mood. He is probably dressed in black and wearing heavy eyeliner.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to add to the story. Fill out some of those references to Cuthbert, or The Band. What exactly was the hoary cripple up to?
There are so many possibilities. Somebody Roland doesn't even notice is sitting down with a picnic and planning how to clean up the landscape and put in a nice tea-shop. The Band are bitching about Roland and planning to ride off after him.

And, of course, what happened after Roland blew that horn?

Do not wants: urine, feces, vomit, omorashi, forced feeding, prolonged embarrassment, emotional abuse, sex with kids under 15, violent rape*, vore, explicitly described torture.

* The usual "sex pollen", "I know I shouldn't but I must", and other flavors of dubcon/noncon are fine. Just nobody being threatened with death or violence.

Thank you. I wish you a joyful and surprising Yuletide.

e: It turns out that this year you have to opt-in to treats; by default you don't want them. If you feel like writing me one this year, please do! Also, hi, mods!

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Yuletide 2022 noms

2022-09-28T22:59:19Z

Meant to do this last year, missed the deadline!

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning

Worldbuilding (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came)

Childe Roland

That hoary cripple with malicious eye

Kubla Khan; or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Worldbuilding (Kubla Khan)

Kubla Khan (Kubla Khan; or A Vision in a Dream

I did change my mind on the third one.
The Eve of St Agnes - John Keats

Madeline

Porphyro

Angela

Lord Maurice

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It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort

2022-07-08T04:48:21Z

When I was thirteen, in 1972, my family moved into my parents' penultimate house, and my first. I remember fragments of our first two houses, plus the houses we lived in for sabbaticals and summer classes, but when I dream, it's of the house we moved into when I was thirteen.

Our house had belonged to a biology professor (my dad was a mathematics professor); before that, it had been the farmhouse for a set of fields that became the surrounding suburb. The house came with grapes, strawberries, plums, apples, raspberries, asparagus, and plants I don't remember. I spent many springtimes sitting in a branch of an apple tree in bloom, reading and being happy. I will never forget the way that apple bark looks after rain. That tree is long dead, but it lives in my memory.

At 906 Abington Pike, I learned to prune, to weed (God, I hated weeding), to can, and to deadhead. I learned to can in the era when making jelly required three different boiling pots. One of paraffin (UK wax), one of boiling jelly, one of jelly glasses. I wasn't allowed to help with the paraffin; too dangerous. My roots are sunk deep in that soil. My father made the family bread; I got teased, in middle school and high school, because my sandwiches were the wrong shape, round instead of square.

I left, because I loathed Indiana and wanted to see the wider world. When I graduated from college, and my husband lived in staff housing, I began my own garden; I have been gardening myself since 1982. There are three gardens I count as my own: one in Massachusetts; one, a failure, in North Carolina; and one in California, which I dearly loved, and left only when my knees could no longer manage the terraces.

We are in our last house now, beside the sea. When we leave this one, we will either be dead or no longer able to care for ourselves. I am paying large amounts of money to have the land carved into my last garden. Right now I have European elders, a self-fertile Cox's Orange Pippin, and French strawberries, waiting in pots for their final home. In the kitchen, there is a sourdough; I've been making bread every two days, and need to stretch that to three. Every day I go out into the garden (currently pots on the deck) and water it and look out at the sea.

When I was a girl, I resented being an Earth sign; I wanted to be fire or air. As an old woman, I am comforted by bread, and earth, and growing things. Sourdough and strawberry starts and old roses make me feel safe in a very unsafe world.

Here I am, and here I stay, until I can no longer.

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Ouch

2022-06-09T18:47:21Z

The heartbeat of my online relationships is seeing something and passing it on to that friend who gardens/handles marine insurance/writes/...

I saw something today, and thought, "Oh, I must forward that to legionseagle".

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Legionseagle has died

2022-06-03T18:25:22Z

That's all I know; I heard it from friends of hers who would absolutely know.

I will always remember her bright, fierce mind, the depth of her expertise, and her coruscating wit.

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Lilith Saintcrow: avoid

2022-04-22T16:13:32Z

For the last week or so I have been reading Lilith Saintcrow's The Hedgewitch Queen, while composing in my head the Dreamwidth post about how most writers don't know enough to compose languages. (Characters use both "m'chri" (ma cherie) and "summat". IJS.)

Then I reached the sequel, and early on the hero rapes his wife, the hedgewitch queen, with description of her struggles, and says at the end he'd do it again. Oh, hell, no.

So I put the Kindle forcefully aside and picked up A Thatched Roof, by the English writer Beverley Nichols. It's a description of his beloved weekend cottage and the process of remodeling it to his tastes. A perfect cozy, in short.

Then Nichols's friend John shops up for a second visit. On the first visit he was a Socialist; this visit he is a Fascist, complete with black shirt. This is treated as a humorous eccentricity. The book was written in 1933. So much for cozy. (I am very fond of the book and will finish it; it was a jarring note.)

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Vagueblogging

2022-03-22T23:31:44Z

Dear Author,

When your viewpoint character, kidnapped by foreign forces when he was expecting to be killed by them, has to live in their military camp for some months, he is going to have culture shock. More than once. He's eating weird food, speaking his second language constantly, traveling (because army), exposed to wildly different assumptions about (for instance) the proper treatment of women. He's going to worry about what his family is doing.

To say nothing of being kidnapped when he expected to be murdered instead.

Just going with the flow and learning interesting new things is the act of a robot.

Yours,
Tonstant Weader.

(Not naming the book because I don't have time to do a proper review. It's got some ill-thought-out tribal-vs-'civilized' cultures stuff going on, too.)

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Vile Guardian editorial tw: discussion of transphobia

2022-03-20T20:47:54Z

I keep thinking that I don't need to post this, but I have been livid with rage for some hours.

So, the Guardian ran an unsigned transphobic editorial today (not linking; you can find it if you search for gender) based on an investigation, the Cass Review, which published a transphobic interim report.

Here are some of the unexamined assumptions.

There are no negative consequences to delaying recognition of a child's trans status.

Acknowledging a child's gender expression without making any other intervention causes unspecified harm to the child should they decide to affirm their previous gender.

Because some adults regret their gender transition, that means that all children should be prevented from gender-aware therapy in case they should later regret it.

Because some non-cis children also have "complex mental health issues" or are on the autism spectrum, these are actually causing the non-cis children to think they are non-cis.

And here are some of the absolute lies.

Adult trans people's opinions, based on their own childhood experiences, are "a result of adult affinities to an unevidenced worldview".

Children who use puberty blockers often grow up to use "cross-sex hormones" (notice that phrase); this may mean that "puberty blockers interfere with the natural resolution of gender dysphoria". [THE NATURAL RESULT OBVIOUSLY BEING THAT YOU OUTGROW IT]

"This 'affirmative approach' leaves little space for exploration of the potential relationship between their dysphoria and neurodiversity or psychosocial needs, including those arising from childhood trauma or internalised hostility to same-sex attraction."

The Guardian has been running transphobic columnists for years, so this is part and parcel of their bigotry. I note that a responsible newspaper should read an interim report and get a response from the medical service, the Gender Identity Development Service, that is being criticized. God knows they do it every time the Tories fuck up, but in this case it is obviously unnecessary.

Vile.

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Life by the seaside

2022-03-19T00:26:01Z

Power can be chancy up here, what with high winds and wildfires. We'd like to install a generator. The local electrical contractors sent a request for a permit to the planning department. They got back:

Your building permit application was referred to the Planning Division of Mendocino County Planning and Building Services for approval. Please be advised that the Planning Division is not able to approve your building permit at this time. The proposed Propane/Generator installation does not meet the criteria for an exemption. The project site is designated as Highly Scenic and Coastal Development Permit is required.

Not gonna lie, it is Highly Scenic. It'll be interesting to see if there's a way to hide the generator that complies with the planning board's esthetics, or whether it's simply a no-go.

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Thoughts after rereading Murder Must Advertise

2022-03-18T01:36:25Z

I am struck by the difference in how Wimsey treats two murders.

Dian de Momerie is a drug addict, has no compassion for the feelings of others, sleeps around, and has no manners. Wimsey is delibrately and continuously cruel to her as a way of getting her attention.

Wimsey could reasonably have foreseen that Dian's life would be in danger once she was known to be blabbing to his alter ego. He said and did nothing to warn her, nor did he suggest that Scotland Yard keep an eye on her. When she was brutally murdered, he feels not a thread of guilt, and Charles Parker casually says that she's not a loss.

Mr Tallboy (do we even know his first name? I forget) is knowingly complicit in drug dealing, cheats on his pregnant wife, and commits cold-blooded murder to protect his reputation.

By contrast, when Tallboy the actual murderer is about to be caught and go to prison, Wimsey (as is his métier) encourages Tallboy to commit suicide. Then he feels very guilty about it.

I am, of course, coming from a century later's attitude toward addictions, and toward women's sexuality. That said, I can't but feel that Wimsey ought to have taken some responsibility for both of them.

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Words, words, words

2022-03-15T23:19:54Z

I just found out that the first-ever alphabetical-order English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words (1604), is online and searchable. If you click back to the beginning (I'm linking to "A", for happier browsing) you'll find it's

plaine English words, gathered for the benefit &helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons.

Secondly, I have discovered that you can set your Kindle to the Oxford English Dictionary (not the unabridged) instead of the Oxford American Dictionary, which is handy for me, who am likelier to unknow British words than American.

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Well, that about wraps it up for Poughkeepsie

2022-03-14T16:42:36Z

I am rereading The Worm Ouroboros and savoring it. I had forgotten the long mountain-climbing section entirely; I fear teen me must have skipped it.

In any case, Ursula Le Guin once wrote an essay, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", essentially arguing that all fantasy protagonists should speak in an elevated, heroic style. She was particularly mean to a very recognizable Katherine Kurtz, with some side shots at Roger Zelazny. She quotes and praises Eddison as an example of what should be done.

At one point she quotes from Zelazny, "I could have told you that at Carcosa", and lays down the law that great heroes don't say "I told you so".

"Well," said Juss, "thy counsel hath been right once and saved us, for nine times that it hath been wrong, and my counsel saved thee from an evil end. If ill behap us, it shall be set down that it had from thy peevish will original."

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My Chocolate Box Story

2022-02-22T02:57:30Z

I wrote Eureka (I Remember My Greek), for Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs.

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Lee Jackson, Palaces of Pleasure, a mini-review

2022-02-05T18:40:55Z

The book deserves a longer review. If you're interested in the Victorian period, and like social history that doesn't just present but analyzes --why were some pleasure gardens acceptable and others not? Class-- read this book. It has lots of little satisfying things I didn't know. The precursor to the music hall was "free-and-easies" (men only) and "cock-and-hens" (coed), which were group singing sessions held in pubs, and later in large extensions to pubs, led by a chairman who called for group and individual songs, and (of course) for toasts. These were suppressed, and reborn as 'saloon-theatres', which were suppressed, which were reborn as music halls, which survived.

The subtitle is "From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How The Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment". I'm just to the seaside, and am having a very good time.

This morning I unpacked one large box of kitchen stuff and am wiped out for the day. This is why the unpacking is going so slowly. On the other hand, the good big roasting pan and the pretty Polish casserole dishes have surfaced. To the trash, a well-made Swiss kitchen gadget that both slices and grates garlic. We have knives.

Someday I will find the beaters to the Kitchenaids, dammit. There will be baking.

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A new hope

2022-01-31T21:39:34Z

I felt like gardening today, so I did. I took previously-ordered seeds from Renee's Gardens and took them out into a pleasantly chill day.

Chervil, in the front of a bed that's the back of the deck. California poppies, scattered up and down the sides of the drive and the sides of the lot. Ideally they'd have gone in last fall, but give them a year or so and they'll be fine. Tough little plants. "Mermaid's Dream" sweet peas, a collection of blues, lavenders, mauves, and creams, promised to be heavily scented. "Sabre" shelling peas, and how funny the back-formation "shelling peas" is. Used to be just peas and sweet peas, now there are sugar snaps and snow peas, so we need a disambiguation for the original.

I still haven't found my tools, so it was me, a chopstick, and a table spoon. I did some hand-weeding including of a nasty invasive raspberry, which of course I didn't go to the house for gloves to pull. Now one finger is prickly.

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The chimney man cometh

2022-01-28T23:32:16Z

Today, after many delays, the chimney company came to take a look.

The gas fireplace's intake and output pipes are made of plastic dryer vent. At the top of the chimney, they are wired together into a plastic cutting board. When the wind blows, the input and output pipes bow toward each other, so that the output gets sucked back into the input. Very fortunately for us, this shut down the fireplace rather than gassing us to death.

We will be getting "a quote". Words of doom.

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Most exasperated

2022-01-26T23:59:19Z

The only source of heat in our house, aside from electric space heaters, is a propane gas fireplace (not stove) in the living room. This has been failing mysteriously all fall. We had the fireplace guy out twice; the second time, my husband had noticed that the fireplace seemed to fail more often in windy, wet weather. No, this was not a plus.

The fireplace guy, who is awesome, spent about a half an hour poking, and refused to charge us for the second visit because he determined that the problem was with the chimney, not with the fireplace itself. Scheduled a visit in early January for the chimney people to come out.

The chimney people did not come out; they called after 5 to explain they'd run behind on their previous job, so I'd have to schedule, and their office lady would be reaching out. She didn't, so I called to reschedule. She gave me a date another two weeks out. I pointed out that the original date was rescheduled through no fault of our own, and that we'd been without heat since late December. She snarled that she had had people waiting without heat for months. I grimly accepted the new date.

Reader, that date was today. An hour after the people were supposed to show up, I called the office. The office lady (their term, not mine) answered the phone with "Hello?", not giving the business name. I explained that nobody had been there for the appointment. She said she'd call the roofers and call me back.

Half an hour after that call, the roofers called me.

"Well, the problem was that our office lady forgot to give me the paperwork. It's just as well, though, because I just talked to [Fireplace Guy] and it turns out we need two people anyway, and I've only got one. So it all worked out for the best. Anyway, she'll reach out to you to reschedule."

Me, remembering the last time she'd "reached out", said, "Will she reach out, or do I need to call her?" Him: "She'll call you tomorrow morning. She's out for the day." That was at 3:45 local; the original appointment had been for two.

Rural living, ladies and gentlebeings. No matter how disorganized and incompetent the chimney people are, they're the only ones in the area.

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Victoria Goddard, The Hands of the Emperor

2022-01-26T04:50:24Z

There are books that are like nothing other than themselves. Gormenghast. Lud-in-the-Mist. The Worm Ouroboros.

The Hands of the Emperor is one of those. I love it so much that I can say nothing but here. Here is this book I love. Kermitflail. I hope you love it too.

THotE is about Cliopher 'Kip' Mdang. If, in his native land, you asked Kip who he was, he would respond, "I am Cliopher Mdang. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aoteketetana." (thanks, edenfalling!) If, within the Empire, you ask who Cliopher is, you will be told that he is the Hands of the Emperor. Kip is an emigrant from the Vangavaye-Ve to the Empire. Kip is a two-cultures child, someone who was raised in one culture and became a bureaucrat in the second. Kip is a man who set out to change the world, and succeeded.

THotE is competence porn. Kip succeeds because he has a gift for the particular and the widespread. Kip can perceive both the local and the Empire-wide consequences of his decisions. Kip wants to change the world. He does. There's a lot of thought about colonialism, and about the importance of colonialized cultures, and about the importance of knowing who you are.

The world is changed, ultimately, because Kip recognizes that his Emperor needs a vacation. From that, the remainder of the novel flows. The novel also flows from Kip's slow, slow realization that his home doesn't recognize what he's done, and his home culture's slow, slow realization of how his work has changed their lives.

THotE is a 900-page novel. It's a big ask. I have read it at least five times since I bought it, in a time when I have barely been able to read novels at all.

e: For an alternate, well-reasoned take on the book, see Skygiants. They are absolutely right that this book is idfic. It hits my id, so. This is the only book I've ever read in which the performance of a ceremonial dance is a page-turner that I stayed up late to finish.

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Chocolate Box 2022

2022-01-07T21:50:33Z

Dear Chocolatier,

First of all, thanks for dragging yourself out of the sump that has been this decade into the sunlight of creation. I hope you have fun. Write or draw the things that delight you, and I'll be delighted, too. Feel free to go wild: wingfic, sentient goldfish, everybody lives in a stained glass window, something even more unlikely. Feel free to go naturalistic, too.

DNW: Body fluids (urine, feces, blood, spit), omorashi, degradation, A/B/O. Please keep characters their canon gender, if they have one. No rape, but dubcon is fine.

Homestuck
Dave Strider/Jade Harley

Once upon a time, Dave and Jade were friends. Tell me or show me something showcasing that friendship, please! People can be friends and lovers, and that's how I see them. Making nerdy jokes, teasing each other, enjoying each other's company, smooching. If you want Karkat, feel free to make it poly, but without the jealousy and anger seen in the Epilogues.

No Epilogues or HS^2 content. Pesterquest, Hiveswap, and Friendsim are peachy.

The Addams Family (Movies - Sonnenfeld)
Gomez Addams/Morticia Addams (The Addams Family movies)

The hottest pairing ever seen in the movies, because they *pay attention to each other*. It's not just the way the actors look at one another, it's how much they are in synch, and how careful they are of each other's needs. And how funny! Show me them hanging out together and being (in their own peculiar way) happy. Swordfights, tangoes, or masked balls a bonus.

Zenda Novels - Anthony Hope
Rudolf Rassendyll/Rupert of Hentzau (Zenda Novels - Anthony Hope)

I swoon for love/hate relationships. Rupert is a nasty piece of work, but he's Rudolf's equal in skill, and a great deal better at skulduggery. It's a disadvantage being high-minded when your rival fights below the belt... in more ways than one. If you can find a way to work in a swordfight, so much the better.

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Other people's lives, part N

2022-01-07T03:43:19Z

I was reading r/amitheasshole, as one does, and I came across somebody explaining how often you should vacuum your house. They explained that you should vacuum one day a week for each person and pet living in the house.

I am a terrible housekeeper. My parents, who were anything but, had a cleaning lady in once a week, and the only time the vacuum came out inbetween times was when something large got spilled on the floor.

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Two baby shoes, never worn

2022-01-02T05:50:11Z

My grandmother lost a baby under horrible circumstances. Her husband worked at a railway station somewhere in Southwest Texas. Her baby son got convulsions and died before they could find a doctor. She had one more child, my mother. Years later, when we were at the beach together, I told my mother that I had never really liked my grandmother, and she told me "She behaves differently with boys than girls. Look at her with [my son's name.]"

I did. And a lot made sense.

All that to say, in my son's first year, my grandmother wanted baby shoes for him, and for his older sister, my daughter. Daughter was 2 1/2 years older than him; at that point, I retained one bootie that was my treasure, and all her other shoes were fit to her current size. I sent my grandmother my son's baby sneakers, almost outworn, and a pair of brand-new baby shoes I bought to represent my daughter. She had them mounted on oak pedestals with their names in bronze plaques. (I'm somewhat surprised she didn't have them bronzed. She did have bronzed shoes for my mother and for her lost son.)

Anyway, when my grandmother died, my mother mailed me the shoes, on their oak plaques with Plexiglass covers. It was the 1990s, and I was run off my feet what with babies, so I never actually unpacked them until now.

I saved my son's shoes, which he actually wore and have the precious marks of his wearing.

I threw away two baby shoes, never worn.

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I mean, really

2022-01-02T05:05:14Z

It is a Southern custom, passed on from Black people to White in this case, to have black-eyed peas and collards on New Year's Day. Black-eyed peas (really beans) for luck, collards for money.

My husband, bless him, made both collards and black-eyed peas, the latter in the InstaPot. While carrying the black-eyed peas over to the stove, he tripped, fell over a trashbag*, tried to save the peas, failed, and walloped his back a good one. He is now in bed with ibuprofen, and will probably be miserably sore tomorrow.

Those peas had better get their act in gear.

*I had bravely unpacked a box and thrown away most of it. Little did I know.

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Yuletide 2021

2022-01-01T17:21:27Z

Two years in a row I defaulted (well before deadline) on Yuletide because it was a very bad year. I received wonderful fics without giving anything back. This year I nominated, but forgot to sign up. Instead I took a pinch-hit (coincidentally the first one sent out), and I feel I've put a little back into the Yuletide sea.

My recip asked for "something about Murderbot spending time with its humans", and I wrote Gratitude.

(Whoops, sorry, got the link very broken.)

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Happy New Year, everybody!

2022-01-01T05:41:32Z

I see that I haven't posted at all since August. My New Year's resolution is to get back to Dreamwidth.

Jareth, alas, never came home. I saw him briefly the night after he disappeared, then never again. We know, horrified, that some sort of beast got him.

Some weeks later, we couldn't deal with a catless house any more, so we went to the local Humane Society. While we waited, a teenager who was waiting for her dog to be spayed played with the kittens. When the Humane Society remembered we were there, the kittens were pretty much tired out.

So we all sat on the floor. My husband picked up a feather wand. A small black cat immediately started pouncing on it. Then she jumped on his shoulders. Then he tried to play with other kittens, and the small black cat immediately started jumping on the toy because it was hers. Small black cat was a bushel of personality in a cup and a half of kitten, and it was immediately clear that she was coming home with us.

Meanwhile, my son was slowly grabbing and petting another kitten. She cuddled up with him and started purring. She was a ticked Manx; a "stumpy", meaning that she had a small bobcat tail rather than being tailless. This apparently bodes well for the condition of her spine; Manx cats can have spinal problems.

We came home with the black kitten (the teenager cried, because she'd been hoping to adopt her; her parents reminded her that she had five cats at home) and the Manx. The black kitten is Diana; the Manx is Byakko. We opened the cat carrier, and Diana sprinted out and immediately took charge of the household. Byakko hid, and eventually sprinted out. Then she hid in the console radio that came with the house, which I hope someday to restore. She stayed there for two weeks.

I called the Humane Society and they told us to cuddle Byakko by force. We managed to track her down, then shut her into our son's room. Slowly, she became our son's cat; she sits in his lap. Diana was admitted to the room for regular visits; Diana became Byakko's emotional support cat. At one point Diana was asleep on our son's bed, and Byakko came out of the closet, bopped Diana on the nose, and Diana followed Byakko into the closet.

Four months later, Diana is the queen of the household; she goes where she wants, when she wants, and demands due tribute. Byakko went from following Diana around when Jim and I were sleeping, to walking freely around the house. Currently she will walk three or so feet into our bedroom, then think better of it and turn around.

It's good to have a house with cats.

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Rosemary for Remembrance

Dear Yulegoat

Dear Yulegoat

Yuletide 2022 noms

It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort

Ouch

Legionseagle has died

Lilith Saintcrow: avoid

Vagueblogging

Vile Guardian editorial tw: discussion of transphobia

Life by the seaside

Thoughts after rereading *Murder Must Advertise*

Words, words, words

Well, that about wraps it up for Poughkeepsie

My Chocolate Box Story

Lee Jackson, Palaces of Pleasure, a mini-review

A new hope

The chimney man cometh

Most exasperated

Victoria Goddard, The Hands of the Emperor

Chocolate Box 2022

Other people's lives, part N

Two baby shoes, never worn

I mean, really

Yuletide 2021

Happy New Year, everybody!

Thoughts after rereading Murder Must Advertise