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It’s the holiday season again. Celebratory times down in the village. The lights are up, the tinsel’s out, Old Tup and his fellows are a’roaming for beer money. Locals keep thanking me for ensuring the sun will come back over the next few years. Not really sure what they mean, but as I’ve been invited to be guest of honour at the seven yearly village feast I’ll put up with the local turns of phrase. Last feast was just before I moved here, actually. Oddly enough, the guy who rented Blot Cottage before me was guest of honour then. Poor guy tripped and fell on a “flint knapped biface”,whatever that is, up Ritual Rock on the moor where they have the feast, I heard, so it became available at a great price. I hope you all have a nice time as well! Seasons greetings to all of you!

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything. Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Nothing like a trip to the veterinary ER to make a night interesting… Long story made short, Freyja had an abscess of her left anal gland. How did we know this? She decided to pass blood. While I’m not particularly squeamish, nor prone to the vapors when confronted with blood, this is my baby girl. She is not allowed to bleed, or have pain, or do any of the things that will make me want to strangle a handy god or three. She is an innocent furbaby, and deserves nothing but joy. But this at least was something that can be dealt with, and she is now home, loopy on pain meds and wearing the Inflatable Collar of Great Annoyance. She would like everyone to know that she lives with exceedingly evil humans, but we will be forgiven with sufficient treatos.

When I say, “The world would work better if women were in charge,” I mean just about anyone but me. Why? First fact: It’s “my job” to make sure that all the lights are off and doors are locked when we go to bed because my husband will zombie walk right past a door that is standing open. Second fact: we go to bed when the sun is still up and wake up after dark so customers of my husband’s store can panic-buy their milk, eggs, and bread at the crack of dawn. This means when I check the back door, I get blinded by sunlight through the kitchen window if I’m up too late. Well, a few minutes ago, I flipped the switch on my way out of the room, but the light only got brighter. I spent probably about a minute and a half squinting at the glowing boob-light, wondering what sort of black magic electrical fuckery I was in for now, and contemplating what a sledgehammer would do to the fugly glass shade. Then…it hit me, just like a sledgehammer. Y’all. I just tried to turn off the sun. With a light switch. And got pissy when flipping the switch just made the room brighter. So, yeah. Just about any woman except me. I would do my level best only to get knocked down by a barrage of blonde moments. I’d attempt to bring about real, needed legal, societal, and economic change. Instead, I’d get hung up on ridiculous things like declaring boob-lights and whining electric cords illegal and enacting laws decreeing that pets are taxable dependents and people can be considered pets if they’re not fully housebroken. The world would burn.

What I said: “7 oz can of chipotles in adobo.” What the phone heard: “7 oz can of Chipotles in a dildo.” Even my grocery list is not safe.

I’m juggling a lot of stuff in my life right now, from watching shows people want me to watch (Frieren most recently) to trying to overcome fears about my appearance to sign up for a dating site, but I hope there are still some people around here. I feel bad that I don’t post things as often as I did when I showed up here...six and half years ago now. I may not be one of the OGs, but I’ve been here a while, haven’t I? 😄 The good news is that I actually have a new story in the works! I’ve finished the first chapter, and will keep working on it. I don’t really want to start posting it until I’m done, but it’s a sci-fi/adventure fanfic and I had a lot of fun with that first chapter. In broader terms, I hope people here are doing as well as they can. I know I don’t show up as often as I’d like, but I think about you guys a lot! 🙂

The saddest little face in the world…

Had to order something called a “happy hoodie” for the old lady Siamew. She has an ear infection, is being treated for it, yet is now scratching furrows in her right ear. So, hopefully this will protect her ears from herself.

Aside from my paranoia as an adult, my parents’ homophobia is likely the only reason they haven’t figured out I’m bi. Hearing your teenage girl singing the chorus of Spill the Wine as “Do I dig that girl? Heh!” probably should have made them question things. Fortunately, Heiferlump just thinks I’m embarrassing; her reaction to me singing is to roll over, grunt, fart, and go back to sleep with her paws over her nose. Cats don’t let you get a big head. (Yeah. Almost forty and I just figured out I’ve been singing that wrong all these years. Freud would be clicking his heels with joy over that slip. And almost forty and I only noticed now that autocorrect cut my age the first time. Ugh.)

Doing some small tweaks. Member profile tabs are now all URL sticky. Are there any other areas that should be URL sticky?

In my 2013 Phineas and Ferb fanfic “Candace’s Perfect Body,” there’s a scene wherein Dr. Doofenshmirtz captures Perry the Platypus by trapping him inside a wool sweater and then using a huge blow dryer on it to make the sweater shrink around him. Tonight, I watched an episode of the recently revived Phineas and Ferb in which Doofenshmirtz traps Perry exactly that way. I’d love to think that the writers got the idea from me, but honestly, they’ve used so many different Perry-traps over the years that this coincidence seems like a statistical inevitability.

So, getting some running around done, so I don’t have to deal with the chickens and the snow…. Ye gods...you’d think they never saw the stuff before. 🤣

Pro tip: When it comes to burying bodies, remember to call 811 before you dig!

For all of us who celebrate, may the light return after this longest night. Solstice Blessings! 🌅

A nice quiet birthday was today

The great thing about writing Star Trek fanfic is that there’s almost nothing canon about Vulcan and Orion genitalia, so you can pretty much make their bits work however you want.

Never trust any book with a tagline or summary of this would make Lovecraft scared. Lovecraft is not a viable reference of fear. Man was afraid of Penguins, Air Conditioners and the Welsh.

Every now and then, I take up a small sewing, mending, or needlework project, and I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Then I realize exactly why: somewhere between my chair and the back door—over half the house—is a one inch long needle the thickness of one of my husband’s beard hairs, dangling from thread the color of our floors, and I’m effectively blind. ...because I heard a bird. Yes. I heard a bird and walked through several doorways, needle in hand, to see what it was; on the way back, my brain dumped its cache and the needle vanished. It has ceased to exist. It’s a brand new needle, too, so sharp AF. And our floors have streaks of grey, so the needle blends in like it’s invisible. Unless I magnet-sweep while walking like a Jain with a broom, the second my shoes come off, that little bugger is going to come careening out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile just so it can stab me in the foot. Curse you, happy singing bird, for damning my feet to such fowl treatment. I may all your bath water be just slightly too warm or cold to be perfect.

Did you know New York actually has 12 seasons? https://12seasons.nyc/

Beware the Ides of March!

"will-o'-the-wisp happenstance acclivity" or "brown library movement of good fortune compulsion " or "guesstimate happenstance door " Are these spam bots, or just trying to come up with some old style weekly prompts?

Checking in on all the rest of y’all in the range of Snowmageddon 2026. (Basically, the southern half of the US, northeast downward, half the Midwest, etc.) Everyone doing okay out there? It’s freezing here in southwest Missouri with snow on the ground, but our neighborhood hasn’t lost power...yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be round two of this nonsense. Cold’s vehicle doesn’t handle cold well, so he’s bundling up like he’s bound for the arctic and walking to work. Heiferlump, meanwhile, is determined to crawl inside my skin to sap all the warmth from my corpse, and let me tell you, that cat has cold toes. Those toes are also equipped with unfailing nipple-seeking stomping hardware, and I have the bruises to prove it. Naturally, I’ve held her up to the window circle-of-life style a few times so she can cuss out starlings on the feeder. Everybody, stay warm out there!

It Kinda feels weird when you’re finishing up a series. But Writing the ending to Duncan and Co feels cathartic. <3

Got my Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy on 12/2/25, before the surgery I was 75lbs down but now in total I am about 85lbs down since the surgery

I’m currently looking for active forum members interested in beta testing the New Archives system that is currently under development. Message me if interested.

Winter Holiday 2025 is UP!

I’m probably way too busy and appalled at recent world events to be this bored. Or at least, I ought to be. Someone accused me of not being able to write properly. Someone in an official capacity. I should be too rageful to be this bored. Meh.

The people who leave negative reviews on e-books reporting sex scenes are my heroes. It’s easy enough to filter in smut when you’re reading fanfiction, but the e-book writers get coy about it in their descriptions. If not for sex-averse reviewers, we’d risk reading a “spicy book” that never passes first base, get clam-shelled over the lack of smut, and have to go start a fight with our husbands or something. ...not that I’m speaking from experience, or anything. But yeah. Someone left a squicked one-star review on a book I was considering. Granted, the review was just the word “sex” written three times – like they’re starring in a demonic possession porno or something - and shoop, there the book went. Right into my cart. I hope it’s filthy. People like that are heroes.

I know it is a first world problem, my life is not in danger and no one is trying to kidnap me off the street, but dealing with FAFSA under this regime is beyond frustrating! Are we great yet?

Earlier tonight, I fed one of my non-fanfiction short stories through Pro Writing Aid’s “chapter critique” to see how it measures up against my fanfiction. I never thought I’d see the day when AI would smut-shame me. Yep. Seriously. “…some might find the level of detail in the sex scenes excessive.” What if I don’t wanna associate with that sort of person, huh? Fade to black is for wishy-washy people and FFN, not my filthy shapeshifter plowfest. Stay in your lane or bend over.

Happy Birthday!

So, on this wonderful April the 1st, are we going to be leveraging AI to auto-finish all those WIPs lingering in the archive?

“Necromancy is so misunderstood. Just trying to give people a second chance on life!”

Pro Writing Aid is on such crack. I use actual line-breaks; it doesn’t recognize them as line-breaks and cries about “scenes bleeding into each other” and “mid-scene shifts in POV.” I use extra spaces, ditto, and same with several other ideas. It wasn’t even recognizing transitions, as it tends to. Well, I finally broke down and started writing this... ...every time I change to a new scene, just to hammer it in for the programming. This does not make it onto the finished product; I replace it with a proper line-break before posting because my readers aren’t morons. Well, today, PWA has something new to cry about: Make up your goddamn mind, you worthless pile of code! I can’t psychically implant into your processors that I’m changing the scene, and you can’t recognize that a scene is being changed, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Just let your tantrum drag down my writing score because you can’t find any actual errors that need to be fixed?! I swear. My writing skills have improved since I started using this app for editing, but my blood pressure has worsened. It wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass if any of the errors I’ve reported had ever been addressed instead of just happening time and time again.

Happy Birthday!!!!!

Happy New Year to everyone on the Gregorian calendar! Just happy to be here to everyone else!

Happy New Year from NYC, and good riddance to 2025… 🎉🍾 (As a friend said last night, he’s giving 2025 zero stars on Yelp—does not recommend)

Happy Birthday!

I’ve said countless times before, on various platforms, that I’ve given Spotify an identity crisis with how varied my listening habits are. My 2025 Wrapped dropped the other day, and hoo-boy. It’s a mess. My most listened to songs were Labour (Cacophony) and Rasputin; I play them on repeat as background noise while editing so the whine of all the electronics, the sound of the furnace, and even my own breathing won’t drive my misophonic ass bonkers. (I’ve tried countless other sounds, playlists, and various colors of noise, but it all either irritates my ears – my hearing is mildly fucked – or it has “water” sounds that make me need to pee every five minutes. The best substitute I’ve found is, oddly enough, a celtic band that combines bagpipes with hide drums, but I have to tweak the hell out of my sound settings to make it not painful.) My most listened to artist, on the other hand, was Steeleye Span; I listen to a custom folk playlist when I’m trying to write or edit for a certain story that isn’t going anywhere, and it’s disproportionately full of Steeleye Span. My most listened to playlist, however, is 11+ hours of nonstop oldies; it’s “safe” for when I’m outside, with family, or both. Because it’s gotten so much play, the app pegged me as over 70 years old. My second-most listened to list is full of punk, emo, and nu-metal, so I guess it assumed I’m letting my nonexistent grandbaby mooch off my account. I’m a millennial. They just stopped carding me. Ouch. I feel like I should apologize for gaslighting the app, but...yeah. Nah. I’ve got work to do and my brain is working against me enough. (You sure make me do a whole lotta labour.)

Happy Turkey Day! <3

For those that celebrate it today, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! p.s. Also, remember to set your bathroom scales back 10 to 20 pounds.

A very happy birthday to @DemonGoddess! Hoping the day, and the coming year, are happy, healthy, and safe!

I think someone might have cracked out a phial of starlight, or perhaps a million of you all did. Start spreading the news… 🎵and so on and so forth... [message ends]

When one considers the size of the target and the size of the projectile, one would think a cat’s foot would miss tender spots more often than it would hit. So why do they always—always—manage to stomp right on nipples and testicles? How does that make sense?

This just in: some school districts in the US are banning books about cats. Apparently, somebody needs to have a chat with the administration and tell them those books “aren’t about that kind of pussy.”

I’ll be heading off tomorrow for my holiday. I’ll be landing back in Australia on 15th September local. Try to keep the place tidy while I’m gone.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite (age-appropriate and modern) books described a place as “a screen door town.” The explanation was that every time something happened, no matter how trivial or innocuous, every screen door up and down the street would open and slam shut twice in a ripple effect—once when the occupants came out to snoop, and again when, having discovered it was unimportant, they went back inside. Last year, Cold and I moved into “a lawnmower neighborhood”—meaning every day, there’s at least one person outside mowing somewhere on the block, and most days, their neighbors join in whether or not they need to mow, and the ripple travels further and further until everyone in earshot is mowing. Cold and I sleep during the day and we can only deal with the lawn very early or on his days off, so the constant mowing is a sore point. Well, earlier today, I heard the mowing start up again while I was trying to drudge through beta-reading a chapter from someone who might not have proofread first. As close as the mower sounded, I figured it must be that one neighbor who has an overpowered mower and an undersized lawn. I suffered through reading the same sentence half a dozen times, then stormed into the kitchen to get some tea and wait it out. When I heard Cold come through the door, I started ranting about “whatever asshole is mowing this time can kiss my ass” and a few things otherwise. Then I saw him and I froze. My husband was sweaty and covered in grass clippings. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Asshole. I mowed your lawn. Prepare to give me butt.”

Cicadas when I’m trying to write late at night: “I respect you and want you to succeed, so let me sit on your window and scream about it.” I just opened my office window and told the damned bugs on the screen to go get laid somewhere else because I couldn’t think straight from their noise. Our neighbors probably think I’m nuts. Meh. They drive ugly cars; people who drive ugly cars don’t get an opinion on my sanity or lack thereof.

A very big birthday shout-out to WillowDarkling! Happy Birthday, Neko-baby!

May the fourth be with you all!