This book is a work of fiction, not a grimoire

I didn't expect to get up today and immediately call a doctor, but neither did derspatchel and yet that's how we both spent the afternoon. Upshot: I have a sinus infection, he has some kind of viral cold with sore throat, he cleaned the house and went to bed, I walked ten minutes to the house farwing shares with several housemates I have not yet met and helped schreibergasse move in. I assembled a bed with an Allen key. It made me feel competent. And I knew I was getting pizza out of the deal, but the books were a real bonus. There were three or four brown paper grocery bags of used books in the living room when I came in; they turned out belong to Farwing, who had done one of those periodic library triages of sorting the valuable and the re-read from the never-revisited and inexplicably duplicated. The top layer in all cases was a nearly complete set of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress. So while Schreiber' and his brother returned the truck to the U-Haul in Everett, I sat on Farwing's couch and drank some kind of mostly licorice tea and re-read all of Dorothy J. Heydt's Cynthia stories up through "Honey from the Rock."¹ There was indeed pizza and lots of it. I ran out for donuts and half-moons from Lyndell's. ajodasso and James turned up in the evening and there was much discussion of Gravity Falls. Schreiber' has a new leather jacket that makes him look like a motorcycle outrider in the 1920's. I had to leave to finish my work for the day, but it was one of the randomly nicest afternoons I've spent with other people in some time.

I left with five books: a first edition of Harlan Ellison's Stalking the Nightmare (1982), Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon (1995), Francesca Lia Block's Girl Goddess #9 (1996), a Penguin Classics edition of Aeschylus' Oresteia, and Kathleen Sky's Witchdame (1985). The last of these deserves a little explanation. I haven't read it in fifteen or sixteen years. It was in the house when I was growing up; I read it relatively young and assimilated little more than some names and a confused sense of goddess worship and sex magic, returned to it in high school and recognized just enough of its remixed sixteenth century to find it even weirder. Now that I know something more about the Tudors, everything I can remember about Witchdame is weirder still. It's a heavily alternate, massively Wiccan retelling of the coming to power of Elizabeth I, here the princess of a Goddess-protected Englene ruled for centuries by conquering witchlords, the native woodwitches persecuted; she is the child of both traditions and must claim her birthright, riding round the cardinal points of Sky's alternate Britain (Cymru, Gaeland, Ireland is literally Faerie and no one ever goes there because they don't come back), to break the spell of sterility on the land. I had vivid memories of, and confirmed by finding and reading out the relevant passage to Schreiber' and Farwing, the scene in which Elizabeth has ritual sex with the Archangel Michael at Avebury and sets the hills of Englene alight with blue flame. At one point she fights a tourney with Satan. The angel of exiles is named Menadel Mazal and I am afraid the author made him up. I am fairly certain that Thomas More features as a supporting character and is a magician. I am simultaneously looking forward to re-reading this book and worrying that it will have been visited, not necessarily by the Suck Fairy, but maybe by the Crystally Earthy-Crunchy Fairy, or at least the Fairy of WTF Did I Just Read. Possibly the Fairy of Oh My God Leave the Matter of Britain Where You Found It. It would be kind of a delightful surprise if it held up.

And I came home and discovered that ladymondegreen is telepathic. My green corduroy jacket is eleven years old. In that time I have worn it almost constantly three seasons out of four; I have restitched both pockets and some of one shoulder and I love it dearly, but it's changed colors at least twice and has a general air of fraying around the edges that makes it feel increasingly unsuitable for professional wear. The right-hand pocket has now torn once again so badly that I can't keep anything in it. I've been looking for a replacement since last winter. L.L. Bean is willing to observe their traditional policy and allow me to trade it in for store credit at least, but they no longer make either my jacket or anything in a similar color or style. The women's options are dreadful and the only men's blazer is coffee-brown. Thrift stores have yielded nothing suitable as yet. You'd think hipster fashion would have helped me out, but apparently no one wants corduroy in earth tones these days. And in the meanwhile I need a jacket which isn't my leather winter jacket which I can wear while I mend the corduroy's torn-out pocket yet again.

There were three shirts in the package from Lady Mondegreen, and a box of small neat food items, and a silvery leather jacket wadded up carefully. It has two outer pockets which zip and one inner pocket where I can put my phone. I have no idea if it looks good on me. Quite possibly it's the wrong style entirely. I don't care; it's a jacket, it fits across the shoulders, it has pockets, and it arrived at exactly the right time. Thank you.

(The cats promptly tried to get into the box, which is why it now contains none of the above, but I take it as a sign of their appreciation and approval.)

I want to be less tired. I want to stop having nightmares. I want my body not to feel so wrong around me. I am holding on to everything I can. I want that to stop feeling so difficult. I make posts like these to remind myself that things still happen that are good. I just want my life around them to be better.

1. I've read at least one more, but either it wasn't in Farwing's collection or I didn't get to it before (1) Schreiber' and Dan came back (2) we made a beer run to Ball Square Liquors (3) the pizza arrived. I know there are two or three further in the series, published after Bradley's death, but I've never read them. I just want the complete collected Cynthiad already, universe. They remain some of the best short-form classical fantasy I've read.