I've been under the weather a bit myself

As an index of my mental health and the general state of my life, I realized sometime in the afternoon of NecronomiCon that I was surprised for people to recognize me. After seven years out of circulation and more than a year off mass-market social media, I expected not to be remembered. I have been trying since 2012 to shift Tiny Wittgenstein off my shoulder and into his carefully enriched environment of a jam-jar that the mother of my godchild curates for me and I do not seem able to wrap my emotions around the idea of my own object permanence. I do not think the additional layer of isolation enforced by my illness of the last few years has helped.

I found my 2019 Elder Sign. It was pinned to the lanyard of my convention badge, which is where I thought I had left it. Along with similar paraphernalia from Readercon and the Ig Nobels, it was in a miscellaneous box on which Hestia has been sleeping. Our treasure-guarding temple cat.

The contractors arrived once again at a barely legal hour of the morning to buzz the sad greenery of our yard into sadder green yard waste, but I did manage a meaningful span of sleep beforehand and even a couple of hours after. The monarch count stands at four chrysalides, seven caterpillars, and as of this afternoon three more eggs on a stalk of milkweed I had hoped to provide to the smallest caterpillar, which requires the tenderest leaves. I had to run around more than I wanted for the day, but at least I was not obliged to see any doctors. I was unavoidably and not unpleasantly reminded by Sally Smith's A Case of Mice and Murder (2024) of Cyril Hare's Tragedy at Law (1942).