Ouughhhh… Over 110 the last couple of days. It’s particularly unfair that it is this intensely summer when I can already sense autumn just around the corner. Far be it from me to respect the timetables of American retail establishments, but: there is goddamn Halloween candy on the grocery store shelves. I shouldn’t have to put up with this shabby crap!

Took my car in to the mechanic’s for a tuneup it didn’t technically need. Points go to me, though, because it turned out one of the motor mounts was busted. The noises and movements I’ve been attributing to the “new” rebuilt transmission we put in a while back were actually 90% due to the engine just sort of sloshing around loose under the hood. Poor car. Things are much better now.

I am eyeing September with great suspicion. The middle of the month is going to hit me like a ton of bricks. I am not ready.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 34 hours, with Friday off to let my car be at the mechanic

Cooking: baba ganoush using mystery tiny eggplants from the farmer’s market, hummus, Funeral Potatoes from B. Dylan Hollis (a variation on a familiar recipe, absolutely everything should get a corn flake topping *cronchmonch*)

Cleaning: cleaned out the bottom level of the outside freezer and removed the built-up ice, definitely didn’t slice up my hands in the process...

Crafting: darned work socks

Reading: The Raven King by Nora Sakavic (*gnaws drywall* MOAR SPORTSBOYS), relistened to Jurassic Park because I had the kind of week wherein you want to hear about humans being eaten by dinos

Listening: Drif by Heilung (more weird folk stuff, “Anoana” can play on loop in my head until the heat death of the universe)

Clock Mouse: 1819 words--getting to write about someone doing crafting feels like cheating, because the words just flood out of me

Other: donated blood 🧛‍♂️

After the initial flurry of sketching out the design and making a list of supplies, it only took him a few hours to build the scale, aided in the work by several of the younger, more curious goblins they had met in the market. If they were going to insist that his love was worth her weight in gold, damn it, he was going to calculate the weight to his advantage any way he could. In the end, the actual exchange rate of women to bullion hardly mattered, as the goblins decided they valued his ability to build tricky things enough to trade for his services instead.

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LL#1294

They had told her their love was a light, shining on her, chasing away evil, burning out impurity, but it had only ever felt like a floodlight trained on her every move. So when she ran, she looked for darkness, heading for the low, overgrown places, the neglected corners, the spots no one wanted to look at for long. Down, down, she ran until she found people--small and pale and blind, used to living in a place without light--who knew something about needing to be secret, who knew love as a dark, soft place where seeds and people can finally rest.

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LL#1293