The Stars and the Cookie Jar

(the older I get, the more I feel like Lady Fuchsia...)

I am now 23. Material love has accumulated as follows:

• $50 and card, grandparents
• Thai lunch and 1/2lb of 100% Kona, Fearless Leader
• four gorgeous thick pillar candles (vanilla nutmeg, pumpkin, pomegranate, pound cake),  Dain
• DVD (Chicago), Mother
• very large tin of my favorite Masala Chai, Mother
• magnificent Gollum t-shirt, younger sister
• three poems in the last week, written to spec, Sonya
• odoriferous kitty kisses, Bast

I think now I can go to sleep. Cue the Pavlovian Sleep Song!

shirei_shibolim , current hapless victim of my liiiittle Tolkein thing, has provided me, for my birthday, via the post, with... a mysterious breadstuff. (It hasn't arrived yet. I suspect it will be less mysterious when I remove it from its parcel and eat it.) He has proven himself, by way of challah and kaiser rolls, to be a precocious and well-researched baker. Nostalgia! Nostalgia! I would retain him as personal boulanger-patissier when I've taken over the world (starting at the Cloisters) but he is engaged to a friend of mine, who is also a cat. To my eyes, they are very happy.

I have nine books by my bed waiting to be read, and only two are research.

I'm writing, mostly having been goaded to it; I am ecstatic about this. New characters and everything, though they still seem to exist in that same ur-Massachusetts (that scares you, dunnit?) ...and they're boys  this time.