author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

We have a working washing machine again! I'm going to wash all of the clothes tomorrow. And the towels. And my exercise pants. And etcetera.

It was, as suspected, just a matter of replacing the lid sensor switch. Very simple--only, like I said before, I wasn't going to mess with it and maybe mess things up with either it or our home warranty policy or both. So today we had a visit from an appliance technician who opened things up, confirmed that it really was just the lid sensor switch and nothing else, and replaced that switch for us. And we gave him a check for the amount of the warranty co-pay.

And life was once more that particular sort of good that you get when you can wash your clothes without leaving the house, paying attention to business hours, and/or scrounging quarters.

The fun part was getting to see what the washing machine looked like under the hood. Our model requires one to pop off the end-caps of the front panel in order to reveal the access screws, then unscrew those screws to flip up the front panel, then simply walk off the entire chassis and lid. I didn't realize how little solid machine there was inside the big white aluminum rectangle--it's just a big flimsy metal box that gives the washtub somewhere to live. And also the lid sensor; the bit the technician replaced seemed to be attached to the inside of the chassis there.

It's OK if you're not getting a perfect visualization of the machine's innards from that abomination of a paragraph. Point is--OK, so, I'm thinking of one of John's T-shirts. The one with the slogan, "The insides of things are beautiful. Let's see what they look like." I'm feeling that slogan so very much right now.

There is probably a metaphor for writing in there somewhere. Something about the literary equivalent of taking it apart and finding out what the insides look like: examining the author's choices on a line-by-line level, or watching how they make two themes interact, or spotting that clever bit of foreshadowing on the reread. And sometimes you can't quite figure out how to take the story apart until you've had a chance to discuss it with someone else, or read an insightful review, and then you go, "Oh! So that's how you open it up and get at the lid sensor switch!" Something like that, anyway.

It's not "overthinking it." It's reverse engineering.

The repaint job on our building is over, as far as our unit is concerned. They've got a few more units to finish tomorrow, but our front patio and back balcony are all done. Everything we had to bring inside is outside again, with the exception of the bird feeder--I found out it's against our HOA rules and regs. Which is sad, but fair; if you're worried about raccoons, it makes sense to ban animal attractors. We can put our hummingbird feeder out, but that's the one exception.

The back balcony was the last thing, and the paint crew got to it yesterday. I was in the guest-bedroom-turned-office in the front of the house, but I could hear the racket of ladders--ladders being extended and put in place, people jumping down from ladders onto the balcony, people climbing up ladders to the balconies above ours--when they arrived.

It reminded me of something:

It’s this idea of ownership, I think, which is twined so closely with responsibility and duty: this little patch of earth is indisputably yours, and you must take care of it, because no one else will.

But I think I sensed that this concept of ownership was a lie even then. I knew there were countless infrastructural and financial systems whose whole beings were devoted to allowing me and every other person on the block to engage in this happy fantasy. And for them, there were no boundaries. The men who came to check the meters or the gas or cable lines were perfectly within their rights to hop a fence or open your gate and stroll right in.

A fantasy, in other words, must be maintained. And for it to be maintained, it must be violated from time to time, its fragile penumbra punctured by outsiders going about their day to day business.

That's Robert Jackson Bennett, on a very particular fear that inspired his novel American Elsewhere. Only, of course, in that story, the officially sanctioned trespassers are up to something rather different than checking the meters and maintaining the cable. They're not necessarily men and women, either.

But it's a fair point even without the special pleading of horror/fantasy. We lock the door at night and when we leave the house, and we close the office window that looks out onto a ground floor patio. But because the back-of-house access points are some ten feet off the ground, we feel safe leaving them open so that the evening breeze can freshen and cool the bedroom and living room. And it's all an illusion, pierced the first time someone--legitimate or no--comes around the back with a ladder. Hell, the illusion of security wouldn't even survive a single person who didn't mind breaking glass. And yet we lock the door and feel like we've done the whole of our duty thereby.

It's not so much that I have faith that no one will break in, or that no one will steal the patio furniture if we leave it out overnight. It's just that I choose not to think about, because if I think about it, it scares the crap out of me and makes me paranoid as hell. And that ain't no way to live.

Makes a great basis for writing horror, though.

Hello universe! I have a front patio again! Theoretically, anyway--the paint crew finished up the last bits of the front of the building that pertained to our unit and the two above us, so I think I get to put the plants and patio furniture out front again. I've decided to do that tomorrow; it was too chilly and rainy to do tonight. The plants mightn't like it. The wood folding table and chairs definitely wouldn't like it.

Which reminds me: it's about time I gave the furniture another oil treatment. Once a month was the suggestion at the store, and I'm trying to be very good about maintenance and product longevity.

So tomorrow morning I might actually get to start my writing outside--which is to say, outside on the patio, rather than outside at the creek. Then I might just get to leave everything out there on a permanent basis once again.

Meanwhile, the balcony out back is still waiting for the paint crew to come back through and paint the trim. And the plants that live out there are still hanging around the living room. The most successful of our tomato plants is sort of drooping all over everything; I was going to tie it up against the wall, but obviously this plan had to be delayed. John's little sunflower never made seeds, presumably for lack of pollination action. And my squash, denied the ability to range freely all over the floor, is attempting to climb the walls, the screen door, the mystery pepper plants, and, showing a certain amount of desperation, the parsley next pot over.

So much for the household status report. My writing status report is less interesting (IMHO), but since that's what the blog's about, I shall blog it anyway.

Finally made my way back to my Boulder Writing Examiner gig. Just submitted for review tonight an article about John Scalzi's visit to Fort Collins this Sunday. I'll give you a link as soon as I have one. My relationship with Examiner's new review process has been a mixed bag thus far; one article was approved pretty much immediately, but another--a rather timely one, actually, the Puzzle Pirates weekend blockade roundup--was sent back to me with a request to remove specific dates from the headline, and never did get approved in time to be of use to anyone. So clearly I still have some things to figure out. This time, at least, I've got several days before the article I'm trying to get approved becomes obsolete.

I'm also finally making my way back to the rewrite of "Caroline's Wake." Embarrassingly enough, it has almost been a year since an editor returned it to me with a very specific rewrite request, complete with a marked-up copy of the manuscript and everything. I'm not happy with myself about this. The editor told me not to worry about a deadline, but this, I must admit, is ridiculous.

Why have I let it languish for so long? Well, I could say I've been busy. I could cite moving house, my busy roller derby schedule, other writing deadlines I've imposed upon myself... but when I look back over the past year, it's obvious that I've been able to get some things done. Whenever I can't get everything done, this short story revision has been the first thing on the chopping block. I've been avoiding it. It's that simple.

But why? Why avoid following up on a fantastic response to one of my stories?

I suppose that, while I'm between the rewrite request and the new submission, I'm in a state of potential. Great potential! And the thing about states of potential is, they're no-risk until you try to act on that potential. Where it's at now, the story has been given a strong vote of confidence and no rejection yet.

Basically, it's that thing where the writer doesn't finish because "unfinished" has more possibility than "finished." Until it's finished, it can't be pronounced a failure. Until it's sent out, it can't be rejected.

Which is, logically, a ridiculous excuse. But emotionally it makes so much sense.

Still. Emotionally, it's also got me in a state of stagnation. I'm producing very little new fiction while I'm sitting here frozen on this rewrite request. Knowing that I'm in the middle of one project makes it hard to justify starting other projects. So while this doesn't get done, very little else gets done either. I need to move. The unfinished dragon needs to be finished!

So that rewrite is now my mission for this week. Wish me luck.

The expansion on the drabble is coming along, but it's coming along rough. I have to continuously remind myself that it's OK, because this really is more of a first draft than a revision. I mean, yes, I'm building off of an already-written 100-word version of the story, but this new version is, for all intents and purposes, all new. The character now has a name, an age, a sister, a mother, a geographical location, a job. The story will have at least five scenes, including the one that got vaguely nodded at by the original drabble. The pacing is different, and the climax will be better developed. It's a whole new story. Of course its first draft will be rough.

At least it is coming along. Getting to spend some time on it every work day feels like getting away with something.

Today also involved some Fictionette work, as usual. The one for this weekend is shaping up to be something like E. Nesbit fanfic from two generations' remove. I'm trying to keep a Nesbit-like voice while firmly setting the story in the era of email. I've also taken some time to begin typing up one of the June fictionettes for my appropriately-tiered Patron (didn't get to it as quickly after the May edition as I'd hoped, but oh well, I'm getting to it now), and I discovered that the task gets ever so much easier when the typewriter ribbon is wound correctly. Who knew? Also, the instructions are not lying when they say that the supply spool goes on the right-hand side; however, it does not mention the existence of a manual ribbon reverse switch, and I had it switched to the reverse direction, so. At this point I'll probably have to retype the first page. It's OK if it's a little messy, but all that fighting with the ribbon resulted in a silly amount of mess.

It is probably time to order a new ribbon, if a ribbon fitting a Sears Tower "Quiet Tabulator" portable can be found. I have a spare "universal" in my desk drawer, but I also have a memory of discovering it to be the wrong width or something. I found a site that sells typewriter ribbon by model number, and discovered that my typewriter's model number is partially hidden under the platen assembly. You can just make it out if you open up the rear enclosure as though to access the tabulator stops, and tilt the hinged bit at just the right angle: 871.600, which seems to match these products. The price for a black-and-white ribbon seems reasonable enough.

I had a lot of fun watercoloring on the typewritten fictionette for May, all the more for doing it outside on the patio. But once again I forgot to take a picture. Maybe I'll remember when I'm illustrating the June artifact.

Not on the patio today, alas. Power-wash operations were underway, in preparation for a new coat of paint on our building. Everything on the balcony out back and the patio out front had to come in. Our entryway looks like a jungle, all crowded with lush spath leaves, and you can barely reach the blinds over the sliding glass door what with all of the containers of tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers getting in the way. It's totally a nightshade paradise over there. All we need are eggplants. And then there are the herbs.

Meanwhile, the birds are so confused. The bird feeders had to come inside, too. There's a young female grackle who keeps perching on the balcony rail and eying the place where the feeder's supposed to hang, as though to say, "Mama told me this is where food comes from! Where did the food go? There is supposed to be food! If I wait here, maybe food will appear?" A couple of sparrows actually flew up there as though under the impression that the feeder had simply turned invisible. I feel sort of bad for them.

Just wait 'til the end of the week, little buddies! 'Til then I'm sure you're capable of finding your own grub. Your mama must have taught you about more than just suet cakes!

So sometimes Mondays aren't for getting things done. Sometimes Mondays are for recovering from the weekend. I had a very full weekend, and, considering Monday is not a work day under my current schedule, I spent most of today luxuriating in not having to get out of bed.

That said, I really wish my favorite self-indulgent "Not being productive today, thanks" activity, that of alternately napping and devouring books whole, didn't universally result in headaches and cricks in my neck. There's no right posture, no correct amount of pillows, no position whatsoever that's comfortable for long or doesn't result in the abovementioned afflictions if I fall asleep. I think this must be one of those "getting older" things, along with taking longer to heal from minor injuries and not being able to make it through the night without an extra bathroom visit. Dammit.

But I went to the Rush concert Saturday night! That was awesome. Lots of great music, good humor, lovely memories, a stage design that was itself worth the price of admission, all of it only made a little bittersweet by having gone alone to what was likely to be the band's last tour "of this magnitude". Besides, I wasn't entirely alone--I spent a small amount of the second half tweeting back and forth with an old high school friend who'd seen the tour a few stops earlier, so I had someone to share happy thoughts with during the concert after all. Yay!

So that was awesome. And since that's all I really have to report today--here's a recipe! There may be no writing content in today's actually writing blog, but, darn it, you get a recipe. I call it...

"Wait, This Isn't Shakshuka, What Is This Mess?"

I'm a heedlessly adventurous cook. I will throw things together that do not go together, just because the thought of them together sounds good in my mouth. It is a good thing that I am also an extremely non-picky eater. If the experiment had gone poorly, I would probably have eaten it almost as happily as if it went well. As it turned out, the experiment went rather well. It made a dinner that was almost as deliciously self-indulgent as today's reading-in-bed session was.

Defrost and brown a pound of bulk (not link) sausage. I used breakfast sausage, but anything would do, really. Ground beef would have been fine too. Anyway, while it's browning, chunk and crumble it up as best you can. You aren't going to need to drain the oil. Well, you can if you like. I don't.

Chop up and toss in all the tomatoes burning a hole in your fridge. Between a friend's contribution to the housewarming potluck feast and my husband's experiments with pizza, there were a bunch of tomatoes in the refrigerator, in danger of being forgotten until they composted themselves. This was the main reason this meal happened, actually. "Oh, Gods, I have to use up those tomatoes. Why don't I simmer them with sausage and... oh! with some of that kimchi that I also need to use up?" I have thoughts like that. There may be something wrong with me.

Add a generous portion of kimchi. I am guilty of having about four different half-ful jars of kimchi in the fridge at any given time. Look, they're all different kimchi, OK? After a tour of the available varieties, my nose told me I should use the classic daikon kimchi from MMLocal. It smelled slightly sweeter and less sour than the others, thus matching the flavor profile my mind was reaching for when it said, "Let's put those tomatoes in with some sausage and kimchi."

But wait! It gets better.

Add the juice of half an orange, which also needed using up. These were leftover from another of my husband's cooking projects, tofu marinated in orange juice and soy sauce, then baked until delicious. He bought rather more oranges than he needed, and I keep forgetting they're there. I do not know why I looked at tomatoes, sausage, and kimchi, and said to myself, "This needs orange juice." I may be a genius. A very strange genius.

Add a handful of basil, because there's some in the garden on the back porch, and because when orange juice and tomatoes are on the stove, they obviously need basil. That's the herb that goes into the orange juice tomato soup I make for Winter Solstice, from the Cooking Like a Goddess cookbook.

And also a generous splash of fish sauce, because you already put kimchi in there, so what have you got to lose?

Simmer, stirring often, until the sausage looks fully cooked. Then, because the sight of sausage simmering in juices with vegetables reminds you of that time you attempted (with some success) to make shakshuka, even though this dish really doesn't resemble shakshuka at all, considering the kimchi and orange juice and the total lack of cumin or paprika, crack a couple eggs on top of the mess. Do not stir from here on out. You're going for poached, not scrambled.

When the eggs are done to your taste, spoon them out into a bowl along with a heaping helping of the juicy sausage-tomato mixture that they poached in. Then exercise supreme restraint and same the rest to eat later, probably over pasta shells.

Monday is "get stuff done" day--the more stuff, the better, and better still if it's stuff that's overdue. Today was a very good Monday. It involved the following stuff:

Reconfigure bedroom electricity access. This was a complex process of furniture-moving, electric application inventorying, and delicate negotiation. As such, it got put off for weeks. We finally took the time to assess today: Which things can just get plugged in and stay there? Of the other things, which need three prongs and which need two? How far may cord travel before someone's going to trip over things in the dark? Oh, and you've got two less sockets over there once the lights go out because they're on the light switch circuit.

Things appear to be stable, which means all phones will get charged, neither laptop need run out its battery, other necessary appliances will be reliable, and peace will reign at bedtime henceforth.

Found a place for the remainder of the office board-and-brick bookshelf. There are five 6-foot planks and ten bricks that make up the bookshelf that, for my entire childhood, lived in the "toyroom" upstairs in my parents' house. When Mom and Dad were ready to get rid of it, John and I brought it up to... oh, goodness. To Oregon. We were still living in Oregon at the time. That means we've had this bookshelf since 1997. Anyway, it stood five shelves tall there, and in our first apartment in Boulder, and in our house that we just moved out of. When we moved into the new place, I put three of its five shelves together under the window in the office, but that left two planks and four bricks just sitting around doing nothing.

Today we tried putting them on the dresser in the bedroom, which also happens to be six feet long (or close enough). With pillowcases on the bricks to make them look a little less brickish, the effect is surprisingly nice. The room suddenly feels uncluttered and open. Probably because the dresser had to get decluttered before this and the previous item could happen; probably also because some of the remaining clutter got organized onto the new shelving.

Did the books. On time for once, too. So the bills are paid again, and my inbox is once more empty. Ahhh.

This task included an hour on webchat with Comcast's support staff. Our transfer of services to the new address created a new account number, which did not automatically connect itself to my online billing account. This was awkward, because our billing is only online. We haven't gotten a statement since we moved, which meant last month I had to visit the Comcast office and pay three months' worth of bills all at once.

Well, the techs were able to get our current account linked to the login, but I can't do much with it until I have a PIN, which the system keeps failing to send me. But they processed my payment for this month's bill, so things aren't urgent. Yet.

Connected the Xfinity Digital Voice signal to the landline jacks. Because I was tired of waiting out in the living room for Comcast to call with my PIN, because that was where the sole "landline" phone in the house was, because that's where the Xfinity gateway was. I'd much rather wait in the office, where I could usefully get stuff done while I was waiting. So I put together a frankensteinian mess of phone cords connected to more phone cords using old Qwest DSL filters as glue, and I ran the resulting length of cord from the Xfinity gateway to the nearest landline jack...

...which happened to be in the kitchen because I don't know what the people who built this place were thinking. I guess they figured that the living room/dining area/kitchen really were only one room, albeit a very long one, so why have two phone jacks? Why have a phone by the sofa when you've got one you have to stand up to answer in the kitchen? Why indeed?

Anyway, once I'd run a line from the gateway to the "nearest" phone jack, the rest of the landline jacks in house got dial tone. I can take landline calls in the office again. Whee! Now all I have to do is run another frankensteinian phone cord across the room, because the jack doesn't happen to be on the wall where I chose to put my desk. (Also I need to find where I hid the cable tacks.)

But of course the Comcast call with the PIN never did come. Nor did the email. I'll give it a week to arrive in the postal mail (the analyst swore up and down she'd sent it and it would arrive in 2 to 5 days) before I gripe at them again.

Cleared Gardens 8 and 9! Woo, one of these things isn't like the others, is it? Those being work and this being a game. Too bad. I get to play games sometimes. I did my daily writing work almost as soon as I got out of bed! I deserve some game time. Thththbbbp!

And I hadn't played Eden in so very long. Not for many months before we moved, in fact. I recall being very frustrated with the end of Garden 8, where the last Spectra is barricaded in behind a bunch of movable rocks; you have to hit a bunch of switches in the right order and quickly before everything resets. I think? Maybe they aren't on a timer and I just accidentally reset things because I was panicking because I was running very low on energy--I mean, my "oscillator" was almost completely "out of tune"--

In any case, with John's help (point "That one! Now--back onto the right side--" point "That one! No, the one below it!") I got that sucker. Then, after we took care of the bedroom electricity and furniture rearrangements, I bulled my way through Garden 9. Now my hands hurt.

Going to bed on time. Maybe? Let's find out--

Hey look! It's last week's fictionette. It's called "Adventures in Posthumous Journalism," which, given Wednesday's blog post, is about what you'd expect. Weird thing is, I never got around to the idea that first kicked things off (the fanatical group that opposes utopias as leading to stagnation). Which is great. The idea that kicked things off was dauntingly huge--like, a novel's worth of worldbuilding--and that wasn't going to fit in under no 1,500 words, unh-uh, no way. Much less threatening to just let the main character make her way through the first scene of that hypothetical novel, mouthing off as she goes. But I thought I might at least get to mention the original idea just a bit before the cut-off. But no.

I should just stop issuing positive statements about timing. Yesterday was worthless. There was no getting things done yesterday. Yesterday I woke up with a headache and a sore back and a sore neck and things didn't so much get better as they got vaguely tolerable, at least tolerable enough to go to scrimmage carrying along with me the even vaguer hope that roller derby cures everything. It cured most things. Everything was a lot less sore afterwards. Well, the big sore things. There were new little sore things, but that's roller derby for you. I'll happily take on new bruises in exchange for getting rid of that sore, tight upper back.

But the moral of the story is, I'm not allowed to say things like "Tomorrow is as late as I'm letting this thing get," because some fool imp in my brain hears that and sabotages it to kablooey.

So I'll say this much: I'm not going to get the June 19 fictionette up over the weekend! My weekend is totally full! It involves a wedding anniversary date at the new drive-in theater in Denver, a sort of roller derby barn raising, a furniture shopping trip, a grocery trip, some various housewarming operations, and quite possibly even more excitement than that. So I'm not even tempted to promise the weekend.

But it'll go up just as soon after that as I possibly can manage.

So things continue to be late over here. But they are getting better! I at least managed to get a solid work session in on the Fictionette that was due out June 12. To no one's surprise, it didn't get done in the car on the way to Nebraska--but I did actually work on it then, which is something. Since then I've been nibbling on it a bit every day. I hoped to have it up by now, but I suppose it will have to be tomorrow. (It had just better be tomorrow. I am not letting it go later than that.)

It's kind of a dark one, involving a terrorist plot and a tragic death. I honestly wasn't looking forward to writing it. This is what happens if I don't get my freewriting done every day; when it's time to choose one to turn into a Fictionette, I don't have lots of choices, and I wind up having to choose the one that's the least bad. And comforting myself that I won't have to Fictionette it up until this week next month. Then "this week next month" turns into this week and I'm all, er. Really? This is what I assigned myself? Oh, hell.

I've been warming up to it over the week, though, especially since I decided the narrator would be the dead person. Writing from the point of view of a ghost, especially one who's not letting death stop her from becoming a great journalist, is kinda fun. Interesting, at least.

I don't even remember which of the freewriting sessions from this week last month is scheduled to become the June 19 Fictionette. I haven't even looked at it. Gah.

Which is not to say this hasn't been a productive week! It has! I've been more-or-less sticking to my daily plans for writing. But it's just been slow, not least because there's all this other stuff to be productive about. We've been cleaning up, rearranging stuff, and retrieving things from the rented storage unit. Also shopping for hardware. John has been slowly converting our storage closet downstairs into an honest-to-goodness workshop; to that end, he has brought back from Home Depot an honest-to-goodness workbench. Also an AC outlet that stacks into a lightbulb socket. Tomorrow or the next day, the boards-and-brick-bookshelves come home. (They won't be enough, especially since some of them are going into the storage closet, to better organize our storage. We need more bookshelves. One over there, and one over there, and also one out there.) Then Sunday, we just might, for the first time in our lives, become the proud owners of patio furniture.

And yet, with all this going on (and roller derby too), I somehow found time to post to File770.com a filk of half of Rush's "Freewill" on the topic of the Sad/Rabid Puppy Hugos Ballot Takeover of 2015. Because it got in my head and wouldn't leave, OK? These things happen! ...What?

Maybe I need sleep.

This week is going to be a tight week for me, even if I'm scrupulous about my schedule and use every hour to its fullest. The work days are squeezed between two extremely full derby weekends, with mid-year travel team try-outs just behind and a double-header in Nebraska coming up. Thus Friday will find me on the road all day long. This time I know better than to expect writing to happen in the car.

Knowing that, I still managed to be late with the June 5 Friday Fictionette. It's coming, it's imminent, it's been drafted--it's just that if I stay up until all hours finishing it tonight, I reduce my chances of getting all my work done tomorrow. Schedule scrupulosity cannot happen if I eff up the whole bed-by-one, up-by-eight thing. So.

I haven't got its title yet--my hope is that will come to me in my sleep--but it's about a sort of science fiction/fantasy version of David Moffat, whose proposed railroad will cross under the continental divide rather than over it. And there will, for once, actually be an ending rather than a cliffhanger to nowhere. Rejoice!

More tomorrow. Must engage in bedtime procedures right now.

Today was one of those fresh summer days that wants to come in through every window. I opened up the patio door and the office window, which have screens. I opened up the front door, which, oddly, doesn't; it has something I want to call a screen door, but it has no actual screens in it. It has three glass panels. I figured out how to slide one of them up, but, again, there's no screen. One must choose between air in or bugs out. One cannot have both, at least not until I install a screen or just replace the door.

Replacing the "screen" door would probably be fine. Its latch is broken, too, such that it's difficult to get it to latch shut from the inside and entirely impossible from the outside.

Nevermind! The fresh summer day came in by the patio door and the office window, and extra light came in by the not-really-a-screen-door, and I found the energy to get some household chores done. Laundry, dishes, taking out the recyclables. Topping off the bird feeder. Attempting to rescue spinach seedlings that got dug up in the night, probably by that jerk the squirrel. (Seriously, I need to just bring all the plants in overnight. This is ridiculous.)

I even took a rag and some lemon oil and my spinning wheel outside, and I made a first pass at cleaning off the storage unit grime. All the dust came off, but there are stubborn stains on the treadles, probably from years of having that little bottle of spinning wheel oil hanging upside and dripping onto them. Still, some progress was made. At least the poor thing is no longer gross to handle.

What I'd really like to do is invite fiber-geek friends over and have a little spin-in on that front patio. Now that the summer heat has reached us, it's no longer a dim and freezing cold dungeon. But it's not so full of sun as to be wearying, either. And I've got happy little shade-tolerant plants hanging out there, the decade-old spaths and the new baskets of impatiens and begonias. It would be lovely to sit out there and sip tea and spin yarn (literally) and also spin yarns (figuratively).

Alas, I didn't get to any spinning today. Nor the piano. Mostly I spent the afternoon fighting with Patreon's new input interface while turning "Because You Weren't There" into the May 2015 Fictionette Freebie. The new interface is, in theory, a great improvement over the old. Not only can you input rich text via HTML now, but you can also upload new attachments to, and change out the image of, an existing creation. (You couldn't do that before. I KNOW.) However, there's a bug such that depending on the click path you use to get to the edit interface, the "save" button might not actually save your changes. That is, if you click through to a single post view, and then click Edit, you're fine. But if you click the Edit button attached to the post where it appears as an item in your posts stream, it will be a no-go.

But the post I wanted to edit--the plain-text excerpt of the Fictionette--I had created through the Activity Stream interface rather than through the Creations interface. Which isn't a distinction that ought to matter, since the new interface files both of them under "Creator Posts" as opposed to "All Posts" (that is, posts you posted, or messages your Patrons posted to you). But it matters this much: Posts created under the Activity Stream rubric appear to no longer have an Edit button within the single post view. I can only get in to edit them via the button on the item in the posts stream. Which click path, as I said, leads to a non-functional Save Post button.

Also, have I mentioned that since the interface update, some Patron-only posts got set to Accessible By Everyone? And probably vice versa? Pardon me while I go double-check the status of every single item in my archive since September 2014. Whee.

Finally, after beating my head against that brick wall for far too long, I struck a compromise. I gave up on trying to edit the post, and just created a whole damn new one, with the full text in HMTL and the links to the PDF and MP3 and also the announcement that it was now free for all to download regardless of your pledge tier or Patron status. And I emailed Patreon's support staff with the bug report, which hopefully isn't too rambling for them to understand. The above two paragraphs should give an idea of whether I succeeded; the email was more rambling than that, I fear. Then, at last, I turned my attention to Other Matters.

Which, it being now an hour until I had to leave for roller derby practice, meant things like getting into my derby clothes, cooking myself dinner, packing up my skate gear, and things like that.

Here's hoping tomorrow's work day doesn't get whittled away by technological frustrations like today's did. And that I get all the things done. And still get time to spin yarn and practice piano and maybe play a little on Puzzle Pirates too. And read blogs. And go for a long walk around Sale Lake. And...

Optimism! It's what's for midnight snackies!