Another Friday where I am not in charge

The wind is howling in Idaho today. My wife’s Christmas flag outside lost another jingle bell.

The old pit bull has another ear infection, so I took him to the vet. He won the jackpot this time. It’s bacterial in one ear, and both bacterial and fungal in the other. Yay!

There’s $200 I didn’t need to part with at Christmas time. I told him he should feel blessed. I could get a whole new dog for less than that.

When I got home, I decided to spend a little time at the writing cabin. The crosswind on the landing strip was brutal.

Doubt* the Raven paced across my desktop. A dear friend provided me an extensive markup for Will ‘O the Wisp. I made a bit of progress, but am about to have company for the weekend.

I corrected several pages of punctuation. Doubt matched back and forth, clucking, “Ha ha ha, Ha ha ha.” He’s an asshole sometimes.

Iris**, the fairy wouldn’t come beyond the doorway. “I don’t trust that bird, and he’s bigger than me.”

“That’s fine. Where’s Roald? It’s getting pretty close to lunchtime.”

“He walked to the store. Said you were out of eggs. Wait, he said Out of eggs, by golly.”

“The store’s miles from here. What’s he need eggs for anyway?”

“He said, Mountain cow milk makes the best eggnog in the world. He learned about Christmas, and had me look stuff up for him. He wants to do something nice for you.”

“Lunch would be nice.”

“It just so happens he made you a big scrapple sandwich, and left it in the refrigerator.”

I swallowed hard. “Scrapple huh? Maybe I’ll just pick something up on the way home. I’m sure my company is almost here.”

Iris put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “You need to eat that sandwich. Roald is really nice, and he made it for you. You can share it with the raven, but you’d better eat it.”

I shuffled off to the refrigerator, and found the sandwich behind a baggie of shrunken heads. “Do you have any idea what’s in this stuff?”

Iris smirked like she expected me to eat it anyway.

“Uncle boils down anything he gets into a gelatinous mass. It might have whale, carp, mutton, frogs, roadkill, unicorn, or God knows what in it.”

“Don’t be stupid. We don’t eat unicorns.”

All in all, I got about a sixth of my editing finished. Don’t laugh, it’s better than none. This doesn’t include my final pass over the whole story.

* Doubt is a gift from my Muse. He’s supposed to be helpful, but I haven’t really noticed it.

**Iris, Uncle, & Roald are characters from The Cock of the South. Iris is a fairy. Roald is a dwarven tribesman. Uncle is half dwarf and half human.