A Fellowship of Fine Minds

The Long Back Yard

#
Saturday. Sunny and bright and just as cold as you can want. Minus one now as I sit in the window under my heated blanket. Minus five when I got up.

I am dressed for success today in heavy sweatpants and Steve's red wool drover shirt and alpaca socks.

Breakfast was potatoes fried with onions and a side of cottage cheese. Speaking of things I need to remember, I need to remember that I really don't like Daisy cottage cheese. It's not them. It's me. WAY too creamy.

I'm intending to make black bean soup or black bean chili or something soupish for lunch today. It'll work out.

Speaking of alpaca socks! Right after Christmas, I ordered a bunch of alpaca socks from a local business and apparently hit the wrong button, saying that I would pick them up. A couple weeks went by and they called and said when are you picking up your socks? and I made arrangements to have them mailed to me which they have been. Their trail has gone from Lincolnville to Belfast to Nashua, and now they're expected by the post office to arrive. Oh Monday. Quite an adventure for a bag of socks.

Today's plan is to read Page proofs this morning, make soup, and do some taxes.

I'm looking for ways to get some rest in between all of this because I really need some rest right now but it's not being easy. Well, the snowstorm may actually help with that goal.

How's everybody doing this morning ?

Dictated to my phone
#
Soup's On

#
Moving right along. Biscuit baking to have with the soup -- which is kind of a black bean, mushroom, veggie, sausage thingy with a crushed tomato/veggie broth base. Smells yummy. And yes, there are going to be leftovers.

My duty to the cats has been performed. I signed up for two "courses" from the local Adult Ed -- a couple-hour Zoom discussion of Maine's Death with Dignity law, in March, and a three-hour (yeah, yeah) cruise of Messalonskee Lake, in mid-July.

After lunch, I'll stare at the taxes for awhile. This morning, the cats and I proofread two short stories from LUC6, and may I just say that "The Last Train to Clarkesville," turned out really well.

What's for lunch at your house?
#
Rookie had some after-lunch advice to give me.
#
And that? Is enough fun for one day.

The tax paperwork is a zoo. For last year, Steve of course was TAXPAYER, but this year, I'm TAXPAYER, which the CPA has already gotten wrong once. I foresee a serious boondoggle, if I try to use their damned online form.

Well. Another phone call in my future.

In any wise -- Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.

I'll check in tomorrow.

#
Addendum:

And I see the weatherbeans have adjusted the timing and upped the stakes of the incoming storm. Now predicted to start tomorrow evening and go through to the early hours of Tuesday, 10-18 inches for a projected total, though it looks to me that we're still looking for 10ish inches.

Which is enough, really.

Still calling for Pretty Dern Cold tomorrow, after minus 10 on the overnight.

Tomorrow may be a pillow fort day, after I cope with the various piles. Might be I'll bring the page proofs with me into the fort and finish those. At least that's a task I feel like I have a firm handle on, and which won't cause me headache inducing amounts of angst.

Well. Plenty of angst to go around. The snowmen apparently came into Maine with a quota, if not an actual shopping list. They aim to disappear 1,400 people, and they've taken to threatening observers -- following one woman home, pulled a vehicle across the bottom of the street, another at the top, and a third at the curb, rang her bell and said, "We just want you know that we know where you live."

Stopped another guy who was following a car, and told him he was "impeding" them and that they were delivering his first and only warning. If he "impeded" them again, he would be arrested.

And, because the Portland Police Chief was mean, and said they weren't behaving like real Officers of the Law, they took 50 or so people they had stolen off the streets and stashed in the Cumberland County Jail out of the Cumberland County Jail and I'm not finding that anyone knows where they are now.

Not to mention the random killing of folks in Minnesota.

They're trying to start a war, just like the bully in the schoolyard, pushing you and pushing you and pushing you until you break and launch into a fight you can't win.

God, I hate this timeline.

I do believe I'll serve up Coon Cat Happy Hour, and have a glass of wine.

Sarah came, she cleaned, she left. The cats all came back to Steve's office with me, and we read the first 50ish pages of LUC6.

My duty to the cats has been performed. The oven is heating for lunch.

After, I'll work on the taxes for awhile. I'm not sure if everybody is being Very Diligent about their 1099s this year, or if I'm in a time-slip. Or, yanno -- both. In any case, those columns of numbers ain't adding themselves.

This year the CPA had opted to go Electronic Only for its fact-finding questionnaire, and I hate it with a Deep and Abiding Hatred, leavened with Frustration. Also, the upcoming snow event is weighing on my mind. I think I may not be ready for a blizzard. And February lies before me. I'm not particularly sanguine about February this year.

Also, yanno, ICE is in Maine doing its damnedest to make the False Narrative that we are a hellscape of crime and brutality into reality.

*raises hand*

May I fast forward to April 25, please?

No, didn't think so.

How's everybody doing at midday, Eastern?
#
So, I called the CPA and the poor young person who answered the phone had to tell me that, nope, I can't download the questionnaire until it's filled out, adding that she is compiling A List for the people who market this program to CPA firms, because I am not the first one of their clients to have blown a gasket.

The solution was to go to the office -- which, thank ghod, is only ten minutes away -- to pick up a paper copy to work from. I have done this.  I have also, hopefully, provided the necessary encouragement to change the name on the account to Sharon Lee, as today was the third time I was asked if the account might be under another name.  I was Not Nice.  "Why," I said, "maybe it's under my dead husband's name?"  And, yep, that's where it was.

On the way home, I picked up a chocolate milkshake. With whipped cream.

I am now going to go drink said milkshake and then make several copies of the paper form.

Technology. It will make everything easier.

Yeah...
#
In all, this has been . . . a trying day. I'm exhausted. Did get some things accomplished in a taxward direction. It just seems so unfair that you have to do all this work only to have to write a check at the end of it. Yes, yes, I know -- some people get money back on their taxes. That? Has not been my reality for a Very Long Time.

Poor Rookie is starving.  Happy Hour is days late and he has Composed a Poem regarding this tragedy, which he is shouting non-stop from all corners of the house -- testing the acoustics, I guess. The girls are occupying various High Places well out of the Poet's way.

I briefly thought about hiding under the bed, but then I remembered that I have a Captain's Bed, so that's out.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, and the day after that, as well. I do find that some places are stating that they'll issue the damned 1099s on January 31 and not one minute earlier, so that's good to know, and I can't for the life of me remember what I did about BN; as in, if I closed that account entirely. I can't seem to get into my publisher account there. OTOH, they did sent me $150 last year.

I need to remember to write things down. And then I need to remember where I wrote them down.

It may be I'm losing this whole Going it Alone Thing by Slow Attrition rather than A Bolt from the Blue.

And on that cheerful thought, I bid everyone goodnight.

Be careful, stay safe. I'll check in tomorrow.

Today's blog post title brought to you by Buffalo Springfield, who first sang it in 1966. "For What It's Worth."

5   *Carpe Diem ((Liaden Universe® #3), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
4   *Conflict of Honors (Liaden Universe® #2), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
3   *Agent of Change (Liaden Universe® #1), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
2   A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (Lord Julian #10), Grace Burrowes (e)
1   Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green, Linzi Day (e)

________
*I'm doing a straight-through series read in publication order

Monday, condensed

The Long Back Yard

1 Monday morning. Snowing lightly. And the sound of chainsaws from next door.

I expect it will be my turn when and if the guys get here with the equipment since they have to take down two big pines for me.

In the meantime, since I don't have any work to do today, I'm sitting in the comfy chair in the window in my office with the happy light on, dictating this note to the world.

How's everybody doing today?

2 My mission today, aside from staying away from chainsaws and falling logs, is to change out the cat fountains, and catch up with friends at Front and Main this afternoon.

I will also, today, or tomorrow, be posting Explanatory Notes to the Read-Along thread on Splinter Universe, explaining why I fell off the wagon, and offering some insights to the rest of Agent of Change and Conflict of Honors.

I am now reading Carpe Diem, aka Val Con and Miri go to Madison, Maine, which I'll note that they arrived there before we did. We finished Carpe and mailed it to our editor before we made our own migration to Maine, where we fetched up in Skowhegan, which is right handy to Madison.  The first time we drove through Madison's shopping district, I said to Steve, "This looks really familiar." And he laughed at me, the rat. Which is when the penny dropped, and I said, "It's real?"

3 Well. That's a different look. I purely hate taking down trees, and, yes, I know that these were in fact very sick trees, and a danger to the house in the next high wind, and that the top of one had already (previous to our tenancy) snapped off in a windstorm, but -- still.

Trees.

4  So, that was a nice visit before the group splits for winter vacations. Front and Main has an amazing lobby. There was a woman at one of the tables all set up with her papers and her laptop, and honestly I think she's on to something. The tomato-veggie-lentil soup was very good, and so was the company.

Went to the grocery after, but forgot to go to the hardware store. Ah, well. I'll be out again tomorrow.

I believe I will putter for the rest of the day. Maybe make a frittata and see how that goes. I should freeze the second pork chop so I have something to draw on; I let the freezer get a little low. I made a fresh batch of hummus a couple days ago, so that's not quite gone. Maybe some time this week I can bake bread. Oh! And I can finally finish my second glass piece.

So this is what people who don't write books do. Wow.

Still snowing, just enough to be pretty.

While the tree guys were doing their thing, Firefly and Tali went back to Steve's office, but Rook vanished, so he missed the play-by-play. When I came home, he had a lot to say about how the trees are gone, Mom, while he was sitting on my lap, banging his head on my chin. I think we've managed to agree that it was probably for the best, since he's had a wee dram of dry food and wandered off to the bedroom window.

And so, the midday report.
* * * * *
The Long Back Yard:

#
Tuesday. Sunny and cold. Trash and recycling are at the curb. The space where the trees used to be is noticeable, but not raw, thanks to the snow.

Breakfast was leftover soup. Lunch with either be leftover frittata or leftover pork and sauerkraut. Prolly pork; frittata will go better in the evening, after needlework.

I have errands this morning, because! not only did I forget I needed to go to the hardware store yesterday, and even though I was there, I forgot to pick up my meds, so back to the grocery for me.

I woke up at 5, and said to Tali, who happened to be sleeping next to me at that time, "I don't have to get up now." She knocked her head into my chin -- I'm not sure if she picked that piece of communication up from Rook or he from her -- and started to purr. And I went back to sleep.

I thought I was going to update the Read-Along blog last night, but I wasn't able to get into Splinter Universe. That's been fixed, so I can get with that today. Instead of updating, last night I carried on with Carpe Diem, where I've just now gotten to the point where Val Con is introducing his kin's theme songs to Miri.

And that's what I've got this morning.

What's everybody doing today?