This many things make one of these

Life with cats: I have been a laundry-fiend since I got back from F'Con, as I'm away again on Friday and I want to be clean for Provence. I was just turning away from the washing-machine, congratulating myself with the thought that I had started the last load and that every single clothe was washed or washing, when Barry walked by. With a sock in his mouth.

Dreaming with Chaz: I dreamed that I was walking barefoot to the rivermouth, singing half-forgotten Kris Kristofferson songs. And woke to find it halfway true. At least, my head is now entirely full of half-forgotten Kristofferson. A bucketful of earworms.

A question: may I or may I not use "cresset" as meaning the bracket that holds a torch on a castle wall? I did it, congratulating myself on having a vocabulary in my head; then I checked it, as I do, and my dictionaries only like it as an iron basket for combustibles, or else generically for a torch itself, rather than the bracket. So now I'm confused...

We have sconced the torch, not cresseted it

You are all brilliant, and I adore each and every one of you individually and without limit. Just sayin'.

In other news, my editor has just e-mailed to say that he's about to FedEx me the page proofs of HIDDEN CITIES. Exactly in time for me to take them on my holiday, so that I can send him corrections before I come home. *whimpers*

Short-term thinking

Why, I wonder, is my regular optician so very keen to bring me in for laser eye surgery?

If they could persuade me to do this, and if they did it right, they would charge me less per eye than I currently pay for a pair of spectacles, and then never see me again. Whereas I go back for a pair of spectacles every couple of years or so, and have every intention of doing so for the rest of my life. You would think that a business would have spotted which was preferable. And would stop bothering me with special offers and unrepeatable discounts, damn it, on this service which I do not want and which would not profit them in the long run, grrr...