My fate, let me tempt it you

I had actually, honestly forgotten about jetlag.

I'd been back two nights, I'd slept tolerably well at comparatively normal times both nights. Yesterday I had two conversations about jetlag, and shrugged it away: a combination of exhaustion and alcohol, I said, had cracked this particular bugbear. Not a worry. Not a factor.

Hah.

I remembered those conversations this night just gone, when I woke in the dark and discovered it was only one o'clock. I remembered them again at half past three. I have been thinking about them fairly constantly ever since.

And by the time I thought of Karen's recommended fix, it was too late: Barry was asleep on top of the Benedryl.

*whimpers*

Oh daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county?

For the record: it is not only, it is not even principally the sunshine that I miss. There are many reasons why I wish I were in California right now, and the sunshine is frankly the least of them.

But oh, I do miss the sunshine. Today is jacket-and-boots weather; last night there was a frost in Scotland. In July.

Still. It is what it is, I am where I am. For now.

Right now I am chewing dry bread (no, this is not as awful as it sounds: I may in fact not have any butter, but the bread is fresh sourdough, and I like it as it comes) and slurruping coffee and checking through a PDF proof of Rotten Row. Which, as it is all about the mutability of identity, amused me greatly when I found that the copyright notice asserted that the author's rights had been asserted by her in accordance etc.

I have corrected same, but I was very tempted to leave it.

When I am bored with checking proofs onscreen, I can go to the Lit & Phil and check proofs on the page, as the page-proofs of House of Doors have just arrived. Apparently it's house style to be insane and unsanitary, to break dialogue with one dash inside the quotes and one outside ('The sky -' she put her brolly in her bag - 'is ominous.') I hate this with a passionate hatred, but there you go. House style is house style, and immutable. I hate that too.

When I am bored with checking proofs on the page, I can sign sheets instead, as the signing-sheets for Rotten Row have also just arrived. This I used to do in the pub, until I noticed the, um, degradation after a few hundred signatures, a few pints. Now I do them in the library, and my signature still degrades but not so fast nor far.

Meanwhile I have Mr Peabody's coal train in my head, because I want to write a story about a man who dowses for coal. The only way to shift it would be to go back to writing about the aspidochelone, and let Yo Ho Sebastian earworm me instead.

The coal comp'ny came with the world's biggest shovel

...Or, I could just sit here numbly staring at things, dead on the inside. Jetlag has me in its snare; even the pub is too far to walk, even signing sheets is too hard to do.

Also, the steroid that keeps me breathing is unobtainable. There has been a manufacturing problem, apparently, and a man less jetlaggy than I tried seven different chemists and there was none to be had. Sniffle.

In better news, I may be ruined but my favourite casserole dish is not. There was an Incident of Burning - nay, of Severe Burning - and I thought I had finally destroyed it, after the better part of thirty years. But no: a night in a vinegar bath and a healthy scrub with a brillo pad, and lo. It's as good as new, save for a few previous chips in the enamel. (It's heavy. It gets dropped.) Yay Le Creuset: the name is practically a lifetime guarantee in and of itself. I'd leave the thing to my heirs and graces, only Karen doesn't cook and I don't think the Lit & Phil would want it.

I shall now return to my previous programme of sitting and staring. Oy.

Oh good grief, this is pathetic

It's, um, a quarter past eight. I'm going to have a bath and go to bed. With a book, he added hastily - but that's really just cover. I'm too tired to read.

If you ever hear me arguing the virtues of an early night, just shoot me. Put me out of your misery, 'k?

EtA: also, as a side issue: I have taken no alcohol today. None. Partly that's because I spent two hours on the phone when I would normally have been drinking, but even so. I didn't even notice till just now. I don't suppose this has anything significant to say to anything else, but it's a curious datum.

EtA2: correction: not having a bath yet. On account of the water's not being hot, on account this house's not being set up to cater to people wanting to keep such peculiar hours. I have turned on the immersion heater I never use, and will now read the internets for half an hour...

Monkey see, monkey do, monkey copyright?

Hmmm - now, whom do I know who's an expert on intellectual property and the law...?