Hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977

Assignments went out for the Narnia Fic Exchange. Earlier in the week on Twitter we were having fun with were-Caspian and the Hag's missing body in the PC illustration by Pauline Baynes where he gets bitten. The image manip is courtesy of metonomia I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of this for the NFE this year, as well as ladies in love.



My own sign up was pretty much the same as last year and I included a link to it in my sign up.  I'm nothing if not predictable.  Ignore Last Battle.  Just about anything else is OK though I'm not a fan of Jadis or the Telmarine era.  My assignment is going to be.. interesting.  In a good way!  Something new!  VERY NEW.


I got a nice query from a long time reader who was starting a re-read and wondering about reading order, which reminded me that I had a story on FF.net that never made it to AO3, Lost in Translation. LiT was all prompted by reader feedback and questions and most, but not all of it, ended up in other works, especially Rejection of the Terms (there's a cute part in LiT where Peter is doting on a pregnant Morgan and I thought of updating it, setting it later, aligning it with the other stories, and including Seth Stanleh but eh, I think we've all moved on). Anyway, the part that had nearly disappeared into the Internet ether is the Knighting of the Otters. So I pulled it from LiT on ff.net and posted it last night.

I'm working hard on the final update to Star Husband which has gone in a very unexpected direction.  WOOT.  Maybe next week?


AND, in other news, because I know you are waiting with baited breath -- Komo's G/I tract appears to be on the mend.  It's blazingly hot so I"m not getting the dogs out for walks unless very early in the morning or in the evening after a thunderstorm but, as near as I can tell (he's very secretive about where he does his big business) things are normal or nearly so.  We'll be trying a super hydrolyzed, allergen-free commercial diet and see if that solves the issues -- he's exhibited a bundle of symptoms sfor a long time -- including LOTS of water drinking -- and these all seem to have abated.  HOPEFULLY we can get him on to something more nutritionally adequate than boiled rice and chicken.

We returned from the not all frozen North where I managed to squeeze in lovely visits with syrena_of_the_lake and psyche29 . I just adore meeting imaginary friends in Real Life and we've known each other through fic for a very, very long time.

If you did Yuletide, I hope you loved your gift and that your gracious recipient loved yours. It did seem there was more than the usual pinch hit scrambling.  What those admins can pull together every year is astounding. If you see a good story, rec me, OK?

We picked up McKinley at the hospital yesterday. I'm glad she can be at home for whatever time is left to her. Thanks so much to all of you for the kind thoughts.  This is a better, though very, very costly, outcome than I'd expected a few days ago.  She was thrilled to be home after over a week in the hospital.



She has lots of pills -- for pain, nausea, and high blood pressure and has become very resistant to pilling. Anyone have any ideas? I'm used to a dog taking your fingers off so this is a new problem.  I think we might need to go the meat route -- I remember liverwurst growing up?  Maybe there's something at PetSmart?

Also, SEE WHAT I GOT!! My spousal unit managed to track it down and I'm pretty excited.



Have you been to see any movies?  What's your favorite?  Mary Poppins?  Bumblebee?  Aquaman?  Spiderverse?

Also, wow the government shutdown sucks.  Although, the pre-published Federal Register just came out and a few folks are in if funded by non-appropriated money -- and others are supposed to trundle in for an orderly shutdown.  Ugh.  I'm sorry if it's you.  I  know this is super stressful.

It's not secret to those who have followed me that dogs are a big part of my life. Dogs are prominent in my fic and Jina is probably best represented in my first labrador, Ghitsa, crossed over the rainbow bridge after an amazing and long life 15 years ago.
There is Thorin Corgishield, who is, at the moment, alive and well.  (The introduction of worrying fretting shepherds in H&M was due to the introduction of a worrying, fretting herding breed in a house previously occupied by labradors)


McKinley, however, has always been another story. There was the ACL surgery in 2014, the time she ate the retrieving bumper, and the neverending cycle of pain meds and infections, ears, feet, lumps, warts, growths. We got McKinley, like all of our dogs, from breeding/show kennels at 1 year of age, or a little older, when the breeders decide to not show them, don't want to breed them, and are looking to rehome them. McKinley was supposed to be a breeding bitch for an assistance dog program but they sent her back realizing that she had personality traits (in particular no desire to please her owner/handler) that they did not want handed down to generations of assistance dogs. She's dumb as a stump, in her own Labrador world of food and smells and oddly poorly socialized despite years of obedience classes -- she will still bark at people and dogs she has known her whole life. She's 12 going on 13 and the size of her file at the vet is a source of consternation and horror.

And she's been hospitalized since Tuesday (3 separate hospitals) with possible kidney and liver failure, or maybe lepto not covered by the vaccine, or maybe it's the infection that's caused the vomiting even of white rice since last week. Maybe the NSAID we tried for her severe leg pain that was supposed to pose lower risk of stomach upset and liver compromise (and did give her great mobility) has triggered a cascade. We don't know. Care is currently, conservatively going to run to 5 figures.

This is incredibly difficult. With other dogs, they have told us and we knew. They spent their last nights at home with us and we took them to the vet and were with them. With McKinley, I don't know what the right decision is and when we will know. 

So here she is in her finer moments.









 
I'm not really going to respond to comments, OK? I'm not as on top of things as I normally am (I tried making biscotti yesterday and forgot to add the butter).   I've been down this road before, there aren't any good answers, I know all about care of aged and ailing dogs, and we have truly the best vet care money can buy. 

Or Happy New Year in Romanian.

I hope you all had a good year. There is a very amusing posting on Tumblr right now lamenting the loss of Live Journal.

fandomlikefinewine:

Trying to figure out Tumblr after being on LJ for ten years.

I won't do an annual word count.  I know it's smaller than previous years, even if still pretty big.  The 3 Sentence Ficathon is going on and it erupted over the last 24 hours into a massive crackfest of Lord of The Rings/Narnia xover.  Now, let me be clear, I LOVE Eowyn and Faramir.  I LOVE Aragorn and Arwen.  I LOVE Eomer.  And yet, somehow, Peter/Eowyn and Lucy/Aragorn have lodged themselves in my brain, along with, wait for it, Faramir and Edmund.  Utter crack.  (it's in the later pages, 29-32)

Which reminds me, this has really gotten my Eowyn thoughts going again because every 10 years or so, my Eowyn opinion undergoes a cosmic shift and I'm in in the middle of a new one.  Also, I saw and yes, enjoyed the Hobbit very much. So, maybe another post on that, yes?

In closing, my thanks to you all for another awesome year.  If I were to say, what was the best thing for me?  Probably our trip to England meeting awesome and charming online imaginary friends, and paying homage to Darwin, Mary Anning, Bletchley Park, and the Oxford Museum.  And the addition of the Corgi to our family, Thorin Corgishield (who thought the Pottery Barn catalog was delicious)



If you have something good that happened to you in 2013 that would like to share, please do so in the comments.  And may there be more of the same to you and yours in 2014. 

This evening we had a home intruder.  He fell into our front porch bushes, brought half of it into the house, and collapsed in a drunken stupor on the living room couch.  I call 911.   "We have a home intruder."  We go outside.  We wait.  I call 911 again thinking maybe I was not clear enough about the fact that we have a home intruder. I Tweet that we have a home intruder.  My spouse decides now is a good time to go inside and load the dishwasher.  I find out why it takes the police 20 minutes to respond.  They arrive on bicycles. They hustle drunk home intruder out of the house.    The dog doesn't wake up as home intruder bumbles into our home.  She goes crazy over the police officers.  It's probably the bike helments.  They are very scary.

And then the dog barfed.