Commended, My Running Corpse

What with video chats and stuff, lockdown has meant me being more social than at any other time in my life.1 Normally I don’t speak to anyone I didn’t give birth to for days at a time–except for on social media, of course, but text-based asynchronous communication isn’t nearly as draining as video chat or in person. The latter two are such a flood of information; there’s tone of voice, eye contact, microexpressions, body language, the whole enchilada.

Pretty sure the hypervigilance trained into me at a very young age doesn’t help.

Not that I’m complaining! I’m super grateful to be able to talk to My People. I just have to set strict time limits and give myself recovery days.

Lots and lots of recovery days.2

I spent some time reading Unfinished Tales last night, and I do really want to yell about The Children of Hurin. Mostly because all the V.C. Andrews jokes are just laying there, ready to be used; I know Tolkien probably had something more like Sophocles3 in mind but I am not a Very Big Brain Oxford Intellectual.

I’m more a Hilariously Niche Areas of Pop Culture Screaming Maniac.

Plus, Glaurung the First Dragon holds a special place in my heart. Smaug was cool, yeah, but he was a teensy fellow by comparison. Glaurung was Morgoth’s first attempt at dragonmaking and succeeded better than even that very powerful Ainur had a right to expect even though he didn’t have wings.4 BUT ANYWAY.

Today in HOOD the “fine, get snitty with me over being a girl writing sci-fi and I’ll do a whole chapter of Star Trek references” chapter goes out to subscribers, and I am unreasonably excited about this. I also get to take Boxnoggin on his first run since the whole Bus, Bolt, Drag Mum Over Pavement Incident, which is going to be a real barrel of laughs for all concerned, I’m sure.

Last night a part of Black God’s Heart I didn’t plan for fell out of my head almost whole, too, and I have giant plans for a Viking werewolf fantasy gothic heavily influenced by du Maurier and The 13th Warrior. It’s been a while since my head was full of neat things I’m excited to share; what with 2020 it’s been mostly stuffed with “the deep scrambling desire to find a hole deep enough to hide in because I see what’s coming down the pike.”

Anyway, it’s time to get out the door. I got up this morning and staggered around determined to find the source of a particular sound that was Not Quite Usual; you can imagine my chagrin when, after searching the entire house, I found out it was (are you ready?) the dishwasher, and my head was so stuffed it just sounded funny. But there was a pan of brownies waiting to be plundered for breakfast and if 2020 has taught us anything it’s eat dessert first, so that was fine. The coffee is almost absorbed, the dogs are circling restlessly, and there’s a long involved joke about Turin Turambar and Tuor son of Huor meeting on the road I want to get just right, though nobody but me will ever find it funny.

…that happens a lot.

Anyway, it’s Thursday, and I don’t have a single video conference today. I get to rest, renew, and shed my human form for a wee bit. After, of course, I run it into the ground with Boxnoggin’s “help.”

The urge to cross myself and commend my poor corpse to whatever god looks out for running fools is well-nigh irresistible. Put in a good word for me, if you’re the praying sort, I don’t think I should commit any more head trauma upon myself for a while, so I need all the help I can get.

Over and out.

  1. Except for when I was working retail, but that’s less “social” than “enduring contact for a paycheck.”
  2. It works out to about three days off for every day I have to talk to human beings I didn’t give birth to–the Introvert’s Scale, I call it.
  3. And now I’m humming Tom Lehrer’s Oedipus Rex
  4. The “Smaug Was Better” contingent often points this out.