And I mean a day that sucked so badly it pulled small objects nearby into itself, a day that started off setting a new record for suckage, a day that spread blight, disaster and discouragement in every possible direction, even to the gingerbread cookies that Blondie attempted this afternoon, following a recipe from the pages of “Joy of Cooking” which defiantly should have stayed there and never seen the light of day. It’s the Gingerbread Man recipe on p 712 of the 1970s edition, BTW. Can’t miss them… tastes like ginger and molasses playdough, and look most unfortunately like dog turds. And we know dog turds, these days, for we are the one set of responsible pet owners on our street who do, in fact, whip out the approved plastic bags… no matter what that rude woman on the corner with her herd of nasty-tempered rat-dogs called after us, yesterday.

Oh, yeah, ginger-flavored dog turd balls, that’s for sure what we’re going to give to our neighbors for Christmas. The ones that don’t speak to us will probably never not speak to us again, and the ones that we do speak to will be looking after us strangely and discretely spitting out the bite they were polite enough to take into a paper napkin.

Does anyone actually ever eat the Christmas cookies from neighbors, anyway? I think they just pass them on to someone else. Like fruitcakes.

My computer has been glitching, over the last couple of says, abruptly terminating the internet connection, and sending me repeated pop-ups for things that I am not interested in, and so yesterday I burned several hours of writing time running the usual sort of diagnostics, with the result that this morning, absolutely the third thing I tried to do on line froze it up entirely: there was the desktop, and my documents and everything…less my accustomed cookies and log-ins…and it remained frozen. So, first thing of the day, a day dedicated to writing and a chapter of the new book which I had been thinking about all night, and planning to pick up where I had left off yesterday…and I can’t. All my notes, and the very complicated excel spread-sheet I spent hours on this week, plotting out the various events and characters…all locked up, because of course I haven’t copied them over to disc because they are not finished yet.

My computer genius friend says he can’t get to it until tonight, but if we meet his daughter at a place in our neighborhood that she is going to show to a potential buyer, she’ll take the computer to his place, and he’ll work on it after work tonight. We spend some time, locating the place, and waiting for the daughter. She tells us that there has been a sudden rash of malicious worms and Trojans, in the last couple of days… his own website crashed and a lot of his clients are infested up the wazoo with them. He may just have to rescue my documents, wipe the hard drive and start all over.

I have always thought that the jerks who write and set loose malicious stuff like that should be stripped naked, smeared with honey and staked out over a fire-ant nest. Alive. The prospect of perhaps having to re-write what I have so far (not all of it, because a friend who is away for the holiday had the first chapter sent to him as an attachment and he may have it still, but I won’t know until he is back after the holidays!) or even interrupting me when I am in the throes of creating something really, really terrific…and putting a crimp into earning my living writing makes me really, really furious. Yeah, I’ll go for the fire ants nest, but I’d like do to this malicious little bastard (who is probably chortling to himself in a nasty cold-water walkup in Russia or the Philippines or wherever these shits congregate) what the Comanche used to do to their prisoners. (Wasn’t pleasant, BTW. Involved eye-gouging, amputation of marital tackle, hot coals, and stakes.)

I finally finished hemming a length of fabric for a scarf for Blondie, and adorning each corner with an elaborate tassel of beads, all very headachy work, done under bright light with very tiny glass beads. I’ve been putting off finishing it for days, finally did so today, and when she took it back to her room this afternoon, one of the tassels caught on the baby-gate we use to keep the dogs our of her end of the house… and ripped it all loose. Beads all over. When I finally finished it, it stayed finished for a whole… I dunno, fifteen minutes?!!!

I can’t pay a bill that I have been promising I’ll pay today because I haven’t been paid… and I worked three hours and a half, clipping certain real estate ads out of the newspaper, trying to clip them so they could be readable, even if the particular section was on two sides of the same sheet of newsprint. I have a headache from this, and my fingers are all over newsprint and dust. Again, I won’t be paid for this until next week sometime.

I am waiting for the book I have already finished to connect with the publishing world; which is moribund until after Christmas, or even New Years, even. I had the mad notion to do a proposal for the new book, and include it as a two-fer, and I also wanted to try and do my Christmas card letter today… but can’t because my computer is frelled, all because some malicious little twerp decided to stick it to the man.

And we can’t afford to go to my parents for Christmas, when everyone else will be there, and it’s a week before Christmas, and we are juggling time and commitments and money. Candidly, I kind of wish Christmas was over already.

Oh, yeah, and some kids were running around the neighborhood vandalizing cars. And I have to write this on Blondie’s laptop, which has a keyboard and the weird little tracing pad and two buttons instead of a mouse, and everything is in the wrong place…

Bah, humbug… Merry ******Christmas! The person who tries to tell me how it could all be so much worse is getting an internet nuclear wedgie, as soon as I can figure out how to administer it.