The bad news is I forgot my Adderal this morning, which I only noticed when I realized it was 1 pm and I hadn’t done a heck of a lot, and even the post at Mad Genius Club took forever, though it was basically a ran on what annoyed me in recent reading.
I can’t explain what happens, but I’m going to assume I spend an inordinate time between sentences playing with these guys:
Or perhaps staring blankly out the window. Who knows. Or half and half. Honestly, the ADD becoming weaponized is the downside of the post menopausal life. Apparently estrogen mitigates ADD. Who knew?
Okay, new head canon: ADD meds work by keeping Terry Pratchett’s monks of time from stealing hours of your time to patch holes in time elsewhere. It’s as plausible as anything else.
Also is forgetting your adderal (yes, I prefer vyvanse, but the pharmacy has been having trouble sourcing it) the most ADD thing ever? Or is it just me?
Anyway, yes, I have a couple of guest posts waiting, but you know I don’t like wasting those when it’s (eeek!) the middle of the afternoon.
So, first an announcement: for the first time in donkey’s years, I made a recommended reading list in science fiction, at Tangent, with 3 stars, their highest rating. Which was gratifying, since this story would be the prequel to the series of novels about mirror-nauts that I posted a bit of a few years ago. It starts with “Jump, the mirror said.” Anyway, yeah, still intending to write that, and this short story is kind of my promise that I will.
Here is the Tangent review for the anthology: Shapers of Worlds Volume IV
And the recommendation: Tangent Online 2023 Recommended Reading List
Anyway, I thought this would amuse you, and also serve as a promise to myself. This is the cover for the eventual first novel, yes, after the short story reviewed by Tangent:
And this is, not the back cover, but the beginning of the novel:
Mirrorplay
Sarah A. Hoyt
“Jump,” the mirror said.
I blinked. There was one thing I knew for sure, and that was that mirrors don’t talk, even if this was great uncle’s whatshisface’s mirror, inherited in the family for generations, a heavy thing in a heavier gilt frame, which had been a pain and a half to move to my college apartment. I didn’t have any idea why mother had wanted me to bring it with me, either. I mean, sure, your college essentials: modular bookcase, folding table, desk, and of course heirloom Venetian mirror, right?
“Jump,” the mirror said again. “Honorable Katrina Rhea, jump now.”
The mirror looked like a mirror, reflecting myself in jeans and a loose t-shirt, my long red hair caught back in a ponytail.
Right. So somehow, somewhere, someone had slipped some drugs into something I ate or drank. Only I hadn’t eaten or drank anything or been around anyone all day.
Which left going insane as a possibility. I tried to think of insanity in the family, but came up dry. My reflection in the mirror looked pale; green eyes wide, lips parted.
The kitchen exploded.
It was at my back. I was in the living room, facing the mirror, when I heard the crash and saw a blossom of light reflected in the crystalline depths of the mirror. Sound and light. Explosion. I smelled burning.
I can’t explain why I jumped for the sofa, reaching between the arm and the cushions for my gun. The back of my mind gibbered to get out, to call 911.
I held the gun pointed at the doorway to the kitchen. In this cheap apartment it had no door. The people before me had hung a bead curtain, but I’d removed it.
Shadows moved against the light in there. Was it flame? Was this just stuff burning.
“Put the gun down, Rhea,” a man said, stepping from the fire-light-explosion in the kitchen and into the tiny living room. He was huge, blond, with the sort of mustache that had gone out of style in the 19th century. And it looked like he’d outfitted himself by buying everything advertised in Soldier of Fortune, plus some. “The game is up.”
Two other men came out, also large, one more blond and a dark haired guy. The outfits were the same. But they were holding… water guns? Weapons of some sort, from the way they pointed them, but in brilliant colors, and weird shapes. The back of my mind said to rush them. They were only bluffing, my head said. But something held me still.
“My name is Kathy Jones,” I said. “I have no idea who or what you want.”
The first man laughed. I moved my gun between them. When one pointed his weird device at me, I aimed at him.
The door to the outside flung open behind me. It shouldn’t have. It was locked. But I heard it swing open, and felt the woosh of air at my back.
I turned around in time to see what I can only describe as fish men come in. They were tall and wore business suits, but from the neck up, they had the heads of sardines. They walked with a distinct flop flop flop, leaving a trail of water behind them. They wore helmets. Space helmets.
I opened my mouth to protest I wasn’t doing drugs.
Something hit me from behind. Not an object. A force. Something like a heavy wind.
I fell down. I fell down and down and down what seemed to be a cylinder of dark, crackling energy. I fell down and down and down, as though through the floor, and the apartment below, and the earth. Down, down, down.
I was taken. The back of my mind screamed I’d been taken.
****
“Where is it?”
The words repeated, echoed in my mind, with an odd reverberation. Once, when I’d drunk more champagne than anyone should drink in a night I’d woken up with that odd sound effect.
My eyes hurt. My mouth felt dry and like I’d licked a Niarmus hole. And I was immobilized, floating mid air.
“What is it?” I asked. The syllables fell oddly in my ears.
“No games now, Rhea. It’s been a good race, but you lost.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. My voice cracked in the higher syllables. Damn it. How long had I been out? What had they done to me?
I moved my fingers, testing my bonds, and felt them, like fine spider webs against my fingertips. There was an edge of burn too.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. And I heard the syllables coming out of my mouth. Really heard them. They were nonsense syllables. There was a sound like Latin, maybe a hint of Romanian only none of the words were words in any language I knew.
“Don’t try us.”
I had a moment to register that I’d been answered in the same language, before pain hit. It spread from my fingertips and the soles of my feet. It met over my heart, it stopped my mind.
An eternity later, covered in sweat, my body spasming, I heard my hoarse voice say words I had never heard before, words that meant, “By the mother and the world, by the unborn and the eternal, I will end you.”
My interrogator laughed. My mind scrambled, like a cat on ice, trying to get hold of something that identified that laugh. There was a memory, there was– The name slipped, but I had the image of the blond man who had invaded my home.
As though called by the memory he approached, stood next to me, arms crossed. He’d changed. No one would mistake what he wore now for gear off the pages of Soldier Of Fortune. It looked like he’d fashioned a tunic out of flowing, molten silver metal. Mowerelian. Something told me it was suitable to his rank. I didn’t know what his rank was, but I knew his arms were crossed, and there was a superior, smug smile on his face. “There have been advances you knew nothing about when you went to ground,” he said. “Your outdated protections will not hold. Your choice is speak or die, like Kreios Yirach died.”
It hit me hard. I had no idea who he was talking about. Not objectively. Yirach was a strange name, pronounced with a liquid affectation at the end. But grief seemed to choke me, wet and constricted in my throat. I had an impression of a vast palace, of windswept rooms, a feeling of an arm around my waist, of a body entangled with mine.
My love, my lost love.
It was as though I had a mind within a mind, a memory within thoughts. Even as part of me lamented, caught, a child crying, open mouthed, passionate, lost, the other part of me was thinking about that tingle on the fingertips, that sense of spiderwebs. Yeah, the science might have advanced a lot since I’d gone to ground. But I knew this bind. I’d used this bind. I knew the control points. I knew how to short it. All it required was effort and pain. If I could move my shoulder blade just so, and twist my left heel to the right. Painfully, I forced my body through minute contortions. If only Ermis didn’t notice.
Because the contortions were minute, they were more painful. They required incredible control to do. Once I felt the field give under me, I played on my fingers. I’d had someone escape from me this way … but I couldn’t recall when or where, or even who.
I needed to find the pattern, the weaving. I did, finally, little finger of my right hand crossed beneath the palm, thumb and forefinger on the left stretched as far apart as they could go. Then I wrenched my shoulder half out of its socket, shoving just so on the lock point.
The shock of the snap of the grid reverberated through me, like a sharp note, making my teeth ache.
But I had no time to wait, no time to think. Falling, I modified it to land on my feet. Before Ermis could recover, I’d grabbed his gun from belt and was pointing it at his head, my arm around him, immobilizing him.
Men came from the shadows of the room, then, pointing guns at me. It was a vast room, dark, maybe a cavern. The men who came forth were fish men, fins flapping on the floor, their helmets shining in the light. “You live with Rodans now?” I asked, my voice bitter. “Rejected by free men.” I spit. “Master of puppets.”
He didn’t say anything, and I shouted at the fish men in their liquid, watery tongue, “Stop or he dies. He dies now. Leave me a path to the mirror.”
Inside my mind, I didn’t know why I was saying this. There was just the urgency, the certainty this was the only way out, the only way to escape.
I shoved Ermis ahead, the gun at his temple. I could feel him trying to find a way to escape, trying to figure out what to say that would get him out of this. I’d expect no less from him, but I shoved and pushed, in the direction the Rodans were leaving open. It could be a trap. Of course it could. But none of them could stop me from killing their master. And Rodans weren’t that imaginative. There wasn’t that much in their makeup.
“You can’t escape,” he said. “We’ll track you again if you escape. It’s easier if you give it up now. What good is to you anyway? You don’t even use it.”
I cursed him in three languages I couldn’t even understand, save that I was consigning him to the deepest hell of parricides in the mythology of a long lost world. We’d crossed half the cavern and I could see it now, at the end, the mirror, gleaming milky and sharp. It was larger than my mirror had been, as it would be, of course. Wondered what it handled.
I shoved Ermis again. The Rodans were now behind us, in two lines.
I said a string of syllables, hoping it would work, wondering if it would. If this mirror had once belonged to me—
For a moment nothing happened. Then the mirror misted, and a voice said, “Rhea, Lady.”
“Mylarco Tenco,” I said, giving him the precise destination I needed seeking, though I couldn’t tell you how I knew that those particular words would take me back to the world from which I’d been dragged. I didn’t even know why I had to go back there. “Jump me.”
The gate opened, flowing like water, shining like molten gold, swirling like a dream. I had ten seconds, enough.
Ermis’s body tensed, just before I pressed the trigger.
“Mother,” he said.
But I had no mercy left in me. I shot, and I felt him go heavy, and I smelled the metallic scent of blood.
I held the ray pistol tight as I leapt through the mirror.
And landed on the other side, on soft grass. I was naked, and there was a fire truck nearby.
First I threw up. It was instinctive, the body purging itself from tension and recoil.
On hands and knees, I was aware of a firefighter approaching, boots on the grass. “Ma’am?” he said. He was tall, dark, and spoke with a soft Southern accent. “Are you the resident?”
I had enough presence of spirit to shove the ray gun under one of the bushes, to wipe my hand and arm on the grass, where blood and brains had splashed it. Ermis’s blood and brains. Oh, mothers. I had the image of a chubby blond child running to me across a tiled courtyard.
But there was a feeling that was many centuries ago, and loss and betrayal lay between, and it didn’t matter. I didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t even think of the language now, but I had the feeling I’d done what I had to do.
“Ma’am?”
I was shaking, as I stood. “I got out, when… something exploded. I jumped through the window.” I pointed. “Second floor.”
He nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. We think it was a gas explosion.”
There was a woman firefighter with a blanket. There was a cup of cocoa. After a long, long time, in which I intermittently dozed and woke up as from horrible nightmares of which I couldn’t remember any part, I was told I could go in, to salvage what I could, but I couldn’t stay there, not in the condition the apartment was.
I went in with the tall firefighter beside me. He turned his back while I dressed, then followed me, seeming to pay attention to every creak on the floor, looking up as though afraid the ceiling would give.
The place was a shambles, as though something in the kitchen had exploded. But there was no sign of fire. Only broken things, blown out. My books, my papers. Everything I cherished. From the bedroom, I gathered clothes, my purse, all my ID, all my papers. The mirror on the wall was gone.
I absorbed its absence but said nothing.
“Do you have a place to go?” the firefighter asked.
“I will find one,” I said. My throat hurt as though I’d cried for days.
“Good. We need someone to do an engineering inspection, before we can let you back in.”
I knew I’d never be back in, never to this particular place.
In my car, I thought of where to go. The problem is that I didn’t know who I was. Or rather, I knew perfectly well who I was. I was Kathy Jones, from Portland, Oregon. I was sure of it. I remembered mother and father, my childhood, my high school, the pimply young man who’d escorted me to the prom.
None of which explained the other, more intricate memories in my head, or any of what had just happened. I couldn’t be going insane. There was no insanity in the family. At least not in Kathy Jones’ family.
I drove a little forward. The firefighters were talking to my neighbors. I rounded the corner, and came back through the darkened yard next door, to that same bush under which I’d shoved the ray gun. I put it under my sweater.
Then I got in the car, and headed for Portland. In finding out from where I’d come, perhaps I’d find the answers.
And besides, something in me said I needed the mirror. Or a mirror, at any rate.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I also have covers and descriptions for a couple of books I’ll EVENTUALLY write (might not be this year, as you know what I have on the slate this year. OTOH a miracle could occur, and I could take my adderal and get stuff done. I mean, what are the odds?)
So, ALIEN HUNTER
Cassiopeia Jones was left at the altar, waiting for a groom that never showed up. She assumed he had got cold feet. But her crazy aunt Marge (don’t we all have one of those) couldn’t leave it alone. When she calls Cassy for help, things have already gone horribly wrong.
Trying to save her aunt, Cassy finds out what happened to her fiance, and also that the Earth is disputed territory with 100 different species trying to take it. With various governments and bureaucracies in the pockets of an alien faction or the other, there’s only a few, competent and slightly insane humans fighting all the aliens for the sake of humanity.
And then there’s Cassy who– Well, Cassy is not elite anything, and she just wanted aunt Marge to leave her alone. But Aunt Marge didn’t. And now Cassy is the most unlikely Alien Hunter who ever was.
Does luck favor those totally unsuited for the job? Cassy is about to find out!
And A FATAL PAWS
Jane Blond already has too much to do. She has two teen children to keep an eye on, and that’s not counting her mathematician husband, whom no one can predict or even figure out. And they just moved to the small town of Goldport, where he accepted a job teaching Mathematics At Colorado University at Goldport — CUG — where the only acceptable house was a Victorian in need of a lot of repair.
Her daughter — Ada Lovelace Blond — is dating someone unsuitable, and her son — Blaise Pascal Blond — isn’t making any friends and she just can’t catch a break.
And then someone throws a bag full of newborn kittens from a car onto her lawn, and involves Jane in a mystery that she’ll have to solve or die trying.
According To Hoyt 
I’d go for the Alien Hunter one!
Oh dear. Did someone just give her a bunch of shifter kittens to raise?
She’s doomed…
Nah. This is just a cozy mystery….
Whew! 😉
I hope her husband doesn’t have the first name of “James”. [Crazy Grin]
Ok cool. I mean it is Goldport; I could see a group of rambunctious kittens who shift being perfectly happy to help (and drive insane) their adoptive mom, without ever bothering to tell her that, ‘Why yes, we are quite intelligent and perfectly capable of growing thumbs.’
Well, new-born kittens (shifters or not) are going to be more interesting in drinking milk for a few weeks rather than helping their adoptive mother.
Of course, if they shift, they’re more likely to shift into human babies. 😀
They don’t shift until puberty. Hence the problems with posing as human if you were born animal
True (for Sarah’s Shifters) but I was talking generally about Shifters.
Some authors’ Shifters can be born animals or humans and often switch forms as children.
you say this… but we know Goldport.
LOL
Being a cat lover and a recent convert to cozies, I really hope you get time to write the Orphaned Kittens books some year soon.
Mirror Play has a terrific opening. It reminds me, in a good way, of Nine Princes in Amber – that heady combination of mystery and adventure and action starting off with a bang.
Here’s hoping you have a healthy and productive year!
Even so, GOLDPORT!
I was afraid that the kittens would refinish the scratching post. 🙂
I think $SPOUSE will enjoy that one. (As will I, but the others, even more so.)
Oh, you made the list!
I was looking for a list of your recommendations!
Yeah. I made the list, not I wrote the list. LOL.
Seriously, I enjoyed Mr. Truesdale’s discussion of the politically influence over the field of SF.
The commentary on the politically correct influence in SF was very interesting.
I may have two similar comments showing. I’ve no idea why. Is Safari a problem with WP?
WP (Delenda Est) has a set of problems. It occasionally will refuse to update comments to the blog for minutes at a time, though with the Latest and Greatest(tm) update, it seems to have skipped that problem. (At least until the next update. Sigh.)
One sure-fire way to land in moderation is to include more than one URL link in a comment. You can avoid problems by either breaking that comment up, or by obfuscating the extra link(s). (Saying cool-link-to-include dot com rather than a linkable line is the easiest, but a pain to use.) Unless you have a wall-o-links (and that gets ugly fast), the single link per comment is the least frustrating. (IMHO).
I’m running on Pale Moon, perhaps the least compatible of the Firefox compatible browsers. It works, usually. OTOH, WPDE gets stated often.
On the gripping hand, WP might hate Safari. I don’t know.
I’m using Safari right now, and for what it’s worth, I haven’t found that WP hates other browsers less.
The opening of Mirrorplay was fantastic! I want to read it. NOW. Get busy!
I have to finish the started ones, first….
Did you read what you posted? It’s already started, which means you have to finish it!
😛
Yes, but I mean the ones that are halfway need to get done.
Rules-lawyer it all you want, you’re not getting out of giving me my book! 😛
LOL.
I don’t mean to sound churlish and your new stories are lovely, but could you please first finish the stories you started earlier and not leave us all hanging?
YES. Of course. That’s why I said they might or might not happen this year. I FIRST need to finish what’s started (and being excerpted.) 23 wasn’t good. 24 is working, if I don’t forget the dang meds!
I should point out that excerpt was written, I THINK 5 years ago. It’s in queue. This is more my saying “I promise I’ll eventually get to this one.”
“Also is forgetting your Adderal the most ADD thing ever? Or is it just me?”
It’s so common it’s a trope. “Let’s force the person with focus issues to jump through a lot of hoops that require high focus, and they should remember to take their pill that helps them to remember to do things.”
As far as I know I don’t have ADD, but i find it helpful to tie my morning pills to startingy coffee and the evening pills to feeding the cat when I get home from work.
The routine is morning prayers, start coffee/tea, take pills.
That works because if I don’t have a tea mug, then I haven’t had my medicine.
In the evening, when I get home I give the cat half a can of wet food, then take the evening set.
That works because the cat wants his wet food and will get very insistent if he doesn’t get it.
I have a set of pills for morning and bedtime. What works for me is the 7 day pill organizer. I get up, get the morning organizer (which must look different from the bedtime one) and get the pills-of-the-day. At night, it’s just before I haul out the mouthwash, though I’ve been putting those pills in a handy shot glass when I do my teeth just after dinner. (No felines or canine counter surfers in the house, so mileage will vary.)
I consider one of those pills as essential to my survival, so once the routine was found, I don’t alter the procedure. And yeah, refilling the organizers is also it’s own routine.
Yeah, I did try the organizer, but wasn’t able to establish the weekly routine for filling it. Didn’t help that I’m a bit paranoid about flying with an organizer instead of the labeled bottles.
I refill the pills for my husband and myself on Sunday after church.
And grade us on how well we did on taking the pills.
(Which got me grumbled at the week he was doing a three day fast, so he did not take the pile of supplements that included a B complex becuase he isn’t stupid.)
Yeah, when I flew with medications, I had my doctor sign a note with the list, and took the bottles with me. Haven’t flown since 2002, so the pills go into the toiletry, bag, a repurposed back-rack bike one.
I fill the morning organizer Saturday after breakfast, when I’m ready to brush my teeth. The evening organizer gets done after dinner, again for tooth time. The Saturday night pills go in the shot glass. If we had kittehs, I’d do it just before turning in.
Of course, there’s the time I drove into town the day before a medical appointment and was in town when I realized I’d forgotten the bag. 90 miles later, that was corrected, but the pre-procedure prep schedule was a bit off. (Yes, that procedure.) Bit of a scramble, but I managed to get things to an acceptable level. Protip: try not to schedule elective procedures in the middle of winter. The major snowfall made for an even more interesting day. I’ll skip the alternative adjectives…
And now, the toiletry bag goes inside the suitcase.
Or cross the border into the US. Never considered it. When we came back from Canada hubby had been using the pill reminder case. Admitted had no prescription bottles. Border guard said she needed to confiscate. Just said. “Okay. Only a couple days left. Don’t know what is less than free cost.” Border guard laughed and said “never mind”. Once it was mentioned we realized why it was a “big deal”. Just give a clue that our insurance pays for them. Technically I didn’t have the box with prescription for my glaucoma eye drops either. But, while free now, wasn’t going broke paying $20 for 90 days worth either.
The eye procedures I had required me to use steroid eye drops, and it turns out that my eyes are “steroid sensitive”. Eye pressure spiked (not an issue for the cornea work; mild steroid. All bets are off after retina surgery) and I had to get a glaucoma med. One of those procedures meant I had to get a NSAID, and that was north of $150 a bottle (good for a few weeks).
The glaucoma med was over a hundred. Got curious, and looked up the med. Seems the company that made it got bought, and the new owner decided he had a cash cow and was going to milk it dry. The NSAID was new, so the price was somewhat excusable. The procedures were covered in Medicare, but I passed on the Rx program. Once I healed, got to drop the meds.
My current medications are reasonably affordable. I haven’t been tempted to try one of the shiny new alternatives to warfarin, since they seem to have the same potential for problems (perhaps to a lesser degree, but I am very religious about taking that pill the way I should). And warfarin is pretty close to dirt cheap.
Before we were on medicare (we are on Medicare Advantage Regence Blue) we were on Costco’s “we don’t have RX” program (we had some, just it was really, really, low. Paid less out of pocket for 90 days than would have for 30 day x 3 through insurance, that maxed the year out quickly.) Eye drops ran $30/90 days. Hubby’s ran $65/90 days. Worse expense I had was the Rosaca topical jell (which had limited help), which was $90/year. The current anti-inflammatory antibiotic runs $35/30 days, insurance pays half.
Looked at the records and the NSAID (Prolensa) went for $265 a bottle. And I had to refill it once. The Glaucoma med only cost $75 each bottle, with a refill on that, too. Glad neither are meds I have to take now.
At least the first bottles of the other meds were prescribed and billed as part of the procedure.
I get my prescriptions from the pharmacy in weekly disposable organizers. Each organizer is a blister pack with bubbles for 7 days times 4 dosing times per day. (I only have morning and night pills, so the middle two columns are empty.)
Haven’t seen that offered here, and with the supply stresses (not to mention the thrills of rural county medical issues), I doubt we’d see it. Unless pill bottles get even harder to source.
I had to change pharmacies (the regional club store had to drop out* mid-Covidiocy because of sourcing issues) and went with the one associated with the big (for values of) medical center. Pill bottles changed at least a few times, though slightly less often than the generic med suppliers. (My blood pressure med looks a lot like my warfarin tabs right now. I have to keep them straight.)
((*)) They couldn’t compete with the chains. There was to be a deal where the local store was going to have a mini-Walgreens, but the deal crashed and burned. Somewhere along the line, the local pharmacy staff quit and moved to the medical center pharmacy. I don’t know if it was the cause of the failure or a result. Or yes. From what I’ve seen, I’m happy not to deal with Walgreens. They don’t have any presence in our county.)
Ok, that is cool. You know, I recall that supplement makers could ship their stuff in day packets. It’s cool that at least some pharmacies are doing it too.
I’ll have see if mine does that.
I have that. I just completely spaced the thing. And after about 10 am taking adderal means I don’t die that night.
sleep. I don’t know where die came from. GAH
I am horrible on taking medication. I have 14 day (actually 7 day two sided) that should I have to take something day and night (technically do, anti inflammatory antibiotics for roscea, but not critical to take only once/day), could set them up that way. I have two I have to use at night, so tend to take vitamins (calcium is prescribed but don’t have a prescription) at night too. The two nighttime prescriptions are my apnea mouth piece (which requires/strongly recommends brushing teeth first) and glaucoma eye drops (put in, close eyes, go to sleep).
I call this problem ‘Can Opener in a Can’.
Bonus points if at some point the alien hunter says, “Blonde? Yes, I’m a blonde. Jane Blonde.”
😋
No. That’s the orphan kittens. And Drak is going to kill me. Yes, her husband is James.
Oops, so it is.
😓😓
Bonus points there, then!
OH NO! 😉
<runs.
She’s Dyce’s next door neighbor and it’s Goldport.
Poor lady. (Being Dyce’s next door neighbor). 😈
Yes.
Big sign on the bathroom mirror with arrow pointing at the pill bottle: “TAKE MY PILLS!” To start the day off with a smile…😜
I set alarms on my wife’s phone, and we bought 7 day pill containers.
Be warned that if the pills come in blister packs, removing them from the blister early can have bad effects on their effectiveness.
So far, only one has (a high-dose iron supplement), and about a month ago, we started getting it in non-blister.
telling my assistant to poke me on the phone might work too
gadget reminders keep me functional.
I have that too, but not for adderal. You see, I keep hoping I can do without it.
(Yoda voice) Do, or do not. There is no whine.
(grin)
Not throwing any stones. I am also attention-challenged and work in an IT job where the squirrels arrive by firehose. Oy vey!
:intones: “Hope” is not a plan!
Yeah. I know. The “I automagically stop needing it” thing is a hole in the head.
But you know it is there! That is step one.
Step two: 404, step not found. 😉
:grumbles and shakes fist:
Don’t make me get you a pill case! I bet I can find the obnoxious one my granny had, that I swear was an AIR RAID SIREN that wouldn’t stop until you opened the correct hole for the pills you were supposed to take!
I have SEVERAL. Dan buys a new one every month.
It really needs to be a small cat robot that follows Sarah around and meows until she picks it up and takes her pills from it; that would probably work?
:heart:
Tell that to our energy secretary. :-0
I use an organizer application on the desktop computer. The same application is on the laptop when I do the semiannual road trips. That comes in handy for the doctor’s appointment. I don’t like smart phones and got frustrated with the Handspring Visor I used in the ’90s. (Battery life sucked raw eggs.) OTOH, my life is simpler (sort of) in retirement.
Shopping, I go old school and use a paper list. It works, usually.
I’m up for all three of these books, whenever you get around to them. No pressure 🙂
What Roger Ritter said.
I have been waiting years for Mirror Play.
And, um, if there’s a real Cassiopeia Jones, I may want her number…
Sidebar in re meds: Maybe a sweat-proof juju bag will trigger, “What is this bag hanging down my front?” Mr According could ask before retiring, “Where’s your bag?”
Oh you tease! You brutal tease! I want them all!
MOAR!!! Must have moar…!
Is the mirror universe related to the short where the team of three guys and a gal were trying to invent something (teleportation or time travel, perhaps) and finally it worked but one got stepped on and crushed by a dinosaur (or elephant, maybe)?
No.
I mean, it could be, but not that I know. The story in Ed Willet’s antho is a prequel, though.
Kitties! Like “Squirrel!” only better!
I’ll happily purchase all three of these books. Please write as quickly as is consistent with the health and well-being of the author (and family). When they’re done…. “Shut up and take my money!”
On Mirror Play, yes, when I was ranting about Bourne Identity cold opens at MGC, this is that done right 🙂
Eh. It’s a high wire act.