Tired. Don’t know why. Even after a cup of tea, I feel like I can’t keep my eyes open.

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I’ve done very little today. Or perhaps more than I realise. I’ve packaged up the novella to mail. I submitted a story via e-mail. Then I lay on the sofa and read all of Jennifer Cruisie’s _Bet Me_. I’ve heard good things about her work, but never had the urge to pick something up. This one was on the New Releases shelf in the library, and I had library fever, and brought it home. I’m delighted to say it made me laugh out loud numerous times.

Ken even brought Baja Fresh home for dinner, so I didn’t have to cook. We had various options for meals to cook. It was nice not to have to, though.

This evening, I’ve been answering a lot of e-mail and puttering on various projects. We moved all the games from the mission coffee table to the bottom of the built-in china cabinet, in preparation for moving that coffee table into the media room. Its top rises up flat, making it useful for eating and writing and so forth, and it will work better in there. The Celtic coffee table will suffice in the living room for now. One end of it flips up, anyway, to make a larger table, and that will work better, because the sofas in the living room are rather far apart.

Anyway. I’m feeling crafty, and have figured out what to make for largesse for Her Majesty of the Midrealm for Estrella (linen hankies with embroidered/beaded gold crowns). Each local group and guild in Caid has been asked to pick a Kingdom, and Darach chose the Midrealm (we’d originally chosen Drachenwald, at my suggestion, but apparently They’re not going to Estrella, to which I say, foo!). I found all the bits for those tonight, except for beading needles and white thread for finishing the edging of some of the hankies. I’m still working on a second potpourri bag cross-stitched with the Caidan cross, and I’ve got to Yule cross-stitch patterns that I have most of the floss for. I suppose I’ll start one soon, and if I get bored with it, tuck it away until next December. I’m being very good and _not_ looking for Craftsman cross-stitch patterns, even though I know they’re out there…

And that’s about it. Still can’t talk about the Very Good News. I’ll call Teresa tomorrow to confer on one of our collaborations, and then do some work on that. I think maybe I’ll start working on AETW again on Boxing Day.

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Oh! However could I have forgotten!? Ken gave me the most wonderful gift yesterday: he made me a shuttle for the floor loom! He was working on threshold pieces for the kitchen/utility porch/downstairs bath (the wooden pieces that go beneath the doors between each room), and he took an old one and made a shuttle out of it. Then he scrounged through the Empty Box Depository (aka the sewing room) and found some ribbon to tie on it. He’s so amazing. We’d forgotten to exchange Solstice gifts, so I promptly gave him one of his gifts to open—a da Vinci business card holder.

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Speaking of my beloved, he spent a fair part of the day carving a hole in the upstairs hall ceiling for the attic stairs. So now we have a large rectangular hole in the ceiling. He has to buy some wood for the next step in the project, and the wood place is closed for the next few days, so I imagine he’ll go back to working on the thresholds for a bit.

(He just told me that the large hole was because he was concerned Santa wouldn’t fit down the chimney. I asked him how Santa was supposed to get into the attic, and he said, “That’s his problem.”)