A Kept Boy by poisontaster. (CWRPS AU, primarily Jeffrey Dean Morgan/Jensen Ackles)

A Kept Boy is an RPS AU involving slavery, abuse (adult and child) in all forms (verbal, physical, mental), inequalities of power, and dark, adult concepts regarding same. At heart, it's a love story, but it goes through some bad, dark places to get there. Be warned, if any of these are not your cup of tea. This is in no way a true story. Other stories in this universe/vein can be found at whatwekeep. Banner by the generous and talented bloodquartz.

A podfic version of AKB, read by the lovely superstitiousme can be found here, courtesy of the very kind general_jinjur.

Also available here on AO3.

Started: July 10, 2008
Ended: October 6, 2010
Total Chapters: 88
Final Word Count: 200,365

Cast of Characters

( Chapter listing & outtakes )

So. This is the pretty definitive list of all the fic I've written in SPN or CWRPF, either by myself, or in conjunction with others. I'll try to keep updating it as I go, especially the series, so that it can be more immediately understandable/accessible. Any comments on how to improve this list would be greatly appreciated.

( Every Broken Thing/Heart 'verse )

( Hands )

( Sex Pollen )

( Halo/Penumbra )

( The Light Verse )

( Mona1347's Transmutation Verse )

( Books Verse )

( Sateda Dean )

( Winsister )

( In My Brother's Keeping )

( Substitution )

( Vet Dean )

( Stand-Alone Fic )

( Stand-Alone Drabbles )

( Papa )

( Mary )

( Jess )

( Randomalia )

( RPS )

( SPN25 Tables )

Oh! So I remembered what I wanted to post about earlier. Okay. I need your help, flist. Because, here's the thing: though I managed to rack up a fair amount of sexual experience in my misspent well-spent youth, I did so while ALSO managing to bypass all the normal human mating/dating experiences. Especially the dating part.

So. Tell me about dating. Especially dating in high school. How does that even happen?

What the hell do people do on dates? I mean, obviously it varies by preference, but how do the night's events get decided? Like, assuming you guys just met and don't know each other's likes and preferences yet. Is the event part of the invitation, like "Hey, you want to go bowling some time?" or is it a crapshoot, where they come to pick you up (or you meet somewhere) and one person's picked the events and the other just has to like it or lump it?

In general terms, what constitutes a "good" date to you? Like, I probably wouldn't like clubbing as a first date, at least, because it's too loud to talk (my preference will always be talking over just about anything else) and after all that effort to look good, I don't want to sweat myself out (and I WILL sweat myself out on the dance floor). And it drives me crazy when people want to go to the movies--and a movie I WANT to see, at that--and then want to fool around the entire time. Movies are too damn expensive to waste them that way! Like drinking, I can do that at home for FAR LESS money and effort.

There's actually two relationships I'm trying to construct here; one is that of (more or less) high school sweethearts who go on to get married after college and the other is a new relationship between two people who are relative strangers to each other and have sex first and THEN try to get to know each other.

Your dating experiences are gladly solicited.

My washing machine is fixed and hopefully another generation of management office workers has been taught their lesson about opposing me when it comes to routine maintenance. I may or may not have caroled "I drink from the keg of victory" while doing stuff around the apartment and I may or may not have commanded the cats and dog to bring me all the finest bagels and donuts in the land. I'll never tell. But I am stuck doing a LOT of catch up laundry.

I've reached the point of entanglement in a story where all I want to do is write. Which, on the one hand is epically AWESOME and wonderful. It's an involvement and synergy that I haven't felt in a really long time. A really long time. On the other hand, it leads to things like almost forgetting to take your cats to their scheduled annual exam (thank the gods for phone alarms!) or getting super cranky with your husband when he wants to do anything that's going to take you away from writing. This is not helped by the fact that, although he always SETS OUT to be supportive and non-intrusive, The Husband is rather like a pushy and spoiled puppy himself. (He's almost never on LJ any more; don't tell him I said that!)

Also: anyone that I owe tags on Words With Friends or Draw Something: I'M SORRY! I know I'm running slow. But I'm WRITING, guys!

The Husband really wants to see Piranha 3DD. To add insult to injury, it's not even playing in Frederick, it's out in Gaithersburg, which is not an insane distance away; it's definitely closer than how far we had to go see Tree of Life, rot its eyes, but as in the case of Tree of Life, it's an awful long way to go for a movie you're not going to like at all. :(

Okay, back to writing.

My cable company only puts up episodes of The Legend of Korra a week behind and, so far, it's been almost IMPOSSIBLE for me to catch them as they air. I can, apparently, watch them on Nick.com, which is something, but it's a less than ideal solution for me. Grargh.

Chernobyl Diaries is a sterling example of how you can go into a movie with SUPER-LOW expectations and still be disappointed. A movie that is only about an hour and 9m of run-time should, in no way, feel 3 hours too long. I think what vexes me most about it is that it didn't have to be a terrible movie; I think it had the bones of something that could've been really interesting and creepy, if anyone had put ANY EFFORT AT ALL into it. *sighs*

I was really not very satisfied with the middle book of Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy (Deadline), but I had to know how it all ended and so I bought and read the final book, Blackout and I AM SO GLAD. I have a longer review about it that I posted on Goodreads, but bottom line, it fixed all the problems I had with Deadline, it called back all the things I loved about the first book, Feed and it was an incredibly satisfying ending to the series for me. Yay! I love it when books allow me to love them.

The new story continues apace. I didn't break 10K yesterday like I was hoping, but as the word count is really just a pleasant after-effect of doing some serious writing, I'm not really disappointed. I just hope I can keep it up. This feels so good, you just don't know.

A. C. Crispin has cancer. I really hate that I've reached that point in life where all my heroes and touchstones are in a constant state of attrition. Crispin wrote some of my favorite Star Trek tie-ins (directly behind those that Barbara Hambly wrote) and she wrote the Starbridge series, which was a BFD when I was a geeky kid for having one of the most culturally diverse casts of anything I'd read up to then. Truth be told, they probably still do. I'd been thinking about the Starbridge books just recently, wondering if they're available as ebooks. They weren't at the time I was looking, but my happiness at finding they are now is eclipsed by the news about Crispin...though there is some satisfaction in giving what little financial boost to her I can by re-buying them all. The income from those books is, apparently, all the income she'll have this year. :( :( :(

I've been working on a new story. On the one hand, it's marvelous to have written six thousand words in three days, a bigger output than I've been able to manage in the last three years. On the other hand, I do really wish my creative spark could settle down into actually finishing something, rather than leaping from thing to thing. Anyway, I am excite.

Funny story, true story: Last weekend, the Husband and I drove up to visit his family. I was sitting there, zoned out at his grandmother's house, when his aunt suddenly asked me, "So, are you going to read that 50 Shades of Grey book?" Fortunately, I didn't have anything to drink, so there was no spittake to avoid as I tried to explain to her--in the mildest and most vague of terms, fanfic being something verboten to bring up around the in-laws--that no, it's converted Twilight fanfic and not really my cup of tea at all. And that I have friends who write better for free. Then I really died when she said she was in the process of reading it herself. After a few more inconclusive protests that she probably would NOT enjoy the book (she was having none of it), I let it go, only to get this email from The Husband a few days later: Got a voicemail from Aunt S: “Tell Erin she was right. That 50 Shades of Gray was the worst piece of crap since I was a teenager and didn’t know better.”

Ahahahaha.

I have been flat on my ass exhausted for going on the third week now and, as a result, I think I'm coming down with a cold, but this was a pretty good weekend.

On Saturday, I went out for dinner & a movie with inlovewithnight, in a strangely deja-vu'ish evening, as it was the same place we went last time we did dinner and a movie, it was raining both times and I think I even got the same parking spot. We saw the Five-Year Engagement, a movie I regarded with the same wary side-eye that all rom-coms require until proven innocent, but it was actually a pretty fun, funny, non-fucked up movie! So that was awesome.

Sunday, The Husband and I were going to be slobs and lounge around the house, but decided at the last minute to go have lunch and see The Raven. Sidenote: TGIFriday's has this new Salted Caramel Cake. Y'all. Y'ALL. So good. Anyway. The Raven was pure escapist schlock, but I loved it anyway and everyone was very pretty and now I want all the stories where Inspector Fields was totally shagging the young constable (and maybe Edgar Allen Poe, too). Ahem.

I ALSO finally found where the On Demand menu was hiding the Legend of Korra eps, and got to watch eps 1 & 2 and re-watch 3 in context. I have yet to see 4, though, as our On Demand is slow and erratic in what they upload. *sadface* STILL. KORRA! \0/

It's a new experience for me, because by the time I was watching Avatar, all the episodes were out and on DVD, and so I could just gorge on them and watch as many episodes as I could sit still for. Now Korra is new and I have to wait, just like everyone else, and I just want to see and know EVERYTHING NOW and...that's just not going to happen. But I'm also not one to sit and wait until it's all over to pick it up then.

Why does there seem to be no such thing as "just enough" gaming? Either I don't have enough game action to keep me occupied and I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for things or people...or I'm slammed and I feel guilty that people are waiting around on me and that I'm not keeping up. I'd really like to find that happy medium where I have just enough games/game time where it neatly fills up my down time but not so much that I'm 'falling behind'. Heh.

Also ran: Grimm! I have not talked about Grimm but I really, really love it quite a lot and I made quietdiscerning watch it the last time she was here and now SHE loves it quite a lot and so we are loving it together. Prometheus! Everything about this movie fills me with DEEP GLEE and I can't wait! Game of Thrones! There was a wee twinge of worry that my enthusiasm would not be the same after I'd read all the books, but THIS IS NOT THE CASE! I am still full of glee! Draw Something! After bitching and crabbing at my SIL for MONTHS about the fact that her cell phone was failing and, as it is my only way of reaching her, she NEEDED to have a working phone, all it took was me and the bro playing Draw Something without her to get her to finally upgrade the broken dinosaur she was working with. Now I can talk to her AND play games with her. WIN.

I swear, I don't know how I ever got through those teenage years where I was so self-conscious about my tits that I pretty much wore my bra every minute I wasn't actively showering. These days, it's the first thing to go, at the earliest available opportunity. *shimmies*

Stephen King's new Dark Tower book came out Tuesday, and despite all my stern resolutions that I was going to wait until I finished the two books I already have going, I opened it up on my iPhone that night for a few words before sleep and...yeah. I just finished it today (which is not as remarkable as it might seem, at 228 ebook pages, it's pretty short) and. Here's the thing. It's a great, gripping little adventure. I love the thing he does with the nested stories. But, O, I am tired of always being asked to identify and empathize with the/a male character in adventure stories. I've been doing it for most of my reading life at this point, and I'm just...tired of it. Very, very tired.

More humorously, I present Things I Have Learned Whilst Playing Draw Something:

1. Don't try to do bagpipes. No, seriously. Just don't try.

2. Gingham is (un)surprisingly hard to render on an iPhone with just your finger.

3. You will contemplate buying a ridiculously expensive stylus that you never needed before and need for nothing else to overcome the massive "handicap" of your fat, uncooperative fingers.

4. You will have sudden flashbacks to just how awful you were at finger-painting, too. Unfortunately by then, it will be too late and the game will have you in its evil clutches.

5. I can draw a picture perfect Wu Tang clan emblem, but stick figures give me problems.

6. Though I can't get my brother to call or text or otherwise communicate with me on a regular basis (we're both kind of phone phobic), we will always come together for a fun game.

7. I love all my friends. My friends are awesome and more artistic than I ever guessed.

*chinhands* What about you guys? Any funny stories from the front?

It's been a lovely little while with fangirls. On Thursday, I got to have lunch with nilchance and then Thursday night, quietdiscerning drove down to spend the weekend. Saturday, quietdiscerning, sixersfan and I drove to Bethesda to have lunch with merepersiflage and her wife on their way through. And then Sunday, before she callously abandoned me, quietdiscerning and I brunched at Volt.

And, since I did this wrong last time, the pix are below the cut.

( Food porn ahoy! )

I love seeing the creativity and ingenuity that goes into creating small spaces like this one, but I also feel incredibly ambivalent in living in a space that small full time (though the linked article is actually for an office, but it could just as easily be a marvelous studio). I mean, I don't think I need palatial digs to be happy, but I also feel like these smaller places are designed in mind for people who just don't already own a lot of things.

I remember a while ago, I was marveling at the ingenuity of this space, a converted pigeon coop, but even as technology gives me the means to dispose of my main space hogs--books, movies and music--there's no provision for holding onto things like your great grandmother's china or the table and chairs that have been in your family for six generations.

And I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, there's something incredibly freeing about slimming down your possessions that far. I live in fear of picking up my mother's packrat ways. On the moon hand...I feel like you've got to be living a fairly vagabond lifestyle to live in a space that small and not have 'creep', possessions piling up past your ability to comfortably and aesthetically contain them.

(Have I talked about this before? I feel like I've talked about this before.)

Anyway, I love the 'living' space of that office. For those not clicking on the link, it has a three tiered couch made of repurposed pallets. If I were the kind of person who threw formal parties, I could see where it might be a bit awkward, but for a family room or hanging out with fangirls (which I'm far more likely to do), it seems like it would be ideal and incredibly comfortable. SLUMBER PARTY!

Anyway.

So, author NK Jemisin retweeted this link: Amazon is Discounting Us To Death

And...here's my thing(s). I think this article is really aimed more at people IN the publishing industry, people who are making their money and their livelihood off the current publishing model and are, naturally and consequently, very concerned that that model is/may be on its way out.

But as a consumer and reader, the tone of this rubs me very much the wrong way, especially with the, how DARE I not be willing to pay higher prices to be able to do something that is, at the end of the day, a luxury occupation. One that's vital for sanity, imo, but still, one that doesn't feed me or clothe me or give me shelter.

And, as a reader, I don't know that I really SHOULD give a fat flying fuck about the current publishing model crumbling like Ozymandias. I mean, honestly, I don't see MY access to stories and storytelling to be impaired in any particular way if the current publishing industry fails. Fandom will still be there, independent publishing will still be there and be possible, small epresses are cropping up and flourishing all the time. I won't lose anything if HarperCollins or Knopf go under.

And, you know, I do feel sorry for the people who will lose their jobs or will have to go and seek other ways of making their living...but I really have a quite hard time with this whole, "Will someone PLEASE think of the POOR CORPORATIONS??" mindset that seems to be coming from the publishing industry when, at either end, they're really trying to make a profit and I'm not the top priority to either of them except for how I can be extracted for cash.

So, wendy said she wanted pictures of our anniversary dinner and I like making wendy happy, so.

Like I said, we went to Volt, here in Frederick, a restaurant owned by one of the Voltaggio brothers (Bryan). He didn't come to our table, but he did come and visit one of the tables in the dining room we were in and, though The Husband didn't notice (and though I'm not usually star struck), my brain stuttered and went numb the entire time he was there. *laughs*

Initially, I felt really bad, because The Husband is NOT a foodie and I wasn't sure there was going to be anything he could/would even eat. I was delighted to be there, but it felt a little selfish, even if this was all his surprise to me. But he was really game; he tried things that I never in a MILLION YEARS thought he would even contemplate, and there were even a few things that he legit liked. So it turned out to be a really wonderful evening.

The menu is kind of hilarious. Nothing is really described. It's like this impressionistic haiku or something. Seriously, google the restaurant and look at their online menu. It's all: "Venison, horseradish, apple, soy." The waitstaff are more than willing to translate, of course, but you might not even know what exactly you're getting until they set it down in front of you. Though, for me, that level of surprise only enhanced the meal.

The restaurant is pretty small, it's in a remodeled townhouse in downtown Frederick, but it's also really lovely, if a little stark. There's nothing really to distract from the food. In retrospect, there are a lot of other pictures I wish I'd gotten. But here's what I DID get pictures of!

( VERY image heavy! )

Do you ever feel like you not only spent your entire allotment of spoons for the week, you're mortgaged into sometime next month, too? Yeah. I've been napping like a champ, but I still can't seem to catch up on this deficit.

But there are good reasons for it, at least. I got to hang out with dear friends last weekend, and then Tuesday was my (and the Husband's) third anniversary and we went to Volt, a restaurant (part) owned by one of the Voltaggio brothers of Top Chef fame. I've been wanting to go to Volt since we moved here! And they were very nice to The Husband, despite his disinterest in pretty much everything they serve. It's funny; I took all these pictures of the food, to share with my foodie friends, and forgot to take a single picture of me & The Husband, even though he managed to get out of jeans for the occasion! So now we know where MY priorities are! *laughs*

Add to this a cranky, elderly puppy with a urinary infection and it's been quite the week!

But! In news of wonderment and awe, tsuki_no_bara has podficced my SPN story, Books of the Living, Books of the Dead! I'm not quite sure what I did to deserve such lovely friends (or such cool presents!) but I definitely am grateful every day. In any case, you should go here and download it and give her lots and lots of love!

Fandom: RPF
Pairing: Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Mickey Rourke (past)
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 4,582
Contains: Slavery, non-explicit mentions of underaged sex of extremely dubious consent, non-explicit physical abuse, psychological abuse/damage, drug use.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.
AN: This is a AKB outtake. It mainly takes place after A Kept Boy. Previous knowledge is recommended.

---

(  Thinking too much about Mick is always a dicey business. )

Sometimes, I will go to look for icons for a show that I'm particularly in love with at the moment, and I'll realize that none of the icons--and by extension, none of the characters--can capture exactly what it is that I love about the show. I don't know what exactly that is, but there should be a word for it.

I dearly love nail polish. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my mother carefully and beautifully painting her nails, or painting mine, or my own blobby attempts to paint my nails with her. Unfortunately, nothing can make nail polish actually stick to my nails for more than 24hrs, which always seems like a disproportionate amount of work for the length of time I get to actually enjoy it. I don't know what that is, either, but there should be a word for it, too.

Temple Run is destroying my life.

I feel like I want to read a story, but I can't articulate, even for myself, what kind of story I want to read. This is just as annoying as it sounds.

One thing that I do want to read is something in the vein of Alien or Event Horizon or the Bushwhacked episode of Firefly (why do we seem to have this story so much more in visual media than in written?) with deep space exploration and abandoned ships/stations/planets and our erstwhile heroes trying to figure out what the hell happened. I LOVE stories like that. Anyone have one?

Overall, Fat Girl In a Strange Land is an incredibly disappointing book. Both because it's largely not what it sets out to be, in terms of positively featuring fat women and because many of the stories just aren't very good.

Let's first look at this interview, where they (the editors) say:

Crossed Genres has always been a publisher that supports underrepresented groups. Fat women have always been hidden in literature and film, or represented as examples of what not to be. We wanted to show some of the ways in which fat women are ostracized, and shoehorned into stereotypes, and display some of the mental and emotional consequences of those stereotypes. We also wanted to prove that fat women can be proud of who they are, and are deserving of their own stories.

With that as their stated mission, the biggest problem I have with this anthology is that its protagonists are mostly not heroes, their characters often feeding into the worst stereotypes about fat women; ugly, sad, unwanted loser-loners with no self-esteem or self-worth. Comparing the majority of the anthology's stories with the editor's statement: " We also wanted to prove that fat women can be proud of who they are, and are deserving of their own stories," I don't know whether to feel more dismayed that they felt these stories represent fat women feeling proud of who they are or that they feel these are the kinds of stories that fat women deserve.

Breakdowns by story:

( Insert requisite warnings about spoilers. )

A short while ago, I bought a book by an indie publisher that purported to be an anthology about how fat women "are deserving of their own stories", specifically in genre fiction like SFF. I'm two-thirds of the way through the stories, at this point and...I do not think those words think what they mean. Super disappointing.

It did make me wonder, however, whether fandom has any kind of HAES (Health at Every Size) ficathon, because (rosy-glassed or not), I think that if fandom turned its mind to the topic--the lack of visibility/representation for fatties, especially fat women, in a positive way--that could rock pretty hard core. So. *chinhands* Is there anything like that already out there?

quietdiscerning forced me to download Temple Run last night. I think she only did it to prove definitively that I've gotten too old for (some) video games. *sighs* It reminds me of when me and my brother used to play Tomb Raider and joke how (because of all the times I killed her) Lara Croft must have the WORST nightmares ever.

Still ice-picking away at Appetite. It was really jolting to realize that it's now basically a four year old story. Admittedly, I took at least two years off to write AKB, but still. It was my 2008 NaNo project. That's a long time. The days of The Fic Machine are well and truly behind me. Still, though I'm not really close, the fog around Appetite's ending have started to thin and disperse, and I feel like I can see my way to it in a way I never could before. It's a good feeling, that sense of things slotting together the way they were always meant to.

If there is one main thing that I take away from 11/22/63 it is this: it is impossible to overestimate the importance of an ending.

Anyone who follows my reviews can see this as a theme: otherwise excellent stories have tumbled in my estimation because of a poor ending; otherwise mediocre stories have hauled themselves grudgingly upward because of an especially brilliant one. It may not be true for everyone, but it's definitely true for me.

I spent a lot of 11/22/63 in a state of middling dissatisfaction. On the one hand, I still maintain that Stephen King is a good—great—storyteller. The story is clearly meticulously researched and the fusion between historical fact and fictional fantasy is fairly smooth and seamless (once you get past the initial swallow of time-travel, of course).

On the other hand, I spent a lot of my time thinking about how much more interesting this story would be, if the hero had been anything other than a heterosexual, able-bodied white man, how different a story that would've been if the feminism and civil rights and sexual struggles of the 60's had been something more personal, that the story's protagonist couldn't just elide past whenever he felt like ignoring it (which he did. A lot.).

( Believe it or not, this is not really a bad review. It is, however, spoilery like whoa. )

At the end of it all, though, the unexpected cleverness of the ending makes my enjoyment of the story feel less guilt-ridden and more just like…enjoyment. And…I'll take that. Yes, I will.

I just lost my browser tabs for the fourth time this month. It's like they don't understand that my memory is chemo bathed Swiss cheese and I NEED those tabs. Or, you know, Firefox sucks. Same thing.

In any case, thank you for my vgifts, both the dragons and those glass hearts I didn't get the chance to acknowledge. I've been concentrating on simple pleasures these last few weeks and those gifts have given me great joy. Thank you.

I keep wanting to talk about writing without really knowing what I want to say about it. I've had to drop out of every fannish thing I've signed up for this year. Most of them, I was afraid of signing up for just that reason--my failure to deliver, my failure to wrangle, my failure to write--but I kept trying to get back on the horse. Now...I think maybe riding is overrated.

Not that I'm quitting writing; I don't think that's even possible, as many times as I've wished (in bitterness, in anger, in the despair of failure) that I could. But I'm done signing up for things for the foreseeable future. There's just no positive dividend from banging my head against this same wall. So there's that.

It's not all gloom and doom; the failure to write anything for my sign-ups means that I've been spending my writing time working on other things, things close enough to my inmost heart that they still inspire that withered creative spark inside me. Most days, it feels like scratching at a glacier with my bare fingernails, and it's that swampy middle part, where you wonder why you ever did this to yourself and that it was all a huge mistake and oh, my dear freaking lord, this will NEVER BE DONE, but, you know, that's all part part of the process and I've been here before.

The low rate of production makes things hard. Hard is an understatement, of course. It's hard to deal with, at a personal level; it's hard to be happy for my so much more productive friends when I feel like I'm revving in neutral; it's hard to talk with well-meaning strangers about how my writing is going when I've been working on this same story for four years now. It's just...hard. And some days are harder than others.

Anyway, thank you.

Okay, I have a poser.

My brother & I have watched a LOT of horror movies over the years. More horror movies than we can rightfully recollect. So The Brother text messaged me tonight asking about a movie that I REMEMBER but I can't RECALL, if that makes sense. And so I come, on my metaphorical knees, to you, dear flist.

Brother's description: "I realize this is a long shot but do u know of a movie, came out in late 70's or early 80's where dude gets possessed by devil or demon and when it's exorcised, it's going to go into "the person closest to him" and at the end, garrett morris gets possessed."

Note 1: We are not talking about Fallen, with Denzel Washington; we are agreed on that. Further, I don't think Garrett Morris is actually in this movie. He did very few movies during that time period (mostly TV) and none of them fit the description, after some snooping around on IMDB.

Brother's description Pt. 2: "Movie ends with dude hanging off a building and black dude who I thought was Garrett Morris pulls him up and, after he and the girl who he thought would get possessed are walking away, black dude's eyes glow and he starts talking in demon voice and chases after some other chick. Any of this sound familiar?"

And all of it SOUNDS familiar, and I'm kind of afraid we're mashing up movies in our head and, in either case, I can't place where it's all from, but OMG, ONE OF YOU HAS TO BE A HORROR FAN WHO CAN MAYBE HELP US before I lose my mind. Help?

I'm not having my best day ever and the highlight of it has definitely been all the lovely v-gifts from my wonderful & thoughtful friends.

deirdre_c, drvsilla, brynspikess, mickeym, wendy, ellia, santacarlagypsy & my sweet anonymice, thank you. Thank you very much. You made a rather dark day a little brighter. Thank you.