(no subject)

Success: Both dogs have been microchipped.
Fail: Serena's new "break-away" collar didn't even last 2 days on her. I found it chewed up into little pieces in the yard. I'll need to make her a metal chain collar like Zorro's, with an elastic strip for safety. Unless Zorro takes to pulling that off her too, in which case I guess she can't have a safety collar.

I attended, with Qiao, the funeral of one of his family friends. They are Episcopalian. Qiao kneels and prays in church. It seems bizarre to me how I can be in a relationship with someone so different from me. The first time the congregation was asked to kneel, I stayed sitting. The 2nd time, I thought that it might feel good to stretch my back, so I kneeled too. Boy was I wrong; kneeling in the pews was not at all comfortable for my back. Had I not been able to lean my arms over the edge of the pew, I might not have been able to maintain that position.

I'm using my new kneeling chair; I'm quite pleased with it. Nevertheless, my back is still very achy. It is still possible to slouch in this chair, so I'm not sure whether it will help much.

I wish I knew the cause of my back aches. I feel like I have to wait until the pain eventually becomes excruciating, before I can seek medical diagnostics and treatment. After all, the chiropractor already performed x-rays and said that my spine looked fine. So whatever is wrong must not be wrong enough yet to be detectable.

It seems that I made the crotch a bit too short on the pair of jeans which I altered. The pants are wearable, but it was a disappointing result after having put all that effort into it.

I read some more of the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" book yesterday. It's interesting, and it makes me want to know the answer to the mysteries, but there's nothing to the story that makes me enjoy it. It's rather grim, actually.

I had also been reading "The Dog from Hell". That story was neither interesting nor enjoyable for me, so I decided to discontinue it.

This New Year's Eve, I went to bed before midnight. I had been feeling down, possibly due to insufficient sleep. The prior night I had likewise gone to bed early, and it felt so good to get a good night's sleep that I wanted to repeat it. But it wasn't repeated. I heard fireworks, so I don't think I got any sleep until after midnight anyway. But still, that may have been the first New Year's Eve for which I didn't stay up.

a snippet of whee, tee-hee!

I wrote down one of my fantasies on paper some years ago. I didn't want to risk forgetting it. It seems somewhat amazing, re-reading what I wrote. It's written in ink, and there are very few places where I scratched anything out while writing it. Yet the quality seems better than some other heavily edited things I've written.

This is a snippet.

---

He does not seem amused anymore. Grim, serious, deadly. Lightning-quick maneuvers and volleys. I am being beaten. I am in pain all over. When will it end? I instinctively react to protect myself: dodge, block, counter... I cannot think any more, only react...

I begin to realize... T's unspoken message is, "How dare you disobey your Master? Your oath-sworn Master?! You are dust between my fingers! You cannot withstand me." In the moments when I am able to think or feel anything, I fear. I fear T. He could kill me right now. His anger is deadly, and he doesn't even seem to have broken a sweat. I realize what it would be like to have T as an opponent in a real all-out fight. Except that then, I would have already been dead a long time ago.

T is showering me with searing energy bolts again. I fall to the ground, crouching, trying to block. I am finished. I can hold out no longer. T comes closer and tells me to get up. I do not. My mind has retreated within me. T asks, "Do you give up?"

"Yes!" I whimper. Anything to make this stop.

"Will you obey me?" T returns. It takes me a moment to realize, to remember, the significance of the question. No, no, no, my mind replies. I won't. You can't make me. I say nothing.

---

Ah, I thought I had posted another snippet of the story before. And now I found it.

Ah! It makes me all tingly inside! Why can't I find any books to read like that?