Kage Baker, as I have mentioned, resisted taking pain killers because they filled her brain with fuzz.

That was her description, by the way – she said they made her brain feel like the lint trap in the dryer. As anyone knows who does any laundry, after a load of towels the lint trap yields a fascinating felted textile with a texture like Angora wool, in pastel versions of whatever towel you just washed. Wonderful fun to play with, especially if you have some spare googly eyes lying around the place. You can also card and spin the stuff into a recycled yarn of amazing softness. It’s almost a self-made roving weight.

However, it’s not so great to have your thinking parts filled with the metaphoric version of this stuff. So I do understand why Kage objected to vociferously to clogging up her neurons with fuzz.

On the other hand, my kidney is being very naughty. In my experience, nothing actually masks kidney pain – even on very strong analgesics, you continue to feel the damned thing; it just becomes slightly more bearable. Anyone who has a recurring history of kidney pain knows that you learn to just live with the crap below a certain level, because otherwise you can’t do anything at all. A certain nephritic stoicism becomes a natural part of life.

At the moment, I am teetering on the high bar, balanced between a brain full of towel fluff and being curled in a cashew of pain. It’s cool; I am remembering all the old tricks of managing this absurd condition – I did my last two years of high school and my first year of college like this; with an A average, no less – but it takes some time. Luckily, I should hear from my doctor about the results of the visualization tests any day now, and then we can fix this problem. It’s probably just stones.

Yes, it’s cosmically unjust, racka racka racka and a hotch-cha-cha. But these things happen in real life, you know? Worse things could happen. I really am grateful nothing is wrong with my car, and that the Corgi and the skunks seem to be working on a truce. I am happy my doctor gave me a prescription for Percocet. I’m ever so pleased the kidney waited its turn, rather than deciding to get jiggy during my cancer treatment. I can deal with this.

And to begin with, I think I’m gonna get some googly eyes and pipe cleaners, and see if I can make a blanket octopus out of the fabric from the lint filter. And if that works, I’ll see what can be done with the stuff in my brain. I bet there’s some form of fluffy monster that can be built out of that, too.

Blanket Octopus, Flaunting Its Blanket