Kage Baker liked, and made, detailed plans.

She was gifted when necessity required improvisation – she could come up with truly amazing solutions when Fate screwed the regular plan over, and arses had to be pulled from fires. Life in a large, poor family; 30 years as an environmental performer; making most of her living via the notoriously fickle medium of The Arts – it all combined to a splendid set of reflexes in the face of any adversity.

She just liked having plans.

Black pepper, for instance, can be used plug minor holes in a leaky radiator. (And it smells  interesting in the cabin of the car.) You have to use a lot of it, and it helps if you are in the habit of carrying a large Costco-sized tin in the glove box. Cakes can be sliced with keyhole saws – thin saw blades are the trick. Almost anything that worked in that history or anthropology book you read, can still work in the age of cell phones and microwave ovens. Probably. Eventually. Trying it will at least give you something to do while you wait for the power to come back on.

Most valuable of all, Kage knew that all plans eventually gang agley. No one rides the wave of Fortune proudly on their feet for very long; you’d best be prepared for the inevitable fall, and being dragged through the surf of some tropical beach sans the bottom of your bathing suit. Kage was always ready to hold her breath and grab some critical piece of her clothing.

I had a wonderful idea for a blog tonight, Dear Readers. And for a story. But this evening has run off the edge of the road; a sudden craving for KFC led to misadventures in the drive-through lane, which necessitated unpacking the entire order in order to be certain that the one indispensable container had, indeed been left out. Making it back into the house required woodcraft in the front yard, to avoid the twilight skunks who like to come out and eat the peanuts the squirrels drop. And now, I have a migraine.

Thus, all I am doing tonight is dashing out and striking an arresting pose on the chalked-in X on the lower stage right. Ta-DA! Now I’m gonna shed my spangles and feathers, and crawl away to sleep.

Tomorrow I shall regale you with the interesting differences between pluots and apriplums. I shall reveal the reason it is now the season to sleep in the recliner, and what the cats think of that. And I shall discuss a story idea gifted to me today by a vision of a iron pot boiling on a fire of cycad logs.

Sleep well, Dear Readers.