I love ironic humor, but it’s not nearly so amusing when I’m the butt of it.  I’ll tell you what happened.  You know me, I don’t like to complain.  Well, okay, I do, but here’s the thing.  I had just finished writing a piece for here about how I seem to be doing something wrong – on several fronts – but I don’t know what it is.  Things just aren’t working right.  I described in some detail the problems I was having with Lazarus, my cats, and finally, my sewing machine.  And just as I was ready to post it — ZAP! it was gone!  Now I’ve written over 200,000 words in the past six months or so, and I thought I was fairly familiar with the computer keyboard, but Hey! somewhere on this evil contraption there is a feral key that is gobbling my work and then spewing it off to a Cosmic  File somewhere.  It’s happened before, but not for a long time.  (And fortunately, not during the writing of The Novel.)

I had come to the computer to write the article  as an antidote to the murderous rage that my sewing machine had driven me to.  And now, this!  It’s official.  I am harboring a gremlin.  I don’t know where; I don’t know how; I don’t know why.  I only know that I’m ready to kill.  If it weren’t so expensive, I’d murder both the sewing machine and the computer.   It’s fortunate that I live alone.  The cats are safe, only because both of them are cleverer and faster than I am.  If you don’t hear from me for a while, it might be a good idea to send someone over to check.  The only one left for me to kill is me.                                 MM