Today my mind is full of some rather random material. It’s mostly things I want to know.
1. I want to know if vampires have cold cheeks or merely cool cheeks. If so… why?
2. I want to know if, in the seventeenth century, when people made the fermented liquid that was to one day become borscht (except back then it was mostly made with cow parsnip leaves and flowers, not beetroot) they ate the green stuff when fermentation was done.
3. I want to know if anyone reads my fiction.
4. Equally, I want to know if anyone reads my non-fiction.
5. I want to know why it’s so much harder to sleep on a night when the temperature is merely 4 degrees (Celsius, for I’m still in Australia) than on a night that reaches -6.
6. I want to know why I lost the simple trick I used to have of being able to think in Fahrenheit and Celsius at the same time. I can still think in grams and ounces together, and in yards and metres. It’s only the temperatures that can’t exit my fogbrain.
7. I want to know if it’s possible to cure an addiction to lists of ten things.
8. I really want to know why some people run away as if they’re leaving a house on fire the minute they discover I have invisible disabilities. When I was in my teens I had girl cooties: now I have disability cooties.
9. Linked to this is a wild desire to understand why some people inform me that medical conditions that experts have done much testing to establish (including MRIs, which are good places for considering story, because one cannot move and one cannot go anywhere and the whole world rumbles) is merely me getting older and that I can deal because they are?
10. Finally, why can’t I transfer my illnesses to people who tell me all my doctors are wrong?
PS in good news this week, my heart is fine. It’s completely, completely healed. Everyone was surprised (five experts of various kinds), but no-one was unhappy. Rest assured that if I transfer illness to you because you’ve told me I’m not ill, you will not get a weak heart.