STOP! THIEF! (AKA, just a note to tell you I'm still alive.)

Oh, my gosh! It looks like someone stole every single post I made between July 27, 2016 and now!

And the posts were brilliant. Brilliant, I tell ya! Each offering was a veritable masterpiece of wisdom and wit. Fantastic fonts of fabulosity, rigorously written, every single one. So very many of them, too, now lost forever (sob!) in the swirling vortex of cyber space (maybe even THE DARK WEB!), stolen by some heinous cyber-thief (possibly even artificial intelligence ... or ... or aliens) to use for God knows what nefarious purpose. Oh, the humanity!

photo courtesy of morguefile

Um, is anyone buying this? No? *sigh* Me, neither. But it sounds so much more entertaining than the truth.

Okay, so it's been a while. What can I say? You know the old saying about life: "Shhh! It happens." (Compress that as you will.) 

The last few years have been ... well, challenging. Lots of medical drama--death, health issues, injuries, yadda-yadda-yadda, etc., etc. in my family. Mostly not me directly*, but close enough to demand my full concentration and attention. Still does, to a large extent, though I'm trying to hone my multitasking skills. I'm not going to bore you with the details because, heck, who wants to relive the sh!t? Not me!

As you've probably guessed by now, Ciel and Company are on a bit of a hiatus. I'm not saying they won't be coming back, but for now they're working deep undercover (i.e., hiding in my subconscious) while I'm amusing myself by writing a sexy little romantic comedy starring this handsome guy:

photo courtesy of morguefile

Okay, maybe not starring, exactly. But Fugly is definitely a major player. That's right. Fugly. My hubs--the theater god, aka "TG" to those who've actually read my backlog of posts--suggested the name. He's the bulldog lover in the family, and I figured this would be a way of giving him one. He has to wait until he retires to get the real-life version, so he can be the one walking behind it with a little plastic bag, picking up all the bulldog poop, because I'm not going to do that. (See footnote regarding my knee.)

So, you see, I have actually been writing, after a fashion. Just not here. Because something had to give (see above regarding life and shh!it), and as much as I love both of my blog readers (ha! if I even have two left), I thought I'd better stick with with composing words I might have a prayer of selling one day. You know, once I'm better at the multitasking thing, and have perhaps mastered the art of not requiring sleep.


* (This is the footnote I was referring to above. You may have already read it, if you peeked down here when you first saw the asterisk. If so, feel free to skip it now, because I don't think it's entertaining enough to warrant a reread.) The torn meniscus in my knee was definitely me directly, as was the subsequent four months of physical therapy before I could walk again with a (mostly) normal gait. I wish I could tell you a hilarious story about how it happened when I was thrown off a mechanical bull after knocking back tequila shots while visiting my family in Texas, but sadly it was an overuse/stress/took-a-wrong-step injury that occurred while moving my mother into an assisted living facility. Boring! Let's just go with the bull, okay? I'm a real whiz at slinging bull. ;)