I’m lonely. My blog will not publish.

I can look at this one of two ways:

1. Look, I am free! I can sneak about and no one will know – until it’s too late!
2. I am cut off from the world, and everyone thinks I just don’t care.

Hm. Maybe not.

I have discovered a way to beat the heat. And no, it has nothing to do with spending time in a grocery store, hugging bags of frozen peas. I actually dislike grocery stores in heatwaves; they’re too cold, so that when you walk outside again the humidity hits you like a huge wet pillow and your knees buckle for a second or two.

No, my solution is a stay-at-home, do-it-yourself kind of answer. It presupposes you were in a supermarket in the recent past, however, and that you have chicken or some such thing in your fridge or freezer.

Go into your kitchen; turn on an element on top of the stove. (I know I’ve lost some of you already, because most people go into the kitchen to open the fridge for ice water in weather like this. Stove? What stove?) Melt some butter in a pan. Slice your chicken up and stir-fry it. If you want to get fancy you can add some onion, but really, don’t worry about it.

Stand there in front of the stove, and fry that meat.

When it’s done, slide it onto a plate, cover it loosely, and put it in the fridge. Don’t forget to turn off the stove.

Walk out of the kitchen. You will immediately notice a huge drop in temperature. Why, it’s almost as if the rest of your place of habitation is cool!

In addition, you have the handy cooked chicken to chop up and toss into a salad for dinner later, because that’s about as warm a meal as you want to have. Nice, cool salad, with chicken. Mmm.

You’re welcome.

Ever since I was little, my mother and I have been practicing the same little charm at the beginning of the month. See, my mother told me that if you said �white rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits� out loud as soon as you woke up on the first day of the month, before you talk to anyone else, you�d receive a present sometime during that month.

When you�re little, this is a very exciting thing. It�s almost like magic. You say secret words, and something wonderful happens within the next thirty or so days.

Needless to say, I tried very hard, and I�d remember eight times out of ten. Now that I�m grown up (or so they say), I still do it. I feel a bit foolish, whispering it in bed next to my oblivious husband in the wee small hours, but I still do it.

So, as a public service announcement, I wish to remind you all that it is the first of August tomorrow, and if you too wish to say �white rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits�, be my guest. We can all use more presents.

Corset accomplished. And it’s nice and comfy, thank you very much. Not as much back support as I’d hoped, but better posture (particularly typing at a keyboard) which will, no doubt, help the stress along the spine. The only problem I discovered after the whole thing was together and hemmed and sealed up: the busks weren’t exactly even from each end and I must have flipped one around at some point while inserting them, so the right side of the corset is a quarter inch higher than the other. I doubt anyone will ever notice, as this is technically an undergarment, and if they’re beholding the undergarment then I sincerely hope they’re not in the right frame of mind to be critiquing my sewing skills. The whole thing could have done with being an inch or so smaller around the rib cage to allow for the proper amount of “spring”, or lacing tightness, but hey, it’s my first shot, and I’m pretty impressed with myself.

Which means, alas, I realise from my phrasing, that I expect to make another one at some point in time. Maybe a nice one, in a satin brocade or jacquard, instead of natural-coloured cotton sateen. Hmm. Blue, perhaps.

No. No, no, no. Not for a long time. Well, a while, anyway. Must start thinking Hallowe’en instead. I had a revelation the other day: I work hard on a costume in October, usually putting finishing touches on it all the way up to the evening of whatever party I’m scheduled to be at. Then I get there, and I’m still so production-focused that I don’t enjoy the party and want to leave right away. This year, I intend to create slowly and with time on my hands, so that I can hang the costume up and look forward to wearing it for a month or so, allowing myself to actually get excited about it instead of being tense.

Brilliant, no? I feel so smug for figuring a way around one of my little quirks.

No, I never found that missing piece of boning; I used plastic boning instead that I’d had left over from a Renaissance outfit I’d made. Not only has the corset been finished, while I was looking for the plastic boning I discovered a project I’d started a year and a half ago, and finished that as well. Two! Two projects finished by ten in the morning! And I haven’t even had tea or breakfast yet!

I discovered another eight pages of the Great Canadian Novel yesterday after I gave up on the sewing machine. I’m not going to question it; I’m just going to keep sitting down with the laptop and allowing myself to have fun. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go make a fragrant pot of loose Lady Grey tea, and enjoy my corset for a while.

For some odd reason, I decided to finish the corset instead.

I have now broken two needles and lost one piece of boning. How the hell I can lose a twelve inch long piece of white metal, I truly do not know. But I can’t finish the ruddy thing without it.

Apart from that, it’s going relatively well, and it will be nice and functional. I need a metal saw to cut down two of the pieces of boning, because of the same problem I originally ran into with the busks, and I’ll have to do something about the missing one first too. Trust me, I’ve torn this place apart already – I had all of them when I started putting the boning in, I know I did, because I had each and everyone of them laid out on top of the fabric. It must be in Kitty Wonderland, along with a few odd earrings, a heavy pewter necklace, a nice pair of boots, and several pens. You know Kitty Wonderland if you’ve ever lived with a cat: Cat sees object she desires, cat takes object, cat deposits it in pocket dimension available only to those of the feline persuasion, human never sees said object again. Ever. (Although what Maggie-cat could possibly want with a piece of metal, I don’t – oh wait, yes, I do know. I need it. Therefore, she must have it. Cat-logic. Sigh.)

I’m going for a walk, and when I come back the missing piece of boning will magically be lying right in front of the sewing machine. And if it’s not, I will go work on the Great Canadian Novel. See if I don’t.

I think I’ll procrastinate a while longer.

Funny how I manage to work myself up into excitement over writing when I’m doing something else; I use it as a carrot. “Just think – when you’re done this, you can go write!” I can fool myself pretty well, right up until the point where I finish whatever work I’m doing, stand up to go to the laptop, and… well, maybe I’ll get another cup of tea. Hmm, I’ll check my e-mail. You know, I’ve been typing for three hours; I should reward myself by sitting down with a book.

Ceri and I met yesterday for our weekly check-up-on-each-other’s-creativity luncheon, and we commiserated over the tactics our minds create to escape actually committing anything to paper. During university, my favourite way to avoid working on a paper was to wash my hair. Now, it’s blogging. So I understood completely when Ceri looked at me and said, “I have no pages for you today. But I wrote that post on democracy.”

So she did. It’s a terrific post, too. I felt a bit embarrassed when I handed her my thirteen pages, though; guilty, almost. I buried myself in a magazine while she read them, half reading it, half dreading her reaction. I was pleased and (again) slightly embarrassed to note three out-loud laughs and at least one out-loud comment in the middle of it. She squared the pages at the end of it and said, “So, when do I get the next installment? This is terrific!” and away we went, discussing characters, scenes, and so forth. She asked if I knew where it was going; no, of course not, I said. I do have a vague idea; developments occur to me as I write, and I file them away to bring up later when it’s time, but I don’t have a point by point outline of everything that will happen. I know that I’m finding things out as my main character finds them out. Unlike her, however, I know roughly what’s going on in her environment and her society, so I’m one up on her already.

It’s odd. This is the first contemporary work I’ve ever done. I have piles and piles of fantasy tucked away – short stories, a novel, novellas, most set in a world I created which has been developing for about sixteen years now. My only ventures into anything remotely different have been two or three urban fantasies I’ve written, one which I even finished but exists only in longhand. I also never expected to write a comedy, which is what genre this ongoing work most definitely falls into. In all respects, this is a huge departure for me. I’m enjoying it immensely.

Not enough, obviously, to stop blogging and get over to the laptop and pick up where I left off, though.

I will. I will do it.

Although I so desperately want to curl up with Howards End…

I have a confession to make.

I am a tea snob.

I love opening a tin of good, loose tea. I love lifting it up and breathing in the symphony of odours of every ingredient. I love scooping it up in a tea ball, hooking the tea ball onto my teapot, pouring the boiling water into the pot (but not over the ball – mustn’t “scare the tea”). I even love watching the stream of golden brown liquid splash into my cup, steam rising. And then, of course, there’s that first heavenly sip, where those airborne flavours marry on your tongue and produce something hinted at previously and yet oh-so-different.

I am also, alas, lazy.

So, teabags are my friends in the mornings, and usually during the day, too, when I’m working on the computer. I’m a Twinings fan, and Earl Grey used to be my standby until they introduced a new flavour a couple of years ago: Lady Grey, a similar tea but flavoured with orange and lemon as well as bergamot. I was so excited about it I gave it to countless people, who were probably just humouring me. I’ve been using Lady Grey teabags ever since, which I have to pick up downtown since my local grocery emporium doesn’t stock it.

Until last weekend, when my mother and I walked into a specialty grocery store to pick up various dinner items. I saw rows upon rows of Twinings tins – a whole world of loose teas! – and nestled in the midst of them all was a blue one that I had never seen anywhere else.

Twinings makes loose Lady Grey tea.

I picked it up; I cradled it to my chest; I crooned to it. It came back to Montreal with me. This morning, I said to myself that I would make a proper cup of tea for the first time in months, and opened the tin.

The first thing that struck me was the look of it. Tea is, well, brown, little crinkly brown dry things. Lady Grey has blue flowers in it, and whiteish chopped up peel.

It was beautiful. Now, I know I went to bed late last night, and got up too early this morning, but it was, well, pretty. The blue was a nice Wedgewood or Spode-type of blue, and the flowers sort of look like lavender flowers. The tea was a warmer brown than I remember from my tins of Earl Grey, too.

Then the smell reached me.

I never realise how old my tins of tea are until I buy a new one. Old tea has a bit of a musty, flat smell to it when you open the tin, but it still smells like tea. A new tin smells alive.

And the flavour is… complex. A pot of tea made with loose tea is like freshly ground coffee beans to instant coffee. Sure, it’s coffee, but to what degree?

Excellent tea such as this should be enjoyed in the very best cup you have. My mother gave me a single bone china cup and saucer a few years ago with pansies on them which I am petrified of breaking, so as much as I’d like to use it, I usually leave it on the shelf and admire it instead. When I’m finished this mug, though, methinks I shall fetch it down, wash it out, and go sit at my laptop to work on the Great Canadian Novel.