The Red Dragon self-flagellates

Sick as hell. These past couple of months have taken me and broken me, and my fucking body has decided to punish me for not getting pregnant yet by getting rid of my dragonly cramps and replacing them with nausea; I'd really prefer the pain . . . I have a degree of paranoia that I'll be one of those pregnant women who spend the whole nine months puking and the present situation isn't helping me deal with that paranoia. But the lovely Rodelinda, that gem among women, sent me Marks and Spencers chocolate-covered gingersnaps and those have fixed allllmost everything. No wonder men all lose their fucking minds when she dumps them. She's so awesome.

In the meantime, my Christmas vacation has now started. Luke Duke sent us a couple of books on Spain as we're flying out tonight - luckily throwing up all over aeroplanes won't be breaking any new experiential ground for me - which means I am going to go get busy reading them, now that I'm done with Stalin's Children. Which was fine. The first half was really good and the second half wasn't, so, altogether, fine.

Luke Duke's gifts: Ghosts of Spain and ¡Guerra!. They look pretty good. You know what I love about Spanish? The fucking upside-down exclamation points and question marks. That is really awesome. You know right away at the beginning of the phrase if it's going to be exciting or interrogatory. I love that. And yesterday I was given to understand that our Asian division is haemmoraging money so the odds of me being able to continue my job without interruption whilst moving to Australia are poor - but honestly work has stressed and exhausted me so badly over the last little while that I had to welcome that news - especially as it means the F-word and I get to pursue one of the more attractive Plan B's we've ever had: before moving to the Antipodes, we go spend a few months in Spain, doing the Camino and learning that awesome language. I don't speak a word of it of course, but I can usually figure out what they're talking about if they want me to because of its similarities with Italian, so I think given three or four months there I'll be able to pick up a lot of it.

In the meantime, my sweethearts, I'm not going to be posting on this blog; will return the week after Christmas, hopefully stuffed to the brim with tapas and ham, ham, ham. Very lovely holidays to you all; may your indiscretions be discreet, your pleasures shameless, your carbon footprint smaller than mine, and you and yours very very happy above all.