Lynn Strong

I got a week mostly off this week, which is pretty astounding. I have been so burned out at work that it’s coming out in my writing– I’m currently writing about the priests of Upaja, one of whom is so ferociously devoted to his calling that it took, in the words of one of the junior priests, “both an actual conspiracy and an act of God to get him to take any time for himself.”

(Yes, I do resemble that remark. In my case the act of God was a hurricane. I am not unaware of irony.)

So I was absolutely delighted to discover Karryn Nagel’s next Cozy Fantasy sale is July 12 (tomorrow when I’m writing this), because it also happens to be my birthday.

What are you going to do for your birthday? a lot of my co-workers asked.

Many people do know I’m disabled, but not how much. Like Rahat, I do have years of experience in masking.

So I borrowed Ashar’s skill in telling the truth through exquisitely angled language that doesn’t mention the words you can’t afford for some people to hear.

I told them I was going to unplug from everything and curl up with a lot of really excellent ebooks.

Which is also, conveniently, entirely true!

And I know what they picture is nothing like what I live with. I tell my life stories that way intentionally. Like Ashar and Rahat, there are some things I just can’t afford to have spoken aloud in some people’s hearing.

Karryn knows me better than many of my co-workers at this point. When I told her I was struggling with the PDF from the original sale in April, she asked how it could be more accessible.

Hark, I hear my calling, I said.

(Well, no. That’s what I wish I’d said. What I actually said was more along the lines of “so I am actually certified in accessible information design, I live and breathe WordPress 40 hours a week, and I’m 98% sure we can make you an author-managed accessible responsive category-filterable website for free in a subdomain?”)

Karryn said, Awesome. Let’s do it.

(Pretty sure she actually did say that.)

So we did it!

Tomorrow I am eagerly looking forward to putting my phone in airplane mode, uninstalling everything Microsoft ever made, shutting down all the notifications on my tablet, and, I hope, getting one blissful day of peace to browse alllllll the cozy fantasies.

(One of my friends did the Great Unplugination for a week, and found the police breaking down his door on the third day because everyone he knew was so used to being able to ask his time and attention any hour of the day or night that they thought if he wasn’t immediately answering their every need he was either having a medical emergency or already dead. I learned from his experience to warn people before i turn off my own over-a-dozen always-on ping streams. The more you know! …did I mention how burned out I’ve been at work? Hahahahawhimper.)

The Bouquet of Beverages

My family knows I can’t read most print anymore and need dark mode with a lot of magnification, so they regularly give me Amazon gift certificates to help me convert my print library into ebooks I can read. And mostly I do get ebooks with them.

But then I spotted the 14-flavor sampler of floral simple syrup concentrates were back in stock.

When “this was out of stock for weeks before your birthday but just came back in stock” intersects with “no really I can officially use this for Research, I need to know all the flower flavors for rahat-al-hulqum recipe reasons, it is Research” intersects with “ooh pretty bottles” intersects with “birthday gift card” … yes, I am weak.

My only regret is that it wasn’t back in stock in time to arrive by tomorrow for the Designated Day of Cozy.

I am planning to try some of them in tea, some in seltzer, some in rahat al-hulqum, and some in microbatched sharbat that I will probably be acidifying with either an eye dropper or a 1/32 measure.

Some of them do already have citric acid in them, though, so be careful not to use them in milk or lattes.

I mean, not unless you want to experiment with homemade floral tea-cheese or coffee-cheese blends. I am an experimental cook but not quite that experimental!