{"id":252,"date":"2009-08-25T21:19:36","date_gmt":"2009-08-26T04:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/?p=252"},"modified":"2009-08-25T21:22:50","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T04:22:50","slug":"50-half-full-means-time-for-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/2009\/08\/50-half-full-means-time-for-more\/","title":{"rendered":"(50) Half-Full Means Time For More"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was groggy when I woke up.\u00a0 I pulled the sheets off and stumbled into my bathroom, yawning the whole way.\u00a0 Doloise was looking at some books I kept for artistic reference, dealing with anatomy and the way it interacted.\u00a0 They were too artsy to be smut, and nice enough you could keep them on the coffee table, if you had one.\u00a0 I didn’t, so they joined the sprawl on the top of where the bookshelves segregated sprawling space in front of the TV and the computer area.<\/p>\n

I looked out the blinds to see that, yes, indeed, it was overcast.\u00a0 That sense of oppression I’d felt in my dream continued unabated by waking.\u00a0 I was unsurprised; what factors of reality cast their spell into the dreamlands was an argument for those who studied such things.\u00a0 I know better than to eat artichokes at dinner, but that isn’t because I have any illusions about how they interact with my psyche – the only thing guaranteed to give me nightmares was hauntings, and those could be bound away, their doors to my vulnerabilities closed and locked.\u00a0 I have too many keys to my psyche floating around to not be concerned.<\/p>\n

On second thought, I did occasionally get a strange dream or two from Beau Jo’<\/a>s pizza, but I consider that a perk, not a drawback.<\/p>\n

I went into the kitchen and drew myself a cold glass of water.\u00a0 I thought about offering one to Doloise, but the irony would be lost.\u00a0 I wondered if irony was proof against fairy-ies.\u00a0 You know, really fey fey.\u00a0 Nevermind.\u00a0 Maybe I hadn’t woken up as much as I had thought.<\/p>\n

Doloise pushed aside the book. “Your pleasures are well-defined, but your indulgence is carefully measured. Why?”<\/p>\n

I sighed, finishing the glass of water.\u00a0 “Let me get dressed before we talk about my porn collection, OK?”<\/p>\n

She looked confused. “You already wear clothing.”\u00a0 She was wearing another of her own designs from my wardrobe.\u00a0 I looked closer at it.\u00a0 Ah, it was from one of my holiday ties.\u00a0 I have a small collection of them I’ve picked up for various festive functions during the long winter season.\u00a0 This one had a subtle stag print on it.\u00a0 How apropos.<\/p>\n

“There are distinctions in dressing that consider appropriate wear, having put clothes on, and a level of vulnerability,” I lectured from a door half-closed between us.\u00a0 “I was in the having put clothes on stage, but if we’re going to dissect the wrinkles of my personality I want more clothing.”\u00a0 If you have to ask, boxer-briefs, mostly.\u00a0 I also like undershirts.\u00a0 It’s funny, one of my favourite bits in The Fellowship of the Ring<\/span> is the bit where Frodo incidentally reveals the mithril shirt Bilbo insisted he take.\u00a0 Maybe because it’s a light of hope in the darkness of Moria.\u00a0 Anyway, I do think of that passage when I am busy buttoning my workshirts over them.<\/p>\n

Saturday means I call in for a new assignment and wear a T-shirt and jeans.\u00a0\u00a0 If I’m alone, that’s all I’d wear, but I need my armour against the Dragon Princess Doloise, as I mentally dubbed her.\u00a0 My shirt was traditionally geeky, white letters on black.\u00a0 Something about keeping my shiny, happy, fuzzy reality.\u00a0 I did the phone call and then wandered back out to sprawl on the futon that doubled as a couch.<\/p>\n

“I like my little luxuries,” I said.<\/p>\n

Doloise is a stacker.\u00a0 You know, someone who puts things into carefully measured stacks when they return them.\u00a0 It ruined the feel of casual chaos.\u00a0 I wondered about that a little – she seemed fairly constrained.\u00a0 Rules, remember, power a great deal of, well, power.<\/p>\n

“As long as they do not control you,” she said, not looking up from the pictures.\u00a0 That one was an actual art book – something I picked up at a library sale.<\/p>\n

I grunted an affirmation.\u00a0 “Does it mean anything in guarding me, oh guide?”<\/p>\n

“Curiosity has its stigma.\u00a0 I seek to solve it rationally. You are not what we expected.\u00a0 I only seek to bind comfort into the geasa under which I work.”<\/p>\n

“You are free to go at any time.\u00a0 I mean it.”<\/p>\n

“It is too late for that.”\u00a0 She looked at me and did not smile.<\/p>\n

“It’s too late for Saturday morning cartoons, too, but I live in hope.”\u00a0 I found the remote and turned on the TV.\u00a0 Later this afternoon I’d have to do some open-heart surgery, of sorts.\u00a0 I hoped the morning would be more pleasant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wondered if irony was proof against fairy-ies. You know, really fey fey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}