I was right to drag my feet on assembling the Dirtdevil. There's a hose that fits into a ring that fits into the canister, and the hose came out of the ring and wouldn't go back in. The manual treats hose and ring as a single unit and gives no idea how the one goes into the other. So after fifteen minutes of pushing and squeezing and grunting I concluded that the part was defective, packed all the bits back into their plastic bags, and put off the tiresome question of how to return an amazon order. And then, because I can no more stop scratching an itch than I can stop looking for words-that-aren't-there in Squaredle, I pushed and squeezed and grunted some more until, with the arm strength of a young man, the hose got pushed far enough into the ring that I could turn it righty-tighty into unmovingness. So go me, and feh.

Last night's dream purported to be about the Marlows at home with visits by vague relatives and much to-doing over bath times and Lawrie not able to be the Shepherd Boy after all because she had such a hissy fit over her bathtime that she started to run a fever so (somebody- Esther?) had to/ got to play him after all.

Reading Austin Freeman's Thorndyke mysteries because the library has them and Gore Vidal is getting up my nose. I strongly suspect that his view of politics is plain and simply Wrong. The gossip about the Kennedys is interesting enough  (no news to me that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was no JFK either) but leaves me feeling slightly grubby. Of course, Thorndyke is no fast fun raad either, but still an improvement. What I want is more PMT, so instead I keep going over the last story in vol. 1 and its very odd happenings, like the menacing man the okami-san ushers out of the establishment on (if I'm reading this correctly) days that have eight in them but who *seems* to show up two days running? and who may not be the proprietor's favoured client/ boyfriend at all but the personification of the psychic detritus it's necessary to clear out at regular intervals.