Very well, then. Things are good. The weather is fine. How are you? The snortlepig sends her love. She is fine. Helpdesk Man is fine too, but does not specifically send his love, though I imagine he would send vague though unstated feelings of geniality in your direction if he were not busy watching Smallville. The wee ones are also fine. They have come over a few times to help me sew and cook and watch the pig and things. Abby stabbed herself in the eye with her cello one time and I larffed on accident, but felt bad after. She is fine now though. My lettuces are coming up and my marigolds are mildly blooming. We had a Guy Fawkes party with Jamie’s flat and watched V for Vendetta. The pig scrambled her limbs at me and said “No, no, no” monotonously while the fireworks were going, but between them got very brave and sophisticated. She wears two pigtails at the back now on a semi-regular basis, and devises cunning methods for drinking the bathwater. Ruth played the piano on Sunday and gained grudging and qualified approval from certain parties, and full marks from certain others. I made myself a tulle petticoat to go under my as-yet-unmade steampunk skirt, but I rather overdid the tulle and it sticks straight out and is wider than doorways. I’m going to attempt to tack the tulle to the underskirt at intervals to contain the boof. The snortlepig’s wee cousin is improving in looks and growing like a weed, although apparently the doctor thinks he has not grown enough in the last two weeks and wants to put him on formula for supplements if he does not start growing again at the rate of his original rapid growth, which his mother and I both think is weedy as he is clearly thriving and what does the doctor know anyway, wanting to introduce formula to a seven-week-old with a family history of food allergies? Piffle, I think, and he’s as fat as a fish - the baby I mean, not, to my knowledge, the doctor - but fortunately Sister-in-Law has a healthily skeptical attitude to the doctor herself and seems unlikely to do anything rash. My dear friend April bought two corsets and I want to do likewise, but lack in Funds. Another of my dear friends is participating in a bellydancing concert this Saturday which I am planning to attend, largely because I have it on good authority they are planning to bellydance to the “I Dream of Jeannie” show theme.

And, and, I had a bath. And the pig is yawping in the bedroom for the milks, so I must go and proffer them kindly. So bye. K?

*Or near as dammit
**And that of my thousands of loyal fans