There was cake

Too much paper yesterday and my poor scared lizard brain is awakened, up half the night because I'm surely destined for destitution, eating cold beans out of a tin, cold and lonely with fingerless gloves, the works. Perhaps I'll be extradited for non-payment of something or other. 

I get up and the world is as round and spiked as a rolled hedgehog and much less charming. I lose my keys, rub my mascara into my eyes, wear one sock and a slipper because the other one is somewhere. I'm sure I had a fresh cup of coffee. 

Pluvialis arrives and I cry into the space she brought from outside, where there is nothing of mine already. She uses some paper and the new fox pen that my mother sent for Christmas to cheer me. She goes to work a bit in the cafe down the lane while I put away the laundry and set the table and grate my fingertips into the parmesan. Lady Language arrives and we eat pasta and drink primitivo that I splash into the decanter like it's a watering can. Melody Gardot plays. The Christmas little house smiles in its last night of seasonal regalia. We talk about books and Jennifer Lawrence and jetlag and make lists of cover-puffers for Pluvialis' book and also Wes Anderson and Sword in the Stone and there's a strange moment when I do a Billy-Crystal-as-Harry impression, pecan pie, pecan piIIIEEEEee which makes Language crinkle up into frothy tinsel giggle bits and we eat a vast amount of walnut cake that I had to use a palette knife to pry off the Dr Oetker springform that Pluvialis brought back from Germany for me years ago and the candles burn down and slowly I feel better.