New Year's Day at Casa Blake

I usually spend New Year's Day happily by myself, but this is a tough one, because I'm losing my beloved Magic on Wednesday. (She's barely eaten in the last few days and is clearly uncomfortable; the tumors are huge now. They'll burst on their own and kill her soon, and I want better for her than that, so the appointment has been made, and I'm keeping her comfortable until then and treasuring every damned moment.)

We started the morning like so many others, with Magic sitting on my lap while I ate breakfast and read my book. She still purred, which made my heart happy. It has always been my favorite way to start off my days, and I'll miss it. Well, actually, I started off the morning staring at the thermometer and making rude noises. But then breakfast. (It was -13 here when I got up. Ugh.)

Breakfast snuggles

That's just rude

Then in the early afternoon, my friend Ellen (who found me Magic, along with her brother Mystic and mom Minerva almost 16 years ago) came over for a low-keyed New Year's celebration geek style: Chinese food, Scrabble, and watching this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special (which I had gallantly held off on watching so we could do so together). We got Peking Duck, one of our favorites, and Magic happily nibbled on a bit of duck meat.

Peking duck? Well, maybe just a bite or two.

 It made me happy to see her taking such pleasure in our treat. (Although admittedly, all the Chinese food in our little town is fairly mediocre. Still, I didn't have to cook it. And I love duck almost as much as Magic does. Ribs, too, although she didn't get any of those.)

Feast!

 The Doctor Who episode was actually pretty terrific, and it was nice to share it with Ellen.

Last time we'll see this

It was great

 Magic spent most of the meal sitting next to me, although she quickly got bored with the duck. She always supervises everything I do, from eating to writing. Not sure how I'll do either without her. Yes, she IS the boss of me.

Sitting next to me, supervising as usual

 Eventually she wandered off to sit on the bed with (but at a reasonable distance from) her brother and his pal Angus.

It was a three cat afternoon when the sun hit the bed

 Apparently she was my good luck charm, because then Ellen went on to beat me. By six points :-)

Ellen pondering a clever word

We play nine letter Scrabble, so we can get even more vicious and make even longer words.

All in all, it was as good a New Year's Day as I could have hoped for, and I even finished up by writing 3,000 words on the current manuscript, after a nap. (What am I working on? Tune in soon, and I'll tell you. I'm just about ready to talk about it.)

I hope your first day of 2018 was a good one, and that if, like me, it is starting off tough, it gets better as it goes along. I am looking forward to sharing mine with you in the days to come.