It was uncharacteristically warm the day They came. I’ll always remember that day, because that was the day everything changed.

Of course when I say ‘they’ I mean the space wolves. I don’t know why I’m being so vague.

Hi, it’s mom. Where are you? Because I’ve got a leak here. It’s pouring down from upstairs into the front hall. Thank God I found two pots under the sink. Why did you hide them there?  They’ve never been there before. Every week you sneak in here and hide my things. I found my toothbrush on top of the piano and my teabags in the bathroom cupboard. I suppose you find that funny.

Ingredients

– A Boa constrictor digesting an Elephant.

– Baobabs.

– Other assorted characters (see below).

The first thing that goes is your sense of time. Your internal clock. Your circadian rhythm. In the long term, disruption of the circadian rhythm can lead to serious health issues such as chronic fatigue, diabetes, obesity, and clinical depression. This is not our concern- I am at peak physical and mental fitness and my blood sugar is stable. I do almost wish I felt fatigued, chronically, even, as I am a nervous wreck, though I suppose those two things are not mutually exclusive.

In Third Grade, we all hated arithmetic until Mrs. Podolski, with her heavy Polish accent, showed up and briefly cast a numerical spell on us. Mrs. Podolski was a short, stout woman who replaced our regular teacher for two weeks. She wore brilliant floral print dresses and prefaced almost everything she said with, “And now, children.”