But the wings don’t go on just yet. First, Pancake the Penguin and Pep the Lungfish have to go home to Waddleberg, which is a set distance from where the magic chest resided… though we don’t know exactly where that is. Well, that is, the readers don’t. Pancake and Pep do.

So Pancake and Pep clamber on top of the chest and have Narlee give a mighty push! And the two sisters go sliding down the hills, presumably through the icy forest, past the Mountains of Madness, through the Ice Cream Fairy’s domain, back to Waddleberg, where their adventures all began.

While I was reading the little narrative that came with today’s entry to Jennifer, she wondered why Pancake and Pep didn’t just don the wings and fly home. This seems like a logical question; it’s sort of like why couldn’t Gandalf have had the giant eagles carry Frodo from the Shire to Mordor to drop the Ring into Mount Doom from above (somewhere in my internet wanderings I found the answer to this, but sadly I can’t remember what it was). And as I write this now, it occurs to me that Pancake and Pep can’t quite don the wings and fly yet, because they’ll only be able to fly on Christmas Day, and we’re two days away from that yet! So it’s the long icy slippery slidey downhill road for them, just like Frodo and Samwise on their way home to the Shire. Except Frodo and Samwise didn’t shout “YAHOOOOOOOO!” all the way home.

Or maybe they did. It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Lord of the Rings. I suspect, though, that they were at least a little stunned when they returned to the Shire only to find that Saruman had scoured the Shire and turned it into a mechanistic, industrialized hellhole.

Is this the fate that awaits Pancake and Pep? Will they arrive in Waddleberg only to find that it has been taken over by a great evil, a servant of Sauron or Morgoth or Uncle Nav?

We can only wait and see…

Cat Rambo, writer, has issued a challenge for 2023: The Ray Bradbury Challenge. That is, write a short story a week every week in the new year. I’m signing up.

I know I did a short story every week for a year back in 2007/2008, and even sold a couple of those stories. I tried again a few years later, then again a few years after that and failed. This time, there will be a community of writers involved in the challenge on Cat’s Discord server, so hopefully that will help keep me focused. If you’re one of my writer friends and you’ve made it this far into my blog entry, what are you thinking of doing in 2023?

On a very random note, there doesn’t seem to be a way to download to my computer music I’ve purchased, ripped, and uploaded to Google’s YT Music service. This is extremely annoying. Before Google made the incomprehensible decision to get rid of Google Music, there was a way to do this. Now there is not. I’m really kind of upset about this.

‘Tis a squeeeeeee-ish Holidailies!

Today’s entry in the Episcopal Advent Calendar (Bless) reads, “Make sure to pick up an extra present or two — a nice candy sampler or a warm pair of slippers or pajama pants, just in case you have extra friends or guests drop by. Ask God to bless those who travel and those who may be alone in the coming days. Take some bottled water and sports drinks over to your local community cold weather shelter. They will be extra glad to have that during the winter months.”

I really ought to start reading these in the mornings instead of 9:30 at night when I am writing up this blog post. Sacramento, like the rest of the country, is experiencing unseasonably cold temperatures this winter season, and there are warming stations set up. I wish I’d thought earlier to pick up some water or sports drinks for them when I was at the grocery store earlier. The poor and the homeless are often on my mind, in a sort of “There but for the Grace of God go I…” sense, but not much more.