So close, and yet...

::Cue Days of Our Lives music::

When we last left our heroes, MeMum was in a quantum state between being able to communicate online and not being able to communicate online... Telstra had taken twenty-four hours and counting to get back on a one-hour call-back... and Mayhem had forgotten all his Home Ec. crap at school.

Your humble Author is still poor. That $30 has to spend five business days in transit between PayPal and my bank accounts for no apparent reason.

And speaking of no apparent reason: Telstra rang me at last, yesterday afternoon. I called them about the problem at about 3PM on Sunday. They called me at about 4:30 on Tuesday.

Longest. Hour. Ever.

They tried to sell MeMum a Premium Account Service, which works exclusively on the don't-fix-don't-pay principal. But it will of course include automatic fees that MeMum can't afford. I don't know about you, but this stinks incredibly badly of extortion.

I'll be on to the Ombudsman about this nonse very soon, don't you fear.

Meanwhile, I'm having a flare-up on the cusp of a personal victory.

I've been editing my Instants into a gigantic master file so Beloved can add a little feature to my pro page and maybe make it stand out a little from all the other authors out there. The feature? Click a button, get a random Instant.

And I'm only a few stories away from beating Scheherazade, too.

My master file has the official count, and despite numerous instances of can't-math, won't-math, it's only one off of the current total. The numerals are going to go a little wonky, soon. Do not panic. It's just me adjusting for a past error.

Because I have nearly finished the master file, I will be rushing to catch up with my current total. Which means nearly twice the usual amount of copying and pasting. An effort that has increased lately, because I'm also updating my latest Year of Instants. Which means I'm actually doing four times the usual amount of copying and pasting.

Which, in turn, means that my wrists are going to hate me before lunchtime. I'll have to take a break from Undertale, but that's also cool. I couldn't beat Undyne, anyway. Might have to get Mayhem to do that for me.

And on top of all of this, I still have to do my daily five hundred words on my novel in progress.

I am going to be in pain. But the anxiety I'll get from not doing any of this will be worse, so pain it is.