lucy24 - 7:47 am on Dec 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

It took another five minutes to shake himself loose from the daydream. He had last seen Pattie at her wedding two years ago-- just before he stopped wearing clothes, started working for himself, and went through a period he preferred not to remember.

He'd wasted enough of the day. It was time to start acting like someone who had bills to p--

Bills! Only then did he realize he had forgotten to demand a receipt. He had a feeling the oversight would come back to haunt him.

He returned to the computer and checked his e-mail, hoping to find something-- anything!-- that would allow him to turn down the project he had been offered last week. His first glance at the site had revealed a sprawling mess of hacks, patches and splices, overlaid on a design whose WYSIWYG editor been cutting-edge in 1998.

Worse, the prospective employer was impossible to please, a vengeful back-stabber and an incurable tightwad. He had never worked for her before, but knew the description was more than a nasty rumor. She his mother.