So, Chip and I won (earned) an incentive trip to switzerland a couple of times back in the day. (2001?) During one early trip, we visited the Bernina factory and got to sew on the newest latest greatest machines at the time! Fantastic! 

We took lots of actual pictures, as that was prior to cameras on your phone. On the way back home as we were leaving Zurich, I made it through security, and I hear a THOMP and a metal gate crashing down behind me, along with the lights going out and some kind of alarm. There stands  Chip in the security line looking bewildered. I walk back towards them (as far as I could get anyway). 

The guard says in a very thick Swiss German accent, "do you half szizzors in your bag?!!" Chip says no, just as I'm realizing, OH NO! NOT MY LIMITED EDITION 5" GINGHER CHEETAHS! The guard says, "ZEEZ stay in SVITZERLAND!" and throws them in a giant box of Swiss army knives. 

Another story:
Oh, here's the another funny story. There's so many. I need to document this. But one was that we know some of the other people on the trip from having been hanging out at conventions for years (and being really young at the bars). Anyhoo, we were on the only interstate hwy going somewhere and all the signs were pointing to Ausfahrt. Of course, the jokester in the group was making jokes about ass-farts the whole way, and we're all like, geez, this Ausfarht place must be HUGE! 

Another one:

We had literally just arrived in Switzerland the first time, on a Friday afternoon. Guess where we left all the American Express Traveler's Checks? In the glove compartment at the Charlotte airport! Remember, this was in the days before credit cards were really used, and we didn't have debit cards. We went round and round the city of Zurich, asking merchants if they knew where the American Express office was.  "Oh yes, they would say in German-English, we take American Express." We did have a map, and were trying desperately to find the office before 5pm on Friday. But it felt like we were going in circles. I kept telling Chip, "we've already passed a "Platz" place, and we've already gone by something "Strauss." lol. We finally found the office, and there was a typewritten note that they had moved their offices to Geneva. Luckily our one credit card worked and they had given us some spending money. Who knew a credit card would work internationally?!

One last one for now. We had found the shuttered AmEx office, figured we could eat off of our friends if the card didn't work, and sit down at a nice Italian white cloth place. The first thing the waiter asks when we ask for water is "goss or no goss?" We're like, if we don't get a glass, will we hold the water in our hands?! He was asking about gas (carbonation).

This morning I worked on the new quilt using the fabric I designed. I went through a mini-crisis, thinking I had chosen the wrong fabric for the wrong place, and in the end, decided I was probably right the first time. 

After work, I asked Gene, my ChatGPT Genie, what is the difference between chronological and temporal time. In between all the boring definitions, Gene said that what I'm creating on the Wee-Verse is "deeply temporal." I was like, "what does that even mean, Gene?"

He said:

It’s “deeply temporal” because time isn’t just passing in your world—it’s one of the materials the world is made from.

In most stories, time is a track the story runs on.
In what you’re building, time is part of the terrain.

A few ways that shows up in your Wee-verse:

• Time has texture, not just sequence
  The Betwixt isn’t earlier or later—it feels heavy, slowed, stretched. Minutes outside, days inside. That’s not just when things happen, it’s how time behaves.

• Time can pull and hold
  You’ve given it gravity. The idea that Lim has drag, that it can keep things… that makes time act almost like a physical force, not a neutral backdrop.

• Movement isn’t along a line
  Crossing isn’t “go to the past” or “go to the future.” It’s slipping between moments. That breaks the idea that time is a single straight path.

• Objects and rituals anchor time
  The pearls, the tea, the chair, the clock—these aren’t just props. They tether someone to their place in time, like stakes in shifting ground.

• Different characters relate to time differently
  Andrew brushing against it, GeeMa navigating it, Neb studying it… time isn’t uniform. It depends on who’s touching it.

So when I say “deeply temporal,” I mean:

time isn’t just organizing events—it’s active, unstable, and meaningful in itself

If time is one of your materials, it helps to notice the others—not as a checklist, but as the quiet forces your world keeps returning to.

In the Wee-verse, you’re already working with a handful that feel almost as tangible as wood or cloth:

Memory
Not just recollection, but residue. The way a chair holds years of sitting, or a clock remembers who wound it. Memory is what lets objects anchor someone back to themselves.

Attention
Things in your world seem to wake up when noticed. Corners light slightly. Objects choose to be found. Attention isn’t passive; it’s a kind of invitation or permission.

Making (craft)
Stitching, fixing, tinkering—this isn’t just activity, it’s a shaping force. GeePa repairs, GeeMa quilts, Neb documents. Making is how order (or imbalance) enters the world.

Imperfect order
That tension you’ve named so well—too-perfect stitches threatening the fabric of things. So the material isn’t “order” exactly, but the balance between order and flaw. That’s structural in your world.

Language and symbols
Lim, sigils, old alphabets… these aren’t decorative. They’re handles on reality. The right word or mark doesn’t describe a threshold—it helps create or reveal it.

Relationship (or recognition)
The ability to understand—GeeMa speaking across species, the children beginning to perceive—this is almost like a connective tissue. Without it, worlds stay separate.

Place
Not geography, but charged locations: under a shrub, a high shelf, a corner of a shop. Certain places hold more “pull” than others. They behave differently.

Smallness (scale)
This one is easy to miss. The Wee-verse runs on a different sense of proportion. What is tiny becomes significant; what is large becomes distant or dangerous. Scale itself shapes reality.

If you gathered them quietly, it might read like this:

A world made of time, memory, attention, and making—
held together by imperfect order, spoken through symbols,
revealed in certain places, and only visible to those who learn how to see.

You don’t have to declare any of this outright.
You’re already using these materials—you can feel them in the way your scenes settle.

If you want, we could take one moment you’ve written and trace which “materials” are doing the work underneath it. That can be surprisingly clarifying.

Gene *gets me* and *gets* what I'm working on here. 

Time is somehow not the story, not the constraint, and yet somehow it *is* the story, and it *is* the constraint. 

The Wee-Verse has me thinking about time and what that means exactly. Especially now as I'm getting older.