Now that Game of Thrones is on hiatus, many eager fans are going through withdrawals. I’ve developed a handy guide to help you get through this troubling time. Refer to this any time you start shaking from your lack of seeing people burned by dragon fire or a week without seeing Jon Snow’s butt.

• Begin and end every conversation with “Winter is Coe-ming.” The middle of every conversation should be your best dragon screech.

• Replace all work emails with tiny calligraphy-written notes scratched with a quill on tiny scrolls delivered by ravens.

• Adjust your meals. Instead of spaghetti, make your family Indeterminate Meat-like Soup served out of a wooden slop caldron. It should go without saying that it should be served with mulled wine, a bottle of mead served in a lambskin flask, a pitcher of ale, a giant loaf of bread and a single dragon egg.

• Make up a language and insist your family learn it if they want to communicate with you.

• Defend your cube or office at work by creating an improvised yet fully functional trebuchet. Fire it at Ken repeatedly whenever he approaches needing something. Ugh. Ken.

• Never go anywhere without some weird disembodied bronze hand affixed to your cowl. It should go without saying you should have multiple cowls by now.

• Stare into fire at every opportunity, taking care to only burn the blood of kings to properly see the visions.

• If building a working trebuchet is beyond your skills, simply create a zombie strongman that stands and growls whenever anyone approaches. Especially Ken.

• Legally change your name to The Three Eyed Raven. Whenever anyone asks you about it, be very vague and emo as if you don’t quite understand it yourself but you feel cool now and can become birds or something.

• Change one of your children’s chores to “Emptying the filth bucket.”

• Easily create your own dragons by walking into your husband’s funeral pyre you started by burning an enslaved Lhazareen priestess who failed to save your husband after he was wounded taking her village with his hoard of blood riders. Don’t forget your three petrified dragon eggs!

• Without your spouse’s knowledge, trade in your vehicles for horses. If they protest, silence them in your new language.

• Touch a bunch of weird-looking trees for no reason.

• Whenever your spouse asks you to attend a wedding of someone you dislike or don’t know, shout “NICE TRY WALDER!” and barricade yourself in your basement crypt.

• Use duct tape to adhere 200 butter knives to your supper chair. Each night scheme against your spouse for right to sit in it.

• Command an army of frozen zombies.

• Solve all familial disputes by each of you declaring one of your relatives your “Champion” and tricking them into fighting each other to determine the winner of your argument.

• Go ranging at least once per week.

• Whenever you go to a party, insist your boyfriend/girlfriend announce your presence with a powerful name that takes two breaths to finish. Mine is: “Kelly ThunderBalls of the House Van De Walle, First of His Name, the Unbathed, King of the Porcelain Throne and Keeper of the Remote, Lord of the Ford Fusion, Breaker of Wind and Father of the Babbler and the Unlistening.” Or as my wife shorthands it, “No, I’m Not Saying That.”

• Begin your children in combat lessons starting with swords and working up to horseback arrow-shooting.

• Become known for something in your neighborhood, which you now refer to as your “realm.” For example, buy all the bread at the local grocery store and become a grain trader. Defend your grain with your dragons.

• When the snow begins to fall, set 400 sharpened spears outside your garage to ward off white walkers.

Hopefully by following this guide you’re able to make it through an unknown number of winters before the next season starts. At the very least try not to let a tall man dump liquid gold on your head. Talk about embarrassing.

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Kelly Van De Walle can be reached at vandkel@hotmail.com or via flashback by gently stroking a weird-looking pine tree or something. Follow Kelly on Twitter @pancake_bunny for tips on how to avoid being kiss poisoned by your sworn enemies.