Ode to Suzie

Oh Suzie. Queen of Cats. Queen of the Torties. Gracious and capricious Ruler of the Beanbag.

You are a week dead today. 
Seven long days of tears and remembrances. Of shock at your sudden passing and anger at the senselessness of your death. 

We miss your rudeness, your strange didgerydoo miaowing at the window sills. We miss the way you pretended to bite when we tickled in the wrong place. Your little orange tipped right paw. 

We miss your total belief in your self, your right to be inside all day long, your right to get into the house before any of your human counterparts did.

You lie under the apple trees. In the sunniest spot in the garden, wrapped in a beautiful blue and silver sari with a decorated wooden cross that my husband (you thought you were his dog) made for you. 

You leave behind four desperately sad children and two adults and your tabby friend - Willow. Your love/hate relationship, now disbanded had left him lost, he miaows at the window, he peers in looking to find you. He hurls himself about my legs at the washing line for attention. 
Hard to think it was only last week that you and he were boxing on the window ledge. Sparring with little paws raised and now you lie sleeping under the apple blossom.

Sleep soundly my friend. We will meet again. 

Nasty Nicotene

Nasty, nasty, nasty, lovely, no, nasty fags. They will be the literal death of me. 

Bastards. Apologies for the bad language. But really there is no better word for the little feckers. They mock me. They wait in my husband's pockets late at night when no one is awake to see me sneak out the patio door (it's quieter) and quickly roll and light up leaning against the deck. Last night I saw a beautiful half moon that slid gleaming yellow from behind the midnight clouds. No one there but me and the bats to notice. 

But there I go again, making something lyrical out of a snatched nicotene moment on the deck . Later, when I had scrubbed my teeth and guiltily slipped into bed beside my snoring husband, I felt the disappointment, the lack of self respect. I blamed it on the few glasses of wine, the fact that my cat died last week (another post). I find I have lots of reasons to blame my lapses of good healthy behaviour.

Today I went for a two mile run. To be good. To blast oxygen into my lungs. And I think it did good. I felt energised. I'm writing aren't I? Why would I want a rotten cigarette in my mouth? 

Absolutely never, never, ever going to have a cigarette again.

Husband. Hide the damned bastards. Please.

My Husband's Hair

My husband's hair is coming along nicely. His visit to the hairdresser last year, precisely the day before my daughter's confirmation is now just a nightmarish memory. Yes, we still have the dodgy photographs and the kids can still recall the screams of horror when he walked into the kitchen looking like a shaved badger. But it's fading. 

Now we have curls, we have bounce and please God some time in the near future we will have something like this:

Afterall I have three months left until the Electric Picnic and I cannot have a short haired man at my side.

My personal favourite is a mix of Poldark and Childermass. 
Hmm. We'll see. 
I have time, I can rebuild him.




Well, a girl can dream can't she?

Procrastination.

Ok. It's been a while. The spirit is willing but the body is definitely weak. God, I am having such a problem getting down to serious writing. I have been editing. Ok, I'll be honest, I've been semi-editing. The story I have been editing has come to a standstill. I am at a complete loss as to what to do with two of the main characters that I have left them completely in limbo. This has to stop. 

One good thing came out of it though. I wrote a complete and finished (very little editing required) short story about the two characters stuck in limbo. It came to me whilst I was waiting on my roast potatoes to finish in the oven. Husband on the couch devouring the Sunday paper, kids running about the kitchen and coming and going outside. I sat down at the table with a half cold cup of coffee and scribbled a near complete story down in about ten minutes. 

It's short, a mere three pages, less than a thousand words but I have to say, I'm quite proud of it and it gave me the confidence to get back in the saddle so to speak.

Now, what to do with those two stubborn, and now complaining characters? I still hate the original story but there are good bits in there, if I can pull them out and shine them up. I think I can do something with it. 

Well, here's hoping.

Writing is definitely a discipline. I must make a specific time to write and stick to it. It's that simple. 

And yet it's not. It's a mental bloody torture. The thought of writing is in my head from when I crawl out of bed (angrily, most mornings, resentful of the fact that I have to make sandwiches and organise the kids to school) to when I hit the pillow. The only way to get it off my back is to sit down and tap the keys, scribble in the notebooks that I seem to leave in every room in the house. But most of the time it's like struggling through thick heavy mud, the message from brain to finger tips is constantly being re-routed or interrupted. Damn you facebook, Damn you twitter. Damn you youtube. 

 

Have to do more. Have to be more.

Have to stop watching my favourite bits of Poldark over and over again on my smart phone.