All By Myself, Letter I

I did a search for 'All By Myself' and this is one of the first images that came up. Clicky to find the site I took it from.

Dear. Mr. B.

So, you’ve been gone for a few hours. Since I haven’t seen you since you left me at work this morning*, I can say that, effectively, you’ve been gone for eight hours and forty six minutes [according to the time displayed on the Magic Thinky Box, at any rate]. I spent eight of the hours working, and in between customers and the power going out briefly and the other assortment of tasks that usually add up to My Day In The Workplace, I spent a lot of time thinking about how much it was going to suck going home to your absence. When I wasn’t thinking about how much it was going to suck, I was thinking about how weird it was going to be. When I wasn’t thinking about how weird it was going to be, I was probably thinking about the fish, or the sandwich that I had for lunch [that was also fish!].

Anyway, I thought I would write you some letters while you’re away, and then post them in a very public venue for all the world** to see before you are even able to access a computer to read them yourself! HA. I’m awesome like that.

So, the power went out. For like twenty five seconds. Or something. It was just long enough for everyone in the shop to register that something had changed in the atmosphere. The power buzzed out just as I knocked empty one of the espresso filters. It was timed so well I thought that maybe there was a Store Power button on the piece of super-dowelling we strike the filter wands against. I didn’t really think that, but I did have enough time to say[ in an very amusing way], when everyone in the store turned to look at me [at least, that’s how it felt, as I was the only person behind the counter], “I didn’t do it”.

And then the power came back on, and oddly, the gloomy weather that had been plaguing us all morning was gone. I hadn’t noticed the weather change before power outage, but afterwards, it was definitely blue skies. It rained more later on in the afternoon, though.

A couple of hours later, my boss was talking about all the things that got messed up because of the power outage that we hadn’t stopped to consider. I mean, I fixed the time on the microwave, which is easy peasy, but we didn’t register for two or three hours—as it got hotter and hotter in the store—that something was wrong. That something being that when the power went out [or perhaps came back on] it snapped the breaker for the store’s AC off.

My boss also pointed out that no one had weighed anything on the scale since the power outage either, since it wasn’t zeroed out properly. I informed him that I had weighed coffee, but since I couldn’t get it to zero out, I just used my brain maths. He laughed at me, and said, “When in doubt, turn the machine off and back on.”

I let him know that I felt around for the on/off switch but since I couldn’t feel it, gave up. He laughed at me again, which, though I was speaking the truth, was the intended result.

Throughout this exchange, a customer had been standing by, waiting for us to get him a half pound of coffee beans. He chose now to come into the conversation, and the following short exchange occurred:

Customer: “So, we shouldn’t send you on the next mission to Mars, eh?”***

Me:”I don’t want to go to Mars anyway. I like my planets to have more atmosphere.”

Cust:”No doubt! It would pretty boring. Sure you’d be digging in Martian dirt, but you’d still just be digging dirt.”

I was disappointed he didn’t get my clever joke. Then again, I’m sort of used to people not getting my jokes. Maybe I’m too subtle? That’s probably it.

The red planet I won't be visiting due to its lack of discos and coffee bars. And air.

Anyway.

It was after that conversation that I decided that writing these little letters to you might be fun. I didn’t think I’d remember about my stupid joke by the time you got back, and I wanted to tell you about it. I don’t know how much you’ll feel like sitting long enough to read these once you’re home though. We’ll see. I’ll try not to write one every day.

Once I got home from work, I played with Sunday for a bit, and then came inside. The filter was making a funny noise. It still is. I took the sponge off the filter thinking that if I rinsed it that may help, but it didn’t. Miss Ann is coming over when she gets back from hanging out with her family to look at it for me, since I know nothing about fish tank filters. Also, I’m worried about the Froggy Doo. That doesn’t have to be his name, it’s just what I’ve been calling him when I’m talking to the tank. His one knee on his back leg is bright red, and he’s not swimming very well. I hope he’ll be okay. Miss Ann is going to look at him too, although I don’t know how much knowledge she has about dwarf aquatic frogs.

I figured that it was suitable though, since this is my first day home alone, that a bunch of things would go wrong with the one thing in the house I have the least knowledge and experience with.

Now it’s been [effectively] nine hours and fifteen minutes since you left me. It’ll only be, what? Sixteen more days until you’re back—give or take a couple.


Thinking of you,

Miss S. =^.^=


P.S. I’m not doing any dishes tonight, but I might dust something. I also might not.


*Although this will probably become clear as you continue reading, when I say ‘left me’, I mean that literally—he drove me to work, ate a muffin with me while I had a healthy rice krispie square, and then left after saying goodbye and giving me a hug and a kiss. I don’t mean ‘left me’ as in ‘Bitch, I’m dumping your stank ass’, or anything nasty like that. He’s out of town for work.

**’All the world’ is a phrase that here means “the five people that may or may not read this”.

***You know, I’m not actually sure what that had to do with anything, but I’ll roll with it. Just like I did when it happened.

This is Squee.


She died of kidney failure last Friday.

Well, that isn’t entirely accurate. She was diagnosed with severe kidney failure last Friday. She died of the injection I paid the vet to give her since the only feasible way she was going to get better was with a kidney transplant.

I spent a lot of time crying. So did Mr. B. He’s man enough to admit that he cries, and it’s one of the things I love about him.

I'm going with you!

A week ago today, Squee was fine. She’d lost a considerable amount of weight, but the weight loss coincided with us allowing her to be an outdoor cat, which she had been determined to be her whole life. I remember her escaping at the townhouse, where I could have been evicted for allowing my cats outside, and struggling to convince her to get back in the house. It was a game to her—she would run to the next yard, and once I had left my yard, walked around to the neighbour’s gate, and carefully opened it, she would slip back through the fence into our own yard. Sometimes, this game would last for an hour.

Other times, she would watch you approach and allow you to pick her up with nothing more than an indignant meow before purring like a maniac.

So when she was suddenly skinny, we just assumed that she was more active and happier to be outside.

A week ago today, she was her usual inquisitive self. Some friends came over to pick up some cinder blocks from our driveway, and there was Squee, intent as ever to make sure that whatever humans came near her domain were aware of her and were her friends. She wanted to be everyone’s friend. And she insisted that everyone was her friend as well. She was one of the friendliest—and chattiest—cats that I’d ever met.

Squee gets all the cards and all the tokens and all the lovins too.

A week ago today, I distinctly remember her cruising around on our friend’s shoulder, only to climb to Mr. B.’s shoulder, as was her usual wont. When she was a kitten, my ex-boyfriend trained her to leap to his shoulder from the giant cat. When she was a kitten, she was never satisfied being held, she’d always scramble to your shoulder. And she was always looking out for higher ground. Sometimes higher ground was the top of a door, sometimes higher ground was my head, if she felt she could balance there. As she grew larger, she settled for the highest shoulder.

A week ago tomorrow, we realised that she wasn’t herself. She was really lethargic, and the way she meowed worried me. I resolved to take her to the vet the next day.

A week ago two days from now, I had to make what’s probably the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in my adult life so far. I choose to take her life and end her suffering, rather than draw out treatments that the veterinarian told me there was only the tiniest of chances she would recover from anyway.

Wednesday: fine. Friday: buried.
Just like that.

Squee and Alika, cuddling.

When I was sixteen, my mother got me a kitten. I named her Kazul, after a dragon in a series of YA books that I still adore re-reading. When I was nineteen and living on my own, I adopted my neighbour’s cat, only to discover that Lily wanted to eat Kazul. This was a problem since Lily was nearly twice Kazul’s size. So when a different neighbour was giving her kitten away, we did a bizarre swap where I took the young kitten (only five or six weeks old) and she gave away Lily, who was only six months old herself, to some other friends of hers. I got a tiny kitten that was less threatening than Lily, and the other people still got a friendly young cat. I named that kitten Alika.

A year later, Kazul died. She was always getting sick, and no one could ever tell us what was wrong with her. I could draw some parallels between how Kazul was right before she died and how Squee was, but the truth is, I have no idea what was wrong with Kazul. I was devastated. Kazul was my first pet ever.

Squee and Gollum, doing their best impression of a yinyang.

Later that year, Alika gave birth to a litter of kittens. I gave the kitten that I wanted to keep for myself to my mother, thinking that way I’d still be able to hang out with him. I found a home for the other two kittens, only it turned out that one of those homes was only going to be temporary and the girl was going to be leaving the country in less than two years. I couldn’t in good conscience give her a kitten knowing he would be abandoned a short time later. I wasn’t able to find another home for him, and that’s how I ended up with Gollum.

When I got my pet rat, I asked for a rat, and the lady at the pet store said ‘here’. There was a whole bunch of them, but instead of being offered a choice, it was made for me. And, you know, Nez was great, so there’s no complaint there.

When we got our puppy, it was a stroke of luck. We found out about some Rottweiler/blue heeler puppies that were being given away for free. By the time we found the number and called, there was one left. So we took her.

I love all my pets dearly, and the fact that I didn’t get to pick Kazul, Alika, Gollum or Sunday from a litter or a pound doesn’t change how much I love them. I adore all my pets intensely, past and present, regardless of how I came by them.

Basket case...er... cat....

But there’s something to be said for taking the trip intentionally, knowing that you are going to have to choose one adorable kitten over another adorable kitten. That’s exactly what I did in order to get Squee. After Kazul died, but before I knew Alika was pregnant, I decided I wanted another kitten. I thought Alika might like the company. So I found someone who was giving away kittens, got a friend to drive me (and it was nearly an hour to find this place), and then I sat and played with a whole litter of kittens. I was the first person to see them. It was difficult, and I was there for nearly an hour—fortunately the guy and my friend were both patient with me—before I realised that Squee was THE kitten I had to take home with me.

It’s not that losing her is more upsetting than losing any of my other pets has been or would be. There’s just this strange added something to that loss—knowing that she was the one I had to have, she was the choice I made—and now she’s gone forever.
I was expecting years of watching Sunday licking her ears inside out. Years of her meowing at me when I poked her belly or touched her paw. Years of her insisting that she was more interesting than the laptop or whatever book I was reading. Years of watching guests nearly jump out of their skin when she decided to jump from the floor to their shoulder with no warning. Of hearing her victory meow when she caught her pink mouse in the middle of the night. Of her waking me up by purring next to my head. Of her co-opting bags and clothes to sleep on.

All the times I didn’t bother to search for the camera because I was expecting years more in which to catch her doing whatever it was again.

These were some of the moments I wasn't too lazy to catch.

Squee
June 2001 - May 29, 2009

Opinions Unsolicited: Need by Carrie Jones

I finished reading this last night.

I liked the story, mostly.

I liked the characters, mostly.

I really love the cover.

The premise: Zara is shipped off to live with her grandmother in a small Maine town after her stepfather's death [by heart attack, which Zara had the displeasure of witnessing] has left her an emotional void.

Over and over again throughout the book, I was pulled out of the narrative. It's a good story, but I have issues with certain elements. Sometimes the issue was word choice - for several pages at a time I would find the same word being used to describe different actions. Often I was frustrated with how none of the adults behaved as adults.

I was also frustrated with the way everyone knew everyone else. I understand its a small town, and that people know each other. But Zara was the only stranger here, and instead of this giving me, as the reader, an impression of her outsider status, it gave me the impression that it was done for convenience's sake.

And I kept finding that particular niggling annoyance over, and over again. Half-hearted explanations for important plot elements; overly simplistic character arcs.

I used to love reading YA fiction. Maybe I need to move past that, because I'm finding myself having similar frustrations over and over again.

I liked the book. I wouldn't have finished it otherwise. I loved Zara's voice, particularly Zara when she was detached and broken. It was brilliantly done, and there were many observations she made in that state that resonated with me. I've been depressed, and I related very well to the thought processes and the skewed outlook, and also the quiet re-awakening of her more normal self throughout the story.

I liked Betty, her grandmother, even though she sounded more like a teenage older sister than a grandmother. I liked the mythology within the novel, even though I felt like it needed some extra flesh to hang from its bones.

I liked the overall story, even though I was able to predict all the 'twists' save one or two. I felt as though it were an okay story that could have been mind-blowing if someone had asked the author some hard questions during the editorial process.

I'd read more of her books, or at least, more following these particular characters to see how things evolve. Carrie Jones didn't win me over with Need, but she piqued my interest enough that I'd give her a second chance.

Opinions Unsolicited: Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr

I started reading it yesterday afternoon. I finished it sometime after midnight. That was with a break to visit with my neighbours and a dinner break as well.
I tend to do that with Melissa Marr’s novels. I just find myself so drawn into the story that the idea of putting the book down before I know what happens next is a vile, loathsome thing.

Mr. B. Probably thinks that my retreat into the pages of a book that is nigh impossible to distract me from is a vile and loathsome thing. I’m fairly certain you could set me on fire, and I wouldn’t notice until my hands were burning and thusly could no longer hold the book.

But anyways, we’re talking about Fragile Eternity here, not my propensity to get so wholly absorbed in words on a page that I stop responding to the world at large.
The third instalment of Marr’s Faery series centers around Seth Morgan, who is, if you haven’t been keeping up with the series, the boyfriend of Aislinn — the teenage girl turned faery Queen of the Summer Court who is trying to balance having a somewhat normal human life with being the ruler of a troupe of the very beings she spent her entire life avoiding at all costs.

In Fragile Eternity, Seth is dealing with being stuck between two worlds. He’s too human to be a part of the Faery world, and he knows too much about faeries and their world to walk away and return to a purely human state of affairs. Add to the mix the coming of summer, which dials up the magical imperative his girlfriend is burdened with to be constantly near the Summer King, and things aren’t looking too keen for poor Seth.

I really enjoyed this instalment. In Wicked Lovely, we saw Seth through Aislinn’s eyes: he was her rock, her confidante, and he was perfect. I appreciated him then, even if we were only given a one dimensional view through Aislinn’s love-tinted glasses. Everyone should have someone that they feel is there for them, no matter what, and Seth was undeniably there for Aislinn.

In Fragile Eternity, we are given the reverse: we see Aislinn and how she’s changed through Seth’s eyes. He’s still there for her as much as he can be, but due to his fragile human state, it can’t be as often as he’d like. We see his frustration with Aislinn’s growing power and how he feels like he’s losing her, we see his envy of the faeries of her court, and his jealousy at Keenan’s machinations. He’s maddeningly, woefully human surrounded by magic and power that he can’t hope to touch or understand.

Until he realises that there is hope, after all.

It makes for a wonderful story.

I couldn’t help but feel terrible for Seth, but I also felt terrible for Aislinn. She was born human, and has been at this faery business for less than a year by the time the novel starts. She has to learn that she can’t behave like the teenage girl she still thinks that she is, she has to discover that those who were her friends while she was a fledgling faery are only her friends now if it doesn’t interfere with the needs of their respective courts. And Keenan’s misdirection and manipulations help to ensure that he is the only ‘friend’ that Aislinn has left. It’s unfortunate that Aislinn trusts Keenan so much, but with no one to give her solid reasons not to trust him, she can’t really be faulted for wanting to believe he is a good person.

Which, on occasion, he is. But not nearly enough to make up for all the shady things he says and does for the ‘benefit’ of his Court.

I can’t wait to read the fourth instalment.

1,175

That is the number of words that I managed to pump out about my salamander. It is a satisfactory number, although I wish I could have reached it sooner.



Of course, there is editing to be done yet. I'll wait until the whole of The Project is completed before worrying about editing though, unless I find that editing needs to happen to unstick me should I get stuck in the writing process. But since the salamander doesn't have that much bearing on the remainder of the story being told, it should be okay lying fallow for a while.

I think, despite my muchly diminished energy supply [when will I ever learn that caffeine is well and truly NOT my friend?], I will plot out the urchin's story tonight. I have a name for the urchin, but I'm not in love with it anymore. So I will have to think on that some.

Or I'll just use the name that I have. Maybe it will re-grow on me once I'm actually using it within a body of text.

Here is the list of things I have not blogged about in the past couple of weeks despite having thought about it profusely:

-Shadow Hare, Cincinnati’s own superhero. I wish I was joking about this. Google his MySpace page.

-Wolverine, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I was going to review it and segue that into a commentary about the above note.

-How overworked I’ve been feeling. Still working six days a week. Still ridiculously tired.

-I baked some biscuits of sugar and cinnamon-y deliciousness. It’s been awhile since I wrote a kitchen experiment.

-I, as of yesterday, finally finished writing the Salamander segment of The Project. I haven’t met my word goal once this month, but at least I have made that progress. I am proud of it.


Perhaps I will get back to blogging regularly. I do enjoy it when I am doing it. I will attempt to be more diligent in the future.

My apologies, dear Reader(s),

The Mummabear breezed into town for an extended visit.

We got the spare room all set up for her [we have even managed to acquire a nice double bed for the spare room!] She was here for thirteen days.

It was an excellent visit, but not at all conducive to things like Doing My Morning Pages, Working on The Project, or Keeping the Blog Updated.

We took her back to the airport this morning at ridiculously early o'clock, and then I went to work for six thirty. Around five this evening I got the e-mail saying she made it home safely.

I'll miss having her around, although I'll appreciate having my alone time back. I felt guilty trying to work on my writing while she was here, but now there's no excuse to procrastinate anymore.

As of tomorrow, I should be re-implementing my little routine, and we'll see how it goes this time around.

The salamander is still in the brain, and the poor little guy is dying to get out.

That might just have to do with the searing of my brain due to the consumption of a sandwich that had been spread a little too generously with dijon; I imagine that little salamander is somewhat dehydrated now.