#IWSG JULY 2018 CHECK-IN – WHAT AN AIRHEAD

It wasn't until about the middle of June that I realized I'd missed that month's #IWSG check-in. I've been living alone for so long, that it's easy to lose track of days and apparently, months. So, as I was shuffling around trying to figure out what it was that I had missed, it finally came to me in the middle of the month; AHA! I missed June's check in. Blargle. I've been trying to get back into the habit of writing again, but with one thing and another, stuff with finances and all, it just is hard for me to get back in the rhythm. Poor Alex Cavanaugh must wonder if I'm coming or going.

Never mind goals and such; I just need to re-develop that habit of sitting down every day and writing. I'm trying to find part-time work and have focused quite a bit on that, but I still should be able to manage writing with that; provided I ever get hired.

This is really no excuse, but one of just pure empty-headedness and my inability to focus at times. I think I'm too easily distracted by shiny things or things that move. I don't understand why other adults can manage this all fairly well, yet I'm a mess on two legs. Oh well, I have to occupy some space on the number line of humanity. It's not quite 0, but closer to a 3 or 4 at times. I then wonder, if I'm getting too damned old to learn new tricks, but I don't really believe that. I think I'll start leaving post-it notes on the ones I pasted up on the wall last May. Well, maybe I should take those down first! Happy #IWSG-ing!

#IWSG – July 2017 Check in – Depression Really Ain't All That

I'm not going to start this with the usual organ recital of how I had an essential tremor episode, landed in the hospital, came out and got the Plague that everyone had for about 40 years it seemed, but was closer to 7 weeks and then had my cell phone stolen, and then I went to bed depressed for two months, until I got sick of my own pitifulness and drop-kicked my ass out of bed. We've all been there in one form or another, and my particular pity-part seems to be “I suck, hate myself, never did anything good, am a rotten person and cannot do anything well...” What horseshit.

Any one who has to deal with mental illness goes through this cycle and we know that things will get better. I'm at my best when I'm fighting for something I believe in, or if I have a job to do. Simple stuff; easy-peasy. And I've got the tools to take me to next step.

Anyway, it's time for me to move on to the next step and get on with my life. Symphony rehearsal starts in about 7 weeks and I've been approached by NTI, a company that provides work-at-home jobs for people with disabilities; the extra money will help.

I NEED to start writing again too. When I'm really creative, it keeps the bats out of my brains and keeps me motivated. I'm sorry I just sort of dropped out of sight. Alex Cavanaugh and Juneta Key came looking for me, just as I was climbing out of that hole. Thanks, you two, and to any others who may have sent emails I missed, thanks to you as well! I know you care! I hope everyone has a productive #IWSG month!

#IWSG JULY 2016 – CHECK-IN – ALEX'S QUESTION AND AN ANSWER

A few weeks ago, Alex Cavanaugh sent around an email to all #IWSG participants and suggested that he was going to “spice things up a bit” by asking a question for all of us to answer during the following month's check-in and for his first question, he picked a good one: “What's the best thing anyone has ever said about your writing?”

I have a great answer and it was also said to me by my mentor regarding my viola playing and it's quite an achievement, I think. But, before I answer it, I have to kind of explain the process of getting there.

We all start out learning the basics; what's excepted in music and writing and what is strictly forbidden. We learn the rules and build a foundation upon which to build our craft. Once we've done that, we then look to, or read other people that we admire and study their technique and we sort of pick and choose what we like about their practicing of their particular art, and discard what we don't care for.

We're starting to come into our own as individual artists and we start going down paths to see what works and what sucks. I've been down many a horrid path, before finding my way back to some kind of gold standard that works, yet still allows me to be me. My viola mentor worked with me one summer on the William Walton Viola Concerto, when I first came to Florida, and he had me change some of the fundamental ways I was playing and it freed me up and allowed me to express myself in ways I hadn't done before. I became a much better player and got out of my own way. When we finished at the end of the summer and I went through a run of the piece, he nodded his head, pleased. He said, “you took that piece and made it your own.” This is high praise. It wasn't William Primrose's Walton Viola Concerto, Or Patty McCarty's; it was MINE. Thank you, Ben. We worked hard on that!

This past April when we were doing the #A-to-Z Challenge, I wrote what I thought was just a little throw-away piece on the crazy entrepreneurs that pop up around here like Mayflies and disappear just as quickly. That piece can be found here. I was reading the comments, and Eden Mabee said, “Coming back here and reading these snippets in your distinctive and powerful voice reminds me of one of the real joys of blogging, Mary. Thank you.” I was just blown away. I write much the way I speak and think and often times I'm not sure I know where one leaves off and the other begins. But, again, I consider it high praise, because I've practiced enough writing/blogging and just fooling around with ideas that I'm not ill-at-ease, nor do I feel stilted or phony with it. It just happens; I'm a better “pantser” then I am a planner and all of that. But, I never realized that other people would see it as a powerful voice; I am so grateful for that; thank you, Eden!

So, to Eden and Ben, I thank you both for the love and encouragement you both have given me. I enjoy both playing and writing and am so fortunate to have the best of both worlds! 

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This is being published rather early, as I will be in Clinical Research all day tomorrow and at the Dentist most of the day on Thursday. I will be reading y'all's blog posts on Friday sometime. Have a Happy July #IWSG! 

#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE 2016 – LETTER ”M” FOR MAMA, CAT MATRIARCH, IN MEMORIAM

It's with sadness that I write this post and highly ironic, for I've sung Mama's praises to the skies since the day she allowed me to be her friend and it took a long time for that to come to pass. Mama died recently after a long and fruitful life. She originally adopted JC, and actually, it's been one year today, since JC's passing, so that too is ironic. I'm not a person who believes in coincidences, or anything of the sort, but she had been JC's cat, and I worried about her after he died. Alex said she's with Jim now. Yes, in some highly disordered form, I guess.

Speaking of highly disordered form; there is no perspective here, but near as I can figure out, I am behind here, on my bed, and that's a map of the us of a on my computer monitor. I have no clue what I was going for here.

Yet, she was so affectionate and even closer to me than she was to him. However, about six months ago, she came down with Distemper and being elderly and having lived most of her life on the streets, she never really came back from it. Outdoor cats have a hard life and she really could not adjust to becoming an all-the-way indoor cat, which is what I would have preferred and once JC died, I had to keep the doors locked all the time – even THAT didn't stop two idiots from getting in, while I was sleeping, woe unto them. Mama ended up crafting her own little pet door in a window screen, so she could come and go as she please. It was perfect.

She spent lots of time indoors, and followed me all around, and when I sat on the porch, she sat on the porch with me. She had two older sons that would come and visit; they looked like her, just so much bigger. Mama was never a big cat, but she had such distinctive markings; such as I had never seen on a cat before. I guess as old Leonardo da Vinci said, “The smallest of the felines is a masterpiece!”, I take it to mean both in the general and the specific. But all of the felines are, big and small.

Gotta love essential tremor. I was asked "is it REALLY essential, why is it called that?" I thought for 5 seconds and my head exploded. Some dumb neurological term. "Dystonia" is muscle cramps. Every picture I take looks like art from the Impressionist Period.

She had her funny ways and ways to drive me crazy. When she was healthier, she played a lot with her toys and would tear around my little apartment and she could literally bounce from the bed into the kitchen, or from the bed into the living room. A friend, Nancy Cooper sent her some artisanal catnip mice and she went crazy over those. One disappeared, as such things often do.

She could be a little con-artist, too, as most cats can be. I was trying to get her to eat a good dry food and for the longest time, she acted like she hated it. So, I was buying her Friskies and feeding her this stuff, which wasn't really that good for her. This went on for a couple of weeks and I cut back on the Friskies, because it was getting expensive. I walked into my kitchen one Sunday and here she was, happily munching on her dry food. She looked up and the look was priceless: “Oooh, I am soooo busted.” I turned and walked out of the kitchen and she came running after me, hollering about how lousy that dry food was.

This looks like a graphics "feature" in Runescape3, where everyone's head melted for a few weeks. Good times. Good times. She shook her head JUST as I clicked the clicker.

But, she had a really wonderful thing that she did. I have 2 towers made out of milk crates on either side of my blogging chair. One holds a board and a mousepad on the right, and the other, on the left, holds a land-line phone, or a laptop. I have two computers in front of me, side by side. Mama would jump up on the right-hand side and “rest” on my mouse pad, or hand and gradually creep her way up my arm.

She's just starting to work her way up my arm. . .

Now this is a cat that I couldn't even look at without scaring 4 years or so ago, and we had gotten to the point, where she had to have some part of her on me, at all times, while she was in the house, or would lie down between my feet. She also slept with me, sort of.

What she mostly did was walk around on my head, knead in my hair, or with her tiny, less-than-dime-sized feet, stand in my ear. Or I'd feel little feet walking all over my face. But, her most endearing quality was when she would sit on my mouse pad, and reach out with one dainty paw and make me look at her. She would look into my eyes and she seemed to show such love and gratitude that she had a home. I will never forget that, ever. Animals grace us with our present and I was gifted with that grace beyond anything I ever hoped to see from her.

. . . Slowly creeping upward. My only regret is that I never was able to get a decent shot of her reclining on my entire forearm. That was pretty funny. She will be missed. Rest well, Mama, my heart!

I haven't said much, only very close friends like Jeremy Doll who is a fellow Leader of SpiritZ and horse enthusiast and all-around animal lover and such a good person, and Alex Cavanaugh and my Aunt Lande. “She was such a nice cat.”, Jeremy said. And that she was. In all the time she was with us, she never scratched, or bit and never got angry or irritated, she was just such a wonderful being. It was hard for me to fathom that someone had abused her, but she was blind in her right eye, and it wasn't from a cat-fight. I know what that looks like. She would occasionally get scared of the kids playing next door and hide behind the toilet and I'd go and take her some sardines.

Alex and I knew she was going to die and I was in West Palm Beach when it happened. My better 2/3, was all for packing up and driving to Tampa, when Alex called. I thought on it for a while, but said, “No. The offer is so lovely, but it's okay. You care. That is all that matters.” I called Alex back and he agreed. She was put lovingly to rest and will never be forgotten. The really wonderful thing is this; Her progeny gave birth to some more of her progeny, and I will have two little great x infinity grandbabies to keep me busy. Kittens are fun, but these will be indoor kittehs, except for playdates with Oso!

#ROW80 1ST QTR 2016 – POST1 – GOALS

This is gonna be one of those “goals, schmoals” kinda posts, because Jim died last May, and other than playing in the symphony, practicing and playing lots and lots of Runescape and making sure I have a viable clan (we will be eleven years old this month), I just really haven't felt like doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I know that grieving takes time and that we all grieve in our own way, but this is a bit different.

Jim was not the love of my life, nor had we been together all that long, but he was a dear and cherished friend; someone I met when I was homeless and we took damned good care of one another. We recognized the humanity in one another, although we were worlds apart. He came from a very bucolic and rough background; worked all his life and could barely read, but he had common sense and compassion. A rarity seen in this world. He had been treated very badly by his spouse and ended up in a place he never belonged and had no way to cope with it. He was healthy enough when I met him, but there was a deep sadness there, we all could see. All I could do was mitigate it for him and make his final days, days of fun and laughter and let him know that he had friends around him who did love him.

When someone close to you dies, I don't think you can't help but reflect on all the other losses in your life and there have been so many in mine. I am alone, and there are times when I think I cannot bear the loss of one more friend, one more acquaintance, see the name of someone I may have known tangentially without completely losing it, but I'm not built that way, just as I am not built to knuckle under to any kind of force, or sickness, or malaise or illness of the mind. I am so much like my mother, but on steroids, in that sense. I possess strengths I didn't even know I had; but, I am alone. As was my mother. So, I guess it is how we are made and our destiny. The fault lies in our stars.

For my part? I was treated horribly, as has been discussed in this blog by an ex-husband, when I was at the very least, at my most vulnerable. Screaming at me to "get a goddamned job!" when I was totally blind, with congestive heart failure, I had to endure his horrendous insults, making no secret of the fact that he had a girl friend and accusing me of murdering a sick and dying feline. This is just the tip of that ice berg. I fled the home, knowing that I would have to in all likelihood take a lesser settlement. I still cannot see well enough to drive and although I can play, I cannot play as much as I would like to, because I cannot drive. I have a motor disorder, likely exacerbated by his treatment, akin to PTSD and my life is diminished due to his greed and his need to stick his dick in any old thing. The irony is that Bill Nunnally works in a Social Worker-type environment for Teri Saunders at HeartlandforChildren.org, yet he will have little to do with the “clients”. When he was interning, I did much of the running around to see the young girls when they were released. You forgot about that, didn't you, Lithia?

I have no agenda in releasing all of this information other than setting the record straight. I had my faults as well. I drank too much. Who wouldn't. That shit ended, when I left the homestead, but I never pretended to be something I wasn't. But this post isn't about that; it's about goals.

Right now, I'm not sure, where I am. I have been editing the original posts that I wrote for “Homeless Chronicles in Tampa” when I created the blog and I would like to publish those as an e-book. I've thought about dabbling in some fiction, but that is hard for me, and I'm not really creative enough to come up with some of these great plots, like Alex Cavanaugh, orJemima Pett or Damyanti G. So, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I do know that I need to write more, as I did in the early days of #ROW80, when Andi-Roo first suggested I get into this, so I'm going to go back to what works.

Write a post a day, see what happens. It can't help but sharpen my writing craft and maybe along the way, I'll come up with some ideas for flash fiction or something. Who knows?