Rainmorning

It's morning. It's raining. I haven't written a single word in two days, which is unusual for me lately-- since the beginning of June I've been either paper journalling or writing here basically everyday. I might miss one but not two until now.

Angus is away at Shambhala till Monday night/Tuesday morning. I'm left free, untethered-- with no one to know or care where I am or what I do except myself. Work has been stressful lately, there have been deadlines and funny things to do that aren't within the normal realm of wandering around and tending things. Now I've been unceremoniously slid into a long weekend of my own making, too busy to see it coming until now-- I open my eyes in bed alone and it's raining and I'm accoun
Except myself.

I have a lot to do today. I've been neglecting my rattery far too much; I need to clean some cages and run a baby up to meet her new owner, but also update my website some and answer some emails (Sarah-- yours is among them). There's also farmer's market and I'd dearly like to make chicken soup with one of the chickens in my freezer. This weekend I am supposed to spend some significant time with the Writer watching a bunch of West Wing as well, but what with one thing and another this may get whittled to just some time.

There's been a fair amount of stuff on my mind lately. I'm navigating my life fairly well right now, but I'm encountering some half-familiar waters in the realm of friendship and, um... I guess the term is 'romance'... that are murky to me. I can't see through them into either people's intentions and behaviour or into the future. I realise you can never really see into the future, but sometimes you get a general idea.

I should believe that the future is all change; I should believe that everything will be different in awhile, because, well, it will be. This part of my life has set up such a lovely and strong holding pattern, though, that I can almost believe in continuity.

Last night I went for dinner with my mom. She was talking about the time she lived in Japan, about how when she'd been there four months and it was time to come back it was hard to leave. She had a home there, friends, habits, a circle of people and behaviours. She had left the very same thing here, had a home to go back to, all that-- but it was still hard to come back.

I didn't know how to tell her that, in my life, I almost always feel like I am leaving everything, all the time. Any time the wheel of behaviours and people turns a full circle and takes me back into familiar people and territory I am, not surprised, but grateful.

I don't know if other people have this experience with their own lives, but I suspect not often.

This is incoherent rambling, I have nothing real to say, but it feels good to write. Now to get some work done...

(no subject)

So last night I had all these plans for the weekend. Even this morning, I got up, first thing I did was come write, sorta muddled, but there were things on the go. I was going to have breakfast with Bob, go to the farmer's market with CrazyChris and posse, start chicken soup, drop off a rat downtown, watch West Wing into the night-- you know, plans. I was going to do some rat cages before breakfast.

Thing is, we've had this bad air warning from all the forest fires lately. The air's been disgusting. And I have a lot of elderly rats with respiratory infections. The thing about rats is, they're smart, they have feelings going on, and-- like people-- they care about stuff. When I got home last night Corn Pops was dead. I'd known she was on the way out for awhile.

But-- last night another one went, and Heat Lightning and Olympia are both in bad shape. I'm pretty sure that last night that particular rat was just waiting until I got home and said goodnight to die. When I'm particularly close with them they've been known to do that, I am particularly thinking of Gabe who was boarded at Lizzy's and waited till I showed up, waited till I picked him up, then died in my hands within half an hour. He was a very old man.

Four is a big toll for one week. Olympia might still surprise me, as might Heat Lightning, but... I've had a fairly smooth stretch so far. It's just time. And it's just not easy. It sneaks up on you, something with a lifespan of a couple of years, because that time passes so quickly and then suddenly the young breeding girls' cage has all had babies and the oldest girl in the cage is coming up on 2 and it's... time to say goodbye.

I really don't care about my weekend plans anymore. I'm not going for breakfast; I need to clean cages so the cagemates of the dead ones can get on with it; I always scrub down the whole cage immediately after a death, and who wouldn't? The internet is a weird and fragile medium, it's just words and words and words. Right now it makes me incredibly angry to get those thin signals next to the intense reality of the life and death things I am engaging in, even just next to the smells and feels and sounds of the rattery. That's not the world and I don't want it right now.

Back to the rats.