I'm Back

Okay, first a few words on Multiple Sclerosis relapses: they really suck. I’d like to opt out now. Enough said there. I’m back, let’s get caught up.

When I left off, Darth Jingles had a collar on because she was injured in a cat fight. So while I was lying around hating life, a small black cat was shut up in my room with me going stir crazy. Misery loves company, right? No. She did recover and get the collar off before I strangled her. It was just in time for a series thunderstorms and rain showers to hit town and keep her locked inside longer. Since she was used to spending time walking all over me, and deciding my feeble attempts to bat her away were a signal that I wanted to play, she decided to grace me with her presence a little longer. Lucky me. There is nothing I enjoy more than having a cat pouncing on my toes with claws and teeth while I’m in a dazed never-land state. It makes for wild dreams. Particularly when I’ve been watching The Walking Dead.

On writing: I haven’t been doing much of that in the past few weeks although I have a collection of hastily scribbled notes that I now can’t read. Really. It’s like who taught this three year old cursive before she could color inside the lines? Anyway, I’m optimistic I’ll decipher enough to get the gist of these random nuggets of inspiration and file them away for use later. Or they could be useless. It could go either way.

That brings me to my muse. Imagine if you will a spindly woman with wild hair wearing an oversized cardigan and crystals around her neck, collecting herbs, and followed everywhere by a seemingly never-ending stream of cats. Got that picture in your mind? I’d be fine with a muse like that. She seems like a slightly crazy but creative sort. No, mine is the kind that sits in a coffee shop that pipes in the sort of music you don’t listen to, at a volume slightly too loud to be ignored, and won’t meet you anywhere else. She always has a coffee that’s half-finished and it’s just reaching the point where it’s the incorrect temperature so when you are finally making headway in any conversation with her, she sighs and gets up to go get another one because hers is suddenly undrinkable. Like anyone who hangs out in a coffee shop all frickin’ day would really have a problem with their coffee being slightly cooler or their ice melting. You learn to cope! And when she comes back from getting a new coffee, her attention is no longer on the wonderful idea she left with, it’s on that new purse or shoes she saw at the department store, or her nails need a fill, or her hairdresser is on vacation but she really needs her highlights touched up this week. That’s my muse and we’ve spent a lot of time almost communicating lately. (hence the pages of scribbled notes) We’ll see if anything comes of that.  

For those of you who don’t deal with muses, the above is something along the lines of getting a good idea then — oh look, a squirrel! That’s the real world equivalent. FYI. Oh, except every once in awhile, you get to write part of the idea down in lipstick on the mirror before you get attacked by the squirrel. But you can only find your favorite lipstick, and you have to write fast because you’re in a hurry – squirrel.

Now, I have to go decipher hastily written notes. Thankfully, they’re not in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, and there has been no actual squirrel attack. Although, if The Girl could catch one, she’d give domestication a shot. Heaven help us.