Tag: life

Well. Here We Are.

Hello, hello. It’s been a minute. Or possibly several minutes. Time has lost most of its meaning this past week and I’m choosing to blame the weather.

We’ve had the kind of Tasmanian winter days that feel less like weather and more like a personal opinion the sky has formed about you. Grey pressing down from all directions, rain that can’t decide if it wants to be dramatic or just persistently miserable, wind that rattles the old station house windows in a way that suggests the building has something to say and is working up to it. The cats — thirteen of them now, which is a sentence I am not yet fully at peace with — have been performing collective judgement from various soft surfaces. The geese have opinions. I’ve had very little motivation to argue with any of them.

I’ve also run out of my ADHD medication, which — if you know, you know. The scaffolding just quietly disappears and you’re left standing there blinking, vaguely aware that there was a thing you were going to do, possibly several things, possibly an entire career’s worth of things, and somehow none of them are happening. I keep meaning to fill the script. I will fill the script. This is me making a promise in public so I actually do it.

In the meantime I’ve been sleeping until what can only be described as the afternoon, waking up to find the morning has fully left without me, and spending the daylight hours doing a very convincing impression of someone who is resting intentionally rather than someone who has simply misplaced their operational software.

The author socials have slid. The Bella and Avery and Tara feeds that I had very carefully been nurturing back to life are sitting quietly on their respective platforms, not bothering anyone, probably fine. I’ll find them again. Right now I’m in the mode where I know the work is there and I know I’ll get back to it and I’m trying to be kind to myself about the gap rather than catastrophising.

Trying. Being kind to yourself is its own kind of work, it turns out.

The bright spot: the author copies of Almost Yours Again — Avery Beckett’s latest — arrived today, and tomorrow Bella Bruce’s Isolated is apparently on its way, which means by the end of the week this table is going to be significantly more stacked with books that have my words in them.

I held Almost Yours Again in my hands. A real physical object with a spine and pages and everything. I love it. I love it the way you love something you made when you weren’t sure you could, the way you love a thing that exists now when once it only existed in your head. I put it on the table and kept picking it up and putting it down and picking it up again. The cats remained unimpressed. Jo said it looked lovely. I cried a little, which is allowed.

And then, inevitably, the fear arrived alongside the love. What if nobody else loves it? What if the thing I made that feels precious to me lands in the world and the world just continues being the world, unmoved?

I don’t have an answer for that fear. I’m sitting with it. I expect most writers sit with it for the entirety of their careers, so at least it’s good company.

The other thing I’ve been sitting with — and this one is a different flavour of nerve-wracking — is an idea that’s been circling for a while. I’m working up to approaching the Community Progress Association about the possibility of putting together a small Writers Festival in town next year. Something local, something that celebrates Australian romance authors and the people who love them, something that fits the specific shape of where we live rather than trying to be a scaled-down version of something bigger somewhere else.

I haven’t done it yet. I’m in the screwing-up-courage phase, which for me involves a lot of internal rehearsal of conversations that may or may not go anything like how I’ve imagined them. But I think it’s a good idea. I think the town could hold it. And I think — if I can just get myself out the door and into the room — I might be able to make the case.

Watch this space. Or watch me continue to rehearse for another fortnight and then suddenly do it all at once. Either is possible.

— Suzy writing from the old station house, Tasmania, where thirteen cats currently disagree about who owns the good armchair

Frightful Weather, Small Consolations, and Amazon Being a Dragon

The weather today was, in a word, awful.

In more words: the rain was insistent and relentless and entirely without charm, the kind of rain that doesn’t have the decency to be dramatic about it and just settles in with its bags unpacked and its feet up, prepared to stay indefinitely. There was nothing delightful about any of it and I say that as someone who does not, in principle, object to rain. This was not rain you could enjoy from a window with a cup of tea. This was rain that was making a point.

I had to go to town anyway because groceries do not materialise simply because the weather is demoralising, and the drive was exactly as hairy as the sky promised it would be. I made it there. I made it back. The house was rewarded for this act of meteorological bravery with Subway for dinner, which is not nothing. Some days the consolation prize is genuinely consoling.

The cross stitch subscription box arrived, which is exciting and being treated accordingly — which is to say it’s sitting there looking full of potential while I decide the right moment to open it properly. These things deserve the right moment. I’ll know it when I find it.

In the meantime I have been making a colouring book.

This is for the Meandering Book Nook — the wandering bookshop project, for those just joining us — and I’m not entirely sure yet whether it will become a regular fixture or whether it will remain an occasional thing. My instinct says occasional themed colouring books are probably going to be a permanent feature of the Nook’s life, because they feel right in a way that is difficult to articulate but easy to act on. We’ll see how the first one lands and go from there.

And then there is the other thing.

I would like to report that Isolated is out in the world and Bella Bruce’s author page is live and everything is proceeding beautifully on the hockey romance front. I would very much like to report that. Unfortunately what I am actually reporting is that Amazon has decided to be an absolute bitch about the whole thing and is currently sitting on both the book approval and the author page like a very bureaucratic dragon on a very unhelpful pile of gold.

I don’t have details beyond that. There are no details beyond that. There is just the waiting and the refreshing and the particular helpless frustration of having done everything right and then handed the whole thing to a platform that operates on its own timeline and its own logic and does not particularly care about your release schedule or your nerves or the fifteen years you have been carrying these characters around in your heart.

Bella is stalled. Her boys are waiting. There is nothing to do about it right now except wait.

So I am doing what writers do when one door slams shut on them: I am wandering through the other rooms. There are other projects. There are always other projects when you have three pen names and approximately a hundred books in various states of completion, and right now that particular abundance is genuinely a comfort. Something is always moving forward even when something else is stuck.

It is not the forward motion I wanted today.

But it is forward motion, and I am choosing to count it. Amazon will sort itself out. Or it won’t and I’ll have to go a few rounds with it, which is a battle I will fight when I get there. For now — other projects, more tea, a colouring book taking shape on the table, and a cross stitch box waiting for its moment.

And the cats, who are blissfully unbothered by publishing platforms and have, as ever, the right idea.

🖤 🏒

Peaking, Poultry Diplomacy, and the Audacity of Sleep

I am, by any reasonable measure, peaking.

One book in the world. One two weeks from release. The second books in both series queuing up behind them like very patient, very demanding children who know their turn is coming. Life at the moment is an unending carousel of blog posts and release dates and Instagram content and newsletter chains and trying to remember which pen name needs what and when, and I am riding it with all the grace of someone who only yesterday slept until one forty in the afternoon.

In my defence — and I do have a defence — I only went to sleep after the sun came up. So technically it wasn’t a late start so much as a very committed finish to the previous day. This is the story I’m telling and I’m not taking questions.

My cousin, who is a saint among people, fed the fur babies for me while I was horizontal and completely unavailable to the world. I owe her something nice. Possibly several somethings.

Tomorrow is a real day with real tasks. Jo and I are going shopping — groceries, chicken feed, the great recycling of the accumulated drink containers which have reached a volume I’m not going to specify publicly. And we need to find some solution to the poultry situation, which has become a matter of some delicacy.

The birds have been visiting the neighbours.

Not in an aggressive way. Not in a way that suggests anything other than genuine sociable interest in what is happening next door. But poultry are not, it turns out, universally welcomed as impromptu visitors, and the neighbours have expressed that they would prefer their yard to remain a poultry-optional space. I feel this is a reasonable position to hold and I am not unsympathetic. The birds, however, have opinions about fences that I can only describe as flexible.

They are poultry. Not social butterflies. Someone needs to explain this to them.

We have also been continuing our Supernatural rewatch, which has introduced a complication I was not prepared for.

Jensen Ackles crying.

I am a grown woman of a certain age. I am, in fact, old enough to be his grandmother, a fact I am choosing to hold loosely because it is not helpful to anyone. And yet. Tears on those lashes do something to my nervous system that I cannot fully explain or justify and am not going to try. There is an instinct that fires — part maternal, part something that is absolutely not maternal — that just wants to make it better. All of it better. Not always in a PG manner. I said what I said.

I am not proud. I am also not sorry. He started it.

Anyway. One book in the world. One two weeks out. The cycle beginning again. The blogs continuing. The Instagram posts requiring their regular feeding. The chickens wandering wherever they like and the cats negotiating their complicated feelings about Pusheens.

And Dean Winchester somewhere in the middle of all of it, being unreasonably beautiful about his feelings.

This is the life. I have chosen it completely and I would choose it again.

After a sleep, though. Preferably before sunrise this time.

🖤 🏒

Dead Hockey, Live Bugs, and the Truth About Pusheens

Hockey is dead to me.

I want to be clear about this. Not resting. Not on hiatus. Dead. Stone cold, no pulse, do not attempt resuscitation. My choices for this year’s Stanley Cup are, and I say this with the full weight of my feelings on the matter, assholes or cheating assholes. Neither of them is worthy of Lord Stanley’s Cup. Neither of them deserves to so much as be in the same room as it. I knew you’d agree with me. You’re very sensible.

I’m not talking about it anymore. It’s dead. Moving on.

We started a rewatch of Supernatural tonight.

We are up to episode eight. Bugs. For those of you who have seen it, you already know. For those of you who haven’t — imagine every creeping, crawling, flying, scuttling nightmare creature that has ever made you reconsider your relationship with the outdoors, and then put all of them in one episode, and then make them angry.

Tarantulas. Cockroaches. Ants. Bees. A comprehensive survey of the reasons I am sometimes very glad to be indoors, delivered in one convenient forty-five minute package. I did not enjoy that episode. I watched it through my fingers for portions of it and I am not ashamed to admit that.

What I will admit, without a single shred of shame, is that Jensen Ackles was an absolutely ridiculous young man. Pretty in a way that was frankly inconsiderate. Crackers in bed would not have been an issue. That’s all I’m going to say about that and I stand by every word of it.

And finally — the Pusheen situation has resolved itself in the most unexpectedly wholesome way possible.

It was never about the bed.

Miss Pretty does not want the Pusheen. Miss Pretty wants Miss Hopalong. The bed is simply where Hopalong is, which makes it the correct and only location as far as Pretty is concerned. She is not defending territory. She is not being difficult. She is grieving her wingwoman and she has selected her replacement and she is simply committed to the arrangement whether Hopalong has fully signed off on it yet or not.

Honestly? I understand her completely.

More tomorrow. There is apparently always more tomorrow.

🖤 🏒

Signs of Life (and Slightly Less Swearing)

I am going to attempt an upbeat post today. Bear with me. I’m a little out of practice.

Here is what I can report: Luke came. Luke delivered. The powerpoints are done — we are almost completely electrically sorted, which is the kind of sentence that sounds mundane until you have been living without it being true, at which point it is frankly cause for celebration.

And the internet.

Oh, the internet.

I will not dwell on the full experience because some of it is not fit for a family blog, but I will say this: three hours on the phone with Telstra, four — four — factory resets of the modem, and a sustained act of collective human will later, we appear to have stable internet. I am using the word appears deliberately and with full awareness of my own trauma. I am cautiously optimistic in the way that you are cautiously optimistic about something that has betrayed you repeatedly and at the worst possible moments. But right now, in this moment, it is working, and I am choosing to accept that as a win.

Which means that tomorrow I might — might — be able to wrap my head around the websites. Which I need to do because, as it turns out, it is four days until my very first book is live in the world.

Four days.

I would like to tell you I am handling this with grace and equanimity. I would like to tell you that. What is actually happening is that I am cycling between cranky and stressed, gleeful and nervous, sometimes all four in the same ten minutes, with no predictable pattern and very little warning. The cats have noticed. They are keeping a respectful distance, which honestly shows good judgement on their part.

Four days.

We’ll see how that whole shenanigan goes.

🖤 🏒

Small Steps Forward

The house is still sad. There’s no other way to put it — Miss Mu left a Mumu-shaped hole that we’re all navigating around in our own ways, human and feline alike. Some days that’s fine. Some days you turn around expecting to see her and the missing her lands fresh all over again.

But life, as it tends to, has been happening anyway.

First, the practical: our internet has been absolutely abysmal, which has made everything approximately three times harder than it needed to be and my patience approximately three times thinner. Luke is back tomorrow, and I am choosing to believe with my whole heart that this will be remedied. I’m sure Luke is a perfectly lovely person in all other respects but right now I am thinking of him primarily as the man who is going to fix my internet, and I will not apologise for that.

Now. The Pusheen situation.

For those playing along at home, there is a Pusheen in this house that is apparently up for grabs, and we have reached a diplomatic resolution of sorts. Our two littlest girls — Hopalong and Pretty — are going to share it. I use the word share loosely. What appears to be happening is that Pretty has decided this is happening and Hopalong is coming to terms with that reality on her own timeline.

Hopalong’s participation, I suspect, is reluctant at best. She has the energy of someone who has been voluntarily annexed and is still working out whether to file a formal objection. Pretty, meanwhile, has apparently decided that the answer to everything is overwhelming affection, and is pursuing this strategy with considerable commitment.

It makes a certain kind of sense. Pretty was Mu’s little wingman — always nearby, always orbiting. She knew her role and she was good at it, and now there’s a Mu-shaped gap where that role used to live. It seems she’s decided Hopalong is the logical candidate to redirect all that devotion toward. Hopalong may not have been consulted on this decision.

In other diplomatic news, Hopalong appears to be slowly, cautiously, with great dignity and absolutely zero acknowledgement that anything has changed, warming to her similarly sized adversary. No formal statement has been issued. Progress is being made.

And then there is the weekend’s great reshuffling of the flock.

Six of our geese are heading off on Saturday to a truffle farm belonging to friends of ours, which is honestly a retirement story befitting their personalities. I wish them well and I suspect the truffles do not yet know what is coming. In their place — because this is how things work around here, nature abhors a vacuum and apparently so do we — we are welcoming two Sebastapol geese, which will bring the goose flock to a very respectable four.

And also arriving at the same time, because why do one thing when you can do several simultaneously, is the foundation of our Cochin flock. One hen, one rooster. The rooster is Columbian variant. The pullet is Partridge variant. They are, by all accounts, extraordinarily fluffy and I am choosing to lead with optimism on the subject of how the existing residents will receive them.

We are, in our own chaotic way, finding our feet again. The farm turns over, the cats negotiate their new arrangements, and somewhere in all of it there is something that feels, cautiously, like forward motion.

🖤 🏒

Gone Too Soon — For Mumu

I had a whole different post planned for today. Something cheerful, probably involving a chicken doing something ridiculous or an update on the renovation plans that have been sitting with council long enough to have developed their own ecosystem. But life had other ideas, as it tends to do around here, and instead I find myself sitting down to write the kind of post I hate writing.

We lost our girl Mumu yesterday.

Friday night we found a lump on her neck — not a tick, not obviously a scratch, just there, suddenly, the way alarming things have a habit of appearing without so much as a warning knock. My cousin, who is an actual doctor and therefore infinitely more qualified than the rest of us googling at midnight, thought it might be a blocked salivary gland. Manageable, we told ourselves. Something to sort out first thing Monday.

She never made it to Monday.

Sunday morning she was struggling to breathe, and then, gently, in her mum’s arms, she just… stopped.

Today she went to the pet crematorium. She’ll come home to us in a little urn, which is both comforting and absolutely devastating at the same time, and if you’ve ever lost a pet you’ll know exactly what I mean by that.

The house has been off-kilter ever since. The other cats know — they always know — and they’ve been restless and strange, doing that unsettled prowling thing that cats do when the world has shifted slightly on its axis. We’ve all been sad and grumpy and not particularly useful to anyone, which I think is probably the correct response.

There’s not much else to report from here. The farm ticked along because farms don’t pause for grief, and the guinea fowl continued their ongoing project of being extremely loud about nothing, and I drank more tea than was strictly necessary. That’s about the sum of it.

I hope your last couple of days have been considerably kinder than ours.

Sleep well, sweet girl. 🖤

A Day of Small Wins and Smaller Disasters

Today has been a day.

Not a catastrophic day. Not a triumphant day. Just… a day. The weather has committed fully to this assessment by refusing to commit to anything else — it has been hovering somewhere between put a cardigan on and take the cardigan off since approximately seven this morning, and I have given up trying to predict which direction it’s heading next. The sky is doing what it wants. I have made my peace with this.

The bigger concern today is one of our girls, who is not herself. We think she has a blocked salivary duct — poor love — which means tomorrow morning I’ll be on the phone first thing trying to get her an emergency appointment, and Monday we make the trip to the vet. She is being very stoic about the whole business, as cats tend to be when they are unwell, wearing their discomfort with a quiet dignity that makes you feel simultaneously heartbroken for them and slightly judged by them. We are keeping a close eye on MuMu tonight. Fingers crossed.

On the more chaotic end of the animal household updates: the ducks have entered their nesting phase, and they are taking the mission very seriously. Two of them have decided that the catio roof is the ideal location to survey their options, which means we currently have ducks on the roof and cats underneath watching them through the wire with expressions ranging from baffled to professionally offended. I cannot tell you this is not my life every single day, because it absolutely is.

Inside, the hierarchy has been firmly established. Mumma has taken over the Pusheen bed with the air of someone who has always owned it and simply allowed others to use it until now. And Hopalong — my little broken sunshine — has had the fire going since eleven this morning and is, by all observable measures, in a state of complete bliss. She has barely moved. I respect this. If I could spend the day in a pink fluffy bed in front of a warm fire, I would not move either.

On the productivity front — well. It was going to be the day I finally taught myself Reels and Instagram Shows. Or whatever they’re called. I had a whole plan. The plan required the printer. The printer, as it has been doing with grim consistency, refused to cooperate. And without the printed notes I’d prepared, I found myself staring at the platform with the particular blank energy of someone who knows there is a system here and cannot locate the entry point without their cheat sheet.

So that’s an agenda item that lives to fight another day. These things happen.

What did happen — and I am claiming this victory fully — is that I got my emails sorted into an actual email client. Everything in its place, properly organised, no longer living in the chaotic wilderness of a browser tab I was afraid to close. It is a small thing. It is also genuinely satisfying in the way that only administrative tasks you’ve been quietly avoiding for longer than you’d like to admit can be.

One tick. I’ll take it.

So that’s today. A sick kitty to worry about, ducks on the roof, a printer that owes me an apology, and one small organisational win that I am holding onto with both hands. Hopalong has the fire. Mumma has the Pusheen. The weather remains undecided.

Tomorrow we call the vet. Tonight we count cats and make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be.

That’s enough for a Saturday.

🖤🏒

In Which The House Wins Again And Hockey Lets Me Down (But I Have A Plan)

Luke is having a day off. This is not because Luke has had enough — Luke is a professional and professionals do not have enough — but because the house has been so comprehensively unpleasant about its lathe and plaster shenanigans that a strategic retreat became necessary before he exhausted his entire vocabulary of swear words and had nothing left for future jobs.

Yesterday, in addition to the walls defeating him at every turn, we also had no internet. Not in a dramatic way. In the specific, vindictive way that old houses and earnest electricians can produce between them — a quiet, total absence of connectivity that arrived without announcement and declined to leave until it was good and ready. We responded the only way available: hotspotting determinedly from our phones, in the crouched-over-a-device posture of people who will not be beaten by their own infrastructure.

The house is winning. I respect the commitment even as I resent it.

Now. Hockey.

I am a hockey girl to my bones. This is not seasonal, not occasional — it is a fundamental character trait that predates most of my other personality features. Every year, even when my team isn’t in the running, I can find something to attach to in the playoffs. A goalie. A story. A team doing something unexpected. I am not a difficult hockey fan to satisfy.

This year has vexed me.

The good news: no Florida teams. I am taking this as a personal gift from the hockey gods.

The bad news: Vegas. Again. Has Vegas missed a playoffs since they started? I cannot be bothered to look it up because it doesn’t feel like they have, and confirming it will only make me more annoyed than I already am. Every other expansion team has had their years of being authentically terrible at hockey in the way of new teams finding their feet. Vegas just turned up and started performing and the rest of us have been processing this injustice ever since.

Last year I had Bob. Sergei Bobrovsky, for those not fluent in goalie nickname. All hockey girls have a soft spot for goalies — this is not a choice, it is simply how we are wired. Bob gave me something last year. This year I cannot even go there.

The best I can do — quietly, and I will deny it if directly confronted — is hope the Habs win. Don’t tell anyone. They are Canadian, and Canadian is the bar I am working with this year, and I am not too proud to work with it.

Hockey is dead to me this year.

That said.

I have also just joined the AIHL viewing network. The Australian Ice Hockey League runs in a completely different season to the NHL — which means that rather than having hockey from October to May and then staring into the void for the remaining months, I now have the theoretical capacity for hockey twelve months of the year. This is either the most sensible thing I have done recently or a harbinger of something my optometrist is going to have opinions about.

Either way: hockey. Always hockey. The big boys can vex me all they like. I have contingencies. 🏒🖤

In Which The House Continues Its Campaign Of Attrition And I End Up Behind Bars

Luke was here today. Luke is our favourite electrician — loyal, patient, competent, and possessed of the specific spiritual fortitude required to work in this house — and he spent the day installing power points. Twelve in the living room. Eight in the library. And then he got to my bedroom and asked how many I wanted in there.

I said: all of the power points.

I am getting eight. Which is, in fairness, a lot of power points. But I want it noted that my ambitions were significantly larger, and I stand by the impulse, because I am extremely tired of daisy chaining power boards across the room to access basic electrical services. Particularly since my bedroom also hosts the modem and the network hub, which means it is functioning simultaneously as a bedroom and a server room and the power situation has always reflected this in the most chaotic possible way.

The house was, as is its custom, an absolute arsehole about the whole project.

The walls are lathe and plaster. Old school to the point of being genuinely historical, and plastered over so many times that what we have now is not technically plaster — it is powder, held together by an outer skin of paint and apparently spite. We have tried to hang things on these walls. What happens is: you put the screw in, the wall considers this briefly, and then opens into a gaping maw you could put your head into. Luke dealt with this with patience and muttered commentary I have learned not to fully register. He left at 4.30, which is early for him, which tells you everything about the nature of the day. The walls foiled enough of his plans that we currently have no power to the entertainment centre area, which means no Jeeves and Wooster tonight, which I am taking personally.

Now. The boudoir.

The reason my room has been resembling the city tip is simple: I open the door, shove my personal belongings approximately in the direction of the room, and close the door. I create stacks on surfaces. Towers of intention. And Chooky, who conducts regular patrols with the thoroughness of a quality inspector and considerably less care, knocks the stacks over. Pushes things off counters. Redistributes my belongings according to her own inscrutable logic. I used to pick everything up daily. At some point I reached the threshold and said, not quite out loud but absolutely spiritually: fuck this, gravity wins. Everything stayed in its landing spot for longer than I will specify.

Today everything was stacked. Not sorted — stacked. Luke needs access to finish the installation. This is apparently the motivator that years of personal resolve could not provide.

On the subject of Chooky: I also bought cat gates yesterday. Until now my system for giving her a safe space was a gate hook that pulled my bedroom door to — open enough for air and dignity, closed enough to keep the other twelve from deciding that wherever Chooky was constituted an excellent place to be. It worked, technically. The limitation was that Chooky had to remain at hook-height or above, which meant floor time was largely theoretical. The gates solve this. What they look like is my doorway is now the entrance to a medium security facility. I am on the inside. I feel like I’m in Alcatraz.

Chooky is lying flat on the floor. Whiskers forward. Entirely at ease. She is, by every available measure, significantly more content than she has been in some time. She has the room. She has the floor. She has a view of the hallway through what I must now accept is her personal portcullis and she finds this arrangement extremely satisfactory.

She does not care about my feelings on the matter even slightly.

In much better news: my best friend, who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, has been having a fortnight. She was given notice to leave her rental by August and has been sad and cranky and frantic accordingly. I have coped with this by trawling Zillow at all hours and sending frantic links — how about this one, what’s the neighbourhood like, have we seen that house on COPS — which I’m certain has been enormously helpful.

Last Friday, she and her wife put in an offer on a house.

Today, they heard they got it.

I am so excited I am practically a liability. Entirely disproportionate response to something happening to someone else. I cannot be regulated. She deserves it completely.

Now if the orange turnip would vacate the premises, I could actually get there and celebrate in person. I miss the Pacific Northwest. I miss my Hawaii. I miss my friend.

One of these days. 🖤