I am alive. No really. Honest. No flowers yet, dammit.

It's just been... well. A little strange, a little frustrating, and a little just my ever present talent for procrastination.

It was Mr. B's birthday yesterday. We had birthdays a bit over a week apart, so we always took each other out to dinner at Red Lobster, one of our favorite restaurants, and then generally, but not always, a movie. So I did. I went out after work - and boy, had work been long - still in my scrubs and scarf, and went to eat. Then, saw Hellboy II. Good movie. I enjoyed it. I liked it. A nice evening, all in all, except the chairs across and then beside me felt achingly empty. I had no one to turn to afterwards and talk the movie over with. No one to grouse to about how Nuala was an idiot, killing herself there at the end, when if she'd just stuck that blade in her eyes, she could have lived. I daresay Abe would have loved her just as much if she were blind, and I don't care how friggin' stoic you are, getting stabbed in the eyes, even if by proxy, is gonna make you stop that last ditch charge and claw at your face in agony. Maybe not as noble, sure, but a helluva lot more practical. There were no jokes or impersonations to make me laugh over it, no deeper comments on the movie itself. No one to just glee over the parts of the movie I found spectacular. I miss him. More now than before. We've been slowly working our way through things. His estate sale will be the weekend of the 15th. I can't even imagine not being able to go to his house. I can't imagine all his things gone... someone else in there, looking up at his ceiling. The ceiling I look up at, looked up at. I always liked his ceiling. Slanted upwards, white, with big, thick, dark brown wooden beams travelling crossways. I don't know why. Maybe because it's interesting. And how many interesting ceilings do you get to see in your life? Really? I never got tired of just looking at it, stretched out on the couch, Mr. B moving around, doing his thing - playing his trombone or watching TV, with Rill sitting beside me on the back of it. She liked to perch there. I miss her, too.

Today has been silent. The past couple weeks of overtime and covering days I don't normally work has taken a lot out of me. I went to bed around my normal time, midnight, and didn't wake up until near one in the afternoon. The computer is acting up horribly - the repair guy first didn't show, then when he did, the computer behaved for... maybe 2 days? Just enough time to try and get the backlog gone through for my DA account, and then, when I sit down to write some emails... poof. Then I couldn't even look at DA. I don't know when the repair guy is coming back - Brad is handling it now.

It hasn't been all bad. There's been the trip to see my best friend in Oklahoma, which I'll have to go into later in more detail, and the visit from an Australian friend for a couple days. And there was yesterday morning. But I'll save that for last, because... well... even after writing all this, it'll still lift my mood, and I want to be able to go away on that.

I haven't been drawing as much as I should have. I've got some things started, but somehow, I haven't been able to get myself to finish them. Or even start anything new. I have to wonder if being able to afford to commission others, who have the abilities that I don't to somehow get closer to depicting what I have in my head than I ever have... and am so far from being able to do myself... has stunted my drive to even make the effort. I love looking at art, at amazing art. But my inability to make any progress in my own skills, well... it's never gotten to me to this degree. I've always said, if you do something long enough, you get better. And so I plugged away at drawing, and I have gotten better. But the things I learned in the class I took are starting to fade... I can't hold onto it. The same for my writing - I feel I've languished. I haven't written anything new in the past year - well, one thing, but I don't view it as being my usual quality at all. And my old stuff STILL remains unfinished. Yes, I've been busy. Yes, I've had other things going on. But... I used to write like I breathed. I never went anywhere without a notebook, and I filled those to overflowing. I want to write. And I find myself unable to. Where's my creativity gone? It's been absent for years now, it seems. The attempt to grasp it again, by taking that writing class when I'd gone back to school, tanked when I discovered a different teacher, using all the methods I'd despised.

Problems aside, I've startled myself with how far along the road I've gotten. The goals I've set for myself, one by one gotten past. The surgery is the next one, and I'm going to start to work on that soon. There are meetings I'm going to have to go to, to even begin the process. I'm looking into times and places. I play sometimes on the Endless Forest. I have been for quite a while now - I was even one of their beta testers when they first began with the fawns. One of my favorite things has always been just... running. Running through the woods, jumping over logs and streams, seeing how long and how far I can make my deer "fly". I'd like to be able to just run again, myself. Finally get rid of the tendonitis and bum ankle. Not HURT every moment of every day.

But there is good too. A client brought in a stray cat she called Buddy, and fed when he came around - his eyes were horribly gunked up, swollen, red, one leaking bloody fluid, the other with a clear discharge. He could barely breathe for all the congestion, and he sneezed a nasty green discharge on a regular basis. He was maybe 3, 4 years old, intact, had worms, scarred on his head from bites and scratches... and all he wanted was to be pet and scratched. All he wanted was love. He was an orange tabby - sort of. He had the tabby stripes on his legs and head and tail, but they faded away on his body, leaving just tipped orange. He wouldn't stop purring. He'd try to butt his head against hands, body, any part of you he could get to. His eyes were so swollen, nearly shut, he couldn't see very well if at all. You walked into the room, he oriented on the sound of the door, and growled. The moment you spoke to him, told him hello, he realized you were a person, and turned into a snuggler, just as happy to have you there as anything. The woman who brought him in didn't own him, just fed him when he wandered by. He was a neighborhood cat, and he roamed a few. She hadn't seen him for a couple months. If his prognosis was good, she wanted him neutered, and she'd keep him. Intact tom with fight wounds? You bet. FIV positive. But they can have good quality lives. They need to be indoors only, to avoid infecting other cats, though. The lady didn't want to risk infecting her other cat. You can't blame her. She brought him in, at least.

But a coworker and I, who handled him, we couldn't stand it. We went halves on his care, and were going to try to find him a home. The owner, when told, was happy, and said she would also help pay the cost of his care. She hadn't liked the thought of him going down. A couple days, and he was improving. And then, the lady called. She'd had second thoughts. She would take him back, make him indoor only, figure out a way to keep the cats apart. Buddy has his home. Kate and I both helped with his bill. No euthanasia for you, my friend. Couldn't happen to a nicer cat. This also happened on Mr. B's birthday.

Same day, but on the other side of the coin from the evening, was yesterday morning. The Saturday crew at work take turns bringing in breakfast. Anything from bagels and donuts to fruit tarts and pastries, to waffles and pancakes. There'd been a bit of confusion as to whose turn it was, with some regulars not coming in, one on vacation, and the list being on a computer that decided to die. So I said I'd do it. I left a bit early, to pick up bagels and still be on time. I left the house and walked into fog. Fairly dense, though not dangerously so - I could see maybe 5,6 car lengths ahead. Soft and gray, it misted the air, cool and muffling. It made things quiet, even moreso than they already were. It was pretty, in the way fog can be. Everything was wrapped in soft shade. It was enough to make me smile a little, as I drove through the hills and saw it tangle in the oak trees, blanket over the tall grass and fields, reluctantly let go of oncoming cars.

As I got closer to the freeway, where I'd turn to go towards work, the trees changed to eucalyptus... and suddenly, the fog ahead began to get lighter. As my eyes widened, it began to glow, light turning everything to blazing silver, to white, streaking in beams through the fog and through the branches, until I drove into light and fog and it was the same, all around, shining so bright it took my breath away, the greens popping, the browns of bark and trunk turned to a brilliant hue, and all this, in the space of one breath. The next, saw the fog abruptly end, and blue sky, yellow sunlight, the trailing fingers of the fog lingering in the shadows of the trees and swiftly left behind. I laughed aloud for the wonder of it all. It was so marvelous, and so beautiful, all of it, from first glimmer of a lighter hue in the fog, to the blaze of blue and yellow, and it happened so fast, for all its gradation! The joyous feeling lasted a long time, I can tell you. Beautiful. Just beautiful. I wanted to turn around just to drive through it again. I settled for calling my mother, ordering her to get in her car and just drive to the store and back. She'd see why if she did. And my mother being my mother, and knowing me, did so. She was amazed, too.

Maybe I was wrong, looking in the evening. Maybe Mr. B was in the morning. Maybe Rill was in the day. Huh. Didn't think of that until just now.