When the Muse Wakes Up

So it’s been a month and four days since Hailey’s passing, and we’re still grieving. We’re adjusting, little by little. I’ve been working a lot and trying to write, as I always do when I’m coping with something I’m hurting over. But this time…it’s like my muse suddenly woke up from a long slumber. Or, I just got tired of not writing. One of those two. Or both. And there is so much I am trying to do now, it’s not even funny: ~Poetry submissions to contests and literary magazines (online), often requiring revisions to existing poems or writing new ones, as they usually don’t accept poems published on social media (and most of my newer stuff is on Instagram). ~My short story for the TDP anthology, theoretically due next month, on its third rewrite. I scrapped what I was doing, rethought it, pulled Tarot cards on some things, and wrote 3,000 words on it already. Most I’ve written on one project all year. What?! It also spawned a SERIES IDEA which I am contemplating. ~Thinking about my poetry chapbook, Eterne (Esperanto for “Eternally”) — I wasn’t planning on publishing any more chapbooks, buuuuut I have so many new poems that it just makes sense. Already bought a premade cover. Just need to, write more, organize it, all that stuff. ~My Radish erotic contemporary romance — experiment to see how that goes (it’s a serial website similar to Kindle Vella) and how writing contemporary romance works for me. I’m about…

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The Hailey Chronicles: Saying Goodbye

Get ready to cry, y’all, because this story is a sad one. 🙁 (TW: pet death) One week ago, we had to say goodbye to our sweet furbaby Hailey. I’ve talked about her before. She had kidney disease. We were taking her to the vet three times a week for fluids and had her on a regimen of medication to keep her comfortable and functioning well, as she was nearing nineteen and a half. We knew her time was coming to an end — but by the beginning of this year, she was still mostly stable. Her bloodwork looked okay — not fantastic, because kidney disease, but not horrendous, either — and she still had fight in her. She’d still play, get on my mother’s lap, eat, drink, get on our kitchen table when we cooked to try to get scraps (or, spend time with her favorite humans), and hung out with me when I worked at night, often battling me to be allowed to walk on my keyboard. Damn, she loved it. It’s backlit in a rainbow of colors, which I think was the attraction. I have several Google Sheets that she’d completely bork if she did her little stroll across it, so there was always this panicked, “No, Hailey, no!” thing with me grabbing her gently and placing her next to my computer, encouraging her to just sit there and let me pet her instead. Sometimes it worked, and I’d work one handed, petting her with my free…

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Random Stuff in My Head

Usually I can come up with a subject to blog about fairly easily, but today I feel like everything I came up with was repetitive or boring. So I give you this, a random mishmash of sh$% inside my head. You’re welcome. 🙂 Random thought #1: Last night, I dreamed I was in a room and there was an earthquake. The entire room shook (and maybe the whole city?). In the dream I screamed, and in real life, I screamed too. I woke my husband up and he held me for a bit. Say it with me: “Awwwwww.” Random thought #2: I made a very odd yet intriguing discovery last night around 12:30. I had a horrific TN pain attack and needed a painkiller, and I wondered idly if it was tied to my hormonal cycle. I remembered reading something about that before. So because I’m a bad ass and have an app and a log of all my pain for the past two years, the information was literally at my fingertips. I did a quick cursory glance so I don’t know about all of it, but from what I read so far, there is definitely a correlation. I’d like to eventually put it into a spreadsheet or graph or something so I can see it all together (one day, she says. One day when she’s not slammed with work). Random Thought #3: I just landed two new clients, yay! Both are amazing and awesome and I am so happy.…

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The Hailey Chronicles

I first met Hailey when my husband, who was at the time my boyfriend, brought me home to his apartment. Sitting there was a black cat with green-yellow eyes. She was just two years old. And i fell in love with her on the spot (I also fell in love with her daddy, but that took slightly longer). She used to love play-biting me. And screwing with my husband’s Christmas tree. This little thing made a move to our apartment ten years ago and followed me out of it when I was signing for a UPS shipment. I’d walked in, shut and locked the door, and ate dinner. About a half hour later, I hear her crying and realize, oh crap! She’s outside. I spent at least fifteen minutes apologizing for leaving her out there, alone and scared. Once she darted out of the apartment and up the stairs. I thank God for the outer door being closed. She might have left us, never to return again. She made the move to where we live now, an actual house to roam in. She has her favorite places: on top of the recliner (she has amazing balance), on the bed, on the couch in the evenings, my office sometimes. On the couch in the basement in the mornings with hubby. Hailey’s not a cuddler or lap cat, and holding her usually results in panicked yowls and wiggling until she’s set free. However, when I was recovering from ankle surgery, she actually…

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