To make a change from the regular cold or flu that’s been hanging around all winter, a little stomach bug walked in the house with one of my grandchildren last week, when they returned from a few days spent at their dad’s house, and it’s jumped from person to person over the past seven days, with sometimes devastating effect.

This is why I really haven’t written anything since then – little time, but also whenever I sat down all I wanted to do was whine and moan and start comparing 2 year olds to Linda Blair and title posts “The House of Barf” and who in the world would want to hear all that? So, I refrained from imposing my misery on anyone else. Almost

Little writing, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking and stuff, so time (such as there was) was not wasted I don’t think. I have, for one thing, a Plan! Not quite sure for what yet. Well, yes I am sure, but since I distrust both plans and sureness (surety?), particularly those arising from thoughts of escaping sick kids and adults, I’ll just go ahead let it simmer a bit in my mind.

Anyway, at least from my reading I’ve come across a few things I want to write about (that have nothing at all to do with barf or poop), so now that I have a Plan, all I need is a Schedule and I’ll be good for at least a week or two.

Anyway, I thought I had found it yesterday. A line of a poem by Langston Hughes just sort of leaped out at me and I thought “That’s it!”.  I loved the sound of it, the lyricism – though it was a few words long. Still, it had the feeling I was looking for, and it even incorporated the “sun”, which has been part of our logo since the beginning! How perfect was that?

Except. A couple of hours later I was warmly thinking of our new name, and then… um, what was it again? How did it go, exactly? I looked it up again and, oh yeah! That’s it, beautiful and perfect.

Only, just now I again tried to recall the words, the sequence, the beauty – and I can’t remember a thing about it, except that it has “sun” in it.

Now, this could be a sign that age has gripped my brain and just refused to let go – or, more likely, a good sign that I should keep looking for that perfect name. If even I can’t remember it, how could I expect my readers to?

Sigh.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the train station sign for which is posted above, is the name of a town in Wales. It reportedly means "St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave.", so you can see why they wanted to shorten it a bit…

That’s my plan, though I am not under any illusions that it will be easy. Good news des not always jump into your face like bad does. Necessary, though, for me. Blogging about politics or news events is often, if not depressing is at least um… well, depressing. In the other meaning. Not particularly buoyant to the spirits, I guess.

So I figure that if at either end of the writing day I deliberately turn my mind to looking up, seeking out the positive, being downright sappy or woowoo if that’s what it takes, it’ll help to mitigate whatever other effects events have left behind.

Now when I sat down to write this I didn’t have anything positive in mind – until I reread the first five words: wake up in the morning.

Well, there we go – it’s a start, yeah? Even if it’s the evening or afternoon, waking up at all, even to dreadful circumstances, is a good beginning.

Or can be. I know some would rather not wake up at all if what is ahead is what they’ve left behind, but I guess I’m a subscriber to the “where there is life there is hope” school of thought. Easy indeed for me to say, never having faced an unimaginably bad day.

Then again, what is “unimaginably bad” is relative, I suspect. Some of my (thankfully past) days would send others completely around the bend.

Anyway, for me, today, waking up this morning into my imperfect and sometimes very annoying life is my positive, hopeful thing of the start of the morning. Some of what happens throughout the rest of the day is beyond my control; most everything else is up to me.

There. Kinda scary but still positive, no?

“Interesting times” indeed, these last couple of years of my life. Me, I’m ready for plain old boring for a while.

ETA: One thing that I noticed, when I could sign on and read everything online, but not participate in the conversation without a *lot* of hassle is that it’s pretty boring now, just reading. I mean, still the same interesting stuff but… just not *as* interesting, since I couldn’t add my own thoughts. Which is odd cuz I rarely comment anywhere anyway, so you’d think it wouldn’t matter much. I’m going to try and change that behaviour though, and participate more now that I realize how important it is to my enjoyment of the web and such.

Also, because I couldn’t type, it seemed to me that I should at least attempt to write some other way so I picked up an actual pen and paper and really did try… but I’m just not used to that anymore. Maybe cuz it’s slower and so my thoughts are held up by my need to make the writing legible or maybe it’s just that it’s so unfamiliar to me now, actually writing things out but I found myself not doing much more than dashing off notes on things.

Better than nothing, I guess, and a start.

Obviously-no-space-key.=Less-obviously-no-”n”-or-”b”-key.

Also,computer-is-dying.

Will-return-as-soon-as-possible.

Said the 4 year old, upon disembarking into a completely different place after his first cognizant ride in an elevator.

Sometimes kids make up for all their other annoyances just with wonder.

He doesn’t belong to anyone – although he seems remarkably well cared for, for a stray. His thick, glossy fur on his large, muscled frame alternately reflects and absorbs all light as he wanders, strutting through his half-wild life as a part of the neighborhood he’s foraged in since he was small.

There is nothing special about my patio; like all the others in this 8 plex it’s a small square with pebble stone paving, and open to the courtyard so that we can look out at the bushes and any flowers the neighbors have planted. The elderly woman who lives across the way has the best patio, by far – all sorts of interesting things: hanging plants, flowers in pots, a bunch of different wind chimes, a bench and a bbq. Me, I have a small 3 legged table that I shove into the corner so that it will stand up, and a black folding chair with a cushioned seat. She is not as fortunate in her view out of her window as I am in mine.

And I guess I should say I share a chair, because it no longer appears to belong just to me.  If I peer through the patio window at night, sometimes I can make out a dark shape on the chair, almost blending in until he lifts his head to give me an unconcerned stare out of brilliant green eyes.

I wasn’t surprised to see him there, even the first time. I’ve pretty much come to expect that, wherever I live, a black cat will at least come visiting in a memorable way, if not take up residence.

The last one wasn’t mine either. She wasn’t a stray and she only came to sit outside my patio door (a different door, a different place) with a purpose.

When I first glanced up and saw her sitting there looking in my window – tall and delicate with silky black fur, jade green eyes and a golden pendant around her neck – it was the morning after I discovered that there were kittens behind my fireplace.

Well, I didn’t realize they were behind the fireplace at first – I just heard the mewing. My cat has been fixed since she was  young, so I knew they weren’t her doing. And, strangely, they weren’t the black cat’s doing either – I’d seen her around for months, and she hadn’t been pregnant (unless she carried them all in back or something, like some women do).

Anyway, the kittens were there, and for as many days as it took to first, figure out that they weren’t going anywhere on their own and then for the maintenance person to find them and figure out how to extract them, the cat would appear each morning to sit right outside my patio door, just waiting.

Once the kittens were gone, she was too.

The one before that was born on my patio. Its mother (again, not my cat) was one ugly cat – orange and yellow and brown, with a funny smushed face. She was wild and never let me get near her but still I fed her, when I could,  just because she was so ugly I was afraid no one else would, and she didn’t  seem all that good at scavenging.

She repaid me by having a kitten on my patio. Just one. A little black ball of fluff, with green eyes. After a few weeks, though, she picked it up by the scruff of the neck and toted it off to some better place she’d found, I guess. Anyway, she didn’t come back and neither did the kitten.

I was moving soon myself, so I just silently wished them well and continued to pack.

Funny to think that I’ve never actually owned a black cat, but I always seem to have one around.

(picture above of the cat is from Flamingo Patterns)

I turned 50 last year.

I had a dreadful year last year.

I joined Twitter.

I realized that, of all the sites I’ve made or been a part of, not one has been just for me. A personal site, with my own thoughts, dreams, aspirations or kevetches.

This is not to say that I’ve not expressed some of those things other places – at Human Beams or someplace else, it’s just that I’ve never felt really comfortable doing so. It’s possibly all in my mind but I’ve just felt limited on what I consider professional sites. Still, it just never occurred to me to start a personal site of my own.

Well wait – I lie.  The original Stalking Sunlight – on blogspot, in 2003, where I wrote a total of 5 posts before moving it over to Human Beams, or thereabouts. I wonder why? In my first post I was saying the same things as now:

And this surely is a new thing for me… a completely self-absorbed journal of thoughts and views, which is also open to the world to see. This should be interesting… to me, at least. I don’t expect anyone else to really care. I guess that is the entire point of random anonymity… exploring who you are, what causes you to be… in full view of people who could care less. Sort of like standing in Times Square, NYC, and yelling that the world is ending while eddys of people pass around you, oblivious, pursuing their own lives and not giving a hoot about yours. I wonder if that is actually the true liberation of thought and spirit.

It’s possible that this experiment is already not turning out as planned if I am at the beginning comparing myself to street ranters, and they are coming out on the topside.

So, here I am again, then.  Things changed when I brought the blog under Human Beams – it was no longer about exploring my own writing or thoughts, so much as (somewhat) writing for a purpose for and about others.  Even my writing style changed (might be a good thing) – less reflective, less visual, more … something. Bloggish, maybe. Certainly more constrained, as there I am representing something. Here, I represent nothing but myself, and can write bad fiction, if I want; long, rambling essays; explore thoughts about activism, writing, gossip about other people – or just whine a lot about life in general.

Anyway, trying again – whatever this turns out to be.

I find it’s important for me to have at least two days in a row after spending the previous 5 days doing this or that. I don’t know if it’s age or just a function of being an introvert but, while I may start off all gung-ho on the first day, I soon fade. My body hurts, my brain hurts, my ears hurt and I find that all I want to do is just sit quietly somewhere and just *be*.

If I have that then the next day (or maybe even that evening) everything else falls into place. I have the energy to do chores, write sometimes and all sorts of things.

But don’t expect much to happen on the first day.