The one in which I locate my shopping gene

The year is coming to an end. December arrived before I was ready and will leave too quickly.

The ferris wheel is spinning faster than I'd like and although I want to climb off, there is too much to be done. I haven't sent any Christmas cards, or bought any food or even figured out what we're doing for the holidays. And still the relentless parade of freelance deadlines passes in front of me, trailing frustration and a whiff of resentment in its wake. What I need is a bloody great stick to poke in the spokes of routine.

And so the universe delivered. Yesterday a colleague emailed to ask if I'd like to go with at lunchtime to check out a massive cosmetics/fragrance sale that was being held in a giant warehouse on the waterfront. I wasn't holding out much hope and agreed more as a favour to her. But it was fun, and loud and busy and I rediscovered how much I love me a bargain. And trying on 18 different perfumes, and buying none. And cajoling a fellow shopper into forfeiting the last Berry Sorbet lipstick. And forgetting about life for a while.

Anita, you would have been proud...

Excitement

Phone off - tick.

Good jammies ironed - tick.

Excitement meter cranked up - big fat tick.


Tonight is the season finale of Homeland and if you call, text or email during the next 90 minutes, please do not expect a response.

Yes, the second season has detoured a little up the WTF path. And as a colleague said today, if we had fashioned a drinking game for Carrie's hysterics or Dana's eye-rolls, we would be well trashed by now. But Breaking Bad aside, it's the best thing since the invention of the cathode ray.

And Brody might just be the hottest ginga to ever walk the planet...

(Photo credit: Google Images)

Sunday

Woken not by terrible news but by the Hound, who confused the fingers of light reaching through the curtains with walkies time. Couldn't get back to sleep so took him for a run around the waterfront.

Six am on a Sunday isn't a time I'm overly familiar with but it was glorious; the only other lunatics saluting the sun at that hour were a few other joggers and dog walkers so we pretty much had the route to ourselves. And it energised me to finish the UK dance feature on last night's Genee finals that's going to print this week. Deadline, met.

Last night, in case you were wondering, was lovely: even the Animator, who is to dance what Joan Rivers is to natural beauty, enjoyed the spectacle. He had to rush back to work before the end, while I spent a pleasant hour chasing the winners and judges for a few quotes at the cocktail function.  

But the late night and early start is taking its toll; the rest of the day will be filled in with domestic drudgery, seafood curry, a glass of red and this DVD which the Sunday Star Times film reviewer today named as one of her movies of 2012. We shall see...

Today's pic is of the Genee semi-final. Who'd have thought that impossibly tall and skinny teenagers could prove so entertaining?

    

So NOT the happiest time of the year

I awake to the news of the mass shooting in the US; for the so-called 'happiest time of the year' there seems to be a shit load of depressed folk around.

Yesterday I went to see my lovely clothes woman who sells items for me that no longer fit or please. We had a little cry together - me about Molly, she about friends and pets she's lost this year. She told me she's taken to bawling on the drive into work each morning; it hasn't been a good year for so many, many people and she, like me, isn't sad that its rump is in sight.

But the show, as they say, must go on. The Animator is (again) missing the beautiful sunny day, locked up in his work gulag, tussling with a ghastly deadline. I, too, am chained to the laptop, trying to coax the words for an article that must be filed this week. Speaking of which, I realised I hadn't shared an article from last week's Sunday Magazine - about my pitiful efforts to join a roller derby team (link here). There has been more bad news on that front: increasingly squeezed budgets means that particular publication, a favourite of mine, can no longer support freelancers (insert tantrum). You know those days when it feels as though you've fallen down a rabbit hole, and you wonder what you did to warrant that tumble, and how the hell it's all going to turn out? I seem to be currently suspended in that space.

Apologies for being so goddam depressing. I shall crack on with my work, take the Hound for a run and enjoy this glorious sunshine. Tonight there is the final of the Genee dance competition and the after-match function where, amid the tiaras and tears (the dancers, not mine; although given this week's events, it doesn't take much to set me off at the moment) I will attempt to wrangle a few quotes from the winners and judges.

Thank god for this little chap who never fails to make me smile...

 

Tired

It's the end of a long week, a week in which sadness has worn a calloused groove into my heart.

The support of friends and strangers has been overwhelming: so many of you commented here or emailed with kind words. Others offered cupcakes and yellow roses. Last night the Mt Vic Vixens convened in my garden to drink Pimms and eat an array of fattening snacks; I laughed and cried and realised that the pain will come in waves, that I can go hours without thinking of Molly and then memories of her sweet face will tug at my consciousness and tears will spring forth. But as wise friends have said, there's nothing to do but wait it out, to sit with the discomfort and be patient. And eventually it will get better.

   

Gone

"Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was, let it be spoken without effort, without the trace of a shadow on it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it always was; there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well..."

Henry Scott Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

This morning we got the news: Molly's vet in San Francisco suspected she had a tumour on her spleen (which, apparently, explained her loss of energy but also, thankfully, her lack of pain). She was sent quietly and quickly to doggy heaven with her American parents by her side.

I'd like to think she's in a better place: she's young again, romping with Brompton and eating all the Schmackoes she can cram into her rotund tummy. I think that as fat, salty tears roll down my cheeks; I've been crying so much today my eyeballs actually hurt. Slowly, the pieces will be put back together but for now, let me mourn one of the sweetest,  funniest, lovable creatures I've ever known. Molly brought so much joy into so many people's lives and was well loved in return. We shall be bereft without her.

        

The post I didn't want to write

The tears started the moment I turned my phone on this morning. They dropped into my pancakes and accompanied the Hound on his short lamp-post watering jaunt around the neighbourhood. A few hours, and several emails later, I am unable to find the off switch.

It's the thing I knew that one day I would have to write about but, with some sort of ridiculous optimism, believed I might be able to avoid.

Doug has emailed from San Francisco to say  that our former dog, Molly, seems to be fading fast. I'm sure he won't mind me regurgitating his words:

Molly has lost quite a bit of energy. She stopped running on the beach, then she was slow on walks, then she was reluctant to even go on walks, and now we are carrying her outside just to get her into the garden.

Equally significant is that her gums are pale and somewhat dry- often a sign of anaemia or organ failure.

The wonderful news is that she is evincing no pain whatsoever. We will protect her from that, so we have adopted a watch-and-wait policy. If she loses her appetite or starts to show any sign of discomfort, we will rescue her.

My heart breaks for that not-so-little terrier/collie mash-up we selected from the Wellington SPCA almost 16 years ago. We all have things in life we regret and one of my biggest is giving Molly away. Although she's probably had a better life in the US than she would have had with us (Doug and Suzi work from home, she has two other canine siblings and she lives in dog-friendly SF. For god's sake, who wouldn't be happy?) I have never been able to shake the feeling that I abandoned her; that I made a promise to love her and give her a good life and when a better opportunity came along, I up and buggered off. It's why my heart carries so many splinters that can never be glued together.

We have, of course, been fortunate to see the glossy black beauty three times since she moved to the Bay Area. To witness the superior care and love she's receiving, to see how deliriously happy she is. And that, in her doggy goodness, she holds no grudge against us. There is much that we miss about her: the way her tail wiggle turns into a half-body wave, her adoring gaze, voracious appetite and the sheer, unadulterated beauty of that thick, glossy fur. But Doug's weekly videos of her scampering along the beach and the photos that line our walls, bedside-tables and hard-drive are a constant reminder of how lucky we are to have had her in her lives.

Although I'm approaching an age that fills me with little joy, I'm pretty comfortable in my skin, in my life, my values and beliefs. I possess a degree, a diploma, two mortgage free houses, more items of clothing than any sane person should ever have and a couple of passports filled with stamps. I have friends in four continents and, mistakenly or not, think I've seen a bit of life. Yet that one email today reduced me to a blubbering, helpless mess. My heart bleeds and my eyes leak and nothing anyone can say or do will make it better.

Ironically, we are soon to make the short drive to the airport to pick up Sheryl, a friend of Doug and Suzi's from San Francisco, who is staying with us a couple of nights. Poor Sheryl, she will not get us at our best today. But as someone who lost both her dogs last year, I imagine she will be able to sympathise.

And now I must go and clean the bathroom; there is also work to be done and walks to be taken and headspace to be filled so that I have little time to dwell upon Ms Molly and the Grim Reaper who swoops overhead, waiting to grasp her to his bosom.

It's a day for tissues and no mascara. And, perhaps later, for strong liquor.