liminal_space | how can i be without dog?

Oh, Watson.

There's a rock-hard hurt in my chest that is refusing to go away. I can work around it -- cooking, playing with kid, reading books, contemplating writing, cleaning, doing laundry, wondering if the weird soreness in my throat is related to my tonsils or if I just have a, you know, sore throat, etc etc etc etc etc -- but I am always cognizant it's there.

So many friends have sent me love and hugs over this that I at least feel like I'm not suffering in a vacuum, but truthfully, I'd rather not be suffering at all. Seija is upset but upset in that enviable kid way that just accepts the universe is fucked up at times and there's not much you can do about it, so you really shouldn't bitch over it . Yet there have been times she's stopped dead still, looking at me with brutalized and sad eyes, a tiny furrow on her brow and says, "Watson is gone."

//Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa.
Yes, Virginia, your little dog is dead.
Merry Christmas.//

Then she regroups, and the cloud over the sun is gone....at least for the moment....and we act normal and fine and wonderful until the next cloud passes.

It will get better, it will; I know this.

From experience.

.......

There's a dated, 5-year journal from Levengers waiting for me to crack it open the evening of January 1st. Each night before bed, I will pen in some happy or some exciting or some plain old' normal in the day's section. For five years I will do this and keep brief record of my day before I go to sleep. I'm looking forward to doing this -- it's something I used to do a long, long, long time ago and there was much joy and reflection to be experienced each New Year(tm).

Plus, the paper is decidedly marvelous.

...

_Wolf Hall_ is over halfway finished and I am changing my mind about it and LOVING it. Good narrative slide now. =D

After this, I'm going to probably finish _World War Z_ then head on to _The Language of Flowers_. After that, I'm not sure what's on the list.

I still maintain you can't be an exceptional writer without being an exceptional reader, so like to think I'm prepping for writing. ;) Speaking of which....

She had reached the bottom of the last box and discovered a copy of _The Great Gatsby_. There once had been a boy, a wonderful boy, who had told her she was his Daisy. She had been offended because Fitzgerald's Daisy was such a horrible _everything_, but he had just smiled at her anger and kissed it away, whispering that someday she would understand. He was right, but the understanding happened long after he had left for college, left her, sloughing the wonderful and leaving it behind, empty and ugly, a snake's shed skin.

I do have my moments.

......

Christmas lasagna is in the oven filling the house with good smells.

New Year's food will be Southern....chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, greens, black eyed peas, and lordy help me, corn bread. Come on over....I'll make tea. :)

......

I still want to move away away away away away. Or at least vacation away away away away.

.....

Merry Christmas, beautifuls.