Ah, what I wouldn't give to have a documentary of a day in the life of Dr Alfred P Love. He has made a point of drawing my attention for every moment of the day that I was home. I woke (for the final time this morning) with him staring at me from the foot of the bed, with the early sunlight glowing around him. He was alerting me that today was an Alfred Day. He is my only boy kitty, and today he was 100% boy. He has been galloping in circles around the house, jumping over furniture, mommy, and sisters, non-stop. I think someone discretely pumped a whole lot of quarters into the back of him, cranked the handle a few too many times, and turned him loose on us. As I write, he is pretending he is being calm, coiled like a spring next to the Christmas tree we finally brought into the house, ready to strike again at the next girl to walk by. No one is safe. Especially not me. As a general rule, when I approach his water glasses, the ones I keep on the kitchen counter or next to the bathroom sink, he comes flying in from across the house, to glare at me and accuse me of trying to kill him with thirst. He insists on drinking from glasses, not bowls, and they must be full -- and I mean absolutely full to the point that the surface tension of the water is barely keeping it from spilling over. If the water level is more than three-eighths of an inch down from the top of the glass, he has a special meow that sounds like he is being strangled. It's his "I'm thirsty" sound, and it is clearly different than any other words he uses. I've often thought about taking pictures of him during my toilet time, because he sits with his back to me, making unblinking eye contact with me in the mirror, and the shade he throws at me is impressive. I'm such a horrible mommy, he implies, for making him wait for me to stand up and add an ounce of water to a glass that is only 11/12 of the way full. But watching him be so boisterous and energetic today has only made me think about how he disappeared down the alley for a day in September. I was so worried he would never come back. How tragic that would have been for all of us. I'm making a point of appreciating him that much more for the close call we had, even on days when he tries to make himself insufferable.
I had skipped going to my writers group for several weeks. I hadn't written any fiction lately, and I kept finding things that needed to be done on Tuesday nights. Tonight was the first time in more than a month that I made it. The group was small, with only nine people in attendance. I hadn't intended on reading anything, but by the time they came halfway around the circle to me, I decided to offer up the blog post I wrote on Sunday to the group, the one where I showed the house that had a mural of Devil's Tower on the wall. (That opened the door to talking about real estate, and darned if I didn't end up getting a little quality networking in.) There were some new faces tonight, and new stories all around. There was a man who had not come in since before I joined the group, and he volunteered an observation regarding "being a writer," that intrigued several of us. He said that it "isn't so much mastering the language, as it is mastering yourself." We pressed him to expand on that. He placed more value on the act of writing, of learning exactly what it is that your soul wants to say, rather than producing something that is marketable, needing external validation in the form of acceptance for publication. He suggested that it would take a lot of practice, over and over, without regard for whether any one piece is going to be read. I didn't say it out loud, but I think by his standards, I have passed the threshold to being a real writer. Next week marks 44 straight months of daily wordsmithing, and after all that time, I know myself better through my words. I would keep doing it even if every single one of my readers went away tomorrow. If I'm not real by this point, there is no such thing as real.
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