Edge.

Things have edges.
Sometimes sharply defined.
Sometimes fuzzy and rounded and toddler-safe.

This thing today has the tact ('tactility' whispers Cow Watcher) of blunt force trauma with the in-your-face sharpness of a razor.

That was what it was, you see.
Razor sharp, the knife wrapped in a towel, which she had stashed in her bag.
Razor sharp, her drawn and grim face, eyes crazed and furious and the unseen people that live in the walls of her apartment.

If that's how your mom responds to an invitation to coffee and cake, it's time to get your head out of the sand.

This is going to be one hell of a fun week.

Snot Fair

Few days ago I had a message from my brother on FB.
Kinda 'Hey how's it going'.
It's been months since I heard of him. Months since last he needed me and I helped him out and I haven't heard of him since, except, since.

Maybe the answer scared him off, enough at least to ask the original question. It wasn't my usual logorrhea, not my usual attack-kill-you-useless-piece-of-shit-I-haven't-heard-of-you-since...

Maybe he realized that when he says he can't come and visit because of new job and visa and money and blahblahblah and two months later he is is in South-Africa and Australia and whatnot, and FB tells me such, I'm his sister, that one woman who never ever forgave him something because he blinked and smiled and shrugged and said 'shuggs'. It there. He dune it. What the question?

Maybe I scared him off with the nutcracker attitude or some such. Maybe he was truely interested. Maybe he was finally planning a visit home not to see all his friends and drinking buddies and whatnot as usual, but to see his sis, and really ask her how she is. To visit mom, and dad, and help out.

And not try to compete with idiot elder brother who's even more of a shtako.


Doubt it, alas.

Real question is, can I blame him?

We always were with or against each other.  Always needing excuses to see eachother. Talk to eachother. Sis-in-law used to make jokes about it when I called my eldest brother. "Computer broke down again?"

We never were the kind of bros and sis you see in the movies.
Only refuge.
Let me sit five minutes with you and just laugh or talk or cry. And then I'll be on my way, no bother to you. Dad won't be funny anymore, and mom will have found her sense of humor again, or some such.

And then they walk away and I'll be right here stuck with their bother, and no younger sibling to stick it too.

Oh, brother...

Oh.

Probably I was.


Not so much reading now. Kill Tinkerbell on sight, daft idiot twinkling firefly.


If I survive this shit with my soul intact, I'll be able to log this filth as "research" for a book or two.

It's probably gonna be Man of Mercury and the full rewrite of the Barynn trilogy or quadrilogy (when/whatever I make my mind up about the amount of human ugliness the average reader will shovel).



I'm losing my writing muscle, dear old digiplips, and it makes me thoroughly unhappy.

Because nothing matters *that* much.

Marker

"Kevin liked to say, 'On judgment day when I'm brought up before the great judge I'm going to say, "Hold on a second," and then I'm going to whip out my dead cat from inside my coat. "How do you explain *this*?" I'm going to ask.' By then, Kevin used to say, the cat would be as stiff as a frying pan; he would hold out the cat by its handle, its tail, and wait for a satisfactory answer."

~Valis, Philip K. Dick


I've got a feeling I'll be reading Valis again, because I need something of substance. Something tougher, sharper, more naked underneath the escapist magic tricks.

Life's a bitch, and my life's been a particular bitch for a while now. Not to be bitching about the bitch, and unlike David Byrne, I'm not wondering where the beautiful car is. I'm simply wondering where every-fucking-thing went. 

So here we are, more than a year after the hubby and me took in dad, because he could not return to his old place and live alone there, and we were all that was left, for a myriad of reasons that will get me spitting bitter foam as it is, so no need to go into that. Sucks to be the idiot that believes there's something as an honest draw with one short straw in the stack, hah.

Anyways, in the meantime my mom's boyfriend passed away, leaving a shadow of the strong and independent woman that raised me, and on top she'd been actin' funny too for a while and it ain't really passing even now she's finding herself again. Unless I personally visit her every day. Capisce?

See, in the life I had planned, there was a hole for one parent to take care of daily, and my dad wasn't it. He's sleeping in the guest bed reserved for mom years ago, imagine how that goes for a gall whose parents divorced 35 years ago. Things are just peachy!

Meanwhile I had a great job except for the idiots I had to deal with in the workplace. Luckily it was a substitute thing, so when the substituting was done and they offered me a real position I bowed out, and found THE JOB OF MY LIFE, except I'm not allowed to continue doing the job, because I don't have a bachelor degree, which the Flemish authority of sports federations thinks I should have. *Any* bachelor degree is better than someone who's been gathering directory secretary competences by doing for over 10 years the job of the better qualified and better paid person over head ("over-head" got it? I made a joke there, see?)

And just when you think: ah, well, when the going gets tough, the tough get going (*eyeroll* I know), GOD KILLS MY GODDAMNED CAT!

There. I just needed a marker for just this day, see. Because I've got plenty of dead cats stowed away in my coat. But Pipsqueek, right here right now, is where this crap stops, okay? Next big thing that happens better be ME WINNING THE EFFING LOTTERY ARRIGHT?

Jeez, fuck karma, man, what was I supposed to be in my former life? The guy who butt fucked Charlie Manson when he was 5?