Orphan kitten. girl. Very young Sleeping in my bra.
Send good thoughts. She’s very young.
Author: Sarah A. Hoyt
I am a novelist with work published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical "novelized biography". I've won the Prometheus award and the Dragon award. I also write under the names Elise Hyatt and Sarah D'Almeida. http://sarahahoyt.com/
Light a candle
In the nineteen eighties when Solidarity looked like they had a chance against the government of Poland, the first significant crack behind the iron curtain since the Prague spring, a whisper went around "Light a candle."
I lived in Portugal then and our media assured us it was all very complicated and we just couldn’t know what to do. We knew exactly what to do. We lit candles. Real ones, on my parents’ cement and stone balcony, electrical ones in the windows of those houses that didn’t have a balcony.
Did it help? I don’t know. The media didn’t make much of it — if they mentioned it at all — but these things have a way of being known and when entire villages in Europe glowed at night with candles in the windows and on balconies… well… I figure if word got back to Poland, the bad buys knew we were watching. And we weren’t amused.
Governments need to take in account all sorts of things. Like, will they have to negotiate with the bastards if something happens requiring such? Also, one of the rules I learned early in writing was never criticize an editor to another editor — no matter how much they hate each other, they still project. They’ll think "if she says that about so and so, what will she say about me?" Even if it’s a joke about how badly your book was copyedited. In the same way governments tend to support others that have the power right now, or at least not attack them, unless provoked beyond endurance, because, well "It could be me next."
We the people have no such restrictions and SHOULD have no moral confusion. What’s going on in Iran is evil. Is the guy the opposition could install only marginally less evil? Perhaps. But even if movement toward freedom is incremental, it should be encouraged.
Light a candle. Light one today.
As for me, a candle will burn on my balcony from today until the people of Iran are free from the tyranny that has stomped them since 79. If for a week or the rest of my life, I don’t know. And I don’t care. I’ll stand with those willing to fight and die on the streets for their freedom.
Solidarity is more than a union in Poland.
Blogging today at MGC
*Considering how most of my days are still being devoted to sleeping — I think this grief thing is more difficult than I thought! — I don’t know how coherent it is, but…*
A French Polished Murder
*This is the novel I’m trying to finish, slightly hampered by fact I’m NOT in a funny mood just now. Ah well, maybe tomorrow.*
A French Polished Murder
By Elise Hyatt
The Fast And the Electrically Furious
We were thirty years old – and, in his case, a couple of months — when I came to the sad conclusion that I would have to murder my friend Benedict Colm.
This was as sad as it was necessary, but there was no getting from the fact as my son, Enoch – whom I called E in an attempt to save him therapy bills as he got older – came speeding into the living room, atop Ben’s Christmas gift to him.
The gift was an electric toy motorcycle with a top speed of ten miles per hour, an acceleration that might seem impossible for a small boy to achieve in a home that was less than seventy feet in either direction, but which E managed, quite often.
I heard the horn blare a moment before E came riding in and, with the practice born of two weeks of terror, dove behind the sofa, while Ben, who stood square in the middle of the living room, his arms crossed on his chest, became an impromptu traffic circle.
E sped around him once, twice, then headed the other way, at an increased velocity.
Until we meet again
Dejah Thoris Burroughs Carter Hoyt, June 12 1989 – June 8 2009
She was the cutest ball of fur you ever saw. For reasons that would take too long to explain, Dan and I broke into the sun room where she was locked — away from her mom. I think she was maybe four weeks old, all fluff and meows.
We bottle raised her and her two brothers — not easy since I had a full time job as a translator at the time. I always thought it was because of that that she was a little shy. Not socialized enough. Didn’t like being held. However when Dan lay down on the floor to read, she would climb between his shoulder blades and fall asleep.
When we put wood down in the hallway of the house in Charlotte, she escaped from where we had her locked up and hid under the neighbor’s porch for two days, refusing to come out. Dan had to go under there to get her. The fit was so tight, he had to strip to his underwear to get her.
As she became tamer with time, Dan was her special person. She used to sit on the bed, on my side, and give me dirty looks when I came to bed, because I was clearly a third wheel.
When we moved from Charlotte, for various reasons, (mostly renting) the cats ended up outdoors. DT took up hunting. She could bring down anything, from rabbits to birds. In Columbia, SC she got me involved with raptor rescue by bringing down a hawk (I think) that we then nursed to health. This while she had a bell on.
When we lived in Manitou Springs and traveled a lot, we boarded the cats while we were gone. If DT got wind she was going to be boarded, she’d run all over the neighborhood to avoid us. More than once we left on vacation and left instructions with our friend Charles to the tune of "When she comes to eat, grab her and take her to the vet for boarding." By this time, we’d have had them indoors only, but her friends, Pete and Randy liked being outdoors and so she did too. If we tried to bring her in she’d cry her heart out to join them.
She was the youngest of the first batch of our cats and answered to ‘baby girl" as readilly as to "DT". She always answerd to Dan, no matter what he called her, though.
When first Randy then Pete died, we brought DT and Pixie inside. She was Pixie’s best friend, comforter and nurse as he declined and died, four years ago. I don’t care what animal experts say, she missed him till today.
If she loved you, she groomed you — usually wildly. We called it "hair by DT" when she licked your hair so it was all at odd angles. If you weren’t feeling well, she crawled in bed with you and did this. Lately she was afraid one of us would think she didn’t love us. She’d walk between us, licking one and then the next.
She’s had diabetes for six months, and we’ve been giving her insulin morning and night. When she seized twice last week while I was away, we thought it was the diabetes. But when I came home on Friday she couldn’t close her mouth and had bloody drool. I thought "tooth. It has to be tooth." But we took her in today, and it turned out she had cancer of the jaw which mestatized all over her lungs and spine. She was in pain and she was only going to get worse. This cancer was very aggressive. It couldn’t have been there more than two weeks.
We did what we had to do.
At times like this, I wish I had more faith in a life after this. I believe there is a G-d, but that doesn’t necessarily imply a belief in the after life.
Heinlein said it’s entirely possible normal people die and disappear forever, but not "saints". Well, I don’t know about saints. And I know every theology is fuzzy on the afterlife of cats.
But tonight I want to believe there is a rainbow bridge and that she’s there, with Pete and Pixel, all of them young and hale again, waiting for us. Until we meet again.
I’ve joined the Glee Club Of The Damned
Now you can too:
You know
You know you’ve lived with a book for too long when the only "last line" that feels right is "And she was done." Messages from Fred, anybody?
(Though the line stands. It works for the book.)
blogging at MGC again
Has it been a week? I promise I’ll blog more regularly once books are turned in. :)
Meawhile, I’m giving away a nifty darkship thieves tshirt at MGC, so hye thee there!
Blogging today at MGC
http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/
Other than that, deep in Kay-Ho. Yes, I know how bad that sounds, but I finally figured out how to fix the bits that are sticking out to make her less of the "helpless victim."
I’m still NOT able to let her run off to Ireland to be a pirate, but it will do. History will NOT be flaunted — and all that.
Sarah
Sarah Talks Back at Music
I’ve been sick. I’m late on books. I haven’t been able to play in my own diner in days. So I find myself in the store, talking back at the music in the ceiling. There was Five For Fighting’s Superman playing and I yelled back "Oh, yeah, try not being faster than a speeding bullet." I know I play with the theme of "superpowers have a price" in the Shifter series, but honest to BOG, at least becoming an animal has a larger downside than being bullet proof.
This song definitely wins the winey-*ssed lyrics prize.
Here are a few more things I’d like to have said:
Five For Fighting – Superman (It’s Not Easy)
I can’t stand to fly
Oh, yeah? Try it with security lines, buster.
I’m not that naive
WHAT does this have to do with no being able to fly?
I’m just out to find
The better part of me
Perhaps you should look behind the sofa cushions. I find when people set out to find themselves, if they just do a really good spring cleaning, they usually get more out of it than by going on a spree. Of course, clearly it’s more fun going on a spree.
……..
It’s not easy to be me
The better part of me
Where we find that Superman is REALLY twelve and hasn’t yet discovered it’s not easy being anyone.
Wish that I could cry
Onions are good for that. Or did they perform a tearductomy.
Fall upon my knees
Oh, sweetie, I’m so not touching THAT with a ten foot pole.
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see
No one wants to hear you lie whine boliviate about the home you’ll never see. Trust me. Geez, like the Roman imperial guard lamenting their lost Germanic homeland. But none wanted to go back.
It may sound absurd
It DOES sound absurd. Message from Fred, much?
But don’t be naive
Excuse me, have we been introduced?
Even heroes have the right to bleed
Now there’s a right to fight for. "We MUST fight for our right to bleed." Uh uh. Shakespeare said it better. "If you cut us, do we not bleed?" In fact I declare a moratorium on lyrics reprising Shakespeare.
I may be disturbed whiney
Fixed it for you
But won’t you concede
Anything, if it will stop you playing the watering pot from public location speakers, thank you much.
Even heroes have the right to dream
Yes, but must they TALK in their sleep.
It’s not easy to be me
Oy, vey, it’s not easy to LISTEN to you.
