determined contentment

Scout doesn't really understand how the sun works. She knows that a sunbeam is warm and good to lie in, but she doesn't understand why it isn't where she wants it all the time. She will reach up and claw at it on the wall, as if she could bring it down to her level. Or she will sit and stare determinedly at the sunbeam until it moves across the room to where she normally sleeps, and then curl up in it, satisfied with her good hour's work.

I think, sometimes, that's how I view contentment. I get frustrated and try and Make It Happen by doing things or forcing things or buying things or whatever. But if I believe (and I do) that true contentment comes from God, then it isn't something to be forced or bought. It kind of creeps up and infuses you when you aren't expecting it. The only thing you can do to bring it on (and it's actually kind of an absence of doing really) is be still and know that God is God. He does the rest.

I wish I could remember that when things are darkest.

vertical bag jump

A higher degree of difficulty than plain old horizontal bag-stalking, the vertical bag jump is inspired, of course, by Aoise's beloved puss Hamlet. Hammy was the absolute king of this manoeuvre, made even more challenging by jumping into A4 envelopes. Scout may be the boss of the paper bag, but she has a way to go before she can reach Hamlet's level of skill.

Little joys

Sure, she can drive me nuts, but there is something to be said for the pure, anarchic joy that a cat like Scout can bring.

Also she's totally the boss of all paper bags. Just so you know.

my cat is insane

Actually, it turns out, no, she's just a cat (she ate two gigantic holes in my new woollen top yesterday...well it's made me inventive as to what I can do with the arms of a new woollen top - make fingerless gloves to replace the ones she ate!).

DestructoCat

Things my cat has eaten or ruined:

• My amigurumi owls
• The strap off my Von Troska top
• A red ribbon (this was no great loss)
• My fingerless woolen writing gloves

Damn thing. It doesn't seem to matter whether I leave things lying around or put them away, she somehow finds a way to destroy whatever she can. It just makes the end of a blah kind of day worse when you come home and discover your not-especially-attractive-but-very-useful Mimco gloves lying on the ground in the middle of your room, each of them chewed and frayed around the edges. That cat deserves the sore belly she's going to have from eating all that wool.

the purple christmas lobster

nearing its untimely demise at the teeth of my cat.

sweltery Saturday

The weather's gone all wet and strange. Not wet in a good, cooling, thundery downpour kind of way, but wet in a humid, sticky and perenially damp kind of way. Every now and again the air just gets too heavy with moisture and there's a shower, but they never last long enough to delight in.

Went to the new gym at Maroubra today and it was great. It felt really good to get the blood pumping again, and it's a much nicer gym than the one at Randwick, which really needs a good clean and spruce up. Mum and I then wandered around Westfield Bondi Junction for a while. I was considering going in to the free Festival First Night thing in the city tonight, but actually I feel much more like just veging out at home I think. Besides which, I've got all the exciting Sydney Festival live music coming up that we booked in November - Andrew Bird on Monday, Sufjan Stevens next Saturday, and lots of other stuff at the end of the month.

I also took down the Christmas tree and all the decorations last night. It always takes a little while to get used to the house being undecorated again; everything seems bare and a little forlorn. But I had heaps of help from Scout, who is as good at dismantling Christmas trees as she is at dismembering cockroaches (and she is very good at that).

Sufjan Stevens makes excellent writing music

Yesterday the Uns and the Beilharzes came around for Boxing Day lunch and trifle (which seemed to be much appreciated by all). Unfortunately, Ben and Karen had to leave for other engagements, but we had a pleasant cup of tea together before they had to go. Guan and Mary showed me the delights of We Love Katamari, an insane Japanese PS2 game that is pointless and yet extremely addictive (as so many pointless things are), with a nutty Japanese-pop soundtrack which G and M sweetly sang along to as I played. They left to pack for their trip to New Zealand, and I had a worsening headache so had to go and lie down.

I made some turkey and sweet potato pasties with the last of the Christmas leftovers, and mum and I had a glass of wine and watched the rest of the North & South DVDs Kiz had loaned me. I rather enjoyed it in the end, although the first two episodes had me grumbling that Elizabeth Gaskell had obviously been studying Pride and Prejudice a little too closely, but seeing as I've never actually read any Gaskell I could be completely off with that judgement. Still, nothing quite like a quiet night in with a bonnet drama, I must say.

Today Karen and I had the first of many (hopefully!) city days. We met at the Tea Centre at 10.00 and wrote for a couple of hours, while enjoying banana bread, turkish bread, various teas and Sufjan Stevens as a very good writing soundtrack (I wrote 13 pages, hurrah). We left and wandered down to Allan's Music, which had a 20% off sale, so K bought up a bunch of film/musical theatre scores and I bought the piano score for the last Pride and Prejudice film. Then on to King's Comics, where we saw many things we would like to buy but we were restrained and only got one thing each (I got Johnny Hiro: half Asian, all hero, which I thought would be a lot funkier than it was). And then finally to Kinokuniya, where miraculously I didn't buy anything, but Karen bought half the shop with her Christmas money (how satisfying!).

We had lunch at Sakura on Pitt St (gyoza and miso soup for me), and chatted some more. We discovered we had a mutual friend from completely unrelated circles, which is always kind of freaky, and I shared with Karen some of the big things that have happened to me in my life. It's always funny when you get to that point in friendships; you've shared lots of the day to day stuff, and the ongoing stuff, and the new memories you are creating together, but there comes a time when you have to decide whether you're going to tell them all those things from your past that make you who you are today, whether good or bad. I guess some people choose to keep them hidden, or are very selective about what they tell, but I figure it's all part of my testimony. All the bad stuff (as well as the good) has been part of God's plan for shaping me, for bringing me back to him, and although it is painful I don't think I'm less of a person for having gone through those things.

Having said that, I do have to be choosy about when and who I tell certain things to. Some people might not ever be ready to hear it, some people might never be close enough to me to hear it. And I'm certainly not going to go into detail about it on the internet! But I was glad I told Karen - hope it wasn't too much to hear.

Karen went to meet Ben for a movie at the Dendy Newtown, and I wandered around the city to buy the last few things I needed, then caught the bus home feeling sick, strange and melancholy. Once home, unable to shake it, I went out into the garden and dug up weeds for an hour. I'm discovering that this is excellent therapy for those down moods, it gives you a useful activity to do while your brain is processing whatever is making you feel down, rather than just lying around or mooching on the net. Also Scout is so much fun in the garden, attacking bugs and leaping in the air in an attempt to catch birds twice her size which are, of course, flying metres overhead.

And now, it's bedtime.

meet Scout.

Today we went to the Cat Protection Society. We were led into a sort of atrium filled with all kinds of scratching posts and rugs and things for kittens to play with, and we were then introduced to the kittens. We spent about half an hour getting to know them, watching them rumble with one another and just generally admiring their unbelievable cuteness. I crouched down next to one, who immediately put her head on my arm and then got up and climbed into my lap. Meant to be! They say the cat chooses you and I think she most certainly did.

So we adopted her and brought her back to the house. They said that you should give the new kitten plenty of time to acclimatise to the new house, and that they might be a bit freaked out by the newness of it all. But no sooner had I let her out of the box than she was checking everything out, making herself at home and just scampering around the place.

So after much deliberation and many rejections, we've decided to call her Scout, both for her investigative abilities, but also because of Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird:

Jean Louise "Scout" Finch is the protagonist and narrator of the story. When the story opens she is six years old and about to start school (first grade); when it ends she is eight and is in third grade. She is a tomboy and an avid reader, and unlike many other children of her age, is literate before she enters school, having been taught by Calpurnia, the black cook and housekeeper of the Finch household, and Scout's father, Atticus. She also has a temper when it comes to people making fun of her or her father. She enjoys playing with her brother Jem and friend Dill Harris. She is very close with her father and is interested in becoming a lawyer just like he is. Throughout the novel she matures and finally understands Boo Radley when she takes him back over the street and 'steps into his shoes and walks around in them.' The book's author, Harper Lee, modeled Scout on herself.

Source

Our Scout's kind of spunky but very affectionate. But I'm going to have to get her out of the habit of sitting on my laptop and/or keyboard while I write. I can't see the screen and it causes all sorts of interesting typos. She is also fascinated by the rollerball and the cursor on the screen. Maybe we'll have to set up some timeshare arrangement with the computer or something.

my kingdom for a cat

To those who worried about me following my sad, sad, 'dear diary' post - thanks for worrying, I'm fine. Went to the gym and hung out virtually with the lovely Baddeleys yesterday, both good things for the mood.

Trying to juggle many things at the moment, and work out how to make changes without letting everything fall apart in the meantime. I'm never sure whether it's better to change one thing at a time, or to make drastic, sweeping changes. I'm the sort of person who takes a long time to make decisions. I can be impulsive about dumb things like making large purchases or whatever, but other things take me longer to work through in my head. Also I get really antsy and impatient to make changes when I'm feeling down - I guess it's an attempt to try and regain some control over my life, and it's why I normally end up rearranging the furniture in my bedroom or office.

This time the antsiness has resulted in an actual, real, big change. I have finally acted upon my decision to leave St Martin's. When I told the minister and his family, they just kind of shrugged; I guess they've known I've been going to go for a while. I'm not sure where I'll end up, but at this stage I'm going to give Wild St Church a go for a while and see if I fit there.

Also trying to figure out things about work, writing time, how to balance it all with downtime, how to manage my moods and my health, etc. Have absolutely no answers on any of those fronts. Perhaps two weeks' holiday will help. Hanging out with friends and pottering around in the garden and things like that. I can't wait.

The other breaking news is that the cat I was supposed to be getting this week is no longer the cat I will be getting. Apparently, the kitty minder has become attached to the kitty and doesn't want to give him up. Fine. Whatever. But now the cat bowl in the laundry looks awfully sad.

Think I might have to go to a shelter and adopt one anyway.

cat names

Oh the pressure of finding a good name.

I still can't quite remember how our last cat ended up being called Misty. Mum wanted to call her Sylvia, and my dad said "you can't call a cat Sylvia!" I'm not sure Misty was much better, but it kind of suited her.

I haven't met our Cat-To-Be yet, but mum had the name book out at the breakfast table this morning. "Calvin? What about Calvin?" Hmm. That could work. Like John Calvin, and Calvin and Hobbes (even though Calvin was the boy, not the tiger). For some reason I think Claude is a hilarious name for a cat, but when I said it aloud I realised it was an unintentional bad pun, so that's gone.

There is a nutty tradition in my maternal granfather's generation - he had 10 siblings and they all had names starting with 'Cl'. They weren't all ordinary names, but some were kind of warped versions of ordinary names. Here's the list:

Cleve
Clara
Clive
Clyde
Claude
Clarence
Cloudy Peter
Clorance
Clewis
Clarvene
Clifford (my grandfather)

My favourite is definitely 'Cloudy Peter'. Every time I see that name I laugh.

The even nuttier part of it is that none of them were known by their 'Cl' names. My grandfather was Colin (not much of an improvement on Cliff I might add), Clorance was known as Bunny (Bunny!) and Cloudy Peter was known as...

George.

So when I suggested we call the Cat-To-Be Cloudy Peter, mum burst out laughing and said we'd have to call him George. I don't think that would be funny to anyone but us, so I think we'll have to keep looking.

The day after

I feel sick and sad. This always happens after conferences, or shows, but this time seems worse than the others. My entire body is aching - I'm just one big ache - but no matter what I do I can't get comfortable. I'm almost too tired to go to sleep, if that makes sense.

Last night I fell asleep the wrong way round on my bed - with my head down the foot of the bed. I have no idea how I got into that position, but it was more comfortable than sleeping the right way round for some reason. The only problem was that it meant I kicked the glass of water on my bedside table over at about 3am. Then at about 5.30am I woke to a weird buzzing noise - the mobile that had been handed in to lost property was in my bag and of course it had a vibrating alarm set for 5.30am. Of course! So I facebooked for a while and pottered around before driving mum into the city for work, and then going to work myself.

I had planned for a short day but ended up staying til 5.00. I had lunch with Karen and Ben at the Sinma Laksa House across the road, which was delicious (one of the few places in Sydney I've been to that feels just like being in Malaysia). Good to chat to the two of them; I realise that although I am fond of him, I don't actually know Ben very well. Must remedy that.

The office was quiet as Mark, Howard and Jess are all away (or in and out) on NTE mission. So it was kind of nice to just tidy things up a bit. I got absorbed in putting together a DVD of all the good photos I'd taken at NTE and before I knew it, it was 5.00 and even Guan was going home before me! (this is a rarity)

I've been feeling listless and kind of washed out ever since I got home. I know I'm just tired, but I just can't shake it. And the humidity doesn't help either. But I am glad to be at home and able to just blob around on the couch with my laptop, and not to have to talk to people, and not to have to run over to the dining hall to avoid the crush, and not to have to deal with daily dramas (although I did learn today that Snowy's van, containing five peoples' luggage, got stolen during the last session! UNSW people had to turn around and come back to pick people up and last we heard, Snowy was still in Canberra waiting to deal with the police. Also the people at the Canberra Theatre knocked over a guitar stand and damaged some of the guitars after the last session, so now there's an impending insurance claim...you'd think by the end of the conference nothing else could go wrong...).

Oh! And another exciting thing that happened today was that the real estate agent said I could have a kitten! Heath and Simone have one they needed to find a home for, so come Sunday I'll have my very own 6 week-old boy kitten! Here he is being cuddled by Sim: