Badger: then and now

The purring starts as soon as she is within sight of a person. She sleeps on her back with all paws skyward. She likes to lick tissue paper. And get into bags, cupboards, drawers. When we open the blinds in the morning she rushes up with purrs and mews as if we somehow turn on the world just for her, each day. She loves Rex so much that even when he steps outside for a few moments to take care of some important catty business, he gets Just Returned From The War level smooches. Badger is fearless.

And she is one of my favourite beings ever in the history of the universe.

After x-rays, blood tests an MRI and lumbar puncture, the vet says Badger has ataxic hind legs. Its a bit like cerebral palsy for cats. By all accounts she is likely to live a long and happy life, marred only by the weakness in her legs and her drunken-sailor walk. It takes her about 4 days to get down the stairs and she falls over quite a lot.  He favourite game of Rex Chasing is sometimes slowed by tripping over herself and sliding along the wooden floors. She doesn’t seem that bothered.

We are trying not to call her Spasticat.

The thing that happened last weekend, somewhere between the smudging of sage and the juicing of kale, was that I remembered myself. On Sunday morning I went out to get the papers and took a slow drive through frosted country lanes to Cirencester: no deadlines, both phones were unblinking with no-reminders, no expectations, no to-do list. Peace. I pulled onto the verge to take a photo of a stone wall and the fields beyond. It was freezing outside, shockingly cold. And I looked around me and took a deep breath and felt my whole entire mind, body, spirit and soul just relax.

I am so fucking tired. Of not loving what I do but resigned to the fact that this pays well and I am quite good at it. And who am I in this economy to want more? But I can’t shake the feeling of being a little trapped, of knowing that I am not creating anything that is mine.

Ultimately this current gig ain’t exactly smokin’ my tyres.

Later on Sunday afternoon I was lucky enough to have half an hour tucked up on the sofa in front of the fire: just me and Emma. We talked about what we had dreamt of for ourselves when we were little and how easy it is to end up somewhere without really consciously choosing a path. It was a giggly dreamy kind of conversation that didn’t seem all that life-changing. But since then squllions of right-brain neurons have been firing off in all directions.

I have been remembering and reflecting on all the bloody scary-brilliant growing I needed, to get to here. How I have managed to start again a couple of times over (in a couple of different countries). I have pushed myself, educated myself, paid off my student loans myself and managed to not get myself in any more debt. And I have learnt to be kind to myself, to be consciously amazed at my very own body.  I have glimpsed at despair and managed to haul myself out of the hole several times. I have had my heart opened up on an operating table aged four-and-a-quarter, and then continually broken and mended until I closed it up for business for a while. And then I let myself fall in love again. And because of all of these things and perhaps because 40 is winking at me from around the corner, for the first time in my life I feel whole.

I feel like I am finally getting it: the big IT: my purpose on this here rotating orb. I have been thinking about the things that make me tick, that are central to the very core of my being, without which I will wither to a dry husk.  These are five very simple, un-extraordinary things: ideas, words, food, connections – all fuelled by great coffee. And this realisation is forming into a plan for my future that feels so real I can taste it.

It makes my heart beat and my eyes water just thinking about it.

Turns out three days and nights with mah sistas in a stone cottage in the Cotswolds, is like ten years of therapy.

And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love comes dragging her skirts, a cup of wine in her hand ~ Rumi

Dearest bloggy readers, I ♥ you. Thanks for taking the time to comment or tweet or email or facebook and say ‘me too’.

It seems the last few months of twenty-eleven were really HARD for loads of people. This being all growed up shit can be just so full of blergh, right? I feel completely ill-equipped much of the time. And then comes the spiral of sleeplessness; the fretting about what hasn’t been done, the demands from others, the expectations, the need to please. The old shames. Fears. And then Mars gets his entire red-ringed arse stuck in retrograde.

I spent my Saturday making my way through the papers before climbing Laundry Mountain. I ironed all the things and watched a craptastic John Cusack offering. I baked a carrot cake with lemon icing. This afternoon is all about the candle-lit bubble bath and the new (to me) book.

Everything seems slow and quiet, as though the entire universe has arranged itself perfectly to suit my state of mind. Maybe I am just able to move into the flow of it when I adjust my pace?

In five more sleeps I am off to the countryside to nestle in the bosom of my posse. Things are looking up.

One of my oldest and dearest friends left a comment to say ‘Love. Be Loved. Go and find yourself a piece of lawn, and spread your toes into it’.

Amen sister.

* apt tweetage from @hisptermermaid