Tag: biology

New Blog – The Four of Us

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We’re getting ready for Halloween and have just finished carving pumpkins. Our foursome is complete and under one roof, Genevieve and Spike have moved in with us! We are forming a household together. One of the interesting things that’s been happening is that we aren’t getting to sleep until very late. Yes, sometimes it’s for fun and nefarious reasons, but more often it’s just that the conversation that started at dinner keeps going until late. We talk like people who don’t see each other often and have to catch up, but we’re doing it night after night. This is after celebrating four years of dating long distance.

When we first started talking seriously about moving in together there was an afternoon down at Spike and Genevieve’s house where we’d talked about everything from biology – birds, migrating geese, Monarch butterflies, dragons; video games – Shadows of Mordor, Assassins Creed, Dragon Age, to Star Wars. We’d talked for at least two hours and the far ranging conversation showed no signs of slowing down. The conversation had gotten quite silly with Jon and Spike taking turns doing lines from one of their shared geeky interests and making both Genevieve and me laugh.

Spike said, “This, if we couldn’t do this together I wouldn’t have agreed to trying to move in.”

“Me, either,” I said, “if we couldn’t do this it wouldn’t work.”

All four of us have what they used to call lively minds, which means we’re quick mentally, verbally, and all of us can hold our own in topics from heavy to light. You never know if we’ll be talking philosophy, religion, science, guns, weaponry in general, childhood memories, favorite movies, games, politics, places we want to visit together, places we’ve been, and just sharing the chemistry of four people who have found that they never bore each other.

I can show in my novels the sex and kink, the romance, the conversations that are pertinent to the character development, or plot of a given book, but I can’t show you the conversations that are utterly necessary to being a great “couple” because they would have nothing, or very little, to do with any plot. In real life it’s both more silly and more serious than I ever get to show on screen. All serious conversations in the writing must serve the larger purpose of the novel it’s in, but in reality there is no plot, no overarching plan for the “season”, or the series. You spend a lot of time winging it in real life, but in a mystery series you really can’t do that. I love any time I’ve been able to show the silliness that is absolutely necessary for me to be in a happy coupleness. I’m never going to be able to discuss politics, or philosophy on stage unless it relates directly to the book I’m writing. I slip in a few geeky happy moments, but mostly it’s all editing the fiction down to serve the purpose of the plot. Real life doesn’t work that way, it is far messier, surprising, even shocking, the turns that your world can take when you say, yes, to the adventure before you.

J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan said, “To live would be an awfully big adventure.”

It really can be if you’re willing to believe in the magic of the people around you, and understand that it’s not all romance and hot sex, that sometimes you have to plan menus and decide who does the dishes, but if you do it right, even that is part of the adventure. After all, if you don’t have dinner you never get to desert. Yeah, *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* Laughs!

Dawn Chorus

I did not sleep well, at all, last night. I’m still sick from the virus and sinus infection that I caught sometime last month, which went undiagnosed. Yes, I went to the doctor. I’ve slept most of the last few days. So much, in fact, apparently I can’t sleep anymore. My mind is too full of ideas, goals, things I need to do so other people can do their job to keep resting. I made myself sleep until 5 AM, but after that I allowed myself to get up and start getting dressed. If I felt wretched, then I’d go back to bed, but if I could manage it I wanted to be up.
In the bathroom as I dressed, I could hear the dawn chorus of the birds at their spring best, that spurred me on, energized me. Now, of course, the energy is ebbing and I’ve got a fine tremble in my arms as I type this, so perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve done, but . . . I called circle to the music of the birds in a choir all around me through the open windows. The cool, spring air is still caressing my bare legs in the skirt I’m wearing. I’m wearing orange and black for Halloween colors, which makes me smile, and because orange is the color for the navel chakra, and I’m wearing citrine set in gold, because those are colors that are good for the solar plexus chakra. These two chakras have been depleted, or blocked for weeks and now I know why. Sometimes I can keep pushing on sheer will power and guts, but eventually I pay the price, this illness is that price, but I push, that’s who I am. I push myself and I push those around me, not push them around, but I always want the best for and from those closest to me either in my personal life, or business. I want us all to be happy and to be the best possible us we can be, I don’t apologize for that, it’s who I am. Never apologize for who you are if it works for you and is your true self.
I called circle and entered sacred space with the moon still shining overhead in a veil of clouds, and the spring air soft on my skin, every bird in the neighborhood singing their hearts out like a blessing in the air, and darkness still thick enough that I had to light my candles carefully in the dark, so I didn’t trip over our three small dogs. For those who don’t know, I was lighting a candle for each element – earth, air, fire, and water. I also light a candle for spirit, and then invoke God and Goddess. If you haven’t guessed, I’m Wiccan, some of us use the term witch, but I do not. I find the word is too dramatic for most of the people here in the Bible belt and explaining that our path of faith is Wiccan, as they are Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, works better than other terms. Some words are hard to separate from their past associations like witch, or inquisition.
The three small dogs were very happy that I was up and wanting to come over to the office and meditation area. They know they get treats and which drawer they’re kept in, and if they were bigger dogs they would so have had it opened and burgled months ago. I’ve caught our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, worrying at it, and trying with mouth and paws to open it. Our pug, Sasquatch, awaits his orders when they need muscle, like ramming doors that will not open. It’s given him his umpteenth nickname of Rhino. Sometimes Rhino finds doors too solidly closed and you hear a thump, and he staggers himself, but mostly he gets the doors in the older parts of the house to open, but most doors open promptly by their human staff, if they’re allowed in that room at that time.
I watched the first glow like a cut in the darkness that allowed the light to seep through, and then dawn spread in a pink, mauve, purple, lavender neon extravaganza lighting up the eastern sky just behind my eastern candle and I was able to greet the light, praise God and Goddess, though dawn always feels more feminine to me. I asked for their help in healing, and being positive while I healed, and finding the lessons that I’m supposed to be learning during all of it.
Now, the dogs are over with our daughter Trinity, who’s job it is to feed them, and I’m left to bird song and the first sounds of my neighbors rising for their days. The sun is a visible ball of fire through the trees like an orang-yellow spotlight and the sky is soft blue with clouds. I’m finishing the first tea of the day in my new chipmunk mug, and feel better than I’ve felt in two weeks. I can see the two silkie bantam hens grooming and searching for insects in the grass of their yard, and I am feeling all together domestic and biology loving, and that always makes me want to write. For those who are new to my books, or who know me only through the mirror of my books, you will find more about nature and animals in my blog and personal musings than violence, sex, vampires, or werewolves, or wereanything. I work in a world that is incredibly violent, but I try not to live there. I need the other sides of myself to nurture the parts that are drawn to the violence, and as for sex, I still haven’t decided how much of that to put here, or anywhere on line. I simply can’t decide my comfort level, so I leave it alone for the most part in these personal writings. If I find my comfort level at some point that may change, but for now there will be more of writing, ornithology, faith, and puppies in my blog than sex and sadism. If that isn’t what you want there are other writers that seem more than happy to share their most intimate details with you, or share the intimate details of others, but I am not one of them. I still feel that intimate reality is a gift to be shared with those who actually get to see you naked on purpose for happy nefariousness, not something to simple titilate and tease for more readership. Which is weird since I put more details in my books during the sex scenes than pretty much anyone out there, but that’s my fiction, and I’m comfortable with that. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex, but sharing my personal sexual details with the world, still not sure that’s a good idea, so – more of blossoms, than blow jobs, in my blog. Yes, that is a tortured reference to Dickens.
Now, I hear crows and they’re letting me know they’ve found a hawk, or perhaps the fledgling great horned owl that our pair raised this year, and I want to see what they’ve found. It sounds more like their, “We’ve found an owl, than we’ve found a hawk,”. Grabbing my binoculars . . . owl!