Phone Call

"CLICK...."

She sat, holding the receiver, wondering why.

Of course, this was not the first time.

It had been about 3 months since she last heard from her mother. Far too long, but inevitably what happened if she did not make the effort to be the one to get in touch.
She'd considered calling, even writing a letter, but she felt bitter and mostly also very hurt, and thus, she decided to wait. Wait for her mother to call her... for once.

Eventually, the phone call came. What she hoped for was some motherly care, concern, an enquiry about her well being, the well being of her kids. Instead, she was subjected to an avalanche of complaints, self-pity and misery. Again, of course, this also was not the first time.


"The exhibition was a disaster! Five months spent, sitting, painting 17 paintings... and what for? I tell you, it was an utter disaster, never had such poor sales before...."

"Well, what did you expect? We are in the middle of an economic crisis. People are losing jobs, losing their homes. Don't you think it's to be expected that very few people buy luxuries like paintings at this moment in time?"

"Do you have any idea how much work goes into 17 paintings??!! Five months, I tell you, Five months I have been painting for!!!"

"what about all us people who actually have to work in menial jobs for a living? What about those who clean toilets? People who work night shifts? People who have to do things which are a lot less enjoyable than painting, day in day out? Try, for a lifetime? What about them?"

"And anyway, why have you not called me?!?"

"Well, I am always the one who calls, you want to talk for over an hour at a time, and actually, while we are on the subject of the economic crisis, I am all but in a great financial state at this moment. It's an international call for me too. I don't see why I always have to be one shouldering the cost."

"You know my situation! I can't call you. It will cause trouble and fights. You know my husband won't have it."

"You know what? I'm sick of this crap about your husband. What are you? Are you his wife? Do you live in the same house, and aren't you supposed to have the same rights? If you want to call your kids, you should just pick up the phone and do exactly that! I would like to see any man trying to stop me from calling my kids! And you know something else? I have lived here for well over 11 years now, and I have had the honour of your company here at my house for exactly 11 days over those 11 years. Do you think that's normal??? I don't even live that far away. I know people who's kids have moved over to New Zealand and South Africa and they have seen 10 times more of their parents over the time they've been away than I've seen of you! How do you think that feels? Do you really think that inspires me to keep calling you?"

"Well, you know who's fault that is, you know wh..."

"Oh, don't you dare to say another word!! Don't even think of going there!"

"If your father had not le.."

"Oh, get over it will you!! That was 20 years ago! How dare you blame my father for the fact that you can't be bothered to come and see your daughter, he has NOTHING to do with that, NOTHING!! People get divorced en re-marry all the time you know! My dad is not responsible for your choices in life! He hasn't even got any influence over them anymore."

"well, I wanted to call now, and I was going to talk to you, but well, I don't feel like that anymore now!"

"CLICK ..."

purple cat nightmares

"Erratic" is the word I was looking for, but which my scrambled brain failed to remember for at least the last ten minutes. That word is exactly the term I needed to describe my sleeping pattern of late.

Near enough every night I have been up until well past 2 o'clock in the morning, and have then tried to go to bed, feeling sufficiently exhausted, only to just lie there, head buzzing with thoughts and ideas, failing miserably to fall asleep.

Every night, in those early quiet hours, you can find me here at, or not too far away from my trusted laptop. I'm still building my web shop and it's slowly starting to take shape. The shelves still need a lot of filling up, some of the legal nitty gritty, like terms and conditions needs sorting out, but the layout and design are more or less in place.

Normally, I'm mostly typing in values, text, etc.., one eye on the PC, and another on the big fat manual. Last night however, it all got a bit more exciting (you are about to find out how pathetically unexciting my little life really is...). All these products have to be photographed in order to show potential customers what they look like, and that is exactly what I did last night.

You should have seen it! The makeshift photographic studio of the year was constructed : One length of white satin and a few pegs; the satin is to be attached to the extraction fan, using aforementioned pegs, making sure that the top is sufficiently gathered. Drop down length of satin, in front of cooker, where a strategically placed ironing board serves as a shelf. The "shelf", a.k.a. the ironing board, needs to be covered with the satin as it comes down, so to create a continuous flow of fabric, moving from vertical to horizontal position in one flowing sweep. Then you collect the uplighter/reading lamp combo from the sitting room, and places it to the left side in front of the arrangement of shelf and backdrop. It is very important that great care is taken when pointing the "reading lamp" spotlight, at the arrangement. In the depths of my store room I still had a slightly lopsided adjustaform bust. However, she is a rather offensive shade of purple, and her "legs" (metal stand) have been lost a long time ago. All was resolved using a polo neck jumper of Little Haggis and by perching her on the "shelf". As soon as this set-up had been put together, I discovered the next problem: the whole point of dragging the bust out, was that I had scarves to photograph. It turned out though, that the neck on the bust was much too short, in fact it was almost non-existent. After a few moments of rummaging around the storage cupboard, I found just the thing: a white ceramic plant pot, just about "neck-sized", carefully placed upside down on the little stomp of neck of Mrs. Adjustaform. So there we go, the set up completed, I could finally get going.

After lots of clicking and zooming, I finally managed to successfully put about 12 different designs of scarf in the picture!

The results are now available to see at www.purplecatbycindy.com. You don't know how pleased I feel with the progress of my site. All I need now is visitors, and of course for some of them to like the site and its contents enough to become a customer...

Here's hoping.

Dark

Everything is dark,
dark and empty.

We fell out this morning, not the first time. It has haunted me all day, filled my head with doubt, left me uncertain.
He's asleep down the stairs, on the sofa, courtesy of his snoring problem which keeps me awake all night long.
It begs the question: "Why does the sound of his (relatively soft) snoring disturb me so much, why can't I find comfort in it, like many others do?"
Lately, I find myself more and more lost a world unknown, filled with very familiar corners.
I'm never far away from a very bright and far too noisy dream. Dreams and reality have begun to melt into one, and I ask my children if they can recall something or other, only just remembering myself, that it only happened in one of my wacky journeys of semi-unconsciousness.

This evening I dozed of, just for a moment, in the sofa. My little girl came through to tell me something... and I asked:"Is het nu al klaar??!" (Is it ready already??! in Dutch). She asked "What??" in a very uncomprehending tone of voice. I just don't know where things keep coming from. My question held no relevance to her message. Increasingly I find so many things that hold no relevance to everything else surrounding it.

Most of all, I wonder if I'm on the path that was cut out for me.
I look around me and sometimes, everything, except my children, seems so alien.
Life feels too heavy to bear, the days too bright, the nights too dark. At the same time, for some strange reason that I can't explain, I somehow seem to skip the daylight. My mind plays tricks on me, locks me in a windowless box, leaves me unaware of the day opening up and closing again.
Nighttime is too dark, and yet, under the blanket of darkness I seem to feel sheltered and desperately lonely all at once. Like swimming in a dark warm womb, and then suddenly realising that the umbilical cord is missing, I'm on my own.
The man on the sofa down the stairs is miles away, he cannot reach inside my shell. He's a good man, and yet at times I don't know who he is, I look at him as he walks through the door, and I wonder: "Who is this familiar stranger?"
Something about him fits me perfectly, like comfortable slippers, a feeling of home... And other things send shivers down my spine, make me want to run. It's nothing he's done wrong, I just can't put my finger on it.

Exhaustion overwhelms me on a daily basis. Is it a result of my insomnia? Could it be that simple? Are all these demanding muddled up thoughts wearing me out?

A fitting answer would be so blissful...

At 16, I was a little bird, not yet ready to fly, I fell out of the nest... somehow I've made it this far, flying and falling along the way, never quite mastered the correct technique of using my wings to their best ability, but I'm still as lost as I was on the day I fell out. I want to be in the egg again, start all over, feel sheltered.

The WHAT??? (Mantyhose)

http://o.aolcdn.com/art/gat/asylum/3/1/mantyhose.html

Just visualise this: Beloved-6ft2, 16stone, hairy teddy bear-, in his morning routine struggle to get into his newly acquired "Mantyhose"!

It just doesn't bear thinking about. Mornings are bad enough when it comes to try and persuade him to actually "match" a tie to his shirt and trousers. It begs the question of how he would manage to add in to the equation a pair of patterned tights? The word "clown" springs to mind.

The next question is: What happens to all that lovely man-hair?
Is it acceptable to wear a very furry version of the Mantyhose?
Or do we submit our poor other halves to yet another chore of shaving, namely their legs?
(please please please say NO... I've shared my bed with a cyclist, and I can tell you, feeling a stubbly leg brushing against yours is neither pleasant, nor sexy!)

I'm sure Robin Hood looked very fetching in his tights, but something tells me that he would have baulked at these.

Somehow I just can't see it happening in this household, not any day soon anyway, unless they invent steel re-enforced toe-ends. The current situation is that Beloved manages to get something ladder-like (i.e. a great big hole around the toe area that tends to run upwards in a thin ladder-like shape) in his THICK SOCKS on a 2 daily basis, so how on earth he would cope with man-tights, God only knows.

And all the practicalities aside... Could you see your kids being taught the very serious subject of maths by a man strutting the latest fashionably patterned "Mantyhose"?

Clever Crawling monster?

When you set up a blog, you can "monetise" it.
All this means, is that you allow Google to use some of the space on your pages to add in adverts.
The mone(y) in monetise comes in in the shape of rewards, when your visitors click the adverts on your site. So far, so simple.
Being quite a rational and realistic person, I don't have great expectations from this particular money-making-scheme. There will be cause for celebration if it brings in enough rewards to buy myself a celebratory bar of chocolate.

Now, here comes the part that baffles me and has me in stitches in equal measures:
The whole system is supposed to be "intelligent"!
The theory is that you write your blog, publish it, and then.. the magic is supposed to happen.
Google sends its very clever Googlebots to "crawl" your site. Now, excuse me, but I can't help being unable to shake the image of little mechanical spiders crawling all over my page..YUCK!
They are a part of our new fandangled artificially intelligent brigade (yes, the one that could potentially take over the world, and destroy us, poor human beings).
You see, they are clever enough to figure out what I have written, and then they are supposed to link this up with appropriate adverts, presumably they will be of relevance to the content of my blog.
Now right there, my dear readers, is where the whole thing unravels!
So far, this site has boasted adverts for gay dating sites, double glazing companies, very doubtful miracle medication, and a few more which I really should have noted down but have unfortunately forgotten (I guess it would be appropriate to advertise something to prevent memory loss??).
If you have read this blog before, I challenge you to make the links that those very clever crawling monsters have come up with!

I must say though, this is just another example of the fact that as far as artificial intelligence goes, we really haven't got that far beyond artificial stupidity. So we can all sleep easy at night, because I really don't think we are about to be attacked by Clever Crawling Mechanical Monsters yet. Of all things that might threaten this world of ours, that really is the last thing I'll worry about.

So what will the next linked advert be?
Brain boosters?