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Back to screaming financial anxiety at the Household as the people with whom Mum's work has its main contract have been notified that their part in her cockamamie job is being automated away at the end of April, but Mum's company hasn't said a word about it to their own employees, which is leading all the drivers to think that the place may well just fold altogether with little if any notice. I shall redact several pages of Brainweaselling about how I'd just started to feel any sense of security at all about my existence and right thereto, and merely note that I Am Not In A Good Place With This.
Among other things, this means that the Writerbrain isn't exactly overflowing with spoons, so Idunno how or if my plans for this year's Advent Calendar are going to come off -- I didn't get the chance to write up nearly as much for it as I wanted to during November, Because Weather, so I was sort of thinking of falling back on at least writing a drabble or so for each prompt to post each day in December, but, um, spoons. I'll see what I can do, not that the Brainweasels think anyone is going to care anyway.
Nevertheless. Here's the bit I was in the middle of finishing up properly when the rest of everything went all higgledy-piggledy again, I have no idea if I've hit any of the emotional notes I'd have liked to but I'm sort of at a point where I need to check one worry off my list so hell with it, I'm kicking it out the door:
***
My hope of sleeping in on my day off is disrupted by the arrival of Button-Down for some sibling bonding, thumping accompaniment to Jason on the piano drifting in from the kitchen. After a stretch of restless tossing even after they've fallen quiet again I give up on getting back to sleep and decide that I might as well have a go at being up for the day.
Three heads look up from the layer of Jill's sketches spread across the kitchen table. "Your phone's off," Max says, without rancor.
We really need to see about our bell. "Didn't know you were thinking of coming over," I say.
Jason appears to be enjoying my surprised gape. "I could say something about needing to be invited, but you'd just get all you at me about it."
"Thanks for letting him in," I say, wondering if I want to know who Max's mobile is telling people that he is these days. "Hope he's not been boring you too badly."
"He was talking shit about Woodstock," Button-Down says, in a voice that suggests he'd actually found it all rather fascinating. "Would not want to be you in the middle of a bunch of stoned hippies, man."
That breezily undertaken trip across the oceans and back, in more innocent days when no one's travel documents looked enough like them to occasion much scrutiny, and one only needed to plead hang-over to wave aside any small discrepancies in a photograph of someone else. "The brown acid was not specifically too good," I admit, and Max beams. He's going to be telling them how badly I'd reacted to the mud in my addled state, next.
But my flatmate saves me; "We're gonna be late," Jason says, nudging Button-Down, and then to me he adds, "Don't do anything he wouldn't do," with a gesture to indicate he means his brother. In a murmur of argument as to why Button-Down has to always be the boring one they slope out.
I latch the back door behind the fading voices and turn back to Max, who's installed himself on the settee with a look to dare the world to think he's sitting down because he can't keep up. "Getting on all right, then?"
Max lifts a hand and then lets it fall again in a gesture that speaks eloquently to the sudden void after forty years of better and worse. "People keep coming over to make sure I eat, guess I can't complain." A beat. "You look like shit."
It's not a casual observation. We can't quite look at each other, even now, as I come to sit beside him on the settee. And I try not to reflect upon how time has drawn the blue veins clearer beneath translucent skin, when Max rests his upturned wrist across my knee.
With the first taste my horizons draw in to the quickened beat of a strong and healthy heart. The trickle of salty iron warms that place that nothing else can, not entirely, even the small lives of rabbits and rats such a poor shadow of this. Though half-fed on rabbits and rats I only need the gentle murmur to accept it, when he wants me to leave off, letting go my hold with a sigh. Sod verticality for a game of soldiers, I curl up to rest my head in Max's lap, drifting in the pleasant ache of unfulfilled desires. He strokes my temple absently, as one reaches out half unknowing to reassure that intimacy holds fast.
I must have fallen asleep, because Max has pulled the shabby blanket from the back of the settee over me. He's been dozing himself, eyes glinting open as I push myself upright. I stand up to go fetch him a glass of water, and he breaks into a sleepy, satisfied yawn:
Is that pho place open for lunch?
Among other things, this means that the Writerbrain isn't exactly overflowing with spoons, so Idunno how or if my plans for this year's Advent Calendar are going to come off -- I didn't get the chance to write up nearly as much for it as I wanted to during November, Because Weather, so I was sort of thinking of falling back on at least writing a drabble or so for each prompt to post each day in December, but, um, spoons. I'll see what I can do, not that the Brainweasels think anyone is going to care anyway.
Nevertheless. Here's the bit I was in the middle of finishing up properly when the rest of everything went all higgledy-piggledy again, I have no idea if I've hit any of the emotional notes I'd have liked to but I'm sort of at a point where I need to check one worry off my list so hell with it, I'm kicking it out the door:
***
My hope of sleeping in on my day off is disrupted by the arrival of Button-Down for some sibling bonding, thumping accompaniment to Jason on the piano drifting in from the kitchen. After a stretch of restless tossing even after they've fallen quiet again I give up on getting back to sleep and decide that I might as well have a go at being up for the day.
Three heads look up from the layer of Jill's sketches spread across the kitchen table. "Your phone's off," Max says, without rancor.
We really need to see about our bell. "Didn't know you were thinking of coming over," I say.
Jason appears to be enjoying my surprised gape. "I could say something about needing to be invited, but you'd just get all you at me about it."
"Thanks for letting him in," I say, wondering if I want to know who Max's mobile is telling people that he is these days. "Hope he's not been boring you too badly."
"He was talking shit about Woodstock," Button-Down says, in a voice that suggests he'd actually found it all rather fascinating. "Would not want to be you in the middle of a bunch of stoned hippies, man."
That breezily undertaken trip across the oceans and back, in more innocent days when no one's travel documents looked enough like them to occasion much scrutiny, and one only needed to plead hang-over to wave aside any small discrepancies in a photograph of someone else. "The brown acid was not specifically too good," I admit, and Max beams. He's going to be telling them how badly I'd reacted to the mud in my addled state, next.
But my flatmate saves me; "We're gonna be late," Jason says, nudging Button-Down, and then to me he adds, "Don't do anything he wouldn't do," with a gesture to indicate he means his brother. In a murmur of argument as to why Button-Down has to always be the boring one they slope out.
I latch the back door behind the fading voices and turn back to Max, who's installed himself on the settee with a look to dare the world to think he's sitting down because he can't keep up. "Getting on all right, then?"
Max lifts a hand and then lets it fall again in a gesture that speaks eloquently to the sudden void after forty years of better and worse. "People keep coming over to make sure I eat, guess I can't complain." A beat. "You look like shit."
It's not a casual observation. We can't quite look at each other, even now, as I come to sit beside him on the settee. And I try not to reflect upon how time has drawn the blue veins clearer beneath translucent skin, when Max rests his upturned wrist across my knee.
With the first taste my horizons draw in to the quickened beat of a strong and healthy heart. The trickle of salty iron warms that place that nothing else can, not entirely, even the small lives of rabbits and rats such a poor shadow of this. Though half-fed on rabbits and rats I only need the gentle murmur to accept it, when he wants me to leave off, letting go my hold with a sigh. Sod verticality for a game of soldiers, I curl up to rest my head in Max's lap, drifting in the pleasant ache of unfulfilled desires. He strokes my temple absently, as one reaches out half unknowing to reassure that intimacy holds fast.
I must have fallen asleep, because Max has pulled the shabby blanket from the back of the settee over me. He's been dozing himself, eyes glinting open as I push myself upright. I stand up to go fetch him a glass of water, and he breaks into a sleepy, satisfied yawn:
Is that pho place open for lunch?