As you may know, I sometimes play a bit of Flash Fiction over on Anna Spargo Ryan’s blog.  Here’s my latest, in response to the prompt:

The rain spattering on the half-moon of the canvas beat out a groove that was like a blogger starting a new post- beginning slowly, then increasing in speed and intensity as she found her rhythm, then being joined by eight then thirty-two then hundreds of bloggers, all trying to get their posts published first.

He listened to the warm puffs of the children’s breathing among the breaks in typing, as the rain ebbed and then grew and then ebbed.  They always loved listening to their children make their tiny snuffles.

He composed the sentence in his head first before trying it out in the air.  It sounded good, so he let it mix with oxygen.  Turning on his side he said, “What was rain for, if not a kiss under its dark canopy?”

He knew she would laugh and say, “Wanker” as she always did with his poetry.  And then they would kiss and kiss with mouths turning up at the corners as they laughed at him a little, but mostly just laughed together.  He always knew how to make her laugh.  And she always knew how to laugh.

He reached over to touch the warm edge of her smiling mouth with his thumb, to feel her smile as well as hear it, as he said again, “What was rain for, if not a kiss under its dark canopy?”

His hand fell into dense darkness and cold.

She was not there to call him a wanker.  The rain was for his heart.

All in all, a pretty BLOODY week for The Ashers…

1.  I’ve already spoken about Coco’s transfusion here. She was also in a magazine.  Here’s the link if you want to read the story of her blood stuff in “Life” (Page 8)

http://www.donateblood.com.au/files/J002%20-%20LIFE%20Autumn%202014%20LR.pdf

The hit: Coco is now all pepped up, and this time she says she received “playful” blood.  So thanks anonymous playful donor.  Love your work.

2.  I gave blood.  It all went perfectly, as it usually does.  Since contracting The Menopause my blood pressure has been kinda low, so on blood donation days I have to get all stressed up.  They take my bp, say it’s too low to donate, and then give me one more chance.  I think of stressful things (like having a Neuroanatomy exam I haven’t studied for, or not having the right shoes to match the rest of my outfit.) for a bit and then viola: 91/58 mmHg.  Amazing what a little good stress can do for ya.

The hit: I got to make a little deposit into the blood bank.  It’s good to know The Ashers aren’t always just makin’ withdrawals.

PS Did you know, 1 in 3 of us will need blood at some stage in our lives, but only 1 in 30 donate?

3.  The cat got a bloody eye, which of course I wrote all about here… She had surgery and so now we wait.  If the eye ‘deflates’ she will need a “very expensive second operation” or, as I have told the kids, we will have a very cute pirate cat.  Henceforth she will be called: Woofarrr.  All Dad jokes aside though, I have to say the vets at Noosa Animal Hospital were unreal.  I spoke to the after-hours vet at about 10pm, and I have to say, I wasn’t making much sense (as I was convinced the cat had no eye) and he was soothing and understanding and didn’t tell me to stop being an idiot once (at least not out loud).  If only we could all be so kind to one another in times of stress.

4.  We can’t go bloody camping (due to cat eye ointment applications), and seeing as there is now a category five cyclone Up North that will probably send some weather this way, it is probably a blessing in disguise.   The hit: we are dragging out the fire pit and going camping at home.  With showers.  And toilets.  And a fridge.  So, ummm, why were we going camping again?

PS Stay safe FNQlders.

5.  My Mum came to stay and look after the brats and she got sucked into cooking both nights.  Yippee for me.  The first night was a bloody beautiful (bloody) Thai Beef Salad.  How good is dinner when you don’t have to cook it?  Bloody good, that’s how good.  Thanks Mum.  You rock (AND you bring fancy wine).

Do you have any bloody hits?  Share.

…From The Ashers xx

So we have a cat: Woofa Butterball Popsicle Asher.

(Not taken today)

We got her at a time when I maybe wasn’t going so well.

When you have a kid with a “thing” sometimes you can be a bit of a mental as you chisel away the entrenched stone of your heart that is made up of all the ridiculous notions of perfection you had, and sculpt yourself a new shape.  One that encompasses the reality of loving the kid you have.  I say “you”, but I mean “me”.  It was ME who was a bit of a mental.  I guess I was working my way through the stages of grief, but not of a loss of something tangible, but of a potential.  A potential life for our daughter that existed only in my imagination.

There was also the sense of loss in knowing that I would have no more children, for I couldn’t, once I knew that we both carried secret mutations on a precise spot on a particular chromosome that when coupled, would make a kid with a thing, one out of every four times.  Again, a loss of potential, a fleeting wisp of an idea of a baby that I allowed only to exist in my peripheral vision.

So when I saw that Ragdoll and her deep blue eyes- kind of like the eyes of a kid I know- I had to have her, even though it wasn’t the best time for me to be looking after another life.

And if you could see that kid with a thing cuddling that cat, pushing it in a pram or touching noses together, you’d probably agree it was a good choice.  Even if you think cats are a bit shit.

Her name was Popsicle when we got her, but we wanted to name her ourselves.  I wanted to call her Johnno or Chairman Miaow.  Liam wanted to call her Fooey Fooey Meow Meow, and Nath didn’t give a toss ‘cos he hates cats.  But Coco wanted to call her Woofa, so of course that is what she was named.

Woofa is the laziest cat in the known world, and usually comes in around 5pm on a big day.  Today she didn’t.  And then tonight she didn’t and then late this evening she didn’t.  And even though I profess not to like that cat, I started to feel sick at the thought of what we might be scraping from David Low Way tomorrow before the kids got up.  I called her one more time tonight before bed, even doing the silly “pusspusspussPUSS” thing that no self respecting cat has ever heeded.

And she came.  She came all wobbly and miaaaoww-ing and strange.  I couldn’t tell immediately what was wrong although I knew it was something.

It’s her eye.  The entire thing is full of blood, so much so that at first when I held my breath and prised the lids open I thought there was no eye, just a dead red socket of eyelessness.  I’ve looked three times and taken a photo and sent it to the vet, and I’m still not convinced that what I’m seeing is her eye.  Her azure is crimson.  I want to quote Lady Macbeth and say “The multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the blue (sic) one red”.  Or something.  A bit melodramatic, but it’s her eye.  Or not an eye.  I can’t decide and I can’t sleep yet until I look one more time and be sure that someone hasn’t just done a King Lear and an “Out vile jelly” to it, like I first thought.

Seems I’ve read too much Shakespeare and Stephen King (the World’s two greatest storytellers, by the way) for sleep to come easily tonight. (But of course the bloody cat is asleep next to me on the Time Capsule, dreaming the dreams of the innocent.)

I guess you don’t see with your eyes when you dream.

Do you want to see the eye photo? (You know you do)

What are you, lovely readers, Team Dog or Pussy Lover?

…From The Ashers xxx

On the train from the airport to the city, there seemed to be a lot of young children in formal school uniforms, for a Sunday.  Whole families were decked out: children in blazers, hats and ties, adults in what we would wear to a wedding up here on the Queensland Coast.  I guess you would call it semi-formal.  With lots of black.  More black than you ever see in my town.  I thought it a little unusual, but then I’m from UpNorth, and you never know what those crazy Southerners will get up to.

We all got off at the same station, landing us in the middle of the city.  The mood was solemn, but then, it was the city, and we don’t really expect country kindness this far south of our border.  We stepped out of the station, and into a horde of people.  At first I thought it was the crush of the usual Sunday crowd, and bewildered with the motion that swept us along, it took me a moment to realise we had waded into some kind of rally.

The assembled were orderly, and the pace as slow as a funeral march.  Almost as I formed that thought, I heard someone ringing a bell.  Not a festive tinkling.  A knell.  Followed by some kind of chanting.  And it was then that I realised we were in some kind of cortege.  Which explained all the formal black.

Hurriedly we jumped out of the procession, concerned that we were intruding on someone’s grief.

That was when we saw two girls with placards.  Standing silently as the men and women, teenagers and tiny, tiny children streamed by.

The chanting wasn’t for a dead person.  It was for un-persons.  And they weren’t dead.  Not unless you can count a collection of cells that was never born: living, and then when they are no longer supported by a host: dead.

For this requiem was by Bishop Julian Porteous, lamenting, then lamenting and lamenting some more, in this, the March of the Unborn Child.

I was taken aback at how moved I was by this display, but perhaps not in the way that Porteous and his flock intended.  I could feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyeballs, but not in sympathy for the so called unborn “children”, but in mourning for all of the women who have died in Australia due to abortions performed inexpertly and in an unsafe manner.  In regret, for all of the “unwed mothers” in the 1960s and 70s who felt they had no option but to give birth to unwanted children and then adopt them out.  In sadness, that we live in a country where a woman’s body is deemed by some, to be the concern of a third party.  In fear, that a Woman’s right to choose when and if she wants to have a baby, could be taken away.

Should some interloper deem it their business, to decide what a woman can do with her very own body.

I sank to the curb, the strength that I usually possess evaporating from my legs, and watched with the disgusting fascination that some people have for car accidents, as the parade of the self absorbed and the righteous trudged by.  They had their eyes forward, fixed on some point in the distance, like zombies approaching a feed.  At least the adults did.  The children, children from parents who wanted them, tried to lark and play but they had their hands gripped, and restrained to somber, as they approached the cathedral.  For this was not a day of exuberance, or of joy, or of freedom.  This was a day of repression and stifling and silent suffering.

From my curb-side position I watched those gorgeous two with their little signs: NEVER AGAIN and MY BODY, MY CHOICE adorned with pictures of coat-hangers, and I admired their energy and enthusiasm and their virile youth.  I adored them for choosing to be here, in this place of frowning, filling the space with light and love and acceptance.  I admired their cheeky freedom.  My heart smiled and sighed with their bounding potential.

Lightened my heavy heart

And as a woman who is on the other side of the fertility spectrum, I sent them sparkling golden wishes that they would always be so full of life and promise, and that they would always, always have the right to choose.

….From The Ashers xxx

Ever had one of those days when everything went completely and totally to plan?

I had one today.

Today was transfusion day for Coco, and usually there is a comedy of close to errors.  All manner of things can go astray, from not being about to get a carpark within a five kilometre radius of the hospital (with an exhausted seven year old who is too heavy to carry and is too big for a pram), to thunderstorms, to the kid vomiting all over herself in the car (no, I do not carry a change of clothes in the car), to blood that has gone missing in action, nurses who rarely transfuse children and so (understandably) don’t really know the protocols (which incidentally, change often), doctors who choose not to listen to the kid on which vein is the best one, and so blow a few on the way in…

We got Coco’s blood cross-matched on Friday, and so had the weekend to prepare for today.  Call me crazy, but I decided to “manifest” over the weekend, so just like when I pull an arsey Member’s Park on Hastings Street on any given day, I visualised every last detail…

We got a spot in the underground carpark.

We got a private room.

They were running on time.

Cass the music therapist was there to play tunes whilst the doctors were cannulating.

The doctor listened to Coco and popped that vein first go.

The kid had invented a new process of listening to Aunty Hayley’s Song and holding her breath, as they punctured her skin so that she didn’t even cry.

The blood was in the fridge ready, and it was good stuff.

Coco didn’t run any fevers.

She preferred her home-packed lunch, so I got to eat her roast beef and it was pretty good.

The nurses knew the protocols, the dosages, the order of operation.

And it didn’t rain.

Oh, and I got to put in my two bobs worth by filling out a survey.

So all that, and we managed to get home in time for dinner.  All that manifesting took it out of me, so after the kids were in bed, I had a little lie down and listened to Coco and her Dad through the baby monitor that we still have in her room.  I could hear her cackling like a loon because Nath was being a “tickle buggy”, whatever the hell that is.  She didn’t want to go to sleep because she was “feeling too playful”, and really, after such a wonderful day, who could blame her?

There’s been a lot going on up here in the Sunshine State regarding wages and doctors and Campbell Bloody Newman.  I don’t know what the future holds for Nambour Hospital and the amazing humans who tend to our little girl, but I can only hope manifest that he leaves the place alone and lets them continue on in their own magical ways, leaving all our kids feeling “too playful”.

And we all know what a bloody good manifester I am.

…From The Ashers xx

There’s a competition running by the Australian Writer’s Centre called Best Australian Blogs, and I have a nomination…

So if you like what you read over here, then I’d love you to send a vote my way…

Just click on HERE and have a go…

You’ll see I’m right on top of the list, due to an inadvertent (but inspired) inappropriate use of punctuation, so it’s not even that much of a hassle.

Go on, it’s much less painful than voting for Tony Abbott, which apparently someone did..

Thanks heaps for voting (if you are, indeed voting for me), and even if you aren’t, you know I’m still glad you take the time to have a read of my stuff every now and then…

…From The Ashers xx