Lunabaas no more

When I sit at the computer, there should be Luna laying here beside me. And when I come home from work, there should be Luna first and longest to greet me back.
And she's not here anymore and it feels like somebody's cut off a limb and I just have to cry like I haven't cried since I was a little boy.
And I miss her so much.
24 hours a day we were together for the first 6 or 7 years. When I worked, she was there with me. When I went out, she came with me. When I slept, she slept on the bed curled beside me. She was the smartest dog I ever knew - in fact, she didn't truly consider herself a dog at all. She even attempted to talk - a chuntering, dolphin-like noise she developed in imitation of speech. But I understood what she meant. Not word for word, of course, but the meanings, the sentences, the grammar - I understood. It surprised people sometimes how much verbal communication we shared. And she knew enough human speech to ignore me in two languages.
Like me, she also became domesticated by circumstance, half her lifetime ago. Instead of our wild days surviving and partying, suddenly we were living quietly, children appeared, and Luna developed a domestic routine with Esther.
But we had a deep, deep bond by then. Since the first time I met her in fact, when she was somebody else's hairball puppy. She was given to me because the bond between us was so apparent and immediate.
And now there is a huge hole, a hole much bigger than a simple small sort of dog would create. The hole takes up half this room, and takes up half my life. She was my partner, my friend, a being I loved so much. She was smart and beautiful and she loved me deeply too. And I held her last night and stroked her as her breathing shallowed and stopped, and I put her in the hole I dug and covered her up with dirt.
I'm going to keep on missing her, I know that. I suspect it will be many weeks before the sudden hurts of loss and absence begin to fade. I can hide the tears until I'm alone - for the sake of the children, and some faking of normality, some semblance of coping, I keep it together. I'd rather the howling grief comes only when I'm alone - I'm not really a sharer like that. And I hope that with the weekend coming I have time to let the grief rise and abate perhaps a little.
Until then.

Over here for the family picture blog.

Autumn

I like autmn. In many ways it's my favourite season. Harvest, and gathering weather. Lots of celebrations. It's the most Northern European of the seasons - when it can be wet, but not miserable - the colours can be golden and flaming, tress heavy with fruit. And the promise to com,e of the Winter celebrations, so that's nice too.
Still, most people don't get that this these days. Seems there's a homogenification going on that is slowly but surely destroying all sense of celebration and uniqueness.
A funny little example. I'm listening to Erasure now. They were a big band when I was 21, and they were very big in the gay scene. Many the night I was at a gay club dancing to Erasure and the ilk. But these days, who knows that scene? It wasn't cool, or it was too poppy, or it wasn't poppy enough. Whatever. But that's the scene that all modern dance music came out of - the clubs where Erasure was commercial but lots of weird Hi-NRG was around. And then the Chicago House came in. Mix it together, and we got House, Acid House, Techno. It hasn't really changed alot - listening to Erasure live now, it could be taken for dance music easy. If it wasn't for Andy's faggy vocals of course :-)
So well I remember the autmn of 1987, when there were two clubs in London playing House - the club above Heaven, and the (Henry) Africa Club on Kensington High Street. I wasn't a club scene expert, I wasn't in the incrowd. I was into soul music, and coming out as bi, so I thought this would be good music to hear, and got into the scene from there. What happened, well a bunch of poofs listening to soul music could never have guessed!

Holiday Over

The kids are back at school tomorrow. Ayla starts real school, Willows moves up to the 'middenbouw' - where she's really into "education" rather than the glorified child care that it's been so far.
They're growing up. It's my last day of holiday tomorrow - taking the day so that I can take them to school in the morning, be there for this step.
Then Tuesday, it's back to work for me too. It really feels like that end of summer holiday feel you got as a kid. Even though I've only been off for 10 days or so in a row, together with all my broken holidays, and 4 days sick, it's beena good rest. I have no time for work of course. I need to get the writing going properly, with discipline now, to give me a viable alternative. Simply finding the time is the problem - when can I write? I'm kind of shy about it too, so it's not something I feel comfortable taking time for.
I shall try figure that out asap. It's got to be preferable to fucking working for a living!