Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Cat Tales, 10

I love curling up in a warm plastic potplant dish

Escaping from the house, I rapidly got into new habits. I’d sleep most of the day. On weekends, I’d spend the day on the deck with my human.

Weekdays, when the builders arrived at 8.30 AM and went home at 3.30 PM, I slept somewhere warm but out of sight and out of mind.

From about 4.00PM onward, I got to know my backyard. Because, of course, the pernickety old woman put every kind of barrier up to stop me wandering. More on those later.

At approximately 5.00 PM, the pernickety old woman would open the screen door and stand there shaking the kibble tin.

The kibbles rattling was her sign that I should come inside for my dinner. She’d lock the screen door after me. Keep me inside during the exciting hours of the week.

After only my second night inside ready for anything, because I’d slept all day, I started planning my escape.

Watching for wildlife with the deck still a bit wet from rain during the night. I’m on the lookout for intruders.

Lego: MILS Again

I’m sure Lego fans will get sick of me posting about MILS plates. They’re great but I don’t have the dollars to make eight or twelve of them and only then add landscaping.

So when I decided to raise my town to above so-called sealevel, I built a Duplo + Lego foundation plate in the MILS format.

Tomorrow another one …

Cat Tales, 9

I hid every morning, glaring angrily …

Now came a bad time in the house. No peace in the daytimes. Builders tramped past all day, talking and laughing when I scurried for my water bowl or my litter box in the laundry.

They took over the garage and used it as their base. I watched them stormy-eyed as they trekked in and out through the screen-door with tools and materials.

I blinked. Didn’t hear the click of the lock that time. Started watching carefully. Listening too. The men grumbled.

The pernickety old woman came in with an armful of dry washing. “What’s the problem?” she said.

“We’re spending too much time looking out for that animal,” said one of them. “It’s maddening having to open and close that damned screen door every trip.”

“Can’t you board her somewhere?” said the other.

I didn’t wait for my human’s answer. Nipped to the screendoor …

Me, Hand-of-God, making my escape

Lodestar, 39.5 … A Crossroad

That is, the writer has arrived at a crossroad in the saga. A place where the forward movement of several characters intersect with consequences good and bad, depending on who they are.

Kes is on his way to rescue Ahni. Srese, the female avatar, is familiarising herself with the world just beyond the door. Her brother Sard, the remaindered avatar, has a hide-out nearby.

Also in the scene are Youk, still trying to best the twins, and half a dozen more people. Though none are expendable extras, they’re not viewpoint-characters in the present.

If you’ve read both The Remaindered Avatar and Lodestar Part 2 up to this point, you may know the problem that needs solving. In the former, it was Sard who rescued Ahni, with all his observations and feelings of what happened in CAVE. (Which is known as Rockeater’s Ridge by the herders.) In the latter, more recently posted story, Srese organises Ahni’s rescue. Same event. Different rescuers.

Which version is the most dramatic? Which version should I disappear?

Both have their merits. But I have to admit, that even as I’m writing this I’m deciding that the version that has Srese setting Ahni’s rescue into motion is the more informative, if not the more dramatic one.

Sard’s version can be shortened toward its end because somewhere along both these time lines, Srese and Sard almost meet.

Meaning that a couple of chapters of Sard’s story need to be rejigged, later, when I resume work on that again. In Srese’s version, Ahni can be left where she’ll be found by Sard after he catches up on what’s happening in CAVE, because Ahni will still need to be in Sard’s hands when she is rescued.

Links to the relevant chapters for your interest:
The Remaindered Avatar 16: Rescuing Ahni
Lodestar 34: What the Implant Did

Brick Stories continued …

A while ago, when I thought I had plenty of energy, I started a second blog to be dedicated to Lego. Then followed a couple of months that had to be dedicated to me keeping my health on the positive side of the baseline. Which were followed by another couple of months …ya dee ya dee … you’ve heard it all before.

The upshot is that I don’t have enough energy to maintain two blogs. This one is it.

So. Now. I’m transferring stuff.

The most economical way to post up the Brick Stories–in time and effort–is to turn them into PDFs, too. But they’ll be posted on their own page, “Brick Stories”, up there in the menu. Though I do plan to ‘signpost’ whenever I put up a new one on this page.

As here … click on the heading and you’ll get to it. OR go to the menu in the usual way.

2. It Looks Like Progress

Wendy, Boss and Drew at their second planning meeting.

Cat Tales, 8

That’s me looking stoic, prepared to wait it out

Some time later … my human looked at a thing she calls a calendar and had turned quite a few pages … I just knew a lot of days had passed.

In the early morning, the pernickety old woman said, “Ha, I hear the truck. I better go tell them where to park.”

Remembering the whole business in the roof that time ago, I hid.

The pernickety old woman came back inside with two men following her, both grey hairs like my human.

Neither of them took their boots off at the backdoor as is the custom. They walked in and out all through the kitchen, the living room next to it and the sunroom behind both.

The pernickety old woman darted in front of them, rolling up the rugs and getting things out of their way.

When they helped her move the refrigerator into the living room and parked it right in front of my hide-out, I’d had enough.

I scooted out of there and ran zig-zagging like a dervish-cat, circling them, then in front and then behind them. Thinking that if I could trip them over, they’d pick themselves up and go away.

The men just laughed and continued with their flicking measuring devices, pens and notebooks.

You’re surprised? I said they were grey hairs!

My human scooped me up and tucked me under her arm. She slid open a cabinet in the sunroom, took the drawer out completely, and put me in that cave.

“Stay there,” she said. “You out of their way and them out of your face.”

This is me looking taken aback. Did my human just tidy me out of the way?