…February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring…

—excerpt from February by Margaret Atwood

It’s actually been gray and sunless long enough to starve our solar panels, which in turn has left our bank of 12-volt batteries flat. I’m under strict orders not to use my laptop for more than an hour…and only during the ‘day,’ when there is presumably more light in the sky than during the ‘night,’ though some days I can’t tell which way is up, and neither can the sulphur-crested cockatoos, who snooze in the mangroves until something like half-past-eight in the morning. I think hunger probably wakes them up, more than the sun.

I’m happy that my time on the macbook has been curtailed, though I miss the music more than anything—I just got Keith Jarrett‘s spontaneous jazz piano piece Köln, January 24, 1975, Pt. II C before all the weather started, and I haven’t been able to listen to it properly yet! Still, it’s not going anywhere; nice to have something to anticipate hungrily.

I had a brief Valentine’s Day rash, a week back, where I painted up some cases in pink and went wild with the hearts and doilies and lace and poetry and whatnot. Owls, did I really do owls?! I think I’m over it now, thank you, (I AM doing just one more, for my friend Miss Hurro Kitty, because she said pretty please) feeling much more like myself again…don’t know what came over me.

But it was a good rash, because I sold the first two of these journals right away, there’s just the last one left…it started with the needle in the upper left corner of the back cover, and before I knew what was happening, I’d added in a whole bunch of needleworking accessories. So it has become A Valentine for an Embroiderer (or Needlewoman, at any rate)

Day? Night? Dude (aka Pink Bumhole) doesn’t care…it’s all just “weather for sleeping” to him. He’s found a new spot this week, too…next to the flat 12-volt batteries.