I think most everyone who reads this knows by now, but I find this journal a good record of my life, so I'll talk about it here, too.

( CW: pet death and grief )

( Cut for talk about Willow )

The decision was taken out of our hands. Willow is gone. She went somewhat suddenly, but quietly and quickly, surrounded by those who love her.

Thank you for all your good thoughts. I deeply appreciate it.

A week Tuesday, she would have turned nine.

Goodnight, sweet Willowbear.

June 9th, 2011: the point at which the time I have lived with his loss exceeded the time I had with him ( Read more... )

My favourite aunt, Hillary, died yesterday after a long and drawn-out battle with Parkinson's. For the past several months, she'd been unable to communicate except for blinking, and in the past few weeks, has had to be fed with a syringe, and coaxed to swallow. Her death was past due, and not unexpected. This is one of those deaths for which we are ( Read more... )

So I found Gus the Big Mean Bunny's diary. I hadn't actually read it before. When he was living, I did find it, but put it down after reading the first page:

Ex Libris (no longer free) [Gus the Big Mean Bunny]. Being within a brief and entirely unedited, spontaneous grouping of ideas of mine, good and bad, upon subjects many and various; close ( Read more... )

So I've successfully gone through over half the stuff in my office and purged a whole lot of it. There's a big pile of stuff to be donated to the local thrift store, and a big pile of stuff that just had to go straight to the dump. I've also got a pile of stuff I want to take with me, but it's a lot smaller a pile than either of the other two ( Read more... )

Paul Quarrington dies at 56.Paul was my mentor when I attended the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop back in 2006. He was genuine and warm and funny and insightful, and his guidance helped me immensely. "Daystar," my first published story, was written immediately after that workshop and was pretty much inspired by Paul. I remember his ( Read more... )

I kept three little mementos in my wallet. Two of them are from epi_lj: a little cartoon he drew for me, and just a tiny piece of brown kraft paper that says "I love you." The third was from Gus the Big Mean Bunny, and was a small, fluorescent pink sticky note that said "I love you" on it ( Read more... )

I had a great weekend, I really did. I was very grumpy and crabby most of Sunday, unfortunately, for which I apologize to epi_lj and eeyorerin, who had to bear the brunt of my company that day. It was a combination of things that was getting to me which culminated in me having very limited patience and getting irritated with things far too quickly. It was ( Read more... )