pillow yearnings

You know how I made those pillowbooks about yearning? Sigh. Pillows + yearning. Here's another sorry tale:

We always take our pillows on holiday with us. They are beautiful expensive microfibre pillows that mould under your neck and manage all through the night to shift when you shift and stay plump in the right places and flat in the right places. My neck never hurts with my special pillow. It transformed my life a couple of years ago and I've been ever so grateful ever since.

We travelled for three weeks with our pillows and then forgot them on the second last night of the trip and left them in a motel in Singleton. Last night, when we discovered this fact just before bedtime at Bernice's lovely shack, I felt bereft. And guilty as hell, as if I'd left my child behind at the shop.

Bernice had ok pillows. Now we've come home to all our second-best pillows. I don't want to look at my bed now, because my pillow isn't there. I miss my pillow more than I miss my cervix, and I miss that quite a lot; it always felt like a friendly nose-tip pushing back at me. Sorry, that was a sudden thought, and obviously just for you females. Didn't mean to gross out the boys -- but ladies, you know what I mean, don't you?

Sigh. We got home today and I had a speeding fine waiting for me. O joy. My first for years and I'd achieved it only metres from home before we left on our trip. Only metres away from arriving home, I'd been pondering whether to pursue my old pillows or swallow the guilt and buy some new pillows, but the speeding fine was around the same cost as new pillows, so I rang the motel in Singleton and organised to have them returned, which will be a LOT cheaper. And I'll feel less guilty about forgetting them in the first place. I'm not Catholic, but I do enjoy a touch of penance.

Whether my pillow will forgive me and be quite as comfortable again is the next issue.

It's very nice to be home.

The cats haven't sulked at all at our tardy return from wherever they thought we'd gone. In fact, they've been ever so clingy and loving, with constant love-eyes* and much lolling at our feet wherever we happen to be unpacking / sitting / sweating. For lo! it is hot, not as hot as poor Adelaide, but hotter than most other capital cities, I notice. The cats are so hot they're loving a quick surreptitious spray with the water misters we bought for Woodford and never used because the sky spat on us sufficiently. They lie in front of the fan with their sprayed fur and purr at us with the love-eyes.

Tomorrow I plan to clean the studio up, since it will be horribly messy from my rushed end of year, and at least ten degrees cooler than the house. And then to the pool, which is between the studio and home and the logical place to be on a stinking hot afternoon when all you want to do it curl up in the shade with a book and all your son wants to do is track down his friends after weeks in the country with his father. If he doesn't find a friend or two at the pool tomorrow, I'll be very surprised.

Have I mentioned how much I missed Bumblebee over the last three weeks? He's missed me too: we've been hugging each other at every opportunity, which is not fun when it's so hot, because we make a weird sweaty ripping noise every time we pull apart. He seems to be inches taller, and he now looks like a high school student, so I'm almost used to the idea. Our mutual relief at having never to see or deal with his old headmistress again is more than words can express.

I think it's time to go and sit on the front step in the cool before going to bed. The night breeze is spectacular, but it doesn't seem to want to come inside, no matter how many windows and doors I open. Never mind, I don't blame it for not wanting to be inside, I'll go out to it, seems the logical thing to do. I think my belief system, if I have anything near such a formal concept, has a large dash of Shintoism in it, or something that allows inanimate objects and natural elements to have personalities of their own. The wind is feeling shy and stubborn, my pillows are sulking in a lost property room in Singleton, and the cats are just glad that everything is back to normal. Sort of. My neck will grumble in its sleep tonight...








*Can it be possible that anyone doesn't know about kitty love-eyes? If you don't like cats, never glare at them with angry squinted eyes, because in cat language you are telling them how much you adore them and their bespittled fur and they will instantly jump on your lap and wish to be adored in return. If you want to keep them away and confused as to why you don't succumb to their irresistible charms, glare with eyes wide, wide open and don't blink for a while. Our cats look at us with long slow winks, which is deep love and appreciation, and I do the same back to them, which ensures that we get on most agreeably.