Where the heck did the last year go?

All I know for sure is that change is a constant in my life, even when I do my best to avoid it, and no one is safe from the ruthless march of time.

Since my last news update in March of last year my sudden flood of sales thanks to the Dull Women's Club quickly dried up. However I had some small success in June when I sold books at my town's annual secondhand book sale organised by the local Lions' Club. In exchange for being allowed to sell my book at the venue I volunteered with the sorting out of donated books and setting them out. I was saddened to see how many books were simply thrown away because they were deemed 'too old' or 'not popular enough' –  I think there's a metaphor in there about how we treat people, afterall, there's a book in everyone, right? However, I rescued several from going to the dump including a well worn copy of Mrs Beeton's cookbook from 1923. There were other interesting finds including one biography of Roger Moore that rattled as I handled it. I opened it to find that it had been hollowed out to make a book safe and contained several trinkets. Here's a tip: if you're going to turn a book into a book safe, be sure you don't donate it to the local book sale.

Though I fully intended to get started on novel number two after the book sale, my life took off on a tangent. I'd been longing for a dog  and had considered adopting an ex-racing greyhound off and on for many years, and in July I started looking online again. One boy's story in particular tugged at my heart strings: a six-year-old that had been rehomed unsuccessfully twice already and had health and anxiety issues. How many times had I been rejected because people couldn't or wouldn't try to understand and cope with my health and anxiety issues? I just knew I was the right human for him and so I sent in an enquiry and within two weeks Ben moved in. The first few weeks and were hard work and there were moments I doubted I'd be able to cope. Ben's anxiety manifested as aggression towards other dogs and our morning walks were a nightmare in the beginning. It's almost a year now and Ben is almost unrecognisable from his former self. He's confident and happy and a lot calmer. He's still wary of unfamiliar dogs that rush up at him but he's actually made a few doggie friends and everyone who meets him loves him. He's been good for me – walking him everyday has helped me lose weight and gain new friends. I made Ben his own instagram page (BennyBean) and in just under a year he has managed to get five times more followers than I've got in six years!  

Things seemed to be finally starting to come right and then in October everything fell apart again. My financial situation has not been good for some time (yes, adopting a dog may not have been a smart move financially, but given what happened next, he saved my life - he was the rock and support I needed when there was no one else to lean on) and while I was scraping by I had zero capacity for a big hit, and that big hit came in an unexpected increase in my rates. It turns out our local council made an error in the rates calculation for low income people paying by direct debit which meant that many people had not had their rates increased in several years. When they realised their mistake those affected were faced with huge increases PLUS additional bills to pay back the money the council had not charged in that time. I was one of the lucky few. Funny how it's always the people who can least afford unexpected expenses who get hit by this sort of thing. I was really angry by the way the whole thing was handled, I took offense at being told I 'owed them arrears', when I've never missed a bill payment in my life and paying by direct debit makes late payment impossible and any errors on them. It was unfortunate that they pissed off a writer – I vented all my frustration in a strongly-worded open letter to the council. I never received any response, but it certainly felt good giving them a piece of my mind.

The error with the rates meant I was looking at an increase of over double what I was paying and I had no capacity to absorb it so I decided it was time to sell up and downsize. It's something I had been thinking about for some time – I was struggling to keep up with the maintenance of my property and knew I'd have to find a smaller place eventually. It must have been fate, because within a week or so of deciding, I found the perfect property just round the corner, literally 140m away according to Google maps. I put in an offer immediately and it was accepted. I still had to get my property on the market and there were some tense moments when I got an offer and it looked like the buyer might pull off, but the odds were definitely in my favour and the sale proceeded.  

I then had around six weeks to get everything packed and organised. For such a short distance, the move was still a huge undertaking and there was an incredible amount of work to do, and it was no less stressful than any other move and it was difficult on Ben too. Poor Boy had only just settled in to a routine with me when everything got upturned and we had to start all over in a new home. We moved in just before Christmas and it's taken a good six months to unpack and get things sorted out. There's still plenty to do, but the hard part is over. I'm really happy with my new home, it suits my needs perfectly and being smaller it is a lot easier to look after.  The physical work of packing, moving and unpacking took its toll though – I've developed over-use issues (bursitis) in my ankles and ongoing back pain. Lucky me! I only just got over a seven-year ordeal of hyper-allergy/sensitivity and reactive skin issues. Sigh. 

Still, I'm optimistic for the future. I feel like I've finally found home. In the 24 years I've lived in New Zealand none of the homes I've lived in have ever felt like home, whereas my new place has felt like home from the moment we moved in. It feels cosy and comforting in the way my childhood home felt. I've always liked to believe in signs and I had several signs associated with this home. On the day that my offer was accepted I found a white feather (which is meant to be a sign that an angel is protecting you) and two weeks before moving day I found a stone that had a sticker on it that read, the best is yet to come (several months later I found a second decorated stone with the same words). However, the biggest sign was a literal message from beyond the veil...

Some weeks before the move I was preparing Ben's breakfast and after adding a couple of scoops of kibble to his bowl I set the container down on the kitchen counter. I continued with my day of packing boxes and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the evening when I went to make Ben's dinner. I went to add kibble to his bowl, but the container of kibble was gone. I looked everywhere in the kitchen and there was no sign of it. Thinking, I must have absent-mindedly carried it into another room or that Ben might have taken it outside, I searched the whole house, garage and garden. I couldn't find it and eventually gave up and made up a new container from the large bag I kept in an outside cupboard. I brushed it off thinking I had probably packed it by mistake and that it would turn up at the new place. 

On moving day, I was busy cleaning the house while the movers packed the boxes and furniture onto the moving truck and walked through to the living room which was now just about empty except for a table and an armchair. One of the removals men was manhandling the chair and on the floor behind him I saw the missing container of kibble.

"Oh! You've found it," I exclaimed. He asked me what I was talking about and I pointed to the container and said I'd looked everywhere for it. He went white and said that it had not been there seconds before when he had walked in the room! We were both dumbfounded and couldn't explain how it had got there as there was nothing it could have fallen out of or rolled out from under. Everything had already been moved out. When the other removals guy joined us in the room, he also had no explanation for how it got there. I took photos of it because it was just so weird. I still can't explain it. It's weird too, because a few minutes earlier I was in the garden and stopped at a cherry tree I planted in remembrance of my parents. I said out loud that I was sad I couldn't take it with me but that I would still think of them. The reappearing container was like my Dad saying they were listening.  Though I'm fascinated by the unexplained and have an open mind, I'm also skeptical and Dad would know that I would need something I couldn't explain away to believe it as a real message from beyond. 

So, I hope that though the vessel was rather mundane – a container of dog food – the message is that the best really is to come. I turned fifty last year and I feel I've hit a turning point in my life. Perhaps its the realisation that I'm probably two-thirds of the way through my life now. I may only have thirty years left if I'm lucky so it's time to let go of a lot of angst and past regrets and make the most of what time I have left. And for me that means making more time for writing and creating. 

I've neglected Shooting Stars for some time – the lack of sales and lack of funds to put into promoting it made me rather depressed and disillusioned. Now that my final move is behind me (that had better be the last one!) and I'm feeling more grounded and optimistic, I'm giving Shooting Stars a makeover and a re-launch so watch this space in the coming weeks.

I'm also reactivating my Buy Me A Coffee page and will be posting fortnightly exclusive content for supporters. This is not so much for you as it is for me – by forcing myself to provide regular updates I'm hoping it'll help to keep me focused on the new book. It's so easy to get distracted and side-tracked by other things when you have no one to answer to.