Two days after Christmas, Wendy, Sue and I sat in the front room. Wendy was writing thank you notes, Sue was doing something on her phone and I was writing my second batch of Christmas cards and blaming their late departure on the Royal Mail, which was still on strike. Wendy looked up. “I hear  Read the Rest…

I recently hosted an episode of Wild Kingdom here in my quiet Seattle residential neighborhood. Coyotes live in Carkeek Park, a wildish, greenbelt a mile from my house. They have, in the past, drifted up from the park to terrorize the neighborhood for a night or two. The alarm goes out, we keep our cats  Read the Rest…

I yelled at the cat. That’s when I knew things had gone too far. It started when I began practicing to sing “Fill the World with Love,” a song from the musical Goodbye Mr. Chips (by Leslie Bricusse). I always get a little choked up when I sing it so I was practicing singing through  Read the Rest…

Still at Zennor ( see previous post) we had lunch at the Old Chapel Café. I discovered Cornish crab, which I afterwards ordered every chance I got. As we were leaving I got engrossed in seeing how an old iron ship part functioned as a doorstop. I pulled it away and watched the door swing  Read the Rest…

I am making this a news free weekend because I am exhausted after the heart wrenching testimony on Thursday of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the ensuing pissing match between Lindsey Graham Cracker and Brat Kavanaugh to see which could spew their putrid stream of testosterone the farthest in service to their own egos. So.   Read the Rest…

I want to tell you what Jesus has done for me. We’ll have to wait a moment until those who know me regain consciousness. Now say “hay-soos” or for the linguists among us: “xe.sus.” I know I am being juvenile about this but I love it that I have a gardener named Jesus. He has  Read the Rest…

The spring usually brings me a surge of energy and this year I am more than grateful. It has been such an awful winter what with the cold and the rain here in Seattle, the darkness of the season, our precarious political situation and probably more than anything, the death of my kittens. After months of  Read the Rest…

I should never have named them Hamlet and Laertes after two literary characters who died young. I thought those were clever names. But one shouldn’t mess around with archetypes. Archetypes are serious stuff. Both Hamlet and Laertes died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. They were nine months old. Hamlet had been sickly from the start.  Read the Rest…

I’ve got a Shakespearean drama going on over here that’s only appreciable to a cat lover. I’ve got this kitten I called Hamlet because Hamlet is one of my favorite characters in literature even though or maybe because he is a load of trouble. So is the kitten. He’s seven months old and still gives  Read the Rest…

I’ve just come through a spate of losing things. At least I hope I’ve come through it because it’s been disorienting. I have always had a sharp memory and bloodhound’s talent for finding things, particularly if those things have sugar in them. The first casualty was a music book. It’s a collection of songs, many  Read the Rest…