I Once Caught a Cubby Cat. . . .

While suffering through our first bout of Covid this May, I saw a cat rescue's photo of a cream-colored kitten and began babbling to Mike, "LOOK at her!  Oh my goodness!  If she were mine, I'd hold her on my shoulder all day long!  I'd call her 'Cubby' and just cuddle her all her day!"  She was blind in one eye and missing the other.  I wanted her as soon as I saw her.  I had really actually thought, "That's my cat" as soon as I saw her, but I said nothing to Mike about wanting to apply to adopt her.  We hadn't even discussed getting another cat in the soon-to-be-two-years since Stuffed's death.  Having a new one somehow didn't even seem like a possibility. 

A month passed and I hadn't been able to stop thinking about this fuzzy little soul.  Was she scared?  Was she lonely?  Did people cuddle her?  She was blind:  Was she safe?  She was just a baby!  On the morning of June 23rd, I woke from a dream in which we'd adopted Cubby.  (She was "Cubby" to me from the start; The rescue called her something else.)  The plot of the dream was lost to me upon waking, but Cubby had been ours.  This was the two-year anniversary of Stuffed's death, and I took it as a sign that we were meant to go for it.  More than a month had passed since I'd seen the rescue's last update on her, so it seemed likely that she'd already been adopted, but I emailed the group anyway to tell them we wanted her.  And I took it on faith that we would somehow be the ones to get her, just like in my dream, and without waiting to hear otherwise, I ordered two aqua gingham collars--one kitten-size and one for her to grow into--a red heart-shape name tag and a special needs tag that stated she was blind, I began reading articles and a couple books about taking care of blind cats, and I ordered a picture of her to keep beside Stuffed's on the table between Mike's and my chairs.  I went ahead and paid the adoption fee and bought kitten food and a few catnip mice to start off her toy collection here.  And I waited to hear back from the rescue.  And waited.  And waited.  I babbled even more feverishly to Mike about this kitten, I prayed about it, I texted him about it while he was at work, I wrote in my journal about it, I willed an email to come or the phone to ring and waited some more.  At one point while Mike listened and looked at me pityingly, I started crying halfway through saying, "It's okay, I know I'm not going to be the one who gets her," surprising even myself with how gutted I felt at the thought.  But almost simultaneously, I would think, "How could this NOT be my cat???  Look at her!"  It was every bit as odd as it seems.

The rescue didn't list a phone number, so I emailed twice more the next week but still got no response.  I dreamed of Cubby a second time while waiting to hear back, however:  In the dream, we had adopted her and I was carrying her into the apartment, but she peed on my shoulder before I could get her over to the litter box and Mike and I were laughing about it.  'Still no word from the rescue, though, and in desperation, I decided to write them a letter and to send it via Overnight Delivery.  In three pink legal pad pages, I pleaded my case for our adopting this kitten, feeling decidedly desperate but compelled to do so, and I sealed the letter with a drawing of Cubby.  Despite being twenty-seven dollars poorer after paying the next-day-delivery postage and uncharacteristically late for work to boot, I felt a sense of peace as I left the post office:  Whatever was meant to happen would happen.  I had fought to be gifted with her, but the rescue would obviously choose the person they deemed best for her, and if all I wanted was what was best for her, then it simply followed that whatever they decided was fine.  Blind baby Cubby would be in good hands.  

On my day off the next day, a woman from the rescue group called and said she'd just received my letter and "I'm so sorry--I thought you knew the cat was yours?!"  She had thought someone else from the rescue had already contacted me, and those volunteers all thought that she had.  I was already crying while she explained this and mouthed to Mike, "We got her!" so he wouldn't think they were tears of disappointment.  The woman explained that the group had received so much interest in this kitten and other people had applied for her but that they had "been extra picky" and had been waiting to find the right person and home for her.  After a frantic week of blind-kitten-proofing the apartment--something I'd read online had recommended covering corners with bubble-wrap so a blind cat could explore and form a mental map of a space without walking into anything sharp-edged in the process, so soon enough, I had taped bubble-wrap around all our chair legs, table legs, wall corners, etc.--and buying new beds and kitten-specific things like a stuffed cat that contained both a heating pack and a battery-operated heartbeat, Mike and I made the eighty-mile trip to collect Cubby.  At this point, we had seen a video of her and a few more photos, so we were stunned to see how much smaller she appeared in-person.  'Not even two pounds yet, she kept her eye squinched shut but snuggled onto our chests and shoulders as we took turns holding her. 'Love, love, love.  ♥

 

Halfway home, Mike driving while I kept an eye on Cubby in the backseat, we parked for awhile to give her a break from her carrier.  As I picked her up to cuddle her, she peed on my shoulder just like in my dream.  I carefully cleaned her with a wet wipe and held her awhile longer after I dried her, but when I put her back into her carrier, the innocent-looking little kitten who had pre-bath been facing me the entire trip now turned her back on me and sat facing the car door instead.  Ha!  'The furry cold shoulder, we call it.  It was the first sign of feistiness in her, and we laughed about it the rest of the way home.  (Mike from the front seat:  "She turn around yet?" - Val:  "Noooope.")  Once we got her home, I sat on the floor with her and opened the carrier to let her begin exploring, but instead, Cubby scrambled up onto my shoulder to sleep.  We sat on the floor that way for forty minutes--"Getting caught in a Cubby Trap," Mike and I began to refer to it--until she was ready to scout out her new surroundings.  "This cat!" as Mike would say.  'Such a love.

So began a summer of what a coworker would affectionately refer to as "Cubby Chaos."  Cubby would sit so still and patiently as I wiped her eye and missing eye area every morning, she would gobble down her food, and then:  Off to the races!  My memory of July is a haze of blearily trying to get Cubby onto a sleep schedule--"Now you know what it's like having a newborn," Mom remarked after one of my been-awake-since-4 a.m. reports--snuggling her on my shoulder and chest--she would lick my face and pat-pat-pat at it with her warm little paw pads as if reading it in kitten Braille--repeatedly running to reach her as she attempted to walk across the air between the arm of Mike's recliner to the arm of my wing chair like Wile E. Coyote nonchalantly stepping off a cliff, weighing her daily to make sure she was gaining weight--and she was! She went from not-quite-two-pounds to almost-five this summer--rescuing her from the tops of chair-backs, bookshelves, and cat trees--she could climb up but couldn't get back down, whether because she was blind and missing the depth perception or just because she was young and little and hadn't yet figured it out, I don't know--laughing as she chased her pink ball around the apartment--we'd hear its jingle and turn to see her marching past with it in her mouth--and texting updates back and forth with Mike.  We had rearranged our work schedules before adopting her so that one of us would always be home with her, at least until she was older and able to be alone safely.  Now that the sleep-deprivation and constant worrying have passed, I look at the pictures and reread the texts we sent each other this summer and laugh.  We only ever knew Stuffed as an adult cat, so this little kitten's energy and antics were eye-opening for us.  

And our favorite, a live-action shot from my attempted afternoon nap with her in bed beside me:

By mid-September, Cubby had settled down some.  She would either sleep through the night in bed with us or stay out of trouble if she moved to one of her beds in the living room.  Always a good eater, she weighed almost three pounds more than she had when we'd adopted her.  She was still smaller than she would have been had she had a better start in life--she was found in a tree stump when only a few weeks old after her mother had been hit by a car, and she'd been bottle-fed after that--but she had noticeably more heft to her now when we picked her up and looked more like a tiny cat than a very young kitten.  She seemed more than comfortable in her new home and had a bunch of favorite spots and daily routines now.  She continued to chase her pink ball and carry both it and a rainbow-striped long-tailed mouse around in her mouth as she ran around.  She wrestled a stuffed Grumpy Cat and cuddled up with "Mama Cat," her heartbeat cat, during naps.  Her barely-audible meow that we'd gotten used to was now a baby-dinosaur-squawking kind of sound as she got more practiced at using her voice.  Her Siamese-mix coloring was coming in darker, so her ears were standing out more against her cream-colored fur, making her even more adorable.  As I texted Mom, it was like I had Holly Hobbie's cat.  :)    

Cubby's spaying was scheduled for mid-October, and the last weekend of September, she began showing signs that we learned were possibly of her being in heat for the first time:  Lethargy, lack of appetite, decreased playfulness, and not wanting to be cuddled.  She drank but didn't eat either Friday or Saturday, and Sunday October 2nd, we took her to an emergency vet since I figured she might need IV fluids for nutrition soon if she didn't get her appetite back.  After the initial exam, the vet's assistant told us we could wait in the waiting room while more tests were run or wait outside in our car, so we chose the latter, and within about ten minutes, the vet called to say that she was sorry and knew this wasn't what I was expecting to hear but that it was time to make some hard decisions about Cubby. Cubby had FIP, which the vet described to us as a "silent killer" kind of illness that typically  lies dormant until it's almost progressed to its fatal end.  She and one of the assistants had both had a hard time finding Cubby's heartbeat, and the ultrasound had shown fluid already built-up in both her abdominal cavity and around her heart.  She couldn't tell us what to do, she said, but there was nothing she could do for Cubby.  She continued to talk, but I was already sobbing and told her I was sorry but that I couldn't talk and was passing the phone to Mike.  I heard her say, "I understand, and I'm so sorry" before Mike stepped out of the car with my phone.  While he walked around the parking lot talking with her, I cried like I have rarely cried in my forty-five years, feeling literally blindsided, and the memory of the sound of my voice as I sat slumped over in the front seat repeatedly howling, "No, nooooooooooooo" remains one of the most disturbing memories of all of this for me.  

The assistants and vets who helped us and Cubby that day had all mentioned at various points that Cubby was "really cute" and "very sweet."  The main vet was crying with me and Mike while she prepared to put Cubby to sleep.  "Poor baby," she murmured to her as she administered the final drug.  Mike and I talked to her as she passed, Mike sitting beside her while I supported her little body as the drug took hold.  She was still smiling even as she died. 

We buried Cubby by dear Stuffed in Mike's mom's backyard, with her blankie, her pink ball, her other favorite toys, and a note, and covered her with Baby's Breath and a riot of roses in both summer and fall colors to reflect the two seasons we got to share with her.  It was almost 10 p.m. when we finished in the yard, working by the garage lights and motion-sensor lights.  When I told Mike that I was glad Stuffed was near Cubby, he said, "Yes.  He can keep an eye on her," and I started crying again.  I had bought the baby Cubby figurine below a month before she died, intending it to be one of my Christmas presents from Mike, but he gave it to me after we came home from burying her.  With that perfect smile on her face and the pudgy kitten body to go with it, there she is with beautiful Stuffed, utterly oblivious to the "Cubby chaos" she's created.  :)  O' my cub!  My heart, my heart. . . .

Almost three months later, I just ache to feel Cubby on my shoulder again.  I miss the warm heft of her soft little body against my shoulder.  I miss the way she tilted her head at us.  I miss singing to her about how ♪ "I once caught a Cubby-Cat.  I caught her in my Cubby trap.  And when you catch a Cubby Cat, you cuddle her on your shoulder and lap."  ♫  I miss watching her nuzzling into Mike's neck, rubbing her face into his beard.  I miss watching her romp around with her ball in her mouth.  I miss getting home from work late at night and having her run out from the bedroom toward me.  I miss holding her paw when we'd first go to bed so she'd know I was right there.  I miss her in her entirety.  It will always bother me that I'll never know how big she would have gotten as an adult cat or learn if she would have eventually jumped down from the perches, trees, and chairs on her own.  She is the closest I'll ever get to having a baby.  The grief is literally breathtaking sometimes, and I force myself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out until the overwhelming wave rolls out again.  I was heartbroken after Stuffed died, but at twenty-one, he had put in his time, and we had been with him year after year as he became an elderly cat.  Cubby was maybe six months old when she died, and we only had twelve weeks total with her.  Just getting her bigger, stronger, and more confident in her surroundings had been such a mission for me from the very beginning, I still feel lost without it.  The day before Cubby died, I had been reading about Robert Kennedy's assassination and how young women who worked in one of his campaign offices the summer of 1968 were witnessed silently taking down its windows' "Kennedy for President" posters and banners.  I've remembered that image a lot since October 2nd.  I had kept a baby book of Cubby's medical records, daily weights, etc.  I'd been so proud of her.  (I'll always be so proud of her.)  How brave she was!  'Blind and hungry and likely expecting her mother to return to her and the rest of her siblings in that tree stump this spring, not being able to see the face of the person who pulled her out of it or the faces of those who transported her or handled her or bottle-fed her or held her in the months before we got her.  'Having to trust that these new voices and hands and shoulders in July would be gentle and good to her too and this new home was a safe place.  She had to take her entire world and lifetime on faith.  And she did it smilingly!   One of the books about blind cats I'd read before adopting her  was a memoir by Gwen Cooper of her time with her beloved "Homer."  After he died, she stated that she had known within five minutes of meeting him that he had already made her want to be a better person, and I had felt the same about Cubby before I'd even been approved to adopt her.  I think about that a lot too.  I think about how as May began, I didn't even know yet that this sweet little soul existed, and how just days later, my heart and my life had been changed by her.  And here I am now, in the end-of-year stillness, sorting it all out.

Monday or Tuesday of the week before Cubby died, I had woken from a dream in tears.  In it, Mike and I were sitting with a female vet--in real life, Cubby's regular vet had been a man--who was asking us how old Cubby was.  "'Between four-five months," I'd answered.  The vet said something else I've never remembered, then:  "I'm sorry.  You only have one more week with her."  I woke up crying at that point and told Mike I'd had a bad dream, but I hadn't even thought of it again until after Cubby had died.  It all really played out as it was destined to, it seems, from connecting with her the first time I saw her picture to knowing instantly that she would be "Cubby" and not the name the rescue group had given her. . .the first two dreams I'd had about her before we'd even been approved to adopt her. . . .I will ponder it all my earthly days, the wonder of how this precious blind baby came into my life and the part she played in it.  

2022 turns to 2023, then, with eternal gratitude for the gift of our ever-smiling Cubby.  What else is there to do now, after all, but be thankful for her, hold her in our hearts, and let her teach us how to feel our way forward?

♥

Aches and Pains and Papas and Petals

After thinking for awhile that I have arthritis, medical appointments the past few months have confirmed as much--osteoarthritis and psoriatic arthritis--and I'm now scheduled to meet with a rheumatologist this winter.  "You should consider talking with someone," one of the doctors told me, "because chronic pain is hard."  I should take her advice--Trained Counselor, heal thyself!--but I'm not there yet.  In a dream earlier this week, my grandfather who died in 2017 smiled at me and said, "I want to see you happy again."  There was no disappointment or judgement in his tone.  I could feel his own seemingly ever-present lightheartedness same as always, but I understood the implied urging toward action in his words.  This was only the second time I've dreamed of him since he died, and this was the first time he's spoken.  I want to see you happy again.  Well, then!  My goodness.   I cashed in a little vacation time this week and next to sort myself out a bit and took pen to paper the other day to come up with some Operation See Val Happy Again ideas.  Treating myself to flowers every week was one.  I've had stretches before of doing it but never consistently for very long, and I'm determined now to indulge myself weekly.  The creamy white Hydrangeas caught my eye late last night and seemed a sweet start to this small part of my plan.  I have other ideas, but this voluptuous bouquet was enough for yesterday. 

Home Again

Monday morning, Mom and I drove out to see the house we lived in in the 1980s and the one I always dream of and tend to remember as Home.  What to say except that upon returning here Tuesday, the hometown city council received a note from me with mentions of "houses that look like they should be condemned," "trash and BLIGHT," and "the worst-looking street in town."  Oh, my heart!  

There are only seven homes on the tiny sloped street I grew up on, and mine was the house at the very top.  This Monday, by the time Mom and I reached the house Mom's great-aunt Clarice once called "a doll house--just a doll house, Christine!"--I was so shocked by the appearance of the state of the first six houses, the current condition of my own former home barely made an impression.  Mom didn't even feel safe the few minutes we spent on the street before walking back to where we'd parked the car.

I have already dreamed of it twice since then:  In one dream, there was a sense of danger in the air and I knew something bad was about to happen somewhere on the street, and in the other, Mom and I were sitting where we'd parked the car Monday and seeing our former street as it had looked when the town was first founded.  In that gift of a dream, what is now the literal junkyard at the foot of the street was still all meadow, and part of the creek that winds through town opened onto a pond. 

Seeing it again has made my beautiful childhood there seem even more incredible.  "When my family lived there in the 80s," I recounted to the city council, "It was such a pretty and well-kept little street.  Good people, nice neighbors, pretty houses and yards, roses and Lilac bushes, clean porches. . . .Seeing it this past weekend was truly saddening.  If I had the money to throw at it, I'd love to buy it all up and completely restore it to its 1980s sweetness.  It really used to be a charming little family street."  Oh, truly!  What fun--what glorious FUN--it would be to play Daddy Warbucks and bring the street back to life. . .repair and repaint the houses, remove all the trash and junk cars, redo the landscaping, fix all the broken fencing,  replant the roses that used to separate a couple of the yards. . . .Ah!  I had expected it to look different, of course--twenty-seven years have passed since we lived there--but not dilapidated and depressed.  Maybe someday, it will take a turn for the better.  I have been telling my parents since I was a kid that if our former house ever came up for sale and I had the money to buy it, I would really be tempted, and oh my, yes:  That one and all the rest, by God, so that someday another almost-five-year-old girl could move into a blue "doll house" and sit inside one of her neighbor's heavenly-smelling Lilac bushes with her new friends and use another neighbor's fallen rose petals as faux makeup and pretend her parents' blue and pink gingham front porch is the judges' station she needs to acknowledge before beginning her Olympic gymnastics floor routine.    Oh, beautiful days!  And poor little street.  ♥

I continue to write about it all, still sharing the table with Stuffed.  While home, I told my parents about the memoir project, and they answered a bunch of questions I had about those years.  We laughed Monday night as I read aloud a few of the entries from diaries I'd kept as a nine, ten, and eleven-year-old in that dear little house.  Dad especially enjoyed 1988's mention that "I gave Dad some 'Almond Joys' for Father's Day!"--since I had just, twenty-seven Father's Days later, given him the same thing for the same occasion.  Ha!  Sweet family, year after year.  

♥

38 and Dreaming (or A Cake I Decorated and a Book I'm Writing)

The computer went kaput before I could share my birthday cake here a couple weeks ago.  I seem to be regressing regarding birthday cakes, getting more of a kick out of them--my own and others'--the older I get:  Deciding on flavors, decorations, candles, and tablecloths for my birthday is a small thing I look forward to every spring now, although I didn't seem to pay much attention even in my early thirties.  The past few years, it's become a fun and reflective time for me, just as setting the table for Christmas breakfast before I go to bed on Christmas Eve has.  ♥

The high temperature on my birthday this year was a humid 84°, so I decided just to mix up some pink buttercream and frost a ready-made ice cream cake.  And after a few minutes of wandering the store with my why-did-I-take-it-out-of-the-freezer-case-before-I-finished-the-rest-of-my-shopping cake, I finally hit upon what I wanted to use as this year's cake topper:  A truffle decorated like a nesting doll.  Her dreamy expression and heart-shaped lips charmed me and seemed appropriate for this birthday. 

While the newly-frosted cake was refreezing, I used pink acrylic paint, a light coat of glue, and a sprinkling of white sanding sugar to doll up a couple grocery store candles.  I only keep candles in cakes long enough for the pictures anyway, so why not jazz them up for the few seconds they'll last.  I stuck toothpicks into the candles' bases to make it easier to poke them into the frozen buttercream.  

A few hours later. . .eating and wish-making with Mr. Mike.  Ohhh, I want to have driven a lot more before my next birthday, although without owning a car, the amount of driving practice depends on how often we rent one.   And I hope to remain in good health and get back into running shape in the next couple years.    My biggest goal and dream for the year ahead, though, is to have finished writing a full first draft of the memoir of my 1980s childhood that I've been working on rather sporadically the past few years.   Memories of my family, house, friends, street, neighbors, pets, and teachers from those years make me light up like nothing else.  The more I write, the more I remember, and while my family and I have many old photos, I've also kept all the diaries I've written since the fourth or fifth grade, and they are detailed treasure troves of memories:  TV show theme songs, conversations with my parents, class projects, Christmas and birthday wishlists, first-day-of-school outfits, board games played with my brothers, paperbacks ordered from the school book order flyers, the athletes that thrilled and inspired during the Olympics, the first cassette tapes I ever owned, even a drawing of the view from my bedroom window circa 1987.  It is time to put all my notes and paragraphs together and get a rough draft finished.  At least a few of you here are published writers, and I hope my own dream of getting the memoir published as book comes true before too long.  

My family moved out of my childhood home in late 1988, when I was eleven-and-a-half, and I feel drawn to it like a magnet lately.  I haven't visited it since the day we moved, and I've always dreamed of it almost abnormally often, but even more-so this past year.  The night of Mike's dad's funeral in March, while we were staying at his parents' house, I had what began as a beautiful dream that my dad and I had gone together to visit our former street.  Oh, how I loved our little street!  It was a short no-outlet hill of a street hosting only seven homes.  And our former house!  I have loved few things in my life the way I loved that house.  I was so excited that I was about to see it all again, and Dad was humoring me.  As we turned the car up the short little hill, I was horrified to see that the street now looked like London's after the Blitz.  There was just enough of each house still standing to make it clear which one was which.  "My God," Dad kept saying, and remembering his voice even now hurts my heart.  I told him I wanted to walk around what was left of the house, and he said he'd seen enough and would wait for me outside.  I made my way into what had been our kitchen, and the dream got worse from there and soon ended, one of the worst nightmares I've ever had.  I was shaking when I awoke, and I'd somehow woken Mike with my fitful sleep during the dream.  "Tonight of all nights," I asked him, "Why would I have to dream something so horrible?"  Because his dad had just died?  Because I was thinking of my own?  Because with the death of one parent, that 80s childhood seemed especially Long Ago and Far Away and finishing the memoir felt that much more urgent?  All of the above, I'm sure, but the timing was cruel.  It took a long time that night to shake the feeling that I really had just been on that ravaged, silent street with Dad.  Four days after the funeral and nightmare, I dreamed that a woman asked me if she could publish my memoir.  "Yes, PLEASE!" I practically shouted in response.  Yes, I'm paying attention, Universe, and I'm connecting the dots. 

While I was home a couple weeks ago, I told Mom how much I wanted to visit "our" street, but from the glimpse of the house visible in the distance as we passed the hill, we could see the current owner in the driveway, and that wasn't the visit I wanted.  I will explore it all on my next visit, home, though, Current Owner in the Driveway or not, because it feels more necessary all the time, like I'm being pushed or pulled there.  

Before I left this last time, the subject of my sixth-grade science fair project came up while I was talking with my dad, and he said again, as he did a couple years ago, "I think now that those were the best years.  All you kids were still little, and Mum and Dad were still alive, and we were going to Ocean City every summer. . . ."  And this time when he said it, just like the first time he'd said it, I choked up at his words, and I wished more than ever that I could whip a hardcover copy of my memoir out from under the picnic table and say, "I think those were the best years too.  Here's a book I wrote about it."  The memoir really is, after all, a love letter to my parents.  Thirty-eight begins, then, with not only dreaming, but also writing.  What else could have topped my cake this year but a dreaming brunette with love on her lips?!  Surely, things are unfolding just as they should here, with death, nightmare, dream, conversation, and cake topper each showing up as they did.  Surely, my dream too can come true.  By the time I share my next birthday cake, I hope to tell you that I have a finished piece I can start submitting--however-many submissions it takes--for publication.   And oh!  Please, please let me have my handing-Mom-and-Dad-their-copies-of-my-book moment. 

♥

Tuesday Mish-Mash

I'm enjoying another cozy rainy day here, and from the looks of Stuffed ever-rearranging himself in his nest of old quilts, I'm guessing he's happy too.  I'm thinking pot pies for supper, to use up a mish-mash of ingredients in the freezer.  And I'm making an effort to whittle down some of the things I've saved in my email over the years.  A few items from my Miscellaneous folder of found quotes, ideas, tips, stories, and General Things I Love and Don't Want to Lose:

• In a CNN story online this summer about how eating apples helps you live longer, someone concurred in the comment section:  "I've been eating seven apples a day since 1811.  I'm over 200 years old and going strong."  :)  Mike and I laughed over that off and on the next few nights, it's so silly.  :)
• Whenever I get to visit Vermont, Jericho is on my must-explore list.  Have any of you visited?  It sounds fascinating and just beautiful.
• When I started this blog, I was working in a deli and bakery to save some money for my move here, and one of the store's resident curmudgeon customers huffed his way up to the counter and asked for however-much white Cooper cheese.  I told him that we were out of the white Cooper just then, but that we had yellow.  "Ohhhh," he growled at me.  "The whole world's gone to hell!"  That still makes me laugh.  "The whole world's gone to hell" became a catchphrase between me and my coworkers and me and my parents for the next couple weeks.  
• I love Sean Hayes' song "Powerful Stuff," and I emailed myself a link to this live performance of it in May 2012.  ♥  ♫  "Every day, do like a flower does.  Sun rises and she opens up.  Sun rises and she sings. . . ."  ♪  Mmmmmmmmmm.  Gorgeous song, gorgeous voice, gorgeous lyrics
• In the text of an interview with historian David McCullough I emailed myself in 2007, McCullough is asked by the interviewer what he hopes to accomplish in his then-new book 1776.  "Most important of all," he responds, "I hope I've conveyed that no one knew how things were going to turn out.  All the signs were that they didn't stand a chance, that the war was over and that we had lost.  It was the darkest time in the history of our country.  The prospects for the United States of America never looked so bleak.  But because a handful of very brave people refused to see it that way, we are the beneficiaries.  Without them, the Declaration of Independence would be only that, a declaration, words on paper."  He goes on to say that, "Ingratitude is a shabby human failing."  Beautifully put.  
• I'm a sucker for a good how-to-clean-your-home-with-[lemons/vinegar/in this case, Alka-Seltzer] and emailed myself this article years ago.  I use the sink-drain-cleaning tip often.
• In 2005, wise and witty Julie of the blog "A Little Pregnant" shared this gem of a conversation that took place in the New Orleans airport that summer.  The paragraph begins with "I miss Southern women," and ends with "That, my friends, is grace."  Indeed.  ♥
•  When I was a kid, thirteen or younger, I had a dream in which I was standing inside my grandparents' bedroom with my grandmother.  She was showing me a pearl necklace as the dream began, and as I looked at it with her as she held it in her hands, she said, "God has a necklace of pearls.  Every time one falls (from the chain), a human life is restored in its place."  That was the entire dream.  I woke up then and wrote it down, but I would have remembered what she said anyway.  
• This banana bread recipe makes the best I've ever had.  There is a container of sour cream in it, and the loaf pans are dusted with a cinnamon-sugar mixture.  Otherwise, it's a basic recipe.  But ohhhhh!  Truly!  Banana Bread Heaven!  ♥

There!  Back to sorting here, then on to pot pie-baking.  'Hope you all are having a good day.  Thank you again for your sweet comments on my autumn walk post too.  ♥

Inside and Outside

Temperatures reached 88°F here yesterday, and since I had started my walk too late in the afternoon, I managed just three miles in the blazing sun before feeling too sick and shivery to continue.  (I passed at least three women pushing babies in strollers and more than a few runners, though, so I have to wonder--as I always do when the tempeatures are this high--if I'm just not sturdy stock.  Babies!  Runners!  In what felt like 90+° heat!  Goodness.)  After returning here for a rest in the air conditioning with an iced tea, I felt good enough to head out for The Walk:  Part II , but by then, it was almost time for Mike to get home from work and I still had to run out for groceries for our supper, so three miles my tally remained.  The days have been glorious this past week, and the nights have been windy with rumbling thunder and lightning like flashbulbs that we see even with closed eyes while we try to fall asleep.  (I just remembered Eddie Rabbitt's 1980s hit "I Love a Rainy Night" and looked it up online only to learn that he died on my birthday back in 1998.  I don't remember hearing about that at all.  Cheers on yet another stormy night this week to Mr. Rabbitt.)  One of this week's walks included the seeking and finding of one of  the country's only remaining wood-bricked streets.  If one of the sweet old brick homes on this little cul-de-sac were available and I had the means to make it happen, I'd be packing moving boxes right now, let me tell you.  It's a charming spot in the city, and examining the wooden blocks that make up its street has been one of the quiet pleasures of this week.  

I have been deliberately and most-obviously cutting back on the time I spend online--you all are in my thoughts and prayers even if I'm not in your comment boxes and email inboxes lately  ♥--and recalibrating how I spend my days so that there is a better balance of fresh air and miles walked and quiet time (reading, napping, writing, puttering around the apartment, etc.) and social time.  Both my personality and my paid work always find me somehow taking care of others, and I am feeling healthier and more content now that I've made taking care of myself more of a priority this spring.  Laundry-doing, email-and-comment-sending, and letter-writing have temporarily fallen by the wayside as I get into new routines and better habits in other areas.  As I've said before, this self-nurturing bit seems to be one of my most-revisited life lessons, and although it's now taken me almost my entire first forty years to figure it out, at least I'm figuring it out.  :)  I had the sweetest dream a few weeks ago that I decided to drive down to my grandparents' house for a surprise visit.  Grandma and I greeted and hugged each other so joyfully, it still makes me smile.  "Oh!  I should do this more often!"  I squealed when I realized how happy this impromptu visit was making us.  "I should have been doing this all along!"  While she and I were catching up with each other in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw Papa building a giant bee box in their side yard.  (He was a beekeeper [in real life].)  That was really all there was to the dream, but the feeling of it and my gratitude for it have remained with me almost a month later,  both because it was a rare happy dream of my grandparents and because it gave me a taste of the peace and nurturing I've been cultivating here, one steamy mile and one steamy bowl of oatmeal at a time.