The Cat Who Remains

Good evening! I may have mentioned this before but Soot was a huntress--she learned not to bring home certain prey--the ones that Mom particularly found appealing--such as birds, squirrels, gray or red, and chipmunks. I have not noticed an increase in the avian visitors so I'm hoping that, in her old age, she gave up expending the energy to catch creatures that had a definite advantage--what's with that flying trick? However, since her demise on April 1 and the arrival of more of less nice weather our bird feeders, indeed our porch, seems to be overrun with the cute rodent creatures. Now, Soot had totally eradicated the chipmunks--after all, how hard is it to wipe out a population of little Alvins who foolishly dig their holes an easy jump off the porch--I mean right there--even I could have just stepped off and stepped on--really! She used to sit for hours just staring at the hole and when one of those little heads popped up before you could say " uh " Alvin was history! I wasn't happy but cats are hunters and if I'm going to have a cat it is going to be an outdoors normal creature or forget it.

Which brings me to this morning. Bill and I had slaved over the jungle of a lawn--40 days and nights of rain will create one even in Vermont! Okay, so I exaggerate but I don't want to tally the rainy days of this spring and, so far, summer for fear the actual count may do me in. I'd rather sort of joke about it and make like Noah--you know the famous two by two guy? Well, it seems we are in a two by two situation, though it may be worse. Without putting cute little bracelets on our rodent visitors' dainty wrists we don't know if we have just two red squirrels and two chipmunks or if there are considerably more but we only see two of each at any given time. Anyway, I digress. Bill and I decided to start today off with coffee on the porch. Mist who will only go outdoors under the most controlled situations deigned to join us. As long as we allow her to lie right in the middle of the table with the doors open to the living room she will relax. She will also venture out if we are visible indoors and again she doesn't get left on the wrong side of the screen door. Sometimes while we are at the table she will actually sprawl on the porch floor but only within inches of the open door!

So this morning, here we three were enjoying the new day and the early sunshine. Suddenly, there arrived a chipmunk in my lovely pink flowered pot. Misty arose and came to my side--her ears pricked forward, her haunches tightened to spring, the tip of her tail twitched back and forth. I told Bill in my best play calling voice of each change in stance and attitude. And then--she made some kind of a chirping sound and turned her back and walked away. Chippy, totally oblivious went on scavenging and departed. Red came to the hanging feeder and things settled down. Misty moved to the table.

Now, it is interesting the behavior of these two rather small and both red creatures with somewhat bushy tails ( of course, though they seem so similar, chippy DOES have those distinguishing stripes ). Red will sit for hours in the feeder and eat and eat and eat--yet at the end there are still some seeds for the birds. Chippy on the other hand is like a vacuum cleaner --he/she will take seeds and hulls and stuff those cheek pouches until you thing the skin would burst--the face actually becomes quite distorted and uncute. Once filled to capacity Chippy takes off to God knows where, unloads and returns for more. They keep it up until there is nothing left for Red or the birds--such gluttons!

So Misty had come to her favorite spot on the table between us and Chippy returned. She actually leaned toward Chippy but then turned to me as if to say, once Chippy had left yet again, " was I supposed to do something? " Sigh! No Misty, it's okay--just try to keep them out of the house--okay?

At Sixes and Sevens! Sigh :(

This has been a sort of don't know what I want to do with myself kind of weekend. After ten days of having the kid home from Montana, not paying close attention to my Weight Watchers' tracking and getting word that our expected company cannot come because of a painful, unfortunate bout of arthritis, I've been sort of moping around.

Daughter left on Friday in pouring cold rain and wind and though she left our house at 12;30 and Lebanon, NH on the bus at 1:20 she did not arrive in Boston until 4:30, an hour late. Fortunately her plane for Minneapolis - St Paul was not to leave until 6:15 so she had time. She called at around 5:15 to say that security took 45 minutes and she was already exhausted and hadn't even really begun her long trip to Montana. She said she was going for a beer--which I could well understand. About an hour later, when I would have thought she'd be in the air she called once more to say that there was another 30 minute delay on her flight and she'd probably miss her connection in M-StP since it had been a tight schedule anyway! Groan. While she was so close and yet so far I was puttering around the house trying to stay warm by drinking copious amounts of tea and finally settling down with a book before dinner. Eventually, I turned on TV and around 9ish she called once more to quickly say that she just landed in Mn and would be able to catch her flight just barely after all--love you, bye. And so about 1130 I retired for the night with a heavy heart and a few tears knowing that she was in the air and would land in Bozeman long after I'd hit REM sleep and deep snoring.

I wish I could say that Saturday dawned bright and cheerful but no--it dawned, cold, gray, rainy and windy--the story of this Spring in Vermont! At around 1030 as hubby and I were into our second cups of coffee the phone rang and one sleepy head informed us that she was safe and tired and still in bed and returning to sleep. We laughed and told her we loved her. Then Bill went to work and again I moped. Worked on organizing photos online and caught up with emails, ordered a few things from Staples and gave up trying to be productive and read some more. She called from work to ask about some recipes since she would be grocery shopping to refill the empty larder she'd left to come home. My sister had found a copy of one of my favorite cookbooks and gave it to Betsy so now she could make some of her most beloved meals in her own apartment. It is fun when she calls to talk about stuff like that. She's called me from the grocery store before to ask about different types of potatoes and which to buy for a certain dish or to check to see what kind of corn--kernel or creamed I use in a side. It's at times like that that I'm happy I have a daughter.

Today it was muggy but at least sunny so my spirits lifted a bit. Read the Sunday papers and don't really know what else I accomplished --not much. As I say, sort of at loose ends. But tomorrow is another day. While Bets was home we moved the futon from my workroom in the cellar to the living room. Now the living room is a total disaster--we had to move chairs to make room for the futon but it still isn't where it needs to go. We have to rearrange some large pieces like the desk, china closet and case clock to make proper room for it. Then we have to reorganize the other side of the room which is the dining room in this open floor plan house. Since this will be the first change in over ten years there are things that have been stored or placed on these pieces that must be sorted and reorganized as well. All in all quite an undertaking but we may as well do a thorough job. It probably won't happen again for another ten years.

Of course, I had the futon moved upstairs because my original dream of a den, workroom,office, library, guest room was too ambitious. Although the office nook has worked out and the shelves for books are in place, they are overflowing and extra books are creating imitation Tour Eiffel and Leaning Towers of Pisa on the floor. At times the futon has served as the guest bed but more often than not it has been one more surface for excess scrap booking stuff. I never did get the large screen TV that I envisioned on the big wall and so my family never curled up on the futon to watch TV whilst I scrapped the history of our exploits. Sooooo, now that the kid is no longer here, I decided that library/workroom is the best use of the space. To that end I've ordered another folding banquet table and stack of drawers. Once our living space is organized I shall have to tackle that area. I wonder if I have that many years of life left--but then I KNOW I shall never get all those pictures scrapped anyway.

So, starting tomorrow PROJECT HOUSE begins--and I'll get back to my WW tracking. Hopefully, as I see things take shape my mood will lift and so will the rainy skies. Maybe I'll get some color after all, lose a few pounds and feel like pulling a mid- July party together. Let us hope--otherwise this listless rainy summer will pass into the short cold days of winter and I'll go mad!

The Cinderella Horse--The Eighty-Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts

This book is as its title proclaims the story of Snowman, an eighty dollar champion but it is so much more. It is also the story of the role of horses in the pre-World War II era and the changes in the years following that event that also changed our use of horses. It is the story of two young Dutch immigrants to the United States, who through hard work and faith in the future made a life for themselves and, eventually, their six children in a new land. It describes life in '50's-'60's Long Island and New York City among the private girls' schools and horse shows of the very rich.

At the heart of this interwoven tale is the story of a man and his horse. A horse who in his first appearance in the narrative grabs us as firmly as he did the heart of sensible, unsentimental horseman, Harry de Leyer. Harry, in charge of the horses used to teach young monied ladies of the Knox School how to ride, is looking for inexpensive, gentle horses at an auction in Pennsylvania. Arriving too late to have his pick he spies a moth eaten old work horse, his white coat rubbed off in places and dirty in others, headed into the truck going to the slaughter house. Standing tall, with his head held high, the horse gives Harry a steady and determined eye that Harry cannot resist. The spirit is there and Harry reluctantly hands over $80 for a horse he isn't sure is worth the proverbial plugged nickel but he must do it--he cannot ignore the look of the horse he names Snowman. For those readers who were not around in the time of this story $80 will probably sound like a pittance but my parents were paying $68 a month without utilities in a nice two bedroom apartment in Chelsea that now goes for almost $2000 a month! $80 was a lot for a man who had very little.

But this is how this love story begins and like Harry, without knowing quite why, we fall in love with Snowman, too. He is the horse the frightened girls ride to get confidence, the one who lets the de Leyer children ride him bareback and the horse, who, when summer comes, and he is taking up space and eating without contributing to his upkeep, is sold reluctantly but unemotionally by Harry to a good home and a neighbor several miles away. He is also the horse who defies all kinds of attempts to keep in pastured at that neighbor's and leaps paddock fences, one time pulling a lead with a heavy tire on it, to return to Harry and the home he loves. What else could be done but to take him back with loving arms?

But Snowman's leaping of fences inspires Harry to try training him as a jumper to be entered into those exclusive horse shows. Snowman, an old work horse from some Amish farm, and Harry, a riding teacher from the Knox School and the owner of the jumper, to compete against thoroughbreds and amateur riders employed by wealthy owners to win ? A fairy tale! And indeed, it is---a fairy tale with a Cinderella Horse and his Dutch Prince. And at the end, after 26 years a fairy tale with the hero dying with his faithful human by his side. The man left alone to dig the grave with his sons. The fairy tale to be told here by Elizabeth Letts and one to cherish and remember.

The only thing as a reader I would have liked was to know what Harry and his family went on to do in the gap between Snowy's death in 1974 and the very short epilogue that takes place in 2005 - 2008. But, perhaps, after the excitement of life with Snowy, the rest was just too much of an anti-climax. This is the story,after all, about The Eighty Dollar Champion but, if Harry hadn't been the fellow in Pennsylvania that snowy night in 1956, Snowman might have been one of hundreds of nameless horses rendered for glue and dog food.

Bill Bryson is Probably Happier in Great Britain

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Bryson is funny at times but I don't like his descriptions of people he meets, particularly those of the South. I see no reason why a man who lived in Hanover--where everything is priced for the elite--should have chosen to describe a waitress in Gatlinburg, Ga as Betty Slutz because he found his bill for a hamburg and drink to be outrageous and she looked it over and said welcome to Gatlinburg! Tourist traps are tourist traps and Ivy League towns are Ivy League towns--guess he didn't mind paying more for the same meal in Mollie's Balloon--but here I'm being funny at his expense and that I'm sure wasn't the source of his humor.



His better than anyone else on the AT attitude aside the tales of the trail are interesting. I still don't know why anyone wants to walk an outrageous distance over impossible terrain in horrendous weather but his description of the functioning of a tree and how vulnerable it is to disease, of meeting a moose at a common watering hole;of arrogant bourbon drinking hikers taking over a lean-to;of black flies and other insect attackers; of great heights and panoramic vistas or not; of the absolute isolation of deep forest are all good reasons for reading the book. I've experienced the same things in the woods of the Eastern seaboard and on its mountains and never set foot on the AT. It is nicer when you don't decide to kill yourself but rather do these things in day long or overnight doses and for me just as satisfying. I must say that I'm glad I did NOT read this book before my daughter and a friend hiked from Gunnerson, Co to Bozeman, Mt last year. I had a few sleepless nights but would not have slept at all had I read this before she departed.



All in all I'm glad I read this but am not inclined to read anymore of his books.



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Reading challenge--I think I'd better make it harder!

2011 Reading Challenge

Katherine has


read 40 books toward her goal of 52 books.

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40 of 52 (76%)

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Let's hear it for Equality!

They Did What? Things Famous People Have Done by Bob Fenster

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Kind of mindless trivia about a lot of famous folks both current and historic. Sometimes fun--for instance, Dr Guillotin did NOT invent that head chopping device but he thought it was a good idea since it made execution more equal--you know along with brotherly and free! Egalite,Fraternite et Liberte--not necessarily in that order. Seems that before the Revolution only nobles were beheaded, the rest of the peons were hung--now EVERYONE could lose their heads. Yea, EGALITE!



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Got Sisters? Read

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Actually, this giveaway closed on June 13 and the book arrived June 14th--but the option to acknowledge receipt didn't appear to many days later. Matters not---I started the book as soon as it arrived and finished it this morning over coffee! Only one complaint--I like the cover of my copy -- a girls hand and a red rose over an open letter better than the clothes rack on the actual cover.



Now to my review--as you can see I've given the book five stars, not a common rating by me. I'm not sure why--or better to say--I'm not sure I know how to verbalize why. Do you have sisters? Did you love Little Women? Who was your favorite---Jo, the outspoken, Beth the adorable and tragic, Meg the domestic one or Amy the cute one who stole Laurie's heart? I always related to Jo--and in this novel so does Lulu--the middle sister of the Atwater clan. She, Emma, the settled and stable eldest, and Sophie, the irrepresible youngest,an aspiring serious actress are the latest generation of the Marsh clan,descended, on their mother's side, from Jo.



Donnelly does a remarkable job of interweaving the two groups of girls through Lulu's discovery, in her parents' dusty, spider-infested attic, of letters exchanged among the Marsh girls. Jo is left at home, seemingly destined for spinsterhood. This is a situation to which Lulu feels she can relate, especially since, as a 25 year old college graduate, she still hasn't settled on a life's work nor has she a boyfriend, although, this being the 21st century she is sharing a flat with a rich female friend. Amy is newly married and on her honeymoon in Europe with Laurie. Emma is engaged and soon to be married and quite decided on her life's path or so it seems. Meg is married to a dependable, quiet sort--much like Emma's Matthew --and has two children. Probably the sort of life Emma will have. Beth, of course, has died and her memory weighs heavily on her sisters, particularly Jo. In the modern group, Sophie, comes close to dying. This event causes her sisters to contemplate what it would mean to have one of them gone.



In Little Women Mr Marsh is present only through letters but his marriage to Mrs Marsh and their relationship is the foundation and security which stabilizes and supports the Marsh girls and so, too, David and Fee's marriage provides the anchor for the young women in modern London. But in no way is the story of the Atwater's a mirror image of the Marsh family. Instead, the letters help to clarify for Lulu how much life has changed in over 150 years and yet how much remains the same. How much the history of a family carries down through the generations and informs the present. Lulu keeps the letters for herself for most of the story --for herself and for us--and they bolster her through her time of indecision and self discovery. They also speak to all of us who have had sisters or who have daughters or who have extended families of women--but really for all those female interelationships--there simply is nothing like having real sisters and all the joy, aggravation, irritation, love, grief, anger, happiness, stress, jealousy, sharing that that entails.



Ms Donnelly wrote a beautiful book -- you'll delight in reading it.







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