Cat people.

I hosted a book club at my house this week. We read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and then my friend Karen, from high school, and her book club came here for dinner and discussion. It went well. It was only my second book club experience, and I had a good time. I was amazed at how much we actually talked about the book. In my previous book club experience we talked about the book for about twenty minutes before we moved on to other subjects. This time, we talked about the book for about an hour. Wow! That was a hard thing for me, all that talking about the book. Not because I hadn't read it, because I had (and I had a few things to say about it, namely that it was too long and too many loose ends were not tied up), but because I wanted to eat all the food that we had there! I made a tossed salad, a chick pea salad (that reminds me, Summer-Sweater, I owe you that recipe), and roasted banana cupcakes, and it was the banana cupcakes that I really wanted to dig in to. They were SO GOOD.

The recipe was not that complicated, but it was time-consuming. They took about three hours to make. First you had to roast the bananas (and I do not recommend using over-ripe bananas, as they just turn to a sugary mess) then sift all the dry ingredients together, and then you were ready to add in the cooled roasted bananas. Looks appetizing, no? (One of the reasons why I am even recounting the tale of these roasted banana cupcakes is so that I can showcase the above photo, which is about the most disgusting display I've ever seen.) They turn out very well, though, and they taste even better. I highly recommend them.

One of the things I learned at book club was that most people I know are dog people and not cat people. No one except me out of the whole group have cats. They all have dogs. Doug and I have been on a dog kick lately; we've been so many places of late where dogs are prominent, and that just makes us want to get one all the more. So today, instead of going to the second day of the Design 4 Drupal conference that Doug's company is co-sponsoring, Doug and I headed off to our local shelters to see about adopting a dog.

In our post-Wyatt world, we have often visited shelters to look at the animals, and a couple of times we have been close to pulling that adoption trigger. We never did, though. Either we weren't in the mood, or one of us liked the animal more than the other, or we felt that we would be disrupting our little feline duo that bonded more than ever before now that Wyatt was no longer around. But I've always said that we'd adopt another animal when we found one that we really wanted, that we really connected with, and that we just couldn't leave behind. And today was that day, only not with a dog. Yes, with a cat.

We went to the Animal Rescue League of Boston's Dedham location, mostly on a whim. It was the last shelter that we visited. When we got into the shelter we walked by this friendly orange cat that was in a cage right outside the dog room. The poor guy was wearing a lampshade. The sign on his cage said that he was a sweet and lovable boy, and was he. I am drawn to the underdog, to the down-trodden, so I stopped to stick my hand in the cage, and he put his body into such a contortion to reach my hand that he fell off of the ledge he was perched on. I felt badly about causing him that fall, so I quickly went into the dog room. The dog room was filled with pit bull mixes, none of which could live with cats, so we left that room. Once back out, we stopped and said hi to our lampshade friend again. He was trying desperately to rub his head against the cage to say hello, but the lampshade made it pretty impossible. Doug and I nicknamed him "Conehead." We petted and loved Russo (his actual shelter name) for a little while, but then we headed into the cat room, just for yucks, where Doug became instantly smitten with Daisy Wick, a 9-month old long-haired black and white girl. She had a pretty face, and she was sweet enough through her cage, so Doug and I started talking about taking her home. But Conehead was on my mind. I had never met a friendlier, more sweet cat, and I have such a thing for orange cats. I told Doug that if we were considering Daisy Wick then we had to consider Russo. So, propelled by the momentum of the moment, we went to the desk and told the girls working there that we wanted to play with both Daisy Wick and Russo.

We played with Russo first, and wow. He was even better out of his cage than in it. He was bright, inquisitive, and super sweet. He let me brush him, he ate the treats we fed him, and he cared not one bit that all the other cats were hissing at him. He just went about exploring. When I picked him up and he was purring I knew that I wouldn't be able to leave without him. We played with Daisy Wick, just to do our due diligence, but there really was no question. Russo had won us over. We filled out the paperwork and packed him up and he's now ours.



He was found by a couple of people in West Roxbury, who noticed him wandering the neighborhood. This was in early April. They picked him up and saw that he had a huge gash going from the top of his neck between his shoulders to around the underside of his neck. Who knows how the poor boy got it. When they brought him to the shelter in Dedham the people there didn't think he'd make it. They bypassed their normal vet and brought him straight to the Tufts Emergency Vet clinic, the very same place we brought Wyatt to just about one year ago. The amazing vets there gave Russo great, great care and he is alive and well and as happy as can be now. In the past few months he's been through major surgery, spaying (he was not spayed when found), and an ear-mite treatment. He's on the mend, just about 100%, except that his scar on his neck itches him, so he wears the cone to keep from scratching at it. He's a wondercat.



Meggie and Sasha have not yet met him, though they know he's here. We will introduce them tonight, but will have more integration each night this week. My great wish is that this kind and sweet boy gives Meggie all the love and affection that she needs and used to get from Wyatt, and that Sasha ignores them both and lets them be. That's what I want. But for now Doug and I are content hanging with him and getting acquainted.



He's already burned a hole into our hearts, and we don't even have a real name for him yet. It feels nice having three cats again, especially when one is as sweet as this guy. Will we ever get a dog? Maybe. It's pretty clear, though, that for right now we are cat people, and that's just fine with us.

Weekend Edition.

I think that should be the new name of my blog. Or maybe "The Weekly Update." I seem to blog only once a week now, and it's mostly just a recap of what we've done (usually what we've done on the weekend).

Anyway, just a few things to catch you up on. I have a new addiction - to the WBUR app on my phone. I can listen to WBUR anytime now, and I do. While at the gym, while jogging, while on the train (until the signal cuts out), walking to and from the train... it's wonderful! I was listening in the mornings to a great recurring story on evaluating teachers (there is more than a little bit of me that is interested in being a teacher, even after listening to that series). And Weekend Edition on Sunday morning is perhaps my new favorite show to listen to. This is a case where I am happy to own a bit of modern technology. I think my phone does enhance my life.

Doug and I went to the Bruins parade yesterday (FYI - they won the Stanley Cup). It was a good time. It was also a very hot day, and thanks to the inaccurate weather forecast I brought with me my raincoat and umbrella, only to wish that I was wearing a sundress and had my sunhat. Doug was very happy to be there and so were the thousands of other revelers who stood out in the bright sun to cheer the Bruins on. We took the train into South Station and walked over to City Hall Plaza. It was a good place to watch from, but it's not like we could see much. We were about thirty people back from the road and the Duck Boats. BUT... we did get a glimpse of the team as they rolled by, and even of the Stanley Cup. It was fun to see all the black and gold confetti floating in the air. I'm so glad this parade wasn't for the Red Sox or the Patriots. I am tired of both teams, and tired of everyone wearing their red and blue. It's nice that another team has their moment of glory.

I saw two movies this weekend, too. First was Midnight in Paris, which was very good. Owen Wilson did a very good Woody Allen-lite character, and I enjoyed seeing Marion Cotillard and Lea Seydoux. French women are more than a bit beguiling. I also saw Bridesmaids, which was also very good, and actually quite funny. It was The Hangover, but for women. Same kinds of jokes, exact same idea, just with women. And like The Hangover, this movie somehow worked. Would I recommend it to men? Probably. The food-poisoning-pooping-in-the-street scene is something everyone can laugh about. Right?

What is perhaps most monumental and in need of relating, though, is that THE BIKE RACK IS NOW ON THE CAR! Doug, inspired by seeing Chara ride away from the Bruins parade on his bicycle, finally decided to grant my birthday wish of both last year and this year and got the bike rack on the car. So now we can bike. I'd love to bring the bikes to our vacation in Maine. Don't ask me where we'd ride to, and if we'd be in any kind of condition to ride around those hills (that's putting it mildly), but still. I can dream. It's good to dream.

Candyfreak

It's probably fitting that as I type I am feeding myself Necco Wafers, once a favorite candy of mine. I bought two sleeves of these treats on my drive over to Ithaca last week; the first I ate on my way to Ithaca and the second I was saving for a special moment. That moment is now, because I am reading Candyfreak, a story of a man and his love of candy (and his quest for candies of his youth that have gone the way of the dinosaur). This is the second book that I have read on candy; the first being Emperors of Chocolate, which was more of a history of chocolate manufacturing than one man's love affair with corn syrup. I remember that after I read Emperors I treated myself to a bag of Hershey's Kisses. Now I'm treating myself to a whole lot of Necco Wafers. I really need to stop reading books about candy.

But how else would I fill my spare time? Maybe by hanging out with family and GETTING THINGS DONE. I love to get things done. What did I get done on Saturday? I got a trip to the American Girl store checked off my list. Won't have to go back there until Miss Maria's birthday, because, thankfully, she got her AG fix for now. I also got a new faucet installed, thanks to my dad and Doug, and scratched "kick old, broken kitchen faucet to the curb and spit on it as it goes" off of the to-do list. I hated that old faucet. The new one is much better in a functional kind of way (though it's a bit shiny. It's like having a mirror in front of me as I'm washing dishes. Very odd.) My mother and I also reupholstered the cushion to the rocking chair that we bought in Brimfield last month. My mother took an upholstery class years ago and she was finally able to put her skills to use once again. After purchasing a staple gun Sunday morning we set about attaching the new fabric (which felt so HGTV). I stapled and my mother stretched the fabric. Here's to a little bit of hard work, creativity, and teamwork: Because of her efforts, I gave my mother a short break before making her go outside with me, in the mist, to weed my side garden. I can actually be kind when I want to be.

But why all of this family time? Doug was away, so I thought it would be a good time to bond with them. Doug was in NYC with Hot Molasses playing a show at the Ding Dong Lounge. I wish I had gone, since Doug said that it was a really good show and a cool venue, but I thought that the band was going to do a roadtrip thing where they all pile into a van, travel to New York, and sleep on someone's floor post-show. I didn't want to be a third wheel. However, all band members drove separately to New York and went their separate ways after the show. What kind of band camaraderie is that? When I get my bluegrass band up and running there will be none of that going on, I promise. (I also promise that I won't start up a bluegrass band anytime soon. Audiences would never pay to hear the sounds that come out of my violin at this point, and, given that I haven't picked up my instrument in over a month, they may never have the chance.)

Ithaca is gorges.*

I spent a little time in Ithaca earlier this week at the Ivies+ conference held at Cornell. What a good time. First of all, the drive there was just wonderful. The sky was bright and sunny and the temperature warm. The hills were rolling and the country was perfectly agrarian. I saw cows and horses and fresh hay bales. It was like a little bit of Vermont in upstate New York.

And then there was Ithaca. I don't have much experience with upstate New York other than a night spent in Liverpool, a few drives across state on my way to Canada, and a weekend in Cooperstown, but Ithaca was a lot livelier than I expected. I wish I had more time to spend there, but what I saw of it was nice, including the Courtyard Marriott, which had a remarkably equipped fitness room for the size of the hotel. The city is at the base of one of the Finger Lakes, Cayuga Lake, and is all hills and streams and gorges, like this one that runs right through the Cornell campus. There are wineries and walking trails and all kinds of great stuff to do and see. I wish I had had more time to spend there, but I know it's a place I'll go back to.

And what about Cornell? I was mightily impressed with the campus and the buildings and the views, as you may have by now suspected. It reminded me so much of the UConn campus, but a Storrs on steroids. I found myself wondering what it would have been like to learn there, to spend some formative years there, but then found myself wondering what it would be like to work there, to spend some of my working life there. It's such a self-contained little world, but with ties to the wider world. There are partnerships between the Cornell libraries and those of Columbia, and buses run frequently from Ithaca to NYC. The winters there would probably do me in, but if the summers are anything like the days that I spent there then sign me up. The air was clean and cool and the greenery! It was almost too much for me. That part of me that craves wide-open space and rolling hills was throbbing with desire.

But yes, yes - as you know, this does tend to happen to me. This location-envy. Every time I go somewhere new I find myself imagining myself living there, thriving there, prospering in ways that I am not (or don't think that I am) prospering at home. I always have to remind myself that real life would catch up to me no matter where I lived. That I'd love working at Mann Library or Olin for a year, but then the novelty would probably wear off and it would become a job, work, just like everything else. It's fun to imagine, though, and it's fun to escape the realities of life for a while and imagine something new. It's also fun, though, to come home from those places and be greeted by my rose bush, or my cats or the quilt on my bed, because all of that reminds me that I am prospering at home, that I do have a home, that my home is here and my life is good now, and that I can go and visit Ithaca anytime I want and soak in all of its natural splendor and then come home to what's comfortable. Maybe someday I'll make a move, when Doug and I feel the time is right, but for now I am content going to these neat little places and dreaming of a different life, only to come home to a reality that really is quite good after all.

*I apologize for re-using that well-used slogan, but I can't help it. It's so apt.

Ah, the house.

I have a love/dislike relationship with our house. Some days I love it. I walk up the street on my way home from work and I look at the big windows in the sunroom and the flamingos in the garden and I cannot wait to get inside to be inside my house. I walk into the kitchen and I feel comfortable. I feel at home. This house feels right.

I had one of the "I love this house" moments this weekend; actually, several of these moments. Doug and I spent A LOT of time working in the front yard to weed and improve. So much improvement, don't you think? This is what the front of the house looked like before we got to it: And this is what the front of the house looked like after we got to it: Doug took out that big, prickery bush and I had my way with another of the nasty plants up front. And while I was very tempted to cut down the overwhelming rose bush on the side of the house along the driveway, I didn't because it's covered with these rosebuds and it will be a beautiful bush once those buds blossom.

But today I'm having some of those dislike moments about the house, because I finally called the handyman (not Doug for this one) to get our upstairs shower fixed, and while I was baking cookies in my kitchen that's the size of a postage stamp I turned on the faucet in the kitchen to get a glass of water and whoosh! A geyser of water sprayed out the stop of it. The thing is cooked. Broken. Dead. Done. So now we need a new faucet. Which will involve a plumber. All of this just after I put the deposit on the housepainting project that we have coming in August. So yes, I'm having some of those dislike moments about the house.

I remind myself, though, that there are good things. There are good things about my house, and also just good things about life in general. Blue Ribbon for dinner, Doug playing guitar in the basement, going to the beach and enjoying the warm sun on my (well-sunscreened) skin, wonderful and beautiful beach roses, and the fact that our house, the house into which we pour our time, our wallets, and our love, was not destroyed by a freakish tornado. As I go to bed tonight, it's those good things that I'm going to think about. And I'm going to avoid the kitchen faucet for a while.