PLANTZ!

The recent (or not-so-recent) (or extended) (or something) postlessness on this blog has been noticed by a friendly/familly following. This neglect is due entirely to the circa-Mother's Day "past danger of hard frost" season on the East Coast of the USA. Yeee-HAAAAAAAA! PLANTZ!

My dusty little indoor-started seedlings had been spending increasing amounts of time out on the picnic bench each day, "hardening" to the weather for a couple of weeks before the official planting season began. The white mum and zinnia seedlings stood straight and tall, questing toward the sun. A couple quested toward the earth below (damp off) and had to be plucked out and thrown over my shoulder. But I got enough mum babies to give some away to the neighbors and enough zinnias to stand guard around the crops. The herb seedlings didn't fare as well, but they never do. Some basil survived, but the parsley and dill did poorly.

Mr. Pseudonym spent a whole weekend day digging my little garden. I followed behind him, shaking dirt out of the grass clods and flinging them over my shoulder. (There's just something proudly decisive about flinging flora over the shoulder. So we get a little dirt in our hair! So what!?!) We did a not-so-quick dried manure run, with Mr. P getting outraged at Agway for asking $6.50 per bag of garden crap. I feared he would locate a small horse farm, hand over his shovel and set me to mucking out the stables, but we finally came upon some reasonably-priced manure at Lowe's.

Mr. P thoroughly dug the manure into the soil, but it dried out and left large, rock-hard clods instead of mixing into soft, nicely-enriched topsoil. (Sort of reminded me of my attempts at making pie crust.) The clods were so hard that I couldn't explode them with my rake, so I'll be squeezing dried dung with my garden gloves every time I work out there for the rest of the summer. Oh, well, I'm used to changing babies and scooping out the cat box; what's a little more poop to a dedicated pro?

I fought shit rocks and over-watered mudslide soil to mound up a couple of awkward cucumber hills. Short tomato cages and six rapidly-poked cucumber seeds per hill sealed the pact. That night, however, we got a violent thunderstorm and torrential rainfall. The little hills now look like ice cream cones dropped on the sidewalk, and I fear my entire crop was washed away in the deluge. Alas, I had no insurance.

So, there are now two Roma tomato plants, one cherry tomato plant, basil and zinnia seedlings, thyme and parsley transplants, dill seeds and bush bean seeds in my little square patch of the Garden State. Oh, and a canna plant Junket had given me that's supposed to grow five feet tall and attract hummingbirds. We shall see what we shall see. Amateur gardener updates imminent!

Rabbits and Rubber Gloves

Easter is such a nice holiday in so many ways. For the religious, of course, the story of Christ's resurrection is paramount. And even for the heathens, this is the season of the Earth's reawakening from her long winter rest. (Well, our part of the Earth has been resting; other parts of the Earth have been lounging poolside, sipping tropical drinks with little paper parasols in them and gossiping with other planets about Pluto being a little, well, sensitive, if you know what Earth means. Confusing? Yes.)

Warm weather and fresh air, rabbits, lambs, chicks, egg dyeing, brightly-colored baskets, plastic grass, special foods, fancy clothing, passing on the bunny myth to the little ones--all of these things mark our emergence into a new season of life once again.

Women feel the cycles of the Earth strongly--as opposed to men, who feel only the bumpy buttons of their remote control devices. As the days get longer and warmer, women everywhere get the urge to clean house (undoubtedly a vestige of our cavewoman days--remove the old animal bones and urine-soaked grass from the cave, pick off and eat the cavebabies' fleas, hang the family's reeking, animal-skin wardrobe out in the sunshine because, y'know, RETCH!).

These days, this powerful instinct in women is often performed as a religious or cultural observance. Before the Passover celebration each year, Jewish women clean their homes top to bottom, gathering and destroying any grain of "chametz" (leavened bread) found in the house. Cleaning rituals in other faiths and cultures also survive from antiquity (although many are linked to celebration of the new year or to various other holidays throughout the calendar year).

While spring cleaning is not technically practiced at Casa Pseudonym, Nature's pull on Priscilla was evidenced recently when she impulsively grabbed up a broom and knocked down the webs of several former house guests. These webs were quite ancient and coated with greasy brown dust, so the house spiders had probably packed up and left for more sanitary accomodations long before Priscilla's uncommon fit of cleanliness. There was also a mass slaughter of E. coli, salmonella and several viral colonies in the kitchen and bathroom when Priscilla found an old bottle of Kill, Kill, KILL! spray bleach under the bathroom sink and went berserk.

Before collapsing from exhaustion, Priscilla nobly managed to sweep up most of the orchard grass bedding that had fallen from Sprinkles' cage before a scheduled visit from the cable company. It's bad enough the cable guy had to perform his duties in the Pseudonym's home office under the close scrutiny of a small rat in a big wire cage. Service people have been known to scream and run out of the house when unexpectedly coming face-to-face with pet rats.

This is really absurd, but not everyone recognizes how really sweet and cuddly pet rats can be. In point of fact, rats are soft, warm and completely docile. Reptiles are cold, scaly and often mean spirited. Reptiles will very often try to bite you, slap the nose off your face with their tails or wrap themselves around your throat and suffocate you. Yes, yes...they're God's creatures, too. But have you ever seen one eat? GAG!

Anyway, About.com offers a Complete Spring Cleaning Checklist, which may help some of us with this annual endeavor. Priscilla has no need of such a checklist: objects at Casa Pseudonym are either reasonably clean or coated with slimey brown goo, making the tasks at hand clearly evident. Priscilla thinks the checklist is for women who don't remember when they cleaned this or that, since everything looks fairly clean from actually having been cleaned within the past few months because these women clean and clean and clean and clean and clean, constantly, every morning, evening and weekend, so that they never have to scream in horror and start chucking things into closets and kicking things under the sofa whenever unexpected company pulls up in the driveway. They also make their beds every single day of their lives. Even when they have the flu and get out of bed for a few minutes, the bed gets made before they run off to hurl in the commode.

Best wishes to everyone for a pine- (or lemon-) scented cave this month!

Counterfeit Carnations

Went with friend Kathy to her father's grave today. She goes there three times a year--his birthday, Christmas and Easter. She delivers some silk flowers and talks with her Dad for awhile, feeling better afterward for having gone.

I stopped going to the cemetary a long time ago. There are just too many people who have gone on--parents, in-laws, aunts, uncles--just too many. I get no feeling of peace at the gravesites, just a feeling of deep, isolated loneliness. Maybe someday it will be different.

My mother, gone 12 years this coming August, just loved lining up her ducks. After we lost my father in 1991, Mom had a beautiful double headstone put on his grave. She had her name and year of birth engraved on the stone in anticipation of sliding in next to Dad some day.

I hadn't taken Dad's death well, and I hated it when Mom would periodically bring up the matter of having her half of the headstone engraved after her death. I don't know whether she was obsessive about these things or just liked torturing me, but I used to cringe when she would bring up that headstone. I eventually stopped nodding and agreeing to call Mr. Granite at Thrifty Tombstone when she died.

"Look, Mom, I'm juggling too much responsibility while hauling three kids around behind me all the time. I can't promise to call Mr. Granite, but I do have a black, extra-large felt-tip marker at home. I could just swing by the cemetary when you die and write 'DEAD' in big, black letters across your half of the headstone. That way, anyone who visited would know!"

Mom would always laugh while feigning annoyance. From the time my brothers and I were very small, we knew we could always get around Mom's persistent questioning by making her laugh. Dad was a very humorous person naturally, and we three kids learned to use humor to get what we wanted or to get out of trouble. We had some very hard times in our family, but we also had a lot of laughter on a regular basis.

Maybe I'll go to the cemetary with some silk Easter flowers this year. Mom loved flowers.

Oooops...

Experiencing technical difficulty here...meaning #1 Daughter is up to her butt in work and does not have the time to fix this right now. And Priscilla hereby admits she can't brush cake crumbs out of the keyboard, let alone diagnose and correct template problems on a blog site. The fonts are frightful, hyperlinks are hysterical, captions are calamitous: Girls, we VITIATED!

Priscilla was going to take the whole shebang down but, on second thought, who the hell cares? It's not as if anyone will be reviewing Pinelands Ponderings for the New York Times or anything. So, we will keep the new posts as simple as possible and wait until Daughter has some time to help.

For now, there will be no amusing photographs of flying cranberries (along with hilarious caption), reliable font size, even line spacing and fascinating sidebar info. All three of Priscilla's regular visitors will just have to brave the storm. Many apologies--we know how important those cranberries were.

---

Postscript: By some miracle or other, Priscilla discovered the Quickie Template control on this thing! We now have options for colors, fonts, cranberries and squirrel pix. OK...it's true the blogsite now looks like Priscilla's returning from vacation to Jamaica with a satchel full of gifts for her family in New Jersey, but these things take time to refine, y'know? Just give up a chance, OK?

A Day on the Town

Kathy (my dear friend and neighbor) and I had previously scheduled a Slipcover Hunt for today, which was a good thing 'cause, y'know, Kathy's cushions have been getting as bedraggled as my pitiful emotional state of recent weeks. It was a good day to get out of the house and go count some threads.

Junket and I had been scratching at each other this morning, so I arrived at Kathy's in a less-than-ideal mood. But it was a warm spring day, we had at least three leads on SureFit retailers and had made grandiose plans for lunch out. We slid into Kathy's black and tan Toyota Coonhound and set off in pursuit.

Speaking of Surefits, we stopped at the drugstore first so that Kathy could buy a big bag of pull-up diapers for her mother. Nothing strikes terror into Kathy's heart quite so much as running low on Mom's supplies. Alzheimer's is such a charming disease! I bought some board books for J.Q.'s Easter basket and a couple of cocoa butter sticks for my poor hands. (Believe me, you do not want to see these hands!)



So, Melvin, suppose you explain to me why I shlep the BIG tub
of Eucerin home from the drugstore and then you refuse to
put it on! Go ahead! Explain already! I'm listening!
At the mall, we ran our prey to ground at Drool & Slobbier: all SureFits on sale for 50% off. Kathy got some nice neutral waffle-weave slipcovers. I just felt every blanket, sheet, shower curtain, bath rug, quilt and bedspread in the linen department, like a natural woman! *sigh* Nothing like obeying one's primitive instinct to hang pelts or brightly-colored leaves on the cave walls!

Lunch was a pleasant interlude before our final stop, Rock Bottom Dusty Discount Debris, our local mainly useless crap store. I was unable to locate a table runner, but I did manage to get some ceramic flamingo accoutrements for my kitchen.

Kathy dropped me off, and both of us took a short nap before her mother came home on the daycare bus. I went over and helped feed the old lady, which is always entertaining. It's sort of like spooning strained carrots into a talkative octopus on amphetamines.

It was so nice to be out from under the depression, if only for a few hours. It's creeping back now, but that's just what happens. At least I'll have access to Mr. Pseudonym's car tomorrow, so I can get out early in the day and buy some seeds. YES! SEEDS! Probably the happiest time of the year for me!

Does anyone know if peas can be grown on a common chain link fence? Interesting concept, no?

Critter Crises

Oh, God. Krimpet the Rat took suddenly ill and had to be put down on Friday. Without unnecessary description of her symptoms, it appeared to be cancer. The ground was still frozen, so she lay in state for two days, peacefully arranged in a cookie tin out in the shed. Mr. Pseudonym was finally able to plant her in the rat garden yesterday--another tiny, beloved scrap of life stirred back down into the continuum. She had a great time living with us, and she's busy now becoming spring flowers.

Krimpet's exit leaves only Sprinkles the Nine-Lived Rat in the rodent column, and she's still bouncing around like a WalMart shopper three days before Christmas. She rings a bell in her cage when she wants attention, which is most of the time she's awake. ("DING-DING-DING-DING! MOM! I'M AWAKE! WHERE'S MY COOKIES? AND DON'T FORGET THE MILK THIS TIME! DING-DING-DING!") Sprinkles has survived a three-day escape from her cage before she left the pet store, having her underside slashed open in an argument with one of her late sisters and a serious bout of head-tilt when she was about a year old.

The same day Krimpet went on to the Big Trashcan in the Sky, Onyx the Old, Old Cat took ill. She's been wobbly and taking nothing but water for two days, and she's not able to make it to the litter box today. She's always been fastidious--a little lady--so we know she's on her way out. She's always loved eating, as well, but now she's uninterested. I've been holding her in my lap most of the time, and she purrs and burys her head under my arm the way she always did. We will take her to the vet if she's unable to cross over easily by herself.

*teardrop*

On sunnier topics, #1 Daughter (a.k.a. Mrs.Thumbscre.ws) has obviously done more work on sprucing up Priscilla's blogpartment, and she promises the squirrel pix will be installed soon. She was here last weekend to give us the dining room set she bought with the soon-to-be-ex. The s-t-b-e (we call him "Stubby" for short) has moved on to IKEA high-gloss, and my daughter keeps her new place fairly spartan to minimize the destruction wrought by little J.Q. He just loves coming to the grandparents' house, where he can destroy at will. His favorite activities are trying to "feed" the fish by swishing his hands around in their tank ("Shishies! Eat!"), smacking Grandma's plants leafless, chasing after the pets with his shape-sorter cart and digging through the kitchen cabinets in search of sweets. ("Gamma! Fwoot sak? Kweem? Cookie? Canny?") ("No, J.Q. No. No. No.")


WeeMote KomTwoll!
Wheeeeeeeeee!

Spring may bring the end of a long, long, long spell of depression for Priscilla. Tail's been dragging in the dirt for months now, but maybe the longer days and warm winds will help with the despondency. Either things get better soon, or we jump back on an SSRI and deal with the side effects (such as nightmares of Stubby popping up out of the dining room table with a knife between his teeth and glowing red eyes).

Serious Changes Afoot

Well, Mrs. Thumbscre.ws finally got some time to work on my page layout. She still has to do some more tweaking, but she came up with the cute lil' pinecones up at the top and some neato text colors. I don't understand a single thing she did--I looked at the HTML and went crosseyed.

I don't know why the font size on the previous postings is so small; Mrs. Thumbscre.ws will fix this when she comes up with more time, which will be roughly when she's visiting Casa Pseudonym again and J.Q. takes another 3-hour nap. Hmmmm...maybe it's time to visit the eye doctor again.

During this "under construction" phase, we would appreciate the patience and forbearance of friends and family who visit regularly. We will be showing essential links, wildlife graphics (squirrels, in particular) and twiddling our fonts and colors until viewing this blog page may cause gentlewomen to swoon. Just watch.

12 Steps & 12 Paparazzi

Counselor: So glad to see you back, Br*tney.

Br*tney: [sneers] Yeah, well, it's not like I had any f**kin' choice in the matter.

Counselor: No, but what now looks like the worst possible turn of events may ultimately turn out to be a pivotal point in your journey toward recovery.

Br*tney: [yawns, slouches in seat, scratches under left breast with ball-point pen]

Counselor: So, can you tell the group what happened to you after you left us the other day?

Br*tney: Why? So you can, like, climb up my a** the way you did before? No THANKS!

Counselor: Br*tney, you DO remember agreeing to participate in the therapeutic process upon re-admission to this facility, correct? You signed a contract stating you would take an active part in both individual and group therapy while an inpatient here and would attend at least three meetings a week after...

Br*tney: OK! OK! OK! Jesus-Chugged-The-Manischewitz! Look, I'm, like, TIRED, OK? And my scalp is FREEZING! Do you people have, like, a heat lamp or anything around here?

Counselor: Br*tney, you are wearing a coonskin cap, a thick wool neck scarf and long johns under your regular clothing. Let's get back to discussing the events of the past 24 hours or so, shall we?

Br*tney: [softly, with chin quivering] They took my f**kin' umbrella away! I'm, like, DEFENSELESS!

Counselor: Defenseless, not really. Powerless, yes! And we begin to heal at the point we admit our powerlessness.

Cindy [group member]: Yeah, it took me, like, FOREVER to admit I couldn't control my...

Br*tney: I had those popparozzies crawlin' over me like flies on a rib roast, and they took MY umbrella away!

Counselor: Cindy? You were saying?

Cindy: Well, I'm not a celebrity or anything, but my addiction is the same as anyone else's addiction, right?

Br*tney: [stands up, throws notebook and pen into center of circled chairs] WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! You people have NO IDEA what's it's like to be in my shoes, so don't, like, pretend you do! They NEVER leave me alone! EVER! First it's my clothes! Then it's my voice! Then it's who I f**ckin' marry!

Counselor: Br*tney, sit down. Now.

Br*tney: [flops down, sliding chair backward with a harsh metallic scraping...holds face in hands while weeping piteously]

Counselor: Br*tney? Will you please look at me?

Br*tney: What? WHAT? I'm supposed to, like, IGNORE it when they call me a bad mother? They were chasing me again! And the f**kin' kid was in my LAP, with a big f**kin' steering wheel around him! He wasn't goin' NOWHERE! And I'm, like, this HORRIBLE mother for trying to get my kid away from those bastards! I didn't know what they were going to to do him! Kev*n isn't as strong as me! He couldn't take it after awhile, always worrying about when some bastard with a camera is, like, going to RIP the baby's diaper off and take a picture of his POO for the Nation*l Enqu*rer!

You wanna know why I shaved my f**kin' head? I was AFRAID of them ripping my f**kin' hair out! THAT'S why! Ripping my f**kin' hair out and selling it on E-Bay! What the F**K!!!

Counselor: Br*tney? Let's keep the focus on the alcohol and substances, shall we? You are powerless, and your life has become unmanageable. That's the real issue, isn't it? The unmanageability of your addiction?

Br*tney: Yeah, like WHOA! The "UNMANAGEABLENESS" of, like, MY...BIG...F**KIN'...ADDIK...SHUN! What about those crazy bastards being, like, addicted to their stupid cameras and to selling other people's f**kin' hair on f**kin' E-Bay? Who rips THEIR umbrellas away from them so they can't even defend themselves? Huh? Huh? Answer me THAT, Mr. Counselor-to-the-Celebrities!

Excuse me, but I have to get a Diet C*ke from the machine before I choke to death from the fur on this hat. I'll be right back, OK? Or is getting a drink, uh, "against the rules" of this place?

Counselor: [stares at Br*tney for a full 15 seconds] OK. Thanks for sharing, Br*tney. Now, Cindy? You were telling us on Tuesday about your mother marrying a Rastafarian in 1997? I think you mentioned being a "Flower & Herb Girl" at the wedding. Can you elaborate on this?

The (Empty) Arms of Morpheus

I don't remember when my sleep problems started. Mr. Pseudonym says they've been there always, and he should know since he's also been there always. (I feel Mr. P and I have had interwoven lives in previous forms, such as when we were mushrooms or grasshoppers.)

But the sleep problems are continually present and continually distressing to me. I can set myself a bed time and try to stick to it, but things never seem to work out. I'm always staying up way past the time normal people hit their pillows and slide into peaceful intermission. Mr. P has only to plunk himself in bed at a decent hour and he's out like a light within five minutes--literally, five minutes.

I've got to follow a complicated winding-down pattern each evening, and this exercise stretches into the wee hours of the following morning. After all of the good, hardworking, gainfully employed family members have yawned "g'night!!" and shuffled off in their jammies, I pop in a DVD for my reward of the day. Having been up and active for 12-15 hours, I deserve my evening movie. But there are always "urgent matters" popping up that interrupt the movie and have me walking in circles around the house:

• Have to restart the washing machine. Forgot the load of whites that has been soaking in chlorine bleach for several hours. Mr. P's undershirts will look like swiss cheese if the wash cycle is not completed this evening.
  
  
• Krimpet the Rat hasn't been exercised yet--she can come out and watch the movie with Mom. It's a mystery, and there's usually a rat or two in mystery movies, so Krimpet will enjoy the film. She may even have a Hollywood cousin or two who work as extras in the movies, and I'm sure she would love to see her kinfolk squeaking and chewing on people!
  
  
• Need to hit the loo. A big mug of tea is an integral part of my evening reward, but drinking tea results in "addressing the porcelain" several times over the course of a movie. (Note to Self: business plan: research "peeless tea" for people who want to watch movies start-to-finish, without interruption.)
  
  
• There's crab dip in the fridge and crackers in the cabinet. Crab dip must be eaten within two or three days of purchase, for safety reasons. As official Safety Officer of the house, I have my duties.
  
  
• Onyx The Senile Cat is yowling again. She's 16 years old, and she often forgets she's already had supper. She sleeps all day and then stumbles around the house all night, presumably looking for misplaced cat toys from years gone by. If she sees me, she immediately remembers her 9Lives canned tuna and demands to be let into the utility room and given another can of food. She licks the gravy off and then remembers she's not really hungry.
  
  
• Need box of tissues. The movie is sad or my allergies are acting up. Since I rarely watch sad movies (too sensitive), it's most likely the allergies. In a house with four cats, two rats, a dog and nomadic tribes of dust bunnies, we go through a lot of tissues.
  
  
• Daisy the Terrier wants out--again. She hears the neighbor's dog barking, and she doesn't want to be left out of any barking initiative going on outside. After all, the neighbor's dog is guarding her own yard, and Daisy's patch is no less important.
  
  --"Oh...wait...it was just the wind blowing some leaves! IN, MOM! OK...all's well...back to the sofa." (jumps up on sofa, turns in circle three times, flops into crescent-shaped dog pattern) "..sigh..yawn...zzzzz-zzz-ZZZ-zzzzz..."
  
  --(five minutes later) "WAIT! What's THAT??? MOM! C'mere! Lemmee OUT! Something's going on in my YARD! It's a BEAR! And he's stealing STICKS and TENNIS BALLS and FRISBEES from my YARD! Grrrrr-ROWL-ROWL-ROWL-ROWL-ROWL! Grrrrrr-ROWL-ROWL-ROWL-ROWL! ROWL-ROWL-ROWL! Oh...wait...it was just some more leaves. Nevermind! In now! ROWL! In! NOW!"
  


• Trash needs to be taken out. We generate more garbage in this house than any other family on the East Coast. Even with recycling, we put out four or five bags a week. I've tried waiting for others in the house to notice the overflowing kitchen receptacle, but everyone here seems to suffer from selective garblindness. So I pull the trash bag out, tie it up and fling it out the back door, into the recycling can. Mr. P gets upset when I do this, since the squirrels throw a luau out there when they find uncovered bags of trash. But I do enough around here without having to run out to the covered cans at the side of the house in the middle of the night, so FLINNNNNNNG!
  
  
• Oooops! Kitty litter needs scooped before trash bag is flung out the back door! (Ewwwwww.)
  
  
• Krimpet needs to go night-night. I've fallen asleep while watching the movie (again) and awakened with my hand on a rat. She's sitting there, staring at me with wide eyes, wondering why I've stopped petting her. Time to go back to her condo for the evening.
  
  
• The fish need to be fed. Each time I walk past their tank, they all swim up to the top, in anticipation of their fish flakes. Sha, Na, Na, Bob, Flippy and Flapjack can't make any noise at all, but they still manage to look pitiful until I make with the flakes.
  
  
• There's ice cream in the freezer, and it will get freezer burn if it isn't eaten immediately.
  
  
• Onyx is "hungry" again.

It is now 2:00am. The movie was supposed to have finished in time for me to hit the hay by midnight. The 11:00pm news broadcast re-runs at 2:00am, so I might as well stay up and catch the weather report I missed earlier. Never know when a hurricane was supposed to have blown by the Garden State at 1:00am, which would account for those strange growling noises from the back yard during the movie. Or maybe there were possums fighting over the trash bags out there. News ends at 2:30am. I'm still sitting there, staring at the television, wondering if it's worth getting into jammies at this hour. And I forgot to watch the special features on the DVD.

Wait a minute, Onyx...Daisy hears another bear. *yawn*

Uhoh...BROKE!

Hmmmmm...
Priscilla goes missing for several weeks, and then her blog shuts down almost entirely, except for a few words and the picture of the hairless kitten. What could have happened--on both counts?

Priscilla Goes Missing

Well, to be perfectly honest, I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with this computer. I want to use it, but I don't particularly like spending any amount of time on the thing.

Part of this paradox stems from the fact that, in the first through third grades, my elementary school conducted regular "H-Bomb Preparedness Exercises." These were the golden days of childhood innocence, when a teacher could still smack an occasional heiny and we all believed that ducking under our little desks and covering our heads with our hands could protect us from nuclear detonation directly over Pinebarrens Public #4. In short, this was a long, long, long time ago. Let's face it, Priscilla is approaching old age rapidly, and modern technology has slipped from her grasp like a glistening toad on an August evening.



"OK children! Under your desks!
Eddie! Stop laughing! This is SERIOUS!"

My kids know everything about computers--absorbed the knowledge transdermally. They even managed to teach Mom basic HTML and talk me into a more interactive enjoyment of the Internet (thus this blog). But for most of my life, personal computers weren't around or weren't easily usable by the average person. Windows changed everything for everyone everywhere, but all of my formative years and young adult life were spent in a time when the world ran a bit slower and more methodically than it does today. Time has been flying by me with ever-increasing speed in the past few years. I'm sure this time distortion is experienced by almost every person approaching seniorhood, probably because we never quite adjust to the social and technological changes of the passing decades.

In summation, I want an instant weather report each day, but I don't want to miss Judge Judy at 5:00pm. I want to know how to translate "Oh, get down on all fours and munch grass!" into French, Spanish and German, but I don't want to read stories about the stock market or computer hackers. I want to read my daughters' online journals, but I have a hard time accepting their risk-taking behaviors in this endeavor. I want to be able to make my own greeting cards, but I don't want to take the time to learn any more about C*relDraw than I already know. I want to have my own blog, but not at the expense of my work, recreation or sleep schedules. I want online friends, but none who will be disappointed if I toodle off to parts unknown for a few days now and then. And I never, never, never want to traverse that vast wasteland known as "chat rooms" again! *!shudder!*

Most of all, I don't want to feel any of my remaining time in this physical form is being squandered on staring owl-eyed at a monitor and tapping away at a keyboard for hours at a time while there are outside squirrels teasing my inside cats at the big glass door to our back yard.


Priscilla's Blog Shuts Down

This could have been caused by any number of things:

• solar flares,


• a Diet Coke spilled into my hard drive,


• TastyKake crumbs migrating into my hard drive


• a hacker who hates grannies and pets,


• an accidental "delete this blog" keystroke,


• a Blogger employee throwing a hissy fit over his/her annual raise and tampering with the product,


• Priscilla's children tampering with the product (hey--you've all seen what they do!),


• the Internet becoming self-aware on 1-20-2007 and planning domination or destruction of all mankind,


• the Internet belching,


• tectonic plate slippage, or


• just some damned thing or other.

Fortunately, Daughter #l knows more than everything about fixing glitches and gaffes in online publications, and she fixed my blog this afternoon. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

I am happy to be back here and prattling away, but I would like to hear from any of you who also love/hate your equipment or are afraid of being enslaved by computers and/or the Internet. Do any of you feel compromised by having to spend time updating your blogs or by getting lost in site hopping because the Internet is a bottomless ocean? Let me know.

Uhoh...TAGGED!!!

Well, it's been several weeks since Jo from Tangled Me, being swept up in a meme tagging frenzy, charged me and several other good women to reveal five things about ourselves of which people were unaware.

I must admit, this tag left me looking like a deer caught in the headlights: what was a meme? what five things about myself have I not already long-since revealed in my postings? why on earth would anyone want to know any more about me than I've already been nattering on about for the past year or so? But I value Jo's friendship, and I've honestly been wracking my brain to come up with these five items to comply with the tag challenge.

Wracking my brain wouldn't seem to be such a difficult task considering the hollow sound resulting from a sharp rap on my skull with the knuckles. I mean, there ain't much in my cerebrum but a grocery list and some fond childhood memories! But, DANG! What five things does no one know about Priscilla?

*squint*
*frown*
*remember mint-flavored M&M's in kitchen cabinet*

To be fair, the holidays were upon us, and there was so much work to be done. Christmas was oddly difficult in that I felt so prepared and confident right up until a few days before. Last minute wrapping sessions, a delayed tree snatch and a frantic Christmas Eve meal prep left me exhausted and confused.

I needed Mr. Pseudonym to help with the tree, but he works far away from home with nary a day off ever. He does get vacation and personal time, but he doesn't like to leave the defense of the country to others at Aircraft & Other-Stuff-You-Don't-Need-To-Know-About R Us. So the tree had to wait until the last minute, finally being decorated as part of the frantic Deathmarch Houseclean which always precedes our parties.

One of our Christmas Eve guests is a compulsive talker, and trying to get a holiday meal on the table when she's here is like trying to shampoo a hairless cat on a rubber sheet.

OH, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

Or like juggling peeled mangoes while walking barefoot across an icy roof. But dinner was eventually served, and the coffee pot was kept gurgling all night. I missed out on a lot of present opening, but I saved most of the kids' stuff for unwrapping at Pixie's house the next day.

The bright spot of the Christmas Eve was getting to see J.Q.'s other grandma, #1 Daughter's soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law-but-hopefully-lifelong-family-friend. J.Q.'s grandma was sweet (and brave) enough to attend the festivities at Casa Pseudonym, which helped balance out the psychic drain of my compulsive talker friend's monologue.

The evening ended with a weary plop on the sofa and a protracted, wide-eyed stare at the tree. One holiday down, a coupla more to go.

Christmas Day up at Pixie's was, by contrast, soothing and comfortable. Pixie has turned into a really good cook, and she executed an excellent holiday meal. We opened gifts one-by-one under her illegal evergreen while listening to the Spanish-music station on the radio ("RRRRRRRRRRRRUMBA-CIENTOS-CUATRRRRRRRO-PUNTOS-CINCO! HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, AMIGOS!")

Mr. Pseudonym's 60th birthday was three days later, on the same day I was keeping J.Q. My dear friend and neighbor, Kathy, comes over to help with J.Q. each week now. Caring for a wall-climbing toddler who calls her "Cassie" and begs for hugs just to get out of getting his diaper changed seems to reaffirm her faith in life while dealing with her mother's progressing Alzheimer's. With Kathy keeping J.Q. from destroying NJ, I was able to throw a partial turkey in the oven for Mr. Pseudonym's birthday dinner. All of the kids were here, and the baby got a kick out of everyone singing to grandpa.

New Year's Eve came all too soon. I burnt the breadcrumb topping on the mac and cheese to a black devastation while, once again, listening to Mrs. Compulsive's rambling. And, to my astounding great fortune, she and her husband had apparently stuffed some festive dried herbs into their hookah on the way over, so her stories were frequently punctuated by a magestic rise up onto one buttock and the expulsion of several cubic feet of intestinal gas in a long, alarming screech. While she was obviously delighted with her own talents, my friend's performance left me drained of holiday spirit almost until the big ball dropped at Times Square.

But I got out the good crystal and served the two bottles sparkling cider brought by two different guests. Two different sparking ciders, so it looked as if five of us were drinking champagne and three of us were drinking urine.

OK...the purpose of this post is to fulfill my obligation to Jo. So here goes:

• I wanted children from the time I was a young child.
• I am math phobic
• I believe human beings are meant to be carnivorous, but not necessarily cruelly carnivorous.
• *pauses to pick meat shreds out of teeth*
• I am not an atheist or an agnostic.
• I plan to do away with all of my pets by attrition, because...DAMN!...every time I finish cleaning, I dump out a whole catsworth of hair from the vacuum cleaner!

Oh, ALLRIGHT: My kids are aware of most or all of the above, which is frankly boring, but let's face it--I'm not that complicated a person! I will admit to being empathic till it hurts, overly emotional, way too naive for my age and wicked smart, but I don't think about much more than going to the supermarket, watering my plants and feeding my pets!

Oooooo0o! Ooooooooo! Oooooooooo!

• When Mr. Pseudonym retires, I want us to buy a Winnebago and travel the United States!


• I have always dreamed of seeing the aurora borealis! Literally! I sometimes have dreams about bright, undulating, colored lights in the sky. Sometimes, the lights spell out words or form pictures!

The kids keep saying I need a therapist because I've never fulfilled my potential, but how much damned potential does a woman have at my age? Wasn't the starting bell rung...uh...say, four decades or so ago? And what if I'm basically happy dropping Mr. P's shirts off at the cleaner, throwing the frisbee for the terrier and waiting for the spring planting season? What if I don't feel the need to rush out and get a degree in microbiology? Is this wrong thinking?

Me tired. Head hurts. Will tag others next post, OK?

No, Mama! Scary Man! NO!

Graham Henderson--1991
Courtesy: SouthFlorida.com*

I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a J.Q. & Santa photo taken this year--very briefly, because J.Q. has had a full-blown case of "stranger anxiety" for several months now.

J.Q. is old enough to learn a little about Santa--at least that the dude carries a sack of toys on his back and says "Ho Ho Ho!" But slapping an anxious toddler on a big, scary man with a burned-out attitude and a musty-smelling fur suit just because I want a picture seemed a little cruel to me.

J.Q. has endured some serious changes in his life over the past eleven months or so. Mommy and Daddy no longer live together, and there are extra caregivers in far-distant locations each week. The little guy never knows where he's going to wake up or who's taking care of him on a given day. But J.Q. is fortunate in having parents who are so committed to his well-being that they make a serious effort to get along peacefully with each other and to assure their child is always in the care of someone who puts his safety before anything else.

In return, J.Q. is a generally cheerful and cooperative baby. Even his temper tantrums are brief and mostly for show--he's just too busy having fun to spend much time in meltdown mode. He has to be seriously past nap time to engage in any protracted crying. There's worlds to conquer: speech, manual dexterity, exploration of environment and emotional manipulation of several aunts and grandparents (biological and voluntary).

Still, it seems a shame to let this particular Christmas go by without at least a brief nod to The Man With All Those Toys and the Serious Cholesterol Problem. So I found a Night Before Christmas board book to read with J.Q. Since he's too young and too impatient to sit through the antiquated Clement C. Moore poem while we look at the illustrations, I'm going to have to modify the story a bit to appeal to his 20-month old sensibilities.

* * *

Toddler Night Before Christmas
(as adapted by Priscilla Pseudonym)

Oooooo! Look, Baby! Grandma got you a new book!
No, no, no! Leave Kitty's tail alone, and come sit on Grandma's lap!

Good. OK...settle down now.
No, Baby! No glasses! Grandma can't read book without glasses!

OK...now, this book is called Night Before Santa comes to Baby's House!!!
NO! Kitty doesn't want any more Cheerios!

OK...let's start. Turn page, Baby.
NO MOUTH! NO! We don't chew on Santa Clause!

Here we go...
It was Night Before Santa Come to Baby's House, and LOOK! Everyone sleepin'!!!
Mousies sleep, Mommy/Daddy sleep, all the little children sleep...

Whoops! That's OK... Grandma just wipe up milky off of sofa and coffee table and magazines and floor. There.
No, Kitty! NO! Go away!

Where were we? No mouth...no glasses...put cup down now...kitty go away.
Oh! Look! Daddy hear something! Daddy jump out of bed!
Daddy has dorky hat on! Aren't we glad our Daddy not wear dorky hat to bed? YES!

Look! There's the moon, and WHAT'S THAT??? LOOK! REINDEERS!
Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen... Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, EIGHT REINDEERS!
You know why so many reindeers?
See that guy in the sleigh? That's SANTA! And Santa MORBIDLY OBESE!

Owwww! OK. No...it's OK. Grandma's mouth OK. Baby's head OK?

OK...more reindeers, more sleigh...
We can just skip these pages...
NO MOUTH! NO! Here, let's get to the good part...

BABY! Come back here! No! No outside! Too cold! No!

(...45 minutes later...)
LOOK! That's SANTA! Isn't he CUTE?
And he's got TOYS! See? And he's smoking a PIPE!
But pretty soon, no books will show Santa's pipe because
Societal Health & Behavior Enforcement Squad is closing in fast, and our civil liberties
are swirling around and around and around and pretty soon go all the way down potty!
But that's another story.

Anyway! See Santa put toys in stockings for little children!

BABY! Leave...the...CAT...alone!
OK. Long story short...Santa comes to Baby's house with TOYS!
But only if Baby is good: be nice to kitty, stop ripping off Grandma's glasses, no fishing around in the trash, no throwing food, no pinching other people and stop trying to escape from house.

Oh, and Baby has to eat at least ONE thing per day that isn't grapes. OK?

Baby! NO! NO!

---

*thanks to aussiegal for recommending "Scared of Santa" site to Pixie:
http://www.southflorida.com/events/sfl-scaredsanta,0,2245506.photogallery?index=1

Evergreens of Yore

A short break from mall skipping to remember trees gone by:

Like Pixie, I'm of a mind to get me a cut tree this year although, not being as audacious as my second-born, I'll go about it legally. I've been using my little two-foot, plastic, laser-lighted, psychedelic conifer for the past few years. I got it for $12 two days after Christmas in 2003, and it has been causing passing motorists to drive into my mailbox each holiday season since that time.

This year, however, I'm a little more on top of the holiday than is my usual habit. Most of my shopping is done, and it may be possible to get together for some tree decorating, cookie baking and assorted Holiday Magic with friends and family within the next couple of weeks. Younger Brother is into baking, and I got some really neat 3d cookie cutters from W*lliams-Son0ma for our baked-gift preparation needs. And there may be enough time to drag home a fresh tree from the local garden mart.

When I was very young, my family lived in a small house on 3-1/2 acres of prime NJ farmland (pine trees included). Each December 23 or so, my brothers and Dad would put on their boots and ear muffs, grab an ax and trot off to the woods behind our house with Mom yelling after them, "Not too big! Not too big! Do you hear me? NOT TOO BIG!!!" They would drag home Pinezilla and pull/push it into the house with my mother's anguished cries as background music. They would then commence chopping off the top, the bottom and 10 or so large branches before Dad could prop it up in our rickety old metal tree stand, slide it into the customary corner of the dining room and fill the reservoir in the stand with fresh water.

The ornaments and lights would come down from the attic, and even Mom (fortified by a glass of spiked eggnog) would participate in the tree decoration. The lights rarely worked without Dad's magic incantations (which cannot be repeated in polite company, so I'll just omit them here). The ornaments were old and sad-looking, but we children always thought we had the most beautiful Christmas tree on earth. Until the dog crawled under it to get himself a drink and the whole thing started tipping over. Good thing Dad had wired the top half to the wall!

Many years later, Older Brother was visiting my parents' house with his family one Christmas, and it came time to put up the tree. Brother climbed up into the attic and brought down the tree stand and the box of ornaments. He looked at the sad, lopsided little metal tree stand and said, "I had one of these once! I know what to do!" He put on his coat, picked up the tree stand and dropped it into the trash on his way out to the car. He came back within an hour with a brand-new, heavy-duty tree stand. I don't think we even had to wire the tree to the wall that year!

Mr. Pseudonym and I had at least one child, possibly two or three, the year we procrastinated a little too long in getting our Christmas tree. It was Christmas Eve, and I was wailing in my frazzled husband's ear, "You can't just not get a tree for your child! You can't DO that!" Our oldest must have been three or four that year, which would mean we had a three-year old and a newborn, or a four-year-old, a year old baby and a newborn. To Mr. P's reply that he was unable to simply shit out a tree on demand, I countered with my sighting of a perfectly serviceable little white spruce-looking thing growing in our own back yard. It was just the right size, Mr. P. had a sharp saw in the shed and all of the kids were asleep. TREE TIME! There was just one problem--it was raining buckets that night.

Mr. Pseudonym opened the back door and stood with the cold rain splashing in his face for a few seconds. He somberly shut the door and turned to stare at me. I stared back, just as determined and sure of my position as Mr. P was sure he didn't want to be outside rolling around in the puddles. We stared in mute standoff for what seemed like forever, but Mr. P had been married 13 or 14 years at that point and knew when to give up and get dressed. He pulled on his boots, grabbed an umbrella and headed across the yard to get his saw from the shed.

I followed with my own umbrella, softly singing "I'm Dreaming of a Muddy Christmas" while waiting by the little tree. Mr. P lay on the ground, hacking away at the tree trunk while I held my umbrella over his head and thought about standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls. The little tree fell over, and I rushed into the house to spread out sheets and towels over the hardwood floor.

Mr. P dragged the saturated tree into the house, and we let it "drain" on the dropcloths for an hour or so before putting it upright in the stand. It stayed undecorated for quite a while after that--we didn't want to get electrocuted from stringing lights on a dripping wet tree. Mr. P got changed into dry clothing and I made a pot of hot coffee.

So Santa had a tree to put his presents under that year, and I think Mr. P and I resumed speaking to each other by the next morning. Now that's what I call a successful Christmas!

Priscilla Posts!

Well, I'm SORRY! I've been at the mall! For a month!

Actually, most of my Christmas shopping is done, and I can spend December finishing up the odds and ends--fattening the stockings with extra trinkets and baking cookies. Last year was a nightmare, and I've made good on my promise to myself regarding this year's festivities: no procrastination/no last-minute panic/no throwing slippers at the t.v. just because the Mormon Tabernacle Choir launches into Joy to the World just as I run out of scotch tape.

This year should be fun with little J.Q. He's at a good age for Christmas--old enough to reply "Ho! Ho! Ho!" when asked how Santa goes, but not old enough to ask for real pricey toys. I'll be looking for some special pre-Christmas books for him this year, which reminds me of when his mother was a little younger than J.Q. at her second Christmas. She was demanding to be read her favorite book around fifteen times a day, and we finally had to kick Jingle Bells under the sofa when she wasn't looking so we could get a break. ("Look at horsey pull the sleigh! Run horsey, RUN! Go, horsey GO! Uhoh! Horsey slipped on the ice and crashed into the Ukrainian Credit Union building! Maybe horsey should take a nap now!")

Long story short ('cause it's jammie time), Priscilla is still alive and whiney, but there's so much to do and so little time. Further adventures anon.

Priscilla Takes A Sick Day (or Three)

Rats! I was going to do a really nice essay on making Halloween costumes for little kids. But when I sat down at the keyboard, my neck disks decided to stage a coup and overthrow my best intentions. Crushing, burning pain at C4-5, complete with nausea, flattened me for two days or so. And I don't handle "flat" very well.

So the Halloween costume piece will have to wait until next year (God willing, 'cause, y'know, at my age y'never know). For now, I'll have to write about all of my cats developing matted fur at the ass-end of their backs, which must be some kind of fall-shedding and winter-coat-growing phenomenon.

Or maybe I'll just skip it. Yeah.

The Country Living Fair

Fall—my most favorite time of year! The leaves are just starting to get serious about turning color in my part of the Eastern Seaboard. By Halloween, we will have lost most of our leaves after a day or two of rain and wind, but now they’re going orange, red and gold in sequence: vines first, deciduous trees next and the sturdier shrubs last. Even if we haven’t had any cool weather by the middle of September, the vining plants tip us off to the unofficial beginning of autumn.

Every fall we have the holiday I’ve invented for my family—my Annual Breakfast before the Country Living Fair at Batsto, New Jersey, held this year on October 15. Most holidays just depress me. There are a lot of memories about late family members who had their birthdays or died on the major holidays, but the month of October has no sad memories or associations for me.

I don’t even know how many years the Country Living Fair has been held at the restored 19th-century village of Batsto. Composed of thirty-three historic buildings and structures--including the Batsto Mansion, gristmill, sawmill, general store, workers' homes and post office--Batsto Village is a New Jersey Historic site and is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places.

Historically, this area was the homeland of the indigenous Lenni-Lenape, who signed the first Native American treaty with the newly-formed United States Government on September 17, 1778. Although some small Lenni-Lenape communities remain in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the modern Delaware Native American tribes are located in Oklahoma. (See also Lee Sultzman’s Delaware History, Susan Ditmire’s Native People of New Jersey and Terrie Winson’s Lenni Lenape)

In 1784, William Richards bought the Batsto Iron Works (originally built in 1766). It remained in his family and was operated by his son and grandson (who built most of the village) for the next 92 years. Along with the pig iron industry in general, Batsto declined in the mid-1800's, finally falling into receivership after a brief period as a glassworks. The complex was purchased by Joseph Wharton at a Masters Sale in 1876. Wharton made improvements to the mansion and many of the village buildings, built a sawmill, cleared the land, planted cranberries and other crops, and ran a forest products and agriculture business until he died in 1909.

Wheeeee! Cranberries!
Managed by the Girard Trust Company in Philadelphia from the time of Wharton’s death, Batsto was purchased by the State of New Jersey in 1954. The few people still living in the Village houses remained as long as they wanted, and in 1989 the last house was vacated. Today the village is the core of Wharton State Forest, which in turn is part of the Pinelands National Reserve. (See also The Pinelands National Reserve and NJPineBarrens.com)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Family and friends are to meet at my house at 9:00am sharp! Well, the sharp part is negotiable. It’s hard to get out of bed that early on weekends, and we usually get a call saying several people will be straggling. Brother brings his pure-bred Westie and his pure-bred basset hound, since most fairgoers bring their pure-bred dogs. I would bring Daisy the Terrier, even though her lineage is a little jumbled (just like mine!) but, unlike her superchilled cousins, she can’t behave herself for five minutes (just like me!).

Mr. Pseudonym kindly helps with the last-minute "desperation" house cleaning and I work hard on breakfast, making a lot of things from “scratch” and setting a beautiful table. I receive many compliments and a bit of criticism from my family for using the “good china,” so to speak: “Why do you have to use fancy glassware? Why not just put out the carton of juice? jug of maple syrup? jars of jam?” Oh, well, they can’t help it; people from the Pine Barrens tend to be a bit…uh…how shall we say… primeval. We finish up breakfast while yelling at the dogs to stop racing around the house like ferrets on speed (Daisy's influence), and we finally pile into several cars for the trip down to Batsto.

This year, we had perfect weather--not too hot, not too cold, lots of sunshine and a crisp, autumn breeze. There are always a lot of crafters at the fair, but I'm not especially into buying old washboards costing $32 because they're decorated with artificial flowers and hemp-vine bows. But there's also music and dancing onstage, food and drink vendors, a see-through beehive, pony rides, antiques, a footbridge over the cedar-water river and a display of old cars, tractors and various motors. (A side trip to the Batsto-Pleasant Mills United Methodist Church will take place on another day, but it is of special interest to our family since Brother and Sis-In-Law were married there!)

The Village itself is worth walking even if there is no special event going on. The mansion is huge, with tall windows and a wide porch three-quarters the way around it. Some of the worker's homes have been partially restored, and the visitor's center has a gift shop and flush toilets for the faint of heart. (We studiously avoid the Porta-Potties sprinkled here and there because, you know, ewwwwwwwww!)

Using the mansion as a rendezvous point, our party splits up to pursue our varying interests. Brother leans backward and takes off at a trot, to be yanked around by his dogs at about 10mph for the entire day. I make a bee-line for the antiques and the kids seek out the food vendors lest they faint from inadequate nutrition. We meet several times on the mansion porch to compare our plunder (Brother lashes the dogs to a post while he catches his breath). When no one can walk another step and even the dogs seem subdued, we finally head back to my house for coffee. Everyone agrees this has been the best Country Living Fair Day yet.

This is a wonderful day for me, and I look forward to this "holiday" all year long.

K*therine is 21

K*therine was born on October 12, 1985, about 12 months and three weeks after her sister Sarah. We weren’t planning on another child, especially this soon, but we adjusted quickly to the prospect of having one more to round out our family.

With Sarah being born in the E.R. the previous year, I spent most of this pregnancy worried about delivering the baby at home, suddenly and without medical assistance. The obstetrician’s nurse assured me that in such an emergency, babies will more or less birth themselves--we would just have to cut the cord, wrap the baby up and wait until the ambulance arrived. I wasn’t reassured.

We weren’t sure when K*te would be full-term, but September 22nd (Sarah’s birthday) came and went, as did 23rd (the date I wanted for K*te’s birth) and the 24th (Julia’s birthday). My neighbor, Kathy, had her baby around October 1, and still I waited…and waited…and waited.

On the morning of October 12, I got a slight pulling sensation in my back, followed by a few more spaced regularly over the next half hour. “That’s it,” I yelled to my husband, “Off we go! ” I was not going to have this baby at home! In just three hours and forty-five minutes, we got our K*te. She more or less birthed herself—the doctor cut the cord, did the requisite procedures for newborns, wrapped her up and handed her to her Dad. Our third daughter didn’t want to open her eyes; she was comfortable and warm and just wanted to sleep.

From the beginning, it was obvious K*te had a unique personality. She was quiet and introspective as an infant, with her own special outlook on life. As she grew, her personality developed into a Day/Night pattern of unrestrained laughter alternating with cool detachment. She was either acting out in shameless comedic performance or she was coolly reserved, letting no one inside her head. K*te was an expert at mimicry; she could always make us laugh, which got her out of a lot of trouble growing up. She had a stubborn streak, however, which worked against her in relations with her parents and teachers.

I wish I could say K*te grew up happily and uneventfully. I can’t. As with all of my children, K*te was “different” from her peers. Wickedly intelligent and disdainfully observant, she found no common ground or fast friendships while growing up. She spent a lot of time lonely and isolated until a series of unfortunate alliances in her late teens sent her on a fast descent into a world of misfortune. For what seemed like an endless, torturous time, we could not communicate with our little girl. As with Julia, we could do nothing but wait until she came back to us.

Finally, finally we got our K*te back, all 5 feet, 1-1/2 inches, 106 pounds of her. She has had to work hard at understanding where she’s been and where she’s going. She’s a good daughter, a good employee and a good friend. She’s grateful for her renewed relationships with those she loves.

K*te’s 21 going on 41, frequently showing a lot more common sense than people many years her senior. She’s assertive and opinionated--a force to be reckoned with--but her intentions are usually toward helping others with compassion. K*te suffers no fools, though; she’s been down that path and can read the signs.

Happy 21st birthday, K*therine, our surprise baby. We celebrate this day with much happiness.

Incoming! Incoming!

Hi Grandma!

Hi! I was told that you have cornbread. I have not been fed in weeks. Really. My sisters say I'm fat but really I'm just big-boned and I need cornbread. My mom says that you have an empty cage and that you have cornbread and you take care of special-needs rats and that I'm a special-needs rat. What are special-needs?

Did you get the cornbread yet? I'm dying of starvation. Really. I really am.

Love, Krimpet

---

Hi, Krimpet!

Yes, I have cornbread and ice cream and cookies and all kinds of stuff. You can come stay with me tomorrow! You mama said so! Grandma won't starve you. You will have all you want to eat and you can play on the couch every day! Remember how we played on the couch?

Special needs means you are big-boned and need more cornbread. So, you come over here with your mama tomorrow and stay with me so you won't starve any more, OK? I have a big cage with a platform just for you, and you won't have to share your food with anyone. Sound good?

Grandma

---

Hi, Grandma With Cornbread!

Thank goodness! They wouldn't believe me when I said special-needs means I get to have all the food. And cornbread. Playing on the couch was the best. There were crumbs there. And a dish of milk. And they were all my crumbs. And my milk.

I am ready to go to Grandma's house! Where there is cornbread! Come on, mama! I will see you tomorrow, Grandma. I will try not to starve to death before then.

Love, Krimpet
P.S. Cornbread

R.I.P. Pokey

Ready or not, here I come!
Pokey - 2004 to 2006

My daughter, Junket, was working at a pet store when she started bringing home rats. Not the ugly, snarly, sharp-toothed, nasty-tempered sewer rats we see in horror movies. No, these were pet rats, in a variety of pretty colors and coat styles.

I don't know how Junket got around my policy of "absolutely no more critters will be brought into this house!" She must have worked on me for weeks, but eventually Sniffy, a brown agouti rat, came home with Junket one day. She had a ruffly, brown/gray coat, sparkling, fiery eyes and tiny pink ears. Her long tail made me instinctively react with aversion, but when I saw her holding a bit of cracker in between her tiny, star-shaped paws and nibbling at it resolutely, I began to fall in love.

Sniffy's long, twitching whiskers, constant lithe movement and comic antics won me over eventually, and I didn't object too strongly when Snowflake and Hambone came home to live with Sniffy. (Rats are social animals, and they need cagemates, preferably from the same litter they were born into.) Some time later, Sprinkles and Pokey came home as well.

When Junket had her own apartment, the first three rats went with her, but I kept Sprinkles and Pokey. (Rats only live from three to five years, and all of Junket's rats eventually succumbed to mammary tumors and old age. It was hard to lose them.)

Sprinkles, our bad luck rat, had been lost for two days in the pet store, attacked and severely injured by one of her sisters after she came home, removed from the original community because of aggression and suffered a bout of "head tilt" last year, which is a common rat ailment resulting in sometimes irreversible circling, off-balance movements. Sprinkles is perfectly healthy today, having recovered almost completely from the illness. Pokey was not so lucky.

Pokey was a sleek, soft rat with a gentle personality. Unlike her naughty, 90mph, always-in-trouble sister, Pokey preferred to climb up Mr. Pseudonym's chest and get petted and fussed over while she chewed the buttons on his shirt. She loved cornbread, melted ice cream and watermelon. After her snack at exercise time, she would sit on a convenient human shoulder and groom herself fastidiously, washing her face with her little paws, licking and smoothing down the fur on her flanks. She wasn't the smartest rat, but she was photogenic and totally cuddly. She was a little doll.

About four weeks ago, Pokey slowly developed the classic symptoms: an awkward, slow, circling movement with the head tilted to one side, falling over frequently, having difficulty eating and difficulty keeping herself clean. By the time she saw the vet after we realized what was happening (and after a holiday weekend), she was far advanced in the illness. The vet did not know if she could be cured, but she prescribed antibiotics and told us to hope for the best. We helped Pokey eat, bathed her and administered her medicine, but she went downhill steadily. By today, she had lost a lot of weight and her fur was sparse and matted. Her left eye was halfway closed and she was showing symptoms of blindness. Unable to clean herself, she was dragging pureéd food and feces all over her cage. It was time she was given rest, since it was apparent she would not recover enough to lead a normal, active life.

I fed Pokey some ice cream, sponged her off and held her close before she was put down. As I rubbed her head, she closed her eyes and ground her teeth--a sign of affection or contentment. I said goodbye to her and wished her well in her next assignment: give back to the Earth what was given to her, nourishing the lifeforms who could use her body and transforming into all she could become.

I feel honored to have known Pokey.

Traffic Noises

It's 12:00 midnight, and there's still intermittent traffic, the occasional trolley car and neighbors talking to each other down on the sidewalk in front of Jul's new bachelorette pad. The apartment is just outside downtown Philophilus, my daughter's street marking the dividing-line between Snooty Terrace and Pit Bull Commons (which is why she had her car desecrated three times in as many weeks just for parking a block over the line). Jul and J.Q. are sound asleep, but I continue looking out the window and listening to all the sounds below.

The pervasive lonliness of suburban living seems so far away when I'm in the city. At home, I keep the television on all day, just to hear human voices. With all of my kids grown, I now have the "peace and quiet" I wanted so desperately when they were little. I must admit, these days I would gladly trade my "peace and quiet" for a little human interaction. With Mr. Pseudonym off to work early each day, the walls have a tendency to close in. I so look forward to hopping the train for Philophilus each Tuesday afternoon and babysitting J.Q. each Wednesday.

Since Jul's separation, it takes an hour less travel time to get to her new home in the city each Tuesday. I stay overnight and wake up on Wednesday mornings to J.Q. grinning at me and throwing his little arms around my neck for a long hug. After he's diapered, dressed and has slugged down a quick bot-bot, he grabs for my keys, toddles over to the front door and yells, "Key! Door! Go!" while nodding his head in a "yes" motion. We hurry downstairs for our morning stroll.


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In the new neighborhood, some of the people walking around are obviously distressed, but most are friendly and polite as I smile and wish them a good morning. Last Wednesday, J.Q. and I met the man with two kitties in his front window and the man with the guitar and the strong blues voice two doors down. Sometimes we walk to the BP gas station store to pick up some milk, juice or a box of crackers. The man takes our money through a small opening in the bottom of a large, thick plexiglass window. He shoves the change and a plastic carrying bag back through the hole.

It is amazing how many people have dogs in the city; we see all sizes and breeds out for their morning walk. Unlike their country cousins, who are just let out into the back yard to do their business each morning, these dogs must be walked twice a day, minimum. And their owners must carry a supply of plastic bags to pick up their animals'...uh...butt flingings for proper disposal. Twice a day! Ewwwwwww! These people must surely love their dogs! Once in a while, we see a somber-looking person being pulled around by a huge, lumpy, drooling canine who looks as if it should be guarding the gates of Hell; J.Q. and I omit the greeting and cross the street when we see these couples.

There are more flowers and plants in most of the container gardens outside the row houses than I put in my large, suburban yard this year. Morning glories climb up iron handrails, and long, trailing plants complement the colorful annuals in the window boxes. "Look, J.Q., pretty flowers!" Predictably, the little hand shoots out to grab a fistful of impatiens from a container, but I learned to keep baby at a safe distance from the plants the first week I went up to the new apartment. J.Q. must content himself with chewing on my keys while studiously absorbing all the bright sights and loud sounds of the city.

The bay windows at the front of most row houses seem to be decorated in themes: patriotic, angels, imported glass, floral arrangement, religious icons. Once in a while, we come upon a house decorated with thousands of mirror fragments or having an ornate, custom-built stairway to the entry. Any house in any row may be painted or decorated in a completely different manner than the rest of the houses in the row. The occasional failed attempt at artful decoration pops out like an outhouse in The Hamptons.

We conclude our morning walk with a 20-minute stair-climbing session outside J.Q.'s apartment. He loves stepping up the four stone steps to the entry door and then stepping back down, over and over and over, clinging tenaciously to the handrail while Gramma keeps a firm hold on the back of his overalls for added stability. His little legs are so strong, and he could keep this activity up for another 20 minutes, but I remind him that there's grapes and waffles and milk upstairs. His little arms shoot out toward me, and he demands to be picked "Up! Up! UP!"

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I have fond memories of visiting my aunts' row houses in the city when I was small. My parents had their own business, and they frequently shipped us off to stay with my aunts during the busy holiday seasons. My brothers and I had so much fun racing Sparky, my Aunt Shirley's dalmation, up and down the two sets of interior steps. We worked out a nifty, multi-floor communications system using slips of paper, a hat and a long length of string. (Sparky ate some of the handwritten notes, but it didn't seem to hurt her.) We listened in on my Aunt's telephone calls when she couldn't see where we were. There was a playroom on the third floor, with an electric train set and a doll house. There was a tiny back yard with a grape arbor in one corner. We were allowed to pick the grapes as they ripened, and I can still remember the thick skin and sun-warmed sweetness of the fruit.

I've asked Mr. Pseudonym a few times if we might someday live in the city for a few years, but he's no more keen on this idea than on any of my other ideas. His parents moved down to the Pine Barrens when he was small, as did my parents. They wanted the acreage of a rural setting, since both fathers had a background in farming and animal husbandry. My in-laws went into poultry farming, and my father kept chickens and tended a huge garden. My husband cannot imagine walking back into the noise and confusion of urban life.

We will probably remain out in the "country" after Mr. P retires. We no longer live in as rural an area as our parents did, but we have a big lot with trees we planted ourselves and much grass to mow during the summer. Everyone drives everywhere. Our neighbors may or may not see us as they hop in and out of their cars, there are no corner stores with familiar faces and we cannot walk to the local library. The night sounds are different here: cicadas instead of trolley cars, loud music from a teenaged neighbor's passing car instead of people coming and going at the corner pizzeria, rolling thunder from miles away instead of the honking horns of irritable motorists.

There are advantages and disadvantages to living in both settings, I suppose. But the city pulls at me, especially since my daughter's move to Philophilus. I'll stand at the window and watch the traffic lights changing for a long time before going to sleep.