slow to post today?

Tired, discouraged, overworked. But wait, doesn’t that describe any number of Fall Semester days? What’s different about this day? The gray skies? Eh, that’s November for you. So what is it that made it so top heavy, so monstrously difficult to navigate?

Blame it on the cat.

Please do note that he is “the cat” when I am ready to claw him to pieces. He is Isis at all other times.

The cat has things well sorted in his little head. Saunter over in the evening. Watch a little TV, saunter out, then in, then out then, just as the farmhouse inhabitants are getting heavy eyed – in again.

We go upstairs, the cat goes upstairs. He crawls all over. Ed tries to keep him to one unobtrusive spot on the bed. Ed fails. One hour, two, the cat jumps down and makes noises, weird noises, I want you to come down with me noises. Ed goes down, lets him out. Ed comes back up, the sensor/doorbell chimes. It’s the cat again, reconsidering.

We repeat this little game for the better part of the night. By 5 or 6, the cat settles down. At my feet. Meaning I cannot move my feet lest I knock the cat down. Mustn’t disturb his delicate nature. I stay still.

By 8, the cat wants to go out one last time and he stays out then and I fall into deep slumber. Finally. But only for a brief hour. Because even though it’s Sunday, I’ve got work to do and cat or no cat, I must attend to it.

But I am tired.

If I had wanted a robust outdoorsy Sunday, it was not to be. I walked the farmette property. I admired the steely blue fields to our north...





I absolutely loved seeing the Caribbean sunshine yellow of the farmhouse against the otherwise un-Caribbean colors of late November (even as I had to shake my head at the willow branches -- innocent and bare now, deceptively delicate, but I know better -- ready to attack any pipe that comes within spittin' distance of its stubborn root system).





Then I returned inside and worked some more.