animal stories

We lug  in groceries and packs and stacks of mail. I turn on the lights. Finally, we're both home again at the farmhouse. (Ed sticks to the sheep shed on the nights I am not home).

My first thought is that there may be a tiny smell of mouse. This does not surprise me: I had forgotten to take down the mouse trap before we left. We have a catch and release little thing and now it seems that a mouse had visited and the trap did its thing. Oops. (I remembered somewhere between Chios and Levos, but clearly that was too late.)


I start to make chicken soup. It is rare that either Ed or I catch colds, but he does in fact seem to have one and so I do the usual: I hover and make the soup and in the meantime he falls asleep and so I eat alone.

Well, not entirely alone. Withing minutes of our coming home, Isis is outside ringing the cat doorbell.

He has had the company of Ed for the past 24 hours, but he appears to be thrilled to see me and he meows his way into my heart and looks up with wistful eyes as if asking -- why weren't you here yesterday or the day before?

In the middle of the night, Ed does the usual 'man with a cold' routine -- he tosses and sniffles and so of course we're both up now, except he does feel sorry that he is keeping me (the one with piles of work to do the next day) from sleeping. So he goes off for a while to the sheep shed and sweetly takes Isis with him so that I can shut out the world around me and not worry about bumping a cat off the bed.

But, two hours later Isis is downstairs ringing the cat doorbell again. How can I not be touched? Isis has sauntered through a dreaded cold to see me.

So now Ed is asleep in the sheep shed and Isis is meowing at the bedside and I try to sleep, but now it's five and my sense of time and place is still confused and jumbled, even as I think I should be up, or, in the alternative, sleeping. Or something, anything other than lying awake and listening to a cat meow.

Still, it's good to be home. The snow has nearly melted here, but now we have a burst of Arctic air and so it is at once naked out in the fields and orchards and, too, freezing as can be!

It is, it really is good to be home.

On Sunday, my older girl comes with her husband and we have an easy spaghetti dinner and I hand over my second carpet from Turkey and so now I can post a photo of both carpets, at the time of purchase.





And speaking of animals, I do miss the sound of goats and sheep in the hills. And the breakfasts at the Mama Nena, though I got the Greek yogurt with drizzled honey part down pretty well today. Sigh...