Saturday Stuff

One year ago tomorrow is when Buddy, who began as a boy cat, and by New Years she was a girl cat, came into our lives. She is taking advantage of my lap this evening as I have been engrossed in a good book. Buddy was little bitty a year ago. She came with a green pipe cleaner as her toy. She slept with us that night and I awoke to her making a boom boom on our bedspread. I got up as any good mom is wont to do and cleaned up the mess. When Buddy was little she would curl up under my chin at night. Now she doesn't sleep with us nearly as much and usually when she graces us with her night presence, she is at the end of the bed. During the day, she follows me around and sits just a few feet away from me. If I get a chance to sleep in, Roy will close our bedroom door and make sure Buddy is with him. She is patient for a while and then she begins jumping on the door trying to get to the door knob to open the door. She's not been successful yet, but I think the day is coming. This weekend Buddy discovered she is able to get to the top of one of our bookcases, so I had to move a chair not to give her such an easy launching pad. I did discover something this week while I have been out sick. If I use my speaker phone to listen to messages, she is beside me in no time flat. Don't know what it is that draws her, but it was a good tool when I needed to sleep and she was occupied with trying to keep me awake.

Friday, I did one of my favorite things. Went to The Nord for a massage. Of late I have been doing the hour and a half massage, but I get restless and want to move. I don't stay still for very long. I was especially ancy yesterday and I think that is why Stacy went to reflexology on my feet. She gave me an unscientific analysis of the stress level of my life right now. Through the roof and even though I feel like I have taken each bit of news and setbacks with a degree of calm, I must be internalizing everything. That has not been my previous choice of how I dealt with stress. Afterwards she went over to the chair in the corner and told me what she thought. I always know when we are going to have a serious discussion cause that is the only time she goes over to the chair. Went to the Bistro for a salad afterwards, then came on home.

Last week I bought a book for Roy, "It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium" which is the true story of John Ed Bradley. He played for LSU and is now a writer. I started the book this afternoon and it has been difficult for me to put down. His experiences of transitioning to regular life after being a football star since high school is thought provoking yet such a difficult journey. I cry at football games, well college games. I have always thought about seniors who are playing their last year and really for most of them, that is it. These young men will never experience anything like this for the rest of their lives and that is the good along with the bad.

I wanted to go to my parents today, but with my lingering cough I knew I could not. My mom would talk herself into having my cold and be sick by tomorrow. That isn't really fair to my dad. She is taking her medicine and has felt pretty good. She had some kind of a set back on Sunday at church that she still seems upset over. She asked me this week if I remembered how she would always rearrange my stuffed animals in my room and when I came home from school I had the best laugh at where I would find them. I told her I came by that streak of humor naturally from her. After college and even after I was married, I would go over to their house and rearrange things. I would tape down the receiver button on the phone so that when they would pick it up to answer it, the phone would keep ringing. One of my favorite things was to hide this small oval antique picture of Jesus around their house. Once I hung the picture inside a lampshade in the living room knowing that the only time my parents went in there is for company. Sure enough one night my mom had her Sunday School class over for a fellowship. They had eaten and my mom was leading them into the living room for their meeting and when she turned on the light she exclaimed, "I just found Jesus." I put that picture everywhere. Once I went to hide the picture which normally hung in the hall and as I grabbed it to hide it somewhere, I didn't get too far. My mom had tied the picture to the nail with a note saying Jesus liked hanging out in the hall.

Tonight Roy and I had an autumnal dinner, honey baked ham, sweet potatoes (made by the fine folks at Rice Epicurean) and shoe peg corn. For lunch I had the Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash filled pasta. It rocks the Casbah! If you haven't tried it, you should. On Monday I am doing another adventure with crockery cooking. I am going to make Kelly's roast recipe. Only I forgot to buy the liquid ingredient for it...beer. So tonight, Roy walked down to the corner Gulp and Go and bought a beer for the roast. Got to love a man who will take the chance of getting caught with a beer in a brown paper bag. Heck, he is giddy just thinking that I am going to cook again on Monday.

Seems like there other things I wanted to write about, but I don't remember right now what they were. So have a good rest of the weekend...and here is to cooler temps soon!