an afternoon with Maisie

Karen went to Pasadena for a couple of days, to help her Mom out with a party, celebrating the small improvements in the bone density of her femur, broken in a fall in Manzanita two years ago.

It's a long story.

At any rate, it's been a quiet weekend, with Karen gone, Ben only occasionally checking in via phone, and Dylan off with his buddies, since Friday night.

Yesterday, I had to hang around the house, waiting for the electrician to come and rebuild a line that was ripped out, when the big maple tree next to our house dropped a giant limb on the power line from our house to our out-buildings. It's a long story, too, and, to finish it up, was fixed with ingenuity and $100.

I did a bunch of yard-work yesterday by myself, then had a pleasant evening watching the DVD of the old Brian DePalma thriller, 'Blow Out', which I had, inexplicably, never seen. It was most enjoyable - great film-making and competent acting by Travolta and, as a dastardly Bad Guy, John Lithgow. Hitchcock will always be with us.

I got up this morning to a quiet house, lounged around reading about XML processing in Python (it's an aquired taste) until it was time to get back to work. I spent about three hours cleaning up our compost area, which was being overrun with morning glory, blackberries, and laurel. It made a big difference to that sector of the yard - a place I have to attack with extreme prejudice, about every two years.

By then it was around 1 pm, and I was ready for a break. Made myself some lunch, then lay down on the living room couch, to enjoy reading, for the first time in many years 'Across the Wide Missouri', Bernard DeVoto's seminally entertaining history of the fur trade during the 1830s (hey, it's a lot more entertaining than you could possibly imagine).

Maisie wandered into the room, jumped up on me, and made herself comfortable for a snooze, lying in the crook of my arm. For those of you who are either new here, or have short memories, Maisie is our old, old cat, who we were convinced was about to die (or be euthanized) before we left for Spain.

Maisie is still hanging in there, not eating a lot, and looking very skinny and bony, but still with us, providing purrs and the presence that only a cat can bring to a room. I didn't want to disturb her, since she appeared so comfortable, so I just lay there, putting down my book, and savored the heat from her little body and her soft breathing.

Her tumors, first identified in early June, have grown. She is clearly going slowly downhill, but we are putting off taking any action as long as she does not appear to be suffering. The vet, back in early June, thought she would not survive our two-week absence.

Next weekend, we go to Manzanita for a week, leaving dog and cat in the capable (we hope) hands of Dylan. Yesterday, I went to Safeway for grocery shopping, and bought a great number of little cans of dog and cat food. I guess the dog will always be happy to eat cat food, but I wonder how many of those little cans will be eaten by the old cat.

At any rate, the two of us had a long time to enjoy each other's company this afternoon, before I had to get up, do more yard-work (finished turning the compost piles), make some dinner, and sit down to write this.

Karen returns tomorrow afternoon. Our out-of-town guests begin arriving Wednesday and we leave for the beach Friday afternoon. I am savoring my solitude and freedom this weekend.

Also rented 'Crash' from Blockbuster - will watch it tonight, after 'The Splendid Table', now on my local NPR station, finishes. See you in a day or so.