Farewell, strange summer. Hello, strange cats.

It is amazing to me how quickly summer turns to fall.  I swear I can sense a difference in solar wavelengths.  I don't need a calendar to know when it is September.  I hope we have a nice, long friendly fall, followed by a good, cold winter that kills a lot of flies and mosquitoes.

 Not TOO cold, though.  I am worried about the cats that have set up housekeeping on my front porch.  It all started during the heat wave from hell.  A golden Manx cat who was extremely undernourished and had obviously been a fight (he lost) was gasping on my porch.  I gave him a drink of water.  He was most appreciative.  I gave him a drink of water for about three days, and then started giving him food as well.  I call him Scruffy.

It was gratifying to watch him regain his health.  After a few weeks, I was plotting to habituate him and then take him to the vet for neutering when I got distracted by the grey tabby.  A petite female Scruffy showed up with one day, she is clearly from the same gene pool that produced my Hobbes.  I called her Baby and fed and watered her, too.

Then, about three weeks after that, I looked out the door and was shocked to see that she was nursing a little tailless grey kitten.  I changed her name to Mama and called the little fellow Baby.  After a few days, he was waiting for me at the door, and squeaking incessantly for his food, so I changed his name to Squeaks.  Scruffy, Mama, and Squeaks.  The perfect family.

Except, a week later, a second kitten joined the family at the dish.  Another male, grey, fluffy where Squeaks is short-haired, but altogether a handsome dude.  By now, the babies were weaned so my food became even more important.  (And it kept them from assaulting the birds.)

Now I was becoming concerned.  It seemed easy enough to fool and trap one cat- maybe even two-  but how in the world do you manage to ensnare four? I was willing to pay to have them neutered, but how was I to round them up?  And if I made a move against one or two, I might frighten off the rest and there could be a new batch of kittens to worry about come spring.  Four is a right big number of cats.

Except that they are five.  Yep, another kitten, twin to the fluffy male, tumbled out of the woods one day.  By   now I am seeing less and less of Scruffy and Mama, but they still stop by from time to time, and now there are three young cats dependent upon my largess.

And winter is coming.  I have made a shelter for them on the front porch which I will insulate more fully as the weather worsens.  Squeaks has let me pet him but he draws the line at being picked up.  I hope that will change and I can get him to the vet for shots, de-flea-ing and denaturing before spring.  His brothers still run at the sight of me even though I have been feeding them twice a day for almost four months now.  Kinda pisses me off, really.

So it is official.  I am the crazy cat lady.  I have 5 outdoor cats and four indoor cats.  (Well, only three of the indoor cats are mine.  Snoopy, the morbidly obese cat from Hell, is my Dad's.) As much as I adore cats, I just hope I can prevent the next generation of craziness.  

44 years is a very long time

The hubs and I met in high school, in February of 1967.  Our senior year.  Just after Valentine's Day.  My friend Sue Schleicher helped me stalk him.  She drove me to basketball games, as it was my habit to fail driver's ed (just the driving part) and Dave's habit to go to basketball games.  As they say, I chased him until he caught me.  I am sure there have been times when he wished he could throw me back.

We got engaged in August of 1967 and married on August 10, 1968.  He was 19.  I was 18.  NOBODY thought it would last.  Sometimes, even we didn't.  We were so young.  We came from different backgrounds, different traditions, and different religions. We didn't have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of.  We set up camp in married housing on the campus of the University of Michigan where Dave was going to college and I was learning to be a wife.  

We've been through lean times and flush, hard times and good.  We've been poor, we've been well-to-do.  The birth and death of our first child nearly finished us.  The miscarriage of our second while we were still in mourning was another hard blow.  But we were eventually blessed with two healthy, a beautiful girl, a handsome boy, and now have four gorgeous granddaughters.

We are now both fat and gray and full of aches and pains.  He has gout and reactive hypoglycemia.  I have a crumbling spine and diabetes.  Our bodies make more noise than we do.  Still, we are both pretty active people in a sedentary sort of way.  He has his career.  I have my church, my woman's club and my crafts.  

So maybe it's not romantic any more.  Romance requires mystery and uncertainty and risk.  How long can that last?  Once you get to know one another, you have killed all chance of romance.  You really stop feeling romantic about a person once they start using the toilet while you are in the bathroom.  Intimate, yes.  Romantic?  Not so much.

Which is probably just as well, because romance is exhausting.  Love is easier.  Even when passion wanes, love endures.  And if friendship persists as well, life is good.

So, the hubs and I just celebrated 44 years of wedded... well, not bliss, but something close enough.  I was once asked- in a public forum- what was the secret of a long marriage?  That was on our 25th wedding anniversary, and I stand by my answer.  Don't die.

My favorite place to be

Welcome to my favorite place:  Dragonfly Arts

A whole lot of neat things get made in this room.

A view into Dragonfly Arts from the entrance.  There are three zones:  scrapbooking/crafts; sewing/machne embroidery; and computer/business.  You can see two of the three zones in this shot.

This view is from the sewing zone into the scrapbooking zone.  The beautiful wall hanging was made by Sandie Simms- the fiend who introduced me to scrapbooking and then abandoned me for quilting.

This is my Original Scrapbox, one of the best purchases I ever made.  If the drawers look like they are bulging a little, it's because they are.  The shrine to my past life as a pirate can be seen on top of the Scrapbox.  When fully opened, as now, the Scrapbox is nine feet wide.  Mine is seldom closed.

Here you can see the sewing/machine embroidery zone.  The mannekin is wearing my latest apron design.  I have a Janome sewing machine that I love.  On the cabinet is one of my favorite lamps, and 16 drawers of buttons, assorted by color.  Yes, I actually sat down and did that.

My Brother embroidery machine.  Too cool.  I like having the ironing board set up all the time.  And, as you can see on the sideboard, I have the one absolutely indispensable tool for all crafters.... a coffee pot.


My cousin Valarie came for a visit after Christmas, and I am afraid I put her to work.  This layout is her design and it works like a dream.  Val is a professional seamstress, among many other artistic gifts, and her advice has been invaluable.  Thanks to her, I may actually be able to launch my scrapbooking service this summer.

I guess now that I have two machines I'm just an old sew and sew.