Do the Yak

Loved the article in today's Globe abut the death-sensing cat . He lives in a nursing home and jumps on the beds of patients who are about to pop their clogs -- not those with a simple case of the dwindles (which would be pretty much all of them) or just starting to circle the drain. "Oscar makes regular 'inspection' rounds of the unit, sauntering in and out of patient rooms -- as if checking on the condition of the occupants. But he never joins them for a snooze. Until. "He only shows great interest in individuals when they are about to die," said Dosa. "Sounds like a pretty scary cat -- I'm surprised people don't hold up crucifixes when it enters a room," Dodman said jokingly, referring to the belief that a Christian cross will deter vampires. It's touching and morbidly funny at the same time. The staff love it because they know when Oscar jumps on a bed, it's time to call the relatives toute de suite to say goodbye. Images courte...

Just recently I wrote about the fear of losing Sarah's most precious possession. I guess it's the way these things work -- a few days later we were visiting G. in her assisted-living place, Sarah opened her little bag and burst into tears when she found it empty. No collection of hair bands but more importantly, no Peeper. Because it was Family Day, we'd had to park on a busy street a few minutes' walk from the place because their parking lot was full. So while Ben tried to comfort Sarah, I immediately retraced out steps to the car, on the off-chance that she had actually left the stuff there. I hadn't gotten far when I saw a blue hair band lying on the sidewalk. And then a pink elastic. And then another. It was like Hansel following the breadcrumbs. Obviously her bag had come open as she trotted along, and it was only half an hour ago, so Peeper HAD to be here somewhere. I forced myself to walk slowly and swing my gaze from left to right so as not to miss any bit o...

The kids seem to be enjoying our new house, and they certainly love the ol' swimming hole we can walk to. They can splash around for hours in there. I love the water too, but now I'm a boring grownup and I don't seem to want to splash around for hours but would rather take a dip and then go lie on the beach. We had a real nice time there two weekends ago with a family from our previous town who have two kids roughly Sarah and Becky's age. We met them at school through the kids, obviously, which is apparently the only way to make new adult friends once you're a parent, but that's OK. The only drawback to the new place from the kids' standpoint is that it's bigger and has higher ceilings, which means it's echoey and hard to locate the source of a sound or make yourself heard at the other end of the house even at top volume. So when we're all at home with the adults are puttering somewhere and the kids playing, quite often the kids, especially Bec...

Bumper stickers seen on an SUV on a highway adjacent to our leafy (i.e., white, prosperous, liberal) suburb: " Your marriage doesn't need a DIVORCE, it needs JESUS " [caps not mine] and " The Supreme Court opens with a prayer – why can't schools?" It was a bit unreal, seeing 1) those political sentiments prominently in our notoriously liberal area, 2) seeing them just as I passed the gigantic Mormon temple in Belmont and of course thought of Mitt Romney, and 3) noticing that the driver of the SUV was an African-American woman, a species also rarely sighted in these parts, unfortunately. Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw when I lived in Somerville, traditionally a blue-collar suburb of Boston so you might expect more conservative sentiments, but still... " I'll forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive Hitler ." This was in the mid-1990s, a good 20 years after the Vietnam War ended, but some people find it difficult to move on, I guess. Aroun...

OK, so maybe I read too many "mommy blogs" but only the funny ones, including Finslippy, who is usually funny but last week almost made me cry right there in my office because her post could just as easily have been about Sarah and Peeper, or Becky and Blanket Bear who once upon a time was pink but is now grayish and worn with love. I've had to re-sew his "ties" (the ribbon around his neck) several times because they tend to come loose with all the fondling and once the whole ribbon came off and Becky burst into tears, which made me leap into action with needle and thread and sew that sucker on so tight it's not coming off again ever. Likewise, the satiny heart on his front has needed restitching from time to time. Once we left Blanket Bear in a Toys R Us in the Deep South but fortunately realized it after only a few minutes had passed, so we burned rubber turning around and dashed back into the store to check the floor in every aisle. No luck. I was terrif...

Yes, I am still alive, and happily ensconced in the Leafy Suburb, surrounded by only a few unpacked boxes but still feeling very transitional. I'm an old hand at moving and settling in to new places, but maybe this time there's more self-induced pressure to feel blissfully at home because this is, after all, our Forever House, and a wonderful house it is. But I'm not quite there yet, maybe just because not enough time has passed or because our pictures, rugs and some other things are still in boxes, or because this is the nicest house I've ever lived in and I feel guilty about getting fingerprints on Our Nice New Whatever while thousands of people in Darfur and such places do not have wall-to-wall bedroom carpeting and sparkling water-efficient new toilets and recessed lighting and a view of trees, trees everywhere. I find myself focusing on the few things that are still lacking, like grass instead of the rocks, weeds and random nails and other construction scraps still...