Sheila's LiveJournal

Christmas puddings mixed and steaming on the stove top, Christmas lights up outside (but not operating quite right yet), Thanksgiving goodies assembled to take to family gathering, suitcase ready to be packed for LosCon over the weekend --

Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like the holidays are approaching.

Have you been watching the PBS series on the National Parks? Ken Burns is a genius at the long, well thought out and visually stunning documentary (remember the series on jazz that he did? and the Civil War?)

The films are giving me serious wanderlust. I started thinking about which parks I’ve visited and which I’ve yet to see (too many of the latter, unfortunately). I’ve been to Sequoia and Kings Canyon, but not Yosemite; Death Valley and Joshua Tree; the Grand Canyon but not Bryce Canyon – or any of the wonderlands of Utah. I’ve been to Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Carlsbad Caverns, the Petrified Forest, Denali and the Hawaiian Volcanoes.

And since I once had a snapshot of me by Old Faithful – a sidetrip on a journey back to my husband’s family in Ontario Canada, I must’ve been in Yellowstone, however briefly, though all I have to show for it is a hazy memory of waiting for the “show” and thinking it’d better be good (it was). The visit to inlaws had obviously traumatized me.

That leaves an awful lot of parks I have to put on my new Bucket List. What I’d love to be able to do is get hold of a VW Westphalia with the pop-top roof, load up the dogs and set out on the road. Some of my warmest memories of traveling are camping around Europe with three children in a VW camper.Hmm. I wonder if you can rent one?

I can at least hop over to Amazon.com and check out books on the parks – and dream.

I spent the weekend out in the Hemet Valley with family to celebrate a grandson's graduation and twelfth birthday. Saturday evening some of us went to Temecula for the annual wine-tasting and hot-air balloon festival. The web site advertised the entry price as $5; at the gate they demanded $22 per person. Since we were arriving at 8pm, just before the balloon glow and about an hour before the festival closed down,we thought that was outrageous. Luckily, a young friend who was volunteering with the balloons all weekend scored us some free passes.

Then, once inside, we learned they were shutting down the wine-tasting in about five minutes, and they refused to sell any more vouchers. As these would have cost another outrageous amount of money in any case, we came up with our own solution. We bought a couple of hand-decorated wine glasses at an artist's booth and took those to the winery stalls. I was much happier supporting an artist than feeding a greedy festival committee's coffers.

The "glow" was beautiful to see! I'd hoped to go up in a balloon this weekend, but the weather didn't cooperate -- overcast, blustery, with the threat of occasional thunderstorms. Later this summer, definitely!

I don't know about you, but the years seem to be going by faster than ever. Isn't there a speed limit for that sort of thing? Wonder what Einstein would say about it? I was feeling rather somber about the passage of time and all that it implies when I went down to the hospice where I volunteer. Surprise! The residents were all wearing "Happy New Year!" hats and were surprisingly (to me) upbeat.

I put out an open invitation to anybody in my condo building who wasn't doing anything this evening to stop by my place and have a drink or two. I plan to cut the English Christmas cake I made a few weeks back; the family and I gorged on Christmas pudding and had no room left for cake.

Happy New Year to one and all. Feliz Ano Nuevo. See you next year.

[with apologies to Lewis Carroll.]

One of the great joys of grandmotherhood is getting to experience a lot of wonderful things all over again with the younger generation. This weekend, Amy's eighth birthday, I took her and another granddaughter, Autumn, to see the Nutcracker Ballet in Long Beach. I was delighted that the ballet was the same weekend as the birthday, because I wanted to make sure Amy's day didn't get lost in the great Christmas hustle and bustle; I wanted to celebrate it right. Autumn's mother, April, brought both girls into town on Saturday evening, and we were joined by a third granddaughter, Shannon, for dinner at a favorite pizza house. Then the birthday girl, Autumn and I went to see the ballet.

The Long Beach company always puts on a good show, with a gloriously expanding (and flashing) tree, a flying horse and sleigh, flying fairies, huge golden snowfalls, cannons and fireworks popping and dazzling all over the place – oh, and some pretty good dancing. In my childhood in London, we always went to the pantomime at Christmastime, but since that's not an American tradition, we've substituted the Nutcracker instead. (One year, we did The Glory of Christmas at the Crystal Cathedral, and that was spectacular too.) I think the girls enjoyed the Nutcracker; I know I did.

This morning, Amy's actual birthday, April came back into town and we celebrated the Fourth Sunday of Advent at St Luke's. I love the Advent ritual at my church, the seasonal decorations, all those great old pre-Christmas carols. April used to go to Sunday school at St Luke's, and Laurel, Amy's mom, was baptized there, so it's really "in the family." Then after the service, Shannon joined us again and we went for Sunday Brunch on board the Queen Mary. Almost like being on a cruise! The waiter served champagne for the grownups and sparkling cider for the kids, and Amy opened presents. The ship was decorated for the holidays – although it seemed to us that it was all for Amy's birthday.

Now the family has gone to their respective homes, and the dogs and I have a quiet evening ahead to relax in.

Oh, wait – I still have gifts to wrap!

I recently spent several hours making traditional English desserts for Christmas and got to thinking about the traditions involved It’s not enough to just assemble the ingredients and the equipment or turn on the oven. Rituals have to be observed too.

Take mincepies (no meat, just that rich fruit mixture that Crosse & Blackwell makes available in jars in your supermarket this time of year). When I was growing up in London just after World War II, we had to make enough little individual pies to serve the family on Christmas and Boxing Days, and also all the carolers who might stop by in the week before Christmas. The lore is that you have to eat one mincepie for each of the twelve months of the New Year if you want to ensure good luck. No cheating, either; you have to eat them in different houses. This keeps the carolers busy in the neighborhood and contributes to the friendly visiting that goes on during the holidays. My mother made her own mincemeat ahead of time with dried fruits and brandy, but I’ve never done that.

Christmas Pudding, sometimes known as “plum pudding,” although there are no plums involved (or figs either, in spite of what the carol says), is a holiday treat with serious tradition attached to the making and serving. First of all, if you’re just now making the pudding for this year’s feast, you’re already too late. “Xmas Pud” as we Londoners fondly call it, should be made a year ahead, giving the pudding time to age and mature. But don’t fret; I only made mine at the end of October. A lot of good stuff goes into this steamed pudding – eggs, dark brown sugar, raisins dark and golden, currants, chopped apple, lemon peel, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, brandy, and a dark beer to mix. My mother’s recipe called for suet as shortening, and as a young bride in Indiana I went looking for the packets of dried, cleaned, shredded suet in the market. When I was finally compelled to ask the butcher for help, he shook his head and offered me a large amount of the bloody, fatty tissue in a sheet of paper, clean and chop it yourself. No charge, because American butchers wisely throw this stuff away. After a couple of years of dealing with this chore, I gave up and switched to vegetable shortening. Actually, I’ve learned butter does as well and maybe better, if you’re not counting calories.

The protocol for Christmas Pudding is that everybody in the house at the time of its making must take a turn stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon and adding a wish.The pudding is hard to stir, but even little kids can grasp the spoon with both hands and move the mixture an inch. The wish is the important part. The puddings will steam for eight to ten hours, then be stored as long as possible until Christmas and reheated. Some families put little silver good-luck charms or silver coins in the pudding, either before cooking or when the pudding comes to the table. Mind your teeth if you do this.

Now comes another ceremony. My dad, who was the holiday cook in our house, used to bring the pudding to the table with a festive sprig of holly on top, but an older tradition – which I use today – calls for pouring brandy over it and carrying the flaming pudding into a darkened dining room. The year I got engaged to an American, my dad decided to impress the Yank by showing off our traditions, so he poured the brandy and lit the pudding. Spectacular! Especially since he’d forgotten to omit the sprig of holly which flamed merrily. (My fiancé was very impressed.)

Luckily, the Christmas Cake doesn’t carry such a burden of ceremony. But it too should be made way ahead of time and allowed to mature. I use the same recipe as the royal bakers use for royal wedding cake, and they allow twelve months for the cake to age before covering it with marzipan and decorating with hard frosting. (No smashing cake into each other’s faces here!)

If this brief account has made you sentimental about Christmas ceremonies, I’ll be glad to share the recipes – for next year’s eating, you understand

Every year, on the first Saturday in October, the little village of Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mountains of California, puts on an Art Walk/Wine Tasting event. It's a lot of fun to go to, and I've attended seven, counting by the glasses in my cupboard. You pay a fee – this year it was $25 – and you get a pretty wine glass which you carry up and down the road to the different galleries, gathering samples at each stop. A lot of very fine wineries based in Temecula come up to pour their wines, and there's always food, cheese and crackers and fruit, and usually live music too. This is where I first tasted Barefoot wines, a favorite of mine now. A trolley runs along the route if you need it. This year we were a party of six people and had five dogs along with us, and we couldn't have used it if we'd needed it (we didn't). One year, they had a horse-drawn trolley which was a great attraction for the children who'd come along with their parents.

I enjoy this event, and usually browse the galleries and craft stalls looking for unusual Christmas gifts. Idyllwild is an arts community, with a thriving culture of artists of many kinds, and an internationally known, private arts high school where I taught creative writing for several summer camps. Since I have a small cabin just outside Idyllwild, I often come up to the mountains during the year, but the Art event has to be one of the best occasions of the year.

Making this even more special was the fact that my oldest granddaughter had invited her just-found birth-father to meet the family and enjoy the village scene. I am so happy for her: this is something she's always longed to do, and he seems overjoyed to get to know the daughter he never knew he had. As if the wine itself wasn't enough, this was pretty heady stuff!

The only negative thing was that it rained, not hard at first, but enough to soak through my sweatshirt to my t-shirt. We had umbrellas, but they were in the car. The dogs put up with it just as we did, which is to say not without some complaining. I think that the weather must have affected the number of visitors because the crowd didn't seem as dense this time as in other years. That's not good for the artists and craftspeople. We bought three kinds of bread at a bakery and left a bit early to go down to my daughter's house at the foot of the mountains. There we were joined by another daughter and her family, eager to meet my granddaughter's “New Dad,” and we had a great barbecue (It wasn't raining down there, of course).

Now I have to find where in Long Beach I can get bottles of the port wine I fell in love with this time!

Saturday night, I took two grandsons to the Honda Center in Anaheim (it used to be known as The Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks hockey team) to see the production “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

These two grandsons are eleven and nine, just the right age to enjoy a weekend doing shows and museums with me. A couple of months ago, I watched a documentary on PBS about how these giant models had been built over the course of a year in Australia and knew I'd have to take the boys to see the show. It's currently touring the US, but not staying long in any one location – kind of a rock star schedule, four days in Anaheim, then four days in LA, then off somewhere else. If it shows up near you, go and see it, even if you don't have kids. You'll be amazed. The models are all life-size. The movement and articulation of such enormous constructions is surprisingly realistic; when they move their necks, the “skin” crinkles. (The documentary pointed out that the builders had gone far beyond anything Disney had done so far with animatronics.) A nice touch is the addition of a human narrator, a paleontologist, who explains the different periods and allows size comparison with the creatures. The stars of the show – as far as my grandsons were concerned – were a Tyrannosaurus Rex and her baby.

As a bonus, when I bought my tickets, I received three passes to the Discovery Science Center nearby that was celebrating with a hands-on dinosaur exhibit. I thought the boys would enjoy that, but actually they found the other exhibits far more absorbing. We spent five hours there and only left because the center was closing. Much to my relief as my feet were killing me, especially the one so recently out of its cast.

Lunch on the Queen Mary on Monday, before I took them home, and I think Grandma scored high marks for that weekend!

Now, I'm off to bed for an early night. Wonder why I'm so tired?

My middle daughter, who lives out in the country, keeps goats. As far as I can tell, they're just short-tempered pets, eating and doing nothing productive. I keep trying to find respectable occupations for them so they can at least earn their feed.

I read an article about using goats to keep the brush trimmed in forest fire areas and I thought that might be a grand way to occupy these guys. I have some property up in the San Jacinto Mountains, about an hour away from where my daughter lives, and I'm always having to do fire abatement up there if I don't want the next wildfire to destroy my property. Since my cabin is on sloping ground at 6000 feet elevation, raking the brush gets tiresome rather quickly. But it ought to be a snap for goats. The article said they'd used goats successfully in places such as the hillsides of Laguna Beach, and I'd seen goats all over the place in Rwanda, eating everything in sight, tended by little children. So that ought to work, don't you think? Pile them all into the horse trailer and away we go. Alas, my daughter points out that unless someone is prepared to play Little Goatherd (as in Heidi), the herd is likely to wander off and clear other people's brush that is tastier than mine. Not to mention that the local coyotes would probably consider the presence of the goats as an invitation to dine.

So I was pondering this as I browsed my local specialty market, looking for something delectable to take my mind off insoluble problems. I always check out the cheese section, and I usually come home with a nice piece of Stilton or Maytag or Gorgonzola for my lunch. But on this particular day, they seemed to have everything in stock but blue (or green) cheeses. I spotted something new, a rather creamy-looking cheese with a dark border and an ashy stripe through the middle. I'll try anything once if it has the label “cheese” on it, so I purchased a small piece. (I was a little leery of the ashy stripe.)

Oh joy! The poetically named “Humboldt Fog” tastes like a cross between Camembert and English Stilton and is wonderful with olives – of which this particular market has a large variety for sale. And – guess what – it's made from goats' milk. You can imagine the speed with which I looked up the web site for the goat farm that produced it, and how fast I sent the link to my daughter. If her billy and the nannies won't protect my cabin, at least they could supply me with cheese. Alas again. My daughter says that in order for the nannies to produce milk, they have to be or have been pregnant in the recent past. But her billy has had a little date with a snipper. So no cheese.

I'd wondered why there were no cute little kids (other than my grandbabies) frolicking in the horse pasture this spring.

A couple of weeks ago I was celebrating my oldest granddaughter's 21st birthday. This weekend, I attended my oldest grandson's graduation from high school, and my second oldest granddaughter's passage from middle school to high school. I'm feeling old! When their mothers were at those milestones, I think I felt that it was appropriate, and maybe I even felt a bit of relief that they were getting ready to fly the coop and be off my hands. But grandbabies are supposed to stay cute and cuddly for ever. And small. My grandson towers over me, and both the girls are taller too. Don't misunderstand me, they're wonderful kids and I'm thrilled for them and excited to see what they're making of their lives. It's just that nostalgia got the better of me.

To top it off, I realized that Sunday is Father's Day, and that triggered a round of feeling sorry for poor orphaned me. My father died more than thirty years ago, but not a day goes by when I don't think of him and wish he were around to share some experience with me. Rather than his memory becoming blurred from the passage of years, I find myself remembering – and using! – more of his funny sayings, and I pass them on to my children and grandchildren along with his wise advice so that he won't be forgotten. He didn't have an easy life. An intelligent man, he had to give up a scholarship to a prestigious private school in London in order to help his parents support six children. He and my mother bought a little tobacconist/newspaper shop in Reading which they then lost in the Depression. They returned to London and lived in my maternal grandparents' home where I was born. Well into his thirties, he was drafted into the army in World War II. He didn't get to own a home again until after I was married when my parents moved out of London and he could have a rose garden and his beloved greenhouse to raise tomatoes. He was wise beyond my ability to comprehend at the time. Now that I'm actually older than he was when he died, I recognize his goodness and love.

I miss him.

My tax refund just landed in my bank account. Can the economic stimulus check be far behind? The refund was a paltry couple of hundred dollars, but still, better than nothing. This time of year I'm faced with a lot of expenditures for family birthdays, and this month I have a gift to buy for a 21st (my oldest granddaughter), and a high school graduation gift for my oldest grandson who'll be off to the University of Oregon in the Fall. By the time I've contributed to the party for the newly minted adult and written the check for the graduate, I still have another graduation – granddaughter moving from junior to senior high –  and two more grandsons celebrating birthdays before the month is over.

What's a grandmother to do, especially if she's retired?

But I need that stimulus check to pay for a planned vacation at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, next month! I'm meeting up with a new friend that I made on the trip to Rwanda; she lives in Chicago, and it was her idea. I'm looking forward to the week. I have frequent flyer miles for the journey, and one free night at a Marriott in Portland, but that leaves the tickets for the four plays we're going to see, and the bed-and-breakfast in Ashland for three nights, plus the rental car, gasoline (horrors!), and two more nights on the road. 

Obviously, the check should go towards the vacation (Bush would be pleased). But I have a stack of bills to pay too – in addition to the family celebration ones – and my creditors are looking forward to sharing my new-found wealth. Sigh. I think I'll just charge everything to my Visa card, then pay as much off as I can when the check comes in, and fudge what part of the money went to pay off which expense.

Anybody got any better ideas? What are you going to do with your stimulus check?

I went to a memorial service this week for the son of an old neighbor, someone I'd lost touch with over the years. I'd been reading the local paper and his name jumped out at me from the obituaries. He was a year younger than my oldest daughter, a year older than my second daughter. In other words: in his forties and far too young to die. The obituary listed no cause of death, no wife, no descendants, just parents and siblings and far-flung family members. Something rang a bell in my head, reading that.

It was a Catholic memorial service, and as such not too unfamiliar for an Episcopalian. At the appropriate moment, the priest delivered the eulogy and I suddenly felt very cold. The priest rambled all over the place, mostly about people he'd known who'd taught him life lessons. Where was the young man who'd passed away in all this? We learned how his parents had loved him and that it was nice that so many people showed up for the memorial to support them. And that more people should volunteer to help the needy. But the young man himself – and his life that we were supposed  to be memorializing? Well, it slipped in that he'd been homeless for some  part of the last three years. And then we got to the point. Sometimes, the priest said, we wonder what we did wrong, what we did or didn't do that caused our children to go off the track. And the bells rang in my head again. I'm willing to bet the young man had been gay. Volunteering at the hospice, I've seen families who loved and supported gay sons dying of AIDS, and also those who couldn't bring themselves to accept it even at the last.

Fast forward to this Sunday. My church (St Luke's Episcopal, Long Beach) is busy planning its participation in the coming Gay Pride celebrations, manning a booth at the festival, taking part in the parade next Sunday. We have a fairly large contingent of lesbians and gays in our parish, some with small children they've adopted to make their own families. And in the midst of the announcements about the Eucharist to be celebrated on the ocean bluffs before the parade, and useful advice on how to get to and from the parade on city buses because parking will be a mess, I wondered how many carried the secret sadness of parents who couldn't accept their children for what they were, as they were  made by God.

On Mother's Day, that has to be a very sad thought.

My oldest daughter is into genealogy and family history. So far, she's found two Finch cousins for me, both living here in Southern California – one I didn't know about, and one I'd been seeking for years with no luck. She's found the whereabouts of family in Australia that I'd lost touch with, and a whole raft of second cousins still in England. I think the family got separated after World War II; nobody had telephones in those days, and crossing London just for a visit with family was something of a big deal even several years after the war. (For one thing, in the absence of telephones you needed to write letters back and forth to set it up. For another, rationing went on for several years, making it necessary to carry gifts of tea, sugar, butter and so on with you when you visited.) All it took was for people to move out of London, and they were basically lost to the family.

She also frequents Ebay, and finds postcards of family sites and books that mention family members or places we lived and buys them for me. But this time what she gave me is really special.

Several months ago, I was cleaning out a junk drawer and I passed on to her some things I thought she might like to keep, including a couple of really early tape recordings on three-inch disks, that I thought had been made when she and her sister were little. I used to tape the children and send them to my parents in England, and they in turn would tape replies and send them to California. There was no way to play them any more as the technology has changed drastically since 1967. But I failed to take into account her ingenuity (and willingness to spend money on such projects), and last weekend she gave me two CDs that contained the transcribed contents of the tapes.

My father's voice brought me to tears. He died in 1972, but  hearing him made me realize how much I still miss him. On one CD, he talked about his flower garden, the awful English weather, some new gadget he'd bought to make his phone into a speaker phone, so both my parents could listen to my transatlantic phone calls at the same time, and how much he was looking forward to seeing his granddaughters again later that summer. My mother talked about sweaters she'd knitted for him, and a party the neighbors gave for their daughter's engagement.  Little stuff, but it wrenched my heart. He mentioned a visit to a specialist to check on his emphysema (he'd recently stopped smoking after starting at age fifteen), and my mother commented he hadn't been well but was feeling much better now.  I know now, of course, that he'd be dead in five years.

The second disk was made that summer, when the girls and I were over in England, at a family party. It's noisy and difficult to hear in places, but it was a raucous, wonderful celebration. And I'd forgotten how my family – Cockneys in their roots – so enjoyed partying – and singing. If you ever want to hear English bar songs sung at the tops of people's lungs, I've got just the experience for you!

What a trip back to the lost past it was. And what a wonderful, unexpected gift, even if I can't listen without tears.

[Or: Happy Epiphany!]

 When we lived in Bavaria in the early seventies, this day was almost a bigger deal than Christmas itself. Being a predominantly Roman Catholic state, Bavaria tended to celebrate Christmas as the religious holiday it was first intended to be. Everybody, it seemed, went to church; the more devout among our neighbors put off the drunken revelry until the feast day of the Three Kings' visit to the Christ child. And since those eminences came bearing goodies, it was logical that their day be celebrated by the exchange of gifts.

Of course, I knew that in England in the “Old Days” December 24th was for going around the neighborhood singing Christmas carols (and being served portions of “figgy pudding” or even small mince pies as a reward, or tossed a few coins to just go away). December 25th was for going to church, and December 26th, or Boxing Day, was for giving out the Christmas “boxes” or tips to servants, tradespeople and those who worked for us, and I suppose that included toys for the kids too. My extended family in London wisely conflated all of this into a roaring, two-day party, overflowing with music, gifts, food and drink. (I've often thought that the excesses of those days after World War II were in direct response to the austerity of previous Christmases spent mainly in bomb shelters.)

But back to Bavaria. What I most remember about Heilige Drei Koenige Day was that the preferred fowl was goose. The only time I'd had goose before that was in England – a Christmas just after the war – when a great-aunt brought a goose and real, fresh churned butter up from the country. To my child's palate, they were both horrible, the butter because I was accustomed to the wartime orange glop of “National Butter” -- a concoction of 99 % margarine and 1% butter – and the goose because it was dripping with oil.

Ah, but if you have a good German cook teach you how to roast a goose, it doesn't have to be oily at all! The secret is to cook the goose uncovered in the oven (and unstuffed), and to prick it with a fork at regular intervals so that the oil runs out into the pan under the rack on which the goose sits. Sprinkling the skin with ice water towards the end of the cooking time helps to make the skin crisp and flavorful. The result, served with tart apple sauce, is yummy. (It also helps, my German teacher told me, if the goose has been bred for the table and fed accordingly, not allowed to wander around the barnyard picking up scraps of fish from the pond. Goose, like duck, has a tendency to remind the eater of the bird's last meal.) But alas, there aren't any leftovers with goose for next-day sandwiches, and boiling the carcass for soup as you can do with a turkey doesn't work either.

Now I'm feeling hungry! I'm going out for dinner with my cousin's family tonight. I don't know where we'll be eating, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that roast goose will magically appear on the menu. That would be appropriate.  At the very least, we ought to head for a middle-Eastern restaurant and feast like the Three Kings on their day.

Do you believe in ghosts? I saw a lot of little ones tonight, going around begging for candy. But I got to thinking about the phenomenon we call ghosts. Where I come from – England -- everybody has a haunted house story, and it's no big deal. I've often thought about all the pseudoscientific explanations for the why and how of ghosts and apparitions, but I'm not really convinced. I guess you could say I'm an agnostic when it comes to ghosts.

Yet I must admit that I have seen ghosts of pet animals who have passed. The first one was a big yellow dog we named Buddy, a probably three year-old St Bernard/Labrador mix, a stray my daughter brought home to me, starving and exhausted. He was a sweetheart, and in the manner of rescued dogs, he was very grateful for his home. Then, one December about three years after I took him in, he began to develop seizures and was very sick. I took him to the vet where he was hospitalized. There they recommended an MRI when the traveling machine would come to their clinic in a couple of days, and I agreed. The following day, after teaching, I went by the clinic just to see him. I knew when I saw him that his chances of making it through the sedation they'd have to use to scan his brain were rather poor. I sat with him for forty-five minutes, stroking him and talking to him about what a good dog he'd been. And I gave him leave to go if he needed to.

Then I went home and put him out of mind. It was almost Christmas, so I had packages to wrap. I put some carols on and started to work in the kitchen. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him in the kitchen – a big yellow dog. (Note: There is nothing yellow or even light brown in my kitchen.) Of course when I looked full on, he wasn't there. But at that moment the phone rang. The vet was calling to say Buddy had just had another seizure, a very bad one, and they had been giving him external heart massage, but did I want them to do open heart surgery on him? Shocked, I said no; I couldn't put him through that. Then the vet told me in a kind voice, “Well, I had to ask you that, but to tell the truth, Buddy has already gone.” Of course he had! He'd stopped by to say goodbye.

The second story is briefer. My sixteen year-old cat Billy, a black and white tuxedo cat, had finally died a couple of months earlier. One of my daughters and her boy friend were visiting me, and we were standing in the doorway of my condo (they were outside and I was still in) while I looked for the door key so we could go out to eat. All of a sudden, a black flash dashed between us and out the door. Billy, I knew it. My daughter and I exchanged glances – she knew too. But the interesting thing is, the boyfriend who had neither known the cat nor believed in ghosts, exclaimed “What the heck was that!”

I have no explanation for either of those stories. Perhaps Hamlet's words to Horatio have it right, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

Murphy has been very active around my place lately. I've run into one problem after another trying to get the first two-thirds of BIRDS up and running on my website. Sigh. Still trying!

Meanwhile, this is Gay Pride weekend in Long Beach, with the parade tomorrow. Members of my Episcopal church will march in the parade and so will I. I've been volunteering at a local hospice which has mostly AIDS patients, so I feel strongly about showing some support. Actually, the church whose parish I live in (just around the corner from my home) left the Episcopal Church over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop, so I've gone back to the one downtown where I used to go when the kids were little. (In fact, my youngest daughter was christened there. And ironically, my oldest granddaughter was christened in the one that left.) 

I considered taking my two greyhounds along because they'd enjoy it; they love people and regularly visit the hospice. But the prospect of having to clean up after their "accidents" -- and hoping marchers don't step in it before I'm done -- seemed like too much to handle, so they're staying home this time.  Just gotta hope my feet don't give out before the parade ends!