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December 29, 1999 |
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the peace that passes all understanding |
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Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's Bird Sightings: Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, From Ponkapog to Pesth by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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Shanti walked right up to me and head butted me this morning. She's been doing this to Kendra in the quiet afternoons, but never in the morning when everybody is bustling around cleaning. I was surprised to witness her head butting Kendra and astonished when she head butted me. Of course she immediately raised up her paw to whack me and I dodged out of the way just in time. But still, she approached me. Gone are the days when Stacy described her as "truly terrifying". Chloe was fairly friendly today. Besides lapping up some coffee from the lid of my Dunkin Donuts cup she let me pet her slightly longer than usual. The really astonishing thing happened later though. I had just returned from taking several loads of wet towels to the big dryers at the laundromat. By that time the place was open to the public. A woman came in shortly after I arrived with the dry towels. She walked right over and started petting Chloe. And she kept petting Chloe. And she kept petting Chloe as Kendra and I looked on in pure astonishment. This is by far the longest that Chloe has tolerated petting. I told the woman she had to adopt her right now. Naturally, she'd already chosen someone and wasn't really interested in Chloe. Sigh. But if Chloe is this patient with some random person, she'll certainly be patient when the right person comes along. We still have an awful lot of black cats. We don't call them all Bertha anymore as nobody from the staff that was there the first time I brought Andrea and Elizabeth to visit is still there. For the longest time after Andrea exclaimed that all the black cats should be named Bertha because her black cat is named Bertha, Eileen and Dawna referred to the black cats as Berthas. As in we got a whole litter of Berthas this week. That sweet little miniature Bertha named Janet got adopted since last week. She was one of the cuddliest kittens we've had in some time. Giggle Girl really wanted to adopt her but I don't think the school for troubled teens allows pets... Clearly I have some serious karma to work through involving laundry. The wet stuff awaiting the dryer built up to such a huge queue that not only was it getting in my way at the sink, but I felt like I had a personal responsibility to get it dry. I could just feel the weight of all those wet towels pressing on me and screaming "take us to the laundromat, we can't wait any longer". So when Roy and I had finished washing all the dishes and litter boxes and changed the community litter boxes and water bowls, I offered to take the wet towels to the laundromat. Kendra recommended the one at the traffic circle, where last year Roberta had told me we couldn't go because the lady was afraid of getting litter in her dryers. My plan was to go to the one in downtown Newburyport so I could get some coffee at Fowle's. Altogether a better plan. Kendra and Chris helped me load up the car with bags of wet towels and I sped over the bridge to Newburyport. I did get a few funny looks when I loaded two of the biggest capacity dryers in the place entirely with towels, but nobody said anything. They're probably still wondering and making up scenarios involving hundreds of pounds of towels. I jammed all my remaining $1 bills into the change machine and then jammed all the resultant quarters into the dryers. This gave me 56 minutes to get lunch and coffee before the dryers would stop and the attendant would dump out my dry towels. The curried butternut squash soup at the Tannery Cafe was a little bland, but nice and warm and spicy enough to start to clear my stuffy nose and sinuses. I browsed a tiny bit in Jabberwocky on the way to Fowle's but have such a backlog of reading material stacked next to my bed that nothing even tempted me. I didn't even think about going to Olde Port 'cause I'd have a harder time resisting any really choice books. At Fowle's I got my coffee (a Mexican dark roast) and drank it seated at the old soda fountain counter, smelling the beans roasting and listening to about 5 different conversations float over me like strains of music intertwining in a fugue. The warm mug in my hands, the smell of roasting coffee, and the music of conversation made it seem like I was there a lot longer - a mini vacation by the shore. Back at the laundromat, the dryers stopped just as I walked in the door. Another quarter's worth might have made them absolutely bone dry beyond a reasonable doubt. However, not having any more quarters and considering them as dry as they were gonna get, I loaded them into two huge plastic trash bags and hauled them back to the cat shelter with plenty of daylight still left. After all this I was too tired to take pictures of the new cats. And since Bonnie got a new digital camera for Xmas, I figured she needed the practice. I suppose I could put memorable past cats in the entry today, but I won't. The cold I've been denying I'm getting since yesterday really started to get to me, plus the wind picked up, and it's really cold out. Did this stop me from at least a perfunctory drive-by birding pass? Nope. Without getting out of my car, I managed to see huge numbers of ducks and geese, and as an extra treat a flock of horned larks. I'd never seen horned larks on the island before so that counts for my Plum Island year list (have seen many horned larks this year at Salisbury Beach). I was hoping maybe I'd get lucky and see a snowy owl on the refuge so I could add that to the Plum Island list, but I'll have to settle for having the snowy only on my state list. That's probably it for this year. I'll have to start a new list on January 1. Not that I'm that big on listing. I started including lists in the journal at the suggestion of a couple of readers quite awhile back and decided year lists for specific places are fun to compare. Continuing my denial of getting a cold, I decided I was well enough to meet Mark in Harvard Square for dinner and caffeinated beverages. Boy has the square changed. It's like a gigantic mall now with Abercrombie and Fitch and Pacific Sunwear to go with The Gap and all the other chain stores. Where are the interesting shops of yesteryear? Even the best used bookstore in Harvard Square, McIntyre & Moore, has moved to Davis Square in Somerville. Darn. There's a Peets Coffee next to where Grendel's used to be, in a brand new building. Signs indicate that something called Grendel's Bar will reopen in February in the basement. Not only is the square not like it was when I was 18, it's not like it was 6 months or a year ago. The Algiers is still The Algiers and Caffe Paradiso still has great cannoli and good espresso drinks. At least The Brattle Theater is still there. And I am way too old to buy my clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch. |
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