Merry Merry

`Twas the night before Christmas

And up on “The Hill,

Not a patient was wandering in search of a pill.

One tech was on break with

Another one rounding

And I at the CPRS keyboard a’pounding.

When what broke the silence that settled the floor

Was the sound of buzzer by the exterior door.

When what to my wondering eyes would behold

But a walk-in outside in the dark and the cold.

I paged the OD and I called up the supe

Then I went out to see what was out on the stoop.

The PT was chubby and flushed about the nose

And over his shoulder a huge bag of clothes

Was he drunk and a fall risk? I worried about staffing

He was clearly quite manic the way he was laughing

What’s your name, I inquired as I opened the portal

"I am St Nicholas!" He said with a chortle.

Delusional, manic and a great big white beard

We can send him to Norwalk to be medically cleared.

It’ll take us forever to go through his case

By now the OD was one on one; face to face.

He told us: “Bring Haldol, Ativan and Cogentin,

Trazadone, Risperdal, Colace, Augmentin.”

“He’s bipolar, and having a religious delusion

Prepare the quiet room for four point seclusion!”

The techs did a body check, he had poor ADLS

His red suit emitted some chimney-like smells.

Into sharps went his Belt and his strings

He had no money, no watch and no rings.

I added his name to the days intershifts

While the techs searched his bag, it was full of wrapped gifts.

The he asked just his once, we'd allow him to go

Outside on the deck for a puff in the snow.

Even though he was manic he seemed in control

What would it hurt to allow him a bowl?

Once outside he at once put his hand to his nose

And into the sky the new patient arose.

"Blue alert" I exclaimed to the radio's dial

But the fat man just hung in the air for a while.

"Call it crazy," he said, "some sort of hall-loo-cinations."

"I've been in plenty of tight situations."

"But you get to go home in the morning I'll bet.

But I've got a lot of more stops to make yet."

Then he let out a whistle and along came a sleigh

With eight flying reindeer leading the way.

And I heard him exclaim as he left AMA.

"I might be crazy, but you have to stay."

Paper or Plastic

My diet is coming along well. As I get closer to “human” proportions, my old fat clothes are getting looser and looser. The handful of old “skinny” clothes that I stowed away last diet, are starting to fit. But, while the years and pounds piled on, I had to take most of the smaller clothing off to Good Will. So now, I am giddy to report, I need to buy “all new clothes.”

Fact is, I have been buying new clothes, while at the same time my tailor, Rocco Thimbale, has found a profit center in taking in my “fat” clothes.

“I can always make smaller,” Rocco tells me, looking over the half glasses on the tip of his nose, “its make bigger that’s harder.”

Which is a reminder to me that losing weight is fairly easy, once you make the commitment and find a plan to which you can stick. The real trick is keeping it off once you get to your “target weight.” I will cross that bridge, and alas, probably eat it, when the time comes, but meanwhile, the UPS boxes are bouncing on the front porch like acorns, full of clothing, the next size down. Rocco’s sewing machine whirs in the distance.

One recent Saturday, in an attempt to find things to do (combined with my clothes-buying frenzy), I suggested that we take a field trip to Chester Dibble’s, a long-established, upscale clothing store, in a long-established, upscale town a few exits up the turnpike. In spite of our long tenures in the area, we had, neither of us, been to Chester Dibble’s, so we fired up the old Volvo.

We walked though Chester Dibble’s huge glass doors and onto the sales floor. As usual, the men’s section was Rhode Island to the women’s section’s Texas. I headed off in one direction, Melissa in the other.

The first thing I noticed was the quality of the merchandise . And how nice, I thought, to actually see it and feel it before buying it, a luxury I had not found through Google. Then, as I admired a sweater, I casually flipped the price tag, tucked discretely under the collar. Twelve hundred dollars? For a sweater? I began to flip other nearby price tags and soon discovered that I was way out of my league. The sales staff had evidently already come to the same conclusion, for, while there were just a handful of customers in the store, I was not approached even once by a clerk to see if there was something with which I could be helped.

We continued to wander through the aisles, being ignored, flipping tags and feeling alien. The clothing on these tables and shelves and tucked about the waists of headless mannequins was mostly geared up for weekend wear; the suits were in a separate area. It brought about a whole flood of thoughts through my mind.

I guess, in another universe, the usual customers who actually get waited on at Chester Dibble’s have crossed a line of which I am unaware. Theirs is a lifestyle that involves weekends. The alarm clock blows on Saturday morning – or maybe it doesn’t – and there is an entire set of clothing that is worn for weekend activity. I gather, from the quality and price of these garments, that this weekend lifestyle is devoid of labor of any kind. Unless carrying a shaker of martinis from the Land Rover to the yacht is considered laborious. I envision paneled dens from my real estate days, logs cracking in the fireplaces, fine cashmere draped over the shoulder, tasseled, $800 loafers propped on the leather ottoman, as the portfolio scrolls on the flat-screen, 50-year old single malt scotch glints in the Waterford tumbler.

“Ah, Saturday morning. Perhaps a sojourn to Chester Dibble’s? I could use a pair of $200 socks.”

My life is a bit different. Saturday means a day to do all the things I couldn’t get to during the week when I was in a coma. Melissa has an agenda: yoga, errands for her mother, preparing lesson plans for her class. I always have a list. It often includes a trip to the dump, a combination of words that is not on the to-do list of pink cashmere sweater crowd .

My best clothes, even the ones I have been buying via Google, are not what I wear when I am driving my truck into landfills. I tend to wear a hodgepodge of ill-fitting britches and tunics, collected through the years and now, with my diminishing proportions, often falling off.

Melissa waltzes through the acres of woman’s clothing, pausing briefly to peak at the jewelry cases. Suddenly the quiet din of discreet cash registers drawers is broken by the unmistakable sound of pedigreed dogs tussling over by the alpaca and angora tea cozies. I guess a tradition of Chester Dibble’s is the freedom to bring the dog along. So quaint!

I realize that many patrons are led on leashes, as the two scrapping canines rear up on their freshly-manicured back paws, they growl and nip at each other. So gauche!

I look over and realize that this is not my kind of place. Even if I was the type to light my $25 cigars with $100 bills, I’d likely not buy my Saturday leisure togs at Chester Dibble’s. Like the chain stores I am more known to haunt, I have never been attracted to racks of identical clothing, regardless of price. I prefer wearing things that I most likely will not see on other members of the country club. Fashion, to me, is not dictated by the consensus of a tax bracket, rather by what is comfortable, looks good and fits.

No one even tried to thank us for coming or suggest we return very soon, as we pushed the heavy glass doors open and escaped to our 1987 Volvo and headed back down the highway to reality.

And there was a box on the porch when we got home.

The sweaters were very nice.

Cataclysm

We have three cats now. All are teenagers: Tess is the oldest, Tilden is the crazy boy cat, and Tina is the smallest and shyest of the trio. We didn’t intend to have three cats, but when the well-meaning cat rescue person found out we were in the market and offered to bring Tina by to meet us, she just-so-happened to bring Tilden since the kittens had bonded since they were rescued from whatever dire circumstances had landed them in foster care, weeks earlier.

I am not so stupid or, for that matter heartless, to deny a needy pair of foundling kittens a good home –in spite of the fact that everybody involved and the multi-tiered layers of cat rescue bureaucracy assured us that we needn’t take either one, but certainly we were not under any obligation to take both.

Yeah right. Have you seen their faces? They knew a couple of softies when they saw them.

When Chip Wood, our carpenter, finished redoing our kitchen a few years ago, he promised he’d bring a new grill for the heater vent. While we waited, Melissa inherited her grandmother’s chiffarobe, an old wooden chest which we quickly converted to a kitchen storage unit. Its legs are high enough to allow heat to blow out of the vent into the kitchen.

One recent morning, about sun up, Tess is in the bed, purring like a Wankel engine. Tilden and Tina are on the periphery, clearing their kitty throats and making thumping noises. This is a group effort to get chow on the table. I have always contended that if cats could figure out how to open food cans, they’d have nothing to do with humans. But they can’t, Melissa is up, kettle on the burner and three cats weave around her ankles in the throes of starvation. She ladles kitty gloop into the dishes and, if they approve of the menu selection, it’s feeding frenzy time.

After breakfast, the three cats clean themselves, often in the warmth of a sunbeam and then they have a wrestling match. This mostly involves the bigger cats, Tess and Tilden, and includes running all over the house, thumping, bumping and drooling on each other’s heads. Tina usually separates herself from the fray in self-preservation. After the hours-long sparring match, the cats go to neutral corners and become docile and approachable, allowing us to come close enough to elicit purrs and pats. Tess and Tilden hang out in the bay window and Tina has a heating pad in the corner of the living room where she likes to melt.

Those with cat know-how inform us that these two new cats must get used to human contact. Something that holds no interest to either of them. On a this morning, Melissa bent down to pick up the little cat and she darted out from between her fingers, and bee-lined under the ancestral chiffarobe and, to Melissa’s horror, Tina hopped right into the heating vent, still waiting the grill cover from Chip Wood.

I was, at the time, sleeping off the night shift in my attic man cave, ear plugs in place, likely snoring the rafters loose.

Melissa, panicking, envisioned Tina trapped in the bowels of our ancient heating system, unable to escape certain incineration as gravity brought her closer to the burner. With the recent autumnal temperatures, there was a decent chance that the furnace would fire up at any moment. Thinking on her feet, Melissa went straight to the thermostat to make sure nothing would happen to this little white, orange and gray ball of fluff before the fire department arrived or animal control or she went up the stairs and woke the sleeping giant.

“Lower the number on the thermostat,” Melissa thought and she did just that. In doing so, she actually made the furnace go on. Oh no! Reverse: Temperature higher! Temperature higher!

Furnace off, she then went over to the chiffarobe and summoning her yoga strength, slid it away from the heating duct. Peering into the vent, she noticed a baffle below floor level that was balanced like teeter totter with such precision that the strength of the blast from the fan could control the baffle’s position in the ductwork. But NO tina.

Contemplating her next move, Melissa knew bribing the kitten out of the labyrinth with food was out, as she had a full belly. Clearly feline insecurity negated any chance of luring her from within the darkness with comforting chirps and promises of cat cuddling. Tina, on a good day, will have nothing to do with that sort of nonsense.

Just as she decided to call 911 and live with the sad possibility of losing a third cat in so many months she noticed the little cat in the corner of the dining room, calmly licking her paw.

It appears that Tina was too light to tip the baffle and had somehow hopped out of harm’s way while Melissa was fussing with the thermostat.

Cats 1, Humans 0.

I slept through the whole thing. ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net

A Short Story About a Kitten

Our long-standing cat, Franny left us suddenly one night in May while I was toiling away in the mental hospital. I got a rare call from Melissa at 3:00 am, and I didn’t even think about the time; when you work all night, the clock is just an ornament that tells you it’s time to go home.

Melissa had taken Fran to the all-night vet and the deed was done. We buried her in our tiny yard under a tree where, with any luck, her spirit will reign on this little corner of Rusty Hinge Road until long after someone digs holes for us.

It was sad. The house was empty. Now, full disclosure, Franny had been a handful for years. She required daily infusions of subcutaneous medications related to a kidney problem. She had never quite figured out the whole cat box procedure and toward the end, her stomach became unforgiving. Still, she was a sweet cat, a loving and predictable cat. And after she was gone it was spooky. We continued to watch our step, and now and then we’d think we’d seen her shadow coming around a corner or her dark shape tucked into the couch.

At first we thought, tentatively, that it would be nice to be free of the tether of a pet at the house. We could come and go as we please, free from worry and responsibility, and free from the heartbreak of losing a pet.

It was settled.

In a week or two Melissa arrived home with two kittens. One was names “Tilly,” a feisty tortoise-shell, reminiscent of out previous cat, and Tess, a little ball of fluff who looked like a cross between a raccoon and a possum. Once released from the cat carrier, they immediately hid behind the downstairs toilet in fear.

In a few days though, they began to understand where the food came from, Tilly and Tess provided hours of endless entertainment. Tilly took the lead, proving to be the more agile kitten, nimble on her tiny feet. It suddenly became clear that she was bullying her “sister,” who needed to see the vet soon after they moved in to have an infection, which made her a bit punk, treated.

Before long it was kitty entertainment central. We couldn’t wait to get home and watch the little rascals get into mischief. Tilly was the curious one. She’d come into the bathroom and stare through the shower glass while one of us was in there. She was the first to venture into the upstairs bedroom and make herself comfortable at night. Tess, was shy, often having to be coaxed out from under the couch. Eventually all four of us were comfortable with each other.

Now we were ready to have two cats, companions to each other during the long human-less days and to us at all other times.

In August we went to the lake for vacation, and packed Tilly and Tess off to our neighborhood vet. We hated to leave them behind, but back in the days of Franny we’d either have to take her or stay home, so part of our new, healthy cat scenario was we’d be able to board them as needed.

The lake was great. Cool evenings on the shoreline. Relaxing.

At some point, mid-week, we got word that Tilly was sick. The vet wasn’t sure what was going on but she was treating her and there was nothing to worry about. She felt that the little cat might have picked something up at the cat rescue place where she had stayed.

By the time we got home Tilly was in quarantine. She had bloated up. A virus caused fluids to empty into her abdominal cavity. A Google search on the condition proved so horrific it would make your hair fall out. The prognosis was grim. But the same internet also gave us scant hope and we sought all sorts of treatment. We got Russian antivirus medicine. We got cat interferon. We got contradictory advice.

Tilly was laid low, but did not to appear to be in pain. Her sweet face and spark glowed from the pillow we set up in the corner. Tess looked through the French doors, longing to wrestle with her sister. But stress would exacerbate Tilly’s condition so we kept them apart. Every couple of days the vet would sedate Tilly and drain the excess fluid from her tummy. Her weight hovered just under 4 lbs.

After four weeks, we couldn’t keep hoping. The poor little cat was trapped by her own body. She had stopped eating and was unable to make it into the cat box.

We buried Tilly under a paving stone in the back yard. Her little body carefully wrapped in an old sweater and fleece. When we walked back in to the house, all of our love turned to Tess, who, while we were so wrapped up with Tilly’s illness, had turned into a large, sleek cat who seems healthy, loves to eat and play, and knows where the cat box is and doesn’t mind using it.

Sweet Tilly was not meant to stay long. Perhaps she came into our lives because we needed to practice compassion. We love Tess and we know that another cat will find us if that is what is intended. In fact, we have an interview with two promising kittens tomorrow.

If I lie on my back will you rub my tummy?

Let us leave.

Summer's over.

Actually, as I write this, summer is going full blast, drying out what passes for my lawn and I awake from my sleep after dreaming all night that I am trapped in a whale's stomach.

Speaking of whale stomachs, I am on a diet. No, really.

My doctor, a surly type, with a specially built scale that registers 10 pounds over the one we keep under the vanity, has once again looked over the top of his reading glasses, my most recent lab reports in hand, and pronounced me "unhealthy."

The reality of it all is, no matter how you weighed me, on earth’s gravity, I was out of control.

My labs are all askew and the doctor has assured me, once again, that I can drastically improve both the numbers and my chances of seeing 60, if I lose 50 pounds.

As a medical professional, I cannot dispute him. And it just so happened that through his office, I recently enrolled in a wonderful, easy and painless program intended to help me slim down, become fit and live long enough to attend my own retirement party.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been told about the program. Until now, I did what every other self-respecting tub-o-lard does, I took the phone number, and then I put it off for as along as I could.

But this time, since I was completely out of excuses, I made the call and within a week I was getting large boxes of food sent to me by UPS.

The way this diet plan works is instead of eating bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches three meals a day, I actually have five mini-meals supplied by the diet company and a sixth meal consisting of a small slab of meat and a large handful of approved vegetables that I am required to prepare in my own kitchen. All six meals are eaten at three hour intervals along with copious amounts of water, all the time, all day.

The mini-meals consist of milkshake-like concoctions, granola-ish bars, watery soups and gummy oatmeal.

It's sort of like being an alcoholic, wherein you've done your damage with the booze and now it's time to give it up. Except, everyone needs to eat so it's not like I can take the pledge or anything.

What I have done, as I began to see the tips of my toes emerging from the edge of my gut as I looked at the floor, is decide that "real" food can wait. Until I started this thing, I would eat just about anything and everything I could maneuver close to my mouth (except lima beans): nothing was taboo. This is in spite of the fact that I have several underlying medical conditions that would be less scary if I could steer clear of sugar, fat and everything else delicious.

So, as I type this, I have shed close to 20 pounds. My clothes fit, as opposed to “sort of” fit. I get a bit more tired as I work all my night shifts, but I sleep like a rock when my head hits the pillow.

Like an alcoholic who needs to steer clear of bars, I have to watch my step and keep driving past the pizzerias. I now leave the bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches to those skinny skunks who can eat just about anything and still take off their shirts at the beach.

Here at the hospital, the great tech, Anthony, has just finished a philly cheese steak with all the seductive aromas and satisfied gustatorial grunts that properly accompany such a feast. I have just downed eight ounces of a strawberry Crème "milkshake” that contains essential minerals, vitamins and fiber.

This diet has sharpened my senses and now I am much more acutely tuned in to the world around me. Even the food we feed our wonderful new kittens makes me slobber in Pavlovian ecstasy. A trip to the grocery store is like an adventure into the Forbidden City and if they are giving out samples? I need to be put into restraints and removed on a stretcher.

I am sure, if I stick to it, all my pain and suffering will be well worth it. I'll get to see how my feet are doing. I can buy new clothes! And one day, if I am good, and I mind my P’s and Q’s, I just might eat a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich again one day.

On whole wheat bread?

Why do we remove the corn husks at the store now? What do modern children do while waiting for barbecues?

In the Red

Regular readers might remember a story I wrote a few years back about my old, faithful 1977 Ford F-100 pickup truck that I reluctantly sold to my across-the-street neighbor in a panic, after holding on to it for almost 25 years.

Hardly a morning breaks where I do not catch the rusting, silver and red heap out of the corner of my eye as I survey the day from the porch of my house.

Those with keen memories may recall that I paid $4778.25 cents for the vehicle back when Elvis was wheezing his last few breaths. Now the truck spends a great deal of idle curbside repose as my neighbor, Skootch Johanson, keeps the rust at bay and adds his own little style flourishes to my old ride.

Since that transaction I have gone through an awful lot of vehicles, including only one actual brand-new car and a lot of used ones over the intervening years.

I have been thinking about buying a new vehicle for a few years now. Almost every day I have seen one I briefly consider: minis, maxis, hybrids, Japanese, Korean, German.

The whole situation boiled over my back burner last summer when, while on a family vacation, I rented a Ford Flex.

You have probably seen these on the road yourself: great window-covered shoe boxes with odd corrugated details. I liked the whole idea. It was a strange new ride, minimally advertised and seldom observed. I thought about it for a long time until one day when I should have been doing something else, I dropped in on the local Ford dealer. In the showroom I met a very young salesman in a sensible sport coat and tie. I described my interest in the Flex and we looked at a couple of samples. I was completely smitten. I thought and thought about it but couldn't quite pull the trigger. A new Flex costs ten times as much as the 1977 pick up of my undying nostalgia.

The young salesman poked around in his files for a used model that might better fit my budget but it was always the wrong color or not properly equipped.

At the end of each visit, I’d hear myself say:
"You will find it Steve, " – his name is Steve – "I trust you will, and in the mean time I'll come down and see you from time to time. Call me if you find what I want."

Meanwhile, deep in my subconscious, an idea was slowly forming. The Flex obsession didn't exactly lift, rather it sort of percolated on a back burner in my mind. Now and then I'd find myself driving by the dealership and I'd glance over the lots to see if there were any new Flexes in stock.

Occasionally, when I was supposed to be doing something else of pressing importance, I'd find myself in Steve's office shooting the breeze. We had nothing in common except my money, he wanted it and I couldn't think of a good reason to leave it in the bank.

The pages of the calendar peeled away and next thing I knew it was Summer, and the lure of the outdoors is upon me. The rooftops and side yards in our neck-of-the-woods are bubbling with the rhythmic noise of home improvement. Bang bang. Whir whir: usually while I am trying to catch up on sleep. We have had our annual argument/discussion/fantasy about renovating the garage and how it is full of just about anything except one of the four –count `em four – cars we park on the street for passing motorists to whack with shocking frequency.

“I am going to clean it out this summer, I swear!” I swore, simultaneously celebrating the tenth annual broken vow to clean the garage pageant. I also vowed, to myself this time, that I was really going to do it. I was going to put on a blindfold and empty every last crumb of crap out of the swayback structure and into the nearest landfill. So there.

How was I going to do that? I needed to buy a truck. That’s the idea! Stop the presses! Call Steve!

Nothing had ever appeared so clear to me. Within 24 hours I was sitting at Steve’s desk, signing a sheaf of papers and some guy with his name on his shirt was driving a brand new red pick-up truck up from New Jersey.

I picked her up by Thursday with a weekend off in front of me, a plastic bed liner behind me, I cruised the city, six-months of free Satellite radio filling the cab and the air-conditioner keeping things chilled.

I went to the dump a couple of times and bought some shingles for the carpenter to replace the rotten ones. I was pretty much glowing all over the place.

This may come as a surprise but, I will not share the price I paid for this truck. I realize if I keep this new one as long as I kept the old one, I’ll be close to 80 years-old and whatever they are selling then will have sticker price rivaling the price I paid for the freshly painted rickety house on rusty Hinge Road.

You know the house I mean, the one with the shiny, red truck out front.

Vroom! Vroom, suckers!

Fiddling on My Roof

(Dedicated to the memory of Franny the cat)

I am sitting here on my special bunker. There are the sounds of booms and bangs as the entire building shakes. Light streams into newly formed cracks in the walls and ancient dust and crumbs fall from above and onto the horizontal surfaces in my extra special hidey hole while a cat nervously purrs at my feet.

It is not Paris or Berlin, it is Rusty Hinge Road and I am having a new roof installed.

It all started a couple of years back when we were having a little work done on the house. Part of the work included a new skylight in the bathroom which included a new install on a tiny little roof. The carpenter, who I shall not be recommending upon request, boasted to me that “his skylights never leak,” which I believed, and also served as an omen for future leak problems and a disappearing contractor.
An associate of the same fellow, who I would recommend, in spite of never returning phone calls, , arrived in contractor #1’s stead and applied some goop around the skylight, the good news is he fixed the leak, the bad news is he noted other parts of my roof in mushy peril. Actually the skylight still leaks.

Thus began our search for a roofing contractor.

History and horror stories often indicate that roofing contractors are notoriously slimy. Even folks in the contracting business whom I trusted, wouldn’t offer me any names. So I resorted to the internet, finding a popularly advertised website that rates various local contractors. On it, after paying a fee, I located a company I’ll call “Choice Home Improvements.”

Their representative, Dino, answered the phone himself, made an inconvenient-to-him appointment, braved rush hour interstate traffic and arrived at our door at the agreed-upon time bearing samples and oversized ponce wheels, wearing a windbreaker emblazed with the embroidered company logo.

Dino’s jovial manner along with a scrap-book of awards and accreditations combined with photos of some of Choice’s choicer projects gave us a very warm and fuzzy glow of confidence. His estimate seemed fair. We liked him. The cat liked him.
We watched him as he loaded his samples into his truck. I was ready to write him a check right there, but cooler heads prevailed and we agreed to entertain other bids. So I called around. I asked friends and associates. I contacted trusted tradesmen. I collected a few bids, but none of them gave me the same comfortable confidence that Dino left at our kitchen table. He was firm about his timing, even promising to go over the periphery of the property with a magnet to pick up all the nails. His bid was the best.

So we made the deal and as I type this, a century of dormant house crumbs are bouncing off my keyboard.
He swore up and down that he’d be done in two days and that he’d be there on Tuesday. It rained, of course, so the crew arrived on Saturday – after a couple of perfect days. Meanwhile, I’d used up vacation days that I could have saved up for – well - vacation.

The Choice van emptied out like a clown car and soon the old creaky homestead was swaying under the weight of the handful of brawny roofers, prying and ripping. Soon, two layers of shingles were sliding down big blue sheets of plastic and making the yard look like the ninth ward.

Dino was confident that the whole project would be done in one day, and they were careful not to disturb the nest of robins who’d not asked first before setting up shop in the crosshatch of wires tethered to the corner of the west wing.

As night fell, the roof was not done, but I was assured that it was weather tight.

The forecast was iffy but I was promised an eight o’clock wakeup call Sunday morning.
A mercifully light rain had mocked us by moon light, and I anticipated a much more angry column by sunrise, but the clouds parted with dawn and the clown car arrived curbside. For once we beat the neighbors to the punch, firing up the gasoline powered compressor. Straight from the hymnal of the church of the Rusty Hinge.

By night fall the curbside dumpster was creaking under the weight of a century of roofing history. If you squinted, you couldn’t otherwise tell that there had been confusion, dismay and debris at our little corner of heaven. In their haste to get going, the crew left their magnetic nail picker-upper . So with the cat venturing out of the house after a weekend of being nervously confined to my office chair, I went over the battlefield with the left behind tool. I picked up hundreds of nails.
There is no DNA testing for steel, but by the looks of some of them, I sense that some may have been dropped at the turn of the last century.

The roof looks pretty good, at least from my view of the bunker, where I sit typing as I listen to what sounds like the gnawing of oversized rodents on the wall outside my window. The painters, working mostly in the afternoon, are preparing my house for a new coat of paint and me for a column for next month.

Alas, the sweet cat has departed this life for good, rest well my dear little friend.