Stronger

My Friday interview with Diane at Sherwin Williams went really well, as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping to know how she thought it went by the end of the week. I told her I'd bug her Friday afternoon if I haven't heard anything by then.

Meanwhile, we hosted the UU Church of Meadville Search Committee part two Friday night - five guests for dinner. Once again, Carmen cooked! What the hell?! Anyway, they were all properly impressed with our funky house and the monstrous bookcases.

Saturday we cleaned up the place for our Sunday event while we had the chance, because we went to a 70th birthday party for a church member Saturday afternoon. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store for supplies for our Sunday event, put them away and went to the church "Dinner of Thanks" until late in the evening.

Sunday morning was the church service, which I recorded as usual, and then I walked home while Carmen met with her committee. I did some more cleaning and rearranging for our open house for everyone involved with the pledge drive. Forty people RSVPed that they were coming. We were ready for them, too. But it turned out to be a cold and rainy afternoon and evening, and only ten people showed up. The last one left at 9:30. We put the food away and crashed.

So our much-anticipated weekend has come and gone, and it didn't kill us. Did it make us stronger? I guess it did.

Today I spent pretty much the whole day washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, then Carmen called wanting to go to the Humane Society to look at kittens and cats. She didn't see any that called her name. Believe it or not, we came home empty handed! That never happens!

So now it's back to job hunting, in case Diane takes leave of her senses and hires somebody else.

A Breakthrough!

Carmen asked me to let this be known to my vast readership. I have not mentioned this before in this forum, but our boy Remus J. Lupin is my cat almost exclusively. He spurns Carmen's affections regularly, unless she has the bag of cat treats in her hand. This was not a biggie when Yin and Yang were around. She could always conjure up a lapfull of kitty. Since Yin died, Carmen has poured on the steam trying to win over this Mozzarelly Belly brat - who is, at this moment, perched on my desk, hoping to convince me that it's two hours later than it is (four thirty feeding time.) She has the electric blanket on on her side of the bed, but he sleeps on my unheated side. She tries to pet him and he runs away.

Last evening I was busy fixing supper and the boy was following me around like a puppy (our little dog Remus) so I picked him up and put him in Carmen's lap. He stayed there for a long time. So maybe her hard work is paying off. I hope so. This cat adoration is definitely a double-edged sword!

Woo Hoo

The nice lady at the local Sherwin Williams store has been too busy to look at my application and resume, therefore she did not call me yesterday as promised, therefore I called her today. Harried and hurried, she made an appointment for an interview Friday morning - my first interview since Marshalls in Albuquerque a year ago, and my fourth since leaving Massachusetts a year and a half ago. Here's hoping it leads to actual paid employment. It's part time and within walking distance, and it doesn't get any better than that!

I told the guy at Career Concepts Staffing Service that I feel like I have fourteen strikes against me, and I haven't even been up to bat. Number one: thare are always many many applicants for every job I've applied for; two: I'm the old guy they can eliminate quickly; three: I gots no eddycation past high school; four: I haven't been employed since June of '09; five: I had four employers from '05 to '09, although two of them were during a Mystic layoff; six: I've moved four times in five years, covering four states; seven: my career during the past twenty two years has been in an industry that does not exist in or near Meadville (maybe Pittsburgh?!) eight: I have "benign essential tremor" which causes my hands to shake, which I believe is perceived as a drinking problem, of which I have none (although I do drink a heavily spiked egg nog at least once every December;) nine: I have no vehicle, which was an asset in Boston but is perceived as a severe liability in Albuquerque and Meadville; ten: I am overweight, which is a consequence of a) not working and b) quitting smoking; eleven: I have applied for, probably two hundred jobs during the past year and a half, and had replies back from about six of them, which makes me angry that these companies will make me (us) jump through so many hoops to submit an application to them, but can't be bothered to call or email a notification that they've even received it! twelve: I am very disheartened by all of this, and I fear my cynicism might show. Ya think? So that's twelve. I'm sure at least two more will occur to me as soon as I publish this.

So that is why an interview is such a big deal. I hope I can go in there and calmly convince her that I have the physical and emotional durability she is looking for, even if I am an old geezer!

This Masquerade

I'm sequestered here in my office (wow, can you believe I've got my own office?!) while Carmen continues to work on her sermon for tomorrow. Good thing the clock is falling back tonight, because it's midnight. That extra hour will come in handy. Anyway, I've got, I don't know, maybe a thousand of my all time favorite songs on my computer, and headphones so I don't disturb any sermonics.

George Benson is playing - one of my top ten favorites - and once again I was gobsmacked (one of Neal Stephenson's favorite words) by a song, written by Leon Russell, I first heard by The Carpenters in the early seventies, and done very differently by Benson on his "Breezin'" album in '76. It always makes me melancholy because it was the (Carpenters) song that forced me to realize that my first love with the girl who used to live next door was - stick a fork in it - done. The line "Thoughts of leaving disappear every time I see your eyes" was the lullapalooza, because that was the thing I couldn't reconcile with the "Searching but not finding understanding anywhere" part of the situation. Being lost in a masquerade is a hard thing to face up to, but I did it and I ended it. That was the trigger for the deepest, blackest depression ever, spiraling down from April 1974 to Christmas Day 1976. Coming out of it was nothing short of miraculous. I was lying in bed, tired after working all day, and a strange feeling came over me. I didn't recognize it for a long while, but slowly it dawned on me that...I felt good! That hadn't happened in a long long time, like ten years. If I was going to make up a story to explain it, I'd say it was "This Masquerade" by Benson on the radio that snapped my head around that late December.

I consider myself something of an authority on depression. My brother was plagued with it for fifty years or so, and spent that whole time blaming our parents. I came to realize that it's a chemical thing more than anything, and the best way to fight it is to let it come and go. I spent ten years clinging to it, making it worse by succumbing to it and eating a lot of crap.

Anyway, when I hear that song it reminds me of lost love and a whole lot of lost time. I've enjoyed my life so much during the past thirty years, it makes me sad to remember the many long years of making myself miserable. I won't do that again.

Library Bound

I haven't posted in a while because I've been determined to do two time-consuming things - find a job and finish volume three of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I got the first book, "Quicksilver" for my birthday in January, 2009. I read it and "The Con-fusion" during my weeks of unemployment that January and February. "The System Of The World" I have been checking out of libraries and trying to read ever since then. While living the life of a minister's spouse, I've been vacating the minister's study (742 Chestnut Street) for whole days (such as right now,) spending many hours reading (and using the computers) at the Meadville Crawford County Library, finally arriving at the two hundred fifty page climax of the many intertwined stories last week. I checked it out on Monday night and finished it (!) yesterday, between applying for and calling about a half-dozen or so jobs within walking distance of 742 Chestnut Street.

The best looking job in a year or more is a "Sales Associate" position at the local Sherwin Williams store. The one guy who works there tried to scare me off with the strenuousness of the work, lifting cases and buckets of paint, loading the van for deliveries. He's obviously never seen me work! The manager says she'll call me on Tuesday. Fingers crossed!

Is It November Yet?!

I think it's over now, the month-long Hallowe'en Extravaganza. Last night was the Meadville Hallowe'en parade, the largest nighttime parade in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The UU church had a table selling coffee, hot chocolate, hot cider, bottles of water and various cookies. We didn't sell much, because the church is situated just past the end of the parade, where the various entries split off in different directions and disassemble themselves.

This morning on the way to church, we saw the remains of pumpkins smashed all up and down Chestnut Street. The sidewalks are still littered with the spills of candy here and there and wrappers strewn everywhere. Humans is humans, even in meadville.

Next time I walk downtown I expect to see the yard four houses west cleared of ghosts, skeletons, black cats, coffins, mannequins and headstones. I'm guessing he'll blow everybody away with his Christmas crap, and he'll probably start on it as soon as the Hallowe'en crap is safely stored wherever it is he stores it.

Luckily, the over-the-top decorating thing is not mandated. Some do and some don't. I'm coming down on the side of don't.

High Holy Days

In Meadville, Pennsylvania, "High Holy Days" means the whole month of October, leading up to Hallowe'en. Decorating actually starts in September. In the City of Meadville, Trick Or Treat night is the Thursday night before Hallowe'en. The kids are out of school on Friday. The huge Hallowe'en Parade is Saturday.

Last night from 6:00 until 7:30 people brought their kids from miles outside of Meadville to Chestnut Street, the trick or treat capital of Crawford County. The street was crammed full of kids in costume (or not) and containers ranging from plastic grocery bags to the fanciest plush candy-hauling technology I've ever seen. Parents with babies sleeping in strollers collected candy. Teenagers who needed a shave begged for candy. Little ones who were as yet unable to say "Trick or treat" got candy anyway. I ran out at 6:55. My next door neighbor saw he was running out, sent someone to the store for more, and still ran out at 7:10. Two neighbors keep a count. The one on the north side counted 387; the guy across the street had 422. All I know is - it was a lot!

Yesterday late morning I was still thinking about what I wanted to do. I didn't want kids coming up to my porch. At last I pulled out some scrap plywood from the bookcase project and built a portal for the sidewalk at the top of the lower steps leading partway up the hill. I painted it with leftover purple paint from the living room project, stapled our orange lights around it and stationed myself in a chair beneath it. It worked great - until 6:55.

Next year: twice as much candy and more decoration. I'm posting a picture of the yard four houses west of us. Now that's Hallowe'en!

A Reason To Explore

Karen is here visiting for a few days. She and Carmen met at a big law firm in Orlando in 1988 and have been best friends ever since. She has visited us in two houses in St. Cloud, Florida, our house in Orlando, our apartment in Watertown, Massachusetts, twice during our Albuquerque year and now Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Karen flew into Pittsburgh and rented a car to drive the ninety miles to Meadville on Saturday morning. She's sleeping in the living room on two Aero beds stacked like a box spring and mattress. These can be turned up on their ends out of the way during the day, then laid down quickly and easily for sleeping. Easy peasy.

Although she's Southern Baptist, she nearly always comes to church with us when she visits, especially if Carmen is preaching like today. She has a fairly good grasp of the Unitarian Universalist mindset, having hung out with Carmen since we first joined the Orlando church in 1990, and stayed with her through Lesley University, Andover Newton Theological School, and ordination in Albuquerque.

So now we get to see the sights of Meadville with her. Today we ate lunch at Montana Rib And Chop House, our favorite local restaurant, then drove around the area to places I'd never seen before. Then we walked part of Woodcock Dam, and stopped at a wonderful ice cream stand on the way home. It's good to have company. And the weather! It was seventy degrees and sunny, probably the most pleasant day weather-wise we've experienced here.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday, but we are going to try to go to Pymatuning Spillway, where the ducks walk across the backs of the fish (look it up, I'm not kidding.) We've heard about this, evidently the premier attraction in northwestern Pennsylvania, since we first started talking to the Search Committee in January. Several locals have threatened to take us there, but we've held out so far. Looks like tomorrow might be the day we become official residents, having passed the rite of Pymatuning.

Maybe we'll hit a deer on the way back. That's the other thing we haven't done.

Another Hard Lesson

It's easy to get disheartened with this blog business. I hear others talk about their blog as if it's the greatest thing in the world, and I have absolutely no desire to check it out. Therefore, I can perceive my three blogs in the same light - something I am very proud of that I want everyone in the world to read, while everyone in the world is blithely ignoring them due to total lack of interest.

Then, suddenly, I go to the sites and see comments, and the comments tell me that someone out there IS reading them and even getting some sort of enjoyment and/or enlightenment from them. Who knew? And tonight I even got a personal email from a friend. I didn't even know that she had ever heard of Cat Juggler, yet there she was, telling me how reading it had changed her perspective on an issue we are both struggling with.

Years ago in Orlando, I wrote and delivered over a dozen sermons about issues I was struggling with. After the services were over I would stand at the door as people filed out, receiving hugs and handshakes and hearing people telling me what little piece of my message had touched them. Now, as the minister's husband, I am not in a position to do that. My outlet for that part of my psyche is Confessions of a Cat Juggler. No hugs. No handshakes. Only very rarely a comment or even any indication that anyone is reading it.

Evidently, there are quite a few stealth readers out there. I guess this means I'll have to keep writing the damned thing!

Changing Seasons

When we arrived here in western Pennsylvania after a year in New Mexico, we were kind of blinded by green. Everywhere we looked the world was green, very different from Albuquerque.

Lately, one by one the trees have been turning bright yellows, oranges, reds and golds, filling the scenery with blazing color - even the ground. Today we went out to Woodcock Lake and walked across the dam. The air was crisp and cool, making the warmth of the sun a welcome thing. There were a dozen or so people walking or jogging or scootering. And, yes, we even saw someone we know from church! Such is life in a small town.

Therein lies part two of the changing seasons. Rightly or wrongly, it has slowly dawned on me that, along with giving up show business as a breadwinning pursuit, along with the sudden realization that I have become a geezer, and along with trying to figure out what this geezer's next breadwinning pursuit might be in this wrecked economy, I also need to get over myself.

Many of the one or two of you who might still be reading these ramblings know me as a smart-ass with a penchant for leaping as far as necessary to drive home a smart-ass remark or a silly notion. That is who I am, it seems, and it is who I can no longer be. I can no longer be the minister's wife. I can no longer be "Damn it, Jim!" I can no longer be "old, beat up and tired" as my status. My position, under the microscope of the congregation we serve, in this small town where we cannot go anywhere without seeing someone we know (or who knows who we are) is that of the gracious, courteous and discreet minister's spouse, with a tightly reined in sense of humor.

Is it possible that I'll bite my tongue enough that it will turn bright yellow, orange and red, then fall to the ground?

Kitten?

Kittens are cute, there's no denying. Even Remus J. Lupin was a cute kitten once. Now he's a huge overweight cat.

For twenty four years we've had at least two cats, and sometimes as many as four. Even if they hated each other, they still kept each other company. I remember good ol' Peanut - he didn't get along with Harvie, Itty Bitty, Yang or Remus, but he loved our little blind girl. They curled up together whenever he came inside.

Lately we've been contemplating getting Remus a kitten, whether he wants one or not. We're thinking, if nothing else, a kitten will help the "Mozzarelly Belly" weight loss program. Nothing keeps a grown up cat on his toes like a kitten.

We know of a dozen or so people with kittens to give away, and they all know our little girl died recently. So far we've managed to stave them off. But it's just a matter of time. ReLu needs a kitten.

Frog Tape

We had a professional painter paint our living room and foyer. The living room is orange with a yellow ceiling, the foyer is red. The plan was to paint the inner faces of the archways purple, the fireplace brick purple, and four inches down around the top of the walls purple. He kept telling us about this great new stuff called Frog Tape, for masking off color changes such as the purple border he was planning. So he finished the orange, and tried to tape off the border.

The tape wouldn't stick! He talked to the Sherwin Williams people. They said that the paint needed to dry for three days. He came back yesterday and put some tape up on one part of the living room - the part where no furniture needs to move. About an hour after he left, the tape started falling down.

There is something about that deep base used for the orange - Frog Tape won't stick to it! so the living room walls are going to be orange all the way. Personally, I'm glad, but don't tell the design team I said so.

Lost And Found

In January of 2002 I voluntarily went to our therapist solo. I was in great distress, as you would have surmised if you knew me well and learned that I went to any form of doctor voluntarily.

A year earlier I had dusted off an old 1993 sermon entitled "Life And Death Tangled In The Interdependent Web," updated it with a couple of excellent books that had been published in the interim and renamed it "Leading The Way To Hope." In it I described our disastrous environmental situation, and ended up by describing how Unitarian Universalists were poised to be the leaders of the movement toward sustainability and responsible stewardship. At that moment I could see the tipping point ahead, where we would lead the world into a better tomorrow.

I already had a small local circuit that I toured: our Orlando UU congregation; the lay-led University UUs - a congregation birthed from the loins of the Orlando church; and the little lay-led Eustis congregation. If one of my offerings was well-received in Orlando, the others would hear of it and invite me to speak. Lay-led congregations are always hungry for speakers, even if we're just lowly carpenters (and who ever heard of a carpenter being a religious leader?!)

This particular sermon was so well liked, I was approached at District Annual Assembly by a representative of the Nature Coast congregation on the west coast of Florida. He had been asking around the other lay-led congregational representatives for suggestions of speakers. This sparked a germ of an idea in me. I had a District Directory that told me the names of all of the people in charge of lining up speakers in the district churches and fellowships. I printed up a flyer describing my sermon and mailed it out to every congregation in the Florida District, knowing that even churches with settled ministers had periodic lay services during the year and usually during the whole summer. Well... I got a pretty good response. Many had heard of me, and those who hadn't were directed to the many congregational leaders who had already experienced a Jim Emerson sermon.

During the spring and summer of 2001 I was out of town nearly every Sunday. I went to Lecanto, Ocala, Port Charlotte, Clearwater, Bradenton, and even Key West. Ocala asked me back for a date in early October, and Daytona signed me up for mid-November. I was on top of my strange little world, riding a wave of appreciation for my writing and my public speaking skills.

And then those damned four airplanes got hijacked into a huge high-profile big body count attack on the very same American wasteful value system I had been envisioning being phased out by peaceful example-led change from within. At that moment I watched my vision of a sustainable culture crash, explode, burn and die.

I was scheduled in Ocala to deliver a talk about humans and the blurring of the lines that we have drawn around ourselves separating us from the other animals. I tried to write that - really I did - but I couldn't pull my head out of my despair. So I wrote about what I really felt. What a mistake that was! Yes, I stayed for the "talk back" portion of the service, and felt as though the mood of my audience would have been more eloquently expressed by a barrel of hot tar and some feathers. Were these the same UUs I had recently invested with so much hope?

In November I mustered the gumption to go to Daytona and deliver "Leading The Way To Hope" as scheduled, but I did so with a very heavy heart. That is when I learned that I did not believe it any longer. My hope was gone.

Doctor Hughes listened to my tale of woe, and did what he could to help me dig out from my despair. He told me that EVERYONE had lost something on September 11th, 2001. I had lost my hope.

Life gradually got better for me, although I became more reclusive, and I was pretty introverted before. I withdrew from Unitarian Universalism just as Carmen was poised on the threshold of her quest for ministry. As we moved to Massachusetts and became immersed in the history of the UU movement, I gained a huge amount of respect for the things about it that I had admired years before, but now saw with mine own eyes. We visited dozens of churches that had been ongoing since the 1640s and directly involved in many upheavals in our culture.

At church this morning, Carmen's sermon was about the dynamics of cultural evolution, resistance to change and fiery determination to take it to where someone thinks it ought to be. Religious freedom and religious pluralism was the focus of the sermon, and the events leading up to recent anti-muslim sentiment were spelled out. Her point was that Unitarian Universalists were poised on the threshold of tipping the scales toward real religious pluralism, because this is what we are all about and have been for decades. I was forcefully reminded of the events leading up to the day my hope was lost.

Today, I think I found it again.

The Geezer of Meadville

On March 11th of this year I posted "The Conquering Geezer Returns," a slice of my new life as an official geezer (the tipping of the scales was the hearing aids.) On March 11th, on my way home from getting my aids tuned up, I had to wait an hour for the next bus to my neck of the desert (in Albuquerque.) I walked into Wendy's at 11:00am and found myself surrounded by geezers. So I turned up my hearing aids, adjusted my trifocals, hitched up my compression stocking and limped in on my orthotic arch supports.

Today I walked down to the Area Agency for Aging, where I was hoping to get some help finding a job. I was walking past the Wendy's at about 1:15 and realized I was hawngry! Well guess what - it was filled with geezers. I felt right at home.

After eating I went on down Park Street to the address of the AAA - in the Senior Center. I went inside and walked from one end of the building to the other. Nobody was home, even at the welcome desk. I guess they were all at Wendy's.

So I walked over to Market and Chestnut Streets to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Workforce Development office, hoping for some help there. I found a couple of geezers there. I think they were volunteers. Their "job" was to help people look for work on the Workforce Development website. It turned out that I knew more about that than they did. I did a little looking on their computers just to be polite, then walked on home. My computer is faster than theirs.

It was a nice walk, anyway.

Only Kitty

When Professor Remus John Lupin came into our lives, he was the youngest of four kitties. Big bad Peanut was outside most of the time, and when he came in he would take nothing from Remus. Yang avoided him as much as possible, and Yin wasn't much fun to hide from and pounce on, so R.J. Lupin slept a lot, ate the cheese Aunt Cyndie fed him and grew that famous Mozzarelly Belly we know and love.

In 2005 Peanut went to live with my parents at their mountain cabin in Georgia. In 2008 Yang died. As long as Yin was alive, ReLu had to be fed in a separate room and kept there until Yin was finished eating - otherwise Remus would eat her food then his. Yin was always underweight, so we kept a good supply of dry food in a bowl for her to munch between feedings - which kept Remus' mozzarelly belly in full bloom. Now that Yin is no longer with us, the perfesser is on a diet! He doesn't much like it either. He howls at me to put down dry food between meals, and I put down ten or twelve nuggets. He looks at me with a puzzled, contemptuous expression.

It's been over a week since Yin did any eating. I've been feeding Remus "where the white kitties eat" this whole time, but he still goes to his quarantine room door when I set out to feed him. Critter of habit.

Sometimes he howls for no apparent reason, and we have to wonder if he's grieving for Yin. After all, she was good for a pounce and roll every now and again, or a game of "under the door" or "the chair game." And they often shared the sunshine streaming in through the back doors in Albuquerque and here. I'm certain he misses her.

He has never been an only child before, taking the brunt of both of our affections. But he seems to be getting used to it.

The Heart Of A Lion! - A Eulogy

Yin died tonight at about 8:30. For several days she has done little but lie there breathing, with that heart of a lion pumping. She was in Carmen's lap when it finally stopped.


The vet told us when we rescued her and her brother that they were damaged goods and we shouldn't expect them to live longer than three or four years. Yang died two and a half years ago at nine years old, and Yin made it to eleven and a half. She was always an inspiration.


At four weeks old when they were dumped by a breeder, they would both fit in the palm of my hand. After they were nursed back to health, they were regular kittens, into everything, exploring everywhere. Yin had no pupils in her eyes so we knew she was blind, but she was determined to go wherever Yang went, climbing up on chairs, desks, sinks and dressers. She used to run down the hall, turn into the bedroom and leap onto the bed - until we moved the bed. After that she would never jump up on anything unless she could feel the top of it with her front paws. She would jump down off of anything, though, trusting that the floor would always be there. She landed in a waste basket or two, but mostly that procedure worked. For that reason, we were sure to always close the lid on the toilet - and were aghast when a visitor would leave it open.

She had a mental map in her head at all times and in all places we lived - she lived in five houses with us - and changed the map when the furniture moved. If she heard us talking about taking her to the vet, she could hide faster and more bafflingly than any other cat we've had.


When she was young we had a bent wood rocking chair. We're not sure how it got started, but she had a frequent game going where she climbed up into the chair, ran up the back so it rocked down and up and down and up, until it stopped, then she would run back down to the seat and back up the back to ride the ride again, sometimes eight or ten times before she moved on to some other entertainment.


In Orlando our back pool deck was completely fenced in, so one day we let Yin and Yang outside to explore and sniff and feel the sunshine. For about a half hour it was paradise. They circled the pool, smelled the bushes, swatted at lizards and rolled around in the sunshine. Then they came on back around, looking like they were ready to go inside. I got up to open the door, and my chair made a loud scraping noise. Yin bolted away from the sound - directly into the pool! Carmen jumped in after her, grabbed her and tried to hand her to me - a sopping wet furry buzz saw of claws! We were both bleeding from several wounds by the time we got her calmed down and dried off. The next time she went outside was in the walled-in pool-free back yard in Albuquerque.

She saw us through Simply Organized, Inc., Lesley University, Andover Newton Theological School, the Albuquerque internship and the beginning of the Meadville ministry. I guess her work was done. We shall sorely miss her.

Big Doins in Meadville!

In the past five years and five months I have lived in Orlando, greater Boston and Albuquerque before moving to Meadville. What I've noticed about Meadville is that things that would attract very small crowds in very big cities are per capita very big draws here. The first example is one we haven't seen yet, but we are assured that we must: there is a dam hereabouts where people feed the carp bread, and they have grown so big and so numerous that ducks walk across their backs. That's entertainment.

There are three theatrical entities in the city plus a few out in the hinterlands - we have been to shows put on by two of them already.

Thunder In the City, a motorcycle and classic car festival, was in the city the second weekend in August. The UU church put on a pancake breakfast that Saturday morning and nearly broke even.

The County Fair was last month, and every place we went people asked us if we had gone to the fair yet. (Don't tell anybody - we never did go.)

This week The Tall Ships are in Erie, and the chatter is all stories about times folks have gone up there to see them in years past, and/or plans to go see them this time.

This past Wednesday we were invited by a church member to the Crawford County Historical Society's presentation by a man who has done a lot of research into the history of the Medal of Honor with an emphasis on the two Meadville residents who were awarded the medal for their valor at Gettysburg in 1863. There were about seventy people there.

And today was my second session serving the homeless at The Soup Kitchen over at the Methodist Church across the street from the UU church. There were five of us from the UU church (the second Friday of each month is our day) four non-UU volunteers and after a while we were joined by about ten members of the Allegheny College Gators football team.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that in those places I used to live, this sort of thing is overshadowed by the sheer mass of events and activities available on a daily basis. Here in small town Pennsylvania, this is what there is to do, so many people do it. It's kind of refreshing, really.

I like it!

Wrong Again?

Those who've known me for a long time know that I am often wrong. Those who know cats know that they are expert in the field of making liars out of us. The freshest example that comes to mind is the food Yin just ate - a chunky bits in gravy kind of food that, until a few weeks ago (when Carmen bought some by mistake) I vehemently said that Yin will not eat. She eats it now.

The other possibility is that she overheard us talking about veterinarians, and decided she'd better snap out of her "declining" behavior. I've seen that before, too. She has been on enough vet visits to have figured out the drill.

Anyway, the bottom line is that she has perked up and is no longer acting as though the end is near. So - disregard the previous post.

Sad Times A-Coming

It appears that our little Miss Yinny Yin Yin is winding down. She hides in her little cave a lot, she hovers over her water dish for hours at a time, and most telling, she doesn't struggle when we pick her up.

As you'll recall from my early postings last fall, she and her litter-mate brother were dumped by a breeder at four weeks old, as soon as their eyes opened. Yang was a wall-eyed Siamese, and Yin has no pupils in her eyes - bad ju-ju for a breeder

Our vet told us not to expect either of them to live longer than four years. In fact, Yang died once on the operating table and was resuscitated when he was three months old. He died again two years ago at the ripe old age of nine. Yin is eleven and up until a couple of weeks ago, was still going strong. Now she's losing weight - and she was always underweight - and looking kind of ragged like her brother did before he died.

We are being intentional about giving her quality lap time these days, and doing everything we know to do to make her feel loved during her last days, weeks, months - whatever. It's hard to say good bye to one who has been such an inspiration to us - a blind little girl kitty with the heart of a lion! Our friend Colleen described Yin's legacy this way: she showed us that being scared is just the first step toward being brave.

Where Does The Time Go?

Almost three months ago I was looking down the barrel of the cannon that would shoot us to our new home here in Meadville, PA. Since then I've been taken off anti-coagulants (which means I'm back on ibuprofen,) we closed on our house, Carmen was ordained, we packed up all of our stuff for the movers, who came right on schedule on July 5th, drove four days with two cats, the movers arrived about six hours late (not bad, really, as movers go) on July 10th, and since then we've been alternately unpacking and remodeling our cute little house here.

I'm sitting in my office - you heard me right, MY office - I can shut the door and everything! Carmen's office, meditation space, artsy fartsy room and primary closet are upstairs in the former attic that was sold to us as a "Master Suite" because it was scheduled to have a bathroom. Someday it will have a bathroom. I promise. My other domain, besides the kitchen, is the basement, a wet and musty-smelling place that Carmen is happy to let me rule. Early in my reign I donned a hazmat suit, put bleach in my squirt tank, and hosed down the whole interior of my basement.

The yard is huge compared to anything we had in Boston or Albuquerque. We bought me a lawn mower and a battery powered weed whacker (I LOVE IT!) first thing. Today I bought a 24' extension ladder to fix a small leak around the vent pipe. I've hung three ceiling fans, two regular doors, three bifold doors, two accordion doors, one window air conditioner for the attic space, two sets of mini blinds and three sets of "regular" blinds, and walls, floor and ceiling in the new attic closet since we've been here. And painted. There's a lot more, but those are some highlights.

And the kitties? Well, the big french doors face south toward Pittsburgh, and the back yard is home to birds, bunnies, squirrels, dogs and about five neighborhood cats who use the former owner's horseshoe pits as outdoor litter boxes. Anyway, the kids can sit in the sun and watch the show (or listen to it, in one case) which can entertain them all day while chaos reigns around them. In addition, there are new rooms to explore, including a basement, new furniture to test-rest, and the magic fountain of food still flows twice a day.

What more could a kitty want?!