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I bury my nose in the top of the cat’s head and smell a faint odor of the peanut butter I’ve been using to try to get pills into him. He’s thinner and his coat is losing its luster. He’s spent the last few days snuggled in the back of my closet, hiding. Not a good sign in a senior cat. We know it’s probably time to make that call to the vet, but I keep putting it off, hoping for a miracle. The puppy yelps as she and the older dog slam into each other in one of their freque

My cat has a cardiologist. Neither of us does, at least not yet, but our twelve-year-old SPCA cat is officially under the care of a veterinary cardiologist and will begin taking Plavix this week. Seriously. Baxter has always been the low-maintenance creature in our household. We have had a progression of beloved but high-maintenance pets over the years. The most recent, Vinnie, a rescue Westie who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in June, suffered from chronic liver disease whic

I wrote about what I learned from quarantine way back in the spring and thought I’d revisit, now that we’re closing the books on 2020. I am incredibly grateful for my health. I never dreamed the new reading chair I bought in fall of 2019 would get so much use. Our twenty-three-year-old, no-repairs-ever-and-still-going-strong dishwasher should be in the appliance hall of fame. I don’t know if it’s a result of the pandemic or my age or having endured a year of the gha

I always put up two creches at Christmas. The one in our family room came from a 1960's Woolworth’s, where it was displayed in the same aisle as the plastic window candles and aluminum trees. Some of the figures still have price tags on the bottom that say twenty-nine cents. A few of the lambs are amputees and the original cardboard stable has long since disintegrated, but this is the creche I grew up with, and I still cherish its delightful tackiness. My other creche is a w

I think I might need an Advent calendar this year. Not those lovely ones made for adults that hold tiny bits of chocolate or miniscule bottles of wine behind each door. I mean the old-fashioned kind, with doors opening to reveal a simple toy or Christmas decoration printed on tissue thin paper—the ones that don’t provide a tangible reward for getting through another day. The kind with beautiful snow scenes showing rosy-cheeked children gathered around the village Christmas tr

Quiet Sunday, as most of them are these days. No rushing off to church and choir practice or drum corps rehearsal. A lot to process as we trim back bushes and shrubs and clean up pots of fading annuals which have given it their all since May. As the hibiscus and mandevilla continue to push out a few token blooms in the seventy-degree weather, it’s hard to believe we’ll be hanging Christmas lights in a few short weeks. Recent days brought stress and shock and relief and joy al

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I was in a retail clothing store and that was only because I had to return items purchased online. The store was following all the protocols—limiting capacity, masks required, hand sanitizer everywhere. I noticed a woman loaded down with clothes approach the dressing rooms. One of the sales associates gently reminded her that she needed to wait to be assigned a dressing room. They were keeping every other cubicle vacant and wiping down

I made a chocolate cake last weekend because my husband’s aunt was coming for dinner, and I thought she’d enjoy dessert. The cake wasn’t anything special—just a mix jacked up with a cooked homemade frosting. I froze most of it because we don’t need that much cake and put the remainder in the refrigerator. When I sliced off a piece today and tasted that ridge of cold icing, I was reminded of the Sarah Lee cakes my grandmother used to bring home from the Acme. She and I would p