THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

I love pomegranates. The seeds are like little jewels. They taste kind of like a combination of grapes and cranberries: sweet, with a little kick. According to the folks at the health food store, they are extremely good for you—loaded with antioxidants and vitamins that keep you living a long time. The problem with pomegranates is that they are hard to open and eat. Those little seeds tend to break open when I cut into the fruit, and they squirt all over my shirt. Others fly around the room as I try to disengage them from the rind and put them in a dish to eat. I can never seem to track all the errant seeds down, and so days later I either step on them, discover them stuck to the walls, or find them dried up on chair cushions. As a result, I eat mostly easy fruits like apples.

This is the story of my life, I guess. As a kid, I never wanted to do much that required major effort. Piano? Are you kidding? You have to practice a half hour a day! Sports? You mean you have to break a sweat? Homework was another thing. If it took hours to write a term paper worthy of an “A,” then I settled for a “B.” I loved books, but if the description of the bosky dell was too detailed, I just skipped pages until the lovers were actually DOING SOMETHING.

This whole habit has stayed with me. I am not proud of it, necessarily, but I feel the need to defend myself against all of those perfectionists out there who feel that doing something requires doing it to the best of one’s ability. THIS IS HOGWASH, IN MY OPINION. Life is short. I want to cram as much in as possible. In order to accomplish that, I have to cut corners.

Let’s consider housework. My mother had a system of keeping house that required an ENTIRE DAY for each activity! Monday, she ironed. I buy wrinkle resistant clothing for all family members. Tuesday was for shopping. Ok, I like to shop, so I do it on a regular basis. Wednesday was for dusting and vacuuming. Dusting? I use my hand; it takes about forty seconds. I vacuum only when I can no longer discern the color of the carpeting. Thursday was for cleaning the bathrooms and washing the floors. I do clean the bathrooms to prevent diseases from spreading, but who ever heard of dusty floors hurting anyone? Mom went on like this all week. I have chosen to work outside of the home and get PAID for it.

Parenting is another area in which I evidently took the easy way. I was never a room mother, because luckily, I was a “Working Mom.” The fact that Charlie also worked and managed somehow to serve up mashed potatoes in the school cafeteria did not escape the notice of my children. When the request went out for cupcakes for the Sunday school bake sale, I always felt that ones made by professional bakers were far superior to the lopsided ones fashioned in the home kitchen. And what is all the fuss about home sewn Halloween costumes? They wear them once, and then GROW OUT OF THEM, for Petes’ sake. Why NOT get them at Wal-Mart?

Yard work is very time consuming, and it is very hard on the knees. I have never really liked flowers all that well anyway. And why in the WORLD would anybody want to spend four hours a week DEADHEADING? I can think of so many other things that I would rather do. Weeding, to me, seems as futile as trying to pick off every single poppy seed from a bagel, one at a time! Our yard looks just fine, thank you, with its ground cover and hardy perennials. Mulch, you know, is not expensive, and if you spread it around thickly enough, it chokes the stuff that isn’t supposed to be growing in those beds. The muscle-bound yard guys I pay to throw the mulch around are also fun to watch from inside the house!

I have never enjoyed cooking. It seems a colossal waste of time to amass ingredients, massage them around, let things rise, baste stuff, and learn how to finesse pie crusts and separate eggs. It takes a member of my family exactly two minutes to polish off dessert. So where is the logic in spending three hours making it?

I am an expediter. I know how to get things checked off lists! My house looks good enough, if you don’t check the corners or wear white kid gloves. I have lots of spare time in which to do fun things. When friends who read what I have written suggest that maybe I might want to write a book, I consider what being an author entails: Thinking of a plot. Description. Exposition. Dialogue. Writing actual chapters. Proofreading, editing, honing, character development…

I WAS BORN TO BLOG.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

There are days when things just don’t go well. The talking alarm clock stops speaking to me. My cell phone dies during an important conversation. I spill juice on yet another brand new T-shirt. I crack my head on the cupboard above the sink. It’s rainy and dull outside. Yesterday was such a day for me. I was wan, depressed, and limp. Charlie saw the situation and jumped into the breach!

“Ok, what do you want to do this afternoon as a fun diversion?” he asked. I, in my weakened state, could come up with nothing. We had seen all the movies, eaten out once already this week, and thanks to the economy, the budget was shot. I sank a little further down into the chair cushions and stared out the window at the empty bird feeder.

After a few minutes of reflection, he came up with a plan. Charlie’s plans are usually excellent. He knows how to spend a day! Our vacations never falter with Charlie at the healm. So I surrendered to his plan, and we got in the car.

The first stop was the music store. He said, “Wait till you see this; you won’t believe it!” He was right! Inside a darkened studio in the bowels of the store was a large box, more like a cabinet. It had a glass front, and it resembled those fortune telling machines at Coney Island—remember the movie “Big?” Inside the display were two antique accordions. Charlie eagerly pushed a button, and the lights came on inside the box, there was a loud WHOOSHING sound, and then the accordions began to play! As they played, Charlie informed me that this machine was probably the only one like it in the world (understandably, in my opinion, but I kept quiet)! The inventor had seen player pianos and decided to make a “player accordion” machine. The music store owner traded a couple of pianos in order to acquire the machine. Seeing it did cheer me up a little, but I experienced a fleeting stab of sympathy for the music store owner’s wife…

We got back into the car and drove out into the country, and spent a fun half hour shopping for pumpkins. I stepped in some slime, convinced Charlie that doing the corn maze in the rain would not be enjoyable, turned down the chance to go on a hayride (wet hay?), and finally purchased a pumpkin. We tasted some cider, bought some Apple Butter, and got back in the car. I was starting to cheer up!

The next stop was “Bed, Bath and Beyond.” Charlie chose this, because, as he told me, “I thought that shopping around would make you happy.” This man KNOWS HIS WIFE. We browsed, we tried on “Snuggies,” and discussed the merits and drawbacks of inflatable beds. We then discovered that in the front of the store was a MASSAGE CHAIR DEMONSTRATION set up. We tried them out! For twenty minutes, the two old folks sat in those chairs, and let me tell you, that SHIATSU setting really works! Picture us: Charlie in his corduroy pants and baseball hat, me in my jeans and Weight Watchers sweatshirt, sitting in the massage chairs, side by side. In the front of the store. In a mall. Probably two hundred people walked by and saw us earnestly testing the equipment…

Feeling energized, we returned to the car. After driving for about a half hour, looking at all the construction in the downtown area of Dayton, we began to feel a bit peckish, and so we decided to have dinner. Charlie gave me my choice of my two FAVORITE restaurants: MCL Cafeteria, which for all of you out-of-towners, is a cafeteria habituated by geriatrics, BUT IT HAS GREAT FOOD, REALLY! The other choice was my favorite pizza restaurant. Remember, we are operating under an austerity budget. Pizza won out, and we had a fun dinner. I even had a glass of wine.

By now, the trials of earlier in the day had been forgotten. Upon arriving home, we sat down to a full evening of Tivoed selections. One of my favorites, about burly tattooed men rescuing chickens in the Bronx, was on, followed by a show with one of Marion’s clients in it. Something about long-dead people being reunited with their families.

So what started out dismally ended up happily. My conclusion, in reflecting upon all of this, is this:

I AM VERY EASILY AMUSED.

THE HORSEY SET

I just returned from accompanying Annie to Chicago for a championship Dressage event. For those of you who don’t know, Dressage is that kind of riding that they do on those Lipizzaner stallions. The horses look like they are dancing, and the riders look like they are doing nothing but sitting there. The truth is the exact opposite.

Annie went on a pony ride at age six. Actually, at this community picnic, the pony rides were free, and so Annie would take a ride, run around to the end of the line, and do it again. And again, and again. After about fifteen rides with Annie and another ten with the other children, the pony became exhausted and had to be retired for the day. Annie, on the other hand, was outraged that the pony had to leave before Annie could have another dozen rides. That was the beginning of a horse career that has lasted for twenty years.

Horses and women go together. Men at horse events are as scarce as hen’s teeth. I guess all the men who like horses go west and become cowboys. Do you know what having a horse and showing it entails? I am going to tell you, and then you, like me, will wonder why MEN don’t do this:

Horses are huge. They can be very dangerous. They have to be wrangled around, bossed, broken, and trained to do exactly what the rider wants them to do. They don’t always want to cooperate, and so they can BUCK, SPOOK, GALLOP AWAY AT BREAKNECK SPEED, THROW PEOPLE UP IN THE AIR, RUN PEOPLE DOWN, AND EVEN KILL FOLKS. And who is it that wants to interact with these thousand-pound animals? LITTLE GIRLS.

Annie was six when she started her love affair with horses. By the time she was twelve, she had her own horse, and we watched, often in horror, as she took control of a beast who could easily kill her, and loved every minute of it. For her, the ultimate experience is the HORSE SHOW.

A horse show gives people from all over the opportunity to compete at various levels of expertise, and then win ribbons. Beautiful women (not men, remember) on beautiful horses executing elegant movements are awe inspiring. It is a thrill to watch. But here is the BACKSTORY:

It takes years of repetitive practice to become show-ready. You and the horse have to work as a team. I have been watching Annie ride for years. She loves every minute. I don’t get it. Here is what it looks like to me:

To practice, you have to tack up your horse, ride him for an hour, untack, rinse him (or whatever they call that), get the yucky stuff out of his feet, clean your saddle and other leather equipment, give the horse some food, and then go home. This is after you have worked a full-time job in order to AFFORD the horse, the saddle, the food, the stall, etc. To be effective as a rider, you have to practice just about every day.

If your horse gets sick, or lame, you have to know how to evaluate whether or not it requires veterinary action. This means you have to know an awful lot of medical stuff, and how to give horse pills, horse shots, and take a horse’s temperature. You have to know how to analyze his poop, and you have to know what a hoof abscess looks and SMELLS like.

If you are really dedicated and good at all of this activity, then you get to go to a HORSE SHOW. At the show, I would estimate that for every five minutes spent competing, there are about seven hours of work leading up to the event. There are equipment stalls and feeding regimens. There is also training, hauling manure, cleaning tack, washing the horse, braiding his mane, and shining him up like a new penny. After showing for five minutes, the horse has to be rewashed, unbraided, and fed. After that, there is all of the cleaning of the saddle, the bridle, the boots, etc. Did I mention that dressage riders always wear WHITE PANTS?

We just got back from a show in Chicago where the wind blew, it rained cats and dogs, you could see your breath, and the arenas looked like swamps. I wanted to go home the minute we got there. But Annie and all of the other horsewomen there LOVED IT. I still don’t get it. Don’t BOYS like playing in the mud? Isn’t it guys that love to stomp in puddles? I thought large farm animals were the métier of the masculine gender!

As I sat there in the rain, watching, I did an informal count. There were approximately two hundred people competing in the show, and four of them were men. The people wrangling, pushing, finessing and mastering these magnificent animals were women. Women!

And according to Annie, a lot of her girlfriends ride in RODEOS. So here is my question: Isn’t the term COWBOY inaccurate and just perhaps a little too self congratulatory?

I CONFESS

Have you ever watched someone in an adjacent car at a traffic light doing an unmentionable thing? And felt smug? I have. But today, as I was sweeping dust UNDER the rug in my kitchen, I realized that I am simply REPLETE with such bad habits, and in an effort to seem much more human and approachable to my handful of faithful readers, I am now going on record with a list of my worst, but not disgusting, bad habits!

I watch all the most lurid reality shows on television. The more horrible, the better. Morbidly obese people getting gastric bypasses are fascinating. Those Hoarders? I just can’t look away! And I feel so superior watching the Nanny and all of her uncivilized charges! At least my children learned to say “Please” and “Thank you!”

I talk to myself incessantly. This seems quite innocent. But how many of you get into loud ARGUMENTS with yourselves! Do you chastise yourselves? How about hitting yourselves in the head? And I sometimes get into self arguments while shopping. The other day, while telling myself kind of loudly that “it is ridiculous to buy another down vest when you already have four!” a woman at the adjacent round ring moved away conspicuously.

I harbor envy. For every woman I see wearing either big diamonds or Tod’s loafers, I cherish negative thoughts. Perfectly landscaped gardens make me irritable. Women who toss off gourmet meals (my sister and daughter), make me want to sabotage the béchamel sauce. I WANT A GUCCI BAG!

I cheat on my diet all the time. Coffee ice cream is simply my undoing. Buttercream icing is like heroin!! As a result, I have to spend so much time atoning (or is it toning?) at the gym that they all know me by name there! And when I went on vacation without telling them, they CALLED THE HOUSE to make sure I was ok!

I spend WAY too much time in bed in the morning. Some days I am still lying there at lunch time! My mother instilled in me that PJ’s must come off before nine a.m., and here I sit RIGHT NOW, typing away in my jammies, and it is two o’clock in the afternoon! There are days when I just manage to get my clothes on in time to make dinner!

I never make grocery lists. As a result, we have four bottles of ketchup, three Worcestershire sauces, repetitive herbs and spices, and redundant olive oil. This drives my husband to distraction, and he has taken to making regular inventories of the cabinets, announcing loudly, “OK: TWO CINNAMONS. THREE DRY MUSTARDS. DO WE NEED BOTH OF THESE CRISCOS? HOW ABOUT BAKING SODA?”

I love candles, buy lots of them, and NEVER light them. For some reason, they always look much more glamorous in the store. The same goes for soaps. I have a stockpile of scented soaps that would cleanse the unwashed of THE WORLD. One bar, I bought in London at Fortnum and Mason thirty years ago, and I just can’t bear to use it. I am sure it has no scent whatsoever anymore!

I just love stinky cheese. My Dad introduced me to Limburger and Liederkranz when I was a child, and I was hooked forever. Some people have gone so far, when entering my kitchen, as to inquire if the dog has committed an indiscretion. It is never good when people check the bottom of their shoes when you serve the cheese plate!

And finally, one of my worst sins: I eavesdrop! It is especially bad in restaurants when I can’t pay attention to my own conversation, because the one at the next table is so much more interesting! Often, STARING accompanies this, to which my daughter has been known to say, “For God’s sake, Mom, cut it out!” In my defense, however, I must say that this habit has never gotten to the point of my attempting to JOIN conversations at other tables. My husband is the champion of this tactic, and it does embarrass the heck out of me!

Let’s face it, no one is perfect. That is probably me at the traffic light in the car next to you—dental flossing….

THIS OLD HOUSE

We have laughed here. We have cried here. There have been first dates and big fights here. Many delicious dinners have been served, along with pizza deliveries and Lean Cuisines. We have painted rooms, torn out plumbing, and sprayed weedkiller all over the place. Through it all, this house has stood sentinel over our family, somehow holding us together when times were great, and when we wondered if we could survive what life threw in our faces.

It is an old house, somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred years. A big, square box with nice airy rooms and high ceilings. I remember driving past it, wondering who lived there, and why that person surrounded the yard with high trees that hardly allowed a glimpse of the house they enclosed. I never imagined that one day the Campbells would move our furniture and our lives into the place.

The trees encircling the lot are long gone. The clapboards are a grayish white now, with lovely green shutters and front door. The front door is what I loved first: big, wide, and surrounded by sidelights crowned by a graceful fanlight. Two little benches flank the door. I like to sit on one and look out at the neighborhood.

Old houses have a way of making their families feel comfortable. Big rooms make breathing easier somehow. Nothing makes summer more enjoyable than a screened porch. Old houses invariably have big fireplaces, big windows, creaky floors, and lots of nooks. Our house has individual hallways leading into a couple of the bedrooms. It doesn’t make sense, but we love it. We have a door that leads into the kitchen where ice was once delivered. There was an inch of coal dust in the basement when we arrived. The butler’s pantry reminds me of Mr. Blanding’s dream house.

We have lived here for almost twenty years. It was here that I had the party where a tipsy guest fell down the two stairs leading into the kitchen, where a big tree fell down onto the deck and destroyed it while I watched, horrified, from an upstairs window. We spent a week last year without power, lighting candles and reading in bed with flashlights. I have gotten the best Christmas gifts ever in this house! There have been teen parties here, unauthorized, and resulting groundings. Dogs have peed. Cats have barfed.

This house has witnessed the worst days of our lives, when Charlie had the stroke that nearly killed him and we fought tooth and nail to get back what was taken away. It saw me stagger through the longest days of my existence. In this house we worked to put together the family that the stroke fractured, and by God, we did it somehow.

Now the house is a little emptier, with children grown and gone. The space is ameliorated somewhat with the five cats and the one dog that have taken the children’s place. Now this is a “retirement” home for two individuals, but the rooms are still full. There is now a blogging room filled with little slips of paper scrawled with potential topics of interest. The basement is an accordion studio, complete with amps, speakers, metronomes and music stands. There are seven litter boxes down there. Also in the basement is a wonderful museum erected to the memory of Girl Scouts, Indian Princesses, horse shows, high school and college theatre productions, and the War in Viet Nam. The kitchen holds, along with memories, an entire shelf of cookbooks that are never referenced, five sets of dishes for all those gourmet dinners that I have not yet concocted, and enough dust on the top of the cupboards to grow vegetables...

The rest of the house is the same. The bedrooms that once held horse statues, extension telephones, hot rollers, five million stuffed animals, and incredible amounts of disarray now have Martha Stewart duvet sets and artfully arranged accessories. The living room and den are full of the books that I keep vowing not to buy. There is a high definition TV! We have beautiful furniture now, instead of the tattered stuff that we had while raising kids, but it now is covered with pet hair rather than ketchup stains.

It is an old house. It is a family house. It is a great house. It is probably just exactly like yours.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION: LOS ANGELES

We are home, and we are exhausted, poor, and a little sad. Our beautiful daughter is wildly successful, the owner of a fantastic apartment, and in a relationship with a gem of a man. She cooks! She cleans! She hosts great parties! And now, thanks to us, she has a beautiful patio!

A little backstory. Our trip to California involved a wedding in San Francisco. It involved the perfect setting, the best of friends, the most beautiful bride, and the best partying we have done in years. After that, we traveled to Los Angeles to spend what my husband thought was a week of vacation visiting our older daughter.

A talent agent, this girl is a go-getter of mythic proportions. She reps some very recognizable faces, and she makes multi-tasking look like child’s play. Riding in the car with Marion is an exercise in self control, as I had to bite cheeks to keep from shrieking “Navigating this nightmare traffic and texting while carrying on a conversation with your parents is DANGEROUS!” She arranged for us to visit the set of “CSI New York,” which was so AMAZING. Eat your hearts out, America—I was actually in the morgue and GOT TO PULL OUT A SLAB! I met AJ Buckley, who is a cast member (very handsome)!

Charlie, ever optimistic, purchased three Los Angeles tour books before we left. As Marion had to work during the week that we were there, Charlie had visions of doing the Griffith Park Observatory, the Getty, and perhaps even the Tar Pits. I knew better than to burst his bubble before we departed; I didn’t want to plunge him into gloom.

The reality of the LA sojourn consisted of more prosaic pastimes. Marion has a new apartment. It has a large, private patio out back. The patio is empty. Her parents have an American Express card. Her mother is an HGTV maven. Put that all together, and it spells WORK, WORK, AND A LOT OF SWEATING.

Los Angeles has all the stores needed to furnish even the most lavish of lanais. But an unfortunate truth about that city is the fact that it is like one unending strip mall. To do the proper comparison shopping for patio gear and plantings requires putting around two hundred miles on the odometer and spending at least seven hours just LOOKING AT STUFF BEFORE COMMITTING TO BUY. This part of the project took one full day.

The following day, after an exciting visit to the CSI set, where Charlie actively campaigned to become an extra (unsuccessfully, and much to his daughter’s aggravation), we put another couple of hundred miles on the car. But this time, we bought FURNITURE. Tip: Smith and Hawken may be going out of business, but 50% off there still amounts to HUNDREDS of dollars for a chair! Home Depot, on the other hand, sells patio tables and chair SETS for that same amount! (Home Depot is three hundred miles away from Smith and Hawken, incidentally.) Loading the car with table, chairs, other tables, and other chairs was a challenge, but Charlie crammed all that merchandise in!

That night, instead of sitting at a chic bistro eating mussels and drinking wine, we hunkered over instructions translated into English by Chinese folk (“add bolt to table leg elegantly”). By eleven that night, we had the tables and chairs assembled and looking great! The pizza we had delivered was good, too!

The next day was also successful. Plants. Back to Home Depot. We bought palm trees, ficus trees, ferns, and incidentals. If it weren’t for a curmudgeonly but delightful gay man (you know who you are, Stan), we wouldn’t have been able to do it. But Stan told us exactly what to buy, what pots to put each plant in, the soil, the fertilizer, the hose, and everything. The only thing he didn’t do was pay.

In Los Angeles, every home store has legions of hopeful Mexican men congregating outside, looking for work of any kind. Stan arranged for one of them, a gracious man named Raul, to load up and deliver our haul. Despite nearly losing Raul on the highway twice, we all made it back to the apartment, where Raul nearly took the top off his truck in an attempt to enter the parking structure.

Marion then directed the potting process, causing near exhaustion and dehydration in all of us. That girl is a slavedriver! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. That is a metaphor—an apple tree is about the only item we left behind at the Home Depot. While we potted the plants and Marion prohibited anyone from taking even a five second rest, Charlie carted away the trash we generated and was caught gazing longingly at the AAA guidebook that he left on the kitchen counter in the apartment.

The result was fantastic! The three of us and Marion’s friend Bryan did not require any direct medical attention, the patio is worthy of Architectural Digest, we were able to have Marion’s friends over on Sunday night for a cookout, and our muscles did not get really sore for another two days. Success!

We are now home. Charlie has donated the tour books to the library, and we will be sending in payments to the credit card company for months. But as any of you who are parents out there know, no investment gives better returns than an investment in one’s children.

I mused about this one all the way home on the plane. Life is a series of connections, and the most important ones, between parents and children, can all too often fracture. Our other most important connection to our spouses, invariably ends with one partner living on without the other. I vowed last night to hold on to my lifelines with all my strength. But I also made a promise to myself to become as independent as possible, while continuously looking outward for new experiences and people.

YOU ONLY GO AROUND ONCE. MY AIM IS TO GO AROUND WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY.

A BIRD IN THE HAND

Our life here at the homestead is usually uneventful. But when something happens, it always turns into a saga. The latest unfolded on a seemingly uneventful morning. As usual, Charlie was hard at work communicating with 2000 of his closest friends on the computer. I was engaged in my usual activity for the early morning: drinking coffee in my PJ’s and reading the paper.

Suddenly, we both noticed an odd thing: our five cats were lined up in front of the glass fireplace doors, mesmerized, looking just like five guys at a bar watching Monday Night Football on the big screen. “OH MY GOD, THERE IS SOMETHING IN THERE!” I exclaimed. Charlie then assumed a position behind the cats, and peered in. “I think it is a small animal of some kind, maybe a raccoon.”

I assumed a position behind the cats and Charlie. IT MOVED. In my fright, I goosed Charlie, who stumbled forward. As we jostled about, spilling coffee and stubbing our toes on the decorative stonework around the hearth, we both realized that the animal in question was a little bird. A darling little sparrow.

“He can’t fly back up the chimney! How will he get out?” I wailed. As calm as ever, Charlie pragmatically answered, “When he dies in there, then I can get him out.”

“WHAT? You CAN’T let that poor little thing DIE! We have to get him out!”

Charlie pointed out the obvious. Getting the bird out would most certainly entail his death anyway, with five lethal felines just waiting for the moment to strike as soon as the glass fireplace doors opened. So we spent fifteen minutes chasing cats, capturing them, and locking them in the basement.

Back to the fireplace. ME: “Can we just reach in there and get him?” CHARLIE: “Are you kidding? As soon as we open the doors, he will fly out and we will never catch him.” ME: “Then let’s get the cats back in here. They won’t let him get far!” CHARLIE: “Are you an idiot? I thought you didn’t want the bird to die!”

Next idea. Armed with duct tape and a large garden and leaf bag, we affixed the bag tightly around the entire fireplace opening with the tape. Genius! We then managed to pry the glass doors open without disturbing the bag. And we waited. After ten minutes, it dawned on us that sparrows are not stupid enough to fly into black bags.

Back to square one. CHARLIE: “Get the cats out here. Let’s let them catch it, and then we can snatch it from them.” ME: “Who will be the snatcher?” The answer was obvious. I put on gloves, long sleeves for pecking protection, and let the cats out. We had a moment of silence, and then ripped off the trash bag.

I opened the door. The little bird, scared out of his mind, stared at me, and I at him. Suddenly, he made a break for it, and I grabbed him. The gloves came up empty. Before I could even register surprise, chaos ensued! Charlie, who never let go of his coffee cup during the entire proceedings, gestured wildly with said cup, flinging coffee all over the rug. I dashed wildly about, but the bird landed on the top of the armoire next to the sofa.

But our intrepid Bengal cat Salami (that is ANOTHER story) reverted to the wild at that very moment! Faster than a speeding cheetah, he LEAPT from the floor to the top of the armoire in a single bound. The bird was in Salami’s jaws!

Fast, fast, fast—I shook off the gloves, ran down the front hall after the cat, turned right into the TV room, emerged back into the living room. I was panting, sweating, and swearing. Charlie watched in amazement as I deftly grabbed the cat. Rushing to Charl, holding the cat at arm’s length, I shouted, “GET THE BIRD, GET THE BIRD, BEFORE HE DROPS IT!!”

Charlie, whose reaction time was never fast, even before he had a stroke, remained holding his empty coffee mug. He seemed stunned. So I had to revert to the wild myself! The cavewoman in me came out, and I swung the cat around, pinned him to the handwoven antique Persian rug my mother-in-law gave me, and with ONE GLOVELESS HAND, snatched the hapless bird. Running towards the front door, shrieking, brought Charlie to his senses, and he rushed to open it.

SUCCESS. I flung the bird to freedom. Relieved, I sank into a chair. Charlie looked at me with undisguised admiration. He gazed at me for a few moments, and then asked the question:

“How do you think she got in there in the first place? Do you suppose there is a nest up there?”