Jan. 04, 2003 ~ Sunshine/LETTER!
It's a beautiful day today! 51 degrees, blue skies and sunshine.
Last night we heard an unusual sound on the back porch. I turned on the light and was somewhat surprised by what I saw there. Called Husband to come see -- a CAT eating cat food. Amazing, really. Usually we see skunks, possums or raccoons. We have made vague threats about putting the cat food away after dark, not leaving it out for the wildlife, but that just seems so unfriendly. It would probably be the smart thing to do, and Husband does pick up the cat food in the barn. At the end of the day he puts it in the feed barrel. But we continue to mumble our good intentions about the porch food every night, and every night we "forget," while we wait for the show to begin. You never know what you're going to find, when you flip that light switch. Could be anything. Sometimes there has been a whole family of coons, Mama Raccoon and five or six babies, and they do this little dance around the bowl. They crowd in and crowd in and pretty soon they are stepping to the side, all of them, and they wind up going round and round the bowl. The little ones have a harder time getting up on the table.
Why do we have a card table on our back porch? Well, it started out as a way to keep the ducks out of the cat food, back when we let our ducks wander around loose. But our neighbor's dogs run loose, too, and have killed too many of our birds. So the ducks and chickens stay in the chicken pen, where they seem quite content. They do have their own wading pool, you know. The ducks, not the chickens. And the card table remains on the back porch.
Misha is getting awfully thin. We put him on the scale the other day and he was 10 pounds, down from 14. Four pounds doesn't sound like much, but it was almost a third of his body weight. He is doing surprisingly well, though. He seems to feel okay, most of the time. He's only the slightest bit spoiled, but we encourage that. I always have to call my family to dinner, usually several times, but I never have to call Misha. When I start bustling around in the kitchen, chopping and stirring and moving pots about, he takes up his position by the table. He parks right there on the floor, between my chair and College Boy's, and he waits patiently. There are those times when what we serve for dinner is not suitable for his needs, so we always keep a supply of deli turkey, ham or beef on hand. We chop some up, put it on his little plate, and he's good to go. Yes, we buy the stuff just for him. Sometimes we eat it, too, but mostly it's Misha's.
Well, I'd best get out there and feed the babies. The cows are looking in this direction!.
Finally, finally, finally! A brief handwritten letter, a little over a page long, arrived today. I'd stopped at the mailbox on my way to run some errands. When I saw the return address on the envelope, I turned the truck around and headed back to the house. College Boy and I sat side by side and read the letter together.
They've moved about some, and I took it that this was their first chance to send mail. He said that six or seven of our letters arrived the previous night, along with the first of four packages we had sent. This letter of his took 18 days to arrive. About what we were told to expect... mail service just once or twice a month... but oh, how hard it was to wait!
His letter really didn't say much, but that's okay. We don't require the Great American Novel. Just a few words from the boy, letting us know he's alive and in good health, that's all we need.
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