And then there were none

Towards the end of Herman's illness, and particularly after we had him put down, Max went berserk.

He started using the dining room carpet as a litterbox.

He was uncharacteristically and violently affectionate.

He figured out how to open the sliding screen door.

And we haven't seen him since.

Going from two cats to zero cats in a week is very disorienting.

And heartbreaking.

Herman, remembered

I had to have Herman put down last week.

He came to us in 1998, a half-starved stray who had taken up lodging at the feed store, with his brilliant green eyes and stubby tail and bones jutting out where bones shouldn't be.  I brought him home and from the minute he took up residence, he radiated gratitude.

I'm not anthropomorphising this.  He was visibly, palpably content to be with us, and he was always around, always in the middle of everything..

Leaping up the stairs first thing in the morning, when Thing Two's feet hit the deck, for a spot of play and cuddles.  Greeting us at the door when we came home each day.  Underfoot in the kitchen.  Tucked in front of the fire.  Sitting patiently by my chair at dinner every evening, waiting until I finished and pushed back so he could jump in my lap.  Perched on the back of the recliner.  On my bed every night, always keeping to the highest spot - my hip, or butt, or chest, or, if it was a really cold night, up around my neck.

He was endlessly playful.  Kittenish.  A decent mouser when he could be bothered.  Very talkative; a cat you could dialogue with.

He had periodic respiratory infections that would slow him down a bit, but he always bounced back.  Until this time.  Something else was going on, and despite treatment, he declined very quickly.  He stopped eating.  He got scrawny again.  And weak.  It was his time.  I stayed with him while the vet gave him the shot.


Days later, I still feel like I've been punched in the gut.  I play the whole sequence of events out in my head in the middle of the night.

He was our buddy, and his absence leaves a pretty big hole in this household.

2012 Great Schooner Race

Thing One called Thursday night.

The fleet was gathering and anchoring off the breakwater in Rockland Harbor, in preparation for Friday's Great Schooner Race.

It was a beautiful night.  

He asked us to come out.

(When your tall, confident, independent 15-year-old who has only been gone for four days calls and wants to see you, well, your heart lifts a little.)

So we grabbed Chinese takeout and Wilson the Agoraphobic Goldendoodle, tootled across the harbor, dropped the hook and enjoyed dinner and the view.

Thing One rowed over after the small boat races.

While he ate our leftovers, he filled us in on his adventures (which include going aloft, twice, untethered, while underway).

Snatches of sea shanties in three-part harmony drifted over from the Stephen Taber and each schooner fired off its cannon.

(Add cannons to Wilson's list of phobias.)

Friday morning was a beauty, too.  The schooners jostled for position by the starting line, off the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater...

...then spread out across the bay as they caught the wind.

The Schooner American Eagle making Owls Head

One can only imagine what it must have looked like a hundred years ago, when Rockland was a hub of shipbuilding and lime transport and the harbor was crowded with vessels like these, and much larger than these.

We're hanging on to a bit of history here.

Just being kids (2012 edition)

The gang got together here last weekend.

Looking back at the pictures of them from just a year ago, the mind boggles at how much they've grown.

Thing One's friend M, back from his first year at MSSM, has really gelled as a person, it seems; another friend, T, is headed there in the fall to finish out the rest of his high school career.

They're all physically much bigger than I am.

They all have jobs.

But get them all together on a beastly hot day and they play Frisbee and soccer and capture the flag (with the sprinkler running at midfield) and have a campfire with S'mores and swing on the swings and go swimming in the lake with [most of] their clothes on and eat a shocking amount of food.

Monday morning we deposited Thing One on the schooner and we'll see him probably one night a week between now and mid-August.

Dammit.

Weirdo

Who does this?

Three things I love about where I work

1.  I can wear jeans every day

2.  I can swear a lot

3.  The plastic poop war

In Memoriam 2.0

A couple of weeks ago we held a memorial service for my great-Uncle Lew.

A man like that needs more than one memorial service, see; this was his third, after one in Florida where he retired and a second in Tennessee where he had his career.  This one was for the benefit of my grandmother, who can no longer travel, and the Maine family who couldn’t make one of the others.

A bit of background, if I may.  Back in the 1940s, as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother went one way and my Uncle Lew went another, theologically speaking.  My grandmother and Uncle Lew loved each other deeply, but the two branches of the family have always regarded each other with some suspicion. 

Uncle Lew’s side exists in good-humored trepidation of the morally superior and judgmental Baptists, while my grandmother’s line compresses its collective lips in grim disapproval of the worldliness and wickedness of the faithless.  This mutual wariness was visited upon the second generation and most of the third, and it accompanied my grandmother, Aunt Gerry, and a couple of dozen uncles, aunts and cousins from around the country into the Thomaston Baptist Church for the memorial service. 

The eulogy was interesting because the minister didn’t actually know my Uncle Lew; but knowing my grandmother, naturally he made assumptions about Lew, and thus expelled bushels of warm air about St. Lew living his life for the glory of God and similar twaddle.  I’m sure it gave my grandmother great comfort but the rest of us had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud and/or bean the ordained one with a well-flung hymnal.

The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone.   We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more.  The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.

(And since my grandmother went home to rest after the service, there was no need to conceal the wine.)

Uncle Lew would have loved it.