Cake and pie.

Chocolate fudge cake, to be exact.... and strawberry rhubarb pie. I baked the cake (very rich... don't think I'd use that recipe again).... and the pie came from Royer's in Round Top. The vanilla ice cream came from BlueBell (the only ice cream you're allowed to serve here in the Hill Country). Anticipating the desserts, I had just a banana for dinner. No sense in piling on the calories at dinner-time when I knew I would have a little piece of both the cake and the pie. "Just a sliver..." as my Aunt Dolly would say.

We invited J & J over for dessert, and B & G.... we wanted to include J & G but they're still trying to settle in and settle down after their move from Pennsylvania. Been there, done that.... any sort of move is intense... but moving from one state to another brings a stress all its own.

When I went outside to lock up the coop tonight, only three hens were in there.... Prissy was missing. I walked all around the back courtyard looking for her... not a sign of that black-feathered bird. As I called out to Prissy, Scarlett came running out of the coop and plopped herself by my feet so I could pick her up. Which I did.... and carried her back into the coop (which is what she wanted in the first place-- Scarlett is back to her "pick me up and carry me to the coop like a princess" routine).

I closed the door to the coop but didn't lock it... went back into the house and told my husband and everyone else that we had a missing chicken........ all three men went outside to look for her.... not a sign, not a feather. B told me that if you don't find any feathers, that means a fox got the chicken-- "They break the neck and just carry them off." Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but that's the nature of the coop.

Except for another gray hair which I'm sure popped right out of my head, I didn't get upset. No more tears for missing or dead chickens. Am I getting that used to the predatory animals out here that can catch a hen in ten seconds flat?

My husband and J & G came back to the house..... not a sign of Prissy. Oh well. "Now there are three," I thought..... and Prissy hasn't been laying eggs since April, so it is what is it. Or was.

Back out we went, into the driveway to say goodbye to our friends and lock up the coop....... and there she was..... Prissy standing in front of the closed gate of the coop, looking up at me as if to say "Well, who closed the door? Can't you see I need to get in there?!"

I opened the gate and in she went. Audrey was at the very top of the ladder, which is where Prissy usually sleeps, but she lost her place because she was so late getting into the coop. Scarlett walked over to my feet but didn't plop her feathered-self down (one princess promenade per night is enough for her, I guess). And PittyPat looked down at Prissy from the second rung of the ladder, probably thinking "Jeez.... I thought we'd got rid of you!" (Prissy is constantly picking and pecking at poor little PittyPat.)

Score one for the hens.... we still have four. I can't believe I kept so calm when Prissy was 'missing.' Had this happened last year, I would have been in tears. City girl. No doubt about it. "It's only a chicken." That's what I kept saying as I walked back towards the house. "Only a chicken. Only a chicken. Only a chicken."

And so it is. Just a chicken. Besides that, I've lost my good friend Fran.... it still hurts.... I still think of her.... her birthday is in a few days.... I know she wasn't ready to leave this world. With all of that, how could I possibly cry over a lost or missing chicken?

Can't sleep.

Again. It's after midnight..... can't sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, it was time to just get out of the bed.

Nothing really going on lately..... nothing much to write about. It's still hot..... broiling hot. We did have one night of rain this past week. I woke up in the middle of the night (can't remember which night it was) and I heard the rain hitting the windows. Strange sound, when you haven't heard it for so long. It rained all night and most of the next morning. I thought for sure there would be a huge puddle (at least) in the pond. There was a puddle, but just a small one, and as soon as the sun came out and the temperature got near to 100 degrees, the puddle dried up.

We haven't had any wildlife adventures lately.... except for the raccoon that comes up on the porch from time to time. I'm sure he's looking for cat food left out there for Gatsby. While we were in Florida, Gatsby stayed outside along with his food dish, replenished twice a day by friends J&J. Whatever dry food that Gatsby left in that dish, I'm sure the raccoon was gobbling up after dark. After just a few days away, Gatsby looked a little bit thinner when we got home. That cat isn't used to sharing his food with Mickey and Sweet Pea, much less a raccoon.

At any given time, there are nearly a dozen barn swallows on our porch. The babies have all left the nests now.... they fly around the property during the day and come back to sleep near their nests at night. They line up on the moulding over the kitchen windows, which of course means that the porch below those windows are polka-dotted with their night-time droppings. I sweep up every morning, they drop their 'gifts' during the night, I sweep up.... they drop..... (A small price to pay for the sweet little sounds those birds make all day long.)

Wasps..... so many wasp-nests by the barn..... we found three new ones this afternoon. We spray them with those big green cans of bug-stuff...... the nests get soaked, the wasps die, we knock down the wasp-condo things, but then more wasps come along and just re-build. I got stung by a wasp a few years ago when we were in the other house.... immediately got me sick, sick, sick. A doctor friend/neighbor of ours told me I was allergic to wasp stings. Told me to stay away from wasps, especially their nests, which they're going to protect and that's when they're more likely to sting-- when you get too close to their cone-shaped condo. There must be a zillion wasps out here in the hills...... half of them are either in or near our barn. Another sting is in my future... it's only a matter of time.

My cousin F is still without her computer..... we're hoping her daughter can solve the problem this weekend. Until then, my InBox is mostly empty....we both miss our daily eMails. Snail-mail just isn't the same... we've spoken on the phone a couple of times this week, but still, being able to type out an eMail without the intrusiveness of the telephone is very much missed. And to think... the kids today (Miss C's age) don't use eMail much-- they say it's too slow. (Slow?!) So they send text-messages instead. I have no idea how to do that. My phone can do a lot of things that I don't know how to do. To me, it's just a phone. To Miss C's generation, it's their world.

And this is my world: not being able to fall asleep on a Saturday night. I finished a Beverley Nichols' book this afternoon ("Down The Kitchen Sink") and I just read a dog book by Anna Quindlen ("Good Dog. Stay.")

The dog book got me to thinking about Gracie. Maybe that's why I can't fall asleep.

Tuesday stuff.

It's been hot. H. O. T. Translation: over 100 degrees... and once it gets that hot, do the numbers really matter? Can we really tell the difference between 102 and 106? The ponds are still dry.... the fields aren't thigh-high with grass, so this season's crop of hay will be much less than what it was last year at this time. My friend J told me this afternoon that it rained in Clear Lake..... we didn't get one little drop here in the Hill Country.

Our up-the-road neighbors J & G have arrived from the north. They usually spend the month of June here, then head back to Yankee Land. Not this time. Their house in Pennsylvania is sold... their house here will forever be home, along with everything that goes along with it-- cows and (sometimes) raccoons & possums and (definitely) coyotes and (most likely) snakes and (maybe) foxes and (certainly) fire ants. Home Sweet Wildlife and Critter Surrounded Home. Yeeeee-haaaaaw.

My husband and I went into town late this afternoon...... went out for dinner and then to the supermarket for groceries. On the way back, as we drove down the lane towards our house, a mama raccoon and four little baby raccoons crossed from one side of the woods to the other. Just like a cat, that mama raccoon came out of the woods, not looking left or right.... and a split-second later, the four little babies followed. So cute, those baby raccoons. No matter the species, all the babies are cute. (Except snake-babies. Nothing cute there.)

My cousin F is having computer problems this week...... a severe rain storm caused her power to go out over the weekend, and along with it went her telephone, television and computer. The first two are back up and working, the computer is resting comfortably. (Translation: not working at all.) My 'in box' has been empty these last few days. As empty as the rain-deprived ponds in the Hill Country here.

I spent some time wrapping up baby gifts for Fran's granddaughter.... into the boxes they went.... out to the post office they will go the next time I'm in town. I will be looking for little-girl gifts every time I'm in a store from here on out. Just doing what Fran would have done for that little baby girl. I could still just scream. I try not to think about it all. That doesn't always work. I looked through our wedding album the other day... there was a photo of me and Fran.... standing together, laughing, smiling. I took the photo out of the album and put it in a little frame where I can see it every day.

It's amazing to me that when Fran was alive, I didn't have to look at her picture. I knew what she looked like. I've known her face, her 'look,' her style, from high school days. But now that she's gone, it's like I need to see her picture. She looked beautiful at our wedding..... happy and healthy.... not a care in the world. Cancer was definitely not in her universe on the day that picture was taken.

When my friend Frankie passed away, I was saddened by her death. Frankie also died from smoking. I was sad when Frankie died, but not like this. Frankie had lived a good long life... she said so herself.... her only regret was smoking. Before she died, she told me to tell everyone I knew not to smoke. And the few people who did smoke-- I told them that Frankie suggested they quit. I said those very words to Fran over the phone. And Fran's answer was the same answer she had given all through the years when anyone who loved her asked her to give up cigarettes. She would say: "I would if I could, but I can't. I enjoy my cigarettes, especially the late-night smokes, and my cigarettes after a good dinner."

But... when Fran found out she had throat cancer, her answer changed. She said her biggest regret was her 'first cigarette' because there was 'no stopping' herself after that first one. During one late-night phone call from NY to TX, Fran was crying and said she wished she could 'take them all back.... take back all those cigarettes....' She herself couldn't believe how her 'favorite little vice' had 'betrayed' her body.

And here we all are.... all of us who loved Fran...... her we are without her, and her brand new baby granddaughter is here with us all, and we don't have Fran to share in this little baby bundle of joy.

I need to stop this. I need to stop thinking of the negatives... and start remembering all the positives. I need to think of those words on the card from the funeral parlor: I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one.... I'd like to leave an echo... of happy times and laughing times..... of happy memories that I leave when life is done.

Life goes on...

Today is Sunday... it is Father's Day. A little baby was born today to the daughter-in-law and oldest son of my friend Fran who passed away on May 30th. Fran's oldest son is now a dad. Fran's younger son is an uncle. Fran's husband will now be called 'grandpa.'

The baby is little girl.... they named her Emily Frances. Fran's husband called to tell me..... I cried when he told me the baby's name..... and then I cried again when I told my husband.

When Fran was still with us, she called me to talk about her impending grandmother status..... she was so excited. We both were. We talked about when her two sons were born... how she was so inexperienced with her oldest son, and not so worried with her second son. Lessons learned along the way.

I had told Fran that if her son J and his wife had a baby girl, I would give them my gold baby bracelet. My dad bought that bracelet for me on my first birthday... I wore it for years and years, till it no longer fit. My Aunt Dolly saved it, as she saved everything.... and when my dad passed away three years ago, I found my little baby bracelet in his jewelry box.

Friends had babies... cousins had babies.... friends' children had babies... I kept the bracelet. When Fran told me about her son's baby-on-the-way, I told Fran that I would be hoping for a little girl..... and I would give my gold baby bracelet to her son for his baby daughter. I told Fran that I had been waiting for the 'right baby' to be born.... and her son's child, if it was a girl, would be the 'right baby' for my bracelet.

Weeks and weeks ago, I took that bracelet to a local jeweler... had it polished up a bit... it looks like new..... or about as 'new' as a bracelet from the early 1950s is going to look. I will wrap it up in a pretty box.... I'm going to start buying little girl baby books and clothes and gifts. When we see Fran's family, I will give the bracelet and the gifts to her son and his wife for their baby... Fran's first grandchild.

Fran passed away on May 30th. The baby was born today, June 19th. This is one of those days when I have to wonder why, if there is indeed a god in this universe, why why why couldn't the first date have been weeks or months later, or the second date have been weeks or months sooner?! More than anything, Fran wanted to hold her 'first baby's baby' in her arms.

And I can hear my husband's mom saying No matter what happens in this world, life goes on in a sensible way.

Broiling hot......

We've been in the midst of a heat wave here (as if this kind of heat isn't expected in this state during summer months?). Temperatures have been 100 degrees and over, for days on end now. The chickens stay in the shade underneath the bushes for most of the day, and only little PittyPat has been laying eggs in this heat. She's the smallest of the four hens, but the most reliable egg-layer. The cats are inside all day long.... Gatsby goes out at night before we go to bed and he does his cat-patrol all night long, coming into the house again after he eats his breakfast out on the porch. Actually, Sweet Pea and Mickey don't go out at all anymore-- they've been in the house since we started seeing snakes in the yard.

I saw a young deer out in the field this afternoon, walking by the pond (empty of water since we haven't had a good rain in the longest time). I opened the gate of the front pasture... maybe the deer will see that there's a fountain filled with water in the front courtyard. I fill it up every morning so the birds have drinking and bathing water. And I'm sure the raccoons, possums, and heaven-only-knows-what-else find that water fountain after dark as well.

We drove to a nearby Bed & Breakfast today...... there's a gazebo there on the grounds that's identical to the one that we have. My husband wanted to see how it was built.... ours needs a bit of repair and he wanted to look closely at the other structure to compare it to ours. The B&B was on a property of over 200 acres... which made our 23 acres seem small. Of course, when we got back home here, our property isn't small at all... it's all perspective and proportion, I guess.

We were talking to the B&B owner about the work and profits of running such a business. She smiled when we asked her about profit. She said there weren't any... you just about break even, when you take into account the people you have to hire (unless you want to do everything yourself, which is impossible) and the cost of extra liability insurance and upkeep. She said that the B&B money just allows her to live on that land and enjoy it all. So of course I was thinking that how can you enjoy anything if you're working from sun-up to sun-down to make all of your guests feel welcome and comfortable. Just this week alone, she's hosting a group celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary, and then a wedding party. She said we'd be amazed at how many couples go there to get married in her gazebo.

When we bought this property, we had no intention of running a B&B business.... but with the size of the house and the number of bedrooms with private bathrooms, it can certainly be done. I'd rather not. My husband already has a job.... running a B&B would be another job..... and it would tie us to the property big-time. And this house for me is already a job... a B&B without having live-in help would be a slow death.

We have stayed in Bed & Breakfasts when we've traveled...... and loved all of them. Never did give a thought to the work that would go into such a business. Everything just looked so lovely and peaceful...... and we felt at-home, rather than just at a hotel. For myself, I couldn't imagine having people we didn't know in this house.... it's our home, not a business, and that's the way I'd like to keep it. Just the thought of all the extra laundry would be overwhelming-- all the extra towels and sheets.... and there I would be, in the laundry room with all of them, and not a house-elf in sight to run the washer and dryer.

The last word...

I couldn't sleep last night... kept thinking of my friend Fran who passed away recently. Tossing and turning in that bed and I could see her face and hear her voice and I just couldn't sleep.

In today's mail, a thank you card came from her family, along with one of those little cards from the funeral home that gives her name, date of birth, date of death. "In Loving Memory...." was at the top of the card. On the front, one perfect beautiful red rose.

On the back of the card, under Fran's birth and death dates, is this poem:

I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways, of happy times and laughing times and bright sunny days.
I'd like the tears of those who grieve to dry before the sun.
Of happy memories that I leave when life is done.


Happy memories indeed. Fran gave her family and friends so many good memories. Countless, priceless memories. Happy memories that I leave when life is done.

It is still so hard to accept that her life is done. There was so much more that she wanted to do.

And that, right there, is today's lesson for us all.

Pixie Dust.... and the raccoons.

Couldn't sleep....... kept thinking about my friend Fran...... knowing that she's no longer here is just so sad. In my mind's eye, I see her cooking, reading, listening to the radio in her kitchen. Fran could take any recipe and duplicate it as if she were a trained chef. Everything she cooked or baked was just so delicious...... such love and care went into everything that came out of her kitchen. And if the recipe called for a stick of butter, then that's what went into the dish.... no scrimping, no paring down, no calorie-counting, no re-writing recipes... which is why everything she made tasted as if Julia Child had been hiding in her kitchen.

When I think of all the time we worked together at the library..... all the books we read... the cookbooks, the craft books, the biographies...... countless titles over the years. And Fran had such a respect for the books and for the library itself...... it was like a treasure-trove to her, all the books that were free for the taking, with just the stipulation that they be brought back when you were done reading them. Those were happy days, happy times, before any sort of cancer was so much as a speck in Fran's universe.

I find myself saying or thinking "Oh Fran" a hundred times a day.... and there are nights, like this one, when I close my eyes and I can see Fran and I sitting at her little round table in the corner of her kitchen, talking and laughing over everything, anything, nothing.


Pixie dust....... we drove up to College Station the other day, and stopped in Half-Price Books. My husband found a book in the business section, its title is "Inside The Magic Kingdom: Seven Keys to Disney's Success," by Tom Connellan. The entire book is about how Disney has created its own special magical world with the 'sprinkling of pixie dust' and time-honored and time-tested traditions of public relations that make each and every guest in their parks feel like everything was created just for them alone. Which, in a sense, it surely was.

The book says that 70% of all Disney guests have been to the parks time and again..... everyone keeps coming back because it truly is "The Happiest Place on Earth," as the Disney road signs will tell you. Everyone smiles, smiles, smiles.... and it's not just a put-on smile, but a genuine smile..... Disney knows that their 'guests' (their word for customers) are the be-all and end-all of everything they do...... and without their guests, DisneyLand and Disney World would just be empty parks filled with colorful rides and attractions.

The Disney managers say that 'pixie dust' is the magic behind Disney....... everyone who works there has the pixie dust spirit, the pixie dust tradition...... and anyone who knows the Disney stories knows that a little bit of pixie dust goes a long way and can fix just about anything. What a nicer world this would be if the Disney-magic could be spread to all corners of the planet. The world outside the Disney parks, on any given day, is filled with less than happy magic.


The raccoons...... we have been putting dry cat food in the cage-trap every night. And every night, between 9:20 and 9:40, the raccoon comes up on the porch, smells the cat food in the trap, and manages to shut the door of the trap without getting inside the cage. That happened twice last night..... we gave up, took the cat food out of there, and left the closed-up cage on the porch.

Tonight.... we tried again. Into the cage went the cat food.... at 9:25, we heard the raccoon on the porch. My husband and I went to the windows in the TV room to watch..... and there was the raccoon, at the back of the cage-trap, trying to put his paws inbetween the wires to get the cat food out. His paws were too big to fit through, so the raccoon started to pull the cage across the porch..... pulling it from the back, so he wouldn't trip the latch that would shut the little door.

We turned on the porch light and went out there before the raccoon had a chance to drag that cage out into the fields. I took the cat food out of the cage, closed up the little door, and let Gatsby outside for the night. Maybe Gatsby will keep the raccoon away from the porch. Depends on what kind of mood Gatsby is in.... he will either run after the raccoon till it goes away, or he'll sit there in one of the chairs and just watch the raccoon as it roams around the porch and the yard. He is such a dramatic cat. "I am the cat, and that's that." (Gatsby's Rule #1.)


Oh well....... the score remains Raccoons 3 - Us 0. We need a smarter trap.... or a dumber raccoon. Or maybe just some pixie dust.

Raccoons and Baby Birds.

A new family of barn swallows had built a nest over our kitchen windows a while back..... when we left for our visit with my Aunt Dolly and DisneyWorld, the baby birds were covered in a patchwork of feathers and the mama bird was busy flying back and forth to feed the four tiny hungry mouths. When we got home from Florida, the babies were twice their size and fully covered with feathers and they were crowded into that nest without half an inch to spare.

Both the adult birds and the babies are used to us going in and out of the kitchen door and they were peering over the side of the nest to watch us come and go. So cute. Yesterday, the baby birds left the nest but stayed up on the moulding above the windows... brave, but not too brave...... always keeping the nest in sight. Today, the baby birds tested their wings, landing on the porch railing, flying from one porch column to the other... never getting too far from the safety of that nest.

My husband says I'm getting too emotionally invested in baby birds. Well, how can you not? They're out there singing and chirping and flying around all day long. I've been keeping Gatsby in the house so he doesn't bother them. I don't think he bothers the birds, though-- Sweet Pea is the bird-catcher here, but I haven't let him or Mickey outside since the snakes started coming around a few weeks ago. Mickey and Sweet Pea seem to be content now with their inside-cat status... and even if they're not, I don't really care. I want them safe, and if being safe means being in this house, then so be it.

I'm guessing that by tomorrow afternoon, the four baby birds will be flying out in the yard, happy to leave the nest for a while.... but they'll probably try sleeping in the nest when it gets dark. With all the baby birds we've had since living here, they always come back to their nests when it gets dark, all of them trying to fit into that small space, cuddled-up and close together like some three- or four-headed feathered flying machine. Okay, okay.... so I'm getting emotionally attached to baby birds here.......

The raccoons........ we have seen raccoons and possums on the back porch-- for weeks now. The raccoons look right up at you when you put the light on, with a look that says "Who are you and what are you doing on my porch?!" The possums are the opposite.... when the light goes on, they put their heads down and don't make eye contact, as if they're saying "Oooh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry... is this your porch? Pardon me.... I'll find my way out, thank you."

Last night, my husband put one of those cage-traps on the back porch, near the spot where we keep seeing the raccoon and possum. Into the cage went a small bit of dry cat food, along with an old egg from one of our hens that has been in that cage since we were trying to catch the armadillo a couple of months ago. My husband intended to re-locate the caged raccoon... driving it to the next town, to the woods around the lake there.

The raccoon, however, had other ideas. About 9:30 last night, we heard the door on the cage snap shut. We looked out the window, and there was the raccoon-- right by the cage-trap, but not inside of it. As we looked out at the raccoon, the raccoon was staring right at us through the window, with a supremely satisfied look on his masked face. Before we could get to the back door, the raccoon walked off the back porch and out into the yard. My husband re-set the trap, and shortly after that, we went to sleep.

This morning, my husband was the first one to look out the back door. The cage-trap, instead of being off on the side of the porch, was right up near the kitchen door. The little trap-door was shut, the egg was still inside the trap, but that's about it. No raccoon. Plus, right next to the cage-trap, face-down on the porch, was a statue of a frog that I keep on the porch. The frog is holding a "Welcome!" sign when he's standing straight up by the door. Poor frog was face-down next to that cage, as if both had been positioned there to make a statement. I'm wondering if the raccoon was trying to get the frog into cage, but of course, that's too Disney-esque.

We figure that the raccoon kept moving the cage around to get the dry cat food bits to come out of the cage, without him having to go into the crate to get the food. As for the frog.... it probably got into the way and the raccoon just knocked it over. But still... both the crate and the frog were lined up just as nice as could be, right by the back door. If we had gone out of the door in the middle of the night, we would have fallen over both of them.

Before the raccoon went on his merry masked way last night, he stopped in the vegetable garden and helped himself to the corn stalks. My husband had picked the best of the corn, so the raccoon didn't get much, but still...... he made a mess of the stalks.

To top that off, my husband saw a fox out in the barn this afternoon... big ears, pointed nose... he thought it was a cat at first (no thank you-- we have enough of those)..... but the pointed face and nose gave it away as a fox. The chickens haven't been around the barn in weeks now... they must know that a fox has found a hiding place in there.

So tonight.... the radio is playing in the barn and the lights are on-- which may force the fox to find another hiding place. The cage-trap will once again be set on the porch, hoping to catch the raccoon.... this time, we'll put the dry cat food in a little tray all the way at the back of the crate.... hopefully, the raccoon will be hungry enough to go all the way into the cage to get the food.

Wildlife adventures.... that's what our life has become... a series of wildlife adventures. I was in a bookstore today and right there on the shelf was a book on "Snakes of Texas." I could have bought the book, read through it, looked at the pictures, memorized the patterns of the snakes in this area. But I didn't. Didn't buy the book, didn't pick it up, didn't look through it...... I just tried to ignore it. Ignorance may not be bliss, but sometimes ignorance can let you sleep at night.

Mickey Mouse & Aunt Dolly

We spent a long weekend in Florida..... visiting my Aunt Dolly for her 98th birthday, and also walking around just about every inch of Disney World. We thought we would take Aunt Dolly to Disney for her birthday, but it was just too hot, and she didn't want to be 'pushed around in one of those chairs' and she thought she would be in the way of everyone who could walk faster than she can. Although, for being 98 years old, my Aunt Dolly can still walk circles around a lot of people that we know.

Florida is definitely hotter than Texas...... our temperatures may be higher, but we don't have all of that humidity (unless it rains, and we've seen precious little of that since February). Aunt Dolly spends most of her time in the air-conditioned house where she lives with my cousin S. She keeps the kitchen clean, and tidies up here and there, making the beds look perfect and the sidewalk in front of the house never has so much as a stray leaf on it.

Aunt Dolly doesn't much like the neighborhood-- it's very pretty and very quiet she said, but it's like living in a 'retirement home' because 'everyone here is so old.' Which, of course, isn't true...... everyone is younger than my aunt, but they all just move slower so she thinks they're older. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Dolly has been in constant motion. If someone told her to sit down and relax, she would tell them: "I'll be dead a long time when I go, so I'll relax then." Maybe that's why she's still very much alive and healthy at 98. My husband asked my aunt what her secret was for living so long. Aunt Dolly looked at him and said "Eat good. Think good. Be good."

My husband and I have been to Disney World before... it was a bunch of years ago, and it was a short trip so we didn't get to see everything Disney had to offer in Florida. This time, we did. We spent every morning in the parks, then visited with my aunt and cousins during the hot afternoons, then went back to the parks at night. We stayed at one of the Disney hotels, so we were able to take advantage of the extra hours at night-- the parks close at 10:00 or so, everyone leaves except the Disney hotel guests, and we were able to stay till 2:00 in the morning on one night.

There's no way you can not be happy when you enter the gates at Disney. Music is playing, bands are marching, parades and shows are going on all around you. Everyone who works at Disney just smiles, smiles, smiles..... they make you think they were waiting just for you to arrive. And the fireworks every night..... amazing...... both at The Magic Kingdom and at EPCOT. They give you a fireworks display like it's the 4th of July and New Year's Eve rolled into one...... and they do this every night, every single night. My husband and I spent an entire day at EPCOT, from 9:00 in the morning till after twelve that night. We had lunch in France, dinner in Germany, gelato in Italy, and strolled through all of the other countries' pavillions and shops. Before we left the park, my husband bought me a Murano glass-beaded bracelet in one of the Italian shops, and he found a Walt Disney poster to have framed for his office.

At The Animal Kingdom, we saw "The Lion King" show...... the costumes were beautiful, the dancing was so perfect, and the music..... those Elton John songs....... I was sitting there with tears in my eyes because I thought of my friend Fran. She loved Elton John, and she loved the music from "The Lion King." Before I knew it, tears were just rolling down my cheeks as I thought of Fran not being with us anymore. That fact alone just breaks my heart, with or without Elton John's music. I thought of Fran a lot over the weekend.... on the planes, at Disney, in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. There was one point when I looked out the plane window at the clouds and said to myself "Are you out there, Fran?"

For Aunt Dolly's birthday, my husband found an Italian restaurant and we got two shopping bags filled with dinners to go.... we brought them back to the house and had dinner in the dining room-- much better for my aunt because it was quiet and not too cold. She wears hearing aids to help her with conversations, but in a noisy crowded restaurant, the hearing aids are useless. She was much more comfortable at her own table, and we all had a delicious dinner with her and my cousins, and no one was freezing in a too-cold restaurant.

Aunt Dolly has been going through the packing boxes that were shipped from my grandparents' home in NY..... she's finding things in those boxes that haven't seen the light of day for decades. She sent me home with three of them, with the promise of more to come in the mail as she gets to the bottom of the larger boxes.

Two of the items were watches that my dad had given to my mother.... one I remember distinctly-- a gold watch that hangs from a pin in the shape of a bow, with little ruby-colored stones in the bow's center. My mother wore that little bow-pin watch just about every day when I was a kid.... and I absolutely remember that she was wearing that watch on a white blouse on the day I started first grade. We were both wearing white blouses that day... I thought she would stay at school with me, but of course she had to leave me at the door. I didn't know that little watch was engraved on the back..... daddy gave it to my mother on their six-month anniversary, which is evident from the date engraved underneath the words "To my adorable wife."

The other surprise was a gold wristwatch, also engraved with a date for the second Christmas after I was born... my dad had it engraved "To our dear wife and mother..." and then he had his name and my name engraved underneath. The wristwatch fits me...... I put it on and wound it up..... and it still works, as does the little bow-pin watch. I sat there in my Aunt Dolly's Florida living room and put the watches up to my ear and listened to them ticking. I felt that if I closed my eyes and wished hard enough, it would be 1953 again and everyone would be together. Oh well. Not even the magic of Disney could make that wish come true.

There was a third little surprise, wrapped up in a tiny piece of tissue-paper..... a lock of my sister's hair, from her first haircut, May 14th, 1961...... it was Mother's Day, and my Uncle Mino cut her hair for the first time. Aunt Dolly tied the curl of hair with a pink ribbon, wrote the date and her name on the paper, and folded it up into a neat little square. That tissue paper probably hadn't been unfolded since that Mother's Day weekend in 1961 when my sister was almost two years old.

Aunt Dolly also sent me home with three of my grandmother's hats. My cousin L had told Aunt Dolly that I had Victorian lady statues in our house, and she thought I would put the hats on the heads of the statues. I did just that after I took the hats out of my suitcase. I remember two of the hats as if I'd just seen my grandmother wearing them yesterday. The third hat, I don't remember it at all..... it looks brand new, as if she had bought it and never got to wear it.

One thing is for sure..... Aunt Dolly was (and is) the 'memory keeper' of the family. Every little thing that could possibly have sentimental value was packed safely away in the attic..... decades went by.... family passed away, or divorced, or moved out of state as the old NY neighborhoods went through changes. Every little memory just stayed right where it was, and if my aunt hadn't had to move out of the house in NY, all these things would still be up there in the attic of that big old house that grandpa built in 1922. Little by little now, as Aunt Dolly goes through the boxes, she's making sure that everyone gets what belongs to them, or had belonged to their parents (which would be her brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles).

While we were at Disney World, one of the songs that we heard was "When You Wish Upon A Star," sung by Disney's Jiminy Cricket. That song makes me cry every time. When I was a little kid in the 1950s, my dad and I would watch Walt Disney's television show every Sunday night...... daddy would sing that song all the time. It always gets to me. And so does Disney.

My Mickey Mouse watch is back in my jewelry box...... we're on Texas time now, not Disney time. I forgot to bring my Minnie Mouse ears when we left, but I took them out of the box when I got back home and they're on my desk as I type. I came home with more Disney pins for my collection...... and I bought Disney gifts for my cousin F.... I wish she had been able to come with us this time. But there will be another trip to Disney, and I'm hoping that we can take F with us to Disney, and to see Aunt Dolly. For her 99th birthday? Or for her 100th?

Surely, if we go back to Florida for Aunt Dolly's 100th birthday... surely she will let us take her to meet Mickey Mouse for that extra-special birthday. When you wish upon a star.....

Bambi

Please, please, please deliver me from baby animals.

We were up early this morning (actually, I hardly got more than two hours sleep all night long)...... and we decided to go for our walk before it got too hot. (Translation: before 85 degrees turned into 100 degrees.)

There we were, walking along the road coming into these hills, on our way to the main highway where we turn around and walk back again. I had a plastic Wal-Mart bag in my hand, so I could pick up any stray bottles or cans that somehow magically appear along the road. (Translation: some people will forever be slobs.)

We walked around the bend in the road up near the now-dry creek (lack of rain) and there in the tall grass was a baby deer. I stopped dead.... it was Bambi, come to life.... curled up like a kitten in the tall grass, with only his little brown ears showing, and big brown eyes staring right at us.

Have you ever seen a very small baby deer? Beautiful brown coat, with white spots along its back, and just the sweetest face that any animal has ever been given by the hand of Nature. My immediate thought was to walk over to the deer, pick him up in my arms, cradle him like a baby, and christen him Bambi as I carried him (or her) back home.

Of course, the voice of reason was there with me. (Translation: my husband.) "The mother must be close by." Well, of course. I looked around in the woods, didn't see any sign of another deer. "If we take this little deer home, the mother will be heartbroken." Well, serves her right... leaving this poor thing so close to the road for all the world to see. "Let's go home and call someone, or look on the Internet to see what the right thing would be." Fine. My husband did walk over to the deer and pet it gently on its little head.... it just stayed there, all curled up, looking up at him like our dog Gracie used to do.

We turned around and walked less than a quarter of a mile and one of our neighbors was walking up the hill in the direction of Bambi. G has saved baby animals before, bringing them to a wildlife rescue center, so we knew she would be the one to ask about the baby deer. We told her what we found and where it was..... we continued on towards the house. Half an hour later, G came to our door..... she had called the lady at the wildlife rescue station.... they suggested the baby deer be moved away from the road, but still be protected by tall grass. She did just that, making sure the deer was in the shade near a tree. G said that when she picked Bambi up, he just nestled right into her arms with his head resting near her neck.

The wildlife station told her that a mother deer will leave her baby in tall grass while she searches for food...... she will remember where her baby is, and come back to get it. The young deer will just stay in that place, or keep itself right in that area if it does move around a bit. G made sure the baby was away from the road, in taller grass so it couldn't be seen..... and she will check on it this afternoon, and again tomorrow morning. If the baby deer is still in the same place tomorrow, then she will bring it to the lady at the rescue station.

Now of course I realize that we cannot raise a young deer. It's been done, I'm sure, but then that's another little life to protect and worry about.... keeping it safe from foxes and coyotes and bobcats... making sure it has proper food to grow and be healthy. And it's a wild deer, not a pet.... so you can't keep it penned up after it's no longer a baby. It needs its mother to teach it how to find food, how to survive, how to live. I cannot be a mother to a baby deer... not even to one who looks like Disney's Bambi.

My husband asked me why it's "always us" who find the lost animals and the abandoned pets. He said he's going to get me a pair of blinders so I don't keep discovering all of them. I don't think blinders would help. I think my body is magnetized in some way..... anything that is adorably cute and likely to break my heart just seems to find me.

Sleepless in The Hill Country

As I type, it is nearly three o'clock in the morning. I've been awake, tossing and turning and staring into the dark, for over an hour. I should have gotten out of bed as soon as I woke up. It never works, trying to fall back to sleep. The only thing that works is getting all of these words out of my head and onto these pages.

Fran. I keep thinking about Fran. So many bits and pieces of memories from all these years just keep popping into my mind. I can't even begin to imagine how many telephone hours we must have burnt up over the years.... or the hours of talking we would do at her kitchen table when I was up in NY. Her husband J would be watching a ball game and he'd come into the kitchen for a soda and he'd look at us and say "Are you two still talking? What is there to talk about for all this time?" Our answers would be Anything. Everything. And when there's nothing, we think of something. We would talk and talk till our voices were hoarse and we were getting tired and we just couldn't drink one more cup of tea or coffee or water.

When Fran first found out about her cancer, she would call me on my cell phone and I would sometimes put my sneakers on as we talked and then I'd take the phone outside and I would just walk and walk, around the subdivision, through the park, back to our house, and then around the subdivision and the park again. Just walking, walking, talking to Fran.... mostly listening to Fran....... she was afraid. Afraid of the cancer, afraid of what could happen, might happen, would happen. She didn't want to be a burden to her husband. She didn't want to leave her sons with sad memories. We talked about it all. I remember telling Fran that she would dance at her sons' weddings. I was right. She did, at her oldest son's wedding a few years ago. I told Fran that she would someday hold her grandbabies. I was wrong.

And now, what Fran was most afraid of, what could happen, what might happen, has indeed happened. Last night was her wake. During the hours that the viewing was going on up in NY, I was sitting in a chair and just thinking, of Fran being there, at her wake. I wondered what she was wearing..... we talked about that during one of those long phone calls. She worried about what she would be wearing because she knew that her sons would forever remember the way she looked in the casket.

Fran had called me some months back to tell me the news that her oldest son and his wife were expecting their first child. "It will be sometime between the middle of June and the end of June," she had said. Fran told me that 'the kids' aren't telling anyone if it's a boy or a girl....... they don't want to know... they want to be surprised at the delivery. I asked Fran "How do you say Grandma and Grandpa in Greek? And how do you say Aunt L in Greek?" She told me, and I wrote down the words....... Yia Yia for grandma; Papou for grandpa; Thea for aunt. I laughed and told Fran that I could just see her with the baby, singing songs to him or her in Greek.

Fran sent me two music CDs over the years..... all of the songs are in Greek, and she made labels for the CDs that say "Fran's Favorites." I don't understand the words, but the music is beautiful. After that movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," I had told Fran how pretty the music was...... so she started to collect the best of the best Greek songs and when she had enough to fill a CD, she sent it to me. First one CD..... then another came before the year was over. I would listen to the Greek music just about every time I cooked. My husband and I played Fran's Favorites when he would make his "Greek stuffing" for holiday dinners.

A freight train went by a little while ago. The train tracks run through the center of town..... we are twelve miles out from our 'downtown' area and we can hear the train whistles as the sound travels through the hills. The sounds are muffled by the time they get from downtown to out here. Some of the train whistles are short and quick, others are long and low-sounding. The train whistle that just went by was almost musical.... it had highs and lows, a pretty melody that was sort of a cross between a happy song and a mournful wail. We hear the trains every day, every night. I've never heard one make this particular sound. It was almost soothing.

When Fran's grandbaby is born, I hope her son will teach his child how to say Yia Yia and Papou. And Thea. Fran would have bought a lot of books for the baby. Fran loved books as much as I do. When we both worked at the library, we'd leave work with our arms filled with hardcovers.

I will start buying books for Fran's grandbaby.