The Xmas season brings out a lot of old songs. Am I the only one who thinks Amazing Grace is over-rated? I am not a wretch and I think humility can be over-done. Also the tune is major ho hum.

Tyler loves the bathtub and rushes in after the tub is emptied to lick up the remaining water. What this mean is that if I want a soak, I have to wash off the paw prints first. He has amazing hearing. He loves fresh water and no matter where he is, he knows the sound of me cleaning out and refilling the water bowls and appears out of nowhere. He stalks floor smutsch, if it moves, he eats it. He eats and poops big time. It’s like having four cats, not just two. He uses the cat door into the pool deck, but butts it with his head several times before actually going through. He tears around the house as if something was after him. We love him.

I don’t ever want him in the garage, as he could be in there when Ed comes home and decides to come in that way and opens the garage door. Also, it is over filled with the detritus of three to four generations of our families, and something could fall on him. But that’s where he wants to go and I have to be really careful not to let him slip through my legs when I go in there to do laundry or get something from the back-up refrigerator.

I have said no to more turkey for Xmas and will instead roast a leg of lamb. It is one of our favorites so Ed has said okay. At least there won’t be any left-over turkey tyrannizing our lives. We aren’t invited to our honorary family, Jean and Danny and their three children and their dachshund, Daisy, where we went for Thanksgiving, which is okay. They are going out of town.

Our super-achiever friends from New York, Terry and Lila, are in the area, staying with his newly widowed dad in Englewood (about an hour away). They’ll come by on the27th and we’ll have lunch. They were my New York loft neighbors. She’s in fashion, he runs art fairs. They’re always saying things like, okay, then, I’ll meet you in Milan (or Paris, or Saigon).

It’s good to have younger friends because the ones we grew up with are leaving and that is heartbreaking.

xx, Teal