You never know

We have a cat that has become persistent in his attempts to sit on my lap. "Not now, Mitts," I say, "I have too much to do." He's an older cat, and three weeks ago I couldn't have gotten him to sit on my lap for anything.

And so it will be for the next two weeks. I submitted my grant proposal tonight after several rewrites. It's never as straightforward as I'd prefer, but so what else is new? I can say I did my best, so now we wait.

"Not now, Mitts." and I gently put him on the floor.

My brother's oldest daughter is coming tomorrow to stay for six days. She's been Hawaii for six out of the seven last months. Events and meals are all planned. There will be late night discussions, for much is left unresolved.

Then we are in Portland for four days, all of which will find me keeping a very low profile. I may get some time to write some then. We are taking a variety of recording devices with us in case there comes an opportunity to document the time away. At any rate, I'm trusting you'll hear from me thereafter, so I hope I have pictures and whatnot to share.

Our rural network is a-buzz with a murder/suicide. Nice house not too far from the old stump. The newspaper said nice people, retired, loved camping.  Some say only one was gentile, with several anecdotes to support that opinion; others say both were hospitable.  The oddest part of it must be that the precursor was observed through binoculars while scanning for coyotes amongst the new lambs. She walks from the rig to the house, slams the door. He moves off into some trees, picks up a large stick and begins flailing, eventually calms down, walks up to house, and gently closes the door behind him.

Until whenever, I leave you with this quote from Mari Ruti's A World of Fragile Things: "It is impossible to love life without loving transience."