Just Another Day with Lizzie

Lizzie has been awfully sweet of late. I don't think she likes the rain storms -- I often find her huddling at my feet or even (shock and awe) jump up on the couch, curl up and sleep. I'm not complaining!

I think back to the time eight years ago this month.

My sweetest boy, The Marmelade Gypsy, had lived a long, loving life and when he moved on, I didn't think I would ever smile again.

It took a few months of coming home to a quiet house, of so many tears that came and went with remarkable unpredictability. But when a friend was fostering an abandoned mom-cat and her kittens and the kittens had found their forever-homes, the mom-cat was still at liberty. I went over and "met her" and I laughed for what seemed like the first time in ages.

She may have been a mom-cat, but she was still a kitten herself when she came my way. My vet bet she was about 10 months old when they "met" in October.

I have to say, the first months were not easy. Lizzie is nothing like Gypsy. He never met a lap he didn't like, especially mine. And it didn't matter if that lap was filled with a newspaper, book or craft project. I was his. Lizzie, on the other hand, didn't "do" lap. She didn't like to be picked up, sit close. She was her own girl.

It took more than seven years for her to fully settle. We would practice lap, thirty seconds at a time. And it's still not her favorite place. But she has turned into a loving close-sitter, a yappy girl with a tone that rivals Ethel Merman, and an animal that seems to have vocabulary comprehension of three phrases -- "Birds!", "Good Girl Treat!" and "Food!" I'm not sure she even knows her name.

She's been a good companion in these days of quarantine. The secret keeper for when my anxiety gets too high, the creature that needs me if for nothing more than two squares a day and maybe a snack before bed.

I think I'll keep her!

For the most part I have ordered groceries online through Instacart. It's a little more expensive but for now I feel more comfortable doing that. But I did my first grocery pick-up. There is a small "general store" in Lansing's Old Town that had wine and locally sourced meat. I want to see them continue to thrive when all this is over.

Easy peasy! I loved that I could pop the trunk and hands-free all the way!

I didn't order scallions because I am learning how to grow them on the window sill, thanks to an article in the New York Times. If you save the root and a bit of the onion part of the scallion, put it in water and change the water daily, new scallions will grow! So far, so good!

Meanwhile, groceries and mail still stay in quarantine, I worry about every rain storm (and kicking myself I didn't replace my basement windows in the fall instead of waiting till the spring and then Covid-19 came along.) There's a problem not with my sump pump but in its "trough" that will require repair and I'm not looking forward to welcoming a repair person to the house. He'd better be wearing a mask. (I couldn't get an appointment till June 16!)

But the lawn is green and growing...

...and the neighbor's crab apple tree was beautiful. Alas, the petals are gone now but it was good while it lasted!

No complaints.

And, if I have them, I know who to tell.