Bow Finds a New Way to Protest the Weather

It started snowing yesterday. By the evening this is how the front yard looked:

It wasn't really that much snow. You could see the fallen leaves on the ground. But it kept snowing throughout the night, and now it looks quite different. There is a soft white blanket of snow covering the ground and no more sign of the leaves.

You cannot even see the step down that you have to take from the front porch to the walkway. For that matter, you cannot see the walkway at all. It is just all an unbroken blanket of white.

In the outer pen, the bench is covered with snow and the grid has some snow enmeshed.

Bow's swing is also covered with snow.

I came back inside after taking these pictures and started gushing about how much snow there was. I glanced briefly at Bow and had to do a double take. His face was hidden by his play sport shirt. He was not  going to even look at the snow!

He was sitting there in the southwest corner of the inner pen, where the living room can be seen on one side and the backyard on the other. But he was not looking. He did not think there was anything good to see.

Only gradually, as I drew closer, did he start to uncover his face.

There's just not that much to do on a day like today, except curl up with a good book. I think maybe later I will read to Bow from The Corsair.

Bow Gets a Catalog in the Mail

With Thanksgiving behind us, the next big holiday is Christmas. As an inevitable part of the Christmas shopping season, there is the junk mail for ordering seasonal gifts. Today, Bow was the only member of our family to get any mail. It was a Harry & David Catalog addressed to Mr. Bow Katz.

I don't receive any mail at this address. For one thing, there is a bullet hole in my mailbox and rain seeps into the box and soaks anything that has been left sitting there.

However, Bow has been receiving fruit baskets from his uncle for years now, on Christmas and on his birthday, delivered to our door. Seeing how much he enjoys fruit, Harry & David decided to send him a catalog, in case he wants to order some directly. When I told Bow about the catalog, he said he wanted to read it.

Bow found the catalog quite engrossing, but in the end he decided not to order anything.

The Tupperware Problem and the Thanksgiving Snake

Thanksgiving is a time of abundance. We prepare more than enough food, but it's okay, because the leftovers last for several days.

There is the turkey and the pumpkin pie, the stuffing and the yams, and the cranberry sauce.

We eat until we are stuffed, and still there is plenty left over. This year, even Bow realized he did not need to finish it all in one sitting. He did not really work that hard on the turkey and the stuffing, focusing more on the cranberry sauce and the sparkling red grape juice.

When everybody has had their fill and they are just too sleepy and tuckered out for any more digestive effort, that is when we break out the Tupperware. I have to dig deep to try to find the covers to all the containers, so that everything is properly put away, ready to be eaten slowly over the next week. 

Invariably, some containers are found for which there are no covers, and some covers are found for which there is no container. Nevertheless, I managed to put everything away last night, with only a few mismatched items of Tupperware remaining, when I spotted that ribbon in the hallway that seemed out of place. 

I think I actually walked over it first, then did a double take. Not a ribbon. A snake!

Of course, what I normally do when I find a snake I need to transport from one location to another is to break out the Tupperware. I usually look for a container that will easily accommodate that particular snake. But this was Thanksgiving! All my really good Tupperware was in use and filled to the brim with goodies. I had just put everything away in the refrigerator! The only thing left were the badly mismatched containers and lids. And here was this snake!

By the time I grabbed the best container and lid I could find, the Thanksgiving snake was already making plans to escape my clutches. But I had my mother and daughter to think of, neither of whom are particularly fond of snakes.

I had to capture the snake and transport him outside before he hid somewhere in the house, only to emerge at the worst possible moment. So I pushed him with my badly chosen rectangular lid into the the circcular opening of the container I had and gingerly held the lid over the container.

I don't have pictures of this, but at one point the snake's tail was hanging outside the container while the head and majority of his body were inside. Luckily, he decided to cooperate and tucked his tail into the container, accommodating himself to its shape, so that I could press the mismatched lid firmly onto the container.

Then I transported him outside and a little way from the house. When I removed the lid, he seemed happy to escape into the night.

Any other time of the year, I have plenty of Tupperware for snakes. But on Thanksgiving day, there is only that mismatched Tupperware left. Luckily, the snake was understanding, and he cooperated even when my containers were not absolutely right for the task. That is something to be thankful for!

Unseasonably Warm and Windy with a Guest Wasp

Today has been unusually warm for an autumn day. All day long the wind has been whipping at the leaves.

Bow asked to go outside in the morning and enjoyed expressing himself.

He let everyone know exactly how he felt: strong and important and powerful.

He talked to the dogs in a gentler tone.

He watched the wind whip at the leaves.

And he settled down into a quiet contemplation of nature.

Bow settled down into some deep thoughts that he did not share with me.

We are close, but even in closeness not all is revealed.

After lunch I went for a walk in the pasture in the hot breezy air. When I returned, I found that Bow had an unexpected guest in the inner pen with him: a wasp.

The wasp was walking around on the floor, and Bow was ignoring it. I went to get a container to put over the wasp. Bow was singularly uninterested in what I was doing.

I then needed to get a nice stiff sheet of paper to put under the container, so I could transport the wasp out. The laminated newspaper account about the signing for "Theodosia and the Pirates" that Representative Ross had sent me earlier this year came in handy for that.

I slipped the laminated newspaper under the container and the wasp was trapped and ready for transport.

Bow was not interested in the wasp still. Something else on the floor caught his attention.

He did not object, however, when I took the wasp outside to release it. The wasp did not seem in a hurry to fly away, though.

When I went back to Bow in the inner pen, he did not mention the wasp at all. He just wanted me to get him his rug.

Too Cold Out to Play

Today is the first truly cold day of the season. Even the woolly worms have all disappeared. It's too cold to play out. But Bow insisted on going out, anyway.

He sat there for a moment under the swing, shivering, and then he asked to go right back in. Once inside, he asked for his rug, which at this point is a very small bundle of rags.

He sat there looking dejected and cold and sad. But then I had an idea that would cheer us both up on such a chilly day. Hot chocolate! I told Bow about my idea, and he immediately perked up. He kept cheering me on with positive grunts as I prepared the hot chocolate in the kitchen. I served it with a spoon and warned him it was still quite hot.

Bow took delight in every aspect of his hot chocolate, handling the cup and the saucer and the spoon with care.

He took careful sips with the spoon at first.

Later, when he determined it was safe to do so, he started sipping directly from the cup.

He was very delicate and careful throughout the process.

Bow drank his hot chocolate slowly and deliberately until there was none left. Even after he had handed me back the cup and saucer, he still kept on slurping contentedly, savoring the memory of the warm, sweet treat. He was no longer upset about it being too cold to play out.

Bow Still Sometimes Lies to Me -- But not as Much

Now they say that nobody tells the truth all the time. When we catch someone in a lie, we should not get all judgmental about it, because we should remember those times that we ourselves have lied.

As a child, I did tell some lies, but the lies that I told in my first decade of life could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They were rare and happened under very dramatic circumstances. Normally, I was an unusually honest child. That is why I tended to be much harsher than most when I caught someone else in a lie. Especially an obvious one that seemed to serve no purpose.

While it may be true that it is very hard to find someone who has never lied, with the possible exception of those who also never communicate, some people do lie a lot more frequently than others and under circumstances where the lie does not help them at all. There are circumstantial liars who when cornered will tell a lie to protect themselves or their family or a friend, but who would not initiate a lie as a tall tale just to get a reaction out of somebody.

Bow used to tell tall tales. He would invent people who were coming to get him. He once said there were eight men and a female dog who attempted to kidnap him when I was away, and that he needed me to stay home on Wednesdays to protect him from them. This was when he was getting used to a new intern. I asked him if he thought maybe I had better call Lawrence to protect him from those eight men and a dog, since Lawrence is much bigger and stronger than I am, but he insisted that only I could save him from the band of kidnappers. Of course, when he said that, I knew it was a lie. He just wanted me to stay home.

These days Bow does not lie as much. He actually  does not talk as much period. There is not a lot of drama here, as we are usually alone, and he has long since stopped trying to cause trouble between me and Lawrence, since we have made it clear to him that we don't keep secrets and we don't tell lies. He used to have it in for the new interns, so he would try to foment distrust. And early on, if Bow told a tale about a new intern, no matter how unlikely, I had to keep an open mind, just in case it might be true.

Because lying has not proven efficacious, Bow has stopped lying -- for the most part. But the other day, when there was a tiny bit of a mess in the outer pen and I asked Bow about it, he told me it was "another guy" who did it. (דוד אחר).

"What other guy, Bow?" I asked him.

This was an opportunity for him to make up another of those fantastic stories. But he just looked into my eyes and could see I was not falling for it. So he didn't answer.

Bow is not talking as much as he used to, because there's just a lot less to talk about.

We Are Still Here

This is just a little note to let my loyal readers on Notes from the Pens know that we are still here. We have not gone away. Bow and I still continue with our daily routines, and I still write about some of the things that happen, but for financial reasons, I do most of my writing on a site that actually pays me to write.

There has been a financial upheaval in the online writing world. Amazon has closed its affiliate program to Missouri associates. This means that all the Amazon sales that used to come in November and December are a thing of the past. This year, there will be no Christmas sales for us. At the same time, Google has made it almost impossible for new readers to discover my blogs, so Adsense is also not a viable source of income. Unless someone already knows about Notes from the Pens and has subscribed, then they are unlikely to find out about Bow and me just by searching the internet.

So I have started writing on Bubblews, a site that pays generously for participation, is not subject to a Google slap, but unfortunately does crash very frequently. Their business model is intriguing, and they remind me of Wozniak and Jobs in the good old days. So I am indulgent of their growing pains, and I don't mind that they are not entirely stable, as long as they continue to pay. I am taking this opportunity, when the site is down, to let you know that is where you will find me most of the time.

Here is a link, which will probably not work just now, but will be helpful once they get their jury-rigged equipment back in gear:

http://www.bubblews.com/account/62970-ayakatz

I will still be posting here, from time to time, but until I see some revenue flowing to us from this blog, my first priority is to keep Bow fed. And if you want to read about what he ate today, you can try both The Feast Before Us and my blog at Bubblews.