Inside on a Rainy Day

Rainy, gray and cold today.  I spent the first part of the morning helping third graders with their spelling.  We're working on "constants:" the words that they are expected to know,  use,  and spell properly before they exit the third grade.  Or, as some inexplicably call them, "spelling constances," which brings to mind a vision of a spelling bee full of girls named Constance.  Now I'm home, having first stopped at the store to provide another therapeutic  chocolate chip muffin to One Who Looks Like a Chipmunk, and I can curl up with hot coffee and a snack and experience the great contentment of being inside on a rainy day.

I finished (mostly) the evil pink cotton sweater.  See:  

You wouldn't think something so innocent looking could generate such project weariness, but I'm glad to be rid (mostly) of it.  I still have to weave the ends in and block the little bugger, but I'm calling this one done (mostly).  The cat, who is an expert on all things of significance, concurs. 

 Here she is supervising me (not) at work. It's very disconcerting.  

Plus, I think she knows I'm talking about her, because she's staring at me while I type.

This is the way I like her best, all cozied into the in box on my desk:



It's hard to get a good picture of her snoozing, though, because I can't turn off the volume on the good camera and any time she hears it she gives me the stare (see above). If I am careless enough to leave my seat, she steals it and is very insulted if I either try to take it back or move somewhere else to work.  I'm not sure what the correct solution is, in her opinion.  No doubt it's a trick question.

This trio looks on from my left side, in a somewhat less threatening manner (except for the owl, who is clearly unhinged, but don't tell Isabel I said so because she made him).  The monkey in the back is called Bunky, or Mo.  He was Matty's first, brief love.  In front, of course, is Moosie who, in one of his six or seven incarnations over time, has been Isabel's true blue for the last ten years. Over time and repeated makeovers, we have pared away any unnecessary appendages (arms, legs, ears--really anything that might have distinguished him as a small gray mouse) and you see him here reduced to his true essence.  Even though Isabel no longer "needs" him, "where's Moosie" is part of our daily conversation and, given his wandering ways,  I still make a mental note of his whereabouts any time I see him.  He once disappeared for several weeks, a time that he spent (misspent, some might say) lodged behind the toilet tank in the downstairs bathroom at the old house, and I would not care to deal with that kind of grief again.

This one just parks himself in the corner and hopes someone will remember him before he perishes from neglect.

Mostly that happens when we trip over him and start cursing, but every once in a while he gets lucky and someone (usually me; the kids keep trying to lock him in the mud room so he doesn't nip at their sport pants, which make a noise that apparently drives him to minor violence) tosses him a treat.

Off now to enjoy the rest of my rainy day, starting with a little lunch and some time spent deciding on my next book and my next project.  Oh, and maybe some work.