July 03, 2009

4:45 p.m.

Repurposing the Flat Cat

I woke to an empty house this morning. After so many years of living alone, after not quite a week here at my sister's house it seemed so odd to not hear anyone about. I knew Pearl was at work today. Rose and Marc are usually rattling around doing something. Finally I texted Rose and asked where they were and they'd gone out to breakfast. There's a wonderful little cafe just down the street that, I hear, does scrumptious breakfasts and lunches. They may have gone there, or to another favorite breakfast cafe in Willimantic. Anyway, that comforted me and I got on with my own morning repast and tea.

I was feeling better aside from a wee headache, and switched some laundry for Rose and hung the wet stuff out on the line. Linus, the Orange Cat Who Came Back, came to visit me as he was padding about the yard, and then Arthur joined me too.

Following that, I was ready to go smudge my House. I picked up the mail from my spankin' new mailbox and headed up the long, dirt driveway carved through woods and brush. You don't even know where you're headed, going up this driveway. The house isn't visible until the very end, and then -- wow! There it is on a rise to the left. I'd trimmed a good deal of Bittersweet yesterday that keeps reaching out across the drive, waving its long tendrils in the air, ready to grab onto the next slow-moving person or plant to happen by. More appeared by today.

I said my prayers and, happily, the matches still lit even though it has rained almost every single day for weeks and the air is quite humid in the house. I put a tealight candle in the bottom of a wide bowl and used that to keep lighting my sage. These were homemade smudge bundles I've had literally for years in my altar, from sage I grew somewhere, dried, and wound up with twine. I smudged every room and doorway, declaring it a place of peace and healing. I banished the sad past, rendered negative energy null and void, transformed, recycled. I sang with heart and gusto, songs I thought would arouse the Guardian Spirit of the house. All who enter here find peace and bring peace with them. This is the new beginning, the renaissance. The good house spirits were invited back in. Now it's just work and love and cooperation.

I went to both attics and smudged to the very beams and bones. I went to the basement and smudged to the marrow. I smudged the mummified cat. I talked all the way through; I talked to my guides and to the House and to the cat, and to the son Joe who was an amazing athlete and a beautiful boy and who killed himself in the driveway one day. I smudged inside every filthy cabinet in the pantry. I smudged the light fixtures. I went outside and smudged the doors and stoops, and where I'd buried St. Joseph, and then smudged my Tree before the wind blew the candle out. I was done!

The wind was coming up and the sky was darkening. More thunderstorms. Oh, of course -- why not? We hadn't had any ALL DAY, after all. I managed to eradicate a bit of poison ivy from around the Tree and had just gone in to use my brand new toilet seat when Marc called.

Blue, our auctioneer friend, was prepared to send a lackey or two and his big white box truck to pick up the Hitchcock furniture TODAY! That was superb. He's having an Americana auction next week and we wanted to get it in for that one. So, Marc said, stage the furniture for quick removal. That involved getting stuff off the dining room table, wiping things off as best I could (yuck), and making a path to the chairs and coffee table in the living room. I did all that while it started to rain, then pour, then thunder and lightning.

A glance out back at the "lean-to," the crappy plywood sort of porch thing, informed me that the brand new, old found-at-the-dump-which-still- works-beautifully lawnmower was getting drenched in all the leakage from that crappy roof, so I managed to get a tarp on it.

Then it was about 2:00 and I realized I hadn't eaten lunch and was famished.

I went back next door to have a wee bite, retrieve my work gloves and chat with Rose, and by the time I got back to House -- box truck, lackeys and brother in law had come and gone and taken the furniture with them already!

They forgot the little chest in the kitchen, so I texted Marc and he raced back in about five minutes. We put it in the back of my car and took it over. The auction place is just two minutes away.

After some chatting and fun banter with Blue, we drove back once again to House so Marc could retrieve his car, and it was then he told me that Blue was interested in the flat cat in the basement.

I thought he was kidding. Who in the world would want such a thing? Medical student? Taxidermist? But no, Blue said he'd sold one last month to a sculptor friend of his for $250. He really was interested in the mummified cat.

As bizarre as that is, I was intrigued to think that there might be a further purpose for the poor thing. So we went downstairs and I carefully lifted it out from among the other debris in the cabinet where it had died, and we gently placed it in a box and draped a towel over it.

Just for fun, we included a free flat mouse.

Back we went to the auction house, and Blue was pleased to receive the relic.

********

I didn't do much else there. Heavens, that was enough, coming off the flu and all. I put the window back in the tiny room, shut off the fan and closed the doors -- not before spraying a couple of small, budding wasp nests. I brought in Rose & Marc's mail and recycling bin from down their long driveway. I also brought over a white shelf that, strategically placed, will keep the vast clutter from accumulating on the kitchen counter which is needed for food prep. There is no "receiving area" yet for papers, mail, work gloves, spare parts, bags of misc. things that appear, glasses, stuff and whatnot, so all that ends up smack where Rose needs to prepare dinner. It drives her crazy and I see why. So I invented this spare shelf idea so non-kitchen things can clutter out of sight.

Those two have been going through vast amounts of files and crap in the other spare bedroom/office. It's excruciating for Marc to make decisions about old books, papers, and stuff, because his brain just doesn't work that way. Let him fix an engine or build a door or rewire a house, no problem. But ask him which books/papers/knicknacks he wants to keep and which to release, and he'll go all blank and fearful and start to stutter. So they're doing it together.

It has stopped pouring and it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend. We're having some kind of cookout, don't know who's coming but lots of friends I hope, and it's now time for me to go out to their little garden and pick collards and snap peas. Yum.