Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 291

High Point of the Week

As the doldrums of February try to close in around us we’ve decided to beat them back by focusing on the positive. Each week this month we will post the high point of our week on Fridays and we hope you’ll chime in too.

So readers, what made you smile this week?

Edith: That February will be over tonight at midnight? Actually, mine would be attending a costumed reading of a play last night about fiery activist and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, a Newburyport native, and eating across the street beforehand in an historic restaurant (built by a Quaker in 1809) featuring authentic 1800s food  (which ended up to be a yummy pork loin with rosemary and apple compote, cornbread, and roasted potatoes) and drink. Yes, including rum. All in the name of research!

Jessie: I took two of my kids to the Lego Movie. It was really well done and a delightful experience to share with my boys. Both of them are starting to outgrow many of their childhood favorites but the love of Legos remains and made the movie even more of a pleasure.

Edith: SO many fond memories of Legos with my boys.

Barb: My high point of the week? Do you have to ask?

Sherry: Viola is so adorable and she looks like you, Barb. I had lunch with a friend that I really love. She’s always so upbeat and energized — one of those people that makes the world a better place.

Filed under: Group posts, High Point of the Week Tagged: doldrums, Firehouse Center for Performing Arts, high point of the week, Newburport, William Lloyd Garrison

Puppy (and kitty) Love

Yes, I’m talking about animals again. I can’t help myself, as you may have figured out by now. But this week I really can’t help it. Tuesday was Spay Day USA (also known as World Spay Day) which is a holiday of sorts in the animal rescue community. Established in 1994 by the advocacy group Doris Day Animal League, Spay Day USA’s purpose was to bring attention to the pet overpopulation problem.*

This year, a community cat in my neighborhood was neutered on World Spay Day. It was a nice way to acknowledge the day. The Count has been living in the backyard shed, off and on, since last fall. It became apparent recently, when he was out carousing during all of these major snowstorms, that he had no home (or if he did, his people weren’t caring for him). So now he’s fixed, thanks to Animal Rescue Fund’s generosity, and he’ll go to a good home soon. And another one will be off the streets.

Well, great, you’re probably thinking. Good for The Count. Or maybe you’re thinking, this is worth a whole blog post?

It is. Because despite World Spay Day and other spay/neuter efforts, despite the best work of so many dedicated rescuers in shelters across the country, despite the homes filled to the brim with fosters and rescue pets, 2.7 million healthy animals are euthanized at shelters in the U.S. every year. That’s one cat or dog every 10 seconds, according to the Humane Society.

Sad. Sobering. Especially when I think about Shaggy, rescued from death row with 24 hours to live – an extra 24 hours a shelter worker miraculously gave her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be here today. I can’t imagine life without that face.

Or when I think about the other animals from kill shelters who’ve been part of my life. Like Valley, who at 16 at the Brooklyn Animal Care and Control Center wouldn’t have had a chance.

It’s sad, and it’s horrible, but worst of all, it’s preventable. This problem is all of ours, and we can all be part of a solution.

How? Here are a few ways you can help:

Adopt, don’t shop. Adopt a shelter pet next time you’re thinking of adding to your family. Look for shelters or organizations that have an “open admission” policy. Since those shelters have to take any animal that’s surrendered to them, they’re more likely to euthanize for space.
Fix a feral – or call someone who can.  If your neighborhood has a feral cat colony, there are a lot of resources available to help. Alley Cat Allies has great information on Trap-Neuter-Return on their site. And even if you don’t have the faintest idea how to set a trap or find a program to get a feral cat fixed, they can help you find a local resource.
Make a donation. Find a rescue group, local or national, that resonates with you and support them. You don’t have to donate big bucks. Any amount makes a difference.
Volunteer. Shelters and rescue groups are always in need of animal people to help their organizations. There are so many ways to help, like being part of a transport, or fostering an animal in need, or cleaning cages or walking dogs once a week.
And of course, if you have a pet, make sure he/she is spayed or neutered!

The sheer number of animals in need can be daunting. Believe me, I know. And no one can do everything. But everyone can do something. Baby steps.

Readers, do you have an animal rescue story to share?

*Doris Day Animal League in 2006 merged with the Humane Society of the United States, and World Spay Day was established.

Filed under: Liz's posts, Pets Tagged: animal rescue, animals, feral cats, spay and neuter, world spay day

Wicked Wednesday-Pleasure or Purgatory?

When the family or friends are all gathered round someone often suggests playing a board game. So, WIckeds, do you enthusiastically haul out a stack of boxes and gleefully suggest a favorite? Or do you feel the smile freeze on your face at the thought of spending an hour rattling dice and moving a piece around a board?

Liz: I LOVE board games! From Monopoly to Clue to Life and beyond, I could – and still do, sometimes – spend hours. We’ve hosted many a game night featuring Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, Yahtzee…. I think I’m truly a geek. Scrabble, anyone?

Jessie: I love the art work and the playing pieces of vintage board games. And I adore the look of playing cards of all sorts. I love visiting  Board Silly, a beautiful puzzle and board game shop in Old Orchard Beach, ME. But I am pretty picky about which games I like to actually play. I like looking at Monopoly and Risk but I definitely don’t want to play them. I love word games like Balderdash, Scrabble, Up Words and Quip Cubes. I also love Rummy and In a Pickle and Timeline. And of course, I love Clue and 221 B Baker Street.

Edith: I also love board games, or if not a board, a game that comes out of a box (except for Risk – hate that game, because somebody is always out to get me). We play a lot of Scrabble around here when my sons are visiting. I love a good game of Fictionary, and all you need is a good dictionary, paper, and pencil. But our favorite game for the past decade is Wise and Otherwise. The cards contain proverbs from around the world, but they’re split in half. One person picks one and reads the beginning, then everyone writes down how they imagine it ends, plus the real ending, and everybody guesses which is the real ending. For example, “There’s an old Chinese saying: Don’t climb a tree…[turn card over] …to look for fish.” Very fun!

Sherry: We don’t play as many games as we used to. In a group I love Trivial Pursuits and Yahtzee. My sister always trounced me at Scrabble when we were little — I’ve never played as an adult. If it is just Bob and I we play Rummikub. But more often we play cards. Usually Rummy with my favorite deck of cards which is scenes of New England — a different picture on every card.

Julie: I love board games. I don’t play them often (and I’ve been told how fabulous Rummikub is), but we’ve had some fun Apples to Apples nights. Triple Yatzee is a must on vacations. I love Scrabble, and old school Trivial Pursuit. And, of course, Clue. What is the game where someone says something, and people vote on whether it is true or not? A group had an epic fight over that one. (Scandal?) We are also big cribbage players in my house.

Barb: Some of my happiest memories are of the vicious Pictionary night games with my parents, brother’s family and my family on the Jersey shore. From childhood, my brother and parents wouldn’t play Clue with me because I always won. When our kids were little, Bill & I used to take our vacations with another couple and every night after all the kids were in bed we’d play Sherlock Holmes–Consulting Detective, a fabulous game with a fabulous board.

Edith: Chiming in again. As a child I was accused (by my big sisters) of cheating at Clue because I peeked at other people’s cards or what they checked off on their clue sheets. But I thought I was just being a good detective! I guess I was preparing even then for writing crime fiction.

Filed under: Group posts, Wicked Wednesday Tagged: Balderdash, board games, Board Silly, dice, In a Pickle, monopoly, old orchard beach, OOB, Quip Cubes, Ri, Scrabble, Timeline, Wise and Otherwise

Opening Lines

Write an opening line for this picture:Edith: As the day turned sharply warmer, Gwen realized she really should have stuffed her rival in a more secure location. But then again, her purse held a ticket for a flight to Rio leaving in four hours and the cabbie was leaning on the horn.

Liz: With three feet of snow on the ground and a deep freeze in the forecast, it was unlikely anyone would find the body until well into the spring, when she’d be long gone. That is, before she realized his shoes had fallen off in the snow bank during the struggle – and she was already on the highway, heading west.

Barb: “Well, I did warn you,” Connie drawled. “I told you if it snowed one more time, I was going to kill somebody.”

Sherry: Barb, that is hysterical! My line: I realized I should have listened when they said I didn’t need another shot of whiskey.

Jessie: She told him not to bother taking down the Christmas lights. But Harold never did listen to a thing she said.

Julie: The spring thaw was going to be a mess this year.

Filed under: Opening Lines

I Can’t Handle One More Relationship

When I go to my pharmacy, they want to know if I have their “care card,” that little piece of plastic that gets me discounts, but also tells them everything I buy so they can more easily sell me more stuff. Because somehow, over the course of the last half decade, we are no longer druggist and druggee. We have a “relationship.”

Every time Bank of America shuts down my credit card because I have done something its fraud detection unit disapproves of, like being in a different city than my husband, because married people, you know, never do that, I have a screaming interaction with them over their 800 number (I am the one doing the screaming), and then they e-mail me a survey to see how satisfied I was with their customer service. I fill out the survey, explaining every time that their customer service person, while perfectly nice, is the helpless pawn of their stupid corporate policies and poor communication practices. And then a couple of months go by and they shut me off again and we repeat the whole cycle, including the survey. Because Bank of America and I have a “relationship.” An abusive one, but a relationship nonetheless.

A couple of weeks ago, a rep from Angie’s List called my husband at 8:00 am (which might as well be 6:00 am around here) and harangued him into giving feedback on a gutter cleaning service we’d found via Angie’s List and failed to leave “feedback” on.

In 2010.

“They came. They cleaned the gutters. I really don’t remember them,” my husband said testily.

Amazon is chronically insecure about its packaging. How many times is it going to ask me if everything was okay? I can hear it whining, “It was good for me, but was it good for you?”

Just what I need in my life. A needy online retail giant.

My wallet is fat with affiliate cards. If I just have one more cup of coffee, buy one more book, make 20 more copies, I will get a free something. If I remember the card and can find it the next time I enter the store.

You know what I long for?

Transactions.

I long for the time when I gave you money, and you gave me stuff.

Or I contracted for services, and you delivered them.

And then we shook hands, parted ways, and never thought about each other again.

That’s what I long for.

I give fully in my relationships with family and friends, but frankly, that’s all I can handle. I prefer to maintain some professional distance with my supermarket.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” I explained to the woman at the checkout counter as I turned down her offer to sign me up. Again. “I just can’t be involved in any more relationships.”

Filed under: Barb's posts