Author Archives: wendywelch

The Milk Run Led Astray

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(The Monday Book will return next week)

I got up this morning with a plan to make a quick run for castor oil and half-and-half, because my dear friend Susan is coming today to make soap. (The half and half is for her coffee; that’s what she likes in it.)

Since we were out of milk I figured a quick run for these items and back would be good pre-caffeination and I could inaugurate the half-and-half.

Not even two blocks from my house, a kitten huddled in the middle of the road, looking ill and vulnerable. Little guy didn’t want to get in the car, so back to the house I went and returned with wet cat food.

Kitten got a little friendlier, I seized it mid-bit. Convinced it was in the grip of a murderous cannibal, kitten struggled, but I’ve done this before.

Soon kitten was ensconced in our spare bedroom (which Susan will occupy tonight) with a soft bed, litter box, water, and the equivalent of its weight in wet cat food. (Little guy is super-skinny, and sick, but will be better soon because we have meds coming from Susan.)

It was 6:45 am. My husband still does not know there is a cat in the spare bedroom- well, he will when he reads this. He always reads my blog posts. :]

There is a castor oil shortage in the town. I finally gave up and went home to get my first cup of coffee.

Is there a moral to this story? Choose one, gentle reader.

  1. Leaving the house uncaffeinated guarantees complicated adventures.
  2. Meet life’s little surprises with grace and gratitude. We do what we can to alleviate the suffering of others.
  3. Never run out of milk.
  4. Always have a friend like Susan, who not only doesn’t care that she will be bunking in with the kitten but is bringing me stuff to make it better. Then we will do silly things (albeit safely) with lye and essential oils. 

A Journey with no End #4

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Jack continues his pursuit of Wendy – –

I flew to St Johns in Newfoundland for Christmas shortly after Wendy commenced her PhD studies and discovered why a small town had such wide streets – they needed somewhere to park all that snow. It’s so cold there that every flake that falls remains until Spring.

I also discovered it was very like a Scottish fishing town, with terraced streets in parallel with the harbor, and descending alleys between, that had pubs just like the ones in Scotland. Which I took as a good sign.

I discovered as I was boarding that the plane continued to St. John in New Brunswick after landing at St John’s in Newfoundland. What I only found out later was that if the weather was too bad it would just go straight to St. John, so I might have missed out on meeting Wendy altogether. But the weather wasn’t too bad, just high banks of snow either side of the runway and taxi way; when we landed the pilot asked those disembarking to “please keep a firm grip of children as we don’t like them blowing around the airport”!

Wendy was still unsure about the relationship at that point, but she drove me to the place nearby from where Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio message. We still have the photo of her looking over the top of her still decrepit Toyota with a look of deep suspicion on her face that said ‘who is this guy and what does he want?’ We put it in a double frame with our wedding photo.

I saw quite a few things for the first time that trip: Outside Christmas lights – unheard of back then in Scotland. Everyone there had indoor paper decorations and maybe candles on the tree (fire hazard, but nothing in Scotland can burn for long, given the rain content in our weather).

Fog banks weren’t new, but how thick they were was. Scotland’s got nothing on Newfoundland for fog. Giant icebergs floating past the harbor entrance. The gulf stream that rounds the outer banks of Newfoundland heads up north past the Irish and Scottish coasts and is still warm, but then skirts Iceland and Greenland and heads back south by which time it’s much colder – hence the icebergs.

Ice breakers – I mean breakers on the coastal beaches that were frozen solid where we went walking.

Of course I was concentrating on Wendy, not the weather. Her initial reception of me was pretty frosty at this point. I mean, I had invited myself over and she was concentrating on her studies, surrounded by bearded young academic hunks—I mean minds.

More about walking next week.