Let’s play find the raccoon. I was sitting at the kitchen table, minding my own business, trying to figure out how to get Rebel Dancing Daughter to bake me some no-calorie chocolate chip cookies, and I heard a scratching sound. Helloooo Felix. See him?
(Innocent Husband says I should not name animals that we are going to have trapped and taken back out to a forest…)
My argument with Felix, The Raccoon Who Wants To Live In Our House, continues.
Last night I went to pull the outdoor lights and Felix greeted me from the top of our trellis with a raccoon-like smile. I do not like being beneath raccoons who can leap onto my face. It makes me nervous.
I skedaddled back inside and lickety-split closed the sliding glass door. Felix dropped down from the trellis and peered into our family room, longing to come inside and warm up by the fire, sleep in a cat bed, and get free food. I
told him to go away and he looked back at me sadly, beseechingly. (I love that word, ‘beseechingly.’) No, Felix, you may not live with us.
This is a photo of another raccoon stand-in for Felix, as I never want to be close enough to Felix to take a real photo.
This is ridiculous, but I am having an argument with a raccoon.
He believes he should be allowed to waddle into my garage and eat my cat food. I believe he should stay outside and act like a regular raccoon.
Every time I shoo him out he looks at me soulfully, sadly, as in, “Oh, come oooonnn!! Look at my face! I’m so cute! I just want to eat your cat food, come inside and warm my bones up by the fire, enjoy your scented candles and watch The Property Brothers with you.”
Sigh…And yes. I know these little critters can get nasty so I hide behind my door while I yell at him to go back to his own home sweet home…
(This is not a photo of Felix, The Raccoon Who Sneaks Into My Garage. This is a sample raccoon, so to speak. A stand-in.)
I’m spending a lot of time in my garden right now on my tenth and final edit of All About Evie.
As you can see, my cat-helper is nearby.
Out in late October!
I’ll be at Stayton Library in Oregon on Thursday at 7:00 to talk about books and writing. Love to see you!
All About Evie is my new book, coming out October 29.
I did just about lose my mind during the eighth edit, but I strictly followed a healthy diet of chocolate truffles and chocolate chip cookies and felt much better.
So, what is All About Evie about? In order to give you a little hint, I’ll ask YOU a question.
Have you had your DNA tested to find out where you THINK your ancestors are from?
Evie did. That was a shocker.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCPSX2X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I have no idea why but my book, The Language of Sisters, is on sale for less than two bucks!
Here’s an excerpt…
Chapter 1
I was talented at pick pocketing.
I knew how to slip my fingers in, soft and smooth, like moving silk. I was lightning quick, a sleight of hand, a twist of the wrist. I was adept at disappearing, at hiding, at waiting, until it was safe to run, to escape.
I was a whisper, drifting smoke, a breeze.
I was a little girl, in the frigid cold of Moscow, under the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, my coat too small, my shoes too tight, my stomach an empty shell.
I was desperate. We were desperate.
Survival stealing, my sisters and I called it.
Had we not stolen, we might not have survived.
But we did. We survived. My father barely, my mother only through endless grit and determination, but now we are here, in Oregon, a noisy family, who does not talk about what happened back in Russia, twenty-five years ago. It is best to forget, my parents have told us, many times.
“Forget it happened. It another life, no?” my father says. “This here, this our true life. We Americans now. Americans!”
We tried to forget, but in the inky-black silence of night, when Mother Russia intrudes our dreams, like a swishing scythe, a crooked claw emerging from the ruins of tragedy, when we remember family members buried under the frozen wasteland of the Soviet Union’s far reaches, we are all haunted, some more than others.
You would never guess by looking at my family what some of us have done and what has been done to us. You would never sense our collective memory, what we share, what we hide.
We are the Kozlovskys.
We like to think we are good people.
And, most of the time, we are. Quite good.
And yet, when cornered, when one of us is threatened, we come up swinging.
But, pfft.
All that. In the past. Best to forget what happened.
As my mother says, in her broken English, wagging her finger, “No use going to Moscow in your head. We are family. We are the Kozlovskys. That all we need to know. The rest, those secrets, let them lie down.”
Yes, do.
Let all the secrets lie.
For as long as they’ll stay down.
They were coming up fast. I could feel it.
There are some things Innocent Husband doesn’t need to know.
How much money I spend on gardening and flowers is one of them.
When I was sixteen I told my dad I wanted a car for my birthday.
He laughed. There was about the same chance that he would walk in the front door with a giraffe on a leash as there was for me to get a car.
My dad was a great guy. Engineer, super fascinated by the first computer he saw which was the size of a large room. His own childhood had many challenges, and he made sure his kids did not have the same challenges.
He worked hard, was kind, and loved our mom.
He taught his kids a lot about money management. He told me, “Cathy, ALWAYS have savings. It’s not IF you will be hit with a financial disaster, it’s WHEN.”
So, in accordance with a VERY conservative money outlook, his parents survived the depression after all, there would be no cars for his kids on their sixteenth birthdays.
However, he did buy me the almost-exact model of this red Ferrari. It fit in the palm of my hand.
“Happy Birthday,” he told me. “Here’s your car, Cathy.”
When I saw this Ferrari outside of my local Starbucks it brought back all those sweet memories of my late father.
Cathy Lamb All rights reserved © 2011-2025 |
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