Reading: The Stand. So shoot me; I skim the bloated 1500 pages in the first 36 hours of every visit.

Christmas: under the tree

Learning: how such pretty kitties can desire so strongly to maim and eat my little guy, and that my desire to keep him alive is stronger.

Moving: A little walk down to the corner and a short swim.

Listening: how can television be this loud?

Viewing: egrets and a cormorant.

24 December 1999: Being There

Thursday was hot and humid. Is it never winter here? We shopped and cleaned for the Christmas Eve party the following night, and finally around 3:00 broke our bonds and scampered out for a swim. This intent precipitated what Floridians consider a cold front, which means clear, warm weather of normal temperatures in the 60s and 70s, ideal for long periods spent outside in the sun with a book. I skimmed The Stand, as I usually do when I'm here, as we prepared and cooked (I chopped, fetched, and got underfoot) for Friday night's party.

Also I wrapped presents for husband and nephew. I had bit of a panic with REI. DMB had told me there was a package waiting for me from REI and I assumed it was RDC's present and didn't ask how heavy it was. When I opened the package, it was RDC's present from my mother, not from me. There was a moment of panic on the phone with an REI representative until further prospecting unearthed it in DMB's bedroom. Whew.

While his grandmother, great-grandmother, and aunt wrapped RDC2's presents, his mother sat in another room and complained about one thing and another. This ends my violation of my own policy not to say anything deliberately unkind about anyone in my private life, but this is my journal and I have to give some hint, however minor and masked, of who she is to illustrate why two weeks in that house were uncomfortable for reasons additional to the five-year-old boy and the four cats.

On to Friday. In attendance were an 11-year-old, four-year-old identical twins, two six-year-olds, a three-year-old, and RDC2's five-and-three-quarterness self. So when Santa, a reindeer, and two elves showed up, eyes were wide and all libidos were guinea pigs,* except for the oldest child, who was wise, and one of the six-year-olds who is Jewish.

* Bloom County reference. A four-year-old sits on Cutter John-as-Santa's lap and tells him all she wants for Christmas this year is a little common decency and honesty from grown-ups. She asked her father what a libido is and he told her it was a type of guinea pig [excuse my having flubbed that--I had for "sex drive" in there for a few days instead of "guinea pig," which doesn't help the joke], so here she is to ask Santa, very sweetly, if he can give her this one wish, and please give Mrs. Claus this hug and kiss the reindeer for me.

So that was neat.

Also in attendance were close family friend Roz and two neighbors of KBH, RDC's grandmother, from their retirement complex. They are quite a couple, with the man being nearly 97 cradle-robbing his hunny, just 80 years old. I make sure to talk to him--who can hear and everything, just not walk very well--and when I saw that the cats entranced him, I dragged their recalcitrant carcasses over to be pet.

Polo is a Siamese, pretty but not dramatically different at his points. He's DMB's cat and wants only to be left alone in her shoeboxes, thank you very much. Koko, lean and gray, tolerated being picked up and placed on an alien lap better. Charley, one of Joe's, is a gorgeous long-haired black and white who likes any lap that comes with a stroking hand (very cat-like) (and whose interest in Blake was obvious and not at all coy). Zach's, Joe's rare-for-some-reason-of-color squashed-in-face yucky Persian, caught both this man's and a later visitor's fancy the most. Bulldogs, with their squashed-in faces, at least are dogs.

Cooking with RDC's family cracks me up. Joe took a picture of KBH and me posing with crabs. I decided for about two seconds to become a vegan if that would exonerate me from slicing squinjil, which I don't even want to try to spell correctly but which are some midget version of conch allegedly available in Long Island Sound (on whose shores RDC's family all grew up) and extremely sticky. RDC's family all speak kitchen Italian of either Sicilian or Neapolitan extraction, with no final vowels: mozzarell', rigott', manigott', and the unspellable "schadol" (escarole). They love to eat and they love to cook, and when you eat what they've cooked you realize why both activities are such a pleasure and why RDC pities my boiled-potato upbringing.

Spaghetti sauce with crab, mussels, clams, and calamar' (however they pronounce "calamari" sounds like the name of that demon-god from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"). Squinjil--honestly, I have no idea and less of where to look it up--salad and scallop salad. Whiskey cake. Rigott' cake. Italian cookies. Lots of shrimp. Piles of food, lots of friends, sufficient drink, a nice big tree, children anxious about the morrow. A good night.

A tip o' the pen to whoever finds me the spelling of squingil, pronounced "squinjeel," with a probable final vowel that this family drops, a relative of the conch or maybe a type of snail, about the size of a racquetball (when out of its shell), very firm of flesh, and stickier than most shellfish (that I know, which are just the basic ones). Aha!