A LITTLE NOTE FROM MASTER STEWEY ANGUS WILLOWSWAMP, HIS VERY LITTLE SELF

My Mo-ther can't come to the blog right now.  She's in the Happy Chair, rocking herself back and forth, tears streaming down her face, and all of your lovely words washing over her like the healing waters of Lourdes.

We both cannot begin to tell you how much we love and appreciate you, and despite the fact that the old lady is about as active as a tree stump lately, we do promise to try to keep in better touch.

Our days are very routine here at Chez Spinster.  We awake (slowly), and after ablutions and constitutionals (Mo-ther the former, moi the latter), the paper is read, coffee is consumed, and the Jumble, Suduko, and crossword are dispatched in good order.  I then fetch the Erin Condren Life Planner and we select at least one thing from the long list of to dos that we carefully negotiate each Sunday evening.  (On good days, Mo-ther gets jiggy with it and does two or three things, but I prefer that she pace herself, or there's hell to pay the next day).  Then, if there are no appointments to attend, once something useful is accomplished, it's time for a snoozy nap with our faces in the sun. (Mo-ther's first, my fourth or fifth of the day, since I find it helpful to lounge quietly when the old lady attends to her chores.)

Upon rising from the snoozy nap, we have cheese and crackers and a dietCoke.  Once the weather turns, this will switch to tea and a lovely cookie.  I am particularly happy about that, since I do think that afternoon tea is much more civilized than afternoon aspertaime.

Our evenings are quiet.  I supervise and Mo-ther stitches in the Happy Chair.  The only downside to this is that it takes a fair amount of arm twisting to convince my mom that PBS and all of the excellent programming contained therein is much more suitable than the c-r-a-p she usually watches, but we seem to have reached a compromise of 60/40.  Currently we're at 60-Caitlyn Jenner and 40-Arthur and George, but I'm hopeful that this will swing more in my favor as the season wears on.

When the old lady starts to droop, I noodge her back to the big girl sleigh bed and tuck a novel into her hand.  Fortunately in this area we are in agreement, and most of what she reads is quite good.  She finished "The Little Paris Bookshop" and "All The Light We Cannot See" most recently, and is now plowing through "Sophie and The Sybil".  When she remembers, she does update her Goodreads page, and we make quite a ceremony of adding the latest title to Bob.

(I'm afraid to confess that Bob is a name shamelessly stolen from the editor of the New York Times Book Review, Pamela Paul.  Bob is the "book of books" that Mo-ther has recorded since/about 1991.  And, just like Ms. Paul's version, Bob is a cloth-bound journal with just the title and author listed as a book is finished.)

(And may I point out that we learned this proper name for Mo-ther's book journal after watching an interview on CSPAN?  Mo-ther was knee deep in all things Kardashian, and I managed to get that half hour of CSPAN in there only after her meds had kicked in.)

That's about it, my dear friends.  We hope that your needles are flying, your chairs are happy, and that you know how much we adore you.  Until we meet again, I remain your faithful and devoted pal...

Stewey