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We adopted a cat over the weekend from the local shelter, an affectionate neutered three-year-old tom named “Garfield”, owing to his orange tabby coloring and his previous owner’s lack of imagination. Owing to our lack of foresight, he found the cat door into the basement and spent his first twenty-four hours hiding between the joists. We planned to put his litter box down there but didn’t anticipate the cat seeing it as an escape hatch from his new digs. Last night we coaxed him into the cat carrier and brought him upstairs to his fleece bed, locking the cat door behind us. Today he’s spending most of his time getting acclimated by hiding under beds and behind chairs with forays out for exploration and some head-scratching, chest-rubbing purring with adults. He is tolerant of Nathan and Nathan is gentle but the boy is still a two-year-old and his jumping, running, yelling, loud playing with toys, what-not racket sends Garfield off to quieter rooms.

Explaining what they meant… Understanding Engineers: Feasibility.

Nathan will be two years old this weekend and he’s talking quite a bit and evidently putting together some kind of model of the world around him. We are daily witnesses to his organizing and reorganizing things into categories. He knows and uses the words “cake”, “cookie”, “ice cream” and “pop”- for the frozen juice “ice pops” we make in the summer- to refer to the appropriate objects. Beware to the adult who uses any of these words in his presence, he knows what you said and expects you to produce a treat. It seems that his category for all sweets, except ice pops, oddly, is “cupcake” and he tacks on a description of his internal state so he will hear the ice cream trunk and say, “Cupcake! Happy cupcake!” and point outside (he’s had ice cream from a truck once, behold the power of partial positive reinforcement) or get a cookie and remark, “Mmmm. Happy cupcake!”

Sunday afternoon on our way to a friend’s place we encountered on I-90 a driver in a new, black Infinity sedan alternatively tail-gaiting the vehicle ahead, aggressively cutting into and out of the left lane and then slowing down and drifting around whatever lane he happened to be in. During one of these slow-downs, I passed to put some distance between us. The driver, a young man in a crisp white shirt, was wearing a wireless headset, actively talking on a unseen phone and both hands were occupied with writing into a small green wire-bound notepad balanced in the center of the steering wheel. I was stunned. Please idiot, when your driver ed teacher suggested you keep one hand on the steering wheel they meant stay in control of the vehicle, not lean on the wheel like a first-grader at a desk learning to write their ABCs. Now shut up and drive.