Hello, my old friend.

 How time flies when you are busy doom scrolling.  I've been away from this blog for seventeen months. Wow. So besides running kids to school everyday, I whipped up a little book of sayings to hand down to my grandkids for when they get older and need help in finding a little mental balance. I've been admin for a monthly book club, a craft club, and a writer's group. Then came the cats and Mah Jongg. After a decades long cat drought... let's just say Hallelujah! The cats are back which also means the rats and mice issue are now gone.  Don't misunderstand. I love a good rat as much as anyone, but I am not a fan of one scurrying across the wall when I walk by.

Sally arrived in April, one year ago. Oscar joined our family in June because I thought Sally should have a friend, and I brought Lucy home in October. But wait! There is more. Our neighbor has a big fluffy gray and white who spends as much time in my back yard as he does his own. The neighbors on the other side had two kittens. I say had because I have only seen one since the first two times I saw it. I do know they have a yowler at the moment. I don't know if they have it locked up or if they have it locked up because it's in heat. I've heard of sightings of two other cats. The kicker was the one at the front door. I had left the door open as I was expecting the electrician. The screen was closed, of course. I walk up to the door to find Oscar, my orange ginger, staring at his reflection. There is no mirror, but there was another orange cat sitting at my door looking in. I find it amazing that we went from zero cats on our street to a full clowder. 

Since June, I have been focused on cats. It's all about the cats. I say June because technically Sally belongs to my daughter. Sally showed up on our front door step and called out. Alicia answered. Sally claimed Alicia as her person from the moment they met. 

Oscar was rescued from a shelter and Lucy was conjured by chaos magic. She was a few days older than four weeks. Oscar acts as her big brother and loves her as much as I do. It's all about Lucy for us which to be honest, Sally and Jake - Jake is our dog who actually meows like a cat and wants to be a cat - are a bit butt hurt as Oscar no longer plays with them as he did before Lucy joined the family. 

But we have all settled in. The neighborhood cats  are all harmonious. Our three cats are allowed to roam in the backyard under close supervision. 

Life is falling back into a routine and a new book is in the works thanks to the thirty30K.com challenge. It will of course be a murder mystery, but this time there will be cats and Mah Jongg and I hope some humor. 

I promise not to be gone so long next time. I've been restricted from posting on FB for no reason. I don't post anything that goes against community guidelines. No insulting, no offensive jokes, nothing political. I know I could invest the time to appeal it, but I decided to say thank you. I have wasted away hours of my life doom scrolling and with so much AI content and so much fake posts, I am happy to break that routine. I can still post on my pages, but again... I think I'll bow out and post here instead. I'll check for notifications  and hope that FB allows me to see that my friends posted something, and I'll share these posts on FB. I'll stick with Thanks FB. It was great in the early years, but it's a bit of an AI cesspool now. Thanks for helping me get clean.