Hasty Sojourner

Epitaph
From Plymouth, Mass.
Ezra Thayer Jackson, 1783, age 25 days:
What did the little hasty sojourner
Find so forbidding & disgustful in
Our upper World to occasion its
Precipitant exit?

Be an editor!  This is for those of you who have bought my latest book, Darned If You Do:  Go to page 207 and near the bottom is a one-sentence paragraph about buying sandwiches at Jimmy John’s.  Draw a line through it.  When I wrote that it was part of a pertinent scene.  Then I had Betsy and Connor eat supper in her apartment, talk, and wash dishes.  So I took Jimmy John’s out – I thought.  It turned up in the proofs and I took it out (again).  My copy editor saw it, queried me, and took it out.  So how it ended up in the final copy, I don’t know.  But now you can take it out.  Thank you.

Our cat Snaps had some kind of seizure early Monday morning.  He jumped up on the bed after I got up, and when I came back into the bedroom, he was lying rigid on his right side, one hind leg straight up in the air.  I touched him, and every muscle was clenched stiff.  I spoke to him, stroked him, and after a couple of minutes he started trying to move.  In another minute, he was standing and purring under my stroking.  He looked fine, so I went to my water aerobics class.  When I came home, he greeted me as usual.  This is the second time in maybe six months he’s done this – though he may have had a seizure (seizures?) when we’re not home and recovered alone.  This is worrisome, of course.  Anyone have any ideas?  His vet couldn’t find anything peculiar when he last examined him.  Snaps is allergic to many things (he suffers huge, wet sneezes), is on a special prescription diet of denatured protein, and occasionally throws up a pink mixture that means blood in his stomach.  Sunday night he wandered around the apartment crying and crying – not as if in pain, but as if he were locked out (which of course he wasn’t).  He’s a sweet animal, very affectionate.

I very likely will not submit an entry next Tuesday, as I’ll be flying Monday and then Tuesday briefly in London and then en route to Leicester.  I’m bringing a tablet and keyboard with me, but don’t know if I’ll be able to get online.  There may not be an entry  March 31, either.  Home April 5, so April 7 I’ll be all over this blog.