Category Archives: Unexplainable

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Are You Judy’s Daughter

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A few months ago while out on a morning run, I paused to let a man in a small truck pass me near the village green. As he slowed he leaned out of the open window slightly and asked, “Are you Judy’s daughter?”  I smiled as I said no, not knowing who he meant or where Judy’s daughter might live. After hearing my American accent, he knew before I had finished saying,”No … sorry, I’m not Judy’s daughter,” that he had mistaken me for someone else.

I went on with my run pausing to snap a few photographs of the misty January light that covered the low-lying land making it difficult to see clearly beyond what was close up. About a mile or so into my run, I stopped suddenly after I realized that I had answered his question without the slightest hesitation and had in fact given him misinformation because my mother’s name is Judy, making me Judy’s daughter. While he was clearly thinking of someone else, the irony of my response was not lost on me.

Most of the time I don’t think about my mother. She doesn’t exist for me except in memories, none of which are pleasant. Occasionally, she creeps into my subconscious like she did last night showing up in my dreams where she behaved as she has in real life. In my dream, she sat across a table from me refusing to speak or even acknowledge my presence. The table was designed to roll a bowling ball back and forth between two people making interaction even more necessary than the game usually requires. Bowling was something she loved to do and I imagine she still does. I would not know now what she does or doesn’t do only that she has no involvement in the lives of her two eldest daughters or the three children they share between them.

The last I heard, she was living in Madison, Alabama where she moved after marrying Bill, her fourth husband. I took my daughter Miranda to see them marry in 1994. It was the last time I saw her. She cut me out of her life twice, once at 14 and later at 34, covering a span of 28 years so that now she has been absent from my life for more years than she has been in it. When she cut off all communication with me the first time, a therapist said that after a while it would be as if she had died.

It wasn’t. It was painful and sad, but I felt hopeful when she finally responded after an eleven year silence only to struggle through ten more years of distant and difficult communication where only one of us seemed interested in building a healthy relationship.

By the time she stopped speaking to me the second time I was older, a mother myself with a daughter I loved so completely that I was even more confused as to how a mother could abandon a child in the way that my mother had. I stopped caring so much after that and found a sense of peace about her lack of interest that was easy to maintain most of the time.

A few years ago, my mother completed a detailed book of our family genealogy. She was still in contact with Margaret then and sent a few copies of Just Folks to her. Surprisingly after years of silence, she also contacted my daughter’s father so that Miranda might have a copy. It was her first overture to Miranda, her first grandchild, in many years and while she sent the two book volume to Miranda, she never bothered to respond after Miranda sent a note back.

The saddest and most telling piece was that she left all three of her children, me, Margaret, and Pam completely out of the family history. Since she did not include her three children, she also omitted her five grandchildren. When Margaret questioned why she had not mentioned us, she said it was her history and it was about her, making it clear that her children were not part of her history. It is interesting to note that the children of distant cousins made it into the pages of family history as did her husband Bill’s childhood pictures complete with his parents, brother, and sister. Family pets from as far back as 1951 can also be found there in photographs, having secured a place in the genealogy book that her children and grandchildren did not.

So you can see how when I said without thinking that I was not Judy’s daughter, it was because for so much of my life I have not been regarded as such and I think I actually forgot that once upon a time, I was Judy’s daughter.

She will be 70 later this year and with her history recorded as it currently exists, it is a sad legacy that it will one day it appear that she died childless when all around her were her children trying so hard to be seen.

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Pioneer Woman’s Husband And Ellen DeGeneres

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I know you are probably thinking … what in the world does Pioneer Woman’s husband, Marlboro Man have in common with Ellen DeGeneres? That is exactly what I thought when they both showed up in the same dream the other night. After all, it’s not like Pioneer Woman and I are big buddies or anything even though we did meet briefly along with about 799 other women in Atlanta one night. You may remember when I wrote about the experience in my post, I’m No Pioneer Woman.

Pioneer Woman & Elizabeth Harper

Strange dreams are not that unusual for me, but I’m generally not dreaming about other people’s husbands or celebrities like Ellen. This one was so weird that I had to think about it a day or so before I decided to mention it to John, my own sweet husband pictured below.

I’m not sure why Marlboro Man decided to spend some time with me while I was trying to catch up on my rest, but my friend Tina and I did have a little chat about him while out on a run earlier in the day so maybe he was trapped in my subconscious somewhere.


I can’t remember how he came up in conversation, but we were discussing his assets and how they are so frequently highlighted by Pioneer Woman in her blog. We were completely appropriate and only briefly touched on her pictures like the one here, before moving on to new topics.

One of the most endearing things about Pioneer Woman is how much in love she is with her husband and I know just how she feels especially when I see pictures of my darling man like the one below.

Or this one taken during a visit to Scotland.

Pioneer Woman occasionally likes to show you pictures of Marlboro Man in his younger years and I have some favorites of John from his mid-thirties that do it for me too, like this one at the beach in 1979.

And I just love this picture taken with his girls in 1972.

I have to say though that I really fell for him when he emailed the picture below during our early online dating days. Seeing him playing bouncy ball on the lawn with his little granddaughter was just about the cutest thing and is part of what I find so attractive about him.

So I know how Pioneer Woman feels when she shares pictures like this one of Marlboro Man in his daddy role or this tender one , because they are the kind I tend to like best.

But getting back to that dream I mentioned … It seems Marlboro Man came for a visit and he had a bunch of tiny cow bells with him. It makes no sense to me either as I know they don’t raise dairy cows. What made it even more interesting than seeing him show up in Cornwall was the reason for his trip. He explained that every time he saw a person doing something kind for someone else, he was there to give them a tiny cow bell to acknowledge it. I am not sure how to connect it all, kindness and cow bells and Marlboro Man, but even more confusing was when Ellen came dancing into my dream to pick up her bell. Maybe it was because she has been so kind in her comments on American Idol this season, but I could not say for sure.  Although I am usually pretty good with dream interpretation, this one has me stumped. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what it might mean?

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Off Kilter

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There is about a six week period each year that is usually a hurdle for me. It always falls during the time period between Lent and Easter. It is when I am generally the hardest on myself and whatever I perceive to be areas needing improvement in my life and behavior. Instead of thinking about the goals I am accomplishing, I tend to get stuck in my head with a litany of my imperfections on repeat mode like a song you can’t silence when you wish it would end.

My way to pull out of that vortex of self criticism is founded in physical movement which is generally a combination of exercise and cleaning. For me, a good deep scrubbing of the places that get tend to be overlooked in everyday cleanups is the secret to reestablishing a bit of balance in my energy. I am intrigued by the timing and wonder why the need to do a deep cleaning strikes when does each year. I would call it spring cleaning although it falls in the same time frame every year no matter what my geographic location or if spring is actually at the door. Spring still feels a long way off here with today being the same as it has been for the last week, a wet and windy grey day with the only hint of the changing season seen in the daffodils that are just beginning to bloom.

I googled the words,“Spring Cleaning“ to find a few things I did not know about the correlation between different religious faiths and the seasonal ritual. Also interesting was how spring cleaning led me to spring fever, a term made popular in a poem by Samuel Clemens better known as Mark Twain and how it appears many people feel as I do at this time of year.

I am not one to suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. In fact, I actually love winter and grey days so I never really considered the weather connection as a reason for my desire to clean my way back into a more settled and balanced feeling. After reading some of the links above, it appears I may not be alone in this.

How about you … if you have experienced a similar feeling of being off kilter, could you share your tips on working through it. I’ll  be back to check in with you in a little while, but right now I have a backsplash and a bunch of kitchen shelves that need my attention.

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My Room Of One’s Own Is Ready For The Big Reveal

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Although my new space is finally ready for sharing, I am going to be a bit mean and show it to you a little at a time this week. After months of planning and work it feels too special to just pop a overall shot or two of it up on the internet without a closer look at certain areas and maybe a story or two along the way. If fact, today I am going to show you my chair redo which I gave you a glance at in it’s original state here. Even though it was only about 25 years old, the fabric had faded and needed some updating especially since it was going to be housed in my new space.

(The pictures of the redo are not my best, but I was so focused on the work I had to remind myself to snap a few of the process.)

This is how the chair looked before I took the pliers and assorted other tools to it.

You can’t tell from this picture, but the fabric was past it’s day.

It had about 5 yards of decorative nails that needed to be removed.

Even though they were in strips, they didn’t give up their position easily.

The real challenge was in getting the staples out. That took more hours and muscle than I would have believed before I started the project.

As I took things apart, I noted how it was all put together and took photographs when I remembered so I could refer back if I needed to see how it looked originally.

Hmm, now what to do here with these fabric covered buttons. Since I was going with a less than traditional fabric color choice, I decided to use a different look here as well.

After taking it all apart, I laid the pieces of fabric out to use as a pattern placing it on top of my green piece. A quick look told me that in order to get a proper cut to my fabric, the pieces I was using as a pattern needed a touch of the iron.

Using my lovely steam iron that I had suggested as a gift for Christmas, I carefully ironed away all of the wrinkles.

Then I pinned it down and cut my replacement pieces.

Here you can see the padding underneath waiting for its new covering. It still retained the previous shape and I was careful not to damage it when I was taking off the rusty-orange colored original fabric.

Having the space already in place for the tufted spots made it easy to replace the covered buttons with the clear ones I used.

This is the back of the chair minus the padding that I set aside to be reused later.

I checked my measurements before I began to staple it down.

Here you see the padding.

This is a close-up of the buttons and tufting. The clear buttons show green through them which I really like.

This photograph shows you the finished chair with the new look. I’ll be back tomorrow with more from my new space.

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The Last Walk – Measured Steps

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Our friend MIJ is desperately ill. She won’t get any better and it is really bad now. That knowledge sits so uneasily with me that it stays with me in the back of everything lately. I pester John for answers he doesn’t have and ask him to call her partner Ray for updates when I know there is not going to be any good news.

Twenty years ago, MIJ had breast cancer with a reoccurrence five years later, but with good medical intervention and diligent followups it seemed unlikely that this would reenter her life, at least not in this way. In November, she turned sixty with the kind of energy you would expect to see in an athletic forty year old. As active as I am, I always felt pleasantly tired after one of our five hour walks around Dartmoor, while MIJ never showed any signs of fatigue.

She has been in so much pain that Ray said she has given up and her doctors are now focused on just keeping her as comfortable as possible. Already a tiny slip of a woman, her weight loss is shocking when friends stop by to see her and it has been difficult to find the right dosage between controlling the pain and allowing her some lucidity in the short time she has left.

From everything we hear, she is receiving wonderful care from a compassionate medical team who spent weeks searching diligently through symptoms that were so unusual that they thought she might have something they could treat … something with a different outcome than the one she has now, a terminal diagnosis.

Mid November was the last time we saw her. I wish I had known it would be our last walk, I might have talked of other things. From all appearances, everything in her life was fine. She’d just had her sixtieth birthday becoming eligible for her state pension and we discussed the ways a bit of extra cash would be useful to her travel plans. After retiring at 58, she and Ray would often go off for six weeks at a time, walking and camping in conditions that while beautiful, would have left me grumbling. When we saw them in November, they were planning a trip to Nepal with a departure date of next month, and I listened to her explanation of why they were going there and putting off the New Zealand trip I knew she had been dreaming about.

She also told me in great detail of the new kitchen installation she had decided to go ahead with. MIJ has a doll house of a cottage and had wanted to make changes for some time, but had put it off, concerned as are most people on the edge of retirement, about money. The kitchen was finished about a week after MIJ went into the hospital. She never even had a chance to use it. My mind fixates on things like that. I tend to get stuck on thoughts such how she won’t ever cook a meal or wash a dish in the new space. I think about how she will never see New Zealand or swim again with her grandchildren. I keep thinking about how sad it all is and what she will miss.

I have been getting stuck there lately thinking about the twenty years she won’t have, but John encourages me to shift my thinking by gently reminding me of the twenty years of living she has been able to have since her first cancer diagnosis. In those years, MIJ has seen her son marry and have children of his own and she has been able build memorable relationships with her grandchildren who are old enough now to remember her when she is gone. Having twenty more years meant she had time to meet and fall in love with Ray eighteen years ago and travel to places she might never have seen had she been traveling alone.

When I came back from America early in December, I anticipated we would see Ray and MIJ for New Year’s Eve like we did last year, but around the time I began to think we should call them to make a plan, Ray called us to share the bad news. They were with us on our wedding day and I thought we would have more time. That’s often the way it is. You plan for a future that may not come and put off the things you might do or say differently if you only knew that this moment might be all you would have.

It is so natural to say, ” When I retire, I shall do ____ or when I get a new ___, I’ll be peaceful and happy,”  but if anything ever illustrated the point that we should not wait to do the things that matter, the finality of death does in it in an unmistakable way. It is that period at the end of the sentence, the full on stop that says, ” Your time is up.”

As Ray watches over MIJ in the hospital, I find my focus shifting to what we can do to help him. MIJ is getting all she needs now and is barely able to communicate more than a few words a day. He is at her side, all hours of the day, staying late into the night to keep her company as she gets ready for the final part of her journey.

Looking back over my photographs from our last walk together, I saved this one although I wasn’t really sure why at the time. It is not particularly pretty like many of the others that day, but in looking at it now I can see a future that was not apparent to any of us three short months ago.

MIJ, as you can see, walks on ahead while Ray waits, looking off in another direction. She is getting closer to the end now and I feel such sorrow thinking of her dying in a hospital bed. A still and quiet MIJ is so unfamiliar that I can’t quite get my head around it and my mind looks for something more comforting. I find it by picturing her walking, looking as I remember her best and thinking of these last days as measured steps, where MIJ is only going on before us, on a last walk alone.

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Watching The River Run

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Sometimes in life you have absolutely no control over a situation. To think otherwise would be like trying to control a river set on overflowing its banks when the energy of the water becomes too much to be contained. In moments like those, I am tempted to build a barricade with my words to keep me from drowning in the depth of emotions that rush over me. Hurt, anger, and resignation are words that flood my brain as I try to make sense of behaviors I can’t control. Sometimes, all I can do is watch the river … and wait.

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Just A Time Traveler Trying To Find My Way Home

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Maybe to you this picture looks like just another woman at a fancy dress/costume party … someone possibly dressed as Amelia Earhart on New Year’s Eve, but I see something different. It’s there in her eyes … joy, relief, and playfulness … the kind of things one might feel when finally arriving at their destination after a long journey.

Too many of us get stuck in the past never letting go of old hurts or regrets. I have long been determined that I would not be a casualty of what I could not change and when I couldn’t find my own way, I had enough sense to ask others for a bit of help and direction. I know I walk a clearer path today because of the guidance and support of two very special women.

I am sure they both know how important the work is that they do, but I want to say thank you again to Nancy and to Wendy for helping this traveler find her way home.

So often I see an internal struggle in the words of the writers whose blogs I read. It is difficult not to want to lend directional support when I see people in crisis. It’s my nature to be a caregiver although I didn’t believe it for many years. I remember exactly, the moment I realized what I had been doing and the impact on my life.  It was the beginning, and I do mean the beginning, of real and lasting change for me.

While I earnestly believe as J.R.R.Tolkien said, ” Not all those who wander are lost ” I also understand that it can be a long and lonely road for those who grow weary of constant movement.

If you’re struggling to do it all on your own, I hope this will be the year you find your own “Nancy or Wendy ” to help you on your way back to whatever you call home.

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Malicious Intent – Destroying Something Special

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The big fish you see in the picture above used to be something Tina ( in red ) and I would pass when we were out for a run. It was a guidepost along the Camel Trail in Cornwall and something many people appreciated even though at first glance one might wonder what it was doing along the edge of the path used by runners, walkers, and cyclists. You can’t see it in this picture, but the River Camel is tucked in the trees not far ahead and a spot where you might see people fishing at times.

The giant aluminum fish sculpture was the creative work of a well known sculpture artist Richard Austin. Mr Austin worked with the children of St Tudy Primary School who envisioned the design that he built for their school project. As you can see by the marker above and the smaller fish on the signpost below, this unusual feature was a popular art piece which never failed to come up in conversation especially when giving directions for places to meet along the trail.

Last Thursday morning, Tina and I set out on a morning run. I was excited to be back in Cornwall having returned the day before from my trip home to America and was shocked when we got to the place where the big fish always helped to mark the milage on our run. What you see below, was what we saw.

It seems just a few days before someone decided to destroy the art work we once enjoyed and set it on fire melting the big fish into an unrecognizable pile of metal. This type of  behavior is really uncommon for our peaceful area and I was shocked to learn of its destruction.

The vandals have not been caught yet, but one can’t help but wonder as to how small and hard hearted someone must be to find joy in the destruction of something that many were proud to create.

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The Synchronicity Of It All

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Late last night while I was sleeping, Kerstin from Gypsylife was reading this post I wrote for TMAST this past Tuesday. She left me a lovely and intriguing comment that caused me to go back to her site to search for a picture to illustrate her comment about her cat which looks surprisingly like the cat, Mephisto in my story. I’ve pasted Kerstin’s comment below:

“Wow, what a story. I am glad you took the direction you did, it was very intriguing. I dream a lot, too, as you know, but don’t usually pay too much attention, either. Maybe I should. And I have to tell you, Elizabeth, my cat looks EXACTLY like the one in the photo! Even your description of the eyes is spot on! It’s a little creepy actually looking at that photo … and I would love to hear the continuation of Mephisto’s story! I look forward to more TMAST stories next year, they’ve been so enjoyable. Have a great trip! Kxo”

One has to wonder at times about the synchronicity of life and how after reading her post on Tuesday during a break from writing my own, the evolution of my story developed in a way that made it possible for me to share several of my real dreams through a character named Minnie. In crediting her as inspiration, she came to my blog and saw the cat that looks just like hers. I love that about life.  I hope you’ll take a look at both cats in the links I provided above…the two cats do look as if they could be the same and it’s pretty amazing to consider that my cat picture was taken here in England, while hers was on the West coast in America.

If you’ve had a similar experience, I love for you to share it. Perhaps more of us will find a link we were unaware of before now.

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Tell Me A Story Tuesdays – Minnie’s Mephisto

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Everyday, he looks right at me. Not as a cat, but as a mysterious sentry who knows more than he should.

Minnie looked hard at the cat that appeared to be watching her as she walked past the window. It was always the same whenever she saw it… sitting, just as it was now, staring, unblinking and still. It seemed positioned at the window as if it no longer had a need to close it’s eyes or rest from what Minnie had come to think of as a sort of guard duty. Unlike most of the cats around the village, she never saw this one outside the house, in fact she never saw it in any of the other windows of the house but this one.

Minnie had moved here from America not quite a year ago when she had married a man she’d  met through an online dating service. Happily in love with him and her life here, she had more time on her hands than she could ever remember and her husband teased her sometimes about her active imagination. He knew better than to try to chat on days when she went straight to her computer after coming in from a walk eager to record the stories she dreamed up while exploring the ancient village. There were many advantages to living in a place that was so old that its existence had been recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 especially for someone who had been creating other lives in her head since she was old enough to read a story by herself.

With so much history all around her, how could she not feel the past speaking to her knowing as she did that people had walked the same ground for hundreds of years before her.  When she spoke about the energy of a place as in ” something feels funny here,”  her husband would dismiss it gently, but not disrespectfully being content as he was that all things could be explained with logical facts and a rational discussion.

Minnie had experienced one too many unexplainable  “awarenesses” that had later been confirmed as having happened to let go of what she felt to be true. She would never have called herself a psychic, but sometimes she had dreams that had messages for people she knew…what she liked to think of as love letters from the dead.  A vivid dreamer her whole life, she usually remembered her dreams with great clarity, but even she had pooh poohed her waking and sleeping “connections” until one night she had a dream that could not be ignored.

Much of the time, her dreams made no real sense to her and aside from noting the detail and sometimes writing them down, she had rarely thought too much about them until one night years ago not long after her father had died she had dreamed of an uncle who had died of breast cancer.  Minnie had known little about this man, having grown up disconnected from that part of the family for most of her early years. If asked to describe him, she would have said that he had worked all his life in different offices for insurance companies, wearing wing tips with his suits and ties, a type of shoe that while enjoying a kind of constant popularity in business men,  still screamed “old man shoes” especially when tied up with tiny waxed laces. He had smoked cigarettes for years, and never seemed too interested in healthy living, barely taking time off for vacations and rest with his family. His whole life had seemed dedicated to his job and providing for the people who depended on him.  He was just reaching an age where retirement was within sight when he received a cancer diagnosis and died a few months later.

Minnie had gotten pretty upset over his death ranting to anyone who would listen as in why would he die just as he was getting ready to “live” or at least what she thought of as living. Here was a man who had never taken time for hobbies or fun and now he was gone. What was the point of it all, she’d thought to herself  feeling more anger that she should have at the early death of someone she had felt she’d barely known?

It was a dream she’d had four days after his death and a subsequent conversation with her aunt that made her decide that perhaps she should pay attention to more of the things she had jokingly referred to a messages from the universe, but had really always thought one might argue as much for the coincidence of things as one could the possibility of a psychic connection.

In her dream, she was with her uncle walking and talking with him on a cattle ranch in Montana or Wyoming. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket as if it were very cold and while she had not been wearing a coat, she not felt cold at all. There was a very clear awareness in the dream that he was dead, but he seemed happier and more at home than he had ever been when living and when she woke she thought it odd that she saw him out west on a ranch when he’d had spent his life primally in the Southeast, in office buildings, working with people and numbers. Even though her dream had made little sense, Minnie had felt a bit more peaceful about his passing and got back to the business of her own life with no more thoughts about the dream or her uncle until a few weeks later when her aunt came to town to buy a marker for his grave.

It was very clear to Minnie that her aunt was still in deep mourning when she arrived and so she had avoided too much talk about her uncle until they were setting the table for dinner. It was then she had decided tell her aunt about the dream that had made her feel better in hopes that it might possibly ease some sadness in the room. She had hesitated at first thinking that her aunt might be offended because of her religious views, but the dream had given Minnie comfort and she thought it might do the same for her aunt.

As Minnie told her aunt the dream, her aunt stopped putting silverware on either side of the dinner plate in front of her and looked up at Minnie and said, ” Did you know he read every Louis L’ Amour novel ever written? ”  These were shocking words to Minnie that carried a huge meaning. For one, she had no idea that her uncle had read anything for pleasure and two, she would never have expected it to have been a series of books based on a western cowboy theme. Minnie had thought then that perhaps she had visited briefly with her uncle in his version of heaven and that it had been his way of saying, ” I’m all right…let go.”

Given experiences like that she thought how could she not believe now when she got one of her feelings or had a dream that seemed to carry a message with it. Minnie knew without a doubt that she had dreamed of her husband on her  eve of turning 47 four months before they had met and she had told him of her dream within eight weeks of meeting. News like that might have scared off another man especially one who didn’t believe in the unexplainable or the need for marriage at his age, but he had stayed constant and within a short time, they were married and living a life that fit together so easily you might never have known they hadn’t been together for years.

Minnie thought about this as she snapped a photograph to take back to show him. She’d seen this cat many times, but when she had asked the man who lived there about the cat when she saw him at the pub, he had acted a bit uncomfortable and had said in a loud voice that, ” He didn’t have a bloody cat! ”  Minnie knew that this picture would prove what she’d been saying about seeing it in the same window of the old house at the edge of the village green. With parts of the Mansion House as it was called dating back to the fifteenth century, Minnie was sure it had its share of ghosts, but this cat was real and she was going to prove it.

While she didn’t visit the pub as often as some who showed up every evening for a bit of drink and news of the day, she made sure she was waiting when the man who had argued that he had no cat came through the door for his evening pint. She was so excited by her evidence that he had barely stepped up to the bar and was still waiting for Roger the barman to fill his first glass when she shoved the camera with the image above under his nose with a loud, ” Look! “

He took the camera from her looking at it long enough for the cat’s image to register with his brain and dropped the camera onto the bar like it was too hot to hold. Backing away from the pint that was now before him, he headed for the door with everyone watching as he did something he never done before by leaving the pub without having had a drink. Minnie stared after him confused and mildly irritated that she had not had a chance to hear him admit that he did have a “bloody cat” after all. She turned back to see that Roger had picked up the camera from his spot behind the bar and after taking a long look began to tell a story about the cat in the window. Roger’s family had lived in this area for so many generations that he was the man to go to for any questions she’d  had about local places and folklore. Usually he answered her queries with great patience and this time was no exception, but as he began, she could see that even he had been a bit shaken by the image she had captured earlier.

This cat he began, is believed to have belonged to Obadiah Reynolds who had the Mansion House remodeled in 1627. There’s a stone that commemorates the completion of the building work that was erected in 1636, but the story of his cat Mephisto begins after the work had been underway for a year or so around the time Mephisto first showed up at the door in 1628. Pulling up a stool, I took a seat at the bar and picked up the pint that had been left untouched. From the look on Roger’s face, I felt sure this was going to be a good and listened closely as he began…Mephisto was a gray haired feline with eyes so green they looked yellow to anyone who stared at them long enough to notice that they never blinked. He came to the village on a windy day in late October when the rain couldn’t decide to stay or go and while everyone around him was wet to the bone with the early winter rain, Mephisto arrived at the doorstep perfectly and unmistakably dry….

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I want to thank everyone who has been involved in TMAST over the last thirteen weeks. It has been a lot of fun for me and a great learning experience. I’m going to be taking a break from TMAST though until after the new year. With a trip back to Atlanta in two weeks, I have a great deal to complete before I leave and need to focus on that for a while. I’ll be stateside with family for three weeks and I know participating in TMAST will not be possible for me then either so in the interest of balance…I’ll be putting it on the shelf for a while. I will still be blogging so keep an eye out for me and I will consider beginning TMAST again in January.

For now, I want to thank Judy Harper who has been writing a story a week for as long as I have. Her story for this week can be found here.

I also want to thank Gaelikaa for her contributions to TMAST and her story for this week can be found here.

Lastly, I want to thank Kerstin Martin over at Gipsylife who shared some of her dreams yesterday which I think may have had a subconscious effect on the direction of my story today. Pop over to see her post…you’ll be glad you did.

Just in case anyone is wondering about the dream Minnie had about her uncle as well the one she had about the man who became her husband…those really happened just as they’re written…except for the Minnie in my story was really me.

As for Mephisto…well, there really was a cat in the window.