Summer with Frida

Summer felt like it started in earnest on Tuesday, when Bob went back to work. The vacation was wonderful, and now summer begins. I like to have something to show for my summer days, so yesterday I cleaned the accumulated leaves off the roof. While I have been active in the garden and around the house, and running all the usual errands to pick up groceries and cat food, my new pleasure is reading with Frida in the living room.

Frida stopped coming upstairs to sleep with us about two years ago. We think it was a combination of Nicky being territorial and arthritis pain in Frida's joints. Her heart is not strong, either, so climbing the chairs is a chore. She sleeps in the living room during the day and the TV room at night, snuggling in Bob's lap until he goes to bed. Frida found us in 1995. She is 19 years old. She has outlived three younger cats-- Jeoffrey, Lily, and Rose.

It was last summer that I got up in the night to give Frida the drops that saved her eye from a monster corneal ulcer. She was so happy to have company at night that the third hour when the alarm went off, instead of letting me putter around in the kitchen doing things waiting for 5 minutes between drops, she purred loudly and let me know she wanted to spend those 5 minutes sitting in my lap. That's how we passed the rest of the night doses, just sitting together watching the timer tick off the seconds.

This summer I am really in the mood to read the books I have had lined up on the shelf, books I got from Parnassus Books in Nashville. I started the summer with a gift from a student, The Fault in Our Stars. I was enjoying it but didn't feel like reading it at the hotel last week, so instead I started Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore. I loved it from the first sentence, finished it yesterday, happily enjoying all the homage to Borges, and am now a big fan of Robin Sloan. So today I turned back to The Fault in Our Stars and am once again enjoying it. Both books have a fresh funny style that is perfect for summer, although the book about young love is not as lighthearted as the book about friendship.

The best part, though, is reading in the living room, in a comfortable chair with summer light coming in the windows all around, the green of the garden cooling the view, with Frida happily curled up on her heating pad, or her Purr Pad, or standing or sitting in my lap.