Your cat will kill for such a pill - as soon as you catch it
by Ann Landers column from years and years ago!
Dear Dog Lovers: Today's column will be of no interest to you.
Cat lovers, you will definitely enjoy it.

The column was written by Bob Story and appeared in the Laguna Beach, California Coastline News

How to Give Your Cat a Pill
1.  Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as though holding a baby.
Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to his cheeks.
When cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth.
Cat will then close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Repeat the process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom and throw soggy pill away.
4. Remove second pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand
Force jaws open and push pill to back of throat with forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10, if you are able. Hold cat's mount closed as well.
5. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call for assistance.
6. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, immobilizing front and rear paws.
Ask assistant to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing a wooden ruler into cat's throat.
Flick pill down ruler with one finger and rub cat's throat vigorously.
7. Retrieve cat from living room curtain valance.
8. Carefully sweep shattered figurine from hearth.
9. Remove third pill from foil wrap.
10. Get a towel, wrap it around cat and ask assistant to lie on the floor with cat's head visible under assistant's armpit.
Put pill in one end of paper tube you've made for this purpose. Then force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow.
11. Check label to make sure pill is not lethal to humans.
Sip water to take taste away.
Apply bandage to assistant's forearm and remove blood from carpet with soap and cold water.
12. Retrieve cat from neighbour's roof.
Remove fourth pill from foil. Place cat in cupboard and close door on cat's neck with head outside cupboard.
Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with rubber band.
13. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges
Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot.
Throw bloodied ripped T-shirt away and fetch another from bedroom.
14. Apologize to neighbour who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat.
15. Call 911, ask fire department to retrieve cat from tree.
16. Remove remaining pill from foil wrap.
17. Tie cat's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and securely tie to leg of dining table. Put on heavy duty pruning gloves.
Force cat's mouth open with tire iron.
Drop pill, previously hidden in one ounce of raw hamburger into cat's mouth.
Hold head vertically with nose pointed to ceiling and pour one half pint of water down cat's throat and two jiggers of whiskey down your own.
18. Ask assistant to call emergency room.
Sit quietly while doctors administers anesthetic, stitches finger, forearm and removes pill remnants from eye.
19. Drop off cat, along with a generous donation at animal shelter and adopt a goldfish.

Trigger - the exercise bike by Peg Pyner

          If there's one thing I don't need in my life it's more fantasy. For this reason I wish Barbie would stop tethering up my bike.
          I got an exercise bike at Sears mostly because I thought the bike would be good for my sore knee and I used to love biking and even biking standing still is more fun than lying on my floor flapping my legs. Jimmy calls those exercises "my roly-polys" and I suspect that bike riding has more dignity. I quickly discovered that it was fun to bike while watching TV so the bike isn't banished to the spare room anymore. It sits in the living room and is hurriedly whisked from sight if anyone real comes.
          Nancy and Barbie giggled a bit and said wouldn't it be fun if they removed the little bar from under the wheel so the tire would touch the floor. When I got on and started pedaling I'd go whizzing across the floor, through the big picture window and over the sundeck twelve feet down to the ground. Silliness I can take from the young and I ignored it.
         Barbie had no right to start patting the bike and saying, "Whoa there, Trigger. Whoa, boy." She had absolutely no right to get a rope and tie the bike to the chesterfield. "You don't want it stomping all over your living room," she said.
          She had no right to keep putting plants in front of it and accusing me of starving the thing. "Barbie!" I screamed, "I have enough fantasy in my life. I don't want my bike turned into a horse."
          I am a stolid, ordinary kind of person. I frizz not my hair madly, I dye it not blond, I flit not through misty meadows clad in wispy robes of white. I am sensible, down to earth, the kind they call a good, plain homebody, although with my hair just done I'm not all that plain. I do believe I look kindly and practical.
          I never invented all the mad stuff that goes on in this community. It's all true and I'm absolutely terrified that Barbie can take this ordinary bike and turn it into a horse. I'm resisting this fantasy with every atom of my being.
          Now I need to take this column over to the newspaper office. I hope it will clarify matters for those who think they hear whinnying from our front room. And on the way back I'll pick up a sack of oats for Trigger. I haven't got a plant left in the place.

Intro to Mom's life - 1914 - me

Marguerite Flora Anderson, Greta, born in 1914 grew up to be my mother. Greta's life didn't begin in a wealthy home - her father was an unwell man, older than her mother and poor. I hesitate to diagnose her mother in hindsight but from stories told to me by my mother and her siblings I can guess Em was not a good mother. In fact, she was pretty awful. Em's youngest child was diagnosed as an adult as having borderline personality disorder and being narcissistic. Several of my mother's siblings showed clear signs of those personality/mental health disorders. I suspect they came from Mom's mother, Em.

Em's upper-crust parents came to the colonies from England. How Em met and married Mom's dad Arthur, 17 years her senior, remains a mystery.

Arthur was the son of AC Anderson, a Hudson's Bay fur trader and his Metis wife, Eliza. In the early 1900's Eliza and her offspring were simply part-Indian or half-breeds. Therefore, Arthur their son was also part-Indian. It was a disgrace for Em to marry a part-Indian man. One of Em's brothers never spoke to her again.

Greta's (Mom's) early years were spent with her family on Valdez Island, one of the Gulf Islands in the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the west coast of British Columbia. Greta lived as a wild child with her younger twin brothers, Johnny and Tommy and her youngest sister, Joan. Her two older brothers, twelve and fourteen year old children Elton and Harry logged the property. Rosamund, her oldest sister lived with Granny and Grampa in Duncan and developed the proper British accent that stayed with her for life.

When Greta's family moved to Duncan in 1923 the part-Indian label preceded them. Greta went to Grade Four as "one of the dirty Indian kids", squaw or papoose. The family's poverty coupled with Em's terrible housekeeping and neglect added to the stain.

When Greta turned fifteen her despairing letters to her older sister, who now lived in Winnipeg, became more desperate. Rosamund suggested that Greta join her in Winnipeg where she could go to school and be away from the family. Greta jumped at the chance - she knew Rosamund loved her dearly and she loved Rosamund. After all, love was in short supply in her family.

In Winnipeg, Rosamund suggested that Greta was an unattractive name and called her Peg - and Peg stuck. Mom was Peg to me all my life and I didn't hear about Greta until much later.

Life for Peg in Duncan, Valdez and Winnipeg impacted her life along with the genes she inherited. The stories that follow will cover some of those times and I will look at how those years and genes impacted her life and ultimately impacted mine.

I will be using Mom's letters to her sister Rosamund from Cortes Island when my sister and I were babies to uncover and open doors. I didn't understand when I first read them what sort of impact the letters, what was said and what wasn't said, would have as I fight to understand my own choices.

And the beat goes on.

Manson's Landing Mirror circa 1955

We have no policemen on Cortes so it would be a miracle if any of the members of the Ladies' Guild got themselves arrested for speeding or dangerous driving or such last Saturday night. Had they been, they would have felt very silly. Not for the fact of being arrested, heavens, that happens in the best regulated ladies' clubs but for the fact that the arrestees would likely have been tossed in the jug wearing naught but a diaper, a short frilly dress and hair ribbons, plus a wide-eyed innocent look that would surely wring the heart of a law minion even if we were doing thirty mph which is the equivalent of ninety elsewhere.
The event was the annual spring party, held at Mary Ward's house. Hazel and I were in charge of entertainment. We asked everyone who came to bring a brown bag of clothes. We traded the bags and each dressed in the clothing from the brown bag we were given. We looked mighty foolish but better foolish than dullish I always say. May Freeman was the winner and she was indeed cute in her frilly bonnet, long white nightie and shawl.
We played games and as always the games that Hazel and I had decided would be utter screams turned out to be rather dull and the quiet little filler-inners had us rolling in the aisles. We chose to  play a ridiculous gave wherein we divided everyone into four teams with captains and gave each team an animal name - cats, dogs, sheep and donkeys. The teams had to rush around and find beans previously hidden and make their animal sound until their captain came and collected the loot. What a madhouse it was, all of the bow-wowing and baa-ing and meowing at once. To her dismay, one over-excited sheep pointed out a pile of beans to her sister, instead of properly baa-ing for her captain. Said sister delightedly hee-hawed and I bet that sheep would have liked to back up and bunt her one. The donkeys were the winners, as fine a bunch of big-eared, loud-mouthed creatures as ever you'd hope to see in any zoo.
"Let's play Charades" sounds like bustles and bows, swooning ladies and gallant gents, plush filled parlours and beaded antimacassars, whatever they are.  It sounds like fun now to the Ladies' Guild anyway, most unexpected fun to most of us. Charades is a game of pantomimes. You have to "act out" a phrase without speaking, while the other members of your team try to guess what the phrase is as quickly as possible. We guilders are not afraid of overacting or overlaughing so it was a terrific success.
We threw a man out of that Guild party, too. Oliver Ward came home from Vancouver that night and expected to enter his own home and be greeted by his ever-loving wife. All reasonable enough I suppose but on LADIES GUILD PARTY NIGHT! We threw him out. We had to. He hung around for a while wistfully looking in the windows and then he went away.
If he breathes a word of what he saw that night......

Adventures in Cooking

From "Lurking Back" by Peg Pyner

 

There’s a book called "Adventures in Cooking with James Beard."  Well, I had one of my typical adventures in cooking and I don’t think James Beard would print it. Down the tube, into the compost that is, went three cut-up sausages, one slice of smoked ham, a gob of molasses, brown sugar, ketchup, water and two cups of beans. Who but me could ruin baked beans?

I relaxed on the chesterfield the other night, reading the newspaper while a clicky corner of my brain was asking, "What shall we have for supper all week?”  I know this is grounds for divorce but Jimmy never minds. When it's slop like stew, Swiss steak or beans, he’ll eat it all week happily and I add my own variations, a dash of garlic or a piece of toast.

I read a cozy little piece in praise of slow cookers.  I was fascinated by the recipe sent in by one woman.  She, like me, always forgot to soak the beans.  She dumped them in her slow cooker unsoaked and said in seventeen hours she had Lovely Baked Beans.

With a cry of delight I leapt up, turned on my slow cooker, tossed in beans, plus molasses and stuff and again relaxed.  Seventeen hours, I thought, that's tomorrow night.  In the morning I bethought myself of salt pork which I never have, so tossed in three leftover sausages and a slice of ham.  The beans at this point were very, very hard, about the same as when they went in and I felt a tremor of unease, which I shook off.

That night the house smelt lovely.  The sausages and ham had overcooked to a deep dark brown; the beans were still very hard. We had an omelet, which Jimmy doesn't much like. He begged me to fry some bacon and open the canned beans but I wouldn't.  What's the sense, I asked him, of opening canned dumb beans one night then eating lovely home-cooked baked beans all week?

On the third day the meat had turned black, the beans were still hard.  We had poached eggs for supper and Jimmy looked broody which may have been all the eggs but why did he eye me so malignantly?  On the fourth day with fears of botulism in mind, I tasted the beans and they were still crisp, so I've given up.  Even the dog can't have them.

Seventeen hours for unsoaked beans forsooth! Where do they get these fantasies? I'm for responsible journalism and if unsoaked beans can't cook in over 100 hours, all I can say is, “Don't leave today, Jimmy! I'll open the canned beans.”

Frozen water pipes Cortes Island circa 1950

I just finished my biddling around housework and am asking myself what to do next and feeling irresistibly drawn towards the new Journal or mayhaps another seam or two of my new shirt, howsoever I will fill the wondering time with a line or two to you. The curses are standing on cardboard cartons nosing around the counter. Pretty soon one will collapse and they will howl or find something splashy or breaky and I will have to remove them but let's not borrow trouble. I just went and put the brats on two eggs to coddle and they are slugging and guzzling them down. A gory mess but like I say, let them be.
The G.D. pipes froze up three days ago and the boys can't find where. There is 600 feet of pipe which is a lot of digging and Jimmy is furious. I am washing out baby stuff here and there by hand but life is very difficult. I hope it doesn't last much longer. I'm afraid they'll say that it's all so frozen they will have to leave it until they thaw out by themselves. Can't even let the kitchen fire get too hot in case the tank gets overheated and bursts. However the front room fire keeps going and with the kerosene heaters in the bedrooms we keep warm enough.
Barbie hurt her hand or thinks she did and is showing it to Nancy. Nancy rubs it for her and says poor little kid about 60 times. She also rubs her other hand and goes to the extreme of trying to tell Barbie she is going to call the hospital. They are very amiable with each other but daresay it is but a passing phase. A while back Barbie was in the car pushing herself back and forth with her feet. Nancy came along and draped herself across the radiator and Barbie happily pushed them both along, still with her feet.

Barbie & preschool circa 1950 Mom's letters

Breathes there a mama so baffled, so beset upon as the mama of a lonesome preschooler?  I think not.  For the mama of said lonesome pre-schoolers cannot knead a dough, beat a batter, wash a clothe, dampen ironing or toil at any other such task without great gobs of chatty hindering help from the lonesome little one.  And patient as the mama may be about being helped and even though she reads “Porky Pig” aloud fifty times a day, the child is still not content and would much prefer it were Saturday and Big Brother or Sister were pushing the pre-schoolers head into a mud puddle.  And, besides always the mama knows that some day soon there will be that icy plunge into grade One and better mama’s apron strings be loosened beforehand.   
Which leads up to the fact that five of the beset upon mamas of lonesome pre-schoolers are doing something about the situation.  We decided to hold a play school four days a week at one another’s home.  

The kids love the Play School and crabby is the kid who gets a bad cold and has to miss a few days.  They get a variety of active play, mid morning cocoa, story time, sometimes records and/or singing, followed by cutting out or plasticine, the latter being very popular.  They leave for home by 11:30.  Little Dinah Armstrong calls it Plasticine School; our Barbie, after her first day or so, said Play School was fun but when were we going to put on a play?  Must have thought it a Junior Little Theatre.