Category Archives: family

Hurry Up! We’re Going to Be HAVING SEX Late for Church

writing is fun but I really want to draw you here…

The shock value of fuck is slipping slowly down the slope. F bombs are common from anyone. Any age. And are laughed off by all of us as fucking funny. Nothing shocking at all. Just an F bomb. Man the word is taking a beating. Cannot even hold its water as a sacred cuss word. No shock value of any value.

I got a lesson in deflated shock value as a five year old. My aunt and I are walking the few blocks back from town to the parsonage in Farmville, Virgina where we both live. She as a daughter. I as a granddaughter. It is dusk. On coming car lights kept glaring in my eyes. “Damn those lights!” I stamp my foot. Nothing. We keep walking. “DAMN those lights!” No response. “Didn’t you hear me I.G.?” She nods. And we keep walking. After all it was only damn.

One of my favorite childhood chants is one choosing who goes first in a game. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe catch a N word by the toe. I always use it over the boring one potato, two potato. Until one day Mom’s had enough. “Sandra Leigh!” she shouts out the kitchen window. I am told to never ever use the N word again. Ever. Good advise. But just listen. It does have potential as a shock word. Not. Let me repeat not to be directed toward anyone of African descent. But just as a shocking expletive. I mean does, “I can’t get the fucking toaster to work,” imply that the toaster ever had sex. Of course not. So using the N word in general terms to lay into something could work. But of course I really don’t advocate it. I just want a good shock value word. And fuck doesn’t do it any more.

Fucking shame.

 

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Progress Can Be a Bitch Especially When You’re in a FOG About It

“We’re in a FOG! I can’t see you!” My friend and I are running behind a DDT truck as close as we can get to the sputtering machine pumping out noxious gas to kill mosquitoes. The mosquitoes that live by the thousands on our tiny island called Guam. We are not alone. Kids from all over the neighborhood join the ritual. It’s fun to be in a fog surrounded by only whiteness. Get as close as you can without keeling over from the fumes. And of course the truck is moving so you need to run, hold your breath, stop to catch a breath, then run some more before you get left behind.

The fog came in today while I was dashing around the monument. (Yes, yes I did dash on the runway.) And made me think of those evenings on Guam when we chased the DDT truck. Our kids wonder that I’m alive. They also wonder why they don’t all have six legs or three eyes.

Tumon Bay Guam

This is MY Tumon Bay

Life on Guam. In the fifties. Perfect in every way. Mom said it. Dad said it. We live it. We three and baby sister Suzanne, born there mid-tour. It really is perfect. The weather is always warm, we have no windows or even screens, only louvers to close for privacy. Rain comes in showers and leaves just as fast. Flowers are everywhere. The war is over long enough that living standards on the AFB are comfortable.

mom on reef

Mom on the reef at Tumon Bay. Look how far away the beach is!

We are cautioned to not stray too far away from civilization because Japanese soldiers still hid in the hills. We mostly stay on base. There is hardly any civilization to stray away from anyway. Agana, the capital, is a tiny village. There are a couple of public beaches. You have to wear shoes because the coral will cut your feet. But the shallow warm water with no dangerous marine life is a child’s playground. It only gets deep beyond the reef.

We are warned to never get on the reef. A rogue wave can wash you off. Into the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. Of course Dad has to urge Mom has to take on the challenge. Tumon Bay (you don’t want to click on that link, you really don’t) is our favorite beach. Dad can take our jeep (no seat belts, no doors) from the top of the towering limestone cliff to the sandy beach at the bottom in seconds flat. Beats any roller coaster I’ve ever been on. We swim. We bring our own lunch and snacks. We find incredible shells in tiny caves along the shore. We gather coconuts that fall from the palms. Take them home and after way too much work get to the succulent meat inside. The folks that visit Tumon Bay today haven’t the foggiest notion what slice of paradise they’ve missed.

The Little Shop of Sass

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A Flower by Any Other Name

“Pick it like so. Run your hand down the stem. Then snap. That gives you a long flower for your vase.” My grandmother, Mother Leigh’s, sage advise. And we all paid attention. Her love for jonquils, and us, was strong. She wanted every aspect to be as right as possible.

oakland road daffodils

Our Oakland Road jonquil field.

Recently Emily and Donald chatted via FB about having daffodils in their own yards finally. And how it reminded them of home. Our Richmond home. We lived on an old daffodil farm. Blooms by the hundreds were ours for the picking every spring. Except that one spring when I thought I would be resourceful, and so when pickers came by asking if they could pick for cash I quickly said yes. The house was always overflowing with the bunches and bunches of blooms that we picked. And the fields were still full. But I should have known that they would pick the fields clean. And you only get one bloom per bulb each year. “Mom, where are the flowers?” Emily demanded when they got home from school. No undoing that mistake.

three chopt driveway

Three Chopt driveway

I too grew up surrounded by hundreds of jonquils every spring. At Mother Leigh’s Three Chopt antebellum home in Richmond, Virginia. Her semi-circular drive was lined on both sides by the blooms. She had a big aged formal garden in the side yard that in its neglected state grew nothing but daffodils. It was awesome. There was a birdbath in the middle surrounded by four patterned simple mazes defined by raised ground flower beds. The gardener always cut the grass so it looked tended. It just had no flowers except in the spring when it was a blaze of yellow.

Where we live now I’ve tried to get a few bulbs to grow. The moles always thwart my attempts. And I am no gardener. I am an admirer and acquirer. I gladly take garden bounty bestowed on me by others. And I richly admire all gardens with great admiration. It’s the growing that teases me. And so I paint my gardens.

Need A Little Art?

 

 

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All You Need is LOVE

The original Wellington Rabbit

The original Wellington Rabbit

“Write that it is all about love,” the bunny whispers in my ear. He tells me that Easter is slipping in popularity and his story will help fix that. I listen and write exactly what he tells me. But before that happens, this happens.

A long time ago, call it two decades, Easter approaches. The children have always received a stuffed animal, often one of the Beatrix Potter ones. I ponder how to make it work this year as we have no money for traditional Easter bounty. I decide to make them each a stuffed animal since I already have fabric and stuffing on hand. I quickly pump out five identical rabbits complete with a cape and a sack full of colored cloth eggs.

The first book.

The first book surrounded by the entire thirteen. Twenty years. 10,000+ words. 100+ illustrations.

Then I decide that the bunny needs a name and an introduction. A simple paragraph turns into a page and then more over the next few years. Other stuffed animals depicting the central characters emerge. The pages become a book, Wellington Easter Rabbit or the True Tale of How Wellington Became the Easter Bunny. He tells me what to write and I faithfully do so.

The first book is stitched together on my sewing machine. I make a pen and ink drawing of Wellington for the cover. This is great they all say, friends and extended family by this time. But we need more. Illustrations. Divide the book into chapters Donny suggests. So demanding, but they are right.

I get to work. Over the next few years their ideas for book 1 come to fruition. And then slowly at first but gradually picking up speed books 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on until book 13 (the final book in the series completed last year) become a reality. Some years Easter is so early and we are so busy that I only get half written.  By this time the book has a format. Three pages per chapter, one illustration. Ten chapters. The half book years it is a to be continued offering.

Every year I wait until the eleventh hour to begin writing. I am always amazed at how well the story comes together. I mean I do know where it’s going, just not how it’s going to get there. Donny my incredible editor is always there to drop everything and see that the book looks as good as it reads. He polishes and polishes and then we make a dash to get books in the mail (because by this time the children are grown and have children of their own) in the nick of time.

This year I am somewhat relieved to not have the self imposed pressure of The Book to write. But I miss it and at almost the eleventh hour (again) decide to create a new series. A simple set of easy to read books using all the characters from the original series as they fit into the story. And so happy readers I introduce you to the Wellington Rabbit Adventure Series, book 1, The Case of the Disappearing Eggs. Love! Sandy & Wellington

Wellington Rabbit and the Case of the Disappearing Eggs

Wellington Rabbit and the Case of the Disappearing Eggs

 

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Starke Jett IV & Margaret Ann Boschen Jett my parents

My parents, Starke Jett IV & Margaret Ann Boschen Jett. This photo pretty well sums them up, party and play and fight in between.

The title of this post could have been my parents’ theme. Life in our family was a yo-yo affair. Dad & Mom were at the top of their game when playing, few could out do them. And they always took us along. But this every day life befuddled them. They never could get the hang of it.

A friend recently posted a piece about marriage, divorce, staying together for the sake of the kids. Her thoughts are always well put, hit the target and make you think. She comments that staying together for the sake of the kids is a bad plan and one she and her husband will never follow.

I used to agree (and still do if there is physical or drug abuse). All through the years in my quirky dysfunctional family I dream of better. I yearn for my parents to divorce. Still we toddle on year after year. I figure that Mom knows her options and opts to finesse her cards in a way to keep things on a fairly even keel.

Then Mom tosses out a curve ball. She announces that she is throwing in the towel when my brother, the youngest, is college age. My mouth flies open. Why now? Why put us all through so much grief (Dad was classic bi-polar but few knew or used the phrase then) to now quit. Dad was philandering, but he had always been on that tack, nothing new to report there.

And so when she makes her grand announcement, I am pissed and confused for a long time. And then bingo one day it hits me. Sure we were in crappy places as a family much of the time. But we were also in some great places. Christmas and Easter were always magical times at my grandmother’s (Dad’s mother) antebellum home in Richmond. Were we split up as a family that would have never happened.

Summers spent on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the tiny cinder block cottage my grandfather (Dad again) built. No air conditioning, no fans even. Barely a bathroom. Most of the time we peed in the woods, and took dumps at the local filling station when my uncle would drive us up there because the toilet or septic was on the blitz. A shower that never worked but for thirteen people a hot shower inside was a lost cause anyway. Slashing a new path to the broken glass and rotting trees ridden beach through the undergrowth that grew rampart around the tall pines were standards. But it was ours. My family, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and we all loved it. Divorced, it never would have happened.

I can go on. Dad and I shopping for clothes for Mom. My parents together buying my first school dance dress. Spur of the moment vacations. Sundays at the zoo. The list is endless. As is my list of not great, not great at all, to down right miserable, horrible memories. But I count those as learning experiences of what not to do. I call it reverse learning.

Sure I don’t know what perhaps better things would have been in my future as a child of divorced parents. More peace probably. But I wouldn’t trade one day of my life with two child like adults constantly spatting and picking on each other for anything else. Thanks Mom for keeping the family together for as long as you did whether it was for the sake of us kids or otherwise, it is appreciated.

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Why Is EASY so Hard?

easy goingIt’s not really.

1. Unschooling is the home school term. Provide the materials and motivation for the basics and let the rest fall in line. As a young teen, Stephen read an article in 3-2-1-Contact on Basic programing, kept following that thread until now he is a lead developer for PhishMe. I hadn’t a clue until recently. Unknown to me until all was said and done, Andrew decided that Lewis (middle school) needed to take college level Calculus in summer school  at College of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City where he was directing the theater department and also taking classes before heading off to UNC-CH. And so he made it happen.

2. Bare butt training is the potty transition technique. Warm weather, or even a warm house, and a naked toddler body go together. Skip the diaper, provide a convenient porta-potty, clean up the mess (you do that anyway) and they’ll soon figure out the better way on their own.

3. Running on your own clock is the jogging lead. I used to run for set miles or set miles within a set time and drove myself crazy if I didn’t measure up. Now I run for a set time, never check the miles and really enjoy myself. I sprint, jog, walk occasionally but mostly to answer a text, or observe wildlife. I write. This blog, all the kids’ books I have in my mind. And I make up great stories about all the folks I pass.

4. Tossing a mixed salad and adding in some protein is the dinner throw down. After child number four was born I quit cooking. Not completely. But planned meals became a thing of the past. We ate healthy. I made a salad every night. The rest just fell in place. Pasta some night. Grilled cheese. Bean tacos.

Designed by soon to be dil's brother's girl friend's dad. Got that right? Thanks Staples!

Designed by soon to be dil’s brother’s girl friend’s dad. Got that right? Thanks Staples!

5. Making your own choices is the Camp OBX easy. When the grands come here for summer camp we provide a safe environment, a comfortable bed, lots of food options and transportation where ever they may want to go. The balance is up to them. They call all the shots. When they eat, what they eat, when they sleep, whether they get dressed. The ball is in their court.

6. Vacuuming every month or so is the new Tina Tidy’s advise. That is what my avatar name used to be. I was a zealous cleaner. Then when the last child rose from the floor (mano a mano with dust bunnies daily is a bit much) and walked in earnest I locked the vacuum in the closet. I let it out occasionally.

If you thrive on structure that’s your easy. If it drives you to tears, press the button. It’s that easy.

 

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We Got Those Sweet, Sweet Sugar Blues

sugar blues

The actual book that changed the course of our family. I love William Dufty’s dedication. To Billie Holiday whose death changed my life and Gloria Swanson whose life changed my death.

In 1977 Donny picks up a book in the grocery store. The title intrigues me. I start reading. My eyes get bigger and bigger. We are being sold a bill of goods. Sugar. More sugar. Everywhere you look sugar has been blatantly added to foods. Not just foods you would expect but foods like crackers, bread, flavorings, salad dressing, ketchup, peanut butter for crying out loud. I balk. “That’s enough!”

I go through our kitchen cabinets throwing everything out that has any sugar in it. My family is not going to be hoodwinked. And worse, trance induced by a legal drug. Up to that point we ate reasonable well but with no real thought to content beyond a balanced diet. We ate Fruit Loops, drank Tang, snacked on M&M’s along with our farm veggies, fruits and shared meat slaughters.

But throwing out anything with sugar in it is only my start. I am on a mission. I get books that advise us how red meat is nothing but a rotting mess in a human digestive tract. Fine for dogs, cats, most four legged animals with short simple intestines but not healthy for people. Out goes red meat. I read on. White meat is better but not by much. Out goes poultry. Seafood is acceptable but living so far from the source we rarely buy any. When Donny brought home Sugar Blues, Donald’s third birthday was approaching. No exceptions. I make a carrot cake sweetened with honey. Holidays see dried fruits and maple sugar as their food treats. With a, gotcha Mom, grin Emily & Donald now confess that friends at school would sneak them ice cream. We have honey flavored ice cream at home but it is a very special treat.

I am not done yet, not by a long shot. In come more books. Books on healthy life style eating. Brewer’s yeast, but only with balanced B vitamins, is the gold standard, so of course my family has to partake. The health benefits cannot be denied but the taste can. We all loath it but I soldier on. Down a spoonful and chase it with juice, mix it in a shake, nothing disguises the flavor. The family all time favorite method to despise is bite size yeast balls I make with peppermint oil. I do not recall when I stop this fanatical bend but I can tell you to this day no one can even mention the stuff without slightly retching.

This march to health lasts for years until we move. Emily & Donald still chide me about how soft I was on Stephen & Andrew. They got to bake with brown sugar and chocolate chips. I had gone soft. But never would I buy a sugary snack. Okay maybe Virgil’s (our builder) amazing donuts from his bakery Rollin’n Dough. Blame that on the duplex with a stove that made a campfire look first class.

But once we get into our house, if they want it, they have to bake it. And Lewis. Well, he was a lost cause. By his time organic white sugar has seeped into our lives. And it still has a place at the table. But even now more baking goes on than store purchasing. And we do prefer buying items with recognizable ingredients.

We did have some awesome food sources doing my vigilante years. Farm fresh eggs from a local farmer who also supplied us with fresh milk from his handful of cows. He was not in the market. Only family and friends of family got to stop by his farm, drop off empty bottles in the barn with a pig sty close by and pick up a new supply, all on the honor system. We got raw honey by the gallons from a bee supplier. As wonderful as these were none went into the babies mouths until they were past the recommended twelve months old mark.

When Emily & Donald get to talking about the yeast ball days, I remind them how healthy they were and are. Trips to the doctor just didn’t happen. Sure they picked up this and that coming down the pike but only mild cases.

The down side? There is none. The up side, besides great health? Awesome war stories.

family

Here we are during those if you want it bake it years

 

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How I Got to Be in the Mother Of FIVE Club Finale(ly)

dapper donny

This sexy dude plus living in a tiny duplex packed with boxes and kids & with no entertainment = baby number five

By the time we get to the last member of our party we are living on the Outer Banks in a jammed pack duplex that belongs to a friend (one side for us, one side for our stuff) while our house is being built.

“This one’s yours,” I tell Donny when we discover that we’re pregnant. If it were physically possible I would surely let him be the pregnant one. Despite the discomforts, I pretty much enjoy being pregnant but enough is enough. The best Donny can do is pamper me. And he does. He brings me Great Garden sandwiches from Stuffy’s in Richmond because nothing else will do. “It’ll be soggy,” he suggests. I don’t care. He acquiesces. He takes care of everything when he is home, letting me be a miserably sick pregnant woman without concern. He lets me make the momentous decision to have this baby in Richmond via our midwife Sally. The details about how we can actually make this work are unimportant.

The months tick off one by one. I see a local nurse practitioner in between visits to Sally in Richmond. As time approaches Patty tell me that I will have the baby where I want to have it. But if need be she has a birthing kit. She can and will help me until we can get to the over an hour away hospital if it comes to that.

lewis

Lewis Chapin Ball February 2, 1985

Visits to Sally became more frequent. The baby is due in February. By late January I am ready. He’s not ready yet, Sally tells me. I know better, but since we have no real game plan other than wait for the baby, I accept another week of waiting. The next week when we trek to Richmond, Donny checks us into the Hyatt. I have told him that I just really can’t have the baby in his rooms at the store. They are clean and comfy. Two rooms he has carved out for his living space. One is a tiny living type room with a fold out couch that the kids sleep on. The other a room with built in book shelves and a mattress on the floor that takes up most of the space. The arrangement is fine normally but I can not visualize birthing our child there.

Our rooms at the Hyatt are a nightmare, right by the elevators, we can hear folks coming and going all night long. We check out. I go for my appointment with Sally. “He’s ready,” she declares. “This is what we’ll do. I’ll get Dr. Fitzhugh to bring his knitting needle to work tomorrow and we’ll pop the water sac.”

It worked by gosh!

Our mother son talk worked by gosh!

We check back into the Hyatt. Donny explains to the clerk that we need rooms away from the elevators. Things are much better. The kids are in heaven. A pool. A buffet. Endless TV.

We all get settled in for the night. I cannot sleep. During one of my many trips to the bathroom, I have a heart to heart talk with the baby. I tell him that one way or the other he is coming into this world in a few hours. I tell him that it will hurt a lot for both of us. I also assure him that if we work together it will be over quickly. I tell him about the doctor’s knitting needle that will start the birthing process. I tell him that it’s his choice whether he or the doctor start the ball rolling. I go back to bed.

I wake up for yet another trip to the bathroom. It’s early morning by now. While there, my water breaks. I smile and pat the baby, “Well done.” We call Sally. It is over soon. Our party is complete. Later Sally tells me that Dr. Fitzhugh forgot to bring his knitting needle to the office anyway.

The next week when I go for my checkup with Sally, Dr. Fitzhugh comes into the waiting room and purposefully walks up to me awe on his face. “How did you do that?” he asks. I look at him, confused at first. And then it dawns. “I talked to the baby. I told him that it was his choice.”

Missed Part One? Part Two? Part Three? Part Four?

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At Home(School)

Chemistry of Cooking

Chemistry of Cooking

When we last left our three, fresh from the constrains of public school (okay two Lewis was still too young for formal school), homeschoolers we were just getting into the swing of our routine.

Our academic routine. Not for everyone. Crazy and yet it worked so well for us. But there’s more. During the day when we were all awake, (those night owls slept in rousing when the mood fit) I had them work on projects like these.

building

How it Works

I was a stickler for entering every creative contest that came along. Art contests. Writing contests. Poster contests. National Geographic’s Geography Bee. We subscribed to Cricket Magazine and religiously every month I had all three enter the Cricket League competition. Open to all with several age group categories. The League rotated between prose, poetry, art, photography monthly. There was always an intriguing prompt. Later Cricket added an adult category and the boys insisted that I had to enter too. I was the teacher, I hesitated. But what’s fair for the the goose is fair for the gander. And so I did reluctantly. We all won. Multiple times. Sometimes first place, second place, third, honorable mention. Sometimes nothing. This was an international contest too with hundreds of entries. And everything had to be mailed with a stamped return mailer if you wanted your work back. Work. But worth it.

drinking & driving poster driving safety poster heart poster

Sometimes to mix things up we took all the academics outside and worked together. We ate, chatted, studied, took breaks, went swimming. We had fun. But you know what the best part was?

They. Never. Got. Sick.

It was as though the sick switch turned off. And while we did not belong to any homeschool groups (we were our own group) we did interact with the world. They swam on our local community summer swim team. They went to summer 4-H camp. They were all on Dare County Parks and Recreation basketball teams. We traveled to Richmond to be with Donny at work. Being school Geography Bee champion, Stephen got to travel by Amtrak to the state level competition in Raleigh. Andrew got to go to the state level competition too when he was old enough too but no free train ride. (By the time Lewis was eligible organizers had figured out their mistake and banned independent home schools.) Home school for us was not stress free but it was stress that we could handle.

lessons outdoors dune diving karate kids

Next time, how they faired in college and the real world. Spoiler alert. Fleek!

 

 

 

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Apollo

apollo

Today we buried Apollo. He was one of our seven cats. All loved. None purposefully acquired. You know how that happens. First we took in two brothers who having just been neutered for Feline Hope were riding with the vet when he came to treat our sick cat, Willie. They were the last of the litter. “We’ll take them both,” Donny told the vet. “They shouldn’t be separated.” Both solid black. They came with names, Huey & Henry.

“Mom, you were almost free of cats,” Emily laughed. It was her Willie, who had come to live with us after he lost his way to the litter box one too many times, that was sick and would not survive.

The next two to arrive were actually Lewis’ cats. One being Apollo. Gray & white Ares came first. A gift. Lewis decided to name his cats after Greek gods. When a beach goer found a wandering kitten on the beach and could not keep him, Lewis, lifeguarding at the time, stepped up. “Mom,” he phoned, “there’s this kitten…”

“Bring him home.” And so Apollo joined the consortium.

Next my sister had rescued a litter from under a trailer and when we stopped on our way back from California to visit her, she asked if we wanted the last two, Blaze & Pumpkin. “We’ve got enough already,” we told her. She understood. A few days later I called to say we’d take them if she still had not found them homes. They shouldn’t be separated either. Sucker for the family connection.

Lastly is Remus. This time a friend of a friend of Hilarey’s had found a cat while pool cleaning and could not keep him. He became Donny’s Father’s Day present. Hilarey told her dad that Remus was his Father’s Day present too, not being presented with a kitten. We called him the Kitten That Lived Under the Couch because he did and was so tiny and grey that no one could find him.

Cats on the porch the three yellows

But this story is about Apollo. It’s just that they are a consortium and operate as a group, most of the time. Apollo liked to think that he was in charge. And he was unless Ares, the wanderer, was around. Apollo with the squinty eyes could fool his brothers into thinking he wasn’t paying any attention and then smack them into doing whatever it was that he deemed important at the time. He was first to meals and pushed everyone out of the way to get to the best bowl. He was lovable. He purred louder than any of the others and would offer you a wet kiss anytime you asked.

He stopped showing up for meals this past week. At first I thought he had just found something better. They all live outside. On a covered porch. With a custom built condominium. But when he kept hanging out in unit 102, the one with the heat light, Lewis decided that maybe he needed to come inside. We brought him in. The next day I messaged the vet. They were in Vegas at a continuing education seminar. She advised me what to do and arranged for some meds. We kept him inside in a quiet room. I checked on him a lot. Yesterday I decided that he was lonely and carried him around like a baby all wrapped up most of the day. He helped me win a lot of on line games of Dominion. He still wasn’t eating but he seemed better. He watched Justified with us last night. He told Lewis goodnight and as it turns out goodbye. When I looked in to check on him this morning he was in the same spot where I had put him down. I don’t think he moved, just drifted away to the ethereal cat consortium.

Goodbye Apollo. We’ll miss you.

ares & apollo

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by | February 18, 2015 · 6:49 pm