"I like your hair!" a woman at the party said.

This is always nice to hear. My hair is my least endearing feature, primarily because there is not much of it. But since my husband, Peter, started cutting it, I worry a lot less.

"How does my hair look?" I ask as I head out the door. Peter always pretends to take this question very seriously. (He should, as my hairdresser.) He scrutinizes the top of my head for a long moment. He asks me to turn all the way around. Then he reaches over and tousles something on the top.

"Perfect!" he says. And I choose to believe him.

"My husband cuts it," I told the woman at the party. "He cuts his own hair, too!"

"Ooh! Isn't that hard?"

"He's been doing it since he was 17, when the local barber wouldn't give him the haircut he wanted."

This is true. Peter started cutting his hair when the barber was threatening to give him a buzz cut -- because that was the only kind of haircut he gave. Peter got up from the barber chair, walked out, and cut it himself. I like that story. Peter has always known what he wanted and has always figured he could learn new things.

"Don't tell people I cut my own hair!" Peter told me on the walk home.

"Why not?"

"They'll think I'm strange."

"You're married to me! I think they may have already formed an opinion."

Peter granted this was true. As it happens, I was feeling particularly pleased with my hair that evening because Peter had given me a haircut just that morning. Usually, the haircuts were his idea.

"Your hair could use a trim," he will announce in a way that makes it clear I am looking pretty scruffy. So I put on a raincoat, and raise my office chair as high as it will go, and he gets out his sharp scissors that make a satisfying "Snick! Snick! Snick!" noise and, in less than five minutes, he has cut my hair. He doesn't have much to work with, after all.

But this time, getting a haircut was my idea. I'd just watched an interview with Rod Stewart, the iconic rock star. He is 79 years old, and he has just released a jazz album. He is also a keen builder of model trains. But I was more interested in his hair than either his jazz or his trains. His hair looked great. I wondered how a man approaching 80 managed to have such ineffable style, and I decided it was, in large part, because he wasn't too worried about being tidy. Rod Stewart has the untidiest hair you're likely to find on an octogenarian (outside a long-term senior care facility), and I decided he was my new role model. His music is good. But his hair is terrific.

"I want hair like Rod Stewart!" I announced, after watching the interview, and Peter got out his noisy little scissors and set to work.

I'm not saying I look like Rod Stewart. I don't. He has a lot more hair and a lot more experience looking unkempt. But I woke up this morning and looked at myself in the mirror. I left the comb on the shelf. I ran my fingers through my hair and made it stand a little more on end than usual.

"How do you like your haircut?" my hairstylist asked.

"I love it," I told him. "I look just like Rod Stewart!"

"You do," he said.

And I choose to believe him.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found at CarrieClassonAuthor on Facebook.

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"I've been reading about cats," my husband, Peter, tells me. Peter has never had a cat before.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Salt is not good for their kidneys. We have to give Felix unsalted fish."

Felix is our adopted street cat here in Mexico. He is coming back to the U.S. with us in a fancy backpack carrier I found online. It has mesh on either side, with one big plexiglass bubble in the back, so Felix can watch his fellow passengers in comfort. He hasn't flown yet, but our trips to and from the veterinarian were uneventful, so I think he will adapt to it rather well.

Felix is adapting to everything rather well, especially considering he is not the five-month-old kitten we thought he was, but fully two years old. I learned this at the vet when he got his first vaccination.

"I don't know how old he is," I told them, explaining that he was a rescued street cat.

The vet tech was nonchalant. She peeled back Felix's lips and examined his teeth. "One or two years," she declared.

"Really?"

"I think so."

Then a second veterinarian's assistant came in. "How old is he?" she asked.

I told her again that I didn't know. (I figured it was good to get a second opinion.) Felix suffered the indignity of having his lips peeled back a second time in five minutes.

"At least two years old," she said.

"Two years?" I asked -- for clarification. (I have misunderstood numbers in Spanish more often than I care to admit.)

"Yes," the vet tech said with certainty. "He is at least two years old." They recorded his date of birth as 2022, and Felix suddenly went from being a scrappy kitten to a remarkably playful and adaptable adult cat.

But he is very thin, and unlike a lot of rescued animals, he does not seem to be especially interested in food. The woman who fostered him said she had dry cat food available for him all the time, so that's what we did as well. But Felix was not eating much.

I bought an overpriced package of soft chicken cat food. It smelled awful. Felix tried it. He was unimpressed. The food hardened in his bowl, and he was still not putting on any weight.

"Maybe he'd like a scrambled egg," Peter suggested. "Do cats like eggs?"

I've had several cats but, as far as I can remember, I had never made breakfast for any of them. Peter scrambled up an egg and gave Felix part of it. Felix loved the scrambled egg. Then Peter got reading up on what else cats like.

"They can have fish, but they should eat all the bones for better nutrition," Peter informed me. I believed him. Peter brought home a can of mackerel. The mackerel was a huge hit. Peter kept reading.

"It says here that cats like peas. Maybe we could give him some garbanzo beans."

At this point, Peter was miles ahead of me in his study of cat nutrition. We gave Felix three garbanzo beans. Felix ate them immediately and demanded more.

Now Peter is looking for canned fish -- whole fish -- complete with bones that we can give Felix for a bedtime snack. "I can get a case of salt-free canned sardines for a good price!" he announced. "Do you think Felix would like sardines?"

I looked at Felix lying contentedly in his furry bed. I don't know nearly as much about cats as I thought I did. But I'm willing to bet Felix will like sardines very much indeed.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found at CarrieClassonAuthor on Facebook.

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My husband, Peter, and I were surprised that two plates were missing.

We stay in our little apartment in Mexico and, while we're gone, all our dishes and glasses remain in the cupboards. We pack away most of our spices, but we leave the vegetable steamer and the pressure cooker and all the art on the walls. We leave it all in the apartment which, we assume, is rented out to other people while we are gone, although it is hard to know for sure because everything is always right where we left it. But this time, two plates were missing. And I knew where they were.

Shortly before we left last year, a few weeks before Christmas, our wonderful landlord Jorge was chatting well into the evening with a woman about his age at a table in the courtyard. The woman looked a lot like him, and the way they were talking and laughing together led me to believe this was probably one of Jorge's 12 siblings.

"Would you like a piece of cake?" I asked them on the way to my apartment. I had just bought a cake, a chocolate one. (If it sounds as if I do nothing but eat cake and donuts and apple empanadas in Mexico, that would not be far from the truth.)

"Oh, no!" Jorge said, smiling. "I don't need any cake." But I could tell he wanted some.

"Oh, yes!" the woman, who was probably his sister, said. "I would love a piece of cake!"

So I brought two pieces of cake down on two small hand-painted plates I had bought at the market. A few days later, we returned to the U.S. for Christmas, and when we came back this winter, the two little plates were still missing.

I should note that this did not bother me at all. We still had two small plates, and Peter thought those plates were too small for cake anyway. He bought four more that were just as pretty and a little bigger, and that was the last I thought about our plates. Until last night.

Last night, Jorge knocked on our apartment door.

We are on the third story and Jorge is usually behind the front desk, or supervising the small kitchen downstairs, or spending a night in the little apartment on the ground floor, waiting for late arriving guests. But there he was at our door, holding our two plates.

"We have a tradition in Mexico," he told us, in English. "When you are given a plate with food, you must return it with a gift. This is what we do with our family and our friends."

On the plates were what appeared to be two enormous biscuits.

"These are ... I'm not sure what the word is in English," he confessed. "But they are the best."

Jorge handed us the two plates. We thanked him, and he left. Then we immediately put honey on the large, tasty whole wheat biscuits and ate them up. Jorge was right. They were the best ever.

As I washed up our two missing plates, I thought what a wonderful idea it was to return a borrowed plate with a gift. And I thought of what an honor it was to be considered Jorge's friend.

And I decided I needed to loan out more plates in the future -- plates filled with whatever I have to offer, whatever I can give -- knowing that, one way or another, the borrowed plate will be returned in some fashion, filled with something better than I could ever imagine.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found at CarrieClassonAuthor on Facebook.

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