Over the weekend, Felix met his three other mothers.

Felix is our cat, and we adopted him from Mexico. We are now back in Mexico for the first time since we adopted him and, of course, Felix is with us.

When my husband, Peter, and I first discussed adopting a cat, I had in mind some needy little creature who would cuddle on my lap when I read. Instead, we got Felix.

Felix was a street cat for two years before he was scooped up by his foster mothers. He was very skinny when they found him. He is black and white, with silky fur and a sly grin, and he is not at all interested in sitting on anyone's lap. Instead, he likes to tear around the house like a maniac and play games with Peter and nibble my toes to show he cares. He's a good traveler, and he did not seem to mind either moving to the U.S. or getting in his backpack carrier and coming back to Mexico.

I had half-hoped there might be a mariachi band playing when we landed, congratulating Felix on his triumphant return. Instead, we were met by a customs official who made a photocopy of Felix's health records, took his temperature, and wished us all a pleasant visit.

Once we got to our little apartment surrounded by painted suns and got all our stuff back into the usual cupboards and cabinets, we contacted Felix's foster mother, Marcela, and told her we were back, and said we would love to have her over for cake.

Felix's foster mother works at the environmental preserve where Peter takes his long daily walk. She lives with her sister and her sister's daughter, and they all live with whatever animals they have collected and are caring for on that particular day. At present, there are two cats, four birds and eleven dogs.

"I think she spends all of her salary on animal food!" Marcela's boss told Peter. Marcela has a big heart. She was delighted to come with her sister and niece to our apartment for cake and to see how Felix was doing.

"Do you think they'll be surprised how big he is?" Peter asked.

"They'll think he's fat!" I said.

I was a little nervous because I knew that having them over for cake would be a challenge. They speak almost no English, and Peter speaks no Spanish, so I am the one who is supposed to be translating for everyone, and I do not speak enough Spanish to be a translator.

But it really didn't matter because no one was there to listen to me. They were there to visit Felix.

"Oh! He's big." That's what they all said -- and even Peter understood that.

"He is!" I agreed. "Do you think he's fat?" The two women and the young girl all looked at Felix very seriously while eating their carrot cake.

"No," they all said, after a moment's consideration. They did not think he was too fat.

"But he is a little spoiled, don't you think?" I asked.

All three of them laughed and said, no, he couldn't be spoiled because he was a precious cat, and he deserved the best -- and even Felix understood that.

So we finished our carrot cake, and the young girl played with her bubble machine, which looked like a camera but shot out bubbles, which Felix thought was very exciting.

"He has found a good family," Marcela said.

"We are all Felix's family now," I told her. And everyone agreed -- especially Felix.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

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The men who have been making the terrible noise are still at it.

The construction on our building began in the early spring, before my husband, Peter, and I returned from Mexico. When we arrived, scaffolding had been set up all around the building and blue plastic had been taped over our windows to protect them from flying debris. Our balcony was unusable, and the driveway was blocked off, filled with piles of bricks.

And every morning at 8:00 exactly, they began to jackhammer out the bricks.

The project entailed removing rows of bricks from every side and every story of the building because water was getting in. Some sort of magic was performed beneath them (I am not an engineer, in case you were wondering) and new bricks were put in place. The loudest and longest part of this project was the removal of the bricks, but there was also grinding down of edges once the new ones were in, and some pressure washing and, throughout it all and at every stage, a tremendous amount of noise.

The building leaked. There wasn't much we could do.

I decided early on that I could not vacate to a coffee shop every time I needed to write. I don't like wearing earplugs, and I'm not sure they would have done much good. Instead, I wrote through the noise. If I had to talk to Peter, I would go to the room he was in and stand close to him, because inter-room hollering was no longer possible (which might have been one small ancillary benefit of the facade repair).

They were all guys, and they were all quite large. Hammering out bricks and replacing them with more bricks while on a narrow platform high in the air is serious work. These guys did it five days a week from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, taking only a half-hour off for lunch.

I always said "hello." They always apologized for all the noise -- as if there was anything they could do about it. Sometimes I would thank them for the wake-up call. They always laughed and thanked me for being a good sport.

"We should get them snacks to thank them for their hard work," Peter said.

Peter believes every hardworking person deserves snacks. It is one of the many things I love about him. So I went to the bakery, and I bought a bunch of bars -- brownies and lemon bars and Rice Krispies bars and pumpkin -- and Peter and I delivered them one day when they took their short lunch break.

"I want a souvenir!" I told the foreman.

"What kind of souvenir?" he asked.

"I want a brick!"

"We've got bricks everywhere!" He laughed.

"Yes, but I want a signed brick. I want your autographs."

"Why would you want that?" he asked.

"I want it to remember this summer of noise!"

They all laughed, and just when we were getting ready to return to Mexico (which we usually think of as the noisier of our two homes), Peter said, "There's something for you outside the door."

And, of course, it was my brick, with everyone's name written on it. I was so pleased.

It reminds me of those hardworking guys outside my window, hanging off the side of the building day after day. It reminds me that, whatever hard work I think I am doing, there are much harder jobs out there. Sitting at my computer, putting up with a little noise, it reminds me that I have it pretty good.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

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The corn was planted late. We knew that at the time.

Because their house is located so deep in the woods, my mother has had no luck getting vegetables to grow. When my parents heard there were garden plots available in town, they signed up for one, and have had a garden in town for several years.

The rhubarb was already up when they were told there was a garden plot next to theirs that was not being used.

"Use it!" the manager of the community garden told them. I'm not sure where the idea came from, but my dad decided to plant corn.

It was late for corn, that far north. But my dad got three different kinds of seeds, and he soaked them overnight to give them a head start, and when I was visiting last spring, we stuck them in the ground and hoped for the best.

My mom sent a photo midsummer. "The corn is up!" she wrote, with a photo of the little green stalks in three neat rows.

"How's the corn?" I'd ask when I called.

"It's coming, but we still don't have any cobs ready."

The stalks grew tall, and they tasseled out, and there were ears clinging to the stalks. A raccoon or similar invader knocked a cob off the stalk and my dad peeled it open. "Still not ready to eat," he reported.

I visited this past weekend and, late in September, the weather was still warm, although the days were shorter, that far north. I took the garden hose at the community garden and gave the corn a good watering, and I wondered if my parents would get any corn to eat.

While I had the hose out, I also watered the rhubarb. My mother told me that folks said harvesting rhubarb late in the season prevented a good crop from being produced in the spring. But I could tell my mother was skeptical. She has been growing rhubarb almost all her life and knows a thing or two about rhubarb by now. She had given the last of her rhubarb to a friend and wanted to make one last batch of sauce, so we pulled out a pile of big, healthy stems, late in September, and brought them home.

"I don't think it hurts them a bit!" my mother said.

But the corn was not yet ready.

There was still corn at the corn stand. The farmers know what they're doing, planting the corn very early and very late and keeping the sweet corn season going as long as possible. It made me hopeful that those cobs, even if they were a little small, might turn into something edible before the first frost.

On this last visit to the garden, I saw that most of the gardeners have packed up for the summer. They had pulled out the last of the beans and tomatoes and raked out their beds. They had piled cow manure on the top of their beds and taken off for Florida or Arizona. One of them was there while I was watering the corn.

"See you next year!" he told my parents.

My parents are still watering the corn. And I'm glad we planted it, no matter what happens.

Maybe nothing will come of it. Probably nothing will. But planting late corn has given us something to hope for. It's like rooting for a losing team. It's like starting a new dream late in life. I admire my parents for planting corn after the rhubarb was up and hoping for the best.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

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