It's been a big year for our cat, Felix.

Sometime in late 2023, Felix was scooped up off the street in Mexico by a teenager and brought to the home of her mother and aunt. I'm not sure how he was received when he arrived. They already had 11 dogs, at least a couple of cats and several birds. They gave him food and a home, and I imagine the teenager, Daniela, thought that the fostering arrangement would eventually become permanent.

But that's not what happened.

Daniela's aunt, Marcela, works at the environmental preserve where my husband, Peter, hikes every day, and one day he asked her, "Do you have a cat or a kitten looking for a home?"

Probably, the way Peter asked was a little less elegant, because Peter does not speak Spanish. But she did -- have a cat, that is. She still had the cat her niece, Daniela, had brought home two months earlier.

Daniela and Marcela and Daniela's mother all came over in a taxicab with Felix to our little apartment and we met him, who I expected would be terrified in a new place with new people.

But Felix was not afraid. He sprawled across the couch and looked at all these people looking at him and seemed to feel he was right where he belonged. And so he came to live with us in February. Daniela came again when they dropped Felix off, and we could tell she was sad. But we promised to send pictures and take good care of him, and we have done both.

And Felix seems to love his new life.

Instead of sharing a house with several cats and a rotating cast of dogs and birds, he is the only nonhuman in our house. He plays games with Peter and gets snacks several times a day. He talks a lot and has two people who listen to whatever he has to say, even if it is just his regular announcement of when he is going to have a bowel movement -- which I'm sure is newsworthy as far as he is concerned.

"Meow! Meow!" he announces, before and after the big event.

"That's wonderful," I assure him. "Well done!" (I seriously doubt he would have had this quality of attention competing with 11 dogs.)

Today, we are "up north" visiting my parents, and Felix is with us. Katie, my parents' cat, does not care for Felix at all. Katie is annoyed with the casual nonchalance Felix exhibits wherever he is -- the sense that he owns whatever home he is in and deserves whatever treats come his way.

Felix plays with Katie's toys, sleeps in her bed and eats up whatever snacks she may have left in her bowl. He watches the gray squirrels outside and sleeps on my mother's chair every time she carelessly vacates it. Felix is very much at home.

And it is good to be at home with Felix -- wherever he is. I think he has lessons to teach me -- as all animals do.

He has shown me that where we start may have very little to do with where we end up. He has shown me that it's possible to feel comfortable and enjoy even the most radical change in circumstances. He has shown me that life is full of surprises and it's the way we react that usually determines how good or bad this change might be.

And he's shown me that everything can be enjoyable, if viewed from the right perspective. Even if it's just a trip to the bathroom.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

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My sister took me to task. "You know I was not being mean about your dress, don't you?"

She meant the dress that she had said made me look like a car wash -- the part of the car wash where the flappy things slap the car dry. My dress looked a lot like that, especially if I spun around. I thought this was hilarious and mentioned it in a column.

"Of course I knew you weren't being mean!" I told her.

It was not my intention to be so amusing, wearing the car wash dress. From a certain angle, it looks pretty stylish. It was some designer's idea of a good look, and because I wear a smaller size, I can usually fit into these ill-conceived but affordable cast-offs I find on the internet. Not all of them work out. But I am delighted when I can cause some unexpected merriment simply by showing up in an $11 used dress.

My sister ought to know this. She should know that, at 62, I am not angling for some best-dressed list. I am all about having fun with clothes, trying weird and different things, and a lot of those things absolutely are not going to work out. That is fine with me. I still have the car wash dress. Unlike an actual car wash, it is black, so I could wear it to a funeral sometime when I felt a little levity might be welcomed at the end of the service.

My family has a fine tradition of teasing. I know some people find this hard to believe, and I know some people tease cruelly. That is not what I mean at all. The teasing in my family has always been delivered with a heavy dose of love. Since I was a small child, I have known that the person who got teased was loved and the more people teased, the more love there was.

My dad and his sister were terrible to each other. My father always gave my aunt the meanest birthday cards, until one year she said, "Just once, I'd like a nice birthday card!"

The next year, my father went on a mission to find the most maudlin, absurdly sentimental, "To My Beloved Sister" birthday cards he could find. We found three, doused them in perfume, and presented them to her. (My dad also made her a rather nice set of candleholders in his woodshop that year, as I recall.)

They both laughed so hard they had to wipe away tears. She never asked for another nice card. So when my sister tells me I look like a car wash, it makes my day. I feel seen. I feel loved.

Being able to tell someone they look like a car wash means you know them well. She knows I have an oversized interest in buying dresses -- too many dresses -- for cheap on the internet. She knows I am not terribly self-conscious. (OK, I'm a bit of a ham.) Most of all, she knows that I know she loves me. She has supported me through every crazy and life-disturbing decision and event -- through career changes, through a divorce, through moves across the country. There has never been a moment of my life when I have doubted that my sister would be there for me.

And so she gets to tease me.

I am definitely keeping the car wash dress. And it's not the last crazy dress I will buy. I figure it's my duty to give my sister something new to laugh about.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

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This year had a lot of ups and downs for me.

This past spring, I felt about as low as I have felt about my writing since I started. My book was going nowhere. There seemed to be nothing I could do to better its chances of being sold. I was unsure if anything I was writing was any good.

Then something happened. And that something was nothing at all.

There's a story Stephen King tells about his first novel, "Carrie," my more frightening namesake. The novel, to hear him tell it, was in the wastebasket. (This was in the days when documents were made of real paper and went into actual wastebaskets.) His wife, Tabitha, pulled the pages out, brushed off the cigarette ashes, and read them. She thought they were good. She encouraged him to continue. He did, and the rest is history.

I love this story because nothing happened. Tabitha believed in him. He decided not to quit. This is not the stuff of a screenplay -- certainly nothing as exciting as Stephen King would write. But I love the story because I believe this is how most of the big miracles happen. In my case, I just moped around for a few days and finally realized that, if I was going to feel any different, I would have to do something different. And so I did.

I started planning a show for the first time in four years. I made plans to perform in front of people -- not because it was the most practical course of action for a writer to take, but because it made me happy, and it connected me and my writing to other people. For the first time, I almost forgot I had a book being shopped around. As soon as I started making plans, everything changed.

I realized I loved the new book I was working on and dove into revisions. I was able to finish the book after that. I had been worried I would have less energy to devote to projects if I picked up another one. Instead, I had much more energy than before. I had just been a little stuck.

And, somewhere in the middle of all that, my book sold.

In a movie, there would have been a miraculous phone call that turned everything around.

"Hello, Carrie? We're interested in buying your book!" the caller would have said in the movie version of my life. This is not what happened. I was already unstuck when the good news arrived.

This is the lesson I'd like to take into the new year.

It's easy to get a little stuck. There are things that will genuinely slow me down and hamper my success and, as optimistic as I am, I'm not blind to these obstacles. More will come in the future. I know this.

But, somehow, I need to find a way to get unstuck.

Sometimes it's as simple as messing with my routine: Go out for a coffee once in a while, take a walk in the morning, call a friend I haven't talked to in a while. It doesn't really matter. That is the point. It doesn't matter what I do, as long as I get unstuck. The hardest thing is to recognize that I am stuck and realize I don't have to be.

I can't fix everything at once. I might spin my wheels for a while. But, with any luck, someone like Tabitha will give my rear bumper a push when I need it, and I can get myself moving again.

Happy New Year,

Carrie

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

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