What I'm Reading

Barbara passed this book along to me a few weeks ago. I finished the lighthouse book and really loved it. I was getting close to the end, about 20 pages to go, and I was already getting annoyed, positive that I wouldn't like the ending. All the loose ends needed to be tied up, and I didn't trust the author to do it in a believable way -- but she did. So that was a very satisfying read.

You might be able to see that this new book was written by the author of The Lovely Bones which some of you may have read -- the story about the young girl who was murdered and narrates her own story. So far, I'm enjoying this book. Really nice writing.

On other fronts, my mouse/mice seem to have temporarily vacated the premises. My cleaning woman was here on Thursday and she had cleaned the kitchen floor with the mouse droppings around the trash can. We left the one glue trap by the trash can and each day I slowly peer around the corner to see if there's anything in the trap. I told a friend today that my looking at the trap is the definition of ambivalence. Part of me truly wants to find a dead one in there; the other part of me is just happy when it's empty. No dead mouse; no droppings either. That part I'm not in denial about. I even pull the trash can away from the wall to check behind it and so far, nothing.

However my apartment isn't without animal activity in that my ghost cat has made a return. Today when I went to use my upstairs toilet, I see the unraveled toilet paper bunched up on the floor. I really have no explanation for this. So I rolled it up again and about 90 minutes later when I went back, there is was -- unrolled again with this heap of paper on the floor. I wondered if I unroll it myself with my thigh or whatever when I sit down (or get up) and tested that, sitting down and getting up normally, but my body never touches the toilet paper roll. I know I sound batty. I am quite sure it's not a mouse as I don't think a mouse is strong enough to do that and also I have never seen a mouse in that bathroom.

So when I looked for a Google image of "ghost cat," apparently I'm not alone. Haven't tried to photograph mine, and I'm not saying this is real, is probably fake as hell, but here's one of them: