Incoming from Australia and Germany

From Australia, with the stamp on the front. 

From Dortmund, Germany --this is apicture of the senders cat (whose name is Minou) turned into a postcard!

Pretty German stamp. 

Incoming from Shanghai

This postcard is of the town Wuzhen, an ancient Chines town in Zhejiang Province.  I liked the colorful stamps too!

Outgoing to South Korea and Finland

I almost kept the lower one, because the picture reminded me of the illustrations by Garth Williams in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books that I like so much. 

Two outgoing postcards

The one above is off to Lithuania

This Ernst Haeckel postcard is off to Berlin. 

Three incoming postcards

A pretty kitty from Portugal

A cute longer postcard from China with pretty fruit & flower stamps

And another cute kitty card from Germany with very nice stamps too. 

Incoming from Germany

This cute kitty card from Germany made me very happy! :-) Love the baby wild boar stamp too!  

Outgoing Postcard (Postcrossing)

This one is off to Portugal! :-) 

Incoming from Russia

Today I received this beautiful postcard from Russia! I love the stamps too!

The Cask of Amontillado meets the Black Cat or how Laverne got stuck in the bathroom wall.

I was on my mini-holiday in Hamburg with my sister when I got a WhatsApp from Bill that he had driven home from work early (he commutes for four days a week to Chicago) bc Laverne had been/was stuck in the bathroom wall—our lovely neighbor had messaged him.

He mentioned that she had posted something on Facebook so I went to take a peak: about 50 different messages had been exchanged on Oxford page re: “cat stuck in wall, what should I do?”

So, this is what had happened: our/my bathroom was being beautifully remodeled and so far, everything was going to plan. The cats were being taken care of by Bill when he was home and lovely neighbor in his absence. During the day when the remodeler was doing his work they kept a low profile.

Everything was in place for the new mirror/cabinet to be attached above the sink.  I think he left for a couple of hours leaving that part of the wall open. So along comes Laverne: who is, it must be said, a vexing combination of curious and clumsy, who must have jumped up onto the new sink to see what was in the hole and then, we surmise, must have fallen down into the wall. Plonk.

The remodeler returns and oblivious to Laverne’s plight (because Laverne was too scared to make a noise) proceeds to attach the mirror to the wall, thus encasing poor Laverne completely inside the bathroom wall. And off he goes.

Lovely neighbor realizes pretty soon that something is up: she has not seen Laverne, and the other cats -bless their hearts- seem upset too and are not eating.  Esp her darling sister Shirley who keeps sitting by the sink cabinet and meowing—trying to do her best Lassie impression: “LAVERNE IS STUCK IN THE WALL, PLS GET HELP!!”

At some point lovely neighbor actually hears Laverne meowing—at that point she steps fully into action: posting for help on Facebook, trying to get in touch with the contractors and also texting Bill—she got him on the phone and apparently Bill heard Laverne screeching while on the call—that is what set him off to come home from Chicago early.

Meanwhile lots of “helpful” suggestions have come in on the Oxford Facebook page along the line of “smash the wall in” etc. An employee of the local donut shop comes over to assess the situation and I think he detached the mirror. The problem was that Laverne would not make any noise when a strange man was there, so the employee had to believe lovely neighbor without actually any sounds coming from the wall.

Eventually the contractor did come over (this is probably about 8:30 pm or maybe 9?) and he made a small hole near the floor next to the sink. Even with the hole poor freaked Laverne would not come out. So lovely neighbor left food and water and left. Bill came home and went into the bathroom and she came out almost immediately and apparently not much the worse for wear, although she did keep close to Bill.  

All the kitties were relieved and assumed their normal “we’re so spoilt” cat existences.

Shirley, in the back, reunited with her sister Laverne. 

When Marion Zimmer Bradley came to stay. (Nothing bad happened, but she seemed an odd person).

In the early eighties we sometimes had writers and sci-fi fans stay with us in Germany.  My mother always felt bit isolated as a writer and so cherished these opportunities to discuss all kinds of issues related to the world of sci-fiction and writing in general. She was also always an outgoing and sociable person who loved telling jokes and simply having a good time with people she liked and found interesting. For someone who was a writer, she always seemed quite extroverted, at least to my more introverted self.

One of the people who stayed with us on at least a couple of occasions was Marion Zimmer Bradley. Because of recent revelations I’ve been racking my brain a bit to remember the times she came to stay in greater detail.

I do remember a certain amount of eye-rolling taking place when my sister and I were told that people were coming to stay, and this was especially the case with MZB. To my teenage-self MZB seemed a profoundly odd person. Not creepy or sinister in any way- just- well- odd. (And not particularly nice or friendly).

When we first moved to Germany, after living with my dad’s brother and his family for some time, we moved into a modestly sized flat in our middle-sized German town to the south of Frankfurt.  MZB came to our town at least twice, and I’m fairly certain she did stay with us on at least one occasion but on the other occasion she stayed in a small hotel down the street. Even when she did not stay at our place she spent a great deal of time there with my mother in particular and witnessed a fair amount of our everyday comings and goings.

The things we found odd about her (and this included to a certain extent our mom, who was also flattered to be on quite friendly terms with this successful writer) were:

Her odd, frumpy-looking appearance and her complete lack of interest in her appearance or her clothes. I’m pretty sure mum lent her some of her own clothes to sort of “spruce her up” for the book fare appearance.

Her outspokenness to the point of rudeness (typical to our minds of the cliche of the “loud American”) and her self-centeredness. 

In connection with the lack of interest in appearance was a certain frugality/stinginess, which my mother felt somewhat odd, considering she must have been doing quite well, at the time, thanks to “The Mists of Avalon”.  (which back then I felt guilty for not having read, now not so much).

Another thing I remember mom talking about and being confounded by was her lack of understanding of, or interest in, more intellectual writers such as Virginia Woolf or Henry James. I remember mum talking about how she had tried but failed to get Marion interested in such authors.

It did appear that they got along well though and had good talks.

Not at any point did she come across as sinister or manipulative, although as already noted she did come across as odd. I do remember her sort watching our family life and sometimes commenting on it: it made me think her life must be quite different. Once I heard her mention to my mother the fact that I often hummed or sang songs to myself as I went about the house, and how that must have meant I was happy (which I suppose it did, it was just something we all did quite a bit) and I realized she was observing us/me in the context of our everyday family life.

Not exactly sure why I’m posting this now—probably as some sort of reckoning with the past.