I have been reading a book which just happens to be about a heroic spinster...with a cat! The book is "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Bloom, a Dutch woman whose great faith in spinsterhood and cats...erm, I mean God...led her to risk her and her family members necks hiding Jewish people from the the Nazis in WWII. She is the good kind of spinster! One with a dramatic story of lost love that led to eternal spinsterhood. She fell in love with a real loser who seemed to return her affections...for a time. Though he never actually proposed, they talked about how many children they would have (pretty racy talk for the time, I am sure) so she was pretty sure a proposal was imminent...until he showed up to pay respects to her family with his fiance! Now, to be fair, Corrie's own brother told her early on that the man would never marry her because his whole family hung their hopes on him marrying for money, but Corrie was living by a river in Egypt!!! The Nile! Heheheehe. (Denial, get it??) After this heartbreak, she embraced spinsterhood. Which is a much better story than, "oh, I guess I just never wanted to marry anyone who wanted to marry me..."

Unfortunately, Maher Shalal Hashbaz (the cat) does not figure into the story very prominently so far... Corrie just worries about what became of the cat (and the Jews left behind in the secret hiding place) after the whole household was arrested. Hopefully, the Jews got out safely and remembered to let the cat out too... But, I fear the worst...

Guess how many places I have lived since I was 14 year old? 14! What a coincidence. Oh, the funny letters I found when I was digging through old letters trying to find my old addresses. It is sad that I will not have funny letters from you all NOW THAT YOU DON"T SEND ME ANY! Ah, that is the sad thing about email... No more snail mail to be thrown in a box to shock and amuse 20 years later...