Squiddles on the Roof

When I was in college a Buddhist monk and scholar from Thailand spent a term as visiting professor. He was a very erudite man, and humble, compassionate and humorous. He also had a very thick accent. Most of us students were working hard to wrap our minds around a conceptual universe that was quite different from any philosophical or religious system we had known before. So maybe we were primed to expect more intellectual difficulties than actually existed.

At any rate, after one lecture a student had some questions about reincarnation.

"You mean we can come back as an animal, like a cat or a dog?"

"Oh yes, a cat or dog or even a squiddle."

"A squiddle?"

"Yes, even that."

(Puzzlement) "But what is a squiddle?"

"You know, they are all over campus. Little animals with big tails. They climb up trees."

Which is all just an elaborate introduction to saying that the squiddles have been loudly ramping across the roof all morning, despite a temperature just one degree above zero. Someone told me it's their mating season, so I guess they can't help it, poor dears.

********************

I'm making a hat for my friend, Lavonne, who starts chemotherapy on Tuesday. I wish I didn't have the occasion. The yarn is Cascade Chunky Baby Alpaca, which is very soft and lightweight and should be very warm. It feels like such a small gesture. I saw Lavonne come through major heart surgery a few years ago almost without blinking, but this has her shook. I don't know that I'm much of a praying person in any conventional sense, but she's asked for prayer, so in my own way I'm trying. If any of you can hold her in your thoughts for a few moments that would be wonderful.