I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Slice of Life

  • meet Cassidy Carport Cat

    meet Cassidy Carport Cat


    Yes, I have named the cat that adopted our carport as his home. Pretty and I have searched for a loving home for this little fellow for more than a year, but it turns out he found his own home with us. Sigh. I have resisted the pleas of our family, friends, even followers in cyberspace to name him because I felt that would make him less likely to find an indoor home. This week, though, I talked with Pretty, and she agreed Cassidy is a fine name. I added Carport Cat in honor of our beloved Carport Kitty who was our first feline love.

    Carport Kitty stole our hearts and then…

    and then broke them when we lost her in October, 2022

    No more stray cats in the carport, I declared through my tears to Pretty who nodded. But the best-laid plans of mice, men and me go where? go oft astray? oh no, they go to the strays.

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

    Slava Ukraini. Remember the children.

  • scenes from my hood this week

    scenes from my hood this week


    Remember Cat? He loves snooping in the car when he finds an open door – he still needs that good home with someone who will let him live inside, sit in their lap with pets and purrs aplenty. He has had all his shots, the worrisome knot removed and has been pronounced fit as a fiddle. Won’t you please give him the home he deserves?

    Someone went to the groomer this week – Carl looking good. 100% deaf, sundowner issues every afternoon, still loathes Spike, legs tremble from old age, but the little guy has spunk in spades. He could win an old dog sprinting contest, tail wagging contest in any age group. Plus, have you ever seen a cuter face?

    On a morning walk this week, I passed a tree with premature blooms that will surely freeze next week. Every year when we have warmer weeks in February, the blooming trees are deceived by the warmth, happily burst forth in colorful blossoms, and then frost bites them you know where.

    Valentine’s Day brought sweet wishes from Dawne and Darlene in the upstate – and a good laugh from our friend Rob –

    Speaking of the ex-president, the bad news kept pouring in.

    (MSNBC)

    That’s all, folks. Enjoy an extra day off tomorrow in the US for President’s Day holiday!

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • for Pretty on our twenty-third anniversary


    (1) There once was a woman named Teresa

    Who loved a good shrimp quesadilla.

    To Cancun she did roam in two thousand one,

    And when she came home still red from the sun,

    She’d found new love with her best friend named Sheila.

    (2) There once was a woman named Sheila

    Who loved a good shot of tequila.

    To Cancun she did roam in two thousand one,

    And when she came home her journey was done,

    She’d found true love with her best friend Teresa.

    (3) An anniversary of love in twenty twenty-three

    The best of the best has been you and me.

    Wherever we’ve roamed

    We’ve always come home

    Together, believing the best was yet to be.

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

    Happy Anniversary, Pretty. To quote Tina Turner, you’re simply the best – better than anyone could ever have been for me. I am forever grateful that you were the little girl who said yes.

  • if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone (2)

    if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone (2)


    When I woke up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I lay in bed and thought about the million tasks we had to accomplish next month to get moved out of our Texas house that we recently sold out of the blue. This stream of consciousness led me down the memory lane to a post I’d written here about Second Chances two years ago.

    I found it in the archives for September, 2012 and  re-read it, decided it was a little over the top because I devoted so much time talking about the “epistemology” of second chances.  Seriously, what was that about?  Clearly no one gives a hoot or a holler about that word anymore.

    For those of you who are my most loyal followers and who read the epistemology piece before I could figure out how to edit, thank you very much for indulging my big word fantasies. For those of you who just tuned in and have a burning interest in epistemology, please do take the time to visit the archives for the post.

    What I intended to say is I have been extraordinarily lucky to have had second chances to reconnect with my family and friends in Texas since Pretty and I bought our home on Worsham Street in March, 2010.  I’ve shared more holidays, birthdays, domino-playing days and nights, barbecue brisket, bourbon, Tex-Mex, margaritas, Lone Star First Saturdays, wine festivals, bluebonnet pastures, cookie walks, cemetery crawls, country music, front-porch rocking and visiting, bird watching and driving back country roads in the past four years than in the previous forty years. Yee haw – I even got used to wearing cowboy boots and hats again.

    I also found that taking these second chances gave me new first ones, too.  Living on Worsham Street in the little town of Montgomery was a slice of American life I’d lost faith in somewhere along the way.  My neighbors in the 600 block of Worsham became dear friends who reminded me that community and family are not abstract concepts but people who love and support each other through it all. I find that a message of hope for our country and our world.

    I’ve added Rule Number Six to the five rules I made up in that September, 2012 post:  Don’t confuse your second chances with your first choices or your first choices may become your second chances.

    Life is tricky, ain’t it?

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

    I can’t believe I published this piece ten years ago in February, 2014 which means I left Texas, friends, and family then for a second time; but some of my mixed memories from that four-year sabbatical follow me today.  Regardless of the longing in my heart for the Texas of my childhood, a time and place I no longer recognize, I treasure the second chance I had to appreciate new relationships, a renewed kinship with my native land. I believe my dad would have been proud because he told me too many times “you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.”