World's worst editorial assistant

For some reason, for which we have no actual explanation, once the cold sets in, Magellan decides that my husband's lap or chest are the only places where she wants to warm up. This is usually not the best of arrangements, of course, when he is trying to do his work, on his laptop, and she decides that his lap is where she needs to spend the day.

The worst part of the arrangement is that Magellan will get VERY angry if he moves too much or if he tries to re-arrange her more comfortably for him. In those cases, she will get pissy and bite him to assert her Empress Magellan right to a peaceful, if day-long, nap.

We actually can tell when a night is going to be particularly cold because Magellan gets on our bed quickly and settles between us or between my legs pretty self-assuredly and permanently. On warmer nights, she finds somewhere else to settle her fat boricua butt.

While Magellan is getting increasingly demanding because of the cold, Lizzy is dealing with her post-parental visit depression. Sometimes she'll come upstairs and whine, looking from place to place to see where everyone went. She then plops herself on the reading chair, which she loved to take away from my dad, and looks very forlorn.

Tonight, we couldn't take her for her trail walk because it was rainy and late and cold, so we took her for a walk outside the gates of the property. She enjoyed herself, pulling against the leash to try to run here and there in search of one more smell (that's where the deer abound), and even got a chance to eat a morsel of what we believe to have been deer poop. But then she came inside and looked sad and bored.

Darwin, meanwhile, has the best personal equilibrium of them all, and is pretty much a blithe spirit, who doesn't get too upset or wound up about anything (except his little fake mice, which are filled with cat nip, and which we can't throw around anymore because Lizzy will eat them).

That's how our little family is getting along these days, when temperatures remain 20 degrees below normal and, as my favorite TV meteorologist recently announced, we've skipped from summer straight into winter with no actual fall. As to Magellan's skills as an editorial assistant, my husband pronounces: "She's terrible. She messes up everything. And she's not a very good writer."