MindSpinner

Spread newspaper on table. Find good short paring knife and the first of several required bowls. Place laptop beside newspaper and turn on NPR because snapping an entire bucket of beans will take a while and could get a little dull. (After checking a bean for spots, it is possible to read a sentence or two online while breaking it.)
Grab a couple of handfuls of beans and put them on the newspaper beside bowl.
Trim each end off bean and snap beans into 1″ pieces.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap. Grab another handful of beans from bucket.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap. Hold Orange Stripey Dude for a few minutes and scratch under his chin before putting him back on the floor.
Trim beans and snap. Grab another handful of beans from bucket.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table and give him his very own bean to play with.

Who knew how much fun a grean bean could be? Not me. Sounds of chasing and batting come from under the table.

Trim beans and snap. Get another bowl. Note that Orange Stripey Dude has grown weary at last and is falling asleep, lying with his back against the refrigerator, his left front paw resting atop his green bean.

1) I checked the beans yesterday and have a bucketful, so I’m pulling out the canner. I have enough tomatoes to make a small batch of sauce, too. I am happiest in the garden and least happy bumping about by myself in the house, ordering aimlessness with a to-do list. Today, however, it is steamy hot out. I’ll save the outdoors for evening.

2) I had thought that cats were loners of the animal world, that they preferred their own territory. Certainly Bobby, our five-year-old cat, has never liked other cats; he tolerates dogs better because he is more accustomed to them. Presented with a neighbor’s Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy (a creature bred for lion hunting), he will chase it around in the spirit of fun. Presented with a new cat, he will hiss and spit. And so he did at first with the orange kitten who has come to stay. Orange Stripey Dude, for his part, unabashedly expected to be loved and played with and would have no demurring. So now they play, they bathe each other with their tongues, and they often curl up together for a nap. So much for cats being solitary creatures.

3) The new academic year planners do me good. They have “November 2008″ printed right in front of me on physical pages, promising that the next presidential election really will come, and George Bush really will have to leave office.

4) My fifth period sophomore class of about 25 students has at least one precocious student who performs at college level, three who read at fourth grade level and one who reads at first grade level. One expects a range of abilities, but this mix is unusually challenging.