An Irish proverb for St. Patrick's Day

The background color is green for St. Patrick's Day,

and I loved a black cat that I named Clawdia.

So this proverb is perfect for my blog today.

I miss you, Clawdia, my little black kitty with a heart on your chest.

Sunday Salon ~ book I heard about

The Second Chance ~ by Charlotte Butterfield, 2025, fiction, 384 pages

Nell has always known the date she's going to die.  After a psychic predicted her death date twenty years ago, she has lived life accepting she would never see forty –  embracing adventure and travelling the world, choosing fun over commitment and laying down roots.

So, when the fateful day comes, Nell feels ready.  She sends five excruciatingly honest confessions to her sister, parents and past loves, knowing she won’t be around to face the consequences.  Then, with her heart laid bare, all that's left to do is check into a glamorous hotel and wait for the inevitable.  But when Nell unexpectedly wakes up the next morning broke, single and very much alive, she must figure out exactly how to seize this second chance at life.  And then it also hits her ... what on earth happens now that everyone knows how she really feels?

QUOTE from a resident in our Cafe on the day before Pi Day (Friday, 3-13:  "Don't forget the MAGPIE while sitting around on Pi Day."

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, my subject was Roberta Flack and a book she published, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I wrote about Vitamin B12 deficiency, HERE.
3. Wednesday's word of the day was "extrapolate," HERE.
4. On Thursday, I was getting ready for Pi Day (or pie day), HERE, and also thinking about brain activity, HERE.
5. Book Beginnings on Friday's subject was a boy in a suitcase, HERE. 
6. On Saturday, I posted a cat quote, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

A quote for Caturday

"If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor,

a cat will find it and soak it up." — J. A. McIntosh

This is a repeat of a post from 2017, found HERE.

The Caturday quote was illustrated by my cat CLAWDIA,

who lived with me and blogged about things on CATURDAYS.

She still graces the heading above and the sidebar.

Beginning ~ with a woman dragging a suitcase

Beginning

Holding the glass door open with her hip, she dragged the suitcase into the stairwell leading down to the underground parking lot.  Sweat trickled down her chest and back beneath her T-shirt; it was only slightly cooler here than outside in the shimmering heat of the airless streets.

The Boy in the Suitcase ~ by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, 2011, mystery, 313 pages

Nona Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help -- even when she knows better.  When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets sucked into her most dangerous project yet.  Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy, naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking?  Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him?  When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too.  In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.

Pi Day = pie for dessert

Pi Day is celebrated each year on March 14th.  Why?  Because the mathematical "pi" equals 3.1415 (plus a string of other numbers).  When we put those numbers into the way we count days, they become 3/14 or 3-14.  Do you see it?  I loved numbers (as well as words) when I was in school, so this kind of stuff intrigued me.  This year (3-14-25) is a Friday (as you can see).  The illustration above seems rather impossibly to be a mixture of cherry pie and pumpkin pie.  I like both, but I prefer fruit pies like these.

Thursday Thoughts

What happens when we die?  I ran across THIS a few days ago, and I was fascinated:  "Brain activity may prove our souls leave our bodies when we die."  Recent studies suggest that a surge of brain activity observed in clinically dead patients could potentially be interpreted as evidence of the soul leaving the body.  EEGs have detected a burst of brain activity in the brains of clinically dead patients, even after vital signs like blood pressure and heart rate have ceased.  Another way to say it is the brain's final moments of activity or the effects of the dying process itself.  Someone called it a "near-death experience."  Yeah, I know this is a speculative interpretation, but isn't it interesting?

Once again, I happened across one of my old posts with a link to WindowSwap, which linked me HERE.  Clicking from window to window all over the world is fascinating . . . and addictive.  I just kept clicking, from backyards here and there to active scenes.  I saw Cancun and Japan and different states in the USA.  I glimpsed parts of the UK and South Africa and the Punjab, India.  I saw several cats looking out windows the way Clawdia did when she lived with me (shown above), plus a few cats cleaning themselves in the window or out on the porch.

Extrapolate is my word for today

I was in the Cafe recently, eating alone and blogging on my laptop.  Two men sitting near me were deep in a philosophical discussion of words and ideas.  One of them said "extrapolate," and I actually smiled to myself.  That was when this "wordy" person started composing this blog post.

Word of the Day

ex·trap·o·late / ikˈstrapəˌlāt / verb = extend the application of a method or conclusion (based on statistics) by assuming that these existing trends will continue.  For example, if I encounter only friendly faces in a town I am visiting, I may extrapolate that all the folks in that town are friendly.