This is gearing up to be what some would call “an ordinary Saturday”. I even hear Edvard Grieg’s Morning Mood playing in my head. Wake up at usual six am instead of four thirty. Snooze in until nine.  Reading. There’ll be some shopping later for a young man’s winter jacket, some help to another on his English homework. Clearing through some of the paperwork on my desk? Putting books back on bookshelves? Writing, even? Who knows – mysteries lurk in ordinary days – the ones where no one’s hysteria fuels big jags of adrenalin coursing through the system.

Morning. Text message from a friend: the final ultimatum held. All belongings picked up from their temporary shelter, the family on the move again with an extra serving of self-inflicted misery.

A friend has offered me an addition to my collection of gods, gnomes, lares and penates: a small guardian angel made by another friend out of bits and pieces of throw-outs and giveaways. The only photos I have of him for the moment make him look terribly gloomy but he isn’t. He’s just a scrappy little angel that got loaded down with droopy wings of theological drudgery.

Another friend suggested I use the Jewish scapegoat tradition as one way to move on from some of the less savory problems that cropped up in the recent (or distant) past. But I don’t see why a hapless goat needs that kind of treatment. Besides, I have another familiar around who does duty quite well as a neutralizer. I say: when in doubt, stick with your familiars – the symbolic equivalent to comfort food.

(Plus, when all else fails, there’s always The Woman with a Fly on Her Nose.)