It had been some time since we last thought about the Montauk Monster around the office. But on Tuesday, our memories were refreshed by a query from a National Geographic television program producer looking for images for an upcoming program.

To be clear, The Star does not own the rights to the infamous photograph taken by one of our former interns, the daughter of our Montauk correspondent. It was Jenna Hewitt who snapped the shot of an odd, mostly hairless animal carcass found while she was walking on the beach in July 2008. I passed the message from National Geographic on to her via her mom, Janis.

A funny thing about the whole Montauk Monster business is that The Star did not break the story. The what-is-it! coverage began with The Independent and took off from there. By the time we wrote about it, it had become a full-blown Internet sensation. TV crews arrived and interviewed Ms. Hewitt and other discoverers of the sad beast, Courtney Fruin and Rachel Goldberg. Ms. Hewitt told The Star that by a certain point the whole thing had given her a headache.

“We’ve had invites. It’s fun, but it’s August, and we work in restaurants,” Ms. Hewitt said. Classic Montauk.

By then, we were on the story, though trying to frame it for our readers more as a media frenzy phenomena than a mystery. The Star’s nature columnist, Larry Penny, had taken a look at the photograph and conclusively dismissed the carcass as a dead raccoon a bit worse for wear for having been in the surf awhile.

Things took an interesting turn, though, when the thing went missing. Two men had taken the bloated and stinking thing away and left it in a wooded backyard to decay, apparently intending to salvage its bones to encase in resin and sell as art. As best as I can remember, the remains were never seen after that, as fitting an end to the story as could have been hoped, I suppose.

Of course, on the Internet, nothing really ever ends, and the Montauk Monster will live on in the vast, vast universe of cyber-speculation. Why, it’s even got its own Wikipedia page, and that’s more than I can say.

Lisa said it would get worse  before it got better and she was right. There is a rule of etiquette that says that it is impolite to talk about one’s health, but if describing the cold that has been working its way through our household will convince one person to go scrub their hands, it will have been worth it.

My wife is hardly the type of person to get sick. Colds usually set her back for half a day. Then she bounces up and goes back at it. This is good, because as a high school teacher she is exposed to all sorts of things, from great gossip to nasty viruses. Mix in our kids as vectors, and if there is something going around, we’re going to be right in its gunsights.

Back when our first child was little, the Country School in Wainscott she attended for prenursery had a rule (and probably still does) that each student had to wash his or her hands upon arrival in the morning. For us, it was a fun ritual; she would put her hands under the running water, and I would work her wrists as if she were a puppet. At this point, I can’t remember if we had fewer colds, but the hand-washing was a good lesson.

The current cold goes through the usual running nose, aches, and sneezing. Then, when you think it has run its course and you feel a little better, it takes you down again. And so it goes, in my case now, for more than a week. I blame the inflammation; Advil is about my only relief.

Science tells us that there is a link between rest and catching a cold. A study I heard about on the radio found a 20-percent reduction in symptoms among test subjects who got ample sleep. Unfortunately, circumstances have had me awake well before dawn too often lately, which does not bode well for recovery.

Keep those hands clean, people. Get enough rest. But keep the Ibuprofen ready just in case.

If a parking ticket in Southampton Town isn’t a first-world problem, then I don’t know what is.

It all started when I decided I was too lazy to drive UpIsland for a party two Saturdays ago, and opted for the Long Island Rail Road instead of what Google Maps was showing to be an hour-and-36-minute drive. The party was to have a “Back to the Future” theme, and its outcome had me wishing I could travel back in time a couple of hours and tell my lazy self to suck it up and drive. UpIsland, I partied like it was 1985. When I returned about 24 hours later, there it was on the windshield: Written overnight, clear as day, was a $100 ticket for illegally parking in a lot that required a permit.

I started to panic. A hundred bucks is a lot of money for a single, 30-something Long Island girl living east of the Shinnecock Canal. I began listing the things I’d have to sacrifice in order to pay the fine. Ten months of Netflix? Twenty or so trips to Starbucks? Cancel my Ipsy cosmetics subscription? The horror. Maybe I’ll sign up for media access to this week’s gallery openings and theater events. If I can eat a few meals in the press room, at least I’ll save at the grocery store. (Note to my editor: I’m just kidding.)

My next instinct was to get defensive. The Long Island Rail Road website does not list any parking restrictions for the Bridgehampton station parking lot, and anyway, many UpIsland towns and villages allow permit-free parking in train station lots on the weekend. Such an agreement is said to encourage tourism to New York City on Saturdays and Sundays, so I thought it was a safe assumption that Southampton Town, too, accommodates westbound travelers in this way. I was incorrect, but my indignation survived long enough to temporarily inspire thoughts of fighting the parking ticket.

Then I started to get angry at myself. I might have a lazy streak, but mostly I’m an overachiever and a perfectionist to a degree of sickness, so to have this black mark on my record felt really frustrating. Okay, maybe it’s not as much a black mark as it is a little gray smudge, because there won’t be any points recorded against my driver’s license. Still frustrating, though, because this totally could have been avoided.

If I were to tweet this, I’d surely hashtag it “firstworldproblems.” It’s bad enough that Starbucks in East Hampton is closed for renovation right now. What’s next — how to avoid pairing navy blue with black in my O.O.T.D.? Too many costumes to choose from on Halloween? Zumba, yoga, or kickboxing for my Saturday morning workout? To quote from another overused hashtag, the struggle is real.

When perspective finally started to set in, I realized this whole parking ticket situation wasn’t so bad after all. The fine could have been higher, or the car could have been towed. Or worse: There could be no fat to trim in my budget whatsoever, and I’d really have something to worry about. So I opened my checkbook, made out a check, and stuck it in an envelope with the ticket.

Damn, I’m out of stamps, and I’ve got to mail this by today to get it in on time. First-world problems indeed.

Christine Sampson is a reporter for The Star.

Putter, a male cat who may not have made it, and Summer, Putter’s sister, a shy, small, not-much-of-a-cat’s cat, have both blossomed into Disney movie-like caricatures — possibly, someday, attaining cat-legend status in the Cats Hall of Fame, East Hampton, N.Y.

Putter, a scatterbrained, uncoordinated scaredy-cat, a loose cannon, at times emotionally deranged, a falling-from-beam, running-into-wall type cat, a cat destined for cat heaven at a young age. An indoor cat, a cat who would go into deep hiding at the hint of any housecleaning; later, at cleaning’s end, Putter would wobble out of some back hidden section of a remote closet, his demeanor not unlike the human type you see coming out of Rowdy Hall during German Beer Fest Week, after having imbibed too many pints of beer at 11 on Friday night.

Putter was not a good cat! He was not a very friendly cat! He was not a smart cat! Destiny’s bad door was closing in on poor Putter the cat.

Upon being stuck outside his home, Putter would raise a shrill whine that could wake a demon. Then, a door or window was left open: Behold . . . a cannon-shot cat flying through door or open window at breakneck speed, headed for a lengthy hideout somewhere deep in a back closet, or places unknown.

Putter despised the outdoors, cared for nothing beyond the confines of his small home. Putter was beyond a homebody cat: He was slightly psycho.

Summer the female cat: much the same. Not much of a cat. Not interesting, not friendly, not exciting, did not meow much. The cat did not purr often, eat a lot, run around a lot, did not go outside. This was a classic case of a boring East Hampton cat! Not as crazy as her brother, Summer seemed destined to live a long, unadventurous life indoors, away from farm mice, mole, or rabbit.

What happened to Putter and Summer the cats?

Their cat food was changed some years ago to Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’ Favorites from a more expensive dry cat food with a fancy name and claims to health and vitality. The transformation began slowly, with antics that may go down in East Hampton cat history. After a year on the Surfin’ & Turfin’ diet, events as such took place: Summer spent days following a giant tired bumblebee that had flown inside. As the bumblebee wearied, Summer attacked, pinning it to a wooden floor and eating it in small bites, each bite showing a cat face of “Wow, triple-X hot sauce.”

Her coat darkened and lightened, her nose became prettier and a square shamrock shape. Summer became a friendlier cat! Summer became a super-clean cat, cleaning herself all day sometimes. Summer is now a nice cat, with cat expressions saying, “Like, get lost, pal, I’ve got bugs and bees to hunt. Where’s my brother, Putter . . . he’s gonna help.”

Putter, after his diet change to Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’, turned to wild adventure. A beautiful female human guest on the lawn enjoying a glass of Bordeaux wine was asked, “Have you seen Putter?” as early winter night fell. A minute later a giant rabbit ran by, 12 paces away, heading for deep cover in the close-by field. Moments later a streak of a cat resembling Putter ran by, sort of in that direction. Shortly after, an unidentified cat with primarily darkish black markings zoomed by. Putter was having fun with a rabbit and a stray neighborhood cat at the same time. An hour later Putter strolled into the house as if saying, “No big deal, just another Friday cat night.”

Putter’s antics with his 5-year-old male human cousin are quickly becoming household legend. The summertime question arises, “Where’s Santiago?” The fear of Putter badly scratching Santiago: ever present. Yet, miracles happen! Little cousin Santiago Morgan has tamed the beast and is walking around with the cat in a full bear hug, cat legs dangling and all.

Putter seems calm, collected, a super-cool cat ready for anything 5-year-old Santi can dish out. Other encounters with Santi include cat-tail pulling, crawling under bed to harass cat, Santiago using a yellow marker to paint a stripe on Putter’s back — Santiago’s bad little boy behavior gets no reaction at all from Putter the cat.

Of course, little pieces of leftover Iacono chicken are added to Putter’s and Summer’s Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’ Favorites dry cat food. Striped bass is also added to the mix when family friend Garry is fishing and has extra to give away. Occasionally the two cats get a bit of milk. They dip their respective paws in and lick their feet for hours. Both cats drink a lot of tap water from a bowl.

Don’t think for a minute these are sissy cats. Beware these cats’ claws! Morgan Jr. is neglectful of his claw-trimming duties. After all, he is the owner of the cats. They look like fun cats. They are nice-looking, wonderfully marked cats who run up and down floorboards and furniture. However, a reminder to those who encounter Putter and Summer: They were born feral cats under an East Hampton house. Until their claws are cut and they have aged a bit more in cat years, best to give them room to be cats.

You can try as you might to take the wild, adventuresome cat out of an East Hampton cat! Occasionally that just does not work.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

This week, amid juggling pre-election stories, it has been project time in the Rattray household. Evvy, our sixth grader, volunteered to make one of the party games for a school Halloween party, and so, after spending Tuesday trying to make sense of campaign finance reports, I raced home with a slab of builder’s blue foam.

We were to have started on the project Monday evening, but Evvy got the green light to go with her grandfather to see the pumpkins at the Bridgehampton Lions Club contest then get dinner. Instead, we set to it a day late. Truth was, her celebration was not for a couple of days, but she said it was due early.

She is calling the game Poke the Ghosts and Pumpkins, and, as best I understand it, kids in the lower grades at her school will choose from among a grid of 50 paper-covered

plastic cups, each ripping through one to discover a prize. Other sixth graders are filling the cups and capping them; our part is making a large foam grid to hold it all.

As I write, I am waiting for her to get out of bed to see about painting it. After spending about two hours the night before helping her mark out lines on the foam and then cut 50 holes with a drywall saw, the enclosed porch where we went at it was filled with tiny pieces of blue debris. Ellis, our 5-year-old, who lost a first tooth later that night, took each of the leftover circles of foam and assembled them into a rectangle by the front door. It was an “app,” he said, as in something one would use on an iPhone.

One of the pleasures, if hectic after a long day, of being a parent is helping with school projects. Of course, the eternal question is how much to do and how much to leave to the child. Evvy, to her credit, sawed at the foam board until her arm got tired. I took over then and finished up. And Ellis never stopped taking the pieces for his app.

Then I vacuumed. And I’ll probably end up driving the thing to school. That will be part of the project, too.

This month marks a year since I last set foot in Manhattan.

A lot has happened.

Last December, at seven months pregnant, the diagnosis of an “irritable uterus” rendered me unable to lift anything remotely heavy. A brisk walk, a gentle yoga class, even picking up my 2-year-old son, resulted in hours upon hours of painful contractions followed by more than a few panicked trips to the emergency room to make sure that I wasn’t going into early labor.

Needless to say, my movements became more restricted and solo trips into the city seemed absurd.

Flash forward to March, when our daughter, Violet, arrived during the last snowstorm of the season.

People often ask, when ostensibly making polite conversation, if we’re considering a third child. My response, followedby a long, uncomfortable pause, is “absolutely not.”

Two kids is no joke. With one kid, you can sort of fake it. Your body quickly adjusts to sleeping again. Your old life eventually comes back into focus, at least somewhat. But with two children, life seems altered irrevocably, and most days still seem a puzzle whose pieces I have yet to make fit.

My husband and I live in perpetual fear of illness. We’re essentially one bad head cold away from the whole thing falling apart.

I often wonder how people go about deciding exactly how many children to have. As the only child of my parents’ marriage, I reveled in the attention it afforded, but as the years wear on, I also feel the burden of it.

For my son, Theo, I wanted him to have the experience of growing up with a sibling close in age. It’s a wonderful thing to pick up the phone as an adult and reach someone who has the shared trauma of growing up in the same household. As parents, we obviously can’t dictate their degree of closeness, but it’s my hope that Theo and Violet will, at the very least, look after each other.

Shortly after our daughter’s arrival, a friend of my husband’s sent the following note: “I hope this finds you well. I know it finds you exhausted. The thing I miss terribly going from one child to two children was the nap. It was difficult to coordinate two nap schedules and as a consequence the Dad Nap was eliminated. The Dad Nap is an essential part of parenting and sadly with two dependent children, it is a very rare thing.”

My only amendment is the Mom Nap, which has similarly fallen by the wayside.

He ended the note by writing: “Remember, and I say this to truly comfort you, your next good sleep will be in your grave.”

Exhaustion aside, we’re still finding our rhythm among who, exactly, does which increasing number of domestic chores. To his credit, my husband nearly always pulls his weight and seems, for the most part, not to mind it.

Still, I keep having the same nightmare, in which something terrible has happened to me and my children no longer have clothes that fit or fingernails that have been trimmed (I buy their clothes and clip their nails).

My generation is a funny, in-between one. While it was never a question that I would have a career and work outside the home, the roadmap to getting there seems to work a bit differently for each mother I know. Despite being told to Lean In at all costs, we also haven’t figured out basic things like paid maternity leave and child care subsidies to ensure full workplace participation, but maybe that’s a separate conversation altogether.

Shortly after becoming a mother, an old therapist told me that I couldn’t accomplish everything I wanted to do at exactly the same time. Essentially, that if I wanted a big career while my son was still little, I needed to come to terms with the necessity of someone else raising him.

I’m recently back to working part time, but I’m still saying no to more assignments than I’m saying yes to, mostly because my plate feels overwhelmingly full. Having done this once before, I know these early years pass by in a flash and that the time spent with these little people feels like the best work I’ve ever done.

Finding that elusive thing called balance has proven tricky — since the target, well, it keeps shifting. A dear friend who lives in London and is also a mother of two young children, runs a nonprofit and recently departed on a weeklong trip to Africa.

For a month prior, she composed a detailed list of what was to be done each day — when extra pants needed to be packed in case of accidents at nursery school, which frozen meals could be reheated on which nights, and so on.

In all, six people were brought in — her husband, two grandmothers, one part-time nanny, one dog walker, and one housecleaner — to cover for her. By contrast, when her husband leaves town (he travels extensively on monthly business trips), he simply packs a bag and leaves town. A similar phenomenon exists in our household.

We obviously have a ways to go.

My dream is to wake up in Manhattan, childless for a few hours, and a morning filled with exactly nothing to do.

Amanda M. Fairbanks, a reporter for The Star, is recently back on the job after maternity leave.

There is nothing new under the bun,” I said in my best Ecclesiastes manner as my sister, who’s rehabbing a back injury in Pittsburgh, and I peered down at the health care facility’s limp culinary offerings.

“Maybe they think that by serving up such awful stuff you’ll be all the more determined to make a speedy recovery,” I said, before I alit on a gambit of my own. “I know,” I said, “I’ll read you some of my columns.”

At last, a captive audience! I had brought several years’ worth in a manila envelope, and before she could say, “Don’t speak,” I began, of course, with the one about Gary Bowen’s and my recent men’s B doubles championship at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Club.

And then I segued into the Memorial Day one, the one, you know, that begins with my saying to Jen Landes that “all of a sudden, our chances of being in an accident have just increased a thousandfold. . . . Honk if you love peace and quiet.”

I spared her the column about the fascinating lovemaking of slugs — no slam, bam, thank-you ma’ams there! — in favor of one about me telling the historical tourists that my time at The Star dated to the Late Paleolithic period, or perhaps to the Early Cretaceous.

Turnabout, of course, is fair play. So, the next day she read me three Psalms, the 131st, the 26th, and the 23rd, her favorite.

But this was no green pasture in which she was lying down — it was a hospital bed in a dreary place, the type of place from which, whenever I find myself in one, I instantly want to flee. Having suffered a compression fracture of a vertebra, she can’t do that yet. My mission, then, was to cheerlead — or to bore her so with my readings that, without any seeming agency on her part, she would leap from her bed and walk.

We talked of the old house, which I had driven by one morning on my way to see her, its bricks pink in the sun on the hill. It seemed a blessed place. Though parents and grandparents are no longer within, it lives on, stolid and upright, as they were.

Of God my sister is fond, but I said to her in taking my leave last Thursday, “I’m putting my faith in you.”

My husband and I live with tunes of the past. He’s worse than I am, or is it better? He wakes up almost every morning with a song and his repertoire is vast. He’s got Broadway tunes, folk songs, camp songs, and even old radio commercials — like one for G.E. lightbulbs — rattling around somewhere waiting to be unleashed. And he never can explain why a particular song comes forth

On the other hand, I don’t start waxing musical until I’m wide awake, and then I tend to wander around with bits of melody in my head that won’t go away. Today, for example, it was the first line of a song Jenny sings in “The Threepenny Opera”: “There was a time and now it’s all gone by. . . .”

You might be inclined to think that, given the lyric, this song came from a deep, if unconscious, melanchony feeling about time having fled, and you might be right. I am also apt to hear a Noel Coward song that begins with “Where are the songs we sung” or “Long Ago and Far Away” by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin.

But the truth is that there’s some fun and pretense going on. “There was a time and now it’s all gone by” when I used to fantasize about performing in this or that musical, and at least Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera” is among the best.

At other times, the music in my head brings a sense of satisfaction rather than longing. Chris and I try to see every live performance from the Metropolitan Opera that is screened in high definition at Guild Hall. Two weeks ago, the opera was Verdi’s “Otello,” with a stunning performance by a young Bulgarian soprano, Sonya Yoncheva. Her “Willow Song” was heartbreakingly beautiful. “There was a time” when, as a voice student, I learned the “Willow Song” and I remember just enough of it now to enjoy the memory.

“Tannhauser” is coming up this Saturday, and I suppose I could offer to sing a bit from it, too. In high school, I auditioned with three others for the New Jersey All-State Chorus, singing part of “The Pilgrims Chorus” from the opera. I still remember with pride that a judge not only gave us good marks but said I held the group together.

Truth is, I used to be called on in (was it?) third grade to come to the front of the room to belt out “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” if the morning assembly at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School ran short and the bell hadn’t rung, and I’ve sung in choirs and choruses ever since. But it is the slow ballads that continue to reverberate.

But enough. You don’t have to imagine what any of the songs in my mind would sound like if you could hear what I hear. Just go to YouTube and listen to the greats.

The film festival opens here tonight with a screening and party. Lenny Gail, an old college friend, and his family will arrive tomorrow to take in an impressive number of films with a little lunch and dinner squeezed in somehow.

Lenny is the organized type. His list of what the family is seeing and when is something to admire. I’m more the type who waits for recommendations then tries to find the time.

Last year, I was asked to be on the documentary jury, which meant watching something on the order of 20 short and longer films. Armed with an all-access pass, I saw the ones I was supposed to, and darted in and out of another half-dozen as well. What with a houseful of kids and work and everything else, I am not much of a moviegoer, so the festival allowed me to get in a year’s worth in the space of a few days.

A couple of friends and people we know casually here have films they were involved with in the festival this year. This adds to the complications, obviously, as Lenny and company have their own itinerary. Then there is my own preference for serious foreign-language films, which is a little at odds with my wife’s, Lisa’s, taste.

Some advice: With so many films to choose from, not all seats at all screenings will have filled up. The Star of Sept. 24 included a printed festival program, which can be picked up in shops around town and in Southampton or downloaded from our website. The box office is on Main Street, more or less across from the movie theater, and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

A “rush” line forms 45 minutes before screenings, and remaining seats will be sold, one per customer, as they are available.

Hope to see you there.

When the Republican  candidates began to talk the other night about sending in the Sixth Fleet, strangling Putin, strong-arming China, and bringing Mexico’s bordercrossing legions to heel, I walked down the hall to see on our other TV the Pirates-Cubs game, which was such a nail-biter that, inspired by the debaters, I prayed Zeus would hurl a thunderbolt at Jake Arrieta. “I’ve got to stop this — it’s a terrible addiction,” I said to Mary the next morning. “No, it’s not drinking, it’s the staying up to all hours watching the Pirates play. They loaded the bases in the eighth, there was one out, and then...Idon’tknow . . . everything unraveled . . . arrrggghh.”

She wasn’t hearing any of it. How could she, tending as she was her hair with a dryer shaped like one of those creatures from the Burgess Shale.

Joe Zucker, a lifelong Cubs fan, thinks it will come down to a onegame wild card play-in at Wrigley. Neither of us — the Pirates always lost when I was growing up in Pittsburgh, and the Cubs never won, but who cared — is used to this Empyrean sphere, one in which Yankee fans have lolled about for years.

“What will be will be,” I say to myself. Though I can’t let it be.

Someone will save us, McCutchen perhaps, it is usually he, or Kang, or Polanco, or Marte, or even Sean Rodriguez (who looks more like a pirate than anyone). I can’t watch, I must watch.

It’s the same with the Steelers. And the other night they were both playing at the same time, which meant I was running up and down the hall, from one TV to the other, only to be doubly eviscerated at the end. I left Pittsburgh so long ago, but it — whatever that is, the trees, the buckeyes, the stogies, plaid-lined jeans, the Red American Flyer, Isaly’s iconic conical ice cream scoops, pistachio being my favorite, and the cigar smoke that wreathed Forbes Field on game day — has not left me.