The Bromeliad - Sock Debacle

It’s a hellish day and I’m getting little done. The Boy is off at a friend’s house playing marathon games of something and being virtually violent and mischievous. Good for him that it’s somewhere else. The Girl left this morning on her first adult adventure, aside from her first job which she now believes is the worst job on earth. Not really, there are lower paying jobs out there that expect you to do even worse things, but hers is menial with inconsistent hours, no benefits, minimum wage, and management sucks. It’s a good first job because she can only go up from there.

Anyway, The Girl soaked her tiny bromeliad before she left and put it in my bathroom window where it would get filtered sun and would dry slowly so it wouldn’t get root rot. She’s trying to be a good mommy to her little bromeliad. Except she hasn’t been a good mommy to Nimoy, who in a fit of jealousy as soon as The Girl left, absconded with her rival. I noticed quickly (thankfully) because the cat doesn’t normally run through the house carrying something green and spiny.

First, let me say I’m really too old to chase a cat. Cat herding is an idiom, not an actual occupation, and I would suck at it if it were real. Second, let me remind you that this particular cat is an idiot. Once she realized Grandma was chasing her, and unhappy, she doubled back and ran under The Girl’s bed. Okay, she’s cornered. Except I don’t have any kids in the house who can crawl under the bed and won’t for hours to days. I have no idea when The Boy will decide to come home, (It’s a weekend, in the summer.) and The Girl won’t be home until late Tuesday night. I have a responsibility to that bromeliad. Maybe the cat. I’m not sure how Nimoy will fare if she eats the bromeliad.

We have a supply of those stupid grabber sticks that my mother-in-law uses to pick up things that fall on the floor. In theory they’re supposed to be used to grab things that are out of reach on shelves, but they don’t really support any weight and are useless for that. Anyway, the grandkids always play with hers, and break them, so Hubby saw some and bought twenty so we always have one in the car when we go visit for family gatherings to replace the broken one. They can’t keep extras at their house or the grandkids would break them too. Personally, I vote break the grandkids, but Hubby tells me I don’t get a vote and his sisters agreed after hearing their precious babies might be disciplined for something. For once, I needed one of the gadgets.

So I lay on the floor for a half an hour pulling things out from under The Girl’s bed. Now in fairness I should say The Girl’s room is generally the tidiest in the house. Her OCD is phenomenal. Nimoy, however, prefers her bed to hide socks under, and I was discovering why The Boy seemed to be wearing the same socks for days on end. I thought it was my imagination, or that maybe he really did have more pairs with that odd pattern than I thought; but no, he’s apparently running low and didn’t feel the need to tell anyone. Nimoy likes The Boy’s socks best. I can sort of understand that, the cat has a thing for smells, and The Boy’s socks … you can see where I’m going with this. No excuses anymore, not that he offered any, The Boy will start changing his socks again!

That was the beginning of my Saturday morning.

Finished with the bromeliad-sock debacle (the bromeliad was finally retrieved, clinging to a sock, looking none the worse for wear, and placed in a slightly safer place to get a little filtered sunlight, don’t worry about it) I turned my attention to lunch. Except now Hubby was missing. Huh. I looked around, found two whiny cats – one pouting because she perceived she was in trouble (true) and one pouting because she wanted to go outside and no one would let her (sort of). Does a ‘not true’ and a ‘true’ balance out to zero or what? In cat terms it equates to whining.

Jingles wanted to go out: true from her point of view. No one would let her: true from everyone’s point of view. All her humans knew something Jingles didn’t: Rain. I suspect Jingles was at least somewhat aware of the concept because she’d been out for days and came home early yesterday afternoon. I thought it was because she sensed bad weather on the horizon and wanted to be in, but clearly not. Bad weather was here and she wanted to go out during the eye of the storm. But she was beggy, and whiny, and manipulative, and I caved and let her out because I’m a pushover. Then I stood at the door waiting for her to change her mind.

We had a little black kitty-loaf on the steps for a bit, not because the sidewalk was wet so much as the neighbor’s golden retriever was out playing ball. When Sookie plays ball, she uses the entire cul-de-sac. Since Sookie’s owner, Mr. Patient, offers to mow almost all of our yards in exchange for being able to keep the trimmings, we all let Sookie romp on our grass for her occasional ball games. She doesn’t leave any little presents and is on good relations with kids and cats, so why not?

Now I say Sookie is on good relations with the cats, but the cats are occasionally unaware of this. Darth Jingles is skittish about the large golden retriever. She has a very standoffish policy about dogs. Usually. Sookie was dyed purple briefly by the neighbor’s children last summer and Jingles found that entertaining enough to suspend her extreme personal space policy, but when the dye wore off her graciousness did as well. She also played a perverted sort of whack-a-mole with the Chihuahuas behind us and a couple doors down. They dug a hole under the fence and she sat on the other side and whapped them as they stuck their noses through. It was awesome, until the owners fixed the hole, damn it.

So Sookie was playing ball, and the ball occasionally landed in our front yard, and Jingles crouched and bristled whenever the dog came to retrieve it. No hissing or running home to Mommy though, and the dog didn’t notice the little shadow by the mint bushes. Eventually Jingles took an opportunity to slink through the mint and evergreens and away from the safety of the front porch so I closed the door. It was cool enough out that I threw open some windows and started lunch in anticipation of Hubby being home eventually. After a few quick texts, I discovered he was running errands. Then I discovered Jingles in our living room window, on the ledge outside, watching me. Huh. Apparently it was a safe place to watch the dog play ball. Also, I need to wash the screen. Add that to the to-do list. Click photo, on to lunch.

Hubby came home, had lunch, and left to help a neighbor. Then Jingles came in – furious at having been tricked into going outside in such miserable weather. She’s not talking to me now. I closed some windows because it’s now raining again, and broke up a cat fight because Jingles is in a mood. Yay – trapped inside with a bitchy cat and something for her to pick on. I shouldn’t have succumbed to her whining and let her out in the first place.

Text from The Boy: he outlasted his friends, they fell asleep, and now he’s bored. He wants me to come pick him up, also he wants coffee so he can stay up longer. I considered that. If I give him coffee, he will stay up now, but then he’ll probably crash hard in early evening and sleep all night so I might get something useful from him tomorrow. Hmm. I broke up another small cat fight on the way out the door. Of course The Boy couldn’t have come home a couple of hours ago when I was lying on the floor pulling his socks out from under his sister’s bed? At least I know he’ll claim Jingles and take her to his room for the rest of the day. No more cat fights. No more peaceful weekend without the kids either.  

A Tail Not Hers

We have dramas, again. First: rain. Now I like rain. Well, not freezing rain, but a nice downward mist or refreshing summer rain – even if it’s bordering on tropical storm variety – or a spring rain that brings the promise of a new season of gardening… yeah, I sort of like rain. I prefer not to be out in it too long, and the cats prefer not to be out in it at all. So, rain, this means Jingles was inside being all angsty. That’s the second problem: the angst of a cat trapped indoors by her mortal enemy: water.

I have a theory on why Jingles tolerates Nimoy. Sure, I know the plan was to get a kitten so there wouldn’t be any question about dominance. Well, there shouldn’t have been any question about dominance, but Nimoy is a little dim, as I’ve mentioned before. I don’t think it’s the “she’s a kitten, I’m dominant, therefore I can afford to be gracious” attitude that Jingles has so much as “there’s something clearly not quite right with this one.” It’s just not polite to pick on the mentally disabled; apparently that extends to felines.

Nimoy means well. She tries very hard to keep me from falling into the toilet – she knows from experience it’s unpleasant. And while Jingles likes to ‘play’ with me while I take a bath (I have to take bubble baths if she’s going to join me so she can bat at the bubbles), Nimoy seems genuinely concerned about my welfare sitting in all that water for so long. She paces along the edge, throwing worried looks my direction and peering into the depths to see if the tub really is full of water. Every now and then Nimoy reaches out to try to catch my shoulder or arm and pull me to safety. I really wish she’d stop  because she uses claws to hook me and reel me in. For that matter, I’d be fine taking a bath on my own, but I’m not trusted alone in the bathroom. It’s kind of like having a toddler again.

The problem that arose the other day when Jingles was inside because of the rain, and angsty, was this: Nimoy persisted in playing with a tail that was not her own. The owner of said tail quickly lost patience, then the beatings began. For the most part I sat back and watched Darth Jingles set Nimoy straight on tail-etiquette, but after an hour I decided to intervene. Yes, an hour. No, you don’t get to lecture me on my slow response time, focus instead on the persistence of this absurd kitten.

I mean technically she’s still a kitten, but she’s eight months old now; at a certain point they’re supposed to learn things. When the grumpy black cat reaches out a paw and whaps her on the nose, Nimoy could conclude she did something to earn the rebuke. Maybe pause to think – skip back on the 8-track in that thick skull of hers and review the data – what did she do that made Jingles feel the need to beat her? Don’t blame Jingles either. Occasionally it really is the victim’s fault. If I were beating her that’d be different, but this is cat on cat action here. Jingles has patience, but it can’t be endless or Nimoy would never learn. I will pamper and spoil my cats, but only to a point. No paws on the kitchen counters or table, or pantry or cabinets (remind me to tell you about how we learned that one from experience). Jingles made those concessions in kittenhood and everywhere else in the entire house seems to be fair game.

Darth Jingles can’t be held responsible for the other bits of drama, instead The Girl steps up to take her place in center stage. First, a reminder: I’ve mentioned our invisible spiders before. They’re small to medium sized arachnids that happen to be the exact same color as the carpet. On the wall, they stand out – not like a black spider on a white wall, but enough. It’s that time of year where spiders are once again on the move, and because the temperature keeps bouncing up and down, some are finding their merry way indoors.

The arachnid migration is causing a problem in a few ways: primarily in that The Girl is terrified of spiders and can’t bring herself to step on them even with shoes on. She’s eighteen now and we still have to save her regularly from being trapped forever in a room by a spider lingering a foot away from the only door. Worse is when she sees the spider, screams, scares it causing it to lose its footing, we come trudging to her rescue with a tissue only to find the source of all horror has disappeared. The Girl (now supervised with the promise of immediate intervention should the creature appear again) sprints from her room and refuses to enter it again until she’s found Jingles and confined the cat to her bedroom for two hours to make sure she’s had sufficient time to hunt, kill, and devour the spider. Then she’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room anyway just in case. I’d like her reasoning on why the living room is safer, but I’m honestly afraid to point out the hole in her theory.

A similar and related problem with the new influx of spiders is Nimoy. Now when I say influx, I should clarify, I see maybe one a week. We’re not talking infestation here, just more than mid-winter levels of legs in the house. Now, our darling kitten has taken on a new tendency that has much of the household on edge: staring. Not just staring, she stares, wide-eyed and startled, at a spot on the wall just above your head or over one shoulder. And keeps staring at that spot. Now however much I tell myself I’m being paranoid because I’ve fallen for this before, she won’t stop until I break down and look.

Nothing. Just wall.

Either Nimoy finds the texture of our walls absolutely fascinating, or she’s hallucinating. It’s possible she’s toying with us, much like Jingles does with the occasional mouse, but I doubt she has the intellect. Given The Girl has seen spiders recently, she’s completely freaked out by this new behavior in her kitten.

It gets worse.

The Girl isn’t the only one who’s discovered bugs, Nimoy has too. You guessed it, she discovered the invisible spiders. Now Jingles did this once upon a time – spent time seeming to play with an empty spot in the middle of the living room floor. Closer inspection might reveal something we didn’t want to find, so after the first discovery we all decided closer inspection wasn’t necessary – Jingles picks up her toys. Unfortunately Jingles is stealthier in her maturity and we don’t see her doing this anymore so we sort of forgot about it. Extra unfortunate is that while Nimoy isn’t known for picking up her toys in terms of tidiness, she does pick them up – to move them to a more convenient location. Her claws get caught in the carpet.

Invisible spiders become visible on tile.

Sigh. That’d be fine if Nimoy actually picked them up to move them, because I bet that’d be the end of it. I mean given the relative size of a cat and a spider, I can guess the final result. No. That’s no fun, she herds her new toy to a better playground where she can play with it easier – and The Girl can see it easier. The Girl shrieks, sending Nimoy scampering off to hide and leaving a frantically sprinting spider unattended. Not once have these spiders still been either findable or reachable by the time Hubby or I arrived for damage control.

The Girl is freaking out about all the spiders in the house. All? Hubby got clever. He floated the idea to our little bundle of anxiety that there’s only one, and it’s toying with Nimoy as much as Nimoy’s toying with it. Intellectually they’re probably evenly matched. She wanted to believe that, so she did.

Then the highly improbable happened: Nimoy actually made her first kill. Intentional kill. I suspect she learned not to bite spiders before because it puts a swift and premature end to play-time, and she’s never exhibited hunting behavior so she was never in it for the kill. Any spider mortality at Nimoy’s paws & jaws was purely accidental. This time though …. If The Girl was there it wouldn’t have happened, but she was busy and The Boy was happy to not only recognize Nimoy’s changed behavior, but leave her to it. Nimoy corralled and herded her toy spider for nearly an hour before cornering it and pouncing. The cat may be a little dim, but she’s dedicated. Then she sat by her prey and meowed to get our attention. Of course we fawned over her, rewarding the behavior and all, forgetting Hubby’s story that there was only one spider in the house and Nimoy had just killed it. Another apparently moving in a couple of days later didn’t settle well with The Girl. I haven’t seen the newcomer yet. It was gone by the time I answered my theoretically adult daughter’s high-pitched shriek of dismay.

Back to speaking of rain, two cats trapped inside - one now very grumpy in addition to angsty. Add a high-pitched shriek of dismay. I need to go rescue something from something. Reminder: we only have one invisible spider in the house. One. It lives in the living room and plays tag with the kitten. One spider. That should keep The Girl from sleeping on my couch.

The Curse of a Little Black Cat.

The great thing about having a black cat is that she’s pre-decorated for Halloween. Of course that doesn’t stop us from dressing her up anyway, much to her annoyance. Right now, as the season kicks into swing, she’s all about posing as a ‘black cat shadow.’ She’s been practicing for the role all year.

The not-so-great thing about having a black cat is that she’s really just a cat. And she wants to go outside and play when The Girl leaves for school at 6:30 a.m. Actually, she wants to go outside and play when The Girl gets up at 5:00 a.m. but she shows a little restraint. By 6:30, she’s ‘singing’ at the front door and getting underfoot.

So let her out, right? 

No. It’s still dark. In the early days of the blog I mentioned a significant loss of cattage in the cul-de-sac due to a family of foxes residing in the nearby golf course. They’re still building houses between us and the golf course, so there are more barriers for the red assassins, but there is also more prey. The rule that the cat stays in after dark still applies. Or in this case, before light.

Keeping her in, is a challenge. Actually, no, it isn’t. She’s hovering by the front door, so it’s easy to catch her, if not hold her, when The Girl leaves. She can safely go out an hour later when The Boy leaves.

All right, so keeping her in isn’t really the problem, it’s keeping her happy that is. The Girl wanted to give her kitty-snuggles this morning before she left. It went like this:

Mournful meow.

“Stop it, I’m snuggling you."

Another mournful meow.

“Here, let me pet your tummy.”

Mournful meow accompanied by wriggling.

“Don’t you want to be held like a baby?” She switches and puts The Cat over her shoulder to pet her.

Meows to hide the fact she’s digging her claws into The Girl’s shoulder in preparation for launch. The Girl clamps down to hold her in place.

"Hold still."

Low growling.

“But I love you!”

I sighed. “Give her to me.”

The Girl passed The Cat over. The Cat fell silent, although slightly huffy, in my embrace. I pet her. The Girl put on her shoes then walked over, hands on tiny hips, and demanded to know why The Cat wasn’t meowing and wiggling with me.

“I have her in a headlock.”

Homecoming: Part Two (The Revenge of the Shoes!)

Sigh. Homecoming (the first) is over. The Girl survived the dance, the social activity, the . . . heels.  The drama can safely be set aside, but only for two weeks. Remember, she didn’t go to Homecoming at her own school.

Let’s get take a step back to those heels. I’ve mentioned she’s petite. She wears a size four shoe. Kids. There aren’t a lot of dress shoe options there. A helpful saleswoman once told us a kids’ size four is the same as a women’s size six. We picked out a pair of wedges, she tried them, walked in them, life is good. Until later when I caught her stuffing tissue in the toe because they were a size too big.

And why was this not mentioned at the shoe store? Teenage girl. Enough said.

With this in mind, we went shoe shopping again on Thursday. I couldn’t reasonably continue putting it off, even though I really dreaded this activity. Black shoes. That’s all I wanted. Black shoes that fit. Looking. Okay, black shoes that fit and look like they belong with a semi-formal dress not on a five-year-old.

We said a lot of things like “OMG, what were they thinking when they put that bow there?” and “Is that a flower? Why in the name of all that’s holy are there dead flowers on that shoe and why do they look like pom-poms?”

In desperation, I eyed the size sixes. They were largely stilettos and The Girl had only graduated as far as a two inch wedge with tissue in the toe to make it fit. Oh dear. There wasn’t even a simple paten leather black flat or kitten heel. Really? How basic is that? They did have some matte black pumps, but she hated them. And they weren’t dressy at all.

I handed her a shiny black spike heeled shoe. It was still two and a half inches, but hey, I was desperate. And a bad mother.

She glared at me.

“Try it.”

Still glaring, she slid one on, and threatened to fall over. Drama Princess.

“Put the other one on, you’ll balance better.”

She put the other one on, and I coaxed her into tottering down the aisle and back. It wasn’t pretty. We returned to looking at the size fours, then the three and a halves.

The Girl saw a pair of fancy stilettos  - in a size six. Strappy with rhinestones. Suddenly she was willing to give it another shot. Three inch heel. She was near tears.

“Honey, it’s just like walking, only your heel is focused on this little point. The ball of your foot is the same as in a sandal.” It’s pretty true. “Women have been doing this for a long time. You can do it if you put your mind to it. It’s kind of like walking on tip-toes, except you have somewhere to put your heel, so it’s really a lot easier.”  She can tip-toe, any three-year-old can do that!

The pep talk worked. She slid them on and gave it another go. We practiced in the store, then at home. Apparently she’s a kids’ size four or a women’s selective size six. Yeah, I toggle between two sizes too.

The Girl she was very excited because all of a sudden, she could look me in the eye! (I’m three inches taller than her.) She was taller, she had pretty ‘big girl’ shoes. Homecoming wasn’t so bad.

Except of course you have to dance in them. For hours.

She survived. Now let’s get back to that ‘this was at another school’ issue. Now she wants to dress up again and ‘drop in’ on a ‘friend’ who has to work during Homecoming at their school. The girl was quick to explain it wasn’t a date. She’s fifteen and can’t date yet. She’s just dropping by so he can say that he did Homecoming and wouldn’t that be fun?

Fun. Hubby, grab your shotgun, we’ve created a monster.

Homecoming: Part One

How many times have I asked for someone to just shoot me? And yet I’m still here. Fat lot of good you guys are.

I’ve spent three days explaining to The Girl that she’s a girl. I know this may seem self evident, but allow me to explain.

Homecoming. It’s coming up and she doesn’t see the point. I explained the game, the tradition, the dance, but to no avail. Okay . . .  dancing, girls like dancing. Not this one. Fine. Girls like getting all prettied up and making boys’ brains turn to mush. Not this one. Are you sure you’re my daughter? I got glared at for that one and told “You were there!”

I explained the ‘no dating until you’re sixteen’ rule can be put on hiatus in specific cases. I got a shrug. We have a specific case. We’re on the boundary between three high schools (so close that we chose which one she went to because all of them have a bus stop within two blocks). Two doors down, the eldest daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Patience is going to a different high school and has a friend who needs a date, and eyed The Girl appraisingly. Mrs. Patience is chaperoning that dance. The Girl is going whether she wants to or not. For the record, her opinion is not.

Mrs. Patience is living vicariously through her daughters, which she freely admits. I had a social life in high school and college; I don’t need to live through The Girl. I suspect she might have regrets later if she goes through with her ‘forgo all social activities because boys are stupid’ plan. Yes, boys can be stupid, especially the teen variety. She’s desperately looking forward to college. Unfortunately, she’s going to need practice for dating in college, which you get by dating in high school.

So a group date with a neighbor chaperoning? Hell yes she’s going. Besides, she’s got a list of boys already for when she turns sixteen so this will give her a little confidence boost. And Hubby isn’t even reaching for a shotgun or going out of his mind.

This is a win. I hope. I’ll get back to you.

The Girl is a terrible teenager.

The Girl is a terrible teenager. “Why?” you ask? Well, let me tell you a story about a brand new sophomore in a brand new high school (just built new not just new to her).

Things never go smoothly the first week of school anyway, even if the school isn’t new. Not completely. And no one really expects it to. At least not anyone with kids. So when we got a call the second day of school informing us our nearly perfect daughter (true, it’s sickening) missed first period, it was a surprise. 

She denied it.

We told her to go to the teacher the next time she had his class (every other day) and straighten it out. The next day, we got a call saying she again missed first period. Surprised? Yes, but also mildly suspicious. Not of The Girl; as I said, she’s nearly perfect. The school was more likely to be the culprit.

Again she denied skipping first period. Again we told her to go to the teacher and straighten it out.

Third day of school, guess what? You got it, another call. The teachers both claim they marked her as there. Okay, so the school computer has a bug and everyone’s being marked absent? No. The parents of teens who do miss are not getting calls but, for reasons they can’t pinpoint, a bunch of others are getting the calls on their behalf. They’re sorry and have no idea when it will be fixed.

Hubby has the number memorized and sighs when his phone rings now at right about dinner time. So . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . and he’s carrying his phone waiting for it to ring – oh, there it goes.

So, why does this make my nearly perfect daughter a terrible teenager? Because she just realized she could have been skipping first period every day for the past four days, knowing full well that WE WOULD NOT BE TOLD.

I pointed out the school would still have the correct information.

Never reason with a teenager, okay? Not even nearly perfect ones. You can’t win. Reason exists as an abstract concept to them.

The Girl’s answer was it’s okay if her teachers and the school knew if she was skipping a class, as long as Hubby and I didn’t. What? Then she balled up her tiny fists (she’s petite), declared herself to be the worst teenager ever, flung her thick, waist-length waves that I would kill for over her shoulder, and stalked out of the room.

Well, she got that last part just about perfect.

Welcome to Hell, I mean High School

My oldest is in tenth grade. Where I grew up, ninth graders were shoved in with the rest of high school, but not here. Here they’re with seventh and eighth graders, which means they start high school before they’re in high school. The powers that be are rethinking that. It’s a new idea here and slow to catch on. I think the resistance is from overprotective parents not wanting to really admit a fourteen-year-old is a teenager and send them off with all the ‘big kids.’ I have a thirteen year old too. He’s a big kid, dump him in the deep end.

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my baby girl (AKA "The Girl" to all of you) is genuinely in high school now by anyone’s definition. She’s not impressed. Although I am hearing a different sort of rant from her nowadays.

First there’s the "don't they know to walk on the right?" Actually, her school is brand new, just rebuilt so it can hold the new ninth graders. So . . . no. Almost a third of the kids there don’t know to walk on the right because they don’t drive. But wait, they grew up in – well the majority of the world that drives on the right, so shouldn’t they have clued in to walk on the right by now? No. Apparently not, we'll leave it at that.

Second, remember I went off a while ago about teenage boys being allergic to soap? It’s not limited to thirteen-year-olds, unfortunately. Enough said. 

Third, she’s not impressed with others of her own gender either. I tuned out as she went on (and on and on) questioning why a girl who wants to play violin would get her nails done and have them so long she can’t actually play. Or why another would take swimming but not realize she might need a swimsuit she can actually swim in without the top coming off. Personally I’m amazed they’re allowing two-piece suits in a co-ed swim class, but hey, what do I know?

Also, she doesn't understand how anyone can find Latin hard. Plus now she can take Honors and AP classes and, again, she’s flummoxed why kids are whining about it being difficult or time consuming.

And she was asked out in her first week of school. By text message. I’m not kidding. Her immediate response was to text back and ask if he really just asked her out via text, then to ask if he breaks up via Facebook. He didn’t get it. Bit of a mixed bag on that one. She’s flattered, yet annoyed. And in giggles because Hubby is having a meltdown.

The Girl’s fifteen, we’re not letting her date yet. In truth, she can handle group dates now, she’s mature enough. Boys her age aren’t though and we need to protect them from her snarky attitude and her father’s growing reach-for-a-rifle paranoia. He needs another year to psych himself up for this. Hubby’s just not ready.

The Girl, the cat, and the shower

The Girl likes to take baths and showers in my bathroom because I have a big glass shower and a garden tub. Oddly, Cat likes to join me, or anyone else, for baths because she likes to play with water – to a point.

Filling the tub, Cat will sit patiently by the swan-neck tap and bat at the water as it cascades into the tub. Very nice. Then she circles the tub, and the occupant, like a small black shark, throughout the bath and watches you.

Cat loves bubble baths. Really loves them. For her, it is kitty heaven to play peek-a-boo with my toes under the bubbles. She hasn’t gone so far as to jump in after them yet, although she does occasionally slip. If Hubby is in the bathroom she risks having ‘help’ getting into the tub. (The problem is what she really needs is help getting out of the tub.)

Lately, The Girl has decided to ‘help’ Cat overcome her mild hydrophobia. This morning, The Girl woke sore from yesterday’s hike with friends. Hubby suggested a soak in my tub. She chose a long shower. (Why she couldn't use her own bathroom is beyond me.) 

Grabbing her own scuba gear for the venture, she dropped Cat’s collar on my bed and I noticed her disappearing into my bathroom with two black pointy ears and pair of wide yellow eyes peering at me over her shoulder. Oh, dear.

The water runs. Cat’s mournful meow wafts through the door followed closely by, “You’ll be all right, the water’s not hot.”

“A word of warning to the girl with the upset cat in my bathroom,” I called through the door.

“Yes?”

“She has claws.”

Pause. “Okay.”

Not to say Cat didn’t get - moist. The Girl did take her in the shower with her instead of letting her just watch from outside like I usually do. (She likes to chase bubbles streaming down the inside of the glass. Fun!) But Cat was permitted to sit in the corner and only receive the occasional misting from ricochets. Apparently she can jump quite high when she gets cornered in the shower. 

Cat got snuggled in a warm towel afterward. The Girl wasn’t fatally wounded.

Happy Father's Day

Father's Day is coming, and that means another family event. Shoot me. Please? Not for Hubby and my kids, we've got that covered. Let me rephrase: I’ve got that covered. And no, there will be no tie nor macaroni art involved either. No offense for those who like that.

No, there was to be a family barbeque for everyone at the in-law’s place on Sunday. Yay! Wait! Everyone? Even the dreaded sisters-in law? Yes. Well, to get the cousins for The Girl and The Boy, I must deal with the sisters-in-law. If I must. Okay, we’re set.

No. The sisters-in-law planned everything then changed it. They can’t do it Sunday, so it has to be Saturday. We can’t do it Saturday, The Girl has a birthday party she’s planned to attend since school ended and The Boy has . . . something, I can’t recall what. Some mischief I’ve blocked for sanity reasons I’m sure. Both are in the afternoon. My morning and early afternoon is spoken for and can’t be moved.

They huffed. It reminded me of the wolf and the three little pigs and I very nearly told them so. I had a brief daydream about rewriting the story of the three little pigs as a young adult novel before my true calling as an erotic romance writer took over and it got very odd. I’ll refrain from going further on that. And I won’t write it. Promise.

Father’s Day is going to be a great deal more peaceful now. Father-in-law will spend Saturday with his daughters and some grandchildren and Sunday with us. Oddly, The Boy and The Girl are absolutely perfect for their grandparents. All the terror The Boy reins down on us at home, is somehow hidden away and he’s unrecognizable if the in-laws are around. I want to move in with them. He’s even nice to his sister. She, of course, waits until Grandma and Grandpa aren’t looking and gets even for all the hell he puts her through in the past week. Hubby gets to watch. Happy Father's Day. 

The Scientific Method

We had three birthdays in rapid succession giving us a thirteen-year-old boy, fifteen year old girl, and one year old cat. Now, you'd think the thirteen-year-old boy would concern me, but it’s the other two I'm writing about today. Hubby and I have many theories involving the idiot cat, which I’ll undoubtedly delve into at some point. We have all the usual concerns involving the girl too. One concern her interest in the scientific method.

Now most adults may be thinking “What kind of mother are you to discourage that kind of academic exploration?” And many parents out there are nodding knowingly and thinking “Yeah, got it, no more needs to be said.” I’ll say it anyway.

They say you can't put frogs in boiling water because they'll hop out. You have to put them in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil. I am not going to tell you how I know this isn't true. Anyway, The Girl started with this premise, put the cat in my bathroom sink with an open drain, and Cat snuggled in. So far, this is pretty normal. The Girl turned on the faucet: a nice, alluring, playful drip. The result is a happy cat. Bat, bat, bat at the drip, lick paw, bat.

Now the ‘science’ begins. The Girl closed the drain. Cat continued to bat at the drip, bat, bat. The sink began to fill. Lick paw, bat, bat. Cat’s fur was starting to get wet, not just her paw now. Bat, bat, bat, lick. Hmm . . . Lick paw, her paw's dry. Hmm . . . Cat's confused. The sink's filling, The Girl’s laughing. Bat, bat, bat, lick, still wet.

Cat shifts in her sink and everything becomes clear to her. You might say it 'sinks in.' She stares at the sink now almost half-full of water, something that wasn't there when she climbed in. Like most self respecting cats, she decided it was time to leave. That sounds simpler than it was. The funny thing about a cat jumping out of a sink with wet paws - it's slippery.

The end result of The Girl’s experiment? Hubby will be the one Cat will blame, for no reason other than he lives here.