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Charcoal
Everybody, meet Charcoal. Charcoal, meet everybody.
Charcoal says hi.
Charcoal is the little black kitten that Baby Bug and I are “kitten-sitting” for two weeks or so. I don’t know what I’m thinking…well, I do. I know exactly what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that it would be really fun to have a kitten around but not have the responsibility of FOUR cats. We already have three cats. We cannot have another cat. So how about we just take care of him for a little while and then give him back.
Yeah! That sounds like a great plan!
Toby thinks it’s hard on the kitten to adjust to more than one household in his young life but I think Charcoal is adjusting just fine. Compared to the life he would have had living under a trailer with forty-nine other feral cats, I think his life is great.
What I was really thinking is, a kitten would be super fun for Baby Bug. She plays with Pounce all day long as it is. Maybe Pounce could have a break from getting mauled and chased and being forced to drink pretend tea all the time if there was somebody younger and friskier to play with.
The plan is working pretty well. The kitten LOVES to play. In fact the only hitch in the plan is that the kitten loves to play with everything, including little toddler toes. Baby Bug does not like the kitten biting her toes. It’s a bit of a problem. So far we are solving this by teaching Baby Bug to stomp her feet and then run like mad to safety of the couch. Thankfully the toe-biting usually doesn’t last that long because kittens sleep a lot.
In two weeks or so we will take Charcoal back to my mom’s and she will either find a home for him or get him fixed and release him back into the neighborhood. I’m not really sure on that part. There are a lot of feral cats in her neighborhood and she’s trying to help them but it gets expensive.
What you are supposed to do when feral cats are a problem is: catch them, get them fixed and then release them back into the neighborhood so more feral cats don’t move in. But so far my mom seems to be keeping most of the cats she catches. My mom has a weakness when it comes to cats.
But then so do I. Even though I hate how much the three cats we already have completely destroy our house in three days or less, I’m secretly hoping Toby falls in love with Charcoal and we get to keep him forever.
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Rapunzel’s Tenth Birthday Party
My niece, Rapunzel (not her real name) is turning ten on Memorial Day but nobody ever can come to her party on Memorial Day so she had her birthday party today. Most of her class couldn’t come today either but that’s because unbeknownst to us, another boy in her class had a pool party at the exact same time. Pool parties seem to trump everything when you’re ten.
Nevertheless, I think the party was a huge success! I’m starting to think I like smaller parties better anyway. You get more time to play games and interact with all the kids. The children who came are the same kids who came last year and the year before. They’re keepers. I hope she stays friends with them forever.
We didn’t go crazy with decorations or party games. We could have but time sort of ran out. My sister-in-law, CC, was going to make malasadas (Hawaiian potato doughnuts) but they fell by the wayside and were not missed a bit.
CC made her famous bundt cake (It’s so yummy! The recipe is on her blog) and we decorated it like an island. I’m particularly proud of the palm trees. They are pirouette cookies stuffed with apple flavored sour punch straws on one end. Getting the “foliage” to stay in the pirouette cookies wasn’t exactly easy but some thread and a toothpick seemed to do the trick. The sand or “coral pebbles” are just rice crispies and the “lava” is chocolate ganache.
Besides more food than we could ever possibly eat, there were more presents than anybody could ever want. I didn’t include any pictures but I’m sure CC will link some later. My niece now has enough clothes now to go a whole year without ever wearing the same outfit twice. Yeah, I’m jealous. But she’s been growing a lot so this is a good thing. I remember those tween years well. I think a lot of clothes would have made it a lot easier for me back then. Don’t even get me started on the homemade jumpers my mom used to make me wear.
birthday party obstacle course from comfortablycrazy on Vimeo.It was a really fun party. Especially the obstacle course. I was supposed to make a mermaid tail for the kids to jump in gunny-sack-style but I sort of forgot to get around to that. I don’t think anyone noticed. We found an out-of-date mail bag in the ever-present junk pile that is my mom’s carport. I know. Who has mail bags sitting around? Apparently we do. Along with everything else under the sun. But that’s another blog post.
For now we are going to sit around and be fat and happy that another party is in the can. The mess will still be there tomorrow.
