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I call it... "Cats on a Diet"

A busy day

So there was a lot going on today. After the girls spent the morning over at Colleen and Dwight's house frosting cupcakes (more on this in a minute), we were off to Abra's dance recital. Here she is with Raven and Deandre doing their tap dance, with their dance instructor, Mr. Moodie, directing them in front:


Well, heck, it's a dance recital, let's see if we can get some action here! Here's a piece of the tap dance:

And here's part of the ballet

After the recital was over, we dashed home and had a quick lunch so that we could be ready for the giant BAKE SALE! Now this was no ordinary bake sale. Colleen had helped the girls (Abra, Thalia, and their friend Lily) figure out a budget and go shopping for ingredients, then they baked and frostened cupcakes, made lemonade and flower arrangements, and set up shop in front of the house.


Lemonade was 25 cents, cupcakes were 50 cents, and flowers (in recyclable bottles for vases!) were 25 cents each. You might also notice that with your treats, you could also help yourself to some free campaign literature the girls made:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Then the girls went went with Colleen down to the corner and proceeded to direct traffic down to their lemonade, cupcake, and flower stand:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Their first "get" was a gentleman driving a spectacular old car, who stopped and chatted with us and the girls while he drank his lemonade.


After that, Thalia started targetting Lexuses, smart child that she is:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

Now you are probably thinking "Lemonade, cupcakes, and flower, how nice!" But wait, there's more! While you enjoy your treats you get to listen to a cello concert by the talented Miss Lily:


In fact, let's take a listen. But first, an apology: I forgot that while you can rotate pictures easily, you can't rotate movies (if you know how, let me know!). So the movie of Lily was taken sideways, but you can just turn your head to the side and watch:

Meanwhile, Thalia is laying a trail of acorns to attract more customers.


Here comes our neighbor John to buy some flowers (John was a good customer: he made several trips to buy lemonade, cupcakes, AND flowers!):

(photo courtesy Dwight)

We of course had the rather unsurprising issue that the proprieters of the stand seemed to eat a bit into their own profits:

(photo courtesy Dwight)

And at one point, the four year old treasurer managed to dump the money bag into the grass:


But she managed to rescue the money, and by the time the bake sale was over, they had accumulated quite the haul. They had the shareholders meeting over at Colleen's and produced back their financial report:

• Gross Receipts: $47.50
• Less Baking Supplies: $12.00
• Less Workers' Salary: $3/each girl
• Net Proceeds: $26.50

The girls decided to donate the proceeds to Providence House, a shelter/crisis center for young at-risk children in Cleveland.

We'd like to thank all our friends and neighbors who came to the sale, and particularly say thanks to Colleen for helping the girls organize and run the event. (And thanks to Dwight for taking some of the pictures I've used here...)

Too Much Candy

We are trying to give the girls an education in the music us old farts listen to. So we were talking about the Rolling Stones tonight, and Abra and I had the following exchange:

Abra: How old are they?
Me: In their sixties
Abra: Are they all still alive?
Me: Well, most of them. One guy died.
Abra: Who?
Me: A guy named Brian Jones.
Abra: Why did he die?
Me: well....
Abra: Did he eat too much candy?
Me: uhhh.....
Abra: Did he?
Me: well, yeah, pretty much.

Unnerving...

Right now, Thalia is in the living room dancing to "Sister Morphine".

Very strange to watch.

More Pets!

So yes: four cats and a dog just weren't enough. We needed more pets.

About four years ago, a few months after I got Nelson and Healy, I turned my fishtank over to my buddy Bill, whose daughters had expressed an interest in getting some fish. It was a win-win situation: Bill and his girls got fish, I got to stop cleaning a fishtank.

Well, Bill's moving houses now (and in some ways that can be traced to my meddling as well), and asked me if I wanted the fishtank back. He must have caught me after I had had a few drinks, because I said yes. Little did I know that Bill had turned the fishtank into a black-and-gold-molly breeding factory...

So the tank came back this week, loaded with fish. Indeed, while I figured the girls would have fun with it, I was more interested to see how the cats would react. Within two minutes of setting up the tank, Healy had his face plastered to the glass. And here's Miss Stinker herself, Pearl, checking out the new tank:


But the amusement doesn't end there.

The very same day that the tank arrived, Nelson and Healy went to the vet for their every-two-years annual checkup. Now, two years ago when this happened, when Nelson came out of the cat carrier at the vet's office, our vet looked a little shocked and gasped "Oh, my!". Yeah, he's big. I was worried what she'd say this time. What she said were those words that strike fear into the hearts of every living being that has to hear them:

DOCTOR-ORDERED WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM

Uh oh. No more free grazing for the boys. And in our house, when one cat's on a diet ALL cats are on a diet. (Upon hearing this, Pearl immediately lodged a protest with the local chapter of the National Association of Oppressed Felines). So the always-full auto feeder has been taken away, and portion control is the slogan for the house.

So I'm just thinking: hungry cats, new fish..... Hmmm....... This will go well.

SCOTS

So I'm late to the party, but let me tell you something: SCOTS rocks.

SCOTS -- aka "Southern Culture on the Skids"-- is a three piece band out of North Carolina. Think "Hillbilly B-52s". But I gotta say they are a blast. How can you deny such beautiful songs as "Liquored Up and Lacquered Down", "Doublewide", "Gasoline and Fried Chicken", and "Daddy Was a Preacher but Mama was a Go-Go Girl"?

I mean, it's not exactly Lena Horne.

But check out their website: http://www.scots.com and take a listen on the jukebox link to hear some tunes or hit the TV link to see 'em live. Lotsa fun. They even showed up on the playlist at our wedding (playing "I Learned to Dance in Mississippi"), not that anyone at the wedding could hear the music, grumble, grumble.

Anyway, thanks to my good buddy JP for turning me on to SCOTS. The rest of you'se need to belly up to the bar....

Another Random Picture Dump

OK, here are a random assortment of pictures dumped off the camera:

Because four cats aren't enough, we now seem to have a fifth cat who visits the house quite often. A very pretty calico, who seems friendly and lets me pick her up. Our cats are less than excited by this new visitor: here's the standoff at the window between the calico and Healy and Pearl:


Here's a shot of the card Thalia made for Brenna on Mother's Day. Or "Muther's Day", I should say -- it sounds like something that Samuel L. Jackson might have made for his mother when *he* was four.


Healy likes to hide in the towel closet:


For those of you who visited back when the front garden was simply an empty bed overrun with ground cover, here's what it looks like now. Brenna has done a great job with it, and the asiatic lillies (Cat: no Dad jokes!) have just exploded now that they are in full sun.

And finally, the clothes dryer broke yesterday, so now our house looks like hillbilly heaven:

I'm going to have to put the red car up on blocks in the yard to complete the scene. (I should say, hillbilly or not, the cheapskate in me likes lowering the energy bill by not running the dryer!)

Fourth of July

OK, another admission -- while I like fireworks shows, I don't like going to fireworks shows. It gets crowded, it gets hot (except in Cleveland), you gotta walk all over the place (now with young children), etc, etc. Yes, I'm lazy. Plus I broke my neck at a fireworks show on the National Mall when I was younger, and I guess I still have bad memories from that.

Luckily I married a woman who shares this opinion. Our daughters, however, do not. Yesterday when Abra woke up she said "Are we going to see fireworks, Daddy?" Oh, groan. I was hoping we'd get through the day without them even realizing it was the Fourth of July, like we did last year.

Then I remembered that we had an old pack of sparklers stuffed in the back of a kitchen drawer. The box had come from Brenna's house when we packed it up 18 months ago, and was probably well older than that. I wasn't even sure they would light, so I tested one when the girls weren't looking. It lit. We were in business.

So when it got dark, I started lighting them up and passing them to the girls. Abra ran around waving them and making wishes. Thalia was a bit afraid at first, but then got brave and held them. Being old sparklers, half of them would die out halfway through and need to be relit. But they held up. And after we went through the dozen sparklers, the girls chased fireflies for ten more minutes. They would name the fireflies "Ted" and "Sally" and the like. Then it was bedtime.

And when we tucked the girls into bed, Abra said "That was the best Fourth of July EVER!"

Heh, the joy of exceeding low expectations.

Cleveland Weather

I knew Cleveland weather could be wierd, but the weather update this morning on the National Weather Service site had me a bit surprised: