A Skitter Update, And Suzanne’s Sweet & Salty Birthday

Excuse TIE O’ THE DAY’s absence yesterday. We had a playdate with the plumber for most of the day at our house. (You’ll get that story at a later time.) Peace Bow Tie o’ the Day and I will begin this post with an update on Skitter’s ear problems. The vet discovered Skitter’s left ear has BLACK MOLD! Well, not exactly. She has a fungal infection deep in her ear, for which I’m giving her ear drops daily. But it’s much funnier to say she has black mold. Suzanne even believed me when I told her that’s what it was. Her eyebrows got really high! And I could see her having visions of spending bigly bucks to tear up the house and rid it of whatever black mold might be lurking in its walls, which had surely—somehow—given Skitter an ear infection. I had to say, “Whoa!” to Suzanne. I had to explain I was making a joke by labeling Skitter’s fungal infection “black mold.” I NEVER have to explain my hokey-jokey names for things to Suzanne. She always gets my humor. But it was her birthday, so I understood she had her mind on the festivities. Skitter will be fine in a couple of weeks.

For Suzanne’s birthday, we stayed home this year. It’s a bit pandemic-y out there right now, so I designed her birthday celebration with that in mind. Suzanne is good about no longer eating certain favorite “foods,” so her blood pressure is happy. But I decided to give her the gift of freely eating junk food for one evening. One by one, at various time intervals, I paraded out many courses of sweet, salty, and non-nutritional eats. The menu was as follows: Hostess Birthday Cake-flavor Cupcakes; Starburst jelly beans; a Birthday Cake-flavor Kit-Kat; popcorn; peanut M&M’s; Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie OREO’s; Fat Boy Birthday Cake Ice Cream; and—drum roll—my famous Potato Chip Birthday Cake. Suzanne was so full of bad-for-everybody food that she had to wait until the next day to eat my specialty, which is microwaved (no more than 10 seconds) Skittles.

BTW I purposely wore my salad tie to the grocery store when I bought all the junk food. I forgot to take a selfie at the store. Sorry.

Another BTW The party hats are mermaid tails. They were supposed to be for Gracie’s first birthday, but they weren’t delivered to me in time for that. Skitter’s mermaid tail is a little under the weather here, surely reflecting the discomfort of her black mold situation. Mermaid tails sure look dandy on us though, eh?