Of Cats and Brownies
Good morning, dear friends! Happy Monday! I’ve come to a decision about Mondays. I think, since so many exciting things happen over the weekend, that Mondays are just going to be a weekend recap from now on, so I can share all of my many adventures with you. Some weeks will, undoubtedly, be more exciting than others, but that is the way of life. So this is the first, official, weekend recap.
Friday
We had a free day to fight the papacy. My husband discovered through a podcast that there was an event in Swiss reformed history called “The Affair of the Sausages.” The reformer Zwingli preached a sermon on how it was perfectly fine to eat meat on Fridays during Lent since the Bible did not forbid it. Naturally, a bunch of the congregants went out and got a ton of sausages and ate them that Friday, leading the a call for Zwingli’s arrest and the start of the local Reformation. So, of course, upon hearing this story, my husband very much wanted to eat sausages on Friday.
It was gorgeous day, so we ate our sausages and potato wedges on the porch steps. Since it was so nice, after we finished we went for a walk around our neighborhood, to enjoy the fresh air and catch some Pokemon. It was a lovely time, though I will admit, a little hard on my legs. There’s only a slight hill really, but I haven’t been out and about in quite some time. I really need to get back to that. Our walk might have been longer, but my husband had an Overwatch date with some of his college friends, so we headed back and spent the rest of the night playing video games.
Saturday
We started a new adventure. Sleeping in until 10, as usual for a free-ish Saturday, we debated long over what to do for lunch, since breakfast had sailed. We’re terrible at making decisions. We had to go out anyway, for brownie supplies, so we decided to do Panera Bread, since it was near the grocery store. I was very proud of myself for getting something with fruit in it. We don’t eat a lot of fruit. It’s one of the things we need to work on.
Our next adventure started as we searched for mint pieces for our brownies. Logan really wanted to make brownies, and we decided that mint pieces such as crushed Andy’s Candies would be best for the job. We have a ton of birthday Andy’s Candies, but we didn’t want to use those for brownies. Unfortunately, apparently mint pieces don’t exist anywhere. The last time we tried to get some my husband went to the local grocery store and they didn’t have them. We figured Shop’n Save would have a better chance of stocking them since they have almost everything. Apparently not. No mint chips or mint pieces of any kind, and no Andy’s Candy’s in the candy section either for us to crush ourselves. Still unwilling to sacrifice the birthday candy, we decided to just do a mint frosting for the brownies instead.
Mint extract and green food dye were acquired and we returned home to begin brownie making, our third adventure for the day. We mixed up the brownies and Logan wanted to put them in a long shallow pan, as instructed, but I wanted to use a smaller, ticker pan which had a lid with a handle for easy transportation. I also really like thick brownies. Next time I think we’ll try it Logan’s way as many people question my brownie preferences. We put a little bit of mint in the brownie batter, to complement the frosting, I thought, and used the smaller pan, which looked like it would be fine. The thing is, though, thicker brownies take longer to bake. So Logan showered and I kept an eye on the brownies. He got out of the shower, got dressed, and still the brownies were in the oven. They did manage to come out about 40 minutes before we had to leave. Not enough time for frosting making and application. Sure, I could have taken it with us and frosted them at the church, but I still had to get dressed too, so the frosting was skipped.
Why were we making brownies, you ask? For the spring Psalm Sing, of course! As I’m sure you know by now, I love the Psalms. I’ll probably write all about them on Wednesday. So I get super excited for Psalm sings. We had to miss most of the early ones since we had all the weddings and they always seemed to happen on the same day. Anyway,we’re pretty wedding light this year which makes going to things much easier. So we took our very thick, slightly minty brownies to church, munched with the Bible Study gang, and then sang Psalms for an hour, it was lovely. I was disappointed that 23B was not suggested. I suggested 94A, another of my favorites, before I knew it was the second to last tune we’d sing. Next time I will not hesitate on 23B. It is important. The night concluded with burning boxes and chatting with friends. It was quite lovely.
Sunday
You’d think we’d be done with adventures by now, but no. I woke up at 8 on Sunday, which is super weird as usually the cats are trying to get us up around 7 for breakfast. It was Pearl who woke me up, too, which is super strange. She was trying to play with our feet. I looked at Logan and asked if he’d fed the cats. He said “No, did you?” and I replied “I can’t remember.” It seemed impossible that I hadn’t fed them if it was 8 already and Calamity wasn’t on top of us. She was loafing by the side of the bed and when I got up, Pearl ran out, a clear sign they hadn’t been fed, but Calamity didn’t move at first. And when she did move, she didn’t eat anything. Our poor buddy was sick.
Cat sickness is so stressful. I can’t image what child sickness must be like if this is how we get when our cat is ill. I found one puke spot to start with, and another shortly after, but it wasn’t all over like when Pearl was sick. We knew from that experience that we might just wait it out and be fine, but you never know. It’s worse on Sundays since we can’t call our vet and our options are generally, an animal hospital, which seemed a bit extreme. So we tried everything to get Calamity to eat a little bit before we went to church; wet food, treats, tuna water. Nothing. She wouldn’t touch any of it. Eventually we decided to put her in the side room with some food and water and come home after fellowship meal to check on her. We had to close her in so that Pearl didn’t eat all her food.
When we got to church we got a surprise! One of my college roommates, and dear friends had come to visit from Tennessee! She was accompanied, of course, by her husband and baby daughter, so we had two babies at church. It was so nice to seem them and catch up and hold all the babies. We only have the one at church right now, so I have to share. Logan and I enjoyed fellowship meal with them and once they took off, we slipped out too, before second service. I feel a little bad skipping out on second service, but it was important.
We got home to find Calamity hadn’t eaten at all, which was concerning. Until, of course, she decided she would eat a little bit, since we were there and she wasn’t trapped anymore. She only had a few bites at first, but we gave her a treat and she cautiously ate that as well. After a little while she finally sat and really ate what was left of her food, since Pearl had found her way to it and consumed probably half of it. I watched her eat the rest and a little more, which was very encouraging. We hung out the rest of the afternoon at home to make sure she kept that down before we felt safe leaving her again to have dinner with the family.
And that was my weekend. Brownie adventures, cat adventures, lots of baby snuggles. Not a bad weekend, all things considered. I do wish we had more time to chat with our out of town friends, but considering I might not have seen them at all, I will happily take the hour for fellowship meal. I am most relieved that Calamity is back to her normal self. I think they’ll be a little off with their eating for today, since Calamity ate late and Pearl snacked the whole day and then they had dinner at the normal time. Calamity was in around 5:30 last night, being demanding and then Logan fed them this morning and Calamity came back in, even though there was still food for her to eat. It’s been a weird morning. Hopefully they’ll be back to normal by tomorrow. How was your weekend?
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