Mom’s hell bent on turning 100, and this will occur next week on the 25^th. Our good friend Jim’ll be coming from Vancouver for the occasion, so it’ll be a birthday dinner celebration with the five of us: Mom, me, Jim, Luke, Jan. That’s what mom wants so that’s what will happen. Her cousin Hannelore phoned from Germany and told me to get a decent bottle of champagne which I will do.

Imagine my annoyance yesterday morning to find a cat had emptied its bladder onto my bed. I immediately identified Calvin’s rascally cat Felix as the culprit, given he’d told me the cat had wet a floor mat of his the other day. I emailed Calvin who replied with shock that surely it wasn’t his flawless cat. I replied well usually one plus one equals two. His cat has a record of peeing, mine are 7.5 years old and have never done that, so…..

Calvin wasn’t having it and said it wasn’t possible given his cat had spent the entire day downstairs. I replied that wasn’t plausible because he’d been in at least twice prior to 9:00 AM and after that many times and had in fact eaten his usual two cans of expensive food that day. Finally Calvin had to accept his cat might sometimes do a bad thing. His admonishment to the cat? “Good thing you’re so cute.”

I discovered a new flavour of chips for cookies. The latest ones I tried are cream cheese chips. I made a batch of cookies with one cup of those, and one cup of dark chocolate chips and people liked them. I gave some to the Lynches when I went to visit them at Silver Star. Very conveniently I’d ordered chicken feet for Jan from the butcher in Vernon, so I picked those up on my way to the top of the mountain.

People ask, what does Jan do with (ugh) chicken feet? I reply I’m not sure as I’ve never eaten them, but she salivates when she talks about them. Apparently, they’re cooked for a very long time in some kind of a sauce. I wonder about the claws, though. Would those float to the top and you skim them off, or what?

I was in Osoyoos again last weekend and so Lorraine, the nice woman who now sleeps at mom’s, had a night off. I went there to attend my school friend Mary’s husband’s funeral. As I said to Phyllis when I got home afterward, funerals always make me feel like a piece of shit. She laughed nervously, but I said no, seriously it’s true.

Greg was lauded by his sobbing daughter as the greatest dad ever with many stories of what a selfless person he was. She told of a time she felt bad as a mom, and they spoke on the phone, and he said to her “those kids are so lucky to have you as their mom.” Brianna said he was always so supportive and encouraging. I sat there going, wow, I stunk as a mom.

Hopefully by the time I’m dead I’ll have done something tear-worthy for a small group of people. Certainly I think the people I’ve cooked and baked for will feel a pang of sorrow going, “but, who’s gonna bake chocolate chip cookies for me?”

But on a much happier note, imagine my joy to discover there’s a new season of Love is Blind on Netflix. Because I love it so much, I try to ration the number of episodes I watch per night so I can prolong the experience.  Kinda like mom hanging on for dear life until next week.