24

I know that, because I stood in the kitchen doing the math, while we waited for Son2's family to arrive. "Twenty-four. Pup's twenty-four, right?" With a confirmation, I continued, "That means Loo is about to turn twenty-seven. I thought she was already twenty-seven." (Ah, she's gonna love me for that. Sorry, Loo.)

Picture the air being sucked out of the room, when twelve-year-old Son4 then said, with eyes widened, "You mean Loo's older than Pup!?"

Please -- tell me this isn't child-neglect. Strike 3,537. Am I out yet?

We remembered, then, our shock on the day the 6-year-old was asking strange questions about his other brother. "Are you talking about Son1?" No. We finally pinpointed the person he was referring to. "Son4, Kyle isn't your brother. He's Pup's friend." When the span between one's oldest and youngest children is twenty-three years, the baby needs a tutorial. Who knew?

"I" before "E", except after "C", and "E" before "N" in chicken.
This is your brother.
This is not your brother.
This is your sister, who is shortish.
This is your brother, who is tallish.
Mom and Dad were first on the scene, and Loo before Pup in family.

With that all cleared up, we turned our attention to the cake Charles had brought home. Yes, I was supposed to bake and decorate the cake, having even asked the birthday boy what flavor he'd like to have. But with flu in the house for two weeks, I made an executive decision that my time would be better spent shoveling a path through the accumulated debris, and at a late hour I phoned Charles to pick up a cake on the way home. "White. It has to be white with white frosting."

Peering into the box, my own eyes widened, and Charles said, "It was a man. There was only a man there to write on it"...which explained the nearly illegible scrawl.

Oh my. He's expecting a homemade cake, and not only did I not get that done, just look at this mess. It was comical...in a sick way. Poor Pup.

Purrle partied too hard.

Frankly, noticing this, there was a bit of a stir in the small crowd. "Is he breathing?" which apparently cued Pierre to check. Breathing. Breathing? Pierre knows breathing? He checked, and there was nary a twitch.

" Go for the jugglar, Pierre." Ah, he moved. Whew!

We all partied hard. And except for a store-bought, scrawled upon cake, discovering Son4 still doesn't know his own family, the fat cat playing dead, and a departure delayed by the tire our gravel roads flattened, it was a great event.


Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord. ~Psalm 127:3a