Eye Boogies and Sugar Cookies

Eye Boogies and Sugar Cookies
Or – When God wants a laugh, she peeks in at our house

We have a batch of kittens. We did have a batch of sugar cookies. They never had a chance to hit the cookie tin. No Twinkie® shelf-life in this household. Maximum possible cookie life is 27 minutes. I’ve timed it. I’m a writer and as a hobby, I find things to distract me.

Kittens, although born absolutely perfect, often develop what my eight yr. old refers to as “gooey-eye”. Graphic I know, but she’s eight. I learned long ago to turn the gross into attempts at wit. Gooey-eyes, when dried up, become eye-boogies.

These eye-boogies drive my daughters crazy. The twenty year old gently, but often removes them. In my opinion it’s too often. I believe in the lovely flow of nature and the natural instincts of the animal kingdom. Polgara, the mom, is a good mom. She takes very good care of those little balls of fluff. She’s weaning them slowly, but she is a grand care-giver. I believe it’s her job to remove any assorted bodily secretions on her babies. I did it for mine, albeit in a slightly different way (hail the all-powerful tissue).

My youngest, despite orders not to, insists on cleaning these wee eyes repeatedly and as gently as a Taurian female can be when fixated on a task. "Determination" may begin to touch on it. Stalwart determination. You get the picture.

I hand her a tissue, telling her to be gentle. She says “ok Mom” and goes about the business at hand … and nail. And we wonder why we have to send the kids to wash their hands before dinner.

She’s getting better by the day. The kittens love her. Wherever she is, there are bundles of black fur curled up beside her. She must be doing something right.

We were unpacking groceries the other night. (see, there is a segue) My daughter eyeballs the thin plastic box of sugar cookies. You know the ones I mean. If you grab it by just the corner, it cracks, splits and snaps open. Household pets know the sound and gather, watching like a flock of birds. I’m no Tippi Hedren, but it’s spooky.

I opened it for her and held it out for her to take one. She got a serious look on her face and inspected the contents of the box. She reached in and took one. It broke on the way. Ok, so I spoil her. Generally when a cookie breaks in transit, if it lands in the package, I let her take another. If it lands on the floor, the flock swoop in and it’s a free-for-all. May the best pet win. This landed in the package, but just as I began to offer up a whole cookie, I glanced down at five tiny fur balls, rolling around their mother. For some nasty reason, my focus honed in on the dried “eye-boogies”.

The flock got fed, my daughter was sent to the bathroom to wash with soap and I sat down with fresh coffee.

I’m thinking I need to add to the soap budget and hoping beyond hope I got the lesson through to my eldest. The young one shows promise. We’ll see.