For the last several months I’ve been carefully watching what I eat. You see, the lunches Nelly packs for our guests are… generous. A sandwich or a burrito or some quiche or something of the like, a salad, and some sort of baked goods. It’s vacation eating. And for the last several years I’ve been consistently eating what guests eat. So after a couple of years of vacation eating all the time, I’ve gained a pretty significant amount of weight. Which I’ve been working on shedding. Made some pretty good progress, but there’s still a ways to go to get back to where I’m really comfortable. There’s a shortcoming to all this, though. When you get really used to small meals, big meals are overwhelming. If I try to eat the way I was capable of last year I get a stomach ache for hours. And I’m not talking about a christmas feast here. It’s more like if I order an appetiser AND a dinner then I’m nauseous for the rest of the night. Where I’m going with all this is that last night we went out to one of our favourite restaurants. It’s up in the north of Playa, so we don’t go a ton and I figured, “We’re here, let’s eat!” I splashed out by order both a tortilla soup and 5 tacos. Then we went to a good ice cream place that has the most astonishingly good vegan chocolate ice cream I’ve ever had… which I threw away half of when I finally called in the towel. “I ate too much,” I complained most of the way home. “Do you want to stop and get a seltzer or something,” Nelly asked. I did. So we stopped at a gas station not far from here and Nelly went inside to get some drinks. But she got waylaid by a squadron of stray kittens. There are always stray cats at this station, but these were just little kittens. Like, really little kittens. We’ve been talking about getting a second cat for a while, but I’ve been reluctant, worried about upsetting the delicate power structure of fuzzy-things in our home. But this seemed as good a sign as any. “Go on,” I said. And Nelly scooped up the first one to get close enough to snag. She’s in the bathroom now. Pacing around. Playing frantically. Occasionally crying when she hears one of our voices. Neither Tally nor Marvin are paying very much attention to the obviousness that there’s an animal in there. Nelly’ll take her to the vet today. I hope she’s healthy. Because she’s damned cute.
