bet­ter, I think

Does­n’t he look hap­py to you? Of course at the time he and his sis­ters were com­plete­ly maxed out on cat­nip, Avery’s gift from the vet as a reward for his good behav­ior. She also dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day that while you can’t hide a kit­ty Prozac in tuna, or smoked salmon, or cream cheese, you CAN hide it in broad day­light crushed in the palm of her hand mixed with cat­nip. Hon­est­ly, after all our sub­terfuge and John’s attempt at brute force (he has the bloody scratch­es to prove it), Avery sim­ply held the stuff out to him and he ate it. What cheek. We can but hope now that he calms down. I’ve been like the medieval plague mas­ters, run­ning around spray­ing every sur­face I can think of with hap­py-mak­ing pher­e­mones, like sin­is­ter incense at an exor­cism. I feel an utter fool, but there you go: the things we do for our children.

I was so impressed at Avery’s skat­ing les­son yes­ter­day! Her instruc­tor Zoia has taught her all sorts of tricks, with names like “lemons” and “uppy uppy uppy.” She end­ed up stay­ing a real­ly long time, watch­ing Coco’s and Angel­i­ca’s pri­vate lessons, and then when they were over, the three girls act­ed as if they’d been let out of prison and just went around and around (being enjoined sev­er­al times by the “rink min­ders” to go only “anti-clock­wise,” not ran­dom­ly run­ning into peo­ple), hold­ing hands and gen­er­al­ly act­ing as a sort of benign men­ace to the rest of the skaters. I hung out with Angel­i­ca’s babysit­ter Fati and Coco’s mum Alli­son, and we trad­ed sto­ries about our com­plete­ly remark­able chil­dren. When we all emerged, it was pour­ing down rain and Avery and I ran to the skate store to get a skate bag, to find it inex­plic­a­bly closed. What sort of vaca­tion day is Tues­day? Dis­con­so­late­ly onto a bus and home, wet and cranky, but a nice cosy evening at home with but­ter toma­to pas­ta sauce and a baguette. We’ve been watch­ing a real­ly enter­tain­ing tele­vi­sion show called “The Great British Menu,” where pairs of chefs from the var­i­ous cor­ners of Great Britain get togeth­er and com­pete in front of judges with an appe­tis­er, a fish course, a main course and a pud­ding. So you end up with a Welsh win­ner, an North­ern Ire­land win­ner, and so on. Then they will com­pete to dis­cov­er who is award­ed the chance to cook the Queen’s “offi­cial” birth­day lunch in June. Yes, just like famous dead peo­ple who need their birth­days to fall on a Mon­day to cre­ate a long week­end, the Queen has a real birth­day and an offi­cial one. The menus are unbe­liev­ably com­plex, intend­ing to reflect local ingre­di­ents and tra­di­tions. Last night’s involved one chef’s crouch­ing over a rainy, nasty beach some­where in North Wales, pick­ing slimy sea­weed to cook down and mix with oats and pars­ley and deep fry. Eeew. The poor Queen! Any­way, watch it if you get a chance. When the judges are forced to down por­tions of cock­les in a rasp­ber­ry broth accom­pa­nied by lamb carpac­cio in a lime and liv­er sauce on a bed of sea­weed, you’ll be grate­ful for your plate of pasta.