Cats and Caterpillars

"How doth the little caterpillar..." Wait, that's not right...

It has been one of those weeks. The ones that are best expressed by bullet points. So here goes:

• I just finished playing in the sprinklers with Little Man while Tiny napped. The hundred degree heat demanded it. I'm not exaggerating--the car read 101 on the way to and from the library this afternoon. How is it only April?
• Now Littles is playing musical chairs with Rolly. His stuffed animal dog. This needs no further comment.
• Went in on Thursday for a check up on a hydrocele. Came out of what could possibly be the coolest children's hospital I've ever been in with a surgery date for a hernia and an undescended testicle. Boys are so much fun.
• On a similar note, on Saturday, instead of going to a baby shower that I planned and threw, I went to the ER with Tiny. It was fun times as my 3 month old got snot taken, urine extracted, poop scraped from his diaper, blood drawn, and spinal fluid tapped. Also, he is One. Big. Boy. In our followup appointment with his doctor, we discovered that he is essentially fine and about half of the excitement that occurred might not have been necessary. Love it.
• Our cat escaped this week and had his first overnight adventure. I spent the 20 hours he was missing feeling like an awful pet owner, trying to produce ulcers from the worry, and literally having nightmares about where he was (I also dreamed several times that he had returned, only to wander the house in the middle of the night to discover he wasn't yet home). I spent the following morning fruitlessly chasing our next door neighbor's outdoor cat, who, incidentally, looks annoyingly like Oswald. I did this twice. You would think I would learn. I then found Oswald perched in a window sill two houses down. He gave the most pathetic meow of gratitude when I picked him up but was not much worse for the wear...only a couple tufts of fur missing. Incredibly, he too is incapable of learning as he's tried to get out at least 4 more times since then. Intelligence is not his strong suit.
• Today Littles tried to drink nail polish remover. He informed me that it doesn't taste very good. He did so by screaming and wailing emphatically. He was crying so hard that I thought he'd gotten it in his eyes as well as his mouth (and all over his clothes), so I gave him a liberal dousing of water before I realized that it hadn't gone anywhere near his eyes and most likely hadn't been swallowed. He doesn't seem too traumatized by the experience, but at least we know that nail polish will never stick to any part of him ever for the rest of his life. Including his tongue. I'm still airing out my bathroom.
• Our house has been taken over by caterpillars. I'm killing them diligently. So far the death toll is at 15. I even had mercy on one and spared his life. Probably killed him the next time around. They don't learn either!

And the moral of the story is that this is the way the world turns and we don't learn. None of us do. We go on chasing our neighbors' cats and escaping from safety and invading evil maniac's homes and eventually we pay the price (whether that be with sore muscles, lost fur, or, gasp, death). That, of course, is my Deep Thought for the day. Jack Handey doesn't have anything on me.