In mid-May, the big event was my birthday (I turned 48), which kicks off the birthday season in our house (my birthday in May, Mike’s in June, Lela’s in August, and Ellie’s and Owen’s in October). I made grilled salmon on grilled asparagus, cascabel beans, and fresh peas from the market for my birthday dinner. Then for dessert we had Mike’s delicious chocolate cake, with a side of homemade vanilla ice cream and early strawberries! And Ellie got a letter back from Franziska! She was thrilled. And so the pen pal relationship was up and running, with letters and little gifts going back and foth. Also, our new couch and loveseat finally got here! We’d ordered them last fall. We got a taupe color (to match with the living room) and also a pet-friendly fabric – tight weave to minimize damage from claws, and water and spill resistant. They are very comfortable and we were very glad to get them. We gave away the loveseat on Nextdoor – it went to a teacher who had cats of her own! And we kept the brown couch, which was still in great shape. We moved it to the seating area in the garage. In minor kitchen news, I finally retired the plastic Ikea cups, and replaced them with tough café glasses from Target. This felt right. The kids were getting too big and mature for those little plastic cups. It was time to move them all to glass. Another event of mid May was that I took the cats to the vet. It’s a bit ridiculous, but it took us so long to name them, and I didn’t want to take them to the vet without names because I assumed that would create a paperwork headache for the rest of their lives, that I wanted to wait until they were named to take them in. Then, once we’d named them, I called the vet, but it turned out that they only scheduled appointments for new patients on the first of the month, so I had to wait another month to get those appointments! I finally brought them in in mid-May. I really liked the vet – she’d been a teacher, and she returned to vet school to start a second career. I’m very alert to these stories now, of people changing directions in mid-life and doing something new, especially as Mike approaches the end of his time at Facebook. I was worried about the cats’ weights, particularly that Gizmo was getting heavy while Cricket was too light. The vet said their weights were healthy (whew!), and that Cricket was just a very petite cat. But she did recommend that we feed them separately (she recommends this to all pet owners) so we can control portions and make sure each cat is eating properly. So we started doing that, and I have to say it was a BIG relief to be able to watch them each eat their own bowl and know they were getting what they should. I had moved them over to a diet of mostly wet food (after a long experimental period where I fed them something different each day and recorded whether they ate it), and the type I had settled on was grain-free, and the vet recommended that we maintain some grains in their diet. In their natural diet they’d be eating small animals, along with whatever was in those small prey items’ stomachs, which might include grasses, grains etc. Those were an important part of the cats’ diet. So I fed them a little dry kibble each day which contained grains (and the dry kibble was also good for their teeth). It was great to get that sorted out.