Is that a flamenco guitarist in your soup?

What a day it’s been, boys and girls. It started way too early this morning, and looks like it’s going to end rather late tonight. We have solved the mystery of Suzie the cat, the one who hangs around our back deck and front porch, who has wrecked our screen door in her attempts to enter our dander-free abode, who rolls around on her back exposing her soft white belly, a sure sign, according to our guest who left this morning, that she likes us. Well, Hubby was chatting with the neighbour across the street this morning, and she admitted that the cat was theirs. However, she is actually a he and answers (if cats can be said to answer) to the name Do, as in the first degree of the scale. I think Suzie is a much more fitting name for this domesticated feline, and even though she is a he, we will continue to call him Suzie, because I think he’s gotten used to it, as have we.

The other great piece of news today is that Buddy Boy baked his very first pie. This boy, my son, the product of the love between his father and myself, bought an amplifier for his bass (which can double as a guitar amp as well) and beggared himself in the process. He spent all his allowance until the beginning of January and is extremely broke. He absolutely hates this lack of change to jingle in his pocket, but we are not doing anything about it, being the mean, nasty parents that we are.

A friend of his celebrated his 18th birthday today, and Buddy Boy wanted to get him a present. He asked us for $20. We refused. Well, actually, I refused. His father, the softy that he is, would have crumbled under pressure, but I suggested instead that he make something for his friend, like a batch of cookies, and we would supply the ingredients gratis. He thought about this and decided that he would rather make his pal a pie.

We happened to have an aluminum pie plate left over from the night before last’s salmon pie, and I just happened to have bought a couple of cans of pie filling (one blueberry, one cherry) when I was at Costco the last time. I found Buddy Boy the pertinent instructions in The J0y of C00king and made him read them, gave him the flour, butter, water, salt and the bowl and pastry cutter to use, and he was off to the races. All right, I did supervise. A first pie crust is a tricky thing. But it turned out beautifully. He even used the leftover dough to form the birthday boy’s initials for decorating the top of the pie, and sprinkled it with sugar, which gave it a lovely sparkly surface. He used the blueberry filling, since you were going to ask.

After realizing how simple it is to create such a delightful confection, he declared that he would do it more often because, as he said, “I sure do like pie!”

Hubby convinced me to go out with him tonight to see the M0ntreal Guitar Tri0 perform at Centennial Theatre. I had misgivings, as I’m not terribly fond of guitar duets, trios and quartets, and a whole guitar orchestra drives me nuts. But, in order to give Little Princess and her BF some privacy tonight, I agreed. They were loud, they were entertaining, they were anything but your typical guitar ensemble. They did an awful lot of banging on their instruments, and the luthier who made them (they had him stand so the audience could recognize him--he lives in the area, you see) must have been shitting his pants seeing the kind of abuse they were meting out to his precious creations. I couldn’t believe it myself.

And in a while, to bed I hie.

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