A Bad Cat

Sandy the cat is in the doghouse. Melissa's favorite flesh and blood companion has enjoyed being a house cat since his arrival on her 6th birthday. However, his uncivilized manners have caused him to be ejected recently, we haven't been able to solve the dilemma of his *ahem* toilet habits. After about $800.00 damage to our big room/den and now, having to move Melissa completely out of her bedroom in order to paint the floor with Z-Prime, I had to explain to her that he was not allowed in the house anymore.
She seems to understand (thankfully) and has illustrated his current social status.

sunnier places

With the November rain upon me, I am feeling the walls close in. I think Melissa feels it too - she keeps asking me "Why does it rain in Oregon?" and "When will it be snow?" She seems to think as well that her big brother, Jon, has promised her snow for a snowman when it is winter...and since all the leaves are off the trees then, by golly, it is time for that promise to be kept! I try to reassure her that there will be some snow, sometime.
In the meantime, I have gone back to dig up this old sketch she drew last winter. It is her memory of our last sunny vacation as a family. Look carefully and you will see the steaming hot tub at the resort hotel. The palm trees, the rental car...it's all there...I'm with you Melissa, it's time to go back to "the city by the beach"!

Cartoon Jokes

Melissa is entertaining herself and the rest of us with complex storyboards that tell a "joke", usually involving her imaginary friends. The slapstick plotlines she creates have her friends falling off trees, into puddles, or having stuff fall on their heads. Her drawings are so funny that we do wind up laughing, which thrills her enormously and she will go off into her room to create more comic storyboards. A future Pixar groupie in the making.