"We Are Not Cat People"*

My family is so witty.  I'm proud that we are able to entertain ourselves without the help of any electronic devices.  Yesterday we went up to the foothills to spend the day.  Lucy was at a retreat for mock trial and we had to pick her up at the camp at 9pm.  Yes, I know that's an interesting time.  I picked it.  The group was staying until today at noon, but Lucy needed to be home for the Sabbath.  I thought I was a pretty mom to say I would pick her up so late, especially since it was nearly 2 hours from home.

Keith, Mikey and I packed a picnic and left home to arrive in the mountains around lunchtime.  There were a couple of really neat towns with an old main street that we could explore.  We started at an old church with a cemetery surrounding it.  Turns out it was the first Serbian Orthodox church in the United States.  I've never seen fancier graves and tombstones.  It was a cool discovery.  From there we went to a "Used and Rare Bookstore."  That took a good hour and then we browsed a kitchen store had a microwave potato chip maker we were interested in.  There were 5 or 6 antique shops too.  Mikey is fun to hang out with.  He doesn't whine and likes to look at everything.  I got him candy cigarettes at the candy shop.  Keith wasn't thrilled, but I thought they were so fun when I was a kid.

Next we went to the Black Chasm.  A vertical cave.  They a awesome.  Apparently it has features that only 5% of all caves in the world have.  Lucy wouldn't want to go in a cave, so that worked out well.  We had our lunch there too.  We wanted to see the Indian casino in the area, just to see how big and fancy it was.  That was a bust.  We couldn't get close without paying to park.  Oh well, it's not like we were counting on winning at the slots.

So now we come to the part of the day that I think is what I will remember the longest.  At about 7 o'clock we had done everything we could do to fill the day.  It was dark and most everything was closed.  We had eaten a marginal dinner at a local restaurant and we were left to our own imaginations.  We parked the van outside a cafe where there were street lights and sat in the car for the next hour and forty-five minutes.  We started with the animal game--naming animals, as many as we could, in alphabetical order or not.  At one point we named all the kinds of monkeys we could think of.

"Let's do the cat family,"  I said.  We started with cougar and lion; puma, panther, cheetah, leopard, mountain lion, bobcat, lynx, tiger.  Then we got tabby, calico, tom, Siamese, Manx?--the one without the tail.  There was Cheshire and a few more.  Then it got really fun.  I said "____in the hat."

Here are some of the responses:
____got your tongue
____sup
____cher in the rye
curiosity killed the____
KIT____
____on a hot tin roof
____o-nine tails
____amaran
____illac
____nip
____nap
____erpillar
____alogue
____aletic converter
____'s cradle
____scan
____'s meow
____woman
____acomb
____apult

It just kept going and going.  I'm sure there were more that I can't remember.  We were laughing.  Anytime we do something like that, I think about how people must have used games like that a hundred years ago to keep themselves amused.   I think I'd probably be a good Amish person.  I'm so easily entertained.  Anyway, we passed the time.  Lucy got to stay pretty late and we we together---4/5 of us anyway.  Speaking of,  I think Ian would've  liked the game.  He has such a clever wit.

*a phrase Keith taught Ian to say before almost anything else