In the middle of a virtual maelstrom of messages this morning, work and family, email, facebook messages, work I/M, and text, I managed to text my work “team” that I would be AWOL in the middle of the day. Why? We took Little Cat Z (our daughter) out to lunch. Where? Casey’s Tavern. Why? It is her birthday. The message maelstrom was FUN! I am not complaining.

We’re at the point in our lives (all our lives) that we don’t do big birthday bashes with cake and candles and Japanese lanterns and a bazillion packages to open. We’re gonna do the usual FinFam steak dinner faaaar in the backyard kind of party on the weekend when mouse and the racc are home from camping. I asked the bday gal if she wanted to do dinner with us today. She is adjusting to EDT (and life) after a week in San Francisco and really wanted to have a quiet evening. Which was A-okay with me! But then. She rallied a bit and said, “How ’bout lunch?” Yes yes yes.

I like to post this pic on her birthday (and sometimes other days). We are walking out into Lake Superior. Little Cat Z is holding tight to ONE of the bikini clad woman’s fingers aka her mother aka MEEEEE. She seems to think that one finger keeps her safe and actually she is right for reasons I can’t articulate. The two women ahead of us are Radical Betty and The Commander, good friends since they met in college and how my mom and dad met but that’d be a story for another day. The bikini woman hasn’t worn a bikini or tanned herself into that dark color for many years.

But happy birthday to Little Cat Z. How the heck did we raise her into the beautiful, capable woman she is? To quote my dad responding to compliments (not necessarily deserved) from co-workers at my childhood EPA job, “We didn’t raise her. She raised herself.” Indeed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2025 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.