09 June 2010
My mom took Owen for a day out on the town today. She drove him to Burnsville, where she first tried to take him to the McDonald’s play area, only to discover there was no longer a play area in that McDonald’s, then took him to Burger King to play in their play area. After that, they walked around the Burnsville Center, where they checked out JC Penney’s and went mini-golfing. Later they hung out at Walgreen’s for a while.
I think he had a fun day. It’s funny, though, because I think that’s all we did when I was a kid: we spent our days shopping (primarily at the Burnsville Center) and eating fast food.
My wife called me while I was at work and said my mom wanted to know when I was getting home so that she could say goodbye to me. I gave her a time, and then I made sure to be home by that time. And boy, my mom wasn’t kidding: once I got home, she only stayed for about 15 minutes.
She’s still in Minnesota, but she’s leaving for Colorado on Sunday. She plans to come again in August.
10 June 2010
Today we made a memorial stone (or whatever you want to call it) for Oliver. That’s our cat who died last June.We buried him on my sister’s property, where she had quite the pet cemetery going on. We didn’t mean to let nearly a year go by without marking Oliver’s grave site, but, you know, things happen. We actually bought the kit to make the stone several months ago. But since it was winter, there was little point in making a stone that would just have to lie around the house for months until the weather warmed.
I mixed the cement while Jennifer laid out the pieces of stained glass all decorative-like. We tried to keep Owen busy by having him pick out the stamps that spelled out the letters to our cat’s name. I then poured the wet cement into a plastic mold and discovered the cement was way wetter on one side than the other. As Jennifer pushed in the pieces of stained glass, it was a lot easier to do on one side than on the other. After getting all the glass in, she pressed in some smooth stones and made them look like paw prints. Then she stamped in Oliver’s name which, at the time of this writing, is proving quite difficult, as the “ver” part of his name is setting very well, but the “Oli” part of his name keeps filling in with water.
We’re going to my sister’s place on Sunday to pay our respects to our late, good cat. I’ll let you know how it goes.