does chocolate cause dysania?

 Today is Global Scouse Day and also National Chocolate Souffle Day.  Which brings us to, I believe, seventeen days celebrating one form or another of chocolate so far this year.  Scouse I have discovered by intense research (I googled it) is basically stew made with lamb and beef and is evidently very popular in Liverpool, although it originated in eastern Europe.  So there you have it.  If you're in the mood to celebrate food those are your choices.  Please pass the chocolate souffle. On to a different subject.  I learned a nifty new word today.  Dysania means a reluctance to get out of bed in the morning.  So now, when you hit the snooze alarm or don't set an alarm at all but still feel the need to roll over and go back to sleep in the morning, you can tell yourself and others that you are suffering from Dysania.  Throw a word like that around and you'll get all kinds of sympathy.  

It starts with a riddle

 Yesterday my west coast brother posed this riddle:  If five cats can catch five mice in five minutes, how long will it take one cat to catch one mouse?  I'm sure you've deduced the answer but there's more to the story.  After posing this riddle, which my brother had sent on behalf of his cat Ace, he texted me that Ace had delivered a four minute mouse to the family doorstep.  Cats do like to share.  They live in the country, so mice are in ample supply.  We decided, in continued text exchanges, that Ace is probably in training, inspired by the Olympics, for the Mouseathalon, a dual event which consists of catching mice and napping.  From everything I've heard, Ace is a contender. But enough about the Olympics.  I'll leave you with another riddle (also provided by my west coast brother).  How do you keep Canadian Bacon slices from curling when you cook them?  Take away their little tiny brooms.   

Chocolate

 Anyone who knows me knows that I am a boarder line chocoholic.  Which is not all bad.  It is a basic food group after all.  I am particularly partial to dark chocolate, but I do not spurn milk chocolate or white chocolate or chocolate mixed with another flavor.  I believe I have mentioned chocolate covered cherries and caramels in previous blogs.  Tonight, though, I have discovered a new chocolate experience.  I am a fan of the Great British Baking Show but tonight, when flipping through the channels, I discovered The Great Chocolate Showdown.  It has all kinds of advantages over a piece of chocolate.  First, I can watch the contestants create amazing chocolate concoctions; things I would never dream of creating.  Then, it keeps me so busy watching that I don't get up to fix a snack.  It is an absolutely calorie free chocolate experience.  Now if I only had 'smell-a-vision.'  

fancy cat

 Anyone who knows me knows that I am very fond of cats.  Not fond enough to have one now, but back in the day I had as many as three at once.  In my defense, that was only because, when my daughter moved back home after her divorce she brought her two children and her two cats.  Since we already had one cat, that brought the total to three.  When she remarried she took the kids but left the cats.  Go figure.  Up to then we had only had, at the most, two cats at a time.  I'm not a crazy cat lady, quite.  But all this is simply the prelude to an encounter I had with a cat yesterday.  Now, I have plenty of encounters with dogs because there is frequently one riding with it's person in the elevator when I am getting a ride.  They need to go out!  And that's fine.  I like these occasional chances to pat a dog, but even though I know they are around, cats stay in their apartments and are seldom seen.  Until yesterday.  I was coming home from a meeting when I saw a cat strolling down the hall.  It turns out that the gentleman who lives at the end of the hall lets his cat out to walk the length of the hall from time to time.  A little extra exercise, I guess.  We chatted, as I enjoyed patting the cat, about cats of course.  As I was patting the cat I realized that this was an unusual cat.  In the face it looked like my tabby, all the usual markings, and it was ordinary cat size, but the markings on its sides look like a leopard or bobcat. Spotted, any way.  It was beautiful.  My new friend told me that it is a relatively new breed of cat, a cross between some kind of wild cat and a domestic cat.  Really beautiful.  I googled spotted cats and the closest I found was a Bengal cat, but I'm not sure that was it.  Whatever.  It is a very fancy cat.  

little accidents

 One of my granddaughters, 19 and in college, admitted to me that a few weeks ago, in one of our slushy snow storms, she slid her car off the road and into a ditch.  She's fine and the car is was not damaged. It did get pretty muddy as she tried to get it out herself before calling AAA.  Not quite so recently, but during this school year, another granddaughter, this one a senior in high school, had a flat tire on her way home from a party.  It was late at night, and dark and she was in an unfamiliar part of town so she drove slowly home on the flat.  Shredded the tire but didn't damage the rim.  Thirty years ago, give or take, one girl's father and the other girl's mother (my two children) each had an accident while driving to school.  They weren't hurt nor was anyone else.  

All of these incidents were relatively minor and I am so glad that they happened.  Young drivers seem to believe they are invincible, and a wake up call can help them take life and driving a little more seriously from then on.  

And, in case you're wondering, yes of course I had my own little accident.  In my case, I rolled my first car over and up on it's wheels again.  Since it was a Corvair, it wasn't that hard to do.

Old Matt....

 I watched a beautiful program on PBS this evening.  "The American Horse" was an hour long program about the horses that are particularly American.  Appaloosas, Morgans, Mustangs and Quarter horses all have their place in American history.  Seeing those horses running across the prairies, mountains and deserts reminded me of Old Matt.  Old Matt was the only horse I ever had.  Actually I only 'had' him for a week.  My roommate during my first two years of teaching and I decided to take a driving trip out west one summer.  We camped in Yellowstone and visited Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon and finished our journey with a week at a dude ranch in the mountains of Colorado.  It was a great experience which included daily trail rides and some cute cowboys.  When it was discovered that I had never ridden a horse before I was paired up with Old Matt.  I hung on and he walked slowly so it worked out just fine.  We were always the last in line, although he did perk up a little when the barn came into view.  Years later when we lived in a rural area in Ohio our neighbors had two horses and a few times my neighbor girlfriend and I rode the horses up the hill a ways to pick black raspberries and just for the fun of riding.  Thanks to Old Matt I did know how to get on the horse and control him with the reins.  One other fun fact, I got my first ever speeding ticket driving a Mustang.  And that's all the horsey memories I have.  

by the numbers

 There seem to be a lot of numbers floating around today.  It is 2-22-22 or, as it's also called. Twos day.  That is pretty interesting, and according to one reporter, won't happen again for 400 years.  I'll have to think about that.  It reminded me that my 70 birthday fell on 12-13-14 which I thought was pretty cool.  But the number I heard today that surprised me and interested me the most is that Vladimir Putin is only five feet, five inches tall.  Which explains why so many of his pictures seem to be on horse back.  And does this mean he might have a Napoleonic complex?  And does this explain current events in Europe? Something to ponder.