Cake and Controversy

I really did it this time:

 

Meet Miny and Moe, who just turned a week old.  These are the youngest kittens I've fostered, but so far they're (relatively) easy: they can go 3-4 hours between feedings and are still eating well and gaining weight.  I only have to get up once in the night to feed them, and they're so quick to eat that I usually spend no more than 10 minutes at a time with them.  All my other bottle baby fosters were such a struggle; I hate to say anything and potentially jinx this.

The best part about them: one or the other often rolls onto their back and then gets stuck.  I'll hear one screeching loudly and I'll run to their nest to find a kitten on its back, fat belly fully exposed, as it frantically kicks its stubby feet to fruitlessly try righting itself.  It looks like a very undignified tortoise that's been flipped onto its back.  

Naturally, I find this hilarious.

The worst part about them: they smell.  I mean, they're really stinky little things.  They're too young for a full bath right now, so I wipe them down with a warm cloth after every feeding . . . but cat urine sure is a powerful smell.

Bee is not pleased with this situation.  Being a person who is Very Sensitive To Smells, he coughs dramatically every time he passes the kitten room and loudly complains that it's permeating the air downstairs in the living room.  I scrub and do laundry and run vent fans and light candles, but to no avail: my need to foster and his need to breathe will always be at odds.

However, kitten controversies are actually not what I wish to focus on for this post.  We've got the human-type to discuss:

About a month ago we invited S.B. and his girlfriend, Tara, to Sunday morning breakfast.  Despite living here, S.B. is often not home on the weekends, so I figured I'd have more luck trapping him during daylight hours if food and his girlfriend were involved.  Bonus: since Sunday morning first means "Family Cleaning", I was thrilled at the prospect of having Tara come to a freshly-cleaned home to eat a simple meal with us.

Of course, things are never as simple as we expect.  Even meal-planning the night before was a challenge:

"I want to make pancakes," said Bee.  

"OK," I responded.  "I guess I should run to the store to pick up some stuff."

"Why?  I already have the pancake mix.  Just add water!" he exclaimed.

"But we can't have just pancakes," I said.

"You're right.  I'll cook up some bacon," Bee decided.

"Tara's a vegetarian," I reminded him. 

"Oh," he said, crestfallen.  "Too bad.  My homemade bacon's really good."

"It is," I agreed.  "But I should run out and get some fruit."

"Don't go to the store on a Saturday!" he admonished.  "Everyone goes on Saturday."  (We hate crowds.)

"But we need some sort of side for the pancakes," I said. "I guess I could see if we still have any of those jars of peaches I canned last fall."

Bee wrinkled his nose.  "Those didn't turn out well."  (Which is true.) 

(But it still hurts to hear.)

"Forget the pancakes," said Bee.  "Let's do scrambled eggs and toast."

"OK," I hedged, "but do you think that'll be enough for such an auspicious occasion?"

Bee rolled his eyes.  "'Auspicious'?  No.  But I thought we were keeping this simple."

"We are," I insisted.  "I just think I'll be hungry after an hour if I only have a few scrambled eggs and a piece of toast."

Bee waggled his eyebrows and sang: "Not if those scrambled eggs have some of my home-spiced sausage in them!"

"Tara's a vegetarian," I sang-songed back.

"Oh."  Bee was dispirited.

We were both silent for a minute.

"I know!" I exclaimed.  "I can make my mom's famous coffee cake!"

Bee perked up.  "That would be great!" he chortled.  "And you know what would make it even better?" 

He smacked his lips.  "Ham!"

Sigh.  It's tough to feed a vegetarian in a carnivorous household.

In the end, we settled on Mom's Famous Coffee Cake and some scrambled eggs (sans sausage).

I gently eased Bee and Mr. C out of bed at 8:30 on Sunday morning by kicking open their doors and screeching "FAMILY CLEANING!" at them.  Then we spent the next hour bickering about who was more to blame for the messiness of the house as we hurriedly shoved junk into closets and swept the kitchen floor.  I threw together the coffee cake batter -- creating more dishes for Mr. C to wash with a long-suffering sigh -- and we were ready to go by 9:45.

"What time are they coming?" asked Bee.

"I suggested 10:00; but we should double-check,"  I said, texting S.B. 

"Umm, how about 10:15?" he texted back.

Luckily, I was able to keep the coffee cake warm in the oven, and I waited to start the eggs until they arrived, so my number one pet peeve -- cold food -- was kept at bay.  With my extra time, I even made the kitchen table fancy.  And by "fancy", I mean: I put out placemats.

S.B. and Tara were appropriately impressed with the meal.  (How could they not be?  It included all my favorite food groups: sugar, carbs, and fat.)

I doubled the amounts for the "Spicy Topping", of course

I even got to engage in a little of my favorite hostess activity: pushing seconds onto my guests.   I must point out a slight bias I have with my encouragement, though: for some reason, I only offer up sweet items for seconds.  I think that's because -- as a guest -- I want to have seconds (and thirds and fourths) of the dessert-type things, but I always feel too self-conscious to take them.  As a hostess, I therefore make it my duty to offer up allll the coffee cake, cookies, and so forth that I can . . . which has the totally separate but added benefit of allowing me to eat seconds (and thirds and fourths) as well.

Bee is not thrilled with this little quirk of mine.  He rolls his eyes at every party and dubs me the "Sugar Pusher".

Mom's Famous Coffee Cake now completely gone and tea mugs in hand, we all retired to the living room to digest and speak of light-hearted things.  Except, once-again, things were not as simple as we planned.  

"Did you guys see that video on YouTube about the transgender person reading to kids at the library?" asked Bee.

And what was supposed to be a light-hearted breakfast turned into a (friendly but) passionate discussion about LGBTQ+ rights, generational differences, gender equality, and the evils of the YouTube algorithm.

This then led into a debate on personal values, which then led to me sprinting off to print and cut out 5 sets of the values list I got at my leadership training conference a few years ago.  Then we all gathered around the coffee table with our values scraps, moving words between different piles based on how important they were to us, then sharing why we chose the top 10 values we did.

I was pretty happy about all this, actually, as it's something I've wanted to do with my family for years. And then Tara took pictures of everyone's ordered lists so we could refer to them later . . . but maybe it was all for blackmail purposes.

As the event drew to a close, we decided to dub it "Cake and Controversy" and promised to do it semi-regularly.

Of course, the next time I invited S.B. and Tara over for some Cake and Controversy, they also brought her brother and sister-in-law.  As was right and good, our new guests were appropriately-impressed with Mom's Famous Coffee Cake and politely took seconds (allowing me to take thirds).  However, we purposefully steered clear of any truly controversial topics on this first meeting with Tara's family.

I still am not sure if Tara wanted them to come because she wanted to show off her boyfriend's home and living situation, or because she wanted them to bear witness to her boyfriend's family's weirdo-ness.  Either way, her brother and sister-in-law didn't make an excuse to hurry out the door as soon as the meal was over, so I call that a win!

I am already planning for our next Cake and Controversy.  I think it would be quite nice to revisit our Personal Values lists and see if anything's changed.  And I also think it would be fun to take the Personality Test Mr. C sent me a few weeks ago.  (No big surprise: I tested as a Logistician: "Practical and fact-minded individuals, whose reliability cannot be doubted".  Apparently, so are Angela Merkle, Natalie Portman . . . and Jason Bourne.)

These are more along the lines of the "controversies" I want to discuss: I like to understand the people around me, but I'm wary of doing it by discussing current events.  It's sort of the "vanilla" way around it . . . but what's wrong with a little vanilla?

After all: it makes a great coffee cake.