This weekend, I went to my hometown to attend a winter festival and take pictures of the ice sculpture contest. In addition to that contest, there was also an ice cube hunt – like an Easter egg hunt but with prizes frozen into blocks of ice and thrown out into the field of snow. It was a really cute event. It would have been even cuter if there had been SNOW in the field but the winter festival was subject to an unseasonable 50 degree day. Oh well. It was cute on grass, too.
The festival also had the best thing ever: a s’mores making station. While some may question the wisdom of small children walking across the parking lot with molten marshmallow on a stick so adults at the station could assemble the s’mores…well, you should question it. But no one lost an eye this year. And if they had? Immediate, sticky, cauterization. It’s a tasty win win, folks.
But photographing the s’mores station left me feeling smokey and smelling like I’d been camping for a week. When I got back to my parents’ house I went upstairs almost immediately, intent on taking a shower. Cousin Spade wanted to help.
I didn’t let him help.
The black kitten met me a the bathroom door afterward and followed me to my room. I shut the door so I could get dressed. Then I realized I was exhausted and plunked down on the bed. Spade stomped around for a second and let me scritch his back. Then he was done.
He wanted out.
He wanted out NOW.
I pulled myself up and started putting on clothes. OUT. NOW. OUTOUTOUT, Spade cried. “Hold on a sec,” I said, “I’m putting on clothes.”
LET ME OUT! NOBODY CARES THAT YOU’RE NAKED! Spade said, pawing the door.
Clothed, I opened the door. “Nobody cares that YOU’re naked,” I said. And I replunked onto the bed.
Free, Spade came back and sat down next to me for more pets.
***
Side note: As I left to drive back across Wyoming this afternoon, the wind picked up and rain started to fall. By the halfway point, there was a lot of snow. I drove the last two hours with ten feet of visibility and brought a blizzard into Cheyenne with me. Irony, I haz it.
Kitten Thunder: Life lessons and cat tales 
Wait — the kids toasted their own marshmallows and then carried them to the s’mores station for assembly? Because children can be trusted with fire but not with chocolate and graham crackers?
Well, the assembly part would get them sticky. No one likes a sticky child.