Susan spent the afternoon preparing some okra dip for a "Black and White" Mardi Gras party that she and Matt were attending that night. Matt took Cam for a walk. A real walk. Cam's first outing where, instead of the stroller, he walked around himself in his nifty new sneakers. When they got back, Matt busied himself making a carrot cake for a Prenatal Class Reunion that Cam was hosting the next day. Matt thought the cake pan was non-stick, but it didn't work out that way. He ended up making a pile of carrot cake crumbs (and another trip to the supermarket).

This freed me to prepare my special surprise for Matt and Susan: a set of black and white Mardi Gras masks. The masks were a great excuse not to learn anything this day, except that white glue is a useless adhesive when it comes to pipe cleaners on tagboard. Oh, it does a fine job of getting the pipe cleaner fibers stuck to everything, but it's useless when you want to prevent a cat mask with pipecleaner whiskers from looking like Hitler The Cat. I had to resort to aesthetically unpleasing but very quick and stable staples.

Then, it was time for Mommy and Daddy to go party and for Uncle Dan to babysit. I stuffed my gullet on the leftover French bread and okra that Susan had put out for me. I still had 20 Weight Watchers points so I wasn't too worried. (One nice side effect of sleeping until 2pm is that it saves all of your points.) Then, with the remaining bread, I ate the leftover Eggplant and Zucchini Blob. That and 85% of a cake pan's worth of carrot cake crumbs. I toyed briefly with the idea of carefully placing the remaining 15% on top of the trash so that it would seem as if I had thrown most of the cake ruins away, but then a sense of honesty (combined with a rapidly worked out "I had 20 points left" argument) led me to abandon the idea.

Cam played himself to exhaustion in the TV room and went to bed without a fuss around 10. This gave me a chance to write a description of the previous night's "Guesses for Guinea Fowl." Matt and Susan came back late. No one had eaten the okra. (I thought it was good.) But all the bread had been eaten because of a popular sour cream and dill dip made by another guest. ("Thanks for the cut up bread, Susan! Nice job!")

I went to bed nicely full, and nicely forgetting my friend Dina's birthday.