A story for Ms. Kitty.

Miss Kitty sounds depressed, so in case she wanders by, I'm going to tell you about my friend's eight-year-old who is married to a stuffed skunk.

He had lots of small stuffed animals, he explained, so when he got this large stuffed skunk for Christmas, he knew she had to be the Mommy skunk. But he was the stuffed animals' Daddy already, and well, all other things being equal, Mommys should be married to Daddies. So the skunk, who goes by Skunkariena, is now his wife.

I pointed out that if he got Skunkariena in a box, she must be a mail-order-bride from Russia. I watched a lot of Yakov Smirnov comedies as a kid and do a credible comedy Russian accent, I brought Skunkariena to life at which point she started to lecture her husband about how he never took her out to dinner. Eventually, this developed into a game where Skunkariena would fall asleep and begin to dream, then would inevitably be woken up and would angrily berate all concerned because she had been dreaming she was a movie star filming a movie with David Duchovney and was JUST ABOUT TO KISS HIM when she'd been woken up by all the racket they were making.

(She also dreamed about buying Prada shoes, lying by the beach and being in a cookie factory. This is a skunk with an active fantasy life.)

OK, this story really doesn't have a point, other than that anyone who isn't cheered up by this story is not imagining it properly.

CC

Ps. Longtime readers will find the storyline of that game somewhat familiar

Pps. Ok, Ms. Kitty has already cheered up