I could not resist this mini-post. It is a mini-post because this photograph is very small:

This is one of the fun things my nieces in Australia are preparing for a Dr Seuss birthday party being held for the triplets in their neighbourhood. They help the parents, along with a whole roster of others, with baby watching, and baby sitting. They have made lots of little “Cat in a Hat” and green eggs and things out of icing sugar, and a very, very tall cake.

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While chatting to my niece on Facebook, apparently my mother said that she wished I were there to “lick the bowls”.

Whenever my mother made cakes when I was a child – and when I was old enough to hold the bowl without dropping it – I got to lick the bowl. I was supposed to share with my sister, so the bowl was usually whipped away unceremoniously from beneath my sticky little fingers before I was quite finished. I will not even tell you how I used to share those flat strips of Wrigley’s® chewing gum, except to say that I always got the big half, which my younger sister used to try and extract from my mouth. Apart from that, we were mostly well-behaved.

To my mother’s comment about licking the bowls, and in the spirit of the party for which they were so joyously preparing, I replied thus:

Now, that I can do, I can, I can—
I am the best bowl-licker in the world, I am.
I’ve licked close to home, I’ve licked far away—
I’ll lick any bowl, any time, any day!
And perhaps, if you let me, I may even be seen
Licking a bowl when it is perfectly clean!

All tongue-in-cheek, of course.

Sadly, the teleporter is currently being used elsewhere, so I am unable to attend.

Allison