When Mr. MG was sanding the drywall mud ( with me assisting) we had a curtain of plastic hanging here to keep the dust from spreading to the rest of the house. Ha! Within a couple of days the felines had shredded it, and also done a bang-up job of perforating all the plastic we laid over the floor upstairs. And then they ate some. And then they had a barf party all over the house.

When the drywall stuff was done, we rolled up the floor covering and cleaned up the dust. Then it was time to re-plastic the floors for painting. Now, a little dust on the carpet is no big deal, but if the cats rip up the plastic and I drip paint…well that’s a disaster right there. So I got a couple of baby gates and put them in the way.

 The gates stopped them for a little while.

Then the younger of the two figured out that she could leap the nine feet up to climb over. I came out of the shower to find her looking out at me from between the paint buckets. “Crap! The jig is up!” and she bolted down the stairs and knocked the top gate down with a thunderous cacophony, waking up everyone else in the house. So I got a third gate. They completely blocked the stairwell now.

It stopped feline intrusion, but it also blocked us. It is fun to either climb between the top and bottom gates or remove the bottom om one and do the limbo every time I need something from upstairs. Running all the hooligans through baths and showers is a lot of fun, too. Add to that the fact that there are no lights in the ceiling yet and the Pacific Northwest dark is setting in, and you have a recipe for disaster. It is like a boot camp obstacle course.

They never have cats on the set of HGTV shows. Now I know why.

When Moo was still a nursing bebe, it started.

First, I had to cut out anything spicy from my diet.

Then tomatoes.

Garlic? Not such a good idea, either. They all gave her a blistering – actual blistering – diaper rash. The only good thing in this situation was that it made her eventual weaning not so sad for me. I was ready to eat food that tasted like something again.

But then she started reacting to more foods, ones that she ate, herself. Citrus was a no-brainer because of the acid, but she also couldn’t stand any sort of stone fruit, grapes, berries, mango, or even a whiff of cinnamon. I mean, who has a problem with cinnamon?!

And then lately, legumes. Beans, peas, soy, you name it. Diaper rash city. And you don’t even want to know about what it’s like to hold down a terrified, screaming, begging two-year-old and try to gently clean the muck off of their raw tukas. It is awful.

We all thought that potty training would be a snap to potty train; after all, wouldn’t it be a relief to not have the poo touch skin and incinerate it on contact? Yippee for clean behinds! But after two years of it hurting so badly, she is understandably gunshy and doesn’t want to risk letting it out at all. So we endure tearful trips to the potty – eventually, it will click.

But that doesn’t help the other symptoms, the all-over pimply rash and tummy aches. So I finally got a clue and took her to the allergist today. All of the foods she has a problem with are big allergens, and she has a mondo beyondo family history. 

The doctor’s office is so great, and she had a wonderful time. She got tested for a ton of foods, plus cat and dog and grasses and a couple of trees. She hugged me and never complained during the scratch test. Then we waited for fifteen minutes for a reaction to set in before I hiked up her shirt so the nurse could see the welts on her back.

Only there weren’t any.

NOT ONE.

The doctor said that she may have an intolerance to those foods, but not a true allergy. Which is good – I love that she failed this particular test. But great googly-moogly what is up?! How can it cause such problems, and then nothing on a skin test? I would say I’m speechless, but then there is this whole blog post to prove that I am not.

After the doctor visit, we headed out to lunch together to a gigantic salad bar spot. She ate a bit of her cheese sandwich, and then proceeded to poke her chubby fingers into my salad and pick out all the black beans and eat them. “The beans are for me, mama,” she informed me. And what could I do? I sighed and nudged a few more into her reach.