We try very hard to be organized around here. We have a short meeting every morning in which we discuss what we have to do that day. We try to remember to eat lunch, to drink water, to stretch, to pay the bills and occasionally feed the children. We try to be organized. We really do.

But that doesn’t mean we always succeed. In fact, we are usually quite disorganized. Part of it is the sheer number of things we try to do at once and part of it is just the way our brains work (which is to say, not very well).

In any case, club member Spencer had a birthday about a month ago now. We sent Spencer a birthday card, which he dutifully colored in and which his mom dutifully sent to us and which I promptly forgot about and left to grow moldy in my inbox.

I will comfort myself to believe that Spencer’s birthday drawing is one of those things that, like fine wine and certain kinds of stinky cheese, actually get better the longer you wait.

I see that I am rambling on and on and making the arrival of Spencer’s birthday drawing even later than it already is.

So…here it is.

Because Spencer is not just an artist but a published author, he wrote a story to go along with his card.

Actually, he wrote two stories.

Apparently (according to Spencer’s mom) the first version involved spiders reading the cat’s mind so they could find the cat’s parents and kill them. Though pleased with his story, Spencer remembered that the Bobbledy Blog is a generally cheerful sort of place where family-friendly content is our general preference. And so he offered a second story, with slightly less bloodthirsty subject matter.

Scaredey Cat

There’s a cat that is scared because when the ghosts turn red it means they have an evil plan to kill the cat. The spiders are attaching magnets to the cat to get at its memories so they can find the parents and scare them, too. The green skull is trying to spy on the cat because it also has an evil plan for the cat.

I said slightly less bloodthirsty. The cat’s poor parents have been upgraded from a truly grisly fate to merely getting scared. Part of me is glad that Spencer didn’t elaborate on the green skull’s evil plans and part of me is even more scared for not knowing. My imagination is a lively place.

All this is to say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SPENCER! And so sorry for taking so long to post your card. We can hardly wait to see what you come up for next year’s card. Here’s hoping we have the courage to look at it!