Mort has been playing school all morning. He is writing the names of his friends and relatives on a piece of paper and then grading their behavior. I'm afraid that most of the people we know have received only a check mark(good but not great) for their pretend efforts. My sister's cat, however, has been awarded 5 stickers and a smiley face, Mort's highest marks in his ranking system.

My cold has progressed to a full-blown head cold, but is still not a sinus infection. I don't know if that's even good because at least with a sinus infection you take antibiotics and it gets knocked out of your system. This feels like my head is stuffed full of cheap toilet paper. Duke feels certain that I simply have allergies. Because I haven't suffered from allergies my entire life so I couldn't possibly tell the difference between allergies and a cold. But he did get up with Mort this morning and make him pancakes while I slept for several more hours. So, I guess as long as I get to sleep he can call this what he will.

Mort woke us last night by hacking up a lung and when we gave him some homeopathic cough syrup, he announced, "My throat feels grouchy."

As we were falling back to sleep, Duke asked, "What was the adverb he used?"

"Grouchy," I replied.

"Oh, I guess that's a noun," he muttered.

"Well, really it's an adjective," said me, "unless you're referring to Grouchy one of the seven dwarfs and then it's a noun."

And for some reason this made us laugh hysterically. That seems to happen alot when Mort wakes us up.

At least Stella wasn't disturbed. Oh and on Mort's ranking system, Stella received a check and an x for less than good but not terrible behavior.