A Pet's Life in Four Acts

Friday, June 15ths have been hard for us.

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I've been putting this off for years by this point. Now, after having looked for pictures and poring over anecdotes in my memories, in checking over the notes I jotted down at the beginning of the summer, I remember why.

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Corrie and I were moving into our own place for the first time, and had ideas about living abroad later, but still wanted a cat. We figured rescuing an older, more mature cat and giving them a solid twilight period would be our plan.

I went to the rescue shelter off Hwy 1 between Cuesta and Morro Bay. Maybe it was before Cuesta? The same place as the drunk tank, but somehow I never ended up there.

Inside there were some mellow older cats, as well as lots of middle year cats. Eventually I came upon a big kitten run. It was the upper level in like, a cat room. Maybe a half-dozen kittens inside, feisty and---

---eyes, green and powerful, piercing, telling me something, coming from the absolute Platonic Form of Cat, kitten-dom specifically. This cat's little head shape was the most ideal, the most ridiculously perfect shaped head I could have imagined. The white goatee, white whiskers and eyebrow whiskers that looked like wise-man eyebrows, framed by pure shiny blackness. His white chest mane was what I noticed next. His legs were black, as was his back, but his feet and belly were white. He mewed to me and with his eyes he said, Hey...you...it's you...you and me...it's you...

I think I was saying something like, "Hey, there..." when the worker came around. He said, "Oh that guy? His name's Tuxedo. It's on his tag. We found him on the road and called the number on the tag, but nobody answered."

Whether he said that exact thing or not, the deal is that was the essential story of how they came to have this tiny black and white kitten. That kind of thing breaks my heart, but I had already steeled myself for a trip to the rescue shelter, an event that was going to be tough for me emotionally anyway.

I waved buh-buy with my finger through the cage before cruising off to look at other, much older cats.

After catching the last few cats, and making mental notes that I would take back to Corrie, I decided to come back and say goodbye to that beautiful little Tuxedo. I remember thinking that it wouldn't be possible to imagine a more perfect looking, or more beautiful cat.

He did the same thing with his eyes: Hey you...(Meow) it's you again...it's you...you and me (Meow)...we're like...it's you...you and me...(Meow)

That night I talked to Corrie. Oscar seemed like the most reasonable old cat there: he was mellow, he was older, he hadn't been abused or injured in some way, was okay with kids. But I did mention about the very charismatic and beautiful kitten named Tuxedo, which is pretty perfect considering he's black and white and all.

The next week we made it back over to the shelter and went to see Oscar and the other elders, and again we swung by the kitten run and had a look-see at our charismatic little boy.

This time he was bigger than I remember. I remember it as twice as big, but that can't be right. But he was bigger, and now he had Corrie to play with. 

Immediately, seeing us together, he went right for her: the looks, the mewing, the head tilting, the even cuter mewing. She was totally smitten. Since we hadn't seen everybody else, we decided to push on. Corrie leaned in to say goodbye, and he gently put his paw through the bars onto her cheek. His eyes were pleading. Corrie choked up. "We'll come back by before we leave, okay?" she pleaded back.

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Act One

San Luis Obispo

We weren't taken by any of the other great cats they had, and came back around to say goodbye to this kitten, and this time he went right for it: paw on the face again, with a cutesy mew thrown in for good measure.

That was that. He'd picked us; he'd found us; we'd found him...whatever the case was, we had each other.

We filled out the adoption paperwork and paid the fee to have him neutered before we could pick him up, which is the state's policy. 

I'm pretty sure all that happened before school started in late September 2004, and we didn't actually get him until October 12th-ish. He was still kinda stony on the meds for his surgery:

That's him with Corrie on that first day, and he was already obviously bigger than the last time we saw him. His goatee and whiskers, and the way his chest and belly hair work out with is feet...Tuxedo was a ridiculously prescient name, an almost too obvious name, and we didn't make it up!

Look at the way it came together between his neck and belly:

We let him play outside, and he had friends in the neighborhood. There was an awesome little trio of cats that chilled around the Palm and Johnson neighborhood those years in SLO. There was Tux, the aptly named tuxedo cat; there was Bullit, a wiry and long grey tabby with sleek short fur; and there was Cous-cous, a fluffy yellow thing from across the street.

Sometimes Tux would follow us, staying in the grassy yards of the houses along the street. He was a good boy---he never crossed the street. Cars were definitely something that should be avoided.

It was always so sad to see him and have to say goodbye. I mean, this is what it looked like:

Bullit and Cous-cous would come over to the door, we'd let Tux out, and wouldn't see him again until the evening. It was very...suburban...?

He loved hanging out in the hex-table, a piece of furniture that my brother and I would store our toys in at my grandmother's house in San Carlos.

It was around this time that he started to balloon in weight. His eating habits were the stuff of legend. Corrie and I got home once and found him passed out on the couch, covered in crumbs. That's...odd, we thought, and then we saw that high up in the pantry the cat had scaled, climbing to reach the loaf of bread. He had chewed a head-sized hole in the bag, and proceeded to eat a head-sized volume of sliced bread.

As he got older, or more mature at least, his body didn't look so plump at every angle, as here he is at the door, trying to escape a drizzle (as I giggled and took a picture before letting him in):

We would always joke that he was trying his best to be something fierce, a food-hawking, grass-prowling, killing eating machine:

On the prowl

When we went to Europe in 2005, we'd had Tuxedo for nine or ten months, and then we left for seven weeks. I came home first to take an exam, and I remember his terror at seeing me coming in the house when I finally got home. I didn't take it personally, since he didn't like strangers, and I was essentially a stranger. But what I remember most, especially once he warmed up to me after ten or fifteen minutes, was how much he'd grown and matured in those two months.

He looked like a little-boy-kitty instead of a big-baby-boy-kitty.

Act Two

Brooklyn

And then we moved across the country.

After spending a month in Kingston, ninety minutes north of New York, we landed our two bedroom place in Brooklyn. We lived there for three and a half years, times in which Tux finished up any remnants of kitten-hood, and became a fully realized cat:

In fact, this is when we finally got his weight under control, and he rounded into form as possibly the most beautiful cat I ever had the privilege to be associated with:

On steamy Brooklyn summer days, his spot and position, seen in the two pictures from above, taken months apart but during the same summer, was one of always in service of locating the most comfort.

Whereas he had little friends in SLO, in Brooklyn, his outdoor time was...different. No tall grass to prowl in, just debris and crud to avoid:

His eating habits changed a little...as in he was better about lying and lulling us into a false sense of safety, only to pounce on our food once we were out of the room, or out of sight. 

We finally implemented a set eating time for dinner in Brooklyn, and this cat...this cat! Dinner was at 6pm SHARP. Around 3 he would start his screaming for food, and was relentless. 

Also, the way he ate was much closer to that of a dog: he'd eat every single morsel just as fast as he possibly could. (That would only change in the last year of his life.)

Act Three

Austin

And then we moved halfway across the country.

At Dwyce

The first place we moved to in Austin was the house at Dwyce. Two dogs and two cats already lived there, but one cat only seemed to be hanging out. This was quite a shock to our boy Tuxedo, and he relished being alone in our room, and the occasional trip to a quiet and deserted living room (like above).

Once we moved to our own place after 8 months, he seemed more at peace with his surroundings and made himself at home, just like me and Corrie.

Act Four

Long Beach

And, for the third time in a kitty's life, we moved halfway across the country, this time returning to the same coast upon which we rescued the big guy. Not in San Luis, but a few hundred miles south, to our first apartment in downtown Long beach.

He and Corrie would do synchronized yoga in the sun, and he really seemed to like scratching the carpet all up. Tux always did enjoy a good carpet scratching.

We spent half of his life in this apartment, and as we got older, our ideas of what Tux's personality was didn't really age, and this period all mostly blends together in our memories.

One of his more wonderful traits was his nursemaid status, as whenever Corrie would get sick, or when she went into labor, Tux was there in her lap, letting her know she was loved.

After my leg break, he hung out with me all summer:

And so, as things change, we change.

We decided at some point, as the less-young overeducated types that we are, that we should start a human family. We thought, for some reason, that if we were to have kids while having Tuxedo, that he would begin to feel ignored, left out. This led us to get a second cat, a kitten just for him, one he could play with and shape in the ways he saw fit.

This...was a mistake. It was a calculated risk, and we paid for it. NOW we have a cool, mellow whirlwind, a biter that I still call "kitten" even as he's the eldest of the kids in the house.

But it wasn't always like that.

We decided to adopt a second cat, a kitten for Tux to have before we decided to have a human baby, and knew that we needed a kitten with a BIG personality, someone who could run with the Big Boy, who could claim his own food, who could grow and complement our little family.

We got Picasso (named for his "le Demoiselles d'Avingnon" held-tilted face caused by an un-treated ear infection as a tiny kitten) for Tux, and it took a while for it not to feel like a mistake.

They had moments of beautiful tenderness:

But those were few and far between. In the very beginning of our adoption of Picasso, Corrie finally told her job to go pound sand. She set up shop to study for her last licensing exam and start her own architecture firm. But Tux was in BAD shape. 

The first night of the bad time he'd hidden under the bed, and when I was able to retrieve him, his face was deformed and horrific. He needed special attention and a special syringe fueled diet. Corrie took to this with vigor. She'd just quit her job, declaring each day the new "Best Day Ever," and here she was, studying like crazy, giving a five pound kitten a ton of love and attention, and nursing our Tuxedo back from the edge.

One of the changes that came about as the dust settled and Tux finally grew accustomed to a feline roommate was that he wasn't a screamer for food for multiple hours every single day. I know Corrie and I've said that often, that "Tux screamed for food for multiple hours every day," and I know some people would laugh and mentally chalk that up to hyperbole. BUT NO, HE LITERALLY SCREAMED FOR FOOD EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS FOR MORE THAN A DOZEN YEARS. 

But then he got sick, and when he was better, he stopped all that. Food was out, and for a while he would eat all of it, and we'd have to sneak food for the kitten. Eventually he stopped even that, like he was resigned that this little five pound asshole tornado wasn't going to be leaving.  This was the new normal.

I should say, to Picasso's credit, he only wanted to play with and tend to his big kitty brother.

When Corrie got pregnant with Cass, we weren't sure how he would react to another perceived usurper. But of course Tux was too classy for all that, "all that" being problems of any sort. He looked like an old man who became smug that his little shit of a brother finally got his comeuppance. 

Picasso was the one who felt usurped and lashed out way more than Tux ever did with Cassius in the mix. Meanwhile, when Cass finally started eating solid foods, he'd drop bits for the cats, and "for the cats" really just means Tuxedo.

It didn't take long for Tux be like: Aww, this ain't so bad.

We tried to keep his quality of life up near the end, but his guts had suffered for longer than my memory would like to admit. He would track little drips of diarrhea all over: your lap, the couch, your bed...and when he'd have a bowel movement, he would spray the foulest pancake-batter you can imagine all over the litter box and usually the wall too. And this went on for two years. That's the part I don't dwell on, since how can he be feeling okay with that going on, and, on a related topic, how could we have kept him having to?

He had a twitchy skin issue that we could never get resolved, nor could we fix his gut issue, and they happened simultaneously for two years. And don't think we didn't try! Oh man, I was buying live rabbits and having them butchered just to make him special homemade cat food. We spent a small fortune trying to get some answers. The final result of all that work: he may have some allergy or intolerance for something.

Oh really? A probable intolerance for something? I have an intolerance for wiping down diarrhea every single day.

When my mom came out to visit for Cass's second birthday party she asked about Tux. In my head I was thinking It may be getting close to time to let go. Then I showed her a picture I'd taken of him from above while he was walking around. She gritted her teeth and grimaced and said, "Ooh...sorry."

Looking back at the picture it makes a certain sense, since my mom worked for years in veterinary clinics. His large frame looks skeletal aside from the hardness of his gut section. When we brought him into the vet for 2nd-to-last time, the dude did the exact same gritted teeth grimace. The gut hardness was cancer, and his time on this rock was not for long.

Near the end

We made the arrangements and called Victor. He needed to come say goodbye. He'd looked after Tux while we were in Europe when he was an older kitten, and they'd bonded. He was one of the few people that Tux really liked outside of our household.

The end came on Friday, June 15th, 2018. We had our appointment and held him as they administered the shot. He was gone much faster than any of the vet techs were guessing, to which they said, "Wow. He must have been ready."

Memory is a funny thing. He spent as much time dealing with gut issues, twitch spasms, and pancake batter messes as he did living with us in San Luis Obispo. 

So much of our ideas of him, the basic foundation of our parenting of him and his adoption and entrance into our lives, it all took place in a whirlwind of nearly two years when Corrie and I were at very different places than we are now.

While we watched him grow and mature, he watched us grow and mature, going from crazy college kids to married career-focused parents. Tuxedo never got to meet Camille, but Cass tells her stories about him. Which is sweet, because how much could he really remember? I never discourage it though, because the memory should live on.

Especially when my son holds the last picture I'll share here, which is in their room, and says, "Aww...I miss Tuxedo SO much!"

Me too, buddy, me too.

Tux was the first pet Corrie and I had together, and in that sense he was the first pet that I felt a parent of, and as such: he was the first fur-baby that we outlived. And that's both natural and heartbreaking. 

What can you do, close your heart forever and not enjoy the love while it exists?

Anecdotes

At the Palm St house we had people over and were having a good time in the living room, and Tux came to the door as he always did, only trying to keep slightly out of sight. I let him in and he went where he always did, only trying to be more hidden. We all realized pretty quickly that he had lost his collar and seemed to be trying to hide the fact.

At the Palm St house again one late morning I was eating a bowl of cereal while Tux was chilling in my lap. The bowl was clear glass, and as I was eating, the strangest thing was happening: it started to feel heavier, then go back to normal, then get heavier again, on and off like that. When I moved my thumb, I could see through the glass that Tux had his paw hidden under my thumb, pulling down on the bowl, trying to cause it to spill so he could get at whatever was inside. That instituted the No Laps While We Eat rule.

He was a lap kitty, for sure. He'd jump onto your lap, give you a funny look, curl up and get comfortable and start licking himself. After about ten or fifteen minutes of bathing, he would go to sleep. He would sleep until you moved him, ten minutes later or ten hours later, he didn't care. Unless dinner was approaching.

At the first Long Beach apartment I let him eat on some roasted chicken, and he got a piece of bone stuck in his throat. This was terrible and I had to rush off to the night pet ER. They took him in the back, gave a shot of ketamine and popped it out. He was all good. They said he was going to be loopy for a bit. NO. He wasn't loopy, he was trippin' balls, and he stared at the flames coming out of the bottom of our old dangerous furnace for hours, all the way from 11:30 until he came down close to 5 in the morning. I remember him looking at me with eyes I've seen and projected myself and I said, "Yeah, buddy. I know, I know."

That incident prompted the No More Sampling on Dad's Food rule (as one can see, over the years the rules softened). So one night after making a whole batch of chicken wings for dinner, Tux was begging as usual. I adjusted how I was sitting and a chicken wing fell off my plate, the dual-bone type which are my favorites. "Oops," I said and bent down to get it. Tux pounced on it, with his first bite he halved it and swallowed the back half, and before I could even pet his head, his second bite was more him swallowing the other half and looking at me, licking his chops.

I usually talk about Tux in terms of him being the most beautiful cat I ever had the pleasure of knowing. Once I read an article about ways to tell about how smart a cat is. Corrie read it, too, and asked one day: "Does he hide his toys?" I said that I had read that as well, and wasn't too concerned, since I'm not sure I've ever seen him hide anything. "This dude lies to us, regularly attempts to deceive us, and is always scheming for food. He's easily the smartest cat I've ever been associated with," I told her. So there was always that, too. He was the most beautiful and the most intelligent cat I've ever met.

On his lying: in Brooklyn we would buy pizza on the occasional Friday night, and when we'd hit a break with whatever DVD show we were watching (Simpsons or Futurama most likely), we'd head out to the stoop for a smoke. Tux would pretend to be asleep, and then pounce on whatever pizza remnants we'd left on our plates. He essentially trained us to be less careless with food. He would also try to trick the other one of us in the mornings if one of us was still asleep when the other left for work: Oh, please, I'm a starving little kitty! Of course, we had always fed him first thing once getting out of bed. 

Tux was such an indelible part of our lives that we still call Picasso, who'll be 8 years old this September and our lone kitty for the last four years, "kitten," as if his relation to Tuxedo is still one of his defining traits.

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I've been planning in me head for years now a Studio Ghibli-style animated feature featuring three cat buddies: the young and hefty Tuxedo who won't cross the street; the sleek and silver Bullit; and the fluffy yellow ringleader Cous-cous. It would be amazing.

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Friday, June 15th of 2012 I sheared off the distal condyle on me left femur. Friday, June 15th of 2018 we said goodbye to our first little boy. 

We will always remember you, Tuxedo Cartman-Katt! We will always love you, you Platonic Form of feline!

Tuxedo
4/20/04 to 6/15/18
Rest in Power

Changing of the Guard in the NBA?

The betting favorites in Las Vegas for making the NBA finals were the LA Lakers and Brooklyn Nets. The Lakers, lead by champion players LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and the Nets, led by champion players Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, made sense. On paper. Possibly the greatest player ever (LeBron) vs possibly the best scorer ever (Durant) teamed up with possibly the best one-on-one player ever (Irving).

Of course it didn't work out like that. The Lakers hilariously missed the playoffs entirely and the Nets just got swept out in the first round, four straight losses. There is a lot of fresh energy left in the post-season, if you're interested. 

Cass, for whatever reason, loves the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis. He rooted for them last year, the first time I figured out how to get basketball on my TV setup, and then they won the whole enchilada. At least he's mostly interested in watching sports with me.

When it's his team...and they're winning...and the commercial breaks are, (ahem) rare...

Bananas!

The excitement never ends!

Our apartment building has some fruit growing from its courtyard trees (these are "potted" in any sense of the word):

The remaining banana tree has begun to sprout the, er, berries. There had been two of these trees growing from the second floor courtyard planters, but after a particularly windy storm last year, one was felled, and had to be chainsawed into pieces.

This remaining tree is actually tied up to the handrail on the third floor, while its leaves reach past the fourth floor.

There was another instance where I found bananas growing, but it was from a tree on 3rd street proper. It was far smaller than this tree, and has since been removed.

If you squint, sometimes it feels like we live in a lush apartment building in Kuala Lumpur or Chieng Mai.

The real question is: will I ever try to eat one of these bananas?

Tent Camping with Kids

It was going to be our first camping trip with tents and the kids, which made it our first camping trip since Cass was born in 2016, which made it our first camping trip since our North Coast Caper in 2015.

I got Corrie a new tent for Christmas, a "family sized" tent, and this was our first time taking it out. She has very detailed prep lists, which neither of us remembered being there until we perused the camping gear.

She'd made the reservations back in January, and found a spot at San Simeon, just north of Cambria, just up the coast from Morro Bay and Cayucos, in the very near vicinity to our college era haunts in San Luis Obispo. We were only going to out there for two nights, leaving noontime on Friday, and heading back to the Southland Sunday afternoon (always a dicey decision because of traffic).

How would the kids do sleeping in a tent for two nights? And how would they react to the rain that turned out to be on the schedule? 

Wait, rain? We'd never camped in rain before. Once we camped in Sequoia Park a few minutes down the mountain from the snowline, but it wasn't actively snowing, and that experience was the worst weather in our many camping adventures.

We had a friend with us, and found a cool spot under a tree:

Ours is the red and grey tent on the left above. Rain was on the forecast, and by the time we were up in the twilight hours of 6 pm on Friday---enough light to get everything set up but enough cloud cover to speak to the accuracy of the rain estimate---that 86% number looked legit.

Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard...and that our tent could handle it...and that the kids would also handle it...

The rain started lightly in the dark hours of the early morning on Saturday, and until the lunchtime hours remained just that: sporadic drizzle. It was fully manageable and didn't hamper any activities.

It may have changed activities, like having to use the propane stove under the open back-hatch of Corrie's Suburu, using the trunk space as a table. But that was fun! Everyone got pancakes and those of us who wanted bacon got that too.

We soon went for a hike and followed a trail that hugged the road in:

Cass followed our friend Lauren and her two dogs pretty closely, even holding the leash of the older, more mature dog for as long as he could. Camille brought up the rear with either me or Corrie, who above was showing off her coffee as she snapped a pic of the trail.

The trail itself lead all the way to the ocean, and Camille ran up to Cass and me as I was explaining seaweed holdfasts:

Another awesome photo from Corrie...

After a while the sun burned off the clouds, and I returned to the trail to take a picture of the view that was mostly obscured hours before by a combo of marine layer and rain clouds:

Some of the trees had both climbing ivy and Spanish moss, and I liked the way they looked:

It was so good to get back out into nature and sleep outside, and it was maybe surprising to see how well our two kids did, but they freaking loved it. We got to eat breakfast with our good friend Ryan back in San Luis on Sunday morning before heading back to Long Beach. Seeing Ryan was very refreshing and fun, as always, and even the drive wasn't so bad. Maybe being Easter Sunday itself made the traffic light, but who cares! We got home just after 2 pm, which is borderline miraculous taking into account of leaving SLO right before 11.

It was a wonderful experiment (trying the kids out in a tent) and a wonderful weekend.

My Son's Tastes

My Boy has been rather interested in all things related to my childhood. This seems like a reasonable thing for a nearly-6 year old who's into his dad. The fact I've given him my old toys, many of my old comics, and many of my old baseball cards has certainly be integral.

Another thing my son obsesses over is Japan. Home of Godzilla, Pokemon, and lots of other stuff he doesn't quite understand, his love for all-things Japan is also age-appropriate.

Sometimes when his interests point to the past---er, my past---he starts to ask about what cartoons I watched, when I watched them, and then this interest points to even older things. He's found the Looney Toons on HBO Max, but only likes the old, pre-Bugs Bunny, black and white cartoons. He's also found the 1969 version of Scooby Doo, and has watched both seasons (they only made two seasons, with maybe 28 or 30 episodes total) more than once. He loves Scooby Doo.

Well, I found a cool thing in the intersection of this Venn diagram---old-timey cartoons and Japanese things---that I got the chance to expose him to: the 1966 first season of Speed Racer, a DVD collection on loan from friends.

"It's older than Scooby Doo?" he asked with wonder. "It's from Japan?" he asked with shock. Watching it together I felt would give me the chance to discuss the animation style as a comparison to the American mystery show cartoon from a few years later.

The animators working on Speed Racer were ingenious and knew how to maximize their action scenes relative to their budgetary limitations. The approach makes for a far more dynamic looking product, considering there's likely far less character key animation going on, and likely less character movement happening in a given episode.

The "limited animation" techniques that these Japanese studios enlisted---barely movie foreground objects and quickly cycling backgrounds---trick your eye into seeing speed and movement combined with anticipation, while there may be very little object animation.

Think about the way the crew from Scooby walks together:

You can probably see it in your head. The five characters---four human and one dog---are all animated in mostly realistic detail. Given whatever budget they were working with, this is probably pretty decent work. 

Compare this with a frame from the opening credits to Speed Racer:

The bottom of the frame has stationary cars jostling up and down slightly with the background zooming by. In the top half of the frame a car that's lost control moments earlier crashed through the guardrail, and here soars through the air, its parabolic arch the only "real" animation in the scene. It crashed and an explosion fills the screen.

As Cassius matures, it's going to be so cool exposing him to different kinds of artistic problem-solving, as well as artistic masterpieces from all sorts of media. This is the start of deep comparisons, and he's not even six yet. Rad.

My Kids Love Broccoli

No foolin'!

I'm not sure what to say. Maybe my kitchen skills and on point (true, but likely only part of the reason), maybe the green sprouts of this Italian version of Brassica oleracea just tastes great when the flavors are released in this method (very true, and likely the reason).

But both of my kids love their broccoli.

About to go into the oven

When I started this blog so many years ago, I never thought I would have a post about kids and broccoli. I suppose this blog was always just a stream of thought tableau for me, it can't be surprising it would ever come to this.

Anyway, there are two main ways we make broccoli in our house: blanching and roasting.

Blanching is where you drop the florets into a rolling boil of generously salted water (a la mer, 'of the sea', as in the water should taste like the ocean) and then as it's nearly done, spooned out directly into ice water. The ice bath shocks the florets into holding their color, but now they're soft and flavorful because of the salted water.

Both my kids will crush a pile of this type and ask for more.

The roasting version is presented here in photo form.

After coming out of the oven

I toss the raw florets in olive oil, salt and pepper to get a light covering on them. Then onto the parchment paper and into a scorching hot oven, like 450 or above. Mine doesn't work so well on Broil, so I usually just leave it at 450.

In a matter of minutes the smell of roasted nuts starts to fill the kitchen and if I think about it I might open the oven and use the parchment paper to agitate the florets, or rotate them, but if your oven has even enough heat, it won't be necessary.

The florets, when finished, will have golden brown caramelization on the undersides, and will be crispy and delicious. I prefer the roasted broccoli, but my kids don't discriminate.

We eat a lot of broccoli, and this is NOT an April Fool's post.

It's also my boy Tony's birthday, and the first day of April, my own birth month. 

And for some reason I'm compelled to write about broccoli. Again.

Happy Birthday Tony!