For small children, there is a fascination with glitter. In preschool my children seemed to come home with something made with glitter every week in a rainbow of colors. Our vehicles at the time became contaminated with this substance. I concluded it is impossible to get glitter particles out of the carpet both in our vehicles as well as the house.

Then came along “glitter glue” which was only slightly better since it came with its own bonding agent. But the little flakes somehow still escaped to spread like a bad virus. To make things even worse, some brilliant person came up with the idea of putting glitter in makeup and hair gel. At some point along the way, which I think coincided with the acquisition of my new pickup truck, I banned this fiendish product from our home. Anything with glitter was not allowed to be transported in my truck. Just this week I discovered a grocery bag tucked away in my office at work that was decorated with glitter. I plan on leaving it there for the Hazardous Waste people to deal with when I retire.

Recently, unbeknownst to me, my daughter smuggled glitter into the house for a project in one of her university classes. With the help of our youngest cat, Tiger Lily (pictured above on HA’s shoulders), my daughter’s stash of glitter was exposed. For you see, Tiger Lily likes to knock anything off of a desk, table, dresser or any other place she can find and watch whatever it is fall to the floor. Then my two and a half-year old Australia Shepherd, Maggie (who suffers from ADHD), finds the object and promptly takes it to her lair under our 1910 settee which happens to be on the only carpet in the house. Once in her lair, Maggie chews up whatever Tiger Lily has supplied. Needless to say, Maggie did not like the taste of glitter. My daughter was busted for having a banned substance. Four days later I had the evidence.