Vera Does Not Like Grapes

This did not prevent her from asking for them twice. The first time I can understand. After all, anything I eat is obviously good enough for Vera. So she wanders over to where I'm working (as if she's coming over for something other than begging food off me) and looks at me with this big brown eyes. And waits.

So I hand her a grape. They're good grapes, she might like it. After all, she does like broccoli, and that's green also.

Vera takes the grape, puts it on the floor, then makes a show of doing something to it. I'm working, so I ignore her. A few minutes later, Vera looks up at me with those big brown eyes again, then glances at my grapes. Then back at me. Then back at the grapes. This is her classic "give me the goodies!" sign. I ask her if she's eaten the first one and she just keeps looking at me, then at the grapes, then back at me . . . I glance over at the floor but I see no grapes, so I give her another.

Silly me. I was assuming she was eating grapes. Vera assumed that even though the first one proved inedible, this did not mean that all of them were inedible. (Vera is very optimistic.)

Vera put the second grape with the first grape in what was starting to resemble a pile, once I looked in the right area, then came back for more. Look at me, look at grapes, look at me, look at grapes.

I'm not sure what Vera thought she was doing. She's mysterious, at best. Perhaps she had an idea to take a collection of grapes, build a structure out of them, perhaps have her own little grape mountain . . . I don't know. "You know," I tell her solemnly, "They all taste the same. This isn't like your snack crackers, where one tastes like liver, one like chicken, one like beef . . ." (so the packaging says, I've never tasted them myself), "No, these all taste the same."

While it was obvious Vera did not believe me, she eventually wandered off, leaving two forlorn grapes behind. I'm trying to figure out how I can write them off as a business expense.