valentine laundry gerbils

Valentine's Day

J surprised me on V-Day with roses, dafodils, and having the day off - hooray! We had lunch at our favorite spot, Moe's - where we split our usual Billy Barou and drank an obscene number of refills of Cherry Coke.

Our day continued by visiting the local pet stores and admiring/talking to/petting gerbils, hamsters, and bunnies.

The evening concluded with chocolate cake and a homemade meal by mois with strawberry dacquiris. <3

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On Saturday Munchkin and GooberBear assisted us with our laundry:

* Munchkin took each piece of clean laundry, sniffed it, and then carefully set it on the floor in a crumpled pile.

* GooberBear took over the socks by shoving the socks' mate down into the toe.

"Uncle J, do you know how to find the sock? You just put your hand down inside and then there it is!"

* Goober was also very impressed with one of my socks that had snowmen, reindeer, and snowflakes on it:

"Ooooh Aunt B, this sock is soooo cute!"

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Grizzly Bear was in rare form on Sunday (yesterday, if you will) - he's still pretty grumpy, but we've tricked him into putting his paws on us when we have sunflower seeds (by far his favorite kind of seed) - but yesterday he actually hopped right out onto our hands, looking around with his little blind eyes and quivering his whiskers like crazy smelling his surroundings. It was so cute! And he didn't bit us once!

I've also discovered something rather disconcerting: gerbils...shed. There are little gerbil hairs all around in his cage - I've never seen such a thing from a rodent!

morning

Morning is a stupid time of day. Don't try to tell me otherwise, for as surely as I'm sitting here I will sock you in the jaw if you contradict me. Morning...who came up with that idea, anyway? I know afternoon would not be nearly as fabulous without the cursed morning to give it perspective but there must be another way.

Morning in winter is even stupider. It's dark outside. The sun has risen and it's dark outside. The sky is grayish white, which in the morning is a hideous thing to behold. The sky is whitey-gray, the ground and trees and cars and playground are covered with snow. Everything I see is the same color. Even the bright, cheery kite that's been stuck in that tree over there for months is white. Stupid morning. Stupid snow. If it has to be morning there might as well be some sunshine.

One of the things I really despise about morning is that I'm awake during it. I'd much rather be sleeping. I would like to experience as little of morning as is humanly possible. But...my sleeping schedule is whacking out from too many weirdly houred Christmas parties, especially that game night with the cousins that got us home at 2:30 a.m.

Darn you, morning. Why can't you start in the afternoon?!

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Oh yes, I'm back by the way. The holiday craziness is over for another year and I'm finally able to sit grumpily at my computer and complain to the world about the petty things in life again. Like morning. Stupid...stupid...hate...morning....

Christmas was basically fabulous. It was all it was hyped up to be...tons of yummy, yummy food, wild family get togethers, even more playing with GooberBear and Munchkin than I had hoped and dreamed. It was a poor (financially speaking) Christmas for us so I wasn't expecting much in the way of presents, but Jeremy got me the perfect gifts (The Life of Our Lord...one of the few Dickens I'd yet to attain, It's a Wonderful Life, a tin with three Charlie Brown holiday soundtracks, and tons of candy). By joining his family I also became related to a wildly sweet and generous aunt and uncle who dumped gifts on us from the sky...fun gifts but also gifts we really needed, like clothes and money to buy groceries with.

It was one of those Christmases that leaves you humble in its wake, one that has you remembering how much God is taking care of you and how blessed you are to have great family and friends to share it with (it does nothing for your feelings about morning, however).

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I suppose if I had any kids at this point I'd be babbling about what they'd done or said or how they'd acted this Christmas, so in their place I'll let you in on what Mutton Chop, the hamster of joy and affection, has been up to.

Mutton Chop, in the second year of her life, has turned into destructo hamster. She had already destroyed one water bottle and we've fixed her wheel with extra bits of plastic and superglue (and most recently, duct tape), so it probably should not have surprised us that she gnawed three gigantic holes in her second water bottle this past week.

Oh Mutton Chop. You can't really be mad at her or teach her a lesson about this since she has a tiny, tiny brain. At least I think she has a brain. Anyway, J has declared that we shall not buy her any more water bottles (they are, after all, $5 a pop), so we've been trying to get her to drink out of a little dish. This has turned into a disgustingly wet, smelly affair because hamsters hate all things wet. Being a desert creature she instantly throws a tons of shavings in the water dish trying to dry it up...so I empty the dumb thing and put fresh water in constantly and I think after a few days I actually saw her drink out of it once. I let out a yelp of triumph and then realized she was drinking water with a turd floating in it. GROSS.

she's a tired girl

We woke up this morning and had warmed apple cinnamon muffins I'd baked the day before - then J took a shower and by the time he got out I'd fallen asleep for a sound 3.5 hour nap. I think maybe I've been using up more than my normal allotment of energy lately...

Yesterday J got home and said GooberBear and Munchkin were over and Mom2 & Dad2's house again so off we went to play! Three more beautiful hours of chasing kiddos in circles...well that's not exactly true since GooberBear and I spent a solid hour of that making up stories. Out of nowhere he says "Aunt B I'm going to put you in the garbage!" Of course I was outraged and told him I'd escape and this somehow morphed into an hour-long discussion of who would put who in the garbage and how we'd get away. Needless to say I was tired of coming up with ideas loooong before Goober was, but how can you not play along with that crazy 3-year-old imagination?

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I've almost finished reading A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) for, believe it or not, the first time. He's my favorite author, but somehow I've skipped the holiday classic until now...after all I've seen numerous versions on video every year (The Muppet Christmas Carol reigning supreme) and I guess that was good enough for me up until the present. I shall leave you this blurb, the reading of which made me love Dickens all the more, since I've often questioned this very thing:

"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of iron-mongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

I shall write a more thorough and interesting entry on Monday, I hope...for now I'm ready for bed!

one of Those days

So needless to say, yesterday was an exhausted, groggy affair. Our neighbors have been pleasingly quiet for a couple months now and I'd forgotten just how loud they could get. I didn't miss it. Neighbors can be stupid, inconsiderate things. Rawr!

But the day was great in spite of being half-asleep through most of it: GooberBear and Munchkin had come to play. This was because their mom thought Munchkin had a doctor appointment at 11 a.m. She didn't. It was scheduled for Friday at 9 a.m., so on Tuesday we had the kiddos to play with - oh happy surprise!

They found out about the mix up like this: Munchkin and her mom went to the doctor's while J, GooberBear, Mom2 and I played. Shortly after leaving Munchkin's mom calls and tells us she mixed up the appointment dates. She mixed up the appointment dates and decided that instead she and Munch would head to the Christmas Tree Shoppe for fun. Where one of her contacts popped out onto the floor and she couldn't find it anywhere. Being blind without her contacts or glasses, J drove Mom2 over to pick them up and GooberBear and I had some time alone (it was officially one of Those days).

We talked about fishing, and why the berries on the bushes were gross to eat, and he told me how oatmeal is his favorite food (oatmeal with honey), and we sat and ate an apple together.

By the time J and I got home I was delirious with lack of sleep and tried to take a nap...and sadly I failed. You know when you are so tired that you can't sleep? It's pretty darn annoying. So we watched a Marx brothers film and chilled on the couch and in general had a happy and relaxed evening.

oh how i played

It's what I imagine a bug feels like after a firm stomping from an unforgiving shoe. Crushed, pain wracking its mangled body (can bugs feel pain? Or is it more like paralysis? "That's weird, I can't seem to feel my thorax!"), eyes squinted in agony, dimly wondering what the heck happened to make him feel this way. Except I know why I feel this way. Yesterday I played...

J dropped the van off in the morning yesterday...an unexpected pleasantry causing me to jump up and down and yell "Yippee!". I threw on my clothes and ran out the door. What would I do? Where would I go? As I planned my moves I climbed into the van and let out a cry... For quite a while now we've just been tossing our cans and bottles into the back of the van, figuring we'd take them to the redemption center "sometime". It was yesterday morning that I realized the time had come - 9 garbage bags bulging, one box clinking - blocking windows and threatening to jump into the front seat.

I happily drove to the grocery store and loaded two carts, handily wheeling them to the redemption counter. To the chagrin of every old lady in line behind me I then unloaded all 389 cans and bottles. It was no small feat; in the end I was sticky and somewhat disheveled...but it was with triumph that I cashed my pay ticket of $19.45!

Skipping back to the van I smiled to myself with smug contentment (clearly it doesn't take a whole lot to make me feel special) and drove to Mom's...where my nephew (GooberBear) and niece (Munchkin) were having a snack with their grammy.

Due to somebody being sick or my Fibromyalgia being stupid or somebodies car dying it had been a long while since we'd played together and our meeting was filled with screams and giggles. GooberBear is almost 4. He was so excited to see me that he jumped up and ran in circles and yelled for a few minutes before he could calm down enough to play. Munchkin is around a year and half and smiled and giggled while GooberBear did his thing.

Then we played, oh how we played! We spent a good half hour playing "How high did I jump?". This means I sit on the middle cushion of the couch and GooberBear stands on one end and jumps over me, most of the time needing a little help reaching the other side. Finally I said, "Okay, two more jumps and then let's play something else."

"Okay," said GooberBear, "three more jumps and then hide and seek." He always sneaks that extra jump (or whatever we're doing at the time) in there so naturally that I cannot refuse. What aunt could?

Hide and seek with GooberBear goes like this:

"Hey GooberBear, are you hiding or am I hiding?"
"You hide....in the bathroom." (for "in the bathroom" insert anything from 'under that chair' to 'by that plant')

Goober then proceeds to count from one to twenty. I was impressed as he accurately hammered out 1-12 and then finished up with, "thiiiirteen. fiiiiifteen. foooouurteen. seeeeventeen. TWENTY!"

Now half the fun for this little boy when he hides is having you look for him everywhere he's not while he giggles to himself at how you can't find him. ("Aunt B, look for me everywhere else first.") So as I was crouched down getting my socks wet in the tub I let out my own set of giggles as I heard him looking for me in the other room:

"Hmmm. Where could Aunt B be hiding? Under the table? Nooooo. On the couch? Nooo. Behind the lamp? Noooo..."

In the meantime, Munchkin has decided to join in and gleefully pulls back the shower curtain, exclaiming, "GAAAHBLLLAAA!!!!"

Our games were interrupted occasionally by a "TRAIN!!!!" or "GOHBO!!!" (garbage truck)...in which case we dropped whatever we were doing, jumped on the couch and watched what was going by with fascination through the front window.

After two hours of playing, discussing how we slept with our teddy bears, eating peanut butter off a big spoon, and talking about how we missed each other it was time to go. Fortunately they'll be up on Wednesday and we can play again for another day!

Tired out and sore I contemplated returning home, but having the van for a day was more temptation than I could handle and I hit up The Christmas Tree Shop and A.C. Moore for gifties and stocking stuffers (Christmas is coming!!!) before returning home.

This is where I should have taken the nap and painkillers my body was pleading for, but instead I got distracted and cleaned the hamster cages (gross), which somehow morphed into dusting and vacuuming...and sweeping the kitchen...and taking down 'normal' decorations to make way for Christmassy ones. And getting Christmas boxes out of the closet. When J came home the apartment was in wild disarray and I was ready to collapse. I did collapse, but after a brief nap and supper we got crazy, put on the holiday tunes, and decked the walls and windows with all manner of cheer. (Christmas is coming!!!)

We were done by 9:30 p.m. and after a few minutes on the couch I was painfully aware of having crossed the line physically by doing Too Much. Head pounding and muscles spasming, I went to bed around 11 p.m. No pill could keep the pain down enough for me to sleep, though, and by 3 a.m. I was comparing myself to the unfortunate insects. And now it is morning and once again I am full of pills and pain, but looking back on my day yesterday I can't help but smile and think that it was Worth It.