Pictures

Just a few photos I downloaded from my camera yesterday and decided to share...Aren't you lucky?

This was N's Valentine's 'card' to us--a fridge magnet/self-portrait he'd done in the computer lab at school. It's a pretty good likeness, too! Makes me smile every time I pass it.

Thanks to some Chanukah gift certificates from my mom, Baroy and I were able to buy ourselves a new comforter set...the first new comforter in at least 10 years. It wasn't unti lI got it home that I realized how perfectly it provides camouflage to Benni, one of our two cats.

I had taken this fall foliage photo to prove to you all that we *do* get fall color in Southern California, especially up here in the foothills where I live. But when I think about it, the fact that I took this photo while walking home from my friend Susanna's house in late December in a short-sleeved shirt...well, maybe it doesn't QUITE make the point as well as I thought it did.

Who, me? Rubbing it in? Nahhhhhhh...

Considering

Considering how much tsuris this stab wound's put me through, you'd think it could at least LOOK like a stab wound, instead of like a minor paper cut. People are starting to roll their eyes at me when I complain about the pain--oh! the pain! (OK, not so much pain any more, but still...) I think maybe people are thinking I'm a hypochondriac. I know! Can you believe it? I'm not a hypochondriac! I *have* things--like a stab wound!

Considering how much time I spend at my temple these days, you'd think I could figure out how to spell tsuris.

Considering the fact that N's already dealt with the loss/replacement of his kindergarten teacher, doesn't it seem unfair that he is now dealing with the loss/replacement of his Hebrew school teacher? (She's out on maternity leave and will, eventually, be back, but he's not taking it well.)

Considering the fact that Em is only 9, I think she's dealing extremely well with the latest turn of events, in which her beloved guinea pig, Buddy, has suddenly stopped eating and drinking. $100+ dropped at the vet's later, we have no explanation other than that he may be old (we don't know how old he was when we got him) or he may have diabetes, or kidney disease, or liver failure, or godonlyknowswhat. We could find out more of course, the vet proclaimed...if we do a $150 blood test, and $75 worth of x-rays! And then pay for the insulin shots, guinea dialysis, or piggy liver transplant!

Considering that the vet said all of this IN FRONT OF EM, forcing me to shoot daggers at him with my eyes while I explained that I wasn't going to spend that much money on a probably-4-year-old-or-so animal whose life expectancy, mind you, is five years, I think I handled the ensuing tears about how she only wishes we could find out what's wrong with him so maybe we could fix it with relative aplomb. I.e., I didn't drive back to the vet's office and kill him. (Our regular vet, a friend who lives on our block, doesn't have expertise with 'exotics.' That'll teach me to pick a vet out of the phone book.)

Considering that I've now spent my past three evenings syringe-feeding said dying guinea pig a mixture of mushed-up pellets, water and squirts of orange juice from the oranges on our tree, I'd say that I've paid part of my karmic debt for completely ignoring the last few years of the life of my own guinea pig, Streak, who I had from the age of 10 or so until he died of pneumonia when I was 15. Streak, of course, may feel differently.

Considering how far I've strained myself now to make this ill-conceived "considering" conceit work (or, rather, not work) in this entry, I should probably just stop writing and move on.

Consider it done.

She Has Her Father's Sense Of Humor And Timing

As her guinea pig, Buddy, ran around the room while Em and I talked the other night, Em began to ask me questions about my childhood guinea pig, who was creatively named Streak for the...yup, you guessed it...white streak running along the side of his ginger-colored body.

"Look, Em," I finally said. "You have to remember that, back then, people didn't really think of guinea pigs as needing a lot of room or entertainment or anything. I gave him food and straw bedding and kept him in a tiny fish tank, like the one..."

"Like the one we had Buster in?" she gasped, mouth agape, referring to our recently dead beta fish, who lived in a TINY goldfish bowl.

"No, you silly!" I began to laugh. "I meant the one we kept all our other fish in, our 10-gallon one, NOT the goldfish bowl. Can you imagine a guinea pig in one of those tiny bowls?" It took half an hour for both of us to finally stop giggling at the image of a guinea pig in a goldfish bowl; the minute one would stop laughing, the other would start up. We were incorrigible.

The next day, I had a brainstorm. I went into Em's room and found her little stuffed ginger-and-white guinea pig, and stuffed it into Buster's old goldfish bowl and left it on her desk. She had tears in her eyes from laughing after she walked into her room later that day. I was pleased with my comedic prowess, since it's usually Baroy who gets that kind of response out of her.

But apparently, nine years has been more than enough time for Em to learn a thing or two from her father as well, because when I went into her room to put her to bed last night, I found an addition to the sight gag:



I don't think she's ever been as proud of herself as when I began to roar with laughter. She gloated and preened for the rest of the night.

A Boy And His Dog

One of the amazing things that has happened in this house over the past six months is the relationship that N and Snug have built with one another.

There's the classic boy-and-his-dog stuff, of course. N's too young at five (and too small, being the size of someone younger than his actual age) to handle a dog that outweighs him by probably close to 20 pounds now, so he doesn't get to walk the dog. But they do romp around together in our backyard. A particular favorite game is for me to pitch balls for N to hit, and have Snug play "outfielder"--which means he retrieves the balls that N hits, as well as the ones he misses, and brings them back to me. It's adorable.

But even cuter is the downtime these two spend together. N spends the first hour or so of almost every day after school, the time between kindy dismissal and upper-grade dismissal, curled up on our window seat by our front picture window, thumb in mouth, head on Snug's middle, rubbing Snug's fur the way he has always played with my hair...for comfort. He'll seek Snug out at other times, as well, when he just needs to chill out a little.

N was having a particularly difficult day yesterday: He was cranky and obstinate, and pushing all of Em's buttons, causing a constant flow of bickering between them. After a couple of hours of non-stop obnoxiousness, I excused myself and went upstairs for about half an hour, leaving the two of them to fight it out over their computer in the family room.

This is what I found when I returned to my desk, next to which Snug's doggie bed is crammed. (It's the spot Snug claimed as his own within weeks of joining our family, so we made it more comfortable for him, despite the inconvenience for me, since this is where all my files and papers are kept.) What got me, aside from the exquisite cuteness of my boy laying atop his dog, was the fact that Snug was clearly awake, clearly not as comfortable as he'd like to be...and CLEARLY not going to move unless forced to.

Of course, when you're a Labrador, the rustle of a paper bag--food, food, food, could that be food?--is the equivalent of being forced by gunpoint to get up, so after I'd taken the above picture and gone into the kitchen to prepare dinner, Snug apparently wiggled out from underneath his sleepy buddy. Not hearing N complaining about Snug's absence, I returned to my desk and the doggie bed to see this:



All I can say is that I'm glad I wash that cover frequently. Oh, and that I'm so so so glad that Snug came into our lives.

Body Count

In case you were wondering...since the initial tally just two weeks ago, I've had to clean up/dispose of/gag over the tiny corpses of three more no-longer-breathing birds, not to mention shooing away the one that somehow flew in through the window on its own steam (I assume, since it was unharmed).

Today's carcass was clearly that of a very young bird. Its feathers are all over my sleeping bag, on which Benni was lying when I came up the stairs, and which was spread out because that's where Em fell asleep last night while we talked together for a while. (I keep it by the side of my bed at all times for night-wandering children; you never know who's going to show up when, and I'd rather tell them to spread out the bag and plop down than get out of my bed and take them back downstairs. Self preservation, my friends. Self preservation.)

The good news: No new rats, and no new lizards or lizard tails, dead or alive. If you can call that good news. As I drag my vacuum cleaner up the stairs, realizing I've sucked up enough feathers recently to stuff a duvet, I'm finding it hard to look at it that way.

Damn cats. They're lucky I love 'em.