Rat Replacement

A couple days ago, our beloved hamster died.  I don't know what happened to her.  She was fine Monday night when we took her out to play.  But Tuesday, Chuck came home from work, bent over her cage as he always does (cuz he thinks she's cute when she's sleeping), and asked, "why is she laying in the middle of the cage like that?"  Then he went into the bedroom to change his clothes, came out and checked on her again and said, "why is she limping?"  (I was too busy cooking supper to examine her myself).  Then about 10 minutes later, I heard Chuck say, "Oh no!!"  I looked over, and he was bent over her cage, and he said, "she's dead".

I don't know why she died. The gal at the pet store that sold her to me said that hamsters are supposed to live about 4 years.  She was only a year and a half old, and we took good care of her, so I don't know what happened.  Anyhoo, we are NOT getting another one, at least not at this time.  A hamster is one of those pets that I like to have only once in a while because I get tired of the smelly cage. ANYHOO.........................

Apparently Bossy felt that a house was not a house if it did not have a mouse, so she proceeded to get us another one.  Just hours later, and I do find this funny that this happened on the same day, I watched with amusement from the kitchen window, an animated cat trying to catch something in the weeds:

A few moments later, she came trotting toward the back door with something in her mouth.   All I knew was that it was "big" and it's legs were wiggling.  Gross!!  Ew! Gross! Ew!

Her plan was to run straight into the house with it, but Chuck stopped her in her tracks, slid the screen door shut, and said, "OH, No you don't!"

So she dropped her treasure right there in front of the door, I suppose waiting for us to let her in.

She waited, and waited:

and finally figured out that we did not want to keep her new pet.

So she played with it until it was dead, and went back out into the weeds to catch another one.

Luckily, she came back into the house when we called her cuz otherwise we might have had a whole collection of shrews to choose from, all dead of course, and what would we do with a dead shrew, anyhoo?

On another note, I had another setback with my garden.  Can you guess?  The moose came back.

She chewed down my broccoli, beat greens, and cabbage again.  And also chomped my peas half way down.  It's like she knows exactly when to come back - after she's given it time to regenerate itself, and just when I have hopes again that I might get to enjoy it, she comes back and helps herself, and has the gall to not even leave a tip! We've had a mama moose and two babies running around in this area this whole summer, and I'm pretty sure it's them cuz I'm seeing smaller hoof prints in my garden as well as the big ones, and I get reports from my neighbors that they have been chasing them away.  

She was gracious enough to leave this though:

I find it backwards that we humans have to glean after an animal, instead of the other way around. Where's the dignity in that?

As for my pumpkins, this is what I got:

You can't really tell in this picture, but I have lots of these female buds coming and going on the vines.  They get to a golf ball size, and then they turn yellow and die.  I don't know if that means they were never fertilized?  Anyhoo, see the green squiggly thing that's attached to the maltese cross stem?  It's hanging on pretty tight, but I guess that's what those green squiggly things are supposed to do.  The annoying thing about those maltese cross flowers - they are pretty, but they get so tall that they fall over.  This one fell over next to my pumpkin bed, and the pumpkin vine grew long enough to reach it, and now I don't know if I should leave it alone, or unsquiggle it.  

(Why am I suddenly thinking about "Squiggy" on "Laverne and Shirley"?)

Back Again.

Well, we made to Wisconsin and back, and it's so good to be back home again.  Whenever we parents leave the kids behind, we always have those worries in the backs of our minds:  "what's going at home?  Are they taking care of everything the way I instructed?  Will the hamster be dead when I get home?  Will the cats be lethargic due to dehydration and starvation?  Will my garden be all dried up and withered?  Will the house be trashed?"  Even though my kids are legal adults now, I know them too well not to leave them behind with no worries.  But at the same time, at least me and hubby were finally able to go somewhere (just us two) and leave it everything behind with someone we know.  Notice I didn't say "someone we know and TRUST".  Anyhoo, when we came back, all seemed to be well, and most of my worries were unnecessary.  My garden looks like this now:

My son Justin did a pretty decent job keeping it watered, and it looks like the moose didn't come back, allowing it all to grow back.  Yesterday I picked some ginormous radishes, and again wished that I hadn't planted so many cuz I will be the only one eating them.  Plus, I ate one of them and it gave me a stomach ache w/gas.  Maybe that's because I let it grow too large and it was getting kinda "woody",  but don't radishes have that effect on people anyway?  I don't know.  I will try another one later.

My daughter Kayla (PeeWee) was given the task of taking care of the inside of the house.  She did okay taking care of the animals, but did absolutely nothing in regard to cleaning.  It appeared that she hadn't washed the dishes even ONCE while we were gone.  Now I know what happens to leftover cereal milk when it sits in the bowl for 10 days.  Anyone got a chisel handy?

A brief summary of our trip:  I'll try not to let this get too long and boring.

We had a real good time, having no kids with us made it that much better!

First of all, I would highly recommend anyone not to rent a car from Dollar.

That was a very unpleasant experience.  Not only was the customer service (the process of picking up the car) a horrible nightmare, but this is the joke of a car we ended up with:

Notice Chuck is getting ready to check the oil AGAIN. You would think those car rental people would take good care of the cars and make sure everything was good with it, and NOT rent out cars that eat oil. This car has a ravenous appetite for oil!! Customers should NOT be expected to maintain the oil! Luckily, Chuck is the type of person who has a habit of checking oil.  If he hadn't done that with this car, who knows what would've happened?  Before we returned the car, he had put in 3 quarts of oil!  

Never rent a car from Dollar!!

Despite driving around in this little matchbox circus car (and getting teased by every family member, except my mom who said the car was "cute"), we had fun visiting with everyone.  We mostly saw Chuck's family; I didn't get to see much of mine, but that's okay.  We were in Wisconsin for only one week, so we can't expect to see everyone in that short amount of time.  We did get to take my mom and my sister to the circus in Baraboo for my sister's birthday, though.

I don't want to complain, but the circus was somewhat disappointing.  I guess I'm comparing it to the last time we were there a few years ago.  This clown Roger wasn't very funny, and was not my idea of a traditional circus clown.  He was more like a dumb TV show for kids.  Last time we were there, they had a husband and wife clown team who had very little or no dialogue and they were VERY FUNNY just by the what they were DOING.  Roger had a lot of of dumb dialogue to him which made him NOT funny.  His favorite line that he used most was "Oh my gosh!!"  (Is this the best the circus can do?; did they hire him out of desperation or what?)  His costume wasn't what I expected either.  Maybe my image of a circus clown is stuck back in a different time, but he was just really disappointing (at least the kids liked him, but they don't know any better - ignorance is bliss).  Plus, this time they had no tigers, and no trapeze acts, although they did have the scantily clad women hanging upside from the rings.  It was just lacking in a lot of things that you would expect from a circus, so I guess the $20 admission price was about right. They did have elephants though!

Even though the circus act itself could've been better, the whole point was to spend the day with my sister, and that made it worthwhile.  They also had a museum there where you can see old circus wagons from 100 years go, so that was really interesting.  This guy was explaining the history and stories behind some of these wagons.

Okay, that's about enough of the circus.

Back to real world, I think this was my favorite part of the trip:

We got our moms together and took them out for lunch.  They hadn't seen each other in about 3 years or so, so I wasn't sure if Chuck's mom would remember my mom (she has Alzheimer's).  I think she sorta remembered her but not quite.  She seemed to know her from "somewhere" but couldn't quite place her.  She did good though; I think it was one of her "better days".

BTW, here is a little interesting side note.  This restaurant is called "Melody Gardens" restaurant, which is an extension of the Melody Gardens roller rink.  The restaurant wasn't added on until after I grew up and left town, but I used to go roller skating there as a kid.  The roller rink was founded by my dad's cousins YEARS ago, and it is still run today by some of their descendants, so that gives me some bragging rights, right?

At the end of our trip, we drove to Michigan to visit my friend Tammie (and her husband Pete).  And we got to stay and watch the 4th of July fireworks with them.

I could say a ton of wonderful things about her, but that would be way too much typing.

So here I am at home again, and I'm glad to see that my cats and the "fuzzy rat" survived my absence:

Home sweet home.