Our Holiday Weekend

The Plan:

Drive to Kansas City on Friday afternoon. Attend KC Feis on Saturday, then drive back home.

Have kids from Musical Theater class over to watch White Christmas on Sunday night, since they're doing something or other from it and some of the kids haven't ever seen the movie. When Rick heard that some of the kids hadn't seen it he said, "Have them over on Sunday night -- I'll buy a new television," because the tv in our basement is from 1988 -- it was rated as an "unreliable" model, but still worked just fine. Except that back in 1988 people didn't try to plug a Wii into their television, etc., etc.; he'd been hoping for years that it would stop working, but decided this was the excuse he needed to give it to the Goodwill and go buy something a little more up to date.


The Reality:

One of the rats, Callie, got sick -- very lethargic. If you know pet rats, you know that that's an emergency. We got her right in to the vet, who listened to her lungs and said they sounded pretty clear, but gave us antibiotics for pneumonia anyway since there didn't seem to be anything else wrong with her -- apparently when in doubt with rats you treat for pneumonia. She seemed somewhat perkier when we got her home, but dozed off while eating from her food dish. And so it went -- we'd rouse her every couple of hours to urge her to eat and drink. She was always interested in the food and water, but then would get so. very. very. ... tired .... and doze off before she ate much. So, of course, we couldn't just hop in the car and leave her there to eat and drink on her own, let alone give herself antibiotics.

And then, while Annabeth was holding her on her lap, Callie gave a little twitch and just stopped breathing. We could've probably thrown stuff in the car and made it to Kansas City then, but we were sort of wiped out by the experience. People ask if we cried ... um, we just spent hours babying this animal, doing everything humanly possible to help her (well, not putting her on pressurized oxygen or anything exotic like that, because, frankly, I doubt she would've been too terribly happy about that), and she just DIED IN OUR ARMS. Yes, we cried.

So, now we're down to one lonely rat. Sigh.

But on the bright side, since we weren't in Kansas City, we suddenly had a free day with absolutely nothing scheduled. So Rick spent it buying an inexpensive plasma television (you wouldn't believe the deal he got), along with various cushions and bean bag chairs for the basement. Then spent the afternoon -- the most glorious afternoon we've had in MONTHS -- in the basement watching football and tennis. Amazing coincidence how his fit of generosity about buying a new television for the basement happened during the US Open and the college football season.

In the meantime, the guest list for the White Christmas kept changing as families headed out of town for the long weekend, various other events cropped up, etc., etc. Eventually we ended up with no one from the Musical Theater class at our house (well, except our kids), so instead of watching White Christmas they spent time talking, running around in the back yard:




toasting marshmallows (the nights are finally cooler, so I wanted a fire in the back yard -- having people over was just an excuse). The person in the blue shirt claims to have never toasted a marshmallow over a fire before. We commemorated the fact that she set a couple on fire with a photo:



And a couple of them spent the night. I think they eventually watched a movie -- some chick flick that most of them hated.

Monday was spent with homework, lawn mowing, and general STUFF. It was the last day the pool was open, and although it was hot it was quite windy. So once again we skipped closing day of the public pool.

Not quite the weekend we expected, but certainly a change of pace from the regular week.