Happy Rat-iversary, Farley!

You came to live here 2 years ago, a teeny tiny ratty girl.

Since then you've made friends with lots of people,

and other rats.

You've explored lots of places

including every rat's favorite, the trash can,

and even the great outdoors.

You've often tried to learn to use the computer, or at least the keyboard.

You've celebrated many holidays with us.

You've eaten several pounds of Cheerios

and Chex.

And, mostly, you've been a great example of how cute, friendly and smart a pet rat can be!

Long Weekend

We're having hardwood flooring put in our bedroom later this week.  Much of current life revolves around that.

We'd already ripped up the carpet, ripped up and disposed of the padding. removed all of the staple (Annabeth is in charge of that) and the tack strips, screwed down the floor so it doesn't squeak, then put the carpet back over the subfloor so we could still live in the room.  Also, ripped out the woodwork.

This weekend Rick repainted the woodwork, and we started emptying the room.  Also, tried to figure out what to put on the bottom of various pieces of furniture once it's placed on the floor.  And lugged 17 boxes of hardwood up the stairs to our room so it can acclimate more, since the temperature and humidity of the living room is different than our room.

We've hired out the actually laying-of-the-floor.  It's the same company that did most of the rest of the house.

When not engaged in that, we:

1. Went swimming one last time at the public pool before it closed for the season.  Had to wait for a break in the rain for that one.

2. Watched movies.

3. Dealt with a rat with injured toe nails.  Rats bleed a lot when they have foot injuries.  Like, really, really, really A LOT.  And when someone hands you the bleeding rat while they run to get some first aid items, and the rat starts crawling all over you while you're trying to hold it still to see what's wrong, well, you can pretty much say goodbye to whatever you're wearing.

Also, for a toe injury you need styptic powder.  But if you don't have actual styptic powder, you can use cornstarch.  Which, if you're me, you bought last year for science class and kept the rest of because it might come in handy.  Apparently flour also works.

4.  Bought some fabric and made a new top.  Happened to change out of it into an old tshirt before the rat injured herself.

5. The kids rolled change.  $204 worth.  Annabeth gets a 10 percent cut, and the rest goes to Thalia for her trip to the Dominican Republic next year.

Weekend

1.  Took Thalia to catch a bus to go to Florida with her choir.  It left at 8am Saturday, so they had to be there to load the bus at 7am.  They'll sing at 4 places, visit Universal, go to Fort Myers -- quite a whirlwind.

2. Took Annabeth to the mall to shop for a birthday present for a party Saturday afternoon.  Then home to have lunch and wrap gifts, then off to the party.  Except I got sick really suddenly -- one minute I was fine, the next I had a brutal headache and was running for the bathroom.  Weird.  I took her to the party, and another mom offered to bring her home.

3. Spent most of the day and the next morning not doing much more than drinking ginger ale.

4. Rick and Annabeth went to the swimming pool late Sunday afternoon, which was apparently really cold due to the swing back to cool temperatures this past week.  When they got home they decided they wanted a fire.  So we rounded up hotdogs, marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars, and all hung out in the backyard. 

Since it was so nice out, we took the rodent's playpen outside and set it up.

 Then we added rodents.

A good time was had by all.

So far ...

So far we've had a rat in the tree:

We've gone to see Beauty and the Beast:

We've made butter cookies:

And decorated them (after an emergency trip to the store for sprinkles, etc., when we realized we were almost out):

Including a special cookie Annabeth made for Santa (which I think is so awesome I sort of want to lacquer it and keep it forever):

And had our special family reading of the Christmas story while the kids used the manger scene to act it out:

Still to come: the Christmas Eve service at church, which we usually don't go to.  But Thalia and Rick are singing in the choir.  And Rick has discovered that the words "Nobis Pacem" sound a lot like "Obese Possum", and is wondering if he can get away with singing it that way.

Happy Rat-iversay, Emily!

Yes, we've now had Emily for over a year.  And considering how short-lived rats are, that's worth celebrating.

When we got Miss Em she had been a backroom rat -- the pet store had her in the backroom as unsaleable due to a leaky tear duct.  Rick and Annabeth were rat-shopping, and one of the workers mentioned that they had another rat in the back that couldn't be sold because of a health problem -- were they interested in adopting her?  She had been spending her life in isolation from other rats (rats are extremely social animals, and it's unusual to have a solo rat).  And she hadn't really been socialized to humans, either.   And it didn't help that she appeared to be blind in one eye.  To this day she tends to weave her head back and forth when she's looking at you, as though she's trying to compensate for the lack of binocular vision.

Wow, she was a scaredy-rat when we got her.  She hated to be picked up or have much interaction with people.  But after a year of hanging around here, Annabeth is able to tote her around:

Seen here inspecting a birthday card for Grandma that has picture of some rodent that bears quite a likeness to Emily.  Grandma and Emily bonded last February when Grandma sat giving her Corn Chex one by one until Emily had about half a box stashed in her igloo.

She's happy to get out and explore, especially book bags, briefcases, and purses, which sometimes have random food left in them:

She's posed for innumerable photo shoots:

And been dressed up in Angelina Ballerina outfits:

Mostly, though, she likes hanging out in her cage with her friend, Farley:

Or snuggling up in an old tshirt:

One of her favorite things to do is try to stuff everything in the cage into the cube.  And she's the most persnickety rat we've seen insofar as wanting to use a litter box, which we supply in the bottom of the cage.  She enjoys avocados, bananas, beans, and Corn Chex, but her favorite is fresh raspberries.

How did she celebrate her rat-iversary?  She was out of the cage, exploring the house, and climbed in my purse, at which time she discovered that I had purchased a 2 pack of QBel Dark Chocolate Wafer Rolls a couple of days before, eaten one, stuck the other in my purse and promptly forgot about it.  Emily happily dragged it out of my purse and was quietly enjoying the feeling of being a wild rat who had foraged food AND come up with something so luscious ... unfortunately, Farley came along, grabbed the QBel and started running around the house with it in her mouth, loudly squeaking OMG! OMG! OMG! in her excitement (you know the opening scene of Legally Blonde, The Musical where the sorority sisters are all jumping around loudly singing OH MY GOD!?  Farley was doing the the rodent version of that).  So, of course, the lovely QBel was taken away.  Sigh.  Quite a bit of the chocolate covering had already been removed, though, so I think they'd had enough.

Many happy returns of the day, Emily!

Work in Progress Wednesday

CROCHET

Collars for Choreography team.

CUBE

The rats need some new cage furniture.

CAKE

Boston Favorite Cake from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook.  It involves separating eggs, whipping the whites, then folding them into the batter (action shot above).

Then frosted with the butter frosting we use for the Christmas cookies.  Other decorations and candles still to come.

The Rats of Summer

In case you were wondering what the household rodents have been up to lately, they've been:

Exploring trash cans.

Nothing like a can of trash -- a little piece of heaven on earth.


Eating seasonal veggies and fruits in the mornings. Also beans, which are a favorite. But Em will forego the beans if fresh raspberries are available. Later in the day they get Debbie Ducommon's Molasses Mix (Emily likes this, Farley is neutral), and in the evening they get Regal Rat (Farley likes this, but I think part of the attraction is that it's easy to carry around the house and hide).

Looks like this particular morning they had black beans, a little cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, mixed greens, and some grapes.

Remember when American Girl carried the Angelina Ballerina books and dolls? And the dolls were really fairly plump, just like the characters in the books (and unlike the current dolls and videos, which frankly look like anorexic rodents drawn by idiots). We ended up with loads of the stuff, including clothes, which actually sort of fit Emily. Sort of.


Better yet, we can also use the balance beam and stage we got from American Girl.


And when not pursuing her stage career, Farley likes to ride around on Annabeth's shoulder.

We Are Lumberjacks and We're OK

The storm yesterday took out a large tree branch at the back of our yard. And the large tree branch stripped all the branches off of one side of a huge white pine. It all landed in a pile of forsythia and brush. We can now clearly see the house behind us, which is a new sensation.

So yesterday evening was spent getting out the smaller branches so we can see what to attack with a chainsaw. Lots of lopping off stuff one inch diameter and smaller, then pulling it out and throwing into a pile to be further chopped down and put out in yard waste trash pickup. Occasionally I was able to wrestle out a large branch, dragging it through all of the other branches to lay in the yard for further sawing -- I now understand the triumph the rats feel when they find something large and drag it back to the cage. Also, the faith the rats have that if they keep gnawing away a little at a time, they will eventually destroy whatever it is that they feel a need to destroy (like, say, the cable cord or a stray flip flop).

Today: more of the same.

Rat News

Emily recently figured out that sometimes I set a book bag on the floor in the kitchen, and if she gets in it to rummage around she might find TREASURE




which can be dragged back to the cage.


But, alas, a cruel human (Annabeth) took the granola bar away. The rats now get a bit of it in the evening at bedtime.

In other busy-ness, they've been doing quite a bit of redecorating. Note that most of their cubes now have the new backdoor feature:



But, you know, that cube is so last year, so time for a new color scheme for hammocks



and cube



Sort of bland looking and utilitarian right now, but they'll get it peed on and ripped up into a homey little rat's nest in no time.

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.

Summer 2010

Rick left for Mexico early Monday morning, and Thalia left for Oklahoma City (middle school youth group mission trip) Tuesday, which left Annabeth and I, along with the cats and the rats.

We went to the pool a lot. Annabeth claims we've been to the pool more this week than we were all of Summer 2009. I think she's close to being right.



We ate a lot of Doritos and sorbet. And those frozen miniature eclairs from Trader Joe's that you eat straight out of the box because they're better frozen.

But we made occasional forays into nourishing food. We tried to make hard boiled eggs into chibi Totoros, using black sesame seeds for the eyes. I think some sort of round white thing under the seed would help, but I'm not sure what to use insofar as something I'd want to eat with a hard boiled egg.



Chibi Totoro salad!



I did some more crocheting. This is a pattern for a keychain, but I think it would be a great Christmas tree ornament.



It also works for American Girl dolls.



We threw parties for the rats, decorating the playhouse with old newspapers, crepe paper streamers, and strings of popcorn.



They had a lovely snack bar of Cheerios (which they hid in the newspapers) and bread crusts (most of which they hid under the couch).



They also played Bobbing for Peas.



We also managed to get a little school work done, mostly Writing With Ease. Every summer we have visions of getting all sorts of school work done, but it tends to get set aside for more urgent matters like stringing popcorn for rats.

Now Rick is home from Mexico, and Thalia should be home from Oklahoma City later today.

Next week: more of the same.