Almost killed my bamboo

Gardening--indoors and out--has been the focus of my week.  My mom got me a Captain Kirk hosta a couple of weeks ago, and on the 4th of July I went and got two other hosta cultivars to keep it company and planted them in the backyard.  I also added some zebra grass, a red lupine, and a heucherella.

We re-seeded the bald patches in the backyard, and I am hopeful that the grass makes a recovery.  I think Mr. Borealis has been trimming it too short, contributing to the over-drying and yellowing.

Indoor gardening today included moving my giant coleus from my kitchen to the outdoors; I kept a clipping to grow indoors in case the whole thing dies on me, but so far so good.

I re-potted my ever-growing jade plant.  While attempting to switch the jade and my Norfolk Island Pine, I accidentally knocked over the bamboo plant that my mom got me when I turned 16.  It was in this cute little planter shaped like bamboo with a mama and baby panda climbing on it, and I broke part of the planter.  : (

Majorly upsetting, to say the least.  I spent two hours this afternoon trying to gently remove my bamboo from the broken planter without destroying the roots or further breaking the planter (still salvageable as a pen or brush cup, but it will definitely never function as a planter again).  The roots had crowded every inch of the tiny planter, which makes sense, as they've been growing in there for 13 years.

I am anxiously hoping that the bamboo survives in its new home.  It will be a sad day if it dies, as it's the oldest plant in my indoor garden.

I have clippings available if anyone wants any of the following, which would be easy to re-root:

- Coleus: easy to grow indoors and out, and difficult to kill.  Mine is a maroon, green, and tan variety.

- Spider plant:  I currently have several babies off of the main plant that need new homes.  Grow indoors, shade tolerant.

- Jade plant: grow indoors, needs sun.

Alula

Pictures I've been meaning to post

Ladies, these are some things I have been talking about for a while, but never got around to posting the pictures.  

Back in June, a swarm of honey bees took up residence in my back courtyard.  They weren't aggresive, so I was able to get very close to take pictures.  They settled on this chair, and the internet said they were likely to move on to somewhere else on their own within 48 hours, so we left them.  They did not move on.  We called a bee catcher to come and collect them (for free - many bee catchers view this as a mutual favor), and he put them in a box and left them to settle in before he would come and take the box away.  Unfortunately, we had been besieged by the stupidest bees on the planet, and instead of staying in the very nice bees' mansion of a home he left, they moved out of the box and re-swarmed on one of the chair legs of our patio set.  The bee catcher came and removed them the hard way--using a customized no-kill vacuum.

Honeycomb that the bees left on our chair.

A rabbit in my new backyard--there are tons of them in the neighborhood, and mostly not afraid of people.  We like to leave carrots out for them--they also eat any fruit that drops from our trees.

One of the rose bushes in my yard.

Cherries from one of my trees--they are choke cherries, and slightly tart, but I have still enjoyed many a handful.  I'm planning to make preserves.

The apples on the trees are getting huge.  I ate one a couple of weeks ago when they were smaller, because I didn't think the fruit would mature to such an extent.  But it did, and I estimate we have 50-75 apples between the two trees.

If any of you don't have the link to the pictures of the new house, and you would like to see, email me.  Our current frustration is that the previous owners painted all the walls purple.  It doesn't look purple until you see it next to white, but it's PURPLE.  50 shades of purple.  Purple in every room--carpet and walls.  We have already painted all of the bedrooms upstairs and are now working into the den area, where this pastel purple currently resides.

Alula

Le Retourne de Death of House Plants

DoHP!!!!  YAY!!!! You're back!!! ...and you're not dead.  I was worried.  ;P

Yes, you will have to come visit us in the new house.  We won't even make you make the bed, lol.

Yes Q, the timer moves quickly.  They grow up so fast.

I took some pics of my new backyard that I will post as soon as possible.  The apple trees are doing great, and I have a strong crop of chokecherries and crab apples.  I looked up recipes, and apparently the latter two can be used in jams and preserves and such, so I will have to learn.  I found a neat looking katydid back there, too!

Also, I need to check this blog more often.  Also, goodly amount of sales on Kindle platform this month; makes me smile.

Alula

Milestones

Ladies, I am buying a new house tomorrow.  It is so exciting!  The house is super awesome, and super in need of fixing, and the one thing that I would change...it's about an hour south of where we are now.

But it's not in Montana, and we must all remember that.  ;)

It is a 2-story, tudor-esque home at the end of a cul-de-sac, 4 bed 3 bath, on 1/3 an acre, and it has a kick butt back yard.  It has a laundry chute from the master bedroom down to the dedicated laundry room, and a 5-piece master bath.  It also needs a new roof, it failed a pressure test (which means there's a leak in one of the pipes, somewhere, inside the house).  The sprinkler system needs to be redone.  There's poor drainage around the house.

There's minor damage to the foundation, some of the window seals are broken, the furnace, AC, and water heaters may need replacing, and the patios should probably be re-poured.

The carpet is royal purple in a way that reminds me of a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater.  These people had a thing for purple, because it's all over the rooms upstairs.

 The backyard has a sidewalk that loops around the lawn, with garden areas around the edges.

 The fireplace needs to be serviced.

 The Master Bath.

The play set in the backyard (it's safe--HUD put up the orange fence to keep people from climbing on it while they owned the property).

In short, it's a lot of work, but the house is pretty neat.

...Today, I officially hit the 100 book mark.

Y'all come visit me now!  It's kid friendly and everything!
Alula

Everything in my life (including the kitchen sink)

What's new with me...?

Well, not too terribly much. I'm inundated with obligations, as usual. :)

I'm glad to hear that the business is moving along! Thanks for being the primary on this one, because I don't know if it would be humanly possible for me to take on more right now. I've been assigned room configuration for the Annual All-Hands Meeting at work next week (tables, chairs, setup, take down, A/V, etc., for all 40 participants). I'm still frantically trying to pull together a PhD advisory committee and application, and figure out funding. We've had funding cuts, and some additional drama at work, that has meant a higher up has decided to cut parts of the tuition funding option at work--I may be on my own for half, and up to all, of the tuition cost of school. Get this: after doing the math, I still make more money keeping my job and paying 10K of it to school than any other option (lottery aside). I'm mid-semester, taking 4 classes, and in another group project (yay.).

Mr. B's health is up and down, and we recently started to seriously investigate a move to the North West. Sure, I would lose my job, and the PhD option, but we've had some issues with family lately--his mother misses him. So we've spent the last 6 weekends in a row with them (not an exaggeration). She's upset about his health and puts him on a major guilt trip every time he says we're too busy (or we want to spend time together...alone). I'm trying to gently get her to understand that she's doing real harm to my marriage because we're straining to accommodate her needs. We need out, and we like the rain, so we figure Washington state might not be terrible, and as it turns out jobs in both our fields are plentiful there.

But enough of the serious: here's some fun and quirky.

Mr. B has recently discovered audio books, and likes to listen to them on his long commutes. We check them out from the online 2 week downloadables at our local library. He's now listened to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, The Golden Compass, and a few others. We're discussing books together, a long-held dream that I never thought would be reality. We're considering an Audible account in the future, but right now the library is working out really well (FREE!).

We watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at the last movie night, and it was truly AWESOME. Anyone who hasn't seen this 45-minute short film needs to. It's about an aspiring super villain and his bid to join the Evil League of Evil.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of getting our cats. They're a year and a few months old now, and having left their kitten years, they're now teenagers discovering who they really are. They've discovered that now that they are able to sit still long enough, watching birds out of the kitchen window is a really fun pursuit. And where they used to run themselves until they passed out wherever, they are now more selective in their sleeping habits, and discovering certain preferences for location and position:

My garden continues to grow. It survived despite a recent, near apocalyptic, hail storm. It hailed marble-sized hail for a solid ten minutes, and it looked like snow when it was done: everything was 3-6 inches deep in white. It pummeled one of my birdhouses to the point of actually breaking it (repairable). But the wind direction just barely saved my garden, and the peas are doing very well.

My niece was cast a Bell in a kid's version of Beauty and the Beast, and she remembered all of her lines (pretty good for a 7-year-old!).

My diet is back on track, and I've finally lost all of the hospital weight I put on during the first 4 months of the year--the Wii Mr. B got for his birthday is helping. I think I'm going to give myself a 6 month grace period to finish my yearly resolutions due to all of the craziness this year.

Oh, our kitchen sink disposal also needed replacing recently. It was old, and it sprung a leak and I didn't figure it out until after cleaning out the fridge and putting it all down the drain (messy).

Alula

Attack

Well my three injuries have happened glad to have that over! I massively sprained/bruised by foot and ankle falling down some stairs. Fell over some bricks in my front yard getting a nice slice in my other leg probably should gotten stitches didn't, and then I had a girl scout land on me when I was running the climbing wall at work completely messing up my back those girls need to listen to directions like telling me when they are coming down. Well that's over we will what the klutz comes up with next! Working on the online store not as fast as I would like but I am trying I promise. Little man and I will be visiting this weekend to have some fun and do some business stuff. Oh and little man decided to see if an entire roll of toilet paper would flush down the toilet guess what it doesn't. And my fish are trying to eat each other for some reason I just can't figure out which one is doing it and no I don't know their names. And my plants are dieing because I have no Garden to put them in because Mr Man is working 12 hrs a day 6 days a week so he has no time to help me. And it just rained for 2 days straight and the river is running even higher here come the floods. Well that's the down and dirty on my life what everyone else up to? See who I will see this weekend.

Fuzzy

Catching up with Spring

Spring sprang this year while I was frantically trying to wrap up last semester and deal with the various health problems that have sprung up in the last month. Mr. B now has stomach ulcers, severe acne, and swiftly dramatic mood swings from the various medications he's on. They put him on more medications to control these side effects and (oh, joy!) they come with the following side effects of their own: severe dehydration, risk of vitamin A toxicity, propensity to sunburn, and depression. Original side effects are still an issue, BTW. He has to take percocet to sleep because his face and stomach hurt so much. He has trouble shaving because they razor rips open the sores on his face. I feel so bad for him.

He's now on Accutane for the acne, and I'm not allowed to touch the medication because I'm a woman of childbearing years and it causes severe birth defects (no joke--the doctor didn't want to discuss what it did, so I looked it up and found pictures of two headed animals).

I'm now trying to catch up with the things I usually get done in the spring. Things like planting a garden and finishing school (I took an incomplete in my natural language processing class--I still need help with the homeworks).

But my garden came together, and I have parsley, sunflowers, wildflowers, pumpkins, gourds, peas, and pinto beans sprouting up so far. I'm hoping that the coleus clippings I've been fostering all winter take to the outdoors without issue.

In other news, Mr. B got a Wii for his birthday from his mother, and we're thrilled. (I'm not sure exactly what's up with this, because as you may remember, we got super expensive Xmas gifts as well. She's never been this extravagent before, and we're a little worried we're about to get bad news of some sort. That or she's bargaining for a grandchild--still not going to happen. Or she was visited by the ghosts of Xmas past.) And I finally got around to setting up the fountain my MIL got me for my birthday last year in our back courtyard, and am now enjoying a light pre-thunder storm breeze through the screen door while listening to the subtle trickle of the water.

Gnigel my mini garden gnome (thanks again, DoHP!) watches over the coleus.

The garden as it is today.

My new fountain! My MIL got the pot for it, I got the sandstones from Home Depot, and I rigged the rest from bamboo garden stakes and an old metal accent plate I had hanging around.

Alula

Buckets

OK this is going to sound funny but I need buckets, good quality 5 gallon buckets. And the place to get said buckets are a King Soopers bakery. The bakery has good quality buckets that hold the icing for the cakes and cupcakes. And when they are finished with them they usually throw them away or give them away to the people who ask. I am hoping that if anyone finds themselves in a super market with a bakery can take a couple minutes to ask if they have any buckets. I need them for moving and storing rocks and dirt. I have a lot of yard work to do on this house. And well with Easter this weekend you all know those bakery's are using a lot of icing. Well if anyone collects buckets let me know and when I get back from Mr Man's Nana's house, out of state of course. I will be able to come and visit to get said buckets.

The Plagues of Egypt in my home...

So the wasps in my kitchen ceiling are back. Today I discovered a patch on my kitchen ceiling where it appeared they were attempting to knaw through because the drywall under the paint was gone. Another theory ran that the pesticide shot up there had caused water damage. Still another theory ran that the pesticide had damaged the drywall making it soft and allowing the freak zombie wasps (which are actually yellow jackets, I've been told) to munch away at it. Anyways, the patch is 8" by 6", and any way you cut it, not good. I'll post pics of Q and mother's ingenious solution later.

So just to sum things up here, I thought I'd recap all of the plagues of Egypt my home has suffered this summer:

Blood: period that lasted a month.
Frogs:
Knats: Never had them before. Now they are in every house plant I own.
Wild Animals: Gretal and Count. Enough said. Oh, and the deer incident.
Pestilence: We'll substitute "wasps" here.
Incurably Boils:
Hail: Yup. That too--on car, garden, and home.
Locusts: We'll substitute "husband" for this one, as he killed my garden.
Darkness: 3 power outages and counting. One of which made us both late for work.
Death of the Firstborn:

We have also suffered flooding in the basement and in our upstairs bathroom when the toilet overflowed, a heart attack, and a car accident. And for some reason all the walking I've been doing has caused me to gain weight, rather inexplicably, and I'm hitting 185 again walking 2.4 miles a day--what with that?

Boy, I just can't wait for the frogs, incurable boils, and death of the firstborn to get here. (Not really--please don't smite me further!)

On the bright side I got my shiny new badge yesterday and a work laptop (DELL latitude 6000 series...oh baby!) today. I was also invited by my colleagues to speak at a conference in April.

Also, I feel like a really crappy friend. It feels like every time I call Q lately it’s to have her cover my butt, save my butt, or drive my butt somewhere. Q, hon, you’re the greatest—and please feel free to say no. And I totally owe you a deck of tarot cards for everything you do for me. Just send me an email link to what you want and I’ll order it with my school books.

Alula

Present from my Cat

Today I was inside trying to do my final project when Count jumped up on the coffee table purring like a motor boat with something in his mouth. He dropped it in front of me and practically cocked an eyebrow and said "I'm so sexy I brought you a present and I didn't even eat it on the way!'

It was a caterpillar. This caterpillar. Fortunately, he wasn't even mashed--I picked him up and he started squirming, and I looked him over for wounds before giving Count a pat on the head and taking the Brave Little Caterpillar out front. I set him down in my garden to chrysalis and grow wings. He might be a moth or a butterfly--I'm not sure which--but it's always nice to have things living in the garden.

As some of you have already seen, my slacker productivity has gone into high gear again and we now have a private webpage to accompany our blog. If you are currently a contributor to this blog (i.e. Alula, Munchkin, Q, DoHP, and Fuzzy) have permissions to check it out here: The Virtual Nest.

Everyone has a private page to play with located off of the home page. Please feel free to customize your private pages however you want; please ask before doing anything with the main page because the RSS feed to the blog and the chat box were hard to figure out. Suggestion to Google: just give people full access to the HTML. It would make my life a lot easier.

Alula

179.5

One Day at a Time

Alula all I can tell you is for you to take one day at a time. And Enjoy the good things that come your way. Above is a picture of my little garden my zucchini are taking over and my tomato plants (not in the picture) are getting really big. Lots of random things in this garden like some onions and strawberries even my lavender is growing. Now if Mr Man remembers to water the garden in my coming up absence from the house. Little man and I will be coming into your area next Saturday we will try to convince Mr Man to go to the Flea Market Sunday and then the big water Park on Monday. I just have to get little man watched on that Monday he's just too little to be going to such a big water park and I love my mom but I don't think she will be able to keep up with Little Man. So then Mr Man will be coming back home and to the garden, I will stay with my mom and leave for a family reunion in Florida on the 29Th Thu the 10Th. And then Mr Man will Have to come get us because he doesn't want to be without the car for that long. Who knows how much longer that truck is going to last. And if anyone wonders for this trip to Florida Mom will be on oxygen a cpap for the plane, Nessy the "Service Dog" will be going on the plane actually with us not in the baggage area, and Little Man is going as a lap Child for this very long flight. Please wish me luck that I don't completely loose my mind, not that I haven't lost it already. Well fun and games, one day at time.

fuzzy

Rain just keeps on pouring down...

The National Weather Service should issue a warning for my life.

Sultry red sunflower in my garden.

Ladies, let me give you the update since last for those of you who haven't heard yet. We spent the 4th of July in hospital room 213 this year; we actually had a pretty decent view of several fireworks shows out the window. Mr. B's father was released from the hospital on Sunday the 5th.

Now allow me to give a play-by-play of last Monday, the 6th. I wake up and see Mr. B out the door; he was going on an out-of-town job this week. So in a very relieved state of mind that his father is out of the hospital, we both go off to work. Around ten, I get a calm phone message from Mr. B. He has some bad news. I'm dialing him back at my office when the phone rings and I answer. It's Mr. B, and he sounds worried and sheepish--he tells me his father has been readmitted to the hospital for chest pain. I keep my voice calm as I give my condolences and he explains they are treating with blood thinners. Then he takes a deep breath.

"Well, there's something else, too..."

Apparently he hit a deer halfway out to his destination. He was going about 60 when it leaped out in front of the car. I try to not freak out (hey, we get big deer out here) in the middle of my office and ask if he's okay. He mumbles something "that's always the first thing people ask.." and then says he's fine--except he probably didn't need another scare after all of last week. Unfortunately the deer died on impact. He got the news about his dad while he was waiting for the state troopers to show up, and thought it best to leave out his own news given that his mother was pretty hysterical already.

The car sustained, as we now know, more than $4,000 in damage. Our insurance deductible is only $350, so it wasn't a terribly big deal. Mr. B called his boss, and explained about the heart attack, and the relapse, and the babies (our good friend the Valedictorian and his wife had their first child on the 1st, just before my new niece on the 2nd), and the deer, and got cleared to take the week off to recover mentally and spend time with family.

While I was driving home that afternoon, I hear sirens as I enter an intersection. I'm twisting this way and that trying to find the damn ambulance but I can't see it; as my brain debates whether to stop or go, my foot just hits the gas and I clear the second half of the intersection. Then, in my rear view mirror, I see the car on the perpendicular street that had been just to my left pull into the intersection with such speed that it hit the car right behind me and spun out. The ambulance he'd been trying to let through stopped right there, and in my head I'm going "Oh my god, if I had stopped I would have been between those two cars that just collided."

So I keep my mouth shut about it until we've carefully broken the news of Mr. B's accident to his parents, then I tell him. We both feel a little sick to our stomachs because 2 babies and a heart attack are a coincidence; both of us having a near-death experience on the same day? What is God trying to tell me?

I'm really freaked out.

Alula

When it rains...

...it pours.

My first sunflower of the season. Yes, it really does appear pink in real life--I have no idea how this one hybridized into pastel colors, because all of them last year were bright reds, oranges, yellows, or some dusted combination.

It's pouring in my life right now. Don't expect me to take your phone calls.

Mr. B's father had to be rushed to the hospital Wednesday morning due a blocked coronary artery. This is essentially a heart attack, but no one wants to say it around Mr. B's mother. The man is only 50, and he really didn't have that many risk factors. At the hospital they immediately inserted a device into his femoral artery and put in a stent to unblock the artery, and he was doing very well Wednesday evening. On Thursday (yesterday), he dislodged the plug that was put in his femoral artery from inserting the device for the stent, and had some significant internal bleeding in his leg. It was incredibly painful for him, and last night they had drugged him basically into a stupor to get him through it; seeing his father like that really didn't go over very well with Mr. B.

Mr. B is not well with this, and his whole family is pretty much in shock. Thursday evening he came on pretty strong about how we had to have a baby right now so that he wouldn't die alone in a hospital and there would be someone to remember him. Blame me if you want to--I told him I didn't think he was thinking clearly at the time and we'd discuss it later.

Last night, Ociffer and Snow finally delivered (their first attempt to induce was last Thursday at the hospital). It's a girl! She's absolutely beautiful in the pictures I've gotten, 7 pounds and some odd ounces, 19 and a quarter inches long. Full head of dark hair; Snow was apparently joking last night that her hair is already so long she might be able to braid it. I'm making the long drive later today to meet my new niece.

Other than that, I will be at the hospital with Mr. B and family, which I very strongly feel is where I belong right now. To cap it off, I have a group project worth half of my grade I was supposed to turn in today, and half of it isn't done yet because I lost Wednesday and Thursday as well.

Mr. B is supposed to be doing out of town work the rest of this month, and I don't know what's going to happen with that.

Alula

Bragging Rights...

Sorry ladies I know no one likes bragging, but I am so happy that I have to do a little of it. I can actually grow beautiful roses! See here and compliment them if you think they are worthy. The stems actually go all the way down to the bottom of the two foot tall vase. =)

Clover, Mushrooms, and New Start Date

My freakish gardening abilities strike again. I've grown corn, raspberries, peas, pumkins, and several other crops in planters in my barren courtyards. Add to the list these little mushrooms, about an inch tall, currently sprouting in the shade provided by the sunflowers and pinto beans. I didn't plant them, and I have no clue where they came from, but I'm happy to have them--probably won't eat them because I have no clue if they're edible or not.

I initially called the vet because Clover was doing so well. Yesterday she turned feverish, lethargic, and acted like the tumor was hurting; I called the vet again to establish that I now needed an appointment instead of a phone consult. I spent most of the day crying because I thought I was going to take her in and the vet would say we should just put her down. We walked out of the office with antibiotics, painkillers, and muscle relaxers. I was ready to put her down; as I said before, we've known for a while that this day was coming. The vet and I are on the same page about what's happening. It's likely that the tumor has become infected somehow, which means a surgery, except that neither of us wants to torture the rat because she's so old--by old age or disease, the end is near. She shouldn't have to go through more than she needs to.

At this point, we're just trying to make her comfortable for a while. If she hasn't passed on "naturally" by the time the painkillers run out, we will have to put her down. As happens with all ailing rats in my house, there has been much cuddling and comforting.

I went in and filled out the stacks of paperwork required for my new job yesterday. It was literally a stack as thick as a spiral notebook, and now I start the background check. I'm starting this coming Tuesday.

Alula

...and guess where it was?

Please read this post first: Men: Unusually large children.

I finally found the paycheck. Get this: It was UNDER Mr. B's laptop.

He's the $^%&ing king of passive aggresive.

Alula

P.S. I turned turkey leftovers into turkey soup today, and there's a lot of it. Speaking of, Mr. B just spilled some on the kitchen floor as I'm typing. And you know if he's (attempting) to eat it, it must be good. Anyone who wants some is welcome.

P.P.S. The pinto beans I planted in my garden are coming up now, and I'm way more excited than I should be. My mom dropped off coleus for the season today, too.

A Year and a Day

A year ago yesterday (as in February 6th, 2008, not figuring for leap year), we started this blog. We made it, ladies.

I encourage you to read over some of your posts--see what was happening in your life, where you were and where you're going (...and why are we in this handbasket, you ask? lol).

But really, thank you all for sticking with this. I can honestly say I feel we're closer for it, even when we're annoying each other, making fake promises, giving out TMI, or agreeing that our lives are mutually F-ed in the A.

Here's to another great year.

Love You All,
Alula

P.S.
I cleaned out my garden today, but I'm too lazy to post pics right at this moment.

50 floppies + 2 hours = 1 CD

Red Sunflower in my garden!

I begged Mr. B to come with me to see Mama Mia! this weekend--he's a fan of that era of music, but thought the movie looked too "girly." Having seen it on stage before, I knew he would like it--afterwards, he said "it was the best movie he had seen in some time." Ladies, you all MUST see this movie--it's a comedy (like pee your pants funny) based on the music of ABBA (the music came first, then someone decided to make a play that fit the songs).

Over the last few weeks I found myself rooting through my old floppy disks trying to find older versions of a book I'm working on. This weekend Q and I had the sickening realization that the oldest desktop we own (between the two of us) didn't possess a floppy drive to read any of these disks. In horror, I realized that my USB floppy drive is the last one, and when it broke, all the information on my many lovely disks, a span of at least 10 years of my writer's life, would be lost forever.

Today I sat down and compiled them--all of them--into one comprehensive CD. I still have 3 Mac formatted disks which I couldn't read, and some of the file extensions were obsolete and therefore the data was unsaveable, but I managed to save probably 98%.

*Grumble* Someday I'll have to copy all of it again to some media that hasn't even been invented yet...
Alula

Movies and Rat Cancer

...And it's only Wednesday!

Health is bad, feel like poo. But trying to keep optimistic, as Mr. Borealis (MD, apparently) informs me that my "constant pessimism" is the reason my health is bad. I kind of think it's the other way around, but then, that's just me. He's out of town again until Friday, and I'm so lonely it's driving me nuts.

We've managed to see WALL-E and Hancock in the past few weeks; WALL-E was quite cute and definitely worth seeing. Hancock was ok, but probably better saved for renting price. I've heard excellent things about Get Smart (a favorite show from my childhood viewed on Nick at Nite) and The Dark Knight; apparently Heath Ledger gave my dad nightmares.

Lexis the rat had her surgery yesterday. She's doing fabulous, as bouncy as ever, and doesn't seem to quite understand the sudden enforcement of cage rest despite the 2-inch sutured gash on her right side. I'll be auctioning a fairy in her honor with proceeds going to breast cancer research (in humans) when I figure out how to do this through EBay. We're out $400 for the surgery, but at least I have my rat back.

The garden is taking over, and I now have corn and strawberries growing, and the sunflowers have started to bloom a little. I also have healthy basil, sage, spearmint, and parsley.

--Alula

Vet Visit

First little tomatoes in my garden this year!

Well, Lexis had her trip to the vet day before yesterday. The surgery to remove the tumor she has is going to run us more than $500. $130 of that is because the vet would like to run a lab analysis of the removed tissue to see what kind of cancer it is (in rats that present like this, it's under 1% chance it's anything but benign). He says he believes the tumor might be growing too fast to be a run-of-the-mill mammary tumor; so now I'm figuring he needs me to pay that $130 so that I can:

A--find out that everything is fine as suspected.

or B--find out that the rat has a malignant cancer in which case there's not much we can do anyways until she's bad enough that I have to shell out MORE money to have her euthanized.

Why do I need to pay this $130?

Mr. Borealis had the same reaction I did--we sat in the living room for a long time in silence. When the vet told me, I went through every possible reaction in about 10 minutes. Everything from "yes, she's our baby and we must absolutely do this," to "I'm a bad person if I don't do everything I can," to "We don't have five hundred dollars--good God, I'm already eating microwave noodles one meal a day!"

Mr. Borealis looked at me and said, "It's five hundred dollars for a fifteen minute surgery on a seven dollar rat? I don't think we can afford that..."

To which I replied, "Go tell her she's just a seven dollar rat."

We both decided at that point that we're going to have the surgery done. She's only 18 months old, and potentially has another two years in her.

I'm desperately seeking paying employment now; I have my first dental visit in over a year at the end of this month. I was supposed to go last July, but then we were so busy fixing the house and with everything else. Then I rescheduled for January, but then Mr. B lost his job and we had no insurance. Mr. B's last cavity cost us $400 even after insurance, and that's weighing heavily on my mind.

Need. A. Job.

On the bright side, I've named that little rapscallion of a squirrel Alan. I figured he needed a name here because he hangs around so much now.

Wish me Luck!

Alula